The Days of Anna Madrigal Read Free

meet.”
    She knew what that usually meant, but with Brian you had to wonder. Could it be that the senior member of her brood, this perennially roving bachelor of (good heavens, no) sixty-seven, had finally found someone worthy of a permanent cuddle? The last time she had spoken to him (when he was parked somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountains), he had seemed placidly committed to his solitude. She had come to believe that his divorce from Mary Ann had forever soured him on cohabitation. Not to mention the fact that Brian had a lovely grown daughter from that marriage, and—to hear him tell it, at least—Shawna had always been family enough for him.
    â€œIs this a new thing?” she asked.
    â€œYeah—fairly.” He seemed amused by the thought. “Not really, though. We just sort of . . . picked up where we left off.”
    â€œSomeone I used to know?”
    â€œNo . . . actually. Come to think of it.”
    â€œNow you’re just being mysterious.”
    He laughed. “We’ll make a date soon as I’m hooked up.”
    â€œHooked up?”
    â€œAt the RV park! Gotta run, Mrs. Madrigal.”
    He was gone, so she handed the phone back to Jake.
    â€œWhat’s up?” he asked.
    â€œHe has a lady friend. He wants to bring her by to meet us.” She fiddled with the cuff of her Chinese pajamas, pondering this enigma until she finally spoke it out loud: “It’s someone he used to know. That I don’t know.”
    â€œDoes that bother you?”
    â€œIt puzzles me.”
    A s soon as Jake had helped her into bed and doled out her pills, she found herself wondering why Brian had called her Mrs. Madrigal on the phone. It was an echo of her landlady days, curiously out of time, and she could only surmise that he had reverted to this formality for the benefit of his listening lady friend. These days she was on a first-name basis with all the members of her logical family, since the ever-shrinking distance between the middle of life and the end of it encouraged a level of informality. She had never been a Mrs. anyway. The honorific had been her way of further musicalizing her new name—the pleasing rhythm of “Mrs. Madrigal” — though she sometimes told those who had yet to learn of her past that single women are less likely to be harassed if they are thought to be widows or divorcees.
    That was true enough, but there had been another motivation. She had assumed the Mrs. upon her return from Denmark in the 1960s not only to imply a respectable history but also to invent a shadow companion for her daunting new journey. She had married herself, in essence, so she would not be alone in her skin. “There never was a Mr . Madrigal,” she used to tell her new tenants at 28 Barbary Lane, and that had certainly been the case from the very beginning. There had only been scared-silly little Andy Ramsey, the lone male resident of the Blue Moon Lodge and no one’s idea of a mister, least of all his own.
    Funny, she thought, sinking deeper into the folds of a wilting cannabis balloon. Blue Dream is not that far from Blue Moon.
    Then, somewhere beyond the window, out in the white mirage of a desert afternoon, she heard the most curious thing.
    It was the sound of a chicken squawking.

Chapter 2
    A PROPER GENTLEMAN
    T he chicken was in the pen out back, and the ruckus it was making woke Andy from an afternoon nap. They had not kept poultry for some time, so he figured Margaret was turning a trick with the Okie from down the road who sometimes paid in livestock. He wondered if Violet had heard the chicken and if she would be ugly about it at dinner and hurt Margaret’s feelings again. Andy couldn’t see why doing it for a good hen was any less respectable than doing it for a couple of bucks.
    He rolled on his side and gazed at the window shade. It had darkened to amber during his nap, and the acacia bush swam against it like mint