Babycakes (42 page)

“Welcome home,” Brian beamed.

Michael shook his head in amazement. “Look at you.”

“No … look at this face.” He meant the baby.

Moving to his side, Michael peered down into a tiny pink fist of a face. Brian jiggled the baby. “Say hello to your Uncle Michael, Shawna.”

“Shawna, huh?”

“Connie named her,” Mary Ann put in.

“Shawna Hawkins,” mused Michael. “That works.” He looked around the room. “A crib and toys and everything. You guys have been busy.”

“No,” said Mary Ann. “Connie had them already.”

“Oh.” He sympathized with her confusion. “It happened awfully quick, didn’t it?”

“Awfully,” she nodded.

“Instant baby,” said Brian.

Mary Ann opened a drawer and removed a sheet of pink-and-green stationery. “Here’s the note she left.” She handed it to Michael. It was scented.
Mary Ann,
it read,
Please take care of my precious angel. Love, Connie.
She had sketched a smile face next to the signature.

“It’s just like her,” said Mary Ann.

Michael nodded.

“Poor thing,” she added.

“Well,” he offered, “at least she had the comfort of knowing who the new mother would be.”

“I knew her too,” said Brian. “I dated her.”

“Once or twice,” said Mary Ann.

Looking down again, Brian extended his forefinger to Shawna. Five little fingers clamped around his. “We met at the Come Clean Center,” he said.

“Pardon me?” Michael frowned.

“The laundromat in the Marina.”

“Oh.”

Mary Ann glowered at them both. “I don’t think little Shawna needs to press that in her book of memories.”

“Who’s the natural father?” asked Michael.

Mary Ann took the note from him and returned it to the drawer. “It’s apparently some guy who took her to the Us Festival. She wasn’t really sure. She just wanted a baby.”

Michael was sorry he had asked. “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

“No,” agreed Brian, “it doesn’t.” He smiled at Michael. then turned to his wife. “Does it?”

“Not a bit,” she replied.

An awkward silence followed, so Mary Ann added, “I just feel a little dumb, I guess. Our baby just … shows up on our doorstep. I feel as if I should’ve done something to earn it.”

“You did something,” said Brian.

She gave him a funny look which puzzled Michael.

“I mean that,” said Brian, looking down at the baby. “It’s the thought that counts.”

Mary Ann seemed vaguely unsettled. “Well … we just wanted you to meet her.”

“She’s wonderful,” he said, and he meant it.

When he finally trudged downstairs to his apartment, he found a joint taped to the door with a note:
Smoke this and catch 40 winks before supper. AM.
He removed it, smiling, and let himself in.

There were only a few traces of Simon remaining: a half-empty bottle of brandy, several
Rolling Stones,
alien numbers scribbled on the pad by the telephone. The place looked pretty much the same. Nothing special, just home.

A joint and a nap sounded like a great idea. He remembered his suitcase and retrieved it from the landing. Dumping it on the sofa, he snapped it open and felt around for his toothbrush. In the process he discovered a small cardboard box imprinted with the logo of a gift shop in Moreton-in-Marsh. There were holes punched in the side of the box.

He lifted the lid and found a tiny porcelain fox nestled in tissue paper.

With this note:
Find a good home for him. Love, Wilfred.

Requiem

C
ONNIE’S MEMORIAL SERVICE WAS HELD IN A SMALL
funeral chapel in the Avenues. Mary Ann and Michael arrived early and sat in the back, out of earshot of the others. Moments later, a priest emerged from a door near the altar and began organizing index cards on the podium.

“Hey,” whispered Michael. “Isn’t that Father Paddy?”

She nodded.

“I didn’t know Connie was Catholic.”

“She wasn’t. I asked him to do it. These funeral home services are so … you know … cold-blooded. I thought it would be nice if she had a real priest.”

He nodded.

“I feel so awful, Mouse.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess because … I don’t deserve to have her baby.”

“C’mon now.”

“I don’t. I was so mean to her.”

“Look … she wouldn’t have done it if she didn’t think you were a good person.”

She didn’t answer.

“You know that’s true,” he said.

“It’s not just the baby,” she replied.

“What else, then?”

“She saved my marriage, Mouse.”

“C’mon.”

“She did. He was ready to leave me when that baby showed up,”

“He would never have left you.”

“I don’t know that.”

“Well,
I
do. That’s bullshit.”

Father Paddy spotted Mary Ann and gave her a cheery wave from the podium. She waved back, then turned to Michael again. “I put Brian through hell.”

“How?”

“Well … I’d rather not say.”

“O.K., then don’t expect me to reinforce your guilt.”

She fidgeted with her program.

“Look,” he whispered, “whatever it was, Connie didn’t die for your sins. She just died.”

She nodded.

“This isn’t like you, Babycakes.” He reached for her hand as her eyes brimmed with tears. “Why are you so freaked?”

A man in rimless glasses took a seat behind the small electric organ and began to play “Turn Away.”

Michael was thrown. “Who requested
that?”
he asked.

“She did,” wept Mary Ann. “Before she died.” She tightened her grip on his hand. “It was her favorite song.”

He thought for a moment. “Then that means …”

She nodded.

“This is your dream!”

Another nod.

“And … yeah, of course … Brian wasn’t in it because he’s home taking care of the baby.”

She wiped her eyes. “You got it.”

“Jesus,” he murmured.

Father Paddy cleared his throat and surveyed his flock with a kindly smile. “My friends,” he intoned, “we are gathered here today to honor the memory of … uh … Bonnie Bradshaw.”

“Shit,” muttered Mary Ann.

In the Pink

T
HE WEATHER WAS BEASTLY,” SHE TOLD HER MANICURIST.

“What a shame! All the time?”

“Mmm.”

“Ah, well … it was beastly here too. I suppose it’s been beastly everywhere.”

“Mmm.”

“Simon says San Francisco was quite lovely when he left.”

“Well, he had more time to find out about that, didn’t he?”

“The other hand, Your Majesty.”

“What?”

“I’m done with this one. See? Don’t those cuticles look smashing?”

“Dash the cuticles.”

“Sorry.”

“We were talking about Simon.”

“You’re quite right.”

“He’s been
very
naughty.”

“I quite agree.”

“Any other officer would have been court-martialed straight away. No questions asked.”

“You’re so right. Shall we go a shade lighter?”

“What?”

“The nail varnish.”

“What about it?”

“Shall we pink it up a bit?”

“No.”

“Summer is just around the …”

“Miss Treves!”

“Very well.”

“If one isn’t
feeling
pink, one shouldn’t wear it.”

“How true.”

“Have you scolded Simon?”

“Repeatedly, Your Majesty. And he greatly appreciates your intercession.”

“One would hope so.”

“He’s spoken to a publishing firm. They’re going to take him on.”

“Charmed his way in, no doubt.”

“No doubt.”

“He’s too bally charming for his own good, that boy.”

“I quite agree, Your Majesty.”

“What sort of pink?”

“Beg pardon, Your Majesty?”

“The nail varnish. What sort of pink is it?”

“Oh … here. This one.”

“I see. Well, that’s not as drastic as one might imagine.”

“No, ma’am.”

“What’s it called?”

“ ‘Regency Rose,’ Your Majesty.”

“ ‘Regency Rose’?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Very well. That will do nicely. Carry on, Miss Treves.”

About the Author

A
RMISTEIS
M
AUPIN
the author of
Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, and Maybe the Moon
. In 1994
Tales of the City
became a controversial but highly acclaimed miniseries on public television.
More Tales of the City
became a Showtime original miniseries in 1998. Maupin lives in San Francisco.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

Praise for
Babycakes

“Babycakes
is wildly funny, tough, tender, outrageous
and always entertaining. If that sounds like a lot of
adjectives for one book, so be it. Already Maupin has
the touch of a young Evelyn Waugh.”
News and Observer
(Raleigh, N.C.)

“Maupin’s prose is seamless; it floats along invisibly without
calling attention to itself, so that dialogue, exposition and
description blend easily together. It can uniformly and
flexibly accommodate a wide range of material, from the
whimsical to the pathetic, from the vulgar to the
beautiful, with equal capacity.”
New York Native

“Armistead Maupin is a first rate, world-class novelist,
creating characters so vivid, complicated, tender, and true as
to seem utterly timeless…. I’m willing to bet that fifty years
from now Maupin’s work will be read for its detailed
descriptions of late twentieth century America, its
rollicking humor and kind heart, its Chekovian
compassion, its Wildean wit, its intricate … sometimes
unbelievable but always utterly irresistible plotlines.”
Stephen McCauley

“Like those of Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Armistead
Maupin’s novels have all appeared originally as serials. It is
the strength of this approach, with its fantastic adventures
and astonishingly contrived coincidences, that makes these
novels charming and compelling. Everything is explained
and everything tied up and nothing is lost by reading
them individually. There is no need even to read
them chronologically.”
Literary Review

BY ARMISTEAD MAUPIN

Novels

Tales of the City
More Tales of the City
Further Tales of the City
Babycakes
Significant Others
Sure of You

Maybe the Moon

Collections

28 Barbary Lane
Back to Barbary Lane

MEMO TO LORD JAMIE NEIDPATH

Easley House may bear a marked resemblance to Stanway House, but Lord Teddy Roughton is nothing like you. You and I know that. Now the others do. Cheers.

A.M.

Copyright

This work was published in somewhat different form in the
San Francisco Chronicle.

Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint: Lyrics from
Sail Away,
by Noël Coward. Copyright © 1950 by Chappell & Co., Ltd. Copyright renewed, Chappell & Co., Inc. publisher in U.S.A. International Copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.