Mary Ann in Autumn (2 page)

Chapter 2
The Politics of the Park

T
he dog park was a fenced-in parcel of packed sand next to the Eureka Valley Recreation Center on Collingwood Street. When Ben reached the gate, Roman was already straining on his leash in anticipation of the free-for-all awaiting him. There were at least a dozen dogs today, among them two of Roman’s favorites: a frisky ridgeback named Brokeback and a Portuguese water dog who, except for a smudge of white on his chest, was almost Roman’s double. Ben often had to explain to strangers that Roman wasn’t a Portie but a black Labradoodle, one of a growing number of poodle hybrids (golden doodles, schnoodles, even Saint Berdoodles) to be found around the Castro these days. But he hated it when people called them “designer dogs.” He liked to think of Roman as a mutt—a term the president-elect had recently used to describe himself.

Ben found something reassuring in the anonymous fellowship of the dog park. Most of the people who brought their dogs here didn’t know each other on the outside, yet he had seen them hug each other when someone left for vacation. Their offhanded intimacy defied boundaries of race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and—every now and then—mental health. And even the serious crazies somehow seemed less so when immersed in the loving lunacy of dogs. It was a temporary cure for everything.

Ben sat down on a bench that would not have looked out of place in a formal English garden. There were half a dozen of these along the perimeter fence, the result of a beautification effort led by Sister Chastity Boner, a dog-loving member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Winter had been a long time coming this year—not to mention the rain—so he settled against the bench and gorged on the remains of autumn. There was a bolster of fog already rolling over Twin Peaks, but it had yet to smother the sun. The abstract mural on the south wall of the rec center was still ablaze with color, and the frolicking dogs were still casting long shadows on the sand.

A heavyset old man in a navy blue parka sat down next to Ben on the bench. “Roman’s had a haircut,” he said.

Ben nodded sheepishly. “We let him get too rasta. The groomer had to take him down a lot more than usual.”

“Looks good,” said the old man. “Very sporty.”

“Thanks, Cliff.” He knew the guy’s name because Cliff was often here with his dog, a shivery little piebald terrier named Blossom, who, for some peculiar reason, fascinated Roman more than most of the other dogs in the park. “I think he’s a little embarrassed about the haircut,” Ben added. “He’d rather be shaggy.”

“Aw, look. He’s forgiven you already.”

Roman had his nose wedged in Blossom’s butt.

“That’s what I like about ’em,” said Cliff. “They get on with things and don’t hold a grudge. They don’t dwell on the past.”

“No, I know. He ate my Sonicare this morning and hasn’t given it a second thought.”

“Your what?”

“My electric toothbrush.”

The old man smiled, exposing a row of teeth that could have used a toothbrush some time ago. “Our unit had a dog in ’Nam. Little brown mutt the mamasan brought to our hooch one day. Plannin’ on eatin’ it, I guess. Sweet little guy. We made him our mascot for a coupla months, until they transferred us.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

“I
know
what happened to him. Chief petty officer shot him.”

“Shit.”

“Had to. We couldn’t take him with us. He woulda starved. Or got eaten.”

Ben sighed. “I guess so.”

“Did you notice our latest addition?” Cliff asked.

Ben followed the old man’s wobbly finger to a glossy red fire hydrant sitting squarely in the middle of the sandy plain. “What’s it doing there?”

Cliff shrugged. “For the dogs to pee on, I guess.”

“It’s a joke then.”

“Maybe, but it’s a real fire hydrant. Bolted right into the ground. It was here when I came in this morning.”

“It’s fucking dangerous,” said a woman who’d been eavesdropping on their conversation. She was roughly Ben’s age—certainly no older than forty—with garish Amy Winehouse eye makeup to compensate for her skeletal Amy Winehouse limbs. “Karma is clinically blind, you know. She could knock the shit out of herself.”

Ben didn’t know which of these dogs was Karma, but he saw the woman’s point. The hydrant was an immoveable iron stump, and these dogs yielded to nothing once they got going. Why compromise their safety for some kitschy human effort at witticism?

“Anybody know who did it?” Ben asked.

“Not me,” said Cliff, almost as though he were a grade-schooler who’d been asked to snitch on a friend. Cliff kept his profile low when it came to the politics of the park. He was friendly enough, but usually limited his talk to the dogs themselves, avoiding all discussion of their owners. Ben sometimes thought of him as “Mr. Cellophane” from
Chicago
.
’Cause you can look right through me, walk right by me, and never know I’m there.

“I have my suspicions,” said Amy Winehouse, persisting in her investigation of the Great Fire Hydrant Mystery. Now she was aiming her caked turquoise lids toward a cluster of dog owners chatting in the middle of the park.

The group included a chubby Asian teenager, a middle-aged white woman in an Obama sweatshirt and a pair of look-alike ginger bears dispensing treats to their Jack Russell. Ben felt a peculiar sympathy for the culprit, whoever it was. He (or she or they) must have believed that the others would be deeply amused by the fire hydrant.

But this was the wrong crowd to be second-guessing. The hardcore regulars saw the park as an extension of their homes, fiercely debating every change that came along. When, for instance, the new redwood planters were installed along the fence, there were those who fretted that smaller dogs might get cornered there by the larger ones. The exact distance between the planters and the fence was a subject of grave deliberation for weeks. Ditto the contents of the planters, since some of the prettiest flowering trees dropped blossoms that were potentially poisonous. (“But only if eaten in large quantities or boiled into a tea,” Ben’s husband had explained—and Michael, after all, was a gardener. “There’s nothing to sweat until you see a Doberman with a teapot.”)

The ginger bears had left the others, and Ben realized they had done so to watch their Jack Russell tentatively approach the fire hydrant. There was a glimmer of dad-like pride on their faces as the dog began circling the alien totem, obviously as baffled by its presence as the humans were. When he finally headed off without lifting his leg, the ginger bears were noticeably crestfallen, though Ben did not remark upon it.

It occurred to him that Michael would probably have suspected these guys from the get-go. Michael was a bear himself, though not exactly a member of their fraternal order. He had once remarked that the most hidebound of bears, the ones who invoked manhood in beards, suspenders and long johns, had a penchant for cramming their homes with juvenilia: mid-century cookie jars and Disney figurines under glass domes.

That corny fire hydrant certainly fit the profile.

“Well,” said Ben, slapping his knees as he rose from the bench. “Time to hit the road, I guess.”

A cloud passed over Cliff’s face. “Don’t go on my account. I can sit anywhere.”

Ben felt bad for the old guy, who, for one reason or another, always seemed on the verge of apology. “No, I’d love to hang out. I’ve just got shopping to do. We’re cooking for a friend of my partner’s tonight.” Ben usually called Michael his husband but had gone with the less threatening word in deference to Cliff’s age and the likelihood that he was straight. Michael wouldn’t approve, but Ben saw it as good manners.

“Well,” said Cliff. “Cook him something nice.”

“It’s a her, actually.” He decided to make it more interesting for Cliff. “Maybe you’ve heard of her. She had a TV show here in the late eighties. Mary Ann Singleton?”

Cliff blinked at him in mild befuddlement. “She still lives here?”

Ben shook his head. “She’s been back East for years. She’s just visiting. You remember the show?”

“Sure. Went to it once even, sat in the audience. Got her autograph. Not personally, but . . . her producer took it.”

“No kidding? Small world.”

Roman appeared and nuzzled the leash in Ben’s hand. “I guess that’s my cue,” he said, grateful for another excuse to get out of there.

D
ELANO’S
M
ARKET WAS JUST AROUND
the corner from the dog park, but Ben took Roman all the way back to where the car was parked on Eureka, so he could drive into the market’s basement entrance. This was one of the few occasions when he’d leave Roman in the car, having heard too many stories about dogs being snatched for use as “bait” in dogfights. It sickened him to think that such cruelty could happen here, but it did, and not infrequently. In fact, one of Roman’s playmates at the park, a nervous little boxer named Mercy, had been rescued during a dogfight bust in the Excelsior.

Leaving a window cracked, Ben locked the Prius and headed up the stairs to the market. Just before he reached the top, his cell phone tingled against his thigh, so he retrieved it from a tangle of biodegradable poop bags and checked the readout.

It was Michael’s gardening assistant, a cub named Jake Greenleaf.

“Hey there,” said Ben.

“Hey, Ben. You seen your hubby? He’s not picking up, and one of our clients is looking for him.”

“He should be at the house,” said Ben.

“He’s not answering, if he is.”

“Then he must be with Mary Ann.”

“Who?”

“You know . . . the one who came out when Anna had her stroke.”

“The hot Connecticut mess?”

Ben chuckled. “Whatever.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“I dunno. It’s all very mysterious.”

“Well, if you hear from him, tell him Karl Rove’s got a bug up his ass again.”

“Will he know what that means?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jake. “Oh, yeah.”

Chapter 3
Solid Proof

T
he nastiest clients, in Jake’s opinion, were not the rich ones but the ones who used to be rich, the ones who made a huge wad during the dot-com boom and lost it in a big way. Downsizing, as they liked to call it, had turned them into assholes who couldn’t afford a driver anymore but still wanted a gardener to boss around.

Like this client—the one who looked like a younger Karl Rove—who came charging out of his house the moment Jake returned his cell phone to his backpack.

“Did you reach him?”

“Not yet. I left a message.”

The client grunted and rolled his eyes.

Jake had tried to be nice to this loser, but the guy was always such a dick. He never asked for Jake’s opinion about anything. When Michael wasn’t around, in fact, he barely spoke to Jake at all. Jake was just a day laborer in Karl Rove’s eyes, not a junior partner in the business, and these failed dot-commers always had to talk to the boss.

“Here’s the deal,” said Jake. “This is my specialty. I’ve been doing rock gardens for Michael for over three years. If you wanna turn that fountain back into a planter you’re gonna need drainage, and that means we’re gonna hafta hammer a hole in that concrete. You can talk to Michael, but he’ll just tell you the same thing—”

“I don’t doubt that, Jason—”

“Jake.”

“Whatever . . . Jake.”

“I spoke to Michael’s husband,” Jake said evenly. “He’s dealing with a family emergency.” It wasn’t the truth, but it was sort of the truth and easier than explaining that Michael’s favorite drama queen had just rolled into town with a fresh steaming load of drama. Besides, Michael was pushing sixty and having serious issues with one of his rotator cuffs. He had earned the right to some downtime, whatever the reason.

Jake lifted the jackhammer off the ground, letting it swing from his hand gunslinger-style. “Want me to keep going?”

The client nodded sullenly. “Yeah . . . just have Michael call me.”

“No problem.”

Napoleon headed back toward the house, then stopped and turned with a mean little smirk on his face. “You might wanna . . .” He tapped his forefinger against his cheek. “Your beard is splattered with something.”

He knows,
thought Jake.
He knows and he’s having fun with me
.

Jake’s free hand shot to his beard and made an exploratory search. “Oh . . . the jackhammer. Hit a wet spot. Hope it wasn’t cat shit.”

He was trying to show that he was indifferent to mud and beyond humiliation by this douche bag, but the wildfire raging across his face told another story. He hated those telltale blushes. They came less often these days, but when they did, they came with a holy vengeance. And that wasn’t who he was anymore. Or at least who he wanted to be.

Maybe it’s the testosterone,
he thought. Maybe the hormone intensifies what’s already there—like it does with hair growth and muscle mass. Wouldn’t that suck big-time? It didn’t seem likely, but he could ask about it on Wednesday at the Lou Sullivan Society. There might be other guys there with similar experiences.

If you can manage to keep from blushing
,
dude.

T
HE CLIENT WENT BACK INTO
the house. Jake finished his jackhammering and lost himself in the arrangement of rocks on the slope. He had picked out these rocks himself at the stone yard in Berkeley. They were rough and honey-colored, streaked with purple and rust, and he enjoyed finding their kinship to each other as he embedded them in the soil. They were like pieces of a puzzle that he was building and solving at the same time. When all the rock was in place, he would have the entirely different satisfaction of tucking moss and soft grasses between the cracks. That was the icing on the cake.

It didn’t matter that he was doing this for a douche nozzle. This rock garden was Jake’s when all was said and done. He would photograph it, remember it, imagine it years from now as a mossy ruin from an earlier time—
his
ruin—since the guy who builds something owns it forever. Even after Karl Rove had died or moved away, this mighty tumble of golden stone would still be Jake’s, solid proof of his days on earth.

He had said something like that the week before at Lou Sullivan. Not before the group or anything—he was way too shy for that—just gabbing afterward with a hot trans dude named Rocco, who had already announced his taste for men. Jake had hoped to impress him with his devotion to his work, but ended up sounding like a total garden geek. It didn’t help that a butch bio guy was lurking nearby pretending to swig on a Snapple but obviously ready to pounce on Rocco as soon as Jake was done boring him to death with horticulture. He left just after that, choosing solitude over disgrace.

He was no good at meeting people. Even at a support group for trans folk he felt like a visiting Martian. He had thought that would change once he’d made the leap, but so far, claiming another gender—even the one that came naturally to him—had merely offered new ways to feel alienated, new opportunities for humiliation. His hookups with bio guys had been one-night stands at best; the only good that had ever come from that had been meeting Michael and thereby landing this job. A lot of bio guys were just in it for the novelty, losing interest altogether once their curiosity was satisfied. As for other trans guys, they were either cruising the Lone Star for liquored-up bio bears or flirting with the femme dykes down at the Lexington Club. They weren’t looking for Jake.

Still, his drive for completion never waned. In fact, once he’d begun the testosterone, the urgency for the surgery had grown even greater. So he was saving his money, biding his time until the day of deliverance. He was barely past thirty, anyway; the man of his dreams could wait until the plumbing was adjusted. For the moment, at least,
he
was the man of his dreams, and everything else was needless distraction.

Besides, there were matters far more pressing than finding a partner. Like, for instance, how to pee believably. That was less of an issue in San Francisco, where people were used to surprises, but he dreaded the thought of being clocked at a urinal in, say, Bakersfield or San Leandro. Michael, after all, often sent him off on shopping forays to nurseries in the suburban boonies. So Jake had sent away for something called a Freshette—a funnel-and-tube urination device used by bio women on camping trips.

He had worn this thing in his boxer briefs for several days before realizing—on a bus full of school kids, no less—that the funnel looked like some sort of weird domed erection. So he’d trimmed the Freshette down to a less disturbing size before threading its tube through the shaft of a small cushiony dildo he’d found at Good Vibrations. They called it a “packer,” he learned that very day, and it was just what he needed: something believable to pull out of his fly when privacy was impossible.

He was getting there.

F
OR THREE YEARS
J
AKE HAD
been living in the Duboce Triangle with someone he thought of as his “tranmother.” Anna Madrigal was in her late eighties but still getting about. She’d had a stroke a few years back, remaining in a coma for several days, but she’d recovered and since that time had seemed as blissfully fearless as the sole survivor of an air disaster. Her energy was flagging, but she could still be found plodding around the neighborhood in kimono and sneakers, a look that could sometimes border on bag lady. Jake knew better. Anna had a decent nest egg from the sale of a house on Russian Hill, where, once upon a time, back in the seventies, she had been Michael’s landlady.

Anna treasured her independence, so Jake never called himself her companion or caregiver, though that’s how he saw it—and proudly. The old girl was something of an icon among local trans folk, so he found it something of a privilege to keep an eye on her and do her heavy hauling. But mostly, of course, she was just good company.

And that was the reason he headed home for lunch that day. The drive from Pacific Heights to the Duboce Triangle and back again would eat up most of his lunch hour, but he needed a serious dose of Anna, however small. His heart sank when he entered the flat and she wasn’t in her favorite armchair by the window.

“Yoo hoo,” he called, using the silly greeting she sometimes used. He had never done that before and surprised himself with the sound of it.

There was no answer, so he went down the hall toward the bedrooms.

“Anna . . . I brought us sandwiches from the corner.”

Still no response. Her bedroom was empty, so he figured she was out on one of her constitutionals. It served him right, of course, for not calling first, but he’d always enjoyed the way her face lit up when she received unexpected company.

He headed to the kitchen for a glass of juice. There, beneath a shaft of afternoon sunlight, he found her. She was lying on her side on the floor, her face turned away from him. Her old cat, Notch, was perched solemnly on her hip, as if standing guard. Jake felt the blood rush from his face as violently as it could rush in.

“Oh, no,” he murmured, moving closer to her body. The cat rose to its feet, still balanced on Anna’s hip, and arched its back lazily, completely indifferent to whatever the fuck was going on. Jake, meanwhile, had forgotten how to breathe.

“Oh, Jesus,” he said. “Jesus—”

“No call for that,” Anna said sternly.

Jake gasped with relief and went to her side, squatting so he could see her face. Notch leaped from her hip and strode briskly away. “What happened?” asked Jake.

“Just having a little snooze.”

“On the floor?”

“It’s nice down here. The linoleum’s so smooth and cool. I see why Notch likes it.”

He considered, then dismissed, the possibility that Anna had finally lost her mind. “You fell, didn’t you?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

“When?”

“Not that long ago. Who knows? I’ve been sleeping.” She extended her hand. “Give us a lift, dear.”

“No . . . wait . . . you may have broken something.”

“Don’t be melodramatic. I’m not in pain. I was just catching my breath, and I fell asleep.”

So Jake helped her sit up for a moment before scooping her in his arms and rising to his feet. She was a good four inches taller than he, but surprisingly light, an armful of velvet and bones. As he carried her down the hall, he caught the scent of her perfume, which he remembered was called Devon Violets. The name had always puzzled him, since violets—at least the ones
he
knew about—didn’t have a scent.

“Where are we going?” asked Anna.

“To the armchair. To eat our sandwiches.”

Looking up at him, she chortled. “I feel like Scarlett.”

He didn’t get it. “Johansson?”

“No, child . . . O’Hara.”

“Who’s that?”

“Oh . . . that
is
depressing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, dear. Just being silly.”

A
NNA PECKED AT HER SANDWICH
but gobbled up the black-bottom cupcake he had brought as an afterthought. He had read somewhere that old people eventually lost their more refined taste buds, so that only really sweet things held their interest in the end. He wondered if that was true, and if he should start finding ways to make main courses seem more like dessert. He was a crummy cook, though—or at least a fairly disinterested one; Anna was much better in the kitchen than he would ever be.

“That was lovely,” said Anna, dabbing at the crumbs on her chin with the tissue she kept tucked in her sleeve. “Very thoughtful of you, dear.”

“I have to get back soon,” he said. “Michael’s not working.”

“Oh, no. His shoulder?”

“No . . . well, it’s still hurting him, but . . . he’s spending the day with his friend from Connecticut.”

Anna’s watery blue eyes blinked at him, absorbing the news. “Mary Ann’s in town?”

“Mmm.”

Anna drew back, frowning a little. “Why do you say it like that?”

“I didn’t say anything. I said ‘Mmm.’ ”

“Yes, dear . . . but your
tone
.”

Jake shrugged. “I just think . . . she’s kind of a pain.”

Anna seemed to take this personally. “You’ve met her only once.”

Jake remembered it well. Mary Ann had flown into town (in her husband’s private jet, no less) when Anna was already deep in her coma. It was a nice enough gesture, Jake supposed, but Mary Ann would never have known about Anna at all if Michael hadn’t tracked her down. Sure, she must have been nervous about facing friends she hadn’t seen for decades, but beyond that there was something off-putting about her: a certain aloofness that made Jake feel instantly judged and dismissed.

Since that time Mary Ann and Michael had been talking a lot on the phone. According to Ben, who shared Jake’s assessment of this woman, Mary Ann would call to unload at least four times a week. And it was always about her: her distant husband and unappreciative stepson, her dead dream of being a network anchor, her really lousy night at the country club. To hear Ben tell it, Michael rarely got a word in edgewise.

“It’s not like I hate her,” said Jake. “I’m just not real big on her.”

Anna regarded him soberly over her teacup. “Do you know why she’s here?”

Jake shook his head. “Ben doesn’t even know. Whatever it is, she was saving it for a face-to-face with Michael.”

“Which is when?”

“Now . . . I guess.”

The old lady nodded methodically, her beach-glass eyes fixed on the sycamore across the street. Jake wondered if she was hurt, if she felt left out of the loop. Mary Ann had been her darling once upon a time, her ingénue on Barbary Lane.

Anna fidgeted with a strand of snowy hair before tucking it behind her ear.

“I wonder if Shawna knows,” she said quietly.