Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

cut to the chase: “I just lost someone,” she said, as unhysterically as possible. “It hit me kind of hard. I need to talk to you about it.”
    Anna winced in sympathy. “Not the young man on the unicycle?”
    This made Shawna smile. Anna had referred to Otto as “the young man on the unicycle” ever since she’d seen him perform one sunny afternoon at the Now and Zen Fest in the park. “No, he’s perfectly fine,” Shawna assured her. “I just left his place.” She wondered if Anna had remained benignly ignorant of Otto’s name because she’d somehow divined that Shawna wasn’t serious about him—at least not serious serious.
    “This was someone I didn’t know well,” Shawna explained. “She was homeless. We saved her life, I think, for a little while … so it was hard to see her go.”
    Anna nodded. “Of course.”
    Shawna told the story from the beginning: that first day under the freeway, the eye-catching MAMA sign, Shawna’s inexplicable bond with Leia, the obsessive search that led to Cossack Alley, the knife attack, the ambulance ride to the hospital, the flesh-eating disease, the monstrous strangers who had rented Alexandra as a child.
    “Unthinkable,” said Anna.
    “That’s the word,” said Shawna.
    “So they never … took off the leg?”
    Shawna shook her head. “She was adamant about it … and it was too late, anyway. She was too far gone.”
    “When did she die?”
    “Last night. Late. I should have been there.”
    “No, dear. You did well. You were the angel who took her home.”
    Briskly, with a lopsided smile, Shawna brushed away a tear. “They asked me if I wanted her things. I didn’t even know she had things.” She picked up her knapsack and removed the revelatory item she’d brought with her: a Star Wars lunch box so rusty and battered that Princess Leia’s face was all but obliterated. “She kept her cash strapped to her leg—and the knife, of course—but this is where she kept her memories. The guy who was guarding her cardboard box brought it to the hospital this morning.”
    Shawna opened the lunch box and removed one of the photos, holding it out for Anna to examine. “She worked in the East Bay for a while. That’s the Fabric Barn, I guess, judging from those bolts of cloth.”
    “Lovely,” said Anna, and she wasn’t just being gracious. The young woman behind the counter was a stunning brunette with a sparkling smile. When Shawna first saw the photo, it had taken her a while to connect this Alexandra with the wretch she’d met under the freeway, but there had been no denying that it was the same person. It pleased Shawna that Anna would never know anything but this version of the woman, that Alexandra’s beauty was still intact in the eyes of someone who had never known her.
    “And here she is as a little girl,” said Shawna, trying to sound matter-of-fact, because this image, the one with “me” inscribed crudely on the back, was the one that was flooding her mind with nameless dread. The photo had lost all its colors except orange and green. Little Alexandra was wearing a dirndl and standing alone at a window. She wasn’t smiling in this picture; she looked completely miserable, in fact.
    “She looks like Heidi,” said Anna, choosing to focus on the dress.
    “Look again.”
    Anna pulled a pair of reading glasses from the depths of the fur-free blanket and maneuvered them, shakily, onto her face. “She doesn’t seem happy, does she?”
    “Look at the background. That’s Alcatraz, right? And look at that railing outside the window. And that little plywood terrace.”
    Anna nodded but said nothing.
    “It’s the pentshack, isn’t it?” This was their common term for the studio on the roof of 28 Barbary Lane. Anna had rented it out to tenants, but Shawna had been allowed to play there whenever the place was empty. It had been her secret castle in the sky.
    “Well, it’s certainly Russian Hill,” Anna conceded. “But it can’t be the pentshack.”
    “Why not?”
    Anna shrugged. “Because there were never children living there.”
    Shawna looked at her. “Maybe not living there.”
    It didn’t take long for this darkness to find its way onto Anna’s face. “Oh,” she murmured.
    “Didn’t my father live there?”
    Silence.
    “He was seeing Mary Ann, right? She used to sleep over there sometimes. Before they got married and adopted me. He told me so himself.”
    “Well … yes, but it was also the TV room for a long