More Tales of the City

  “What?”

  “I checked on it this morning. And I think you used to sing with him.”

  “Wait a minute! How did you find that out?”

  She averted his eyes. She didn’t want to seem too proud of herself. “I … well, first I asked Jon to call the hospital and find out his name. Then I called Grace Cathedral and talked to some guy they call the verger, and he told me that the transplant man—his name is Tyrone, by the way—he said that Tyrone sings in the choir at Grace.”

  Something like hope glimmered in Burke’s eyes. “And you think … you think I sang with him?”

  “You could have,” she said warily. “You told me you sang in the choir back in Nantucket. You also told me, when we were in Mexico, that you had sent letters to your parents about attending services at Grace Cathedral.”

  Mary Ann must have looked like a frightened rabbit, for Burke smiled suddenly and patted the bed next to him. She came to him and sat down, peering at him balefully. “Am I a pain in the ass?” she asked.

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “So you think that Burke Andrew, boy reporter, stumbled onto some sinister goings-on at Grace Cathedral?”

  She smiled sheepishly. “It’s only today’s theory.”

  “An Episcopal cult, huh?”

  She goosed him. “Don’t rub it in.”

  “Actually,” he smiled. “I kinda like it.”

  Scurrying back to her own apartment, Mary Ann encountered Mrs. Madrigal, who was vacuuming the hallway. The landlady’s hair was up in curlers.

  “Trying out a new do?” asked Mary Ann.

  “We’ll see. I may end up looking like Medusa. Where are you off to in such a hurry.”

  “Burke’s taking me to church.”

  “How very sweet,” said Mrs. Madrigal earnestly.

  “I’m expecting lightning bolts. This is the first time I’ve been to church since I came to San Francisco ten months ago.”

  The landlady smiled. “Well, say one for me.”

  “You don’t need it.”

  “I do tonight.”

  “Why?”

  Mrs. Madrigal leaned forward furtively. “Tonight, my dear child, I have a heavy date with my ex-wife.”

  Questions and Answers

  HELLO, BETTY.”

  Mrs. Madrigal spoke the words with a warmth and self-assurance that astounded Mona. Furthermore, the landlady had never looked more beautiful. Smooth, glowing skin. Shining eyes. A pale green kimono that fluttered about her like butterfly wings.

  And tonight she wasn’t wearing her usual cloche. Her hair fell about her face in soft, romantic ringlets. Betty was visibly stunned.

  “Hello. I hope this isn’t … How are you?”

  Mrs. Madrigal smiled like a benign Hindu goddess. “Call me Andy, if you like. I know Anna must be a little hard to get out.”

  “No, that’s perfectly … This is a darling neighborhood. I see why Mona’s so mad for it.”

  Mrs. Madrigal took her guest’s coat. “I understand you’re just a few blocks away.”

  “Yes. Well, that’s a high-rise. This is just … precious. Those steps up from the street are straight out of … I don’t know where.” She stepped into the living room, nervously appraising everything in sight. Except, of course, the person who had once been her husband.

  Mrs. Madrigal brought sherry from the kitchen. “There’s not one for you, Mona, dear. I think your mother and I should have a little talk.”

  Mona rose like a shot. “O.K. Fine. I’ll take a walk or something.”

  “We won’t be long,” said Mrs. Madrigal. “Why don’t you go to the Tivoli. Perhaps we can join you later.”

  “Fine,” said Mona lamely, heading out the door.

  Mrs. Madrigal sat sipping her sherry in silence, her eyes glued on Betty Ramsey’s rapidly wilting smile. “My goodness,” she said at last, “you’ve certainly held up well. Your figure’s as good as it was thirty years ago.”

  Betty tugged at her skirt, assuring that her knees were covered. “Yoga helps,” she said flatly.

  “Mmm. And a few snips here and there.”

  Betty stiffened. “I don’t see what that—”

  “I’m not being bitchy, Betty.” She laughed heartily. “I’m the last person to denigrate the value of surgery!” Her merriment vanished as rapidly as it had come. “So what can I do for you?”

  The realtor looked down at her glass. “I have a right to see my daughter,” she said quietly, measuring her words, as if on the verge of exploding. “I have a right to know what you’re doing with her.”

  A faint smile rippled across the landlady’s face. “It’s monstrously perverse. I’m giving her a home. And love.”

  “And I didn’t. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “This is silly, Betty. Mona’s over thirty.”

  A large vein began to pulse in Betty’s sinewy neck. “I know what you’re doing. You’re deliberately poisoning her against me. You’re using her to satisfy some sick maternal urge that will make you feel like a real woman! God! That’s so bloody twisted I can’t even—”

  “I’m sorry you resent me so much. It may help you to know that I think there’s some justification for the way you feel.”

  “Some justification! Listen to me, Andy! I want more than a bloody glass of sherry and a few weak-kneed apologies. I want some answers, goddammit!”

  Mrs. Madrigal set down her glass and folded her hands in her lap.

  “Fine,” she said quietly. “I’ll do my best.”

  Her composure rattled Betty. “For one thing, I want to know what happened to Norman Williams.”

  Mrs. Madrigal’s Wedgwood eyes turned into saucers. “You knew him?”

  “Don’t give me that!” snarled Betty.

  “Betty, honestly, what are you talking about?”

  “I hired him, and you know it! What did you do? Buy him off?”

  “He disappeared several months ago. He just never came back, Betty. My God, was he a detective?”

  “How demurely you lie.” Betty sprang to her feet. “I should have known better than to expect the truth from you. And I think it’s about time that Mona learned the truth about her real father!”

  “Betty, please …”

  “Unless, of course, you’ve already told her, in all your liberated candor.”

  Silence.

  Betty smiled savagely. “I didn’t think you had.”

  “How can you be so vindictive? You’ll only hurt her.”

  “You said it yourself. Mona’s over thirty. She can take it. She’s a big girl now.”

  The Sacred Rock

  IT WAS DUSK WHEN THEY REACHED NOB HILL. IN FRONT OF the Mark and the Fairmont, pastel-colored tourists scrambled in every direction. They reminded Mary Ann of baby chicks that had been dyed for Easter and were looking for their mothers.

  But these people, more likely, were looking for their children.

  Like Mona’s mother. Like Michael’s parents and Burke’s and her own. And even like Mother Mucca. Stunned and scandalized, yet secretly titillated, they had flocked to this latter-day Sodom to observe firsthand the fate of their long-flown offspring.

  There was fear in their eyes. And confusion. And a kind of mute despair that made Mary Ann want to reach out and hug them. Some of them were nearing the end of their lives, yet, in many ways, they were the chicks. They were the children of their children.

  The traffic light changed. Burke and Mary Ann pressed through the mob at the crosswalk and strode west up California Street. To their right, the mud-brown fortress called the Pacific Union Club squatted disapprovingly in the midst of this middle-American chaos. Silent, foreboding, impenetrable.

  Mary Ann ran her fingers along the massive bronze fence that protected the building, examining its ornamentation for some sort of rose motif. Nothing. Only Nancy Drew found clues that easily.

  When they reached Huntington Park, they sat on a bench near the fountain, their backs to the PU Club, their eyes fixed o
n the mammoth rose window of Grace Cathedral.

  “Did you call them?” asked Burke.

  Mary Ann nodded. “A woman in the cathedral office says there’s a Holy Communion service tonight.”

  “What time?”

  She looked at her watch. “Forty-five minutes.”

  “We should go in now, then. I don’t want to be there with a lot of people around.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled and pointed to his mouth. “I’ve had enough scenes for one week.”

  “You don’t think you’ll …?”

  “How do I know?” he shrugged. “I think we should stay long enough to see if it triggers anything, then get the hell out.” He smiled at his own phraseology, apologizing to the huge window. “Sorry about that.”

  “Burke, before we go in …”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was just wondering. Back in Nantucket, when you went to church there, did you believe that the wine turned into blood and the bread turned into flesh?”

  He smiled. “Didn’t everybody?”

  She shook her head. “We were Presbyterian. It was all grape juice to me.”

  “I guess we were pretty High Church,” he grinned.

  “Don’t you find that a little grotesque?”

  “Maybe. If you stop to think about it long enough. But not grotesque enough to make a hot news story, if that’s what you’re thinking. Look, Mary Ann, for most Episcopalians, it’s just a bunch of words. If you actually backed a High Churcher into the corner, he might say he believed he was drinking the blood of Christ, or eating His flesh, but I think most people regard it in a kind of mundane, symbolic way.”

  “Have you thought about why you might have been writing a story on it, then?”

  He chuckled. “You’re more literal than the High Churchers. Look, you said Jack Lederer told you I had mentioned the word ‘transubstantiation’ in connection with the story I was writing. In a broad sense, that word can simply mean transformation. Hell, maybe I was talking about my career … or anything. The only reason Lederer wrote the word down was because he himself didn’t know what it meant.”

  A chill evening wind whipped through the little park. Mary Ann turned up her coat collar and gazed again at the great cathedral. She slipped her arm through Burke’s.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said reverently. “It’s almost blue in this light.”

  He nodded, pulling her closer.

  “Why do I feel so creepy, Burke?”

  He turned and smiled at her. “Because your heritage is the Little Brown Church in the Dell.” He rose suddenly, taking her with him. “C’mon, you heathen. Let’s go get religion.”

  The irony of the turnabout did not escape her.

  Now she was the one who wanted to back out.

  Showdown

  MRS. MADRIGAL SAT DOWN ON THE EDGE OF HER red velvet sofa, momentarily stunned. The horrid part, the part that made her knees weak and her throat dry, was that Betty was clearly enjoying herself.

  “She wouldn’t even be here,” snarled the realtor, “if she didn’t think your blood was flowing in her veins.”

  “That’s not true,” said Mrs. Madrigal ineffectually. “Anybody can tell you that’s not true.”

  Betty’s eyes narrowed. “Why don’t we ask Mona? Hmmm?”

  “What point is there in doing that? What would you gain, Betty?”

  Betty’s lip curled. “Not as much as you’d lose, I suppose.”

  “No. You’re wrong. Mona would be the loser, Betty. She needs a family now. She needs to feel kinship. The last thing she needs is to hear about your long-dead little escapade with an oversexed plumber.”

  “He was a contractor. And I find it very odd, Andy, that you don’t think the identity of Mona’s real father might be of some interest to her.”

  “It was of no interest to him. Then or now. It was a one-night stand, for heaven’s sake!”

  “And you have more claim on her, I suppose? You who left her completely fatherless!”

  Mrs. Madrigal’s eyes grew moist. “I’ve tried to make good on that, Betty. Can’t you see?” She gestured feebly around the room, as if 28 Barbary Lane might somehow testify to the purity of her intentions. “Can’t you see what I’ve tried to do for her?”

  “It’s too late for that, Andy. Thirty years is too late.”

  “Do you want me to beg you, is that it?”

  “I’m telling you, Andy. You’re not going to stop me.”

  “She won’t come back to Minneapolis. I can promise you that.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Then what can you gain, other than hurting Mona? In the long run, it won’t make any difference to her. She’ll love you less, Betty, not more.”

  The realtor’s features were rigid. “We’ll see.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Madrigal firmly. “No, we won’t.”

  “What?” The landlady’s tone had jolted her.

  “You will leave town, Betty. You will leave town tomorrow or I will tell all parties concerned about what you’ve been doing in that building at Leavenworth and Green.”

  Betty sensed the shift in power. It hung in the air like ozone after a thunderstorm. “What,” she said testily, “are you talking about?”

  “I mean,” said Mrs. Madrigal, sipping her sherry, “that you’ve been in town a lot longer than you told Mona.”

  “And what if I have?”

  “More like a month than a few days,” smiled the landlady.

  “Look, Andy. I knew something was wrong. Norman Williams had disappeared, for God’s sake!” She paced the room frantically, casting angry sideways glances at her ex-husband. “I had to do something.”

  “Mmm. So you thought you’d do a little poking around on your own.”

  “What else could I do?”

  “Indeed,” said Mrs. Madrigal calmly. “So how’s the view from the eleventh floor?”

  Silence.

  “I did get the floor right, didn’t I? I believe Mona said it was the eleventh.”

  “Andy, I haven’t the slightest idea what—”

  “There must be a lovely view of this place from the eleventh floor.” Mrs. Madrigal’s eyes locked on her prey. “Particularly at midnight.”

  Betty stopped pacing. Her determinedly pursed mouth went slack. “Did Mona tell you that?”

  The landlady smiled. “I have many more children than Mona.”

  Betty stood there staring. Finally, she said, “Jesus.” It came out like the hiss of a snake.

  “So,” said Mrs. Madrigal cheerily, “I think you will agree with me that there are lots of things that Mona would be better off not knowing. Besides, Betty, she needs that boy, almost as much as he needs her.”

  “She … doesn’t know about … me?”

  Mrs. Madrigal shook her head. “Nor does he. He thinks you’re a veritable Salome, a siren on the rocks!” She winked at the realtor. “I won’t tell him, if you won’t.”

  Betty glared at her in silence.

  “I won’t tell anyone, Betty. Not if you leave. Tomorrow.”

  “I can’t trust you.”

  “Yes, you can. I was a weasel of a man, but I’m one helluva nice woman.”

  “You’re a bastard is what you are!”

  “Please,” smiled Mrs. Madrigal. “Call me a bitch.”

  The Man Who Wasn’t There

  AS BURKE AND MARY ANN ENTERED THE CATHEDRAL, their shoes clattered angrily on the stone floor, betraying their presence to the handful of worshipers scattered throughout the great room.

  “I feel like such a tourist,” Mary Ann whispered.

  Burke smiled, squeezing her hand. “It’s all right. No one would ever take you for a Presbyterian.”

  “Shouldn’t we sit down or something?”

  He shrugged. “If you want.”

  They ducked into a pew next to an awesome stone pillar. Above them to the left, the Technicolor grandeur of a stained-glass window was fading into black. Mary Ann sat down and f
umbled in her purse for a Dynamint.

  “Want one?” she asked.

  Burke shook his head. “Let’s just sit quiet for a while.”

  Complying, Mary Ann scanned the room, wondering uneasily if she and Burke were registering the same impressions. Two pews in front of them, an old woman was saying her prayers, a pink floral hanky pinned to the back of her gray bun. Across the aisle, a man wearing a T-shirt that said “the pines 75” was crossing himself with great aplomb.

  These people weren’t Catholics, Mary Ann reminded herself. They were Episcopalians, High Church presumably, but ordinary Protestants who had come to this echoing chamber so that wine could turn to blood in their mouths.

  She shuddered and popped another Dynamint. Then she caught Burke’s eye.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Do you even remember this space?”

  “Not really. It’s a lot like St. John the Divine’s in New York.”

  “It’s so huge,” Mary Ann observed vacantly.

  Burke peered around the pillar. “I guess the choir sits up by the altar. Maybe we should go up there.”

  “Uh … why?”

  He smiled at her. “Are you scared, Mary Ann?”

  “No. I just … Well, we’ll be so … obtrusive, won’t we?”

  He took her hand. “C’mon. Just for a minute. Maybe I’ll recognize the choir loft or something.”

  So they walked down the aisle together. Mary Ann forgot her anxiety for a moment, secretly amused at the symbolism of this action. Was this how a wedding rehearsal felt?

  As they passed the communion rail, he slowed down to read the message inscribed in needlepoint on the kneeling pads: IF ANY MAN EAT OF THIS BREAD HE SHALL LIVE FOREVER. She tugged at Burke’s elbow. “Look,” she whispered. “Transubstantiation.”

  He couldn’t hide his amusement. “You act like you’re visiting an Incan ruin or something.”

  The organist was positioned just beyond the communion rail near the enclosure for the choir. He was the only person in that part of the cathedral. He adjusted his sheet music gravely, without looking up. Then he began to play.

  Mary Ann flinched as the music rolled thunderously through the cathedral. “Burke, maybe they’re starting.”