He frowned. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”
She nodded, then gazed at him soulfully. “She left me her baby, Mouse.”
“Huh?”
“She wasn’t married, and her parents are dead, and her brother’s a bachelor in med school and … she left me this note before she died and asked me to … raise it.” She finished with a sheepish little shrug and waited for his reaction.
“You mean … is it …?”
She nodded. “In the bedroom. With Brian.”
“My God … then it’s going to be …”
“She,” she put in. “She’s going to be our little girl.”
He was flabbergasted. “This is amazing, Mary Ann.”
“I know.”
“Well … uh … how do you feel about it?” She hesitated. “Pretty good, I guess.”
“Guess?”
“Well … I’m still adjusting to it.”
“What about Brian?”
She smiled at him. “Come see for yourself.”
Rising, she took his arm and led him into the bedroom. Brian was seated in the armchair by the bed, cradling the baby in his arms. A gooseneck lamp on the dresser formed a sort of ersatz halo behind his head. Michael couldn’t help wondering if there was a masculine equivalent of madonna.
“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
CONNIE’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
THE WEATHER WAS BEASTLY,” SHE TOLD HER MAN
ICURIST.
“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
ARMISTEIS MAUPIN 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.
BABYCAKES. Copyright © 1984 by The Chronicle Publishing Company.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 978-0-062-11257-6
First Perennial Library edition published 1984. Reissued 1989.
First HarperPerennial edition published 1994.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 83-18368
ISBN 9780060924836
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rmistead Maupin, Babycakes
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