Tales of the City 08 - Mary Ann in Autumn

nothing to show for it afterward but a few more roses in her cheeks. But that was then, and she had changed considerably. There was no denying what time was taking from her.
    “Help yourself to tea,” Anna told her. “I can’t trust myself with the pouring.”
    “That’s okay. I had coffee at Michael’s. I’ll take one of these, though. They look yummy.” She nibbled on a cookie, mostly so Anna could feel like a hostess.
    “Are you holding up, dear?” Those Wedgwood-blue eyes were fixed firmly on Mary Ann, expecting nothing less than the truth, as usual.
    “How much did Mouse tell you?”
    “He said you have a clean bill of health …”
    “Yes … well … yes!”
    “ … and you’re leaving the … uh, Republican gentleman … because you saw him having an indiscretion on the Internet.”
    Mary Ann grinned ruefully. “Close enough.”
    “So how are you holding up?”
    “Oh …” Mary Ann made a mumbling noise that was meant to tell the truth without overtly complaining. “I’ve had better centuries, I guess.”
    Anna chuckled. “Haven’t we all?”
    It surprised her somewhat to hear Anna say this. “C’mon. You live in the moment better than anyone I’ve ever known.”
    Anna shrugged. “We don’t have much choice, do we? But that doesn’t mean I don’t have … my special favorites when it comes to centuries.”
    Mary Ann laughed.
    “This one is too complicated for me,” Anna continued. “Thank goodness for Mr. Greenleaf. I wouldn’t know how to make so much as a phone call.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “Are Michael and Ben taking good care of you?” Anna asked.
    “Oh yes. More than I deserve.”
    Anna frowned. “What do you mean?”
    Mary Ann felt a tightening in her throat. It was not that far removed from how she felt on mountain roads. She dreaded making this hairpin turn, but she had to, if she was ever going to get off the cliff. She was leaving in a few days, heading home to mop up the mess of her second failed marriage, so postponement was no longer an option. It was not unreasonable to think this could be the last time she’d ever see Anna.
    “I treated you all so badly,” she said at last.
    “Who?”
    “All of you. Brian and Shawna … Michael … who was sick, for God’s sake, maybe even dying.”
    “How did you treat us badly?”
    “By leaving. By running away and never looking back.”
    “Twenty years ago, Mary Ann. You were following your heart’s desire. I did that myself, dear, need I remind you. I left a wife and a two-year-old daughter without explanation.” Mrs. Madrigal’s face clouded over. Mary Ann knew she was remembering Mona, the daughter in question, whom she’d lost to breast cancer back in the nineties.
    “But you made up for it,” Mary Ann said. “You brought her back into your life and made a home for her.” Now Mary Ann herself was remembering Mona, the flame-haired free spirit who had done a “reading” of Mary Ann’s garbage the morning they first met in the courtyard at 28 Barbary Lane. There was another one she had carelessly lost forever, without even knowing the actual moment she had lost her.
    Mrs. Madrigal gave her a meaningful look. “Daughters, you’ll find, are surprisingly retrievable.”
    She was talking about Shawna now, Mary Ann realized. “I gave it a shot,” she said with a sigh. “I invited her out to Connecticut. It’s perfectly clear she doesn’t approve of me. Why should she? I don’t approve of me myself.”
    Anna fussed with the edge of her kimono, looking impatient. “If you came here for a spanking, dear, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”
    In its own way this felt like an absolution, so Mary Ann smiled at the person who’d bestowed it. “I came here to tell you I love you.”
    “That’s more like it,” said Anna.

Chapter 31
Unscattered Ashes
    A lmost a week had passed since Shawna left the note at the house on Tandy Street, but so far no one had called. She had told the whole story in her blog, complete with a photo of Alexandra, but she’d thought it best to omit the address, since she didn’t want her crusade to degenerate into an act of harassment. This ambiguous ending to her tale of the streets only enhanced its poignancy, she felt, and several of her readers had told her as much. Of course, there was still the issue of Alexandra’s unscattered ashes.
    Her relationship with Otto was getting wobbly. The first rumblings had come that day on Tandy Street, when he’d accused