Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

workshop until the skylights turned dove-gray with dusk. He drove home through the Mission, where the traffic was predictably sluggish and snarled, then double-parked at a boutique pet shop in the Castro to pick up a brand of organic dog food they didn’t carry at Delano’s. By the time he reached Noe Hill, the sky was already doing its crazy purple thing. He stopped at the gate to admire it, then studied the house with a sense of palpable apprehension. Had she left or were they still in the thick of it?
    Roman led the way, dragging Ben on the leash, delirious at the thought of an imminent reunion. Michael, as it happened, was sitting on the sofa, apparently alone, rummaging through a box of old snapshots. The dog had been trained not to jump on his masters, so he did a little river dance instead, hopping on his back legs in an unashamed exhibition of his poodle ancestry. “That’s right,” said Ben. “There’s Dad. Give Dad a kiss.” This was already a ritual with them; the dog always got the first kiss.
    Ben leaned down and pecked Michael’s mouth, which tasted of pot smoke, despite Michael’s cherished belief that his vaporizer had magically eliminated all that. He worried sometimes that Michael smoked too much. There were days when he came home and found his husband too buzzed and chatty to connect with. At such moments Michael could lose his train of thought completely, though he usually tried to cover it up. What would happen, Ben wondered, when this chemical forgetfulness merged with the ordinary sort that comes with aging? Unless, of course, this was the ordinary sort.
    He sat down next to Michael and leaned his head against his shoulder.
    “Is Mary Ann—?”
    “Back at her hotel,” said Michael.
    “Oh.” Ben made an effort at sounding sincere. “Sorry I didn’t get to say hello.”
    Michael wasn’t buying it, of course. “I wish you liked her more.”
    “I don’t dis like her. She’s just … kind of a mess, and … it gets to be too much sometimes.”
    “In what way?”
    “C’mon. She calls here three or four times a week.”
    “That was just last week.”
    “No, it wasn’t. It’s been going on for ages, and you’re on the phone for hours sometimes. It feels like she’s living with us, Michael.” When his husband said nothing in response, Ben added: “Not to sound jealous or anything.”
    Michael lifted his head and planted a peck on Ben’s shoulder before righting himself with a grunt. “We just have a history, you know. We’ve been through a lot of shit together. I can’t just cut that off.”
    “I’m not asking you to.”
    “I know that.”
    “So what’s going on with her?”
    Michael released a resonant sigh. “She has cancer. That’s why she’s here. She’s having a hysterectomy.”
    Ben scrambled for the right thing to say. There was plenty of reason for sympathy, of course, but he found himself weighing his words with miserly care, wary of what was coming next. “Why isn’t she having it … closer to home?”
    “She’s leaving Bob. She doesn’t want to be anywhere near home.”
    “She’s leaving him now? Shouldn’t she at least wait until she’s—”
    “She caught him fucking somebody. She saw the whole thing on Skype. She’s humiliated and heartbroken and scared shitless about the cancer. She’s just trying to take care of herself right now. So she got the fuck out of there.”
    Ben knew better, of course, but he couldn’t help fixating on entirely the wrong part of that explanation: “How do you see that on Skype?”
    “Sweetie …” Michael laid his hand tentatively on Ben’s leg before taking the leap. “She asked if she could stay in the cottage.”
    Ben nodded slowly, his suspicions confirmed.
    “It wasn’t easy for her to ask,” Michael added. “More than anything … she doesn’t want to invade our privacy.”
    Ben adopted a tone that he hoped would sound compassionate yet practical. “Then why not take a hotel or rent a condo? She’s not, you know … hurting for cash. The cottage is barely big enough for that bed, and … she’ll need her own privacy, won’t she?”
    “She needs not to be alone, Ben. That’s what she needs. She doesn’t have a home anymore.”
    Ben knew already there was no point in resisting. He had no deep sentimental connection to Mary Ann, but Michael’s conscience—and, yes, Ben’s own—made this huge inconvenience inevitable. “How long does she want to stay?” he asked.
    Michael