Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

him. She took a sip of hers without waiting to toast him, since it would have felt weird at a time like this. Then she widened her eyes to approximate delight and offered her own bit of stalling: “It’s wonderful about Obama, isn’t it?”
    He agreed with her less exuberantly than she’d expected. “Yeah … pretty amazing.”
    “But?”
    “C’mon … it was ‘Yes, We Can’ followed by ‘No, You Can’t.’ ”
    “Oh you mean … the proposition?” She knew how clumsy this sounded the moment she said it, but she couldn’t remember the number of the damn proposition and she didn’t want to sound disinterested. “What a heartbreak that was.”
    “More like a rat-fuck.”
    “I should have mentioned that first. I’ve just been so preoccupied … to put it mildly. It didn’t un marry you, did it?”
    “Who knows? There’s gonna be a ruling in the spring.”
    Michael and Ben had been married for the third time in August. The first wedding had been performed at City Hall but was thrown out by the state courts. The second had happened at a B&B in Vancouver but was valid only in Canada. The third one Michael had referred to as the “shotgun marriage” since he and Ben had rushed to say their vows before the November election, when the voters would have their say.
    “Well,” she said lamely, “I’m sure it’ll take eventually.”
    “Like a flu shot.” He gave her a half-lidded smile.
    “If only,” she replied ruefully.
    “If only what?”
    “There were an inoculation against marriage.”
    Michael’s brow furrowed. “Are we still talking about me?”
    She took a long slug of her drink, set it down and turned to face him.
    “I’m leaving Bob,” she said quietly. “I’ve left him.”
    Michael nodded slowly, seemingly unsurprised.
    Had she been that obvious? She knew her late-night phone calls to Michael had sometimes been protracted rants, but they had mostly been nonspecific, focused on the tedium of life in Darien or the tedium of life in general. She had hardly talked about Bob at all. “How did you know?” she asked.
    He shrugged as if it were obvious. “You never talked about him. Happy people talk about their spouses.”
    “Do they?”
    “Did you just get bored or something?”
    “No … well, a little, but I could’ve dealt with that. He was decent enough most of the time and … you know, a good provider.”
    “As they say,” Michael added, and Mary Ann could have sworn she detected the shadow of a smirk. She wondered if he saw her as a spoiled suburban housewife, someone who had long ago sold out everything for a man who could “provide.”
    “So what was the problem?” he asked.
    She took another slug of the vodka and set it down. “I caught him fucking someone.”
    “Well … that would do it.”
    “Someone I know, in fact. My life coach.”
    “Your life coach ? Whatshername, you mean? Calliope?”
    She nodded dolefully.
    “The woman you want to be when you grow up?”
    She winced. “I don’t think I put it quite that way, but …” She didn’t bother to deny it; that was exactly the way she had put it, and Michael knew that better than anyone. She had raved about Calliope for hours on end—her womanly wisdom, her impeccable sense of style, her absolute commitment to Mary Ann’s fulfillment.
    Michael’s lip flickered in a way that she recognized all too well.
    “Go ahead and laugh,” she told him.
    “Sorry … it’s just a little—”
    “No. It’s a scream. You think I don’t know that? Remember how she was always chastising me for my wudda/cudda/shudda? ‘Stop with the wudda/cudda/shudda, Mary Ann!’ Well, she wudda and she cudda and she did.”
    Michael smiled, but his eyes were glassy with sympathy.
    “Maybe,” he offered tentatively, “it was just a one-time thing. Maybe it wasn’t even serious.”
    She shook her head. “It was serious. Venice is always serious.”
    He frowned. “You were in Venice?”
    “ They were in Venice. I was in Darien.”
    “Then how could you walk in on them?”
    “I didn’t walk in on them. We were Skyping.”
    His expression told her nothing.
    “You know what that is, right?”
    “Of course … Oprah uses it. I’m just trying to visualize this.”
    “Bob thought it would be nice if we could see each other when he was on the road. He’s on a ton of boards all over the world.” She could feel angry tears assembling behind her eyes, but held them back, knowing they’d be better spent later.