The Days of Anna Madrigal (23 page)
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Authors: Armistead Maupin
T
his particular someone had pigtails of plaited silver that evoked both Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Baby Jane Hudson. They erupted from the side of her head with childlike gaiety, though her face was etched with her years when she smiled down at him. The smile placed her. It moved him past the nonsensical name tag and the pink-and-white-striped uniform into the realm of someone he loved.
“Mary Ann?”
“Call me Candystriper,” she said.
“Where's Ben?”
“With the doctor. He's here. Don't worry.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I work here.”
“Am I dead?”
“Oh, gee, thanks.”
“I just mean . . . this is surreal. You aren't medically trained.”
“Go ahead. Rub it in.” She paused. “All I have to do is draw a little blood.”
“No fucking way.”
She smiled. “I'm just here to cheer you up.” Her cool, elegant hand swept across his forehead. “How am I doing, babycakes?”
“Not bad, so far.”
“You scared the shit out of Ben, you know. You were out for four minutes. White as a sheet and limp. He thought you were dead.”
This still made no sense to him. He remembered talking to Ben about lyres and lutes, he remembered Ben asking if something was the matter, he remembered Ben telling him the paramedics were on the way, he remembered telling Ben that it was an overreaction, that he had merely passed out pleasantly for a moment or two. He had not been there at all for the peeing and shaking and the going limp. He had not even believed it until one of the paramedics asked him to stand up and he felt the soggy cotton sticking to his leg. Then he had grown sheepish in the presence of these proficient strangers. “Your point is well taken,” he had told them with a smile.
He remembered, too, the flickering film of his trip to the medical tent: the bouncy humiliation of the stretcher ride, the way the lights of the ambulance stole the thunder of the EL-wired bicycles that parted to let them pass. He remembered how the paramedic in the ambulance had slapped his wrists and complained jovially about his absence of veins, finally settling on a fierce jab to the back of his hand. He remembered watching the IV bag as the fluidâwhatever it wasâdripped into him. He remembered thinking: This could be serious. This could take me out right now.
“What do they think it was?” he asked Mary Ann.
“Apparently you had a little seizure.”
“Brought on by what?”
“It happens sometimes when people pass out sitting up. Your organs get all squished up or something, so the body shuts down.”
“You're shitting me.”
Sofa Daddy had been the perfect playa name for him.
“I'm not supposed to talk about these things,” Mary Ann whispered, “so act surprised when they tell you.”
He rolled his eyes at her. “I'll do my best.”
That was so like her, he realized. It stirred pleasant echoes of the old days at 28 Barbary Lane.
Mrs. Madrigal is throwing a party for your birthday, so don't go out cruising tonight, and be sure to act surprised when it happens.
She had to be the first to tell you. It was her favorite form of intimacy.
W
hen Ben returned, Mary Ann was gone. Ben kissed him on the cheek, then pulled a chair next to the bed.
“Did that freak you out?” he asked. “Seeing Mary Ann?”
“It did feel mildly hallucinatory. All of this does.”
Ben nodded. “Do you wanna leave?”
“I might . . .” He didn't want to disappoint Ben, but he was craving clean sheets and hot showers. “Did the doctor say I should leave?”
“No. She just said to take it easy. No more drugs for a while, and keep hydrating. She suggested an MRI when we get home.”
“For what?”
“Just to make sure it was nothing . . . out of the ordinary.”
Michael felt drained and disoriented. At the moment, it was not hard to believe that something might be out of the ordinary. “I'm a little scared, sweetheart.”
Ben smiled. “
You
are?”
“I'm so sorry.”
“For what?”
“I dunno. For scaring you. For thinking you overreacted.”
“Well . . .
that
you can be sorry for.”
“It must have been awful, those four minutes.”
Ben hesitated. “I said good-bye to you. I told you I loved you, and I said good-bye. Just in case you could hear me.”
Awful, indeed, but immeasurably beautiful to the living Michael.
“Take me home,” he said.
W
ord of Anna's arrival in Black Rock City had spread as if by smoke signals even before Jake and Amos returned to Trans Bay. As near as Brian could figure, Sergeant Lisa had a lot to do with it, since perfect strangers had been inscribing love letters to their icon in the thick dust of the Winnebago. Jake himself was misty-eyed at the sight of his roommate. “Shit,” he said. “I'd totally given up hope.”
“Oh, you must never do that,” she said.
“How did you even find us?”
“Your friend,” said Anna, casting her eyes toward Amos.
“Tickets and everything,” said Wren.
Jake gaped at Amos. “You are so bad. And so rich, apparently.”
Everyone but Amos laughed awkwardly, since no one seemed to know the full truth of this. Amos just ducked his head with a modest smile.
“Wait'll you see what we made for you,” said Jake.
Anna widened her eyes. “For me?”
“I think,” said Brian, jumping in, “it's time we let our ladyship go to bed. Everything will be a helluva lot more fun in the morning.”
Anna ignored him. “You don't know where we can find Michael, do you?”
“Sure,” said Jake. “They're over on Edelweiss. Want me to bike over there and tell him you're here?”
“Would you, dear?”
“Should I tell him to join us in the morning? We do a bitchin' breakfast here.”
“A bitchin' breakfast sounds heavenly.”
And with that Jake and Amos left, and Wren and Brian began helping Anna prepare for bed. She looked profoundly weary to Brian, but he also detected a certain restlessness as he pulled off her slippers and adjusted her sheets. The chill of a desert night had crept into the Winnie, so he pulled a blanket from the overhead compartment and placed it at the foot of the bed. “Just in case,” he told Anna.
“You'll wake me, won't you, dear, when Jake gets back?”
“Of course,” he said.
But fifteen minutes later, when Jake got back, the news was hardly worthy of a wake-up.
“I couldn't find them,” he said at the door. “Nobody's seen them for a while.”
Brian stepped out of the Winnie and shut the door.
“They're gone?”
“It's possible, I guess. The car isn't there.”
“Shit.” Brian thought for a moment. “What about Shawna? She's supposed to be staying at their camp.”
“I checked. She's off with some chick named Juliette.”
“Of course she is.”
He knew he sounded like a cranky old dad, but he couldn't help it. Anna wanted the family together, and he would do his damnedest to make it happen.
H
is damnedest was not enough. The next morning at Trans Bay's traditional flapjack breakfastâa long trestle table under a lavender awningâhe broke the news as gently as possible. “It's looking like they may have left,” he told her. “But we could still run into them. Same goes for Shawna. This place is like that.”
“I understand,” she said, a strangely placid light in her eyes.
“And we can stay here as long as we like.”
“That's very nice of them.”
“It takes a while sometimes for people to come together here, but that's the beauty ofâ”
“Brian, dearâyou mustn't try to tidy things up. You'll just exhaust yourself.”
“What?”
“There's no tidying up to be done . . . with the possible exception of this hat.” She fiddled with the loose ends of the turban that Sergeant Lisa had presented to her as soon as they had left the Winnie that morning. “What I mean to say is . . . I've said all I need to say to each and every one of you. Michael included. It's in you now for good.” She reached over and took his hand. “Do you understand me, dear?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“There's nothing you have to say, nothing you have to do . . . and nowhere I have to be. It's all free time from here on out. For both of us.”
Wren, sitting across the table, noticed this exchange and smiled at him. Then her beautiful lips went oval in amazement. “You are shitting me,” she said.
He turned to see what she meant.
It was that monarch butterfly, looming above them like the inevitable.
S
he was amazed at the practiced grace with which they placed her in the highest seat. Jake and Amos led her up the ramp, holding her arms, while Sergeant Lisa, quite literally, brought up the rear. She landed in the pod (as Jake called it) much the way she landed in her favorite chair at home. They gave her a thermos of cold water and a pretty Edwardian parasol and a silver bell to ring whenever she wanted their attention. The ride would last fifteen minutes, they told her, unless she wanted it to end earlier. The three pods beneath her held Jake, Amos, and Sergeant Lisa.
Then the machine began to move, and she heard a squeal of delight from Wren and a manly hoot from Brian and waves of applauseâapplause!âfrom the people assembled along the road. She assumed they were clapping for this wondrous human-propelled creation with its flapping jack-o'-lantern wings until she heard the chants as she moved toward the blazing white ocean of the open desert.
Anna Madrigal, Anna Madrigal, Anna Madrigal . . .
How on earth did they know?
She looked down and saw Jake beaming up at her, pointing to a sign on the front of the butterfly. She could not read it from this height and angle, but she assumed it bore her name. A name she had chosen herself, by way of reparation, all those years ago.
The glorious machine picked up speed. The wheels were singing to her now, the warm wind caressing her face like the softest yellow chiffon. She could feel the freedom in her hair as she raised her arms, ever so briefly, to the welcoming sky. The cheers grew dimmer, fading away at the moment of release. A single voice remained, redolent of love.
“Be good, lamb! Live long and be good!”
Margaret was running after her down the train tracks, blowing kisses and weeping copiously. She could barely manage it in those heels, but she was trying.
“Remember to call my aunt on the Embarcadero!”
“I will.”
“And use the money for something nice!”
“I will.”
“And don't forget toâ”
Anna couldn't hear the rest, but she knew she would have to learn her own lessons now.
There was a city waiting for her.
Armistead Maupin
is the author of the nine-volume Tales of the City series, the first three books of which were made into a television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. Maupin's other books include
Maybe the Moon
and
The Night Listener
. A stage musical version of
Tales of the City
premiered at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater in May 2011. He lives in Santa Fe with his husband, the photographer Christopher Turner.
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This book is a work of fiction. The
characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author's imagination and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE DAYS
OF ANNA MADRIGAL.
Copyright © 2014 by Literary Bent, LLC. All rights
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Epub Edition FEBRUARY 2014 ISBN
9780062196309
FIRST
EDITION
Cover illustration by Richard
Laschon/Shutterstock, Inc.
ISBN: 978-0-06-219624-8
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