Babycakes Read online

  “Things will get better,” she said flatly. “I really believe that.”

  “That’s because you’re twenty-three,” Mona replied.

  “Are things so different at thirty-seven?”

  “Thirty-eight,” said Mona. “And they’re not a bit different. Just harder to take.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Serra.

  Mona made a face at her. “Tell me that again in fifteen years. It’s O.K. to Xerox dicks when you’re twenty-three. It’s not O.K. at thirty-eight. Trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  For a moment, Serra seemed lost in thought.

  “What is it?” asked Mona.

  “Nothing. Nothing yet.”

  “Now wait a minute …”

  “It’s just an idea.”

  “C’mon,” said Mona. “Out with it.”

  “I can’t. Not until I see if it’s possible.” She took a sip of her drink, then set it down suddenly. “Oh, God!”

  “What?” asked Mona.

  “Guess who our waiter is?”

  The waiter recognized Mona instantly, “Oh, hi! The invitations look fabulous!”

  She gave him a thin smile. “I’m glad you like them.”

  After lunch, they received a rush order for five hundred fliers announcing a “British Brunch” in honor of the Britannia’s recent arrival in Seattle. Mona glowered at the layout—Queen Elizabeth saying, “I just love a good banger”— then looked up and glowered at the customer.

  “Would somebody please tell me why every homo in Seattle is so obsessed with this woman?”

  The customer drew back as if he’d been slapped. “What are you? The editorial board?”

  She glanced impatiently at the clock. “I suppose you want this today?”

  The man let his irritation show. She really didn’t blame him; she had always been detached enough to know when she was being a bitch. “Look,” he said, “tomorrow will be just fine. And I’ve had a bad day too … so slack off, will you?”

  “Maybe I can help?” It was Serra, intervening as sweetly as possible.

  Mona felt herself reddening. “It’s no problem. I’ll just fill out the …”

  “Go home, Mo.” Serra squeezed her forearm gently.

  “I can manage.”

  “Are you sure?” She felt like a real ogre.

  “You deserve it,” said Serra. “Go on. Scoot.”

  So Mona got the hell out, stopping briefly on the way home to write a bad check for tuna fish and detergent at the S & M Market. Once upon a time—three years ago, to be exact—she had gotten a big laugh out of the S & M Market. She had promised herself she would take Mouse there if he ever came to Seattle.

  But Mouse had never come, and the irony inherent in the name of her corner grocery had faded like her California tan. They had drifted apart gradually, and she wasn’t sure whose fault that was. Now the thought of a reunion was embarrassing at best, terrifying at worst.

  Still, she couldn’t help wondering if Mouse was doing O.K., if he had found someone to hug him occasionally, if he would still call her Babycakes the next time they met. She had thought of phoning him three or four times, while on Perco-dan from her periodontist, but she didn’t want his sympathy for her dud of a life.

  When she reached her apartment, her neighbor Mrs. Guttenberg accosted her in the lobby. “Oh, thank God, Mona! Thank God!” The old lady was a wreck.

  “What is it?” asked Mona.

  “It’s old Pete, poor thing. He’s in the alley out back.”

  “You mean he’s …?”

  “Some fool kid ran over him. I couldn’t find a soul to help me, Mona. I’ve got a blanket over him, but I don’t think … The poor old thing … he never deserved this.”

  Mona rushed into the alley, where the dog lay immobile in a light drizzle. Only his head stuck out from under the blanket. A rheumy eye looked up at Mona and blinked. She knelt and laid her hand carefully against his graying muzzle. He made a faint noise in the hack of his throat.

  She looked up at Mrs. Guttenberg. “He doesn’t belong to anyone, does he?”

  The old lady shook her head, fingertips pressed to her throat. “All of us feed him. He’s lived here for ten years at least … twelve, Mona … he’s got to be put out of his misery.”

  Mona nodded.

  “Could you drive him to the SPCA? It’s just a few blocks.”

  “I don’t have a car, Mrs. Guttenberg.”

  “You could push him.”

  Mona stood up. “Push him?”

  “In that shopping cart I take to the S & M.”

  So that was what they did. Using the blanket to hoist him, Mona laid Pete in Mrs. Guttenberg’s shopping cart and pushed him six blocks to the SPCA. An attendant there told her there was no hope for the dog. “It won’t take long,” he said. “Do you want to take him back with you?”

  Mona shook her head. “He isn’t mine. I don’t know where I’d … no … no, thank you.”

  “There’s a surrender fee of ten dollars.”

  A surrender fee. Of all the things they could have called it.

  “Fine,” she said, feeling the tears start to rise.

  Five minutes later, when the deed was done, she wrote another bad check and pushed the empty cart home in the rain. Mrs. Guttenberg met her at the door, babbling her gratitude as she fumbled in her change purse for “something for your trouble.”

  “That’s O.K.,” she said, trudging toward the elevator.

  During her slow, clanking ascent, she thought suddenly of the maxim Mouse had called Mona’s Law: You can have a hot lover, a hot job and a hot apartment, but you can’t have all three at the same time.

  She and Mouse had laughed about this a lot, never dreaming that one day, two out of three would be regarded as something akin to a miracle.

  The lover part didn’t bother her much anymore. By living alone she could maintain certain illusions about people that helped her to like them more—-sometimes even to love them more. Or was that just her rationale for being such a crummy roommate?

  The apartment part went straight to the pit of her stomach when she reached the fourth floor and opened the door of the drab little chamber she bad learned to call home. There was something profoundly tragic—no, not tragic, just pathetic—about a thirty-eight-year-old woman who still built bookshelves out of bricks and planks.

  She was on the verge of reevaluating the job part, when the telephone rang.

  “Yeah?’’

  “May I speak to Mona Ramsey, please?” It was a woman’s voice, unrecognizable.

  “Uh … I’m not sure she’s here. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Dr. Sheldon’s bookkeeper.”

  Mona tried to sound breezy. “I see. May I take your number?”

  “She’s not there, then?”

  “ ‘Fraid not.” Less breeze this time, more authority. This bill hound wasn’t giving up without a fight.

  “I tried to reach her at her place of business, and they said she had gone home sick today. This is her residence, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, but … Miss Ramsey has left for a while.”

  “I thought she was sick.”

  “No,” Mona answered. “In mourning.”

  “Oh …”

  “Her best friend died this afternoon.” That sounded a little too conventional, so she added: “He was executed.”

  “My God.”

  “She took it kinda hard,” she said, getting into it. “She was a witness.”

  This was almost overkill, but it worked like a charm. The caller audibly gulped for air. “Well … I guess … I’ll call her when … Just say I called, will you?”

  “Sure will,” said Mona. “Have a nice day.”

  She set the receiver down delicately, then yanked the phone jack out of the wall. If periodontists had any link with organized crime, she was in deep, deep trouble.

  She made herself a cup of Red Zinger tea and withdrew to the bedroom, where she searched the m
irror for even the tiniest clue to her identity. In an effort to be charitable, Serra had once told her that she looked “a lot like Tuesday Weld.” Mona had replied: “I look a lot like Tuesday Weld on a Friday.” Today, the wisecrack was all too applicable.

  Her “character lines” made her begin to wonder if there was such a thing as too much character. What’s more, the frizzy red hair had slopped looking anarchistic years ago. (Even Streisand had finally abandoned the rusty-Brillo-pad look.) Was it time to relent, to throw in the towel and become a lipstick lesbian?

  Some of the most political dykes in town had already converted, tossing out their Levi’s and Birkenstocks in favor of poodle skirts and heels. It was no longer a question of butch vs. femme, liberation vs. oppression. Clothes did not unmake the woman: clothes were just clothes.

  The prospect of a total makeover was strangely thrilling, but she needed a second opinion. She went straight to the phone, plugged it back in, and dialed Mouse’s home number, suddenly delighted to have such an off-the-wall excuse to break the silence between them. But Mouse wasn’t at home.

  Where was he, then? The nursery? Another call produced the same result. It was Saturday, for God’s sake! Why would the nursery be closed on a Saturday? What the hell was going on?

  The door buzzer squawked at her from the other room. She got up and went to the ancient, paint-encrusted intercom. “Yeah?”

  “Is this Mona Ramsey?”

  A moment’s hesitation. “Who wants to know?”

  “A friend of Serra Fox. She said I might find you here. I tried ringing you from …”

  “Just a minute.” Mona dashed to the window and peeped down at an elegantly dressed brunette waiting in the entrance alcove. She certainly looked like a friend of Serra’s. The lipstick lesbians were everywhere.

  Mona addressed the intercom again. “This isn’t about money, is it?”

  The woman tittered discreetly. “Not in the way you might think. I shan’t take a great deal of your time, Miss Ramsey.” She spoke with an English accent.

  Mona counted to ten and buzzed her up.

  Private Collection

  BRIAN WAS SURPRISED TO FIND HIMSELF THINKING OF Mona Ramsey when he and Mary Ann arrived at Theresa Cross’s auction in Hillsborough. During the course of their half-assed little affair in 1977, he and Mona had shared a passion for three things: the movies Harold and Maude and King of Hearts, and Bix Cross’s Denim Gradations album.

  Mona’s favorite song from that album had been “Quick on My Feet.” Brian had found “Turn Away” more to his taste, and here, gleaming at his fingertips, was the platinum record heralding its success.

  “Look at this,” whispered Mary Ann, as they moved along the trophy-laden tables in the late rock star’s screening room. “She’s even raided the liquor cabinet.” She lifted a half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort.

  Brian read the tag on it. “Yeah, but he drank out of that with Janis Joplin.”

  “Big deal,” murmured his wife. “Who cares?”

  Was she spoiling for a fight? He cared a great deal, and she knew it. “It’s history,” he said at last. “For some people, anyway.”

  She made a little grunting noise and kept moving. “How about this?” she asked, indicating a broken toaster. “Is this history?”

  The playful look in her eyes kept him from getting angry. “You’d sure as hell think so if this were Karen Carpenter’s estate sale.”

  Her eyes became hooded. “That was low, Brian.”

  He chuckled, pleased with himself.

  “And I wasn’t that big a fan.”

  He shrugged. “You bought her albums.”

  She groaned as she examined a box of plastic forks. “I bought an album, Brian. Stop being so hipper-than-thou.”

  The debate was cut short by the arrival of their hostess. She swept into the room wearing a black angora sweater over black Spandex slacks. Mary Ann nudged Brian. “Mourning garb,” she whispered.

  “Hi, people!” The rock widow strode toward them.

  “Hi,” echoed Mary Ann, practically chirping. For all her private bad-mouthing, his wife was intimidated by Theresa Cross. Brian could always tell that by the tone of her voice, and it always brought him closer to her.

  “Is your crew here yet?” asked Theresa.

  “Any minute,” Mary Ann assured her. “They must have had a little trouble finding the …”

  “Did you see the Harley?” Now the rock widow was talking to him, having dispensed with media matters.

  “Sure did,” he replied.

  “Isn’t it the best?”

  Mary Ann’s cameraman appeared in the doorway. “There he is,” she said.

  “Fabulous,” exclaimed Theresa. “It won’t take long, I hope. Twenty/Twenty is coming at noon.”

  “Half an hour,” Mary Ann replied. “At the very most. I just need to talk to him about the stuff I want.” She turned to Brian. “Will you be all right for a while?”

  “I’ll take care of him,” said Theresa.

  “Great,” said Mary Ann, backing off.

  Theresa turned to him. “C’mon. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  She led him out of the screening room through padded gray flannel corridors trimmed in chrome. “Were you a big fan of my husband’s?”

  “The biggest,” he answered.

  She shot a wicked glance in his direction. “I hope that’s not false advertising.”

  By the time he had figured out her meaning, she had brought him to a halt in front of double doors, also flannel-covered. “I’ll show you something you won’t see on Twenty/Twenty.” She flung open the doors to reveal an Olympic-size bedroom lined with lighted Lucite boxes. Showcased in the boxes were dozens of pickaninny dolls—“coon art” from the thirties and forties. Cookie jars shaped like black mammies, Uncle Tom ashtrays, Aunt Jemima posters.

  “This is amazing,” he said.

  The rock widow shrugged it off. “Bix was always just a little bit sorry he wasn’t born black. That’s not what I wanted to show you, though.” She moved to a huge chest of drawers near the bed. “This is.” With a flourish, she yanked open one of the drawers.

  He was dumbfounded. “Uh … underwear?”

  “Panties, silly.”

  He shifted uneasily. What the fuck was he supposed to say?

  “From his fans,” explained Theresa, removing one of them from a labeled Baggie. “This one, for instance, is from the Avalon Ballroom, nineteen sixty-seven.”

  His laughter was nervous and sounded that way. “You mean they threw these on stage?”

  She winked at him. “You’re a quick one.”

  “And he saved them?”

  “Every goddamn one!” She ran a crimson nail across the panties, like a secretary explaining her filing system. “We’ve got your Be-In panties from Golden Gate Park. Remember that? George Harrison was there. An-n-nd … your basic Fillmore panties, nineteen sixty-six. That was a good year, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed, liking her for the first time. At least, she had a sense of humor. “These ought to be in the auction,” he grinned.

  “No way, José. These are mine.”

  “You mean …?”

  “You better believe it! I wear every goddamn one of them!”

  This time he roared.

  “I look pretty fucking wonderful in them too!” He had already pictured as much.

  “C’mon,” she said. “You’re starting to sweat. Let’s gel you back to the wife.”

  The Return of Connie Bradshaw

  TWO DAYS LATER, MARY ANN FOUND HERSELF ON UNION Square, shooting a promo for Save the Cable Cars. Since the cable cars were out of commission during their renovation, she was using the one that sat on blocks beside the Hyatt, a melancholy relic whose embarrassment she could almost sense, like the head of a moose on a barroom wall.

  She delivered her spiel in a very tight shot, while dangling recklessly from the side of the stationary car. To add to her humiliation, a small crowd gathe
red to witness the ordeal, applauding her good takes and laughing at the fluffs.

  When she was done, a pregnant woman stepped forward. Her condition, though easily discernible to the average idiot, was confirmed by a yellow maternity smock bearing the word BABY and an arrow indicating the direction the baby would have to go in order to get out.

  “Mary Ann?”

  “Connie?”

  Connie Bradshaw squealed the way she had always squealed, the way she had squealed fifteen years before in Cleveland, when she had been head majorette at Central High and Mary Ann had been a mildly celebrated member of the National Forensic League. Some things never change, it seemed, including Connie’s inability to make it through life without things written on her clothes.

  A clumsy embrace followed. Then Connie stood back and looked her former roommate up and down. “You are such a star!” she beamed.

  “Not really,” said Mary Ann, meaning it more than she wanted to.

  “I saw you with the Queen! If that’s not a star, what is?”

  Mary Ann laughed feebly, then pointed to the arrow on Connie’s belly. “When did this happen?”

  Connie pushed a tiny button, consulting her digital watch. “Uh … seven months and … twenty-four days ago. Give or take a few.” She giggled at the thought of it. “Her name is Shawna, by the way.”

  “You already know it’s a girl?”

  Connie giggled again. “You know me. I hate suspense. If there’s a chance to peek, I’ll do it.” She laid her hands lightly on the Shawna-to-be. “Pretty neat, huh?”

  “Pretty neat.” Mary Ann nodded, wondering when she had last used the phrase. “God, it’s so easy to lose track of things. I didn’t even know you were married.”

  “I’m not,” came the breezy reply.

  “Oh.”

  “See?” Connie held up ten ringless fingers. “Magic.”

  For the first time in fifteen years, Mary Ann felt slightly more middle-class than Connie.

  “I got tired of waiting around,” Connie explained. “I mean … hey, I’m almost thirty-three. What good is a bun in the oven, if the oven is broken? You know what I mean?”