Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

the edge of the bed and tried to soothe herself with the thrift-shop art over the dresser: an incongruous tropical beach scene.
    Seeing her rattled state, Ben sat next to her and took her hand.
    “Welcome to Pinyon City, Mary Ann.”
    T EN MINUTES LATER, THE GUYS left on an exploratory mission, closing the bedroom door behind them. She heard them speak softly to the dog for several minutes before Ben summoned her to join them. Roman was stretched out on the sofa now; Ben and Michael were sitting on the floor next to him. “It’s okay,” said Michael. “It’s over.”
    The dog looked up as she approached, flapping his plumy tail against the sofa cushions in weary recognition. “Yeah,” said Ben. “There’s Mary Ann. She’s back.” He smiled at Mary Ann. “He always does that afterwards. He takes a head count.”
    She was touched, somehow, to be one of the heads that Roman would count.
    “Poor little boy,” she said, sitting on the floor next to Michael. She reached out and held one of the dog’s paws. The pads were enormous, the size of pennies, as dark as charcoal and almost as rough. His breath was foul, but she didn’t mind.
    Michael stroked Roman’s side methodically, as if grooming a horse. “Look at him checking things out. He’s like Dorothy after the tornado. ‘I had the strangest dream, Auntie Em. And you were there … and you … and you.’ ”
    Mary Ann smiled at her old friend. Was there still nothing in Michael’s life that couldn’t evoke a reference to The Wizard of Oz ?
    “How often does this happen?” she asked him.
    “Only twice before. The last one was four months ago. We’ve got him on meds, but … maybe we’ll have to increase the dosage.” He cast a questioning glance at Ben.
    “What causes it?” she asked.
    “His is hereditary,” Ben answered. “His mother had an epileptic pup in an earlier litter.”
    “Did you know that when you bought him?”
    “No, but … really … what are you gonna do? He belonged to us the moment we picked him up. Didn’t you, Mr. Dood?” Ben looked down tenderly at the exhausted dog. Mary Ann thought she saw him get misty-eyed, but he shifted almost immediately to a breezier tone. “So what do you think, you gnarly beast? Is it time for a bath?”
    Roman scrambled to his feet with the ungainly zeal of a newborn colt, that gross string of saliva still swinging from his lips, though this time it verged on the comical.
    “I take it he likes baths,” she said.
    “Oh, hell, yeah,” said Michael. “Anything to do with water. Wait’ll you see him in the snow. He’s a total fiend.”
    As the guys led Roman to the bathtub, Mary Ann found herself envying the dog his blithe amnesia, the apparent ease with which he’d let go of something awful. He had endured a grand mal seizure—the perfectly named Big Bad—but the only thing on his mind now was the prospect of a warm bath and, maybe later, the pleasures of snow.
    I used to be that, she thought.
    •••
    S HE WAS OFFERED HER CHOICE of bedrooms, so she took the smaller one at the back of the house. It overlooked a meandering creek lined with chalet-style cabins. There was gray smoke curling from one of the chimneys and, somewhere farther down the valley, a dog barking erratically, but few other signs of habitation. She unzipped the duffel bag the guys had given her for the trip and arranged her things methodically on white plastic hangers in an otherwise empty closet. There wasn’t much to unpack; she was traveling even lighter now for this escape from her escape, this refuge once removed.
    When she joined the guys again, they were in the kitchen loading groceries into a rusty old Buick of a refrigerator. (Ben had brought along several tote bags of leafy green vegetables, primordial-looking and streaked with red cartilage, like pterodactyl wings.) Roman was lapping water from a stainless steel bowl they’d also imported from the city.
    “I’m making coffee,” said Ben. “Do you take cream?”
    “If you have it,” she said.
    “We don’t, actually. And we could use some mustard. Do you think you could make a run to the general store?”
    It was such quaint thing to be asked—so absurdly Little House on the Prairie —that she smiled. “Across the road, you mean?”
    “Do it,” said Michael. “It’s a trip.”
    So she put on her borrowed ski jacket and headed through the swirling snow to the store. The few cars that were parked along the road, their own