Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

number. DeDe answered on the second ring.
    “Well, hello there. This is a nice surprise.”
    She’d known DeDe for a long time. She had worked for DeDe’s dad at his advertising agency and, several years later, had broken the story when DeDe and her lover D’orothea escaped from Jonestown via Cuba with their twin children in tow. The story had launched Mary Ann’s television career and forged a bond between her and the ex-socialite heiress that had proven resilient despite years of neglect and a continent between them. They had remained firmly on each other’s Christmas card list and had accidentally reunited several years earlier at a charity golf tournament in Boca Raton. Stuffy old Bob hadn’t known what to make of the Halcyon-Wilsons with their Hillary buttons and their easy elegance, but Mary Ann had received them like long-lost sisters.
    It felt like that now, she realized, only stronger. “Oh, God, DeDe, it’s so good to hear your voice.”
    “Same here, missy. Hang on … lemme get D’or. She’s out in the garden with the grandkids.”
    “Grandkids?”
    “I know. Tragic, isn’t it? Where did the time go?” A certain breathlessness in DeDe’s voice told Mary Ann that she was already loping through the garden. Mary Ann could picture that garden easily, or at least how it had looked thirty years earlier when DeDe’s mother, then doyenne of Halcyon Hill, had summoned Mary Ann to the estate to break the news of her daughter’s socially embarrassing return from the dead. DeDe and D’or and the kids had just arrived in Miami in a boatload of gay Cuban refugees.
    And now those kids had kids! “Who do they belong to?” she asked DeDe. “The grandkids, I mean.”
    “Both of them. Anna and Sergei have two of their own, and Edgar and Stephen adopted a seven-year-old last year. Where the hell is she? D’or! There you are. Get your svelte butt over here! It’s Mary Ann! Yeah, that Mary Ann.”
    All this joyful fanfare—and the squeals of children in the background—made Mary Ann wonder if she should do this on the telephone. But she couldn’t afford another moment’s delay if she was going to change doctors in midstream.
    “DeDe, listen, I wanna come visit you guys, but I need—”
    “Mary Ann! Girlfriend!” D’or was on the phone now, apparently in the very midst of all those screaming children. “It’s a friend, Milo … no, nobody you know … go play with Juniper … she needs you at the space station. I’m sorry, Mary Ann. How the hell are you? Where the hell are you?”
    “I’m here,” she responded feebly.
    “In Hillsborough?”
    “No, up in the city.”
    “Is Bob with you?”
    “No, that’s part of why … listen, it’s wonderful to hear your voice, but … could you maybe ask DeDe to take the phone to a quieter place? There’s something kind of important I need to—”
    “Gotcha. No sweat. Talk to you later, doll. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
    If only .
    W HEN THE SUN DIPPED BEHIND Twin Peaks, she went for a walk around the neighborhood, mostly to lift her spirits. Like Russian Hill, this side of town was etched with bowered stairs and secret alleys, and she’d always been a pushover for that kind of charm. Back in Connecticut, whenever she’d grown homesick—or whatever the word might be—it wouldn’t be the bridge or the pyramid or the cable cars that would call her back to San Francisco; it would be the raw essence of the place, its DNA, something that was everywhere but nowhere: a snippet of bay filigreed with trees, or a row of houses on a fogbound hillside, glowing like fairy lights buried in angel hair.
    She made herself wander for an hour. She tried to pretend that her pain wasn’t portable, that she was still capable of starting over, still the sort of woman who could be saved by geography. Never mind that it hadn’t saved her for many years. Not on her trips to Paris or Prague or St. Barts. Not during her six months in cooking school in Tuscany or even her volunteer work with Habitat in New Orleans after Katrina. A mess who traveled was, ultimately, just a traveling mess. Travel might be broadening for a while, but sooner or later it just narrowed your illusions about what you could be.
    On the way home she stopped to catch her breath on the steep street flanking Michael and Ben’s house. There was an old guy across the street who was doing the same thing, so she felt a moment of senior solidarity with him, though he was much older than she