Babycakes (2 page)

“The Queen is al Trader c’s?”
This was making no sense whatsoever.

“Wait a minute,” said DeDe. “You didn’t
know?”

“DeDe, for God’s sake! Is she there?”

“Not yet. But she’s on her way. I thought for certain the station would’ve told you….”

“Are you sure?”

“Somebody’s sure. The streets are crawling with cops, and the Captain’s Cabin looks like opening night at the opera. Look, Vita Keating told Mother, and Vita heard it from Denise Hale, so it must be the truth,”

Mary Ann’s disbelief lingered like an anesthetic. “I didn’t think the Queen ever went to restaurants.”

“She doesn’t,” DeDe laughed. “Vita says this is her first time in seventeen years!”

“God,” said Mary Ann.

“Anyway,” DeDe added, “we’ve got a ringside seat. I’m here with Mother and D’or and the kids, and we’d love for you to join us. You and Brian, that is.”

“He’s at work,” replied Mary Ann, “but I’d love to come.”

“Good.”

“Are there other reporters, DeDe? Do you see any television people?”

“Nope. If you haul ass, she’s all yours.”

Mary Ann let out a whoop. “You’re an angel, DeDe! I’ll be there as soon as I can grab a cab!”

Seconds after hanging up, she phoned the station and alerted the news director. He was understandably skeptical, but assured her that a crew would be dispatched immediately. Then she called a cab, fixed her face, strapped her shoes back on, and scrawled a hasty note to Brian.

She was striding through the leafy canyon of Barbary Lane when she realized what she had forgotten. “Shit,” she muttered, hesitating only slightly before running back home to get her hat.

As she climbed from the cab at the entrance to Cosmo Place, she marveled anew at the enduring mystique of Trader Vic’s. When all was said and done, this oh-so-fashionable Polynesian restaurant was really only a Quonset hut squatting in an alleyway on the edge of the Tenderloin. People who wouldn’t be caught dead amidst the Bali Hai camp of the Tonga Room on Nob Hill would murder their grandmothers for the privilege of basking in the same decor at Trader Vic’s.

The
maître d’
seemed particularly formidable tonight, but she placated him with the magic words—“Mrs. Halcyon is expecting me”—and made her way to the banquettes near the bar, the holy of holies they called the Captain’s Cabin. DeDe caught her eye with a sly Elizabethan wave.

Striding to the table, Mary Ann slipped into the chair they had saved for her. “I hope you went ahead and ordered,” she said.

“Just drinks,” answered DeDe. “Is this a zoo or what?”

Mary Ann looked around at the neighboring tables. “Uh … who exactly is here?”

“Everybody,” shrugged DeDe. “Isn’t that right, Mother?”

Mrs. Halcyon detected the irreverence in her daughter’s voice and chose to ignore it. “I’m delighted you could join us, Mary Ann. You know D’orothea, of course … and the children. Edgar, don’t pick your nose, dear. Cangie has told you that a thousand times.”

The six-year-old’s lip plumped petulantly. His delicate Eurasian features, like those of his twin sister, seemed entirely appropriate in a room full of quasi Orientalia. “Why can’t we go to Chuck E. Cheese?” he asked.

“Because,” his grandmother explained sweetly, “the Queen isn’t eating at Chuck E. Cheese.”

D’orothea rolled her eyes ever so slightly. “It was her first choice, actually, but they wouldn’t take a reservation for a party of sixty.”

Mary Ann let out a giggle, then squelched it when she saw the look on Mrs. Halcyon’s face. “I would think,” said the matriarch, casting oblique daggers at her daughter’s lover, “that a little decorum might be in order for all of us.”

D’orothea’s eyes ducked penitently, but contempt flickered at the corner of her mouth. She realigned a fork, waiting for the moment to pass.

“So,” said Mary Ann, a little too brightly, “what time does she get here?”

“Any minute,” DeDe replied. “They’re putting her in the Trafalgar Room. That’s upstairs and it’s got its own entrance, so I guess they’ll sneak her in the back way and …”

“I have to piss.” Little Anna was tugging at DeDe’s arm.

“Anna, didn’t I tell you to take care of that before we left home?”

“And,”
added Mrs. Halcyon, with a look of genuine horror, “little girls don’t use such words.” Anna looked puzzled. “What words?”

“Piss,” said her brother.

“Edgar!” The matriarch gaped at her grandson, then spun around to demand reparation from her daughter. “For heaven’s sake, DeDe … tell them. This isn’t my job.”

“Oh, Mother, this is hardly …”

“Tell them.”

“The French say piss,” D’orothea put in. “What about
pissoir?”

“D’or.” DeDe discredited her lover’s contribution with a glacial glance before turning to her children. “Look, guys … I thought we settled on pee.”

“Oh, my God,” groaned the matriarch.

Mary Ann and D’orothea exchanged clandestine grins.

“Mother, if you don’t mind …”

“What happened to tinkle, DeDe? I taught you to say tinkle.”

“She still does,” said D’or.

Another glare from DeDe. Mary Ann looked down at the tablecloth, suddenly afraid that D’or would try to enlist her as a confederate.

“Come along,” said Mrs. Halcyon, rising. “Gangie will take you to the little girls’ room.”

“Me too,” piped Edgar.

“All right … you too.” She took their tiny hands in her chubby, bejeweled ones and toddled off into the rattan-lined darkness.

D’orothea let out a histrionic groan.

“Don’t start,” said DeDe.

“She’s getting worse. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she is actually getting worse.” She turned and addressed her next remarks to Mary Ann, shaking a rigid forefinger in the direction of the restrooms. “That woman lives with her dyke daughter and her dyke daughter-in-law and her two half-Chinese grandchildren by the goddamn delivery boy at Jiffy’s …”

“D’or …”

“… and she
still
acts like this is the goddamn nineteenth century and she’s … goddamn Queen Victoria. Grab that waiter, Mary Ann. I want another Mai Tai.”

Mary Ann flailed for the waiter, but he wheeled out of sight into the kitchen. When she confronted the couple again, they were looking directly into each other’s eyes, as if she weren’t there at all.

“Am I right?” asked D’orothea.

DeDe hesitated. “Partially, maybe.”

“Partially, hell. The woman is regressing.”

“All right … O.K., but it’s just her way of coping.”

“Oh. Right. Is that how you explain her behavior out there in the street?”

“What behavior?”

“Oh, please. The woman is obsessed with meeting the Queen.”

“Stop calling her ‘the woman.’ And she isn’t obsessed; she’s just … interested.”

“Sure. Uh-huh. Interested enough to hurdle that barricade.”

DeDe rolled her eyes. “She didn’t hurdle any barricade.” D’orothea snorted. “It wasn’t for lack of trying. I thought she was going to deck that secret service man!”

The air had cleared somewhat by the time Mrs. Halcyon returned with the children. Mary Ann submitted to polite chitchat for a minute or two, then pushed her chair back and smiled apologetically at the matriarch. “This has been a real treat, but I think I’d better wait out front for the crew. They’ll never get past the
maître d’
and I’m not sure if …”

“Oh, do stay, dear. Just for one drink.”

DeDe gave Mary Ann a significant look. “I think Mother wants to tell you about the time she met the Queen.”

“Oh,” said Mary Ann, turning to the matriarch. “You’ve met her before?” Her fingers fussed nervously with the back of her hat. Being polite to her elders had been her downfall more times than she cared to count.

“She’s perfectly charming,” gushed Mrs. Halcyon. “We had a nice long chat in the garden at Buckingham Palace. I felt as if we were old friends.”

“When was this?” asked Mary Ann.

“Back in the sixties,” said DeDe. “Daddy used to handle the BOAC account.”

“Ah.” Mary Ann rose, still gazing solicitously at Mrs. Halcyon. “I guess you’ll be seeing her later, then. At the state dinner or something.”

Wrong. The matriarch’s face became an Apache death mask. Aflame with embarrassment, Mary Ann sought DeDe’s eyes for guidance. “The problem,” explained DeDe, “is Nancy Reagan.”

Mary Ann nodded, understanding nothing.

D’orothea’s lip twisted wryly. “At least, we all have the same problem.”

DeDe ignored the remark. “Mother and Mrs. Reagan have never been the best of buddies. Mother thinks she may have been … blackballed from the state dinner.”

“Thinks?”
snapped Mrs. Halcyon.

“Whatever,” said DeDe, handling Mary Ann’s mortification with a sympathetic wink. “You’d better scoot, hadn’t you? C’mon, I’ll walk you to the door.” She rose, making it easier for Mary Ann to do so.

“Good luck,” said the matriarch. “Look pretty, now.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “Bye, D’orothea.”

“Bye, hon. See you soon, O.K.?”
Away from the old biddy,
she meant.

“Where is she going?” Edgar asked his grandmother.

“To be on TV, darling. Anna, precious, don’t scratch yourself there.”

“Why?”

“Never mind. It isn’t ladylike.”

“The kids are looking great,” Mary Ann said. “I can’t believe how big they’re getting.”

“Yeah … Look, I’m sorry about all that squabbling.”

“Hey.”

“D’or hates these scenes. She’s O.K. when it’s just Mother, but when Mother’s with her friends …” She shook her head with weary resignation. “D’or calls them the Upper Crustaceans. There’s a lot of the old radical left in her still.”

Maybe so, thought Mary Ann, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to remember that the woman in the Zandra Rhodes gown with the understated smudge of purple in her hair had once toiled alongside DeDe in the jungles of Guyana. DeDe’s own transition from postdebutante to urban guerrilla to Junior League matron was equally rife with contradiction, and sometimes Mary Ann felt that the embarrassment both women suffered over the monstrous inconsistencies in their lives was the glue that held their marriage together.

DeDe smiled gently at her own dilemma. “I didn’t
plan
on having a family like this, you know?”

Mary Ann smiled bark at her. “I certainly do.”

“Anna called Edgar a faggot the other day. Can you believe that?”

“God. Where did she pick
that
up?”

DeDe shrugged. “The Montessori School, I guess. Hell, I don’t know…. Sometimes I think I haven’t got a handle on things anymore. I don’t know what to tell
myself
about the world, much less my children.” She paused and looked at Mary Ann. “I thought we might be swapping notes on that by now.”

“On what?”

“Kids. I thought you and Brian were planning … God, listen to me. I sound like Mother.”

“That’s all right.”

“You just mentioned … the last time I saw you …”

“Right.”

“But I guess … the career makes it kind of difficult to …” She let the thought trail off, apparently shamed into silence by the realization that they sounded like a couple of housewives pounding a mall in Sacramento. “Tell me to shut up. O.K.?”

They had reached the door, much to Mary Ann’s relief. She gave DeDe a hasty peck on the cheek. “I’m glad you’re interested,” she said. “It’s just that … things are kind of on hold for the time being.”

“I hear you,” said DeDe.

Did she? wondered Mary Ann. Had she guessed at the truth?

The rain was clattering angrily on the canopy above the restaurant’s entrance. “Are those your people?” asked DeDe, indicating Mary Ann’s camera crew.

“That’s them.” They looked wet and grouchy. She didn’t relish the thought of making them wetter and grouchier. “Thanks for the tip,” she told DeDe.

“That’s O.K.,” her friend replied. “I owed you one.”

The Baby Thing

B
RIAN HAWKINS FOUND HIS WIFE’S NOTE WHEN HE GOT
home from work, and he went up to the house on the roof to await her appearance on television. The tiny penthouse had been his bachelor pad in the old days, but now it functioned as a TV-room-cum-retreat for all the residents of 28 Barbary Lane. Nevertheless, he still seemed to use it more than anyone.