Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

again. “Don’t tell me there’s a ritual or something.”
    “For what?”
    “Sending off your uterus.”
    He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, twelve crones in purple robes smear your body with patchouli oil and dance the sacred Farewell Womb Dance. Jesus, woman!”
    She laughed. “Well, you never know. Not around here.”
    “You’ve been in Connecticut too long.”
    “Tell me about it.” She pecked him on the cheek. “Go to work, Mouse. I’m gonna settle in. Maybe take a nap.” She was already savoring the thought of snoozing on those sun-warmed sheets while hummingbirds idled in the window.
    “I left the house open,” Michael added, “in case you wanna hang out there. Watch TV, read a book or something. Just lock up if you decide to head out. You know the neighborhood. There’s shopping in both directions … down on 24th or the Castro.” He paused, considering something. “You’re okay with walking, right?”
    She nodded. “I’m not feeling anything so far … if that’s what you mean.”
    “I guess that is what I meant.” He fell tellingly silent for a moment. “So you’ve got the doctor lined up and all?”
    “I did. I mean … my doctor in Darien hooked me up with somebody at Mount Zion but … he’s not gonna work out.”
    “Why not?”
    She shrugged. “He’s got a penis.”
    Michael absorbed that. “You want a lady handling the lady parts.”
    “Is that silly?”
    “Not at all. I totally get it.”
    She’d felt sure he would say that, but it helped to hear it anyway. “I thought I might call DeDe and D’or,” she told him. “See if they can recommend somebody.”
    “I dunno.” A mischievous glint came into his eye. “That could very well involve twelve crones in purple with patchouli oil.”
    “C’mon, Mouse. They’re the least New-Agey lesbians I know.”
    “How many lesbians do you know these days?”
    He had always loved teasing her like this, making her seem more out of it than she actually was. It was part of their ancient ritual. “We have lesbians in Darien,” she told him. “There’s one on the board of the country club. She’s a Bush Republican.”
    He smirked. “So to speak.”
    To her amazement, she heard herself giggling. Michael could still do that for her, she realized, still make her feel that giddy release. For a fleeting moment, they might have been back at Barbary Lane, holed up together in his room on a dateless Saturday night, wisecracking their troubles away. And how minuscule those troubles had been.
    Michael pecked her on the cheek. “I’m outta here.”
    “Go. Make pretty things grow.”
    As he crossed the doorstep he pulled out the key and handed it to her with a decidedly tentative look. “Maybe I shouldn’t bring this up.”
    She felt an instant tightening in her belly. “Go ahead.”
    “You know Shawna’s back from New York, right?”
    Mary Ann had guessed as much from Shawna’s Web site, where recent entries had focused on San Francisco. She avoided Shawna’s blog, for the most part, since she was put off by the material. The last time she checked, Shawna was writing about a high-end spa somewhere back East that offered sperm facials to its clients. (And not in the crude vernacular sense, either—actual facials made of sperm from who-the-hell-knows-where.) Mary Ann didn’t need this information from anyone, much less from the only Shawna she had ever known, the little girl with whom she’d sing along to Billy Joel on the drive home from Presidio Hill School. It was too much for her. She was far from being a prude; she just couldn’t make the trip from there to here.
    And it worried her sometimes that Shawna might suddenly decide to get personal in the blog. There was already an autobiographical element to her work, and sooner or later she would get around to her rocky childhood and the selfish adoptive mother who left when she was five. Shawna saw herself as an artist, and that’s what artists did.
    “I had a feeling she was here,” she told Michael.
    “Do you want me to say anything about … what’s going on with you?”
    “No … please. I don’t want her to feel she has to do anything.” She flashed on the hideously uncomfortable afternoon she had spent with Shawna in Darien. Shawna had taken the train from the city and had made an earnest effort at bridging the gap, but they had both begun to squirm before the day was over. They were different people with different histories and no valid reason, biological or