Read Mary Ann in Autumn Online
Authors: Armistead Maupin
Mary Ann in Autumn (11 page)
N
ecrotizing fasciitis.
Shawna had heard the paramedics use that term the night the ambulance rushed Leia to San Francisco General. A day later, on Shawna’s second visit to the hospital, she heard it again as she passed the nurses’ station. It stalked her all the way down the hall to Leia’s ward, droning in her head like some creepy, demonic incantation.
Necrotizing fasciitis
,
necrotizing fasciitis
,
necrotizing fasciitis . . .
The common term for it was “the flesh-eating disease.” It was extremely rare in the general population, but not so much among street people who used heroin. Leia had an advanced case. The doctors in the emergency room had been far less concerned with the surface knife wound on her back than with the gruesome stew of rotting flesh on her left leg. The knife attack had actually been something of a blessing, in fact, since it brought immediate medical attention. Without it, they said, she’d already be dead.
Shawna strode into the ward, her eyes fixed straight ahead so as not to invade the tenuous privacy of the other patients. The salmon-and-green curtains on Leia’s cubicle were closed, so Shawna paused and read the sign that identified the occupant:
LEMKE, Leia
The last name was news to Shawna, since Leia had been too fucked up and frightened to reveal anything on the night of her admission to the hospital.
Shawna cleared her throat. “Leia?”
A growl from behind the curtain.
“It’s Shawna. May I visit?”
Another growl, apparently signifying yes.
Shawna pulled open the curtain and closed it behind her. Leia was sitting up in bed with an IV line sprouting grotesquely from a hole beneath her collarbone. As a nurse had explained on Shawna’s previous visit, there was no other spot on the patient’s over-perforated body that could accept the antibiotic. A tented sheet over Leia’s legs spared visitors—and presumably the patient herself—the sight of a body eating itself alive.
Shawna pulled up a chair. “They’re treating you okay?”
Leia grunted. “Methadone sucks.”
That may be,
thought Shawna,
but you’re not screaming anymore. You’re not clawing at your skin. You seem almost human now.
“You cut your hair,” Leia remarked. “It looks better.”
Shawna was touched by the observation, coming as it had from someone who’d long ago abandoned control over her own appearance. “I wanted something simpler,” she said, reflexively touching the tips of her new pixie cut. She had banished the Bettie Page look an hour earlier; she knew for sure now that it didn’t suit this new chapter in her life.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Leia.
“Doing what?”
“This. Hangin’ out with me.”
Shawna tried to answer truthfully. “I don’t know exactly.”
“You with an agency or something? Rehab?”
“No. Nothing like that. I just saw you under the freeway and . . . I really enjoyed what little I saw of you, so . . . I decided to come looking for you.”
“
Lookin’ for me?
You came there on purpose?”
Shawna nodded. “You think I normally go strolling down Cocksuck Alley at that time of night?”
A quick flash of ruined teeth as Leia laughed.
“Give me a little credit, lady.”
Leia regarded her soberly for a moment. “They wanna cut off my leg.”
Shawna nodded. “I know.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I hear you. I’d feel that way too.”
“Well . . . tell ’em I won’t, then.”
“No, Leia. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . the infection will spread if they don’t amputate.”
“Fuck it, then.”
“It’ll kill you. It
is
killing you. You can start to get better once the leg is gone. That’s what these antibiotics are for . . . to get you stronger before they . . . do it.”
“Please don’t . . . please.” Leia was sobbing now.
Shawna took her hand. “Would you like me to stay?”
“Stay?”
“Yeah. Be with you when you go in, and be there when you wake up.”
“FUCK THAT SHIT. THEY’RE NOT CUTTIN’ OFF MY LEG.”
“Okay,” Shawna replied feebly. “Whatever.”
“Get the fuck out of here, you pesky cunt. Who the fuck do you think you are?”
Shawna backed toward the door, then fled without another word.
S
HE CALLED
O
TTO AS SHE
left the hospital. Hearing the alarm in her voice, he offered to meet her for lunch at the Café Gratitude on Harrison Street. Otto was no more a vegan than she was, but the restaurant was an easy walk from the hospital, and they both liked the cheery neo-Aquarian vibe of the place. On previous visits, she had cut them slack about the pretentious-sounding menu items, but she was in no mood for that today.
“I’ll have the large café salad,” she told the pony-tailed girl server.
“You mean ‘I Am Fulfilled’?”
“Okay.”
“You want that, then?”
“Yeah. Are you gonna make me say it?”
The server gave her a curdled smile and turned to Otto. “How about you?”
“ ‘I Am Elated,’ please.”
“Would you like that with sour cream?”
“Yeah. ‘I Am Elated’ with sour cream.”
“Excellent.”
“And for dessert we’ll both have ‘I Am Awakening.’ ”
Seeing that Otto was enjoying himself, Shawna found herself smirking. When the server had left, she said: “ ‘I Am So Over This.’ ”
“C’mon. They have to say it. It’s part of the gig.”
Shawna heaved a sigh. “What am I gonna do, Otto?”
He didn’t have to ask what she meant. “You’ll go back, is my guess.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged. “You’ll be with her.”
“They say she’s dying. With or without the amputation.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“Would you? You don’t have to see her. I just need you there.”
“Should I bring Sammy?”
Her first instinct was to roll her eyes, but Otto had such a goofy, hopeful look on his face. “I don’t think that’s her kinda thing, honey.”
He cocked his big head of lion hair. “Really?”
“Yeah . . . really. Let’s don’t do that.”
Otto shrugged, looking a little hurt.
A
N HOUR LATER, WHILE
O
TTO
lost himself in a curling paperback of
Infinite Jest
, Shawna spoke to the nurse on duty, a gaunt white guy with a blurry tat on his neck.
“We gave her something,” he said. “I think she’d like the company.”
“Promise?”
He smiled. “She’s feeling pretty good now.”
She headed straight for the cubicle, fearful of losing her nerve. Leia’s bed was tilted a little higher this time, but her eyes were closed.
“It’s me again,” said Shawna.
“Who’s me?”
“The pesky cunt.”
Leia’s eyes fluttered open. “What do you want?”
“Just to talk for a while. If you like.”
“Oh, shit. You’re a priest.”
Shawna shook her head, smiling. “Nowhere close. Just another fan of your sign.” This was incredibly lame, she realized, but it was the easiest way in.
“My
sign
? That horseshit about mamas?”
“Yeah. ‘Your mama would give a damn.’ I thought that was clever.”
“Because everybody loves their mama.”
This was neither a question nor a statement, just something vaguely, sorrowfully, in between. Shawna didn’t know where to go with it, and she was already feeling stupid and cowardly. “I was having dreams about you,” she confessed. “About the two of us.”
Leia scowled.
“Not like that. We were hanging out. Talking about ordinary things. Like old friends. People who’d known each other for years.”
Leia absorbed this for a moment, fiddling with her IV line as if it were a string of pearls languishing on her chest. “Did I look good?”
Shawna laughed. “Yeah. You did. We both did.”
A long silence while Leia’s eyes stayed glued on Shawna’s. “You’re one of those spooky people, huh?”
Shawna felt strangely sheepish. “I am. A little. Hope that’s okay.”
Leia shrugged. “Maurice was spooky. He felt shit all the time . . . shit that hadn’t happened yet. It would wake him up. Like a dog before an earthquake.”
“Maurice was—?”
“Just this guy on the island. He made that mama sign you love so much. I inherited it when he died. He had the same nasty shit I got.” She gazed down grimly at the tented atrocity, then, just as quickly, looked up again. “You always been that way?”
“What? Spooky?”
“Yeah.”
“Not always . . . but it started fairly early, yeah.”
“How’d you know you weren’t crazy?”
Shawna smiled at the memory. “I had a grown-up who recognized it in me. She was that way herself sometimes, so she taught me to go with it and not make a big deal of it.” She was picturing herself at ten or eleven in Mrs. Madrigal’s kitchen at 28 Barbary Lane.
You’ll be tempted to talk about it, dear, but don’t. Just let it be your secret friend.
“I don’t really believe in it,” said Shawna. “I just notice it sometimes.”
“Maurice was just flat-out crazy.”
Shawna chuckled. “Maybe I am, too. Or maybe you and I just met somewhere. Once upon a time.”
“Ever shop at the Foot Locker in West Portal?”
“No.”
“The Fabric Barn in El Cerrito?”
Shawna shook her head. “You worked in those places?”
“Long time ago. Before I started chasing the dragon. I got one of those faces, I guess. People always say I look familiar.”
“Maybe that’s it.”
“What’s your name, honey? You never told me.”
Shawna had introduced herself to Leia in the ambulance, but wasn’t surprised that she had forgotten. “Sorry . . . I’m Shawna Hawkins.”
“Alexandra Lemke.”
Such a noble-sounding name was extremely hard to attach to this ruin of a woman. “I knew Leia was just a nickname, but . . . that’s lovely.”
“What about Shawna? Where did they get that?”
“I never knew, actually. The woman who gave birth to me picked it out, and she died just after I was born. She just passed it on to my adoptive mom.”
“She raised you, then? Your mom?”
Shawna shook her head. “She left when I was little. My dad raised me. I can’t say I’ve ever had a mother.”
Leia nodded. “That’s some bad shit.”
“Hey . . . we deal.”
“Musta been hard when you were little.”
“Well, I always tried to—”
“My mom rented me out to perverts when I was little.”
Shawna flinched. “What do you mean?”
“Sent me on dates with grown men. They messed with me and took pictures of it for paying customers. Split the profits with my folks.”
“Your father was in on it, too?”
Shawna’s reaction drew a phlegmy chortle from Leia. “Got you beat, huh?”
“Guess so.”
“Parents ain’t always a
good
thing, ya know.”
Shawna gave her a sardonic smile, feeling shamefully self-indulgent. She retreated to more practical matters. “Is there somebody I should notify, Alexandra?”
The woman frowned suspiciously. “About what?”
“About you. About your being here.”
In the event of your death
were the words she couldn’t bring herself to speak.
“Oh . . . no . . . nobody. Well, you could tell Maurice.”
“The guy who made the sign?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said he was dead.”
“Oh, yeah . . . right.” Leia nodded slowly, tears streaming down her face.
“I’m so sorry,” said Shawna.
“Ain’t your fault,” said Leia.
M
ary Ann had considered defriending the Facebooker who asked her about Norman, but decided against it. Such a move would only make her look as if she had something to hide. Instead, she just deactivated the chat function. Her fear, of course, was that Fogbound One was someone who had known Norman well—or well enough to know that he’d been with Mary Ann that long-ago Christmas Eve.
Worse yet, what if this guy was a homicide cop investigating a new development in the long-cold case of Norman’s disappearance?
This was paranoia, she told herself. Ben had warned her that social networking could unearth all sorts of stuff, so it wasn’t
that
surprising, really, that Norman’s name had surfaced. She had dated this man, after all, so lots of people could have seen them together. She and Norman had eaten at Sam Wo’s in Chinatown and gone to an old movie at the Castro Theater. They had even gone treat-or-treating on Russian Hill with that poor little girl, though Mary Ann had still been clueless at the time. She’d found it endearing that this shambling sasquatch of a man would babysit for his friends. She took it as a sign of Norman’s basic decency, his obvious yearning for home and family.
She had never been serious about him. He’d been forty-four, for one thing—almost twenty years older—and not all that handsome. She had seen him more as a project, a humanitarian effort. After only a year in the city, she had already had her fill of beautiful, unavailable men, so Norman, with his low self-esteem and adoring gaze, had struck her as an easy, risk-free object of her affection. Since she’d never slept with him, she’d been caught off-guard the night he’d all but proposed to her at the Beach Chalet.
She had sometimes wondered if Norman had seen her as a cure for his pedophilia, his last serious shot at a normal life. Whatever his motives, his anguish had seemed real enough when she turned him down. And it was still in his eyes on Christmas Eve when they were walking along the cliffs at the Legion of Honor and she confronted him about the disgusting magazines she’d found in his apartment. Even then, he still wanted her, still believed he could win her over, if only she would listen to his side of the story.
She’d been over this so many times in her head. Things might have been different if he hadn’t been so drunk that day, if they hadn’t chosen that particular path, if he hadn’t stumbled and lost his footing, if he’d just
held still
when he began to slide on his back toward the precipice, if he’d worn the goddamn tie she’d bought him instead of his usual tacky clip-on, which came loose in her hand when she reached down to rescue him.
There’d been nothing to like about Norman, but she hadn’t wanted him to die. She had never seen herself as someone who could flee such a terrible scene, but fate or karma or
something
had offered her a clean break, and she’d chosen to take it. There had been no witnesses, and even if Norman’s body
did
wash ashore, an autopsy would reveal the huge amounts of alcohol in his blood, and the police would assume (correctly, of course) that a drunk had fallen off a cliff. So she’d taken a bus back to Barbary Lane and gone to Mrs. Madrigal’s Christmas party. She’d never told anyone about it except Michael.
In the intervening years (including the dozen or so more years she’d remained in San Francisco) Mary Ann had never spoken of Norman again, and—even more damning to the memory of a dead man—not a single living soul had ever asked about him. Norman’s ugly little life had left him seemingly devoid of all human connection.
Until Fogbound One.
Now Mary Ann was wondering if Norman had had a friend she’d never known about, someone who’d grown curious about his old buddy once her name had shown up on Facebook. What if he (or she) was trying to torment her about Norman’s disappearance?
Or what if the police had simply found new evidence?
What if a human jawbone with an easily identifiable filling had turned up in the rocks below those cliffs?
Stop it, you ridiculous woman. Just stop it.
“S
EE IF THIS FITS
.”
Mary Ann looked up with a start from her Facebook page. Ben was holding out a puffy powder-blue ski jacket. “For Pinyon City,” he explained.
“You sure I’ll need that?”
“Oh, yeah. It gets into the twenties at night.” He smiled, revealing that delectable gap. “Didn’t you ever go to the Sierra when you lived here?”
“Not really. Well . . . once or twice, but usually in the summer. I’ve never been a skier.”
Ben guided her arms into the cushiony sleeves. “It’s a little roomy, but the color’s really good on you.”
He was right about both things. She admired herself in the mirror next to the bed, mostly to show him her appreciation. “You sure you can spare this?”
“We’ve got tons of ’em.” Ben gestured toward her laptop. “You won’t be needing that, by the way. There’s no Wi-Fi in Pinyon City.”
Her face must have betrayed her chagrin.
“Are you addicted already?”
She knew he was talking about Facebook. “Not really,” she said, lying just a little bit. “But I do wanna stay in touch with my doctor.”
Six days to go,
she thought.
Is this really a wise idea?
Will a radical change of scenery in the middle of nowhere make the time pass slower or faster?
“No worries,” said Ben. “We usually have breakfast over in the next valley. They’ve got Wi-Fi in the café there. And we’re only gone for two nights.”
“Right . . . okay.” She folded her laptop and swaddled it in a pair of slacks before tucking it into her suitcase.
“I’ll see you in a bit,” said Ben, backing out the door. “I’ve gotta get Roman’s stuff together.”
Oh, shit. The dog.
“You knew we were bringing him, right?”
“Oh, well . . . yeah . . . I figured.”
“He lives for these trips,” said Ben. “He’s so much fun in the snow.”
“And he’s good in the car?”
“Oh yeah. He’s great.”
•••
H
E WAS NOT GREAT
. H
E
whimpered, for one thing—not loudly but steadily—for the first two hours of the trip, supposedly in anticipation of the natural wonders awaiting him. When he finally settled down, he sprawled on the seat with all the entitlement of a temple lion, his wet, black nose planted squarely on Mary Ann’s lap. She wondered if he could actually sense something, smell something—
feel her disease
, as that cryptic old Beatles song went.
How
did
that go? He got . . . something, something. He got feet down below his knees, hold you in his arms so you can feel his disease, come together right now . . .
“You okay?” Michael was peering at her from the front seat.
“We’re fine.” She had answered for the dog as well, since they were a couple for the purposes of this trip, whether she liked it or not.
“I can switch with you when we stop for lunch.”
“No. I’m good.” She might have agreed had she not noticed how often Michael and Ben had reached across the coffee holders to touch each other. It was part of their road ritual. Her first husband, Brian, had been like that. Bob, of course, not so much.
Feeling a shiver of isolation, she found herself stroking the wooly head in her lap. The dog was a pretty mottled color, like an Irish cable-knit sweater, a flurry of grays and browns. She spotted a grain of crud in the corner of his eye, so she picked it out with delicate care, only to have the creature turn and lunge at her hand.
“Shit . . . sorry.”
“What happened?” Ben found her in the mirror.
“I was picking something out of his eye.”
Michael chuckled. “He wasn’t trying to hurt you. He just wanted the booger.”
“What?”
“He loves to eat eye boogers. It’s his favorite thing.”
She saw Ben shoot a peevish glance at his husband. “Michael . . . TMI.”
“And you feed them to him? Ew . . . Mouse . . . that’s disgusting. And who calls them eye boogers, anyway?”
“Who says ‘ew’ anymore?”
“Plenty of people.”
“At
our
age, I mean.”
“Our age,” she echoed flatly, shooting him a look. He had tried this several times already: invoking their common decrepitude in front of Ben, so that he, Michael, could strike the pose of the wise old sage. She wasn’t ready to claim that crown yet.
“All dogs like to do that,” Michael insisted. “It’s a natural thing. Besides, it’s neater. What did you do with it?”
“What do you mean? I flicked it away.”
“On the
floor
?”
She reached out to swat him, but he intercepted her hand and held it for a while, almost tenderly, against the snowy bristles on the back of his neck.
“You’re bad,” she said, embarrassed by the intimacy.
T
HEY STOPPED FOR LUNCH, AS
custom seemed to demand, at an In-N-Out Burger just off the freeway. It was perched on a small, barbered knoll that offered a surprisingly unspoiled view of the foothills. The air was much colder here, and the sky was as dingy as an old hankie, but there was no evidence of snow beyond a few ski-racked Outbacks in the parking lot. Some of these patrons had to be locals, she figured, given the patriotic frenzy of their bumper stickers and the sheer height of their vehicles.
For ten minutes, they went their separate ways, two- and four-legged creatures alike. While Ben was at the counter placing their orders, Michael led Roman around a plaza of asphalt-framed grass, and the lone female finally relieved herself in a restroom that was much cleaner than she’d expected. When she was done, she pushed the paper horseshoe into the toilet with the tip of her Pumas and flushed without looking. She would
not
dwell morbidly on her cancer. Dr. Ginny had laid down the law about that in their last phone conversation.
Stop horriblizing
,
Mary Ann. It will do you no good.
She studied her face in a streaky mirror as she washed her hands. She’d been accused of horriblizing before—that very term, in fact—by someone else looking out for her welfare. Calliope, of course, had not been a doctor; her certification had been from a place called Coach U.
That should have been a fucking clue,
thought Mary Ann.
That should have given me the tiniest inkling that this oh-so-earnest shaman with trout pout and cone-shaped breasts might not be the most trustworthy keeper of my heart’s secrets.
“Don’t be such a horriblizer,” Calliope used to say whenever Mary Ann began to fret about the world. “You’re just worrying about stuff that hasn’t happened yet.”
Right,
thought Mary Ann, drying her hands on a paper towel,
like the sight of my life coach sucking off my husband in a fancy Italian hotel.
Good thing I didn’t horriblize about
that
before it happened.
Who knows
where
I would have gone with it.
She flung the towel into the trash and charged out of the restroom in a blind fury, nearly colliding with a balding, pink-haired old woman toting an infant in a Baby Bjorn. Outside, where a gust of cold air slapped her into a semblance of sanity, she saw that Ben had already returned to the car, so she collected herself as believably as possible before climbing into the backseat. She was instantly enveloped in a warm fog of cheeseburger smells.
“Yum,” she said.
“Eat yours now,” Ben told her with a wink. “It’s a lot easier without the doodle in here.”
“I guess I shouldn’t ask,” she said, unwrapping one of the burgers.
He grinned knowingly as he wiped cheese from the corner of his mouth. “It’s hard to be vegetarian on the road. We let ourselves transgress when we’re out of town.”
“No complaints here.”
“Good, aren’t they?”
“Mmm.”
“It’s the soda cups that bother Michael.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’ve got Bible verses printed on the bottom.”
“Really?” Mary Ann tilted a cup to see what he meant, and proceeded, of course, to spill diet soda on her leg. “Shit,” she murmured. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Ben sprang from the car and opened the hatchback, returning seconds later with a ragged terrycloth towel. “It’s Roman’s, but it should be clean.”
She thanked him and dabbed at her sodden leg, infuriated by her own stupidity, her own mindless panic.
“Do you need to change?” he asked. “I can leave for a bit.”
His sweetness made her want to cry, but she held it back.
“It’s okay,” she said. “No big deal.”
Ben smiled sleepily. “It’s the one about living forever.”
“What?”
“The Bible verse. John something. ‘All who believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting’ . . . et cetera.”
“All that’s written on the bottom?”
He shook his head. “Just the chapter and verse numbers.”
“But you
knew
them?”
“I Googled them.”
She laughed. If Ben had been a closet believer, it would have been a revelation, since Michael had indicated that the two of them had given up on organized religion. She felt curiously let down. She wasn’t all that religious herself, so it might have been useful—or comforting, anyway—if someone she knew had Wi-Fi to the Almighty.
T
HE HIGHWAY WOUND INTO THE
mountains so gently that she barely noticed the climb. It was not until the trees had become pointy and a boulder-strewn river was racing them through a gorge that the change was undeniable. Then, out of nowhere, filaments of snow began to lash the windshield from every direction, making even the dog take notice. Roman was sitting by the window now, enraptured by the gradual whitening of things.
“Is this the Sierras?” she asked.
“Sierra,” said Michael, correcting her. “Singular. Sierra Nevada means ‘snowy range.’ It’s plural already.”
“Oh . . . pardon me.”
“He does that to everyone,” Ben told her.
She changed the subject. “We have chains, I take it?”
“Yeah,” answered Ben, “but the snow isn’t sticking yet, and we passed the checkpoint a few miles back. We should be fine.”