Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

scrambled for something positive to say and ended up scratching Blossom’s silky belly. “These little critters can be really good company.”
    “Yeah … for a while. Then nothing works anymore. Not even love.”
    There was a strained silence. Scratching the dog had brought Ben close enough to smell Cliff’s rotten, gin-infused breath, so he leaned away as subtly as possible.
    “Would you do me a favor?” Cliff said after a while.
    “Uh … sure … if I can.”
    “Would you see she gets a good home, if anything happens to me?”
    “Oh … Blossom, you mean?” Ben knew very well what he meant; he was just stalling while he searched for an acceptable excuse. As much as he sympathized with the old man’s situation, this was not a burden he was willing to assume. “You know, Cliff … we don’t have a whole lot of room at our house, and Roman tends to—”
    “I didn’t mean you. Just see that she’s not left alone.”
    “But … you understand … I really wouldn’t have any way of knowing if something happened to you.”
    “Oh, you’d know,” Cliff said vaguely. “Word gets around.”
    “Still I don’t think you should take that risk. It’s better to contact the SPCA. They’re a great outfit, and I’m sure they have provisions for that sort of … advance-need situation. If you like, I can look into it for you … get the number.”
    It was excruciatingly clear that Cliff was feeling rejected. “I know how to look up a number,” he said.
    “Well … of course, I didn’t mean—”
    “I need to be alone now.”
    “You bet. Of course.” Ben rose from the bench, now feeling like a total piece of shit, but glad to be excused anyway. “Take care, okay? I’ll see you soon.”
    He didn’t look back once as he headed for the gate with Roman.
    I T WAS ALMOST DARK WHEN he got back to the house, so he poured himself a tall brandy and took it out to the garden, where a gibbous moon was rising in the lavender sky. He should have done something to help Cliff. He knew that. In his stumbling, shutdown way Cliff had been reaching out, and Ben had effectively ignored him. What was that about, anyway? Was it too personal an act to take responsibility for this old man’s dog? Or at least make an effort to see to it that someone else did?
    Yes. It was. No—it was too familial —and Ben didn’t want to be an in-law to all that wretchedness and regret. Cliff was just a guy he knew from the dog park; he felt pity for him, but he was repelled by him as well, and he didn’t want their casual connection to become something more formal. It was that simple.
    The sad thing, Ben thought, was that Cliff had probably received this reaction his whole life. His social uneasiness seemed part of his very constitution. No wonder he was feeling the loss of someone who had actually married him, however briefly. If his wife had become an addict, Ben couldn’t help wondering if the drugs had driven her away, or if Cliff himself, in his all-consuming cloud of despair, had driven her to the drugs.
    Ben was a little drunk now, so he went into the kitchen to get the irises he had bought on his way home from the dog park. He wanted the cottage to be a welcoming place when Mary Ann got back in the morning. Finding a vase on the shelf above the stove, he filled it with water and fluffed the irises for a while. It felt good to commit this small act of generosity in the churning wake of the larger one he had just dodged.
    When he put the irises on Mary Ann’s bedside table, he saw a T-shirt on the bed next to a gift bag and a spiral of pink paper ribbon. The shirt read PINYON CITY: THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE . He had seen that T-shirt before—lots of them, in fact—gathering dust in his favorite general store. It was touching to think Mary Ann had cared enough about their trip to the mountains, even while it was going on, to commemorate it this way. And the fact she had done so on her own made it seem that much more sincere.
    He stuffed the T-shirt into the bag and put the bag with her other things on a shelf in the closet. Then he stripped the bed and hauled the linens to the laundry room. She would have clean sheets when she got back, and that would be a good way of saying that she was starting over now, that things could only get better from here on out.

Chapter 30
The Anna She Remembered
    T he guys had been so sweet to her. They had built a nest for her on their sofa and plied her with chick flicks and foot rubs and