The Days of Anna Madrigal

  “Now you’re making me nervous.”

  He reached across the table to squeeze her small, well-manicured hand. His own hand was piebald with spots, most of them too freeform to be written off as freckles. Liver spots, his dad had called them, back when Brian was still in law school and the old man was feeling his age. Liver spots. There had to be a better term, something that invoked a life robustly lived. Steak spots? Burger spots?

  “Don’t worry about Mrs. Madrigal,” he told Wren. “She’ll get you, I promise.”

  “I feel like I’m meeting your mother,” she said.

  In a way, of course, she was. Not the mother who had died of cancer when he was barely thirty—the Irish housewife from Harrisburg who collected spoons from every state—but the mother who had surreptitiously given him a home in a new city when he was too strung out on women to notice. Anna had been his stealth mother.

  Wren fussed with the low neckline of her blue velvet dress. “You sure this outfit’s not too much?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s right on the nose. She was raised in a Nevada whorehouse.”

  Wren raised an eyebrow, but it was comically intended and more in curiosity than indignation. “And why have you never told me that?”

  He shrugged. “Thought I had.” The truth was, he thought he’d told her everything. He wanted to tell her everything. His new aim in life was to tell her everything. “She ran away when she was young,” he explained. “Sixteen.”

  “Why?”

  Sort of an odd question, he thought. “If you were a boy who felt like a girl, would you want to grow up in that environment?”

  She pondered the issue for a moment. “Seems as good as any. Depends on the whorehouse, I guess.”

  Her cavalier tone made him smile.

  “Seriously, women as a rule are kinder than men. Sorry, babe, but you know it’s true. A kid like that would do much better in a whorehouse than . . . you know, a military academy.” She picked up another frite. “Did she have family there?”

  Brian sawed on a corner of his filet mignon. “Her mother was the madam.”

  Wren absorbed that for a moment. “Did she love her?”

  “Did who love whom?”

  “Either one. Mother or daughter. Son, whatever.”

  “Not for a long time. Maybe. Who the hell knows? They didn’t reunite until the seventies. Mona bumped into her on a bus to Reno and got a job answering phones at the Blue Moon. When she figured out their lineage, she brought the old lady back to Barbary Lane. Sorta forced the issue. It wouldn’t have happened if—”

  “Wait! Bumped into the mother? The madam?”

  “Yeah, the mother, the madam.” He knew this was bound to take a while, so he popped a morsel of steak into his mouth and chewed it.

  “And Mona was Anna’s daughter? The one who married the English lord and . . . passed away in England?”

  “Yep.”

  “So she bumped into her own grandmother on the bus to Reno?”

  “Right.”

  “And reunited her with Anna, who used to be . . . Mona’s father.”

  “Exactemente.”

  Wren tilted her head and widened her tigress eyes. “Jesus Christ, you people are complicated.” She reached out with the corner of her napkin and, delicately, did minor repairs to the corner of his mouth. “You realize most brides have an easier time sorting out their in-laws?”

  He smiled. “It makes more sense if you’ve lived it.”

  Anna’s parlor (as she liked to call it) had been prepped for their arrival: pillows plumped, lighting adjusted, a silver tray of sherry and shortbread laid out on the coffee table next to a red lacquer bowl full of joints. Brian had expected Jake to greet them at the door, since that had been the custom lately, but there she was in all her bohemian glory, spiffed up in Chinese pajamas and wobbling precariously. He hadn’t seen her for months, so the hug he gave her was part reunion, part rescue.

  “It’s all right, dear,” she said, patting his back. “I’ve got it.”

  With that, she tottered toward her chair. Brian saw Wren move to offer assistance, but he stopped her with a glance and a shake of his head.

  “You’re lovely,” said Anna, still inching away from them.

  Wren looked thrown. “Me?”

  “Yes, dear. Brian doesn’t like it when I call him lovely.”

  Wren chuckled nervously and glanced at Brian as Anna pivoted slowly and free-fell into her chair. (The lavender fabric on its scalloped back had grown shiny from many such landings.) Anna took a moment to catch her breath before lifting her hand to Wren like a dowager empress. “What the hell took you so long?”

  Wren, who had dialed down her usual megawattage, looked almost mortified as she took Anna’s hand. “Sorry. They were a little slow with the check.”

  “What?” Now Anna looked confused.

  Brian scrambled to restore communications. “I think,” he said, glancing at Wren, “she meant that remark in the broader sense.”

  “I meant,” said Anna, gazing up at the velvet-sheathed hourglass whose hand she was still gripping for punctuation, “this boy has been a tramp. A vagabond. I’ve been worried about him. You took your time getting here, dear.”

  Brian tried to translate: “Not you specifically, of course—”

  Anna shot him a withering look. “Yes, her specifically. She’s exactly what I pictured. The hair, the shape, the placement of the eyes, everything.”

  “Well . . . good,” Wren said awkwardly as her hand was released. “That’s great to hear.”

  “She gets kinda spooky about that shit,” Brian explained.

  Wren glanced at him slack-mouthed, unfamiliar with his longtime sparring partnership with the rail-thin old woman in the chair.

  “Before you know it,” Brian added, “she’ll claim she conjured you up with a love potion and some juju dust.”

  Anna gave Wren a weary sisterly look. “He’s so tiresome sometimes. Sit over there, Brian, and have a joint or a cookie or something. I want to talk to your wife.”

  She had unbalanced him exactly the way she wanted. “How did you know we were married?”

  “A soothsayer,” Anna said curtly. “How do you think?”

  Shawna, thought Brian. Or Michael had heard it from Shawna and told Anna. Brian had not yet spoken to Michael, so he hoped he approved, that Michael’s memories of Wren, all these years after that week at the river, were good ones.

  Anna had turned her attention back to Wren. “How was L’Ardoise?”

  “Scrumptious,” said Wren, pulling up a chair to Anna’s throne. “I eat way too many fries when they have a fancy French name for them.”

  Anna nodded. “What does that mean, anyway, ‘L’Ardoise’?”

  Wren screwed up her face, pretending to ponder the question. “I think it’s the feminine form of lard-ass.”

  An odd chortle, uncharacteristically male, erupted from the back of Anna’s throat.

  Brian realized with a rush of relief that Wren was already home free.

  In the old days Mrs. Madrigal had named her homegrown pot after strong women she admired. There was one in particular Brian remembered—a certain Miss Stanwyck—that could knock his socks off and keep them off for hours until he returned to 28 Barbary Lane from his vulpine prowls at Thomas Lord’s or Henry Africa’s. If Mrs. Madrigal was still up and about (as she often was, reading or even watering her garden in the dark) she would join him for a toke of Miss Stanwyck. She wasn’t smoking with them tonight, but she had not forgotten her manners.

  “So who’s this lady?” he asked, passing the doobie back to Wren.

  Anna smiled. “You’ve forgotten her name already?”

  Brian laughed. “Not that lady. The one in her hand.”

  “Oh . . . I didn’t name it,” Anna said. “Jake bought it at the medica
l pot place. They come with their own names when you buy them. Like tea. Or hookers.”

  “You’re funny,” said Wren.

  “What did I tell you?” said Brian. Even as he spoke, he knew how overeager he sounded, like a little kid showing off an old friend to a new one.

  “I grew up with hookers,” Anna added. “I assume he told you that.”

  “He did, yes.”

  After an interlude of silence, Anna said, “Lysol.”

  “What?”

  “The whole damned place smelled like Lysol.”

  Wren’s nose wrinkled, but she ended with a shrug. “Better than the alternative, I suppose.”

  Anna chuckled and looked at Brian. “This one’s no shrinking violet.”

  “I’m no stranger to hooking either.” Wren was on a roll now, he realized, obviously feeling the pot. “I mean . . . long as we’re sharing.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “Do tell.”

  Brian was starting to squirm a little. “She only did it once.”

  “Once is all it takes,” said Anna. “Go on, dear.”

  “He was a nice old guy who liked his ladies big, so . . . he made an outright offer. It paid for my vacation, and he had a good time. I’m not sorry.”

  “That’s how she met me,” said Brian.

  Anna’s brow furrowed. “You were the nice old guy?”

  “No, no!” Brian laughed. “She was up at the Russian River with him. I was up there for a week—”

  “—with Michael,” said Anna, finishing the thought. “Back in the eighties.”

  “So he’s filled you in?” Of course he has, thought Brian. How could he restrain himself?

  Anna nodded. “He’s excited about seeing Wren again. He was quite a fan, apparently, even before he met her.”

  Good, thought Brian. Michael approves, and Shawna approves, and Anna knows Wren had a career outside of hooking. He was checking off the members of his family one by one, letting the pieces fall into place. (His ex-wife Mary Ann would be a tougher sell—not because she was his ex but because Wren had once been a guest on Mary Ann in the Morning and remembered her interviewer as condescending and uptight—an impression that would not have been off the mark twenty-five years ago. Brian liked Mary Ann these days, but he had never been in the same room with both his wives and did not intend for that to happen anytime soon. Why risk it? Start with easy ones, man.

  “Where’s Jake?” he asked Anna. “I thought we’d see him tonight.”

  “He’s out with his friends, being deeply mysterious.”

  “How so?” asked Wren, expelling smoke.

  “If I knew, it wouldn’t be mysterious.”

  Wren chortled, clearly honored that Anna had dispensed with etiquette.

  “It’s a project of some sort,” Anna added. “They come around in overalls and tool belts, all smudged and sweaty, but they just . . . clam up whenever I ask them what’s going on.” She paused to sip her sherry. “Maybe they think it would shock me.” She set the glass down again. “I can’t imagine what that would be.”

  Wren smiled, then leaned forward to underscore the next question: “Did you ever get back to . . . your childhood home?”

  Anna shook her head. “But lately I’ve spent some time there.” She set her glass down with stately deliberation. “It’s something old people do . . . apparently. Dwelling on unfinished business. Old ghosts. It’s tiresome, really. No point in it whatsoever. Especially when . . . what did Gertrude Stein say? . . . ‘there is no there there.’ ”

  Like most seasoned San Franciscans, Brian recognized the quotation. “But she was talking about Oakland, right?”

  “Yes, but . . . her home in Oakland. It had been torn down, so she had no reason to go back. She wasn’t mocking Oakland. That’s a common misconception.”

  Wren was still focused on her original question. “But how do you know it’s been torn down when . . . you haven’t been back?”

  “I’ve seen its absence,” Anna told her. “There’s nothing but a parking lot and an ugly casino they built in the nineties. It looks like a mall. I’ve been all around it.”

  “But . . . I don’t understand.”

  Anna shrugged. “I’m spooky that way—ask him.”

  Brian was tired of paying for that remark, so he scowled at Anna like a grumpy vulture. “Google Earth, I’m guessing.”

  She gave him a sly smile. “I think that’s the name, yes.”

  “Did Jake show you?”

  A somber nod. Suddenly the joke was over, and a palpable melancholy had taken its place. “There is no there there,” she repeated.

  Wren wasn’t giving up. “But the town is still there, right?”

  “Winnemucca,” said Brian, trying to make himself useful.

  A crooked smile from Wren. “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was named after an old Indian,” Anna said. “Back in the last century. Or—you know—the one before that. I can’t keep up with them. He hung around town wearing only one moccasin, so they called him Wunnamocca.”

  “I don’t know whether to believe that or not,” Wren said jovially.

  Anna carefully arranged one of her fragile long-fingered hands over the other. “I don’t make up things, dear. The truth is hard enough to sell.”

  A long silence before Wren asked: “Would you go back?”

  “To Winnemucca?”

  “Yes. I mean . . . all things being equal?”

  Anna gave her a bittersweet smile. “All things are not equal, dear.”

  Brian already recognized the purposeful gleam in Wren’s eye. His mother (the one with the spoon collection) would have called it “a bee in her bonnet.”

  Why not?” asked Wren. “Gimme one good reason.”

  They were winding along the coast highway in their rented Ford Focus, heading back to the RV park in Pacifica. The air was still, bordering on balmy. The moon was just a sliver above the dark sea, the tart remains of a lemon Life Saver.

  “She’s old,” said Brian. “She’s had several strokes. She falls down all the time. There’s three good reasons.”

  “She won’t fall down with us around. She’ll be safer than usual. We’ll make her cozy in the big chair. She can have the private bedroom.”

  “What if . . . something happens?”

  “What if something happens anywhere? It’s just three or four days. And we’d be with her the whole time. I’m sure Jake could use a break.”

  Brian turned and looked at her. “What’s gotten into you, anyway?”

  “I dunno, pumpkin.” Wren smiled wistfully. “I just wanna know her better. I didn’t expect to like her this much.”

  They were silent for a while as the car ribboned along the ocean.

  “The point is,” said Wren, sliding her hand onto his leg, “you know she wants to do it. You heard what she said about unfinished business.”

  Brian had heard all right, but it made no sense to him. Who could Anna possibly know in Winnemucca after seventy-five years? And what difference would it make?

  “Old ghosts,” said Wren, reading his mind.

  Chapter 6

  SCORCHER

  Jeanette MacDonald’s coat was slinky satin trimmed in marabou, but Andy had only a moment to admire it before the room shook and the balcony cracked and people began screaming bloody murder. He usually saved a few Milk Duds for after the movie, just to prolong the experience, but he gobbled every last one of them in the three minutes it took for the city of San Francisco to collapse into rubble.

  “My goodness,” said Margaret as they spilled out of the American Theater into the unglamorous daylight of Bridge Street. “You were wolfin’ down those Duds like gangbusters. Scared the hell out of you, huh?”

  “It was sure realistic,” Andy replied, though truthfully he had be
en more shaken by Clark Gable’s treatment of Jeanette than by the ensuing earthquake. Gable had just humiliated her onstage, after all, evicted her from his club and his life, this blustery brute who couldn’t recognize true love when it came along. It was almost as if he had caused the earthquake. Andy had seen plenty such men, and so had Margaret, but Margaret, oddly, trembled only in the face of collapsing buildings.

  “I ate all mine too,” said Margaret, holding up an empty box of Red Hots. Andy expected her to blow on it and make it honk like a goose, and that’s just what she did, prompting an old lady standing by the ticket booth to jump, then turn and frown at them. He smiled a sheepish apology. Margaret could be childish sometimes.

  “I love the song,” he said, hoping at the very least to keep Margaret from attempting a second honk while there were people around.

  It worked. Margaret puffed up her ruffled bosom, shook her loose platinum hair, and began to sing: “San Francisco, open your Golden Gate—”

  Andy took it from there. “You’ll let no stranger wait, la, la, la, la.”

  They burst into laughter and joined in a duet, heading down the dusty sidewalk like some goofball vaudeville act. “San Francisco, here is your . . . la, la, la . . . saying I wander no more. Other places only make me la, la, la—”

  “Okay, that’s enough!” Margaret brought an end to their routine by yanking on Andy’s arm.

  “What?”

  “You were twirling.”

  “I was giving it some pep.”

  “We’re making a scene,” she whispered. She nodded in the direction of two men in dirty overalls scowling at them from the alley by the five-and-dime.

  Andy shrugged. “Big deal.”

  “You can twirl at home, lamb. Just don’t do it here. Folks will get the wrong idea.”

  Andy could have told her that an old chippie honking on a Red Hots box was making just as big a scene as a boy twirling on the sidewalk, but he kept his mouth shut because he knew what she meant, and because he could hurt her feelings more than she could ever hurt his. They took care of each other in different ways. She did it with movies and tender conspiracies. Sometimes silence was all he could offer.