My Beautiful Hippie (25 page)

I ran all the way back to Rena's and showed her the postcard. “I want to go see him, but I don't want to be hurt again. What do I do?”

“Resist, Joanne, resist. Why try to start something up again when it will only give you grief?”

“I know, but—”

“But what? I don't know what you saw in him in the first place. I mean, it was cool he's the brother of Gus Abbott and all that, but Roach is broken up now.”

“That wasn't why I loved Martin.”

Rena was shaking her head. “He's bad news. Here, let me make it easy for you.” She snatched my wonderful postcard, and before I could stop her, she tore it into pieces and handed it back to me. “There you go,” she said with a smug smile, and in that instant I hated her.

On the cold December morning when Dan was scheduled to make the train trip from Oakland to Fort Riley, Kansas, for U. S. Army boot camp, he had talked our family into saying our good-byes at home.

“I don't want you embarrassing me at the train station, crying and stuff,” he said. “It's going to be hard enough.”

The previous day Denise had taken Dan out to lunch, Jerry had met him for a beer, and Pete and I had thrown him a small party with a few of their old high school friends. Now it was just Mom, Dad, and me, standing on the curb in front of our house seeing him off. Dad shook his hand, Mom kissed him, and I hugged him. Dan muttered his good-byes, but he wouldn't look into our faces. I supposed he didn't want to cry. We watched him shoulder his back pack, cross the street, and head down Masonic to catch the streetcar.

It was all so anticlimactic. Just like any other Thursday morning, Dad drove off to work, Thelma picked up Mom to go to their garden club project, and I started my walk to school.

But I didn't want to go to school. I dreaded seeing Rena and Candy and those guys. My classes were boring and so was Pete, and I was sick of practicing Ravel. With me being the only kid at home, Mom would spend all her energy picking on me.

I made it as far up Haight as the east side of Buena Vista
Park. I circled back and headed home. In my room, I went to my desk and took out all my savings and the tattered shreds of Martin's postcard. I fitted them together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or a broken heart. I had already memorized the address, and on a map of Sacramento I'd found in our map drawer, I'd penciled in a route from the train station to Martin.

I packed my music satchel with my toothbrush, hairbrush, and change of clothes. In the kitchen, I thought to leave a note under the salt shaker, but it seemed too sad, like the song “She's Leaving Home” on the
Sgt. Pepper
album. I wouldn't be as cruel as Lisa Girardi and disappear without a trace; I'd call my parents in a few days. None of this was planned. I was amazed by my own behavior, as if I were a bystander watching someone else live my life.

Traveling by streetcar, bus, train, bus again, and finally my own feet, it took me until four o'clock to get to Martin's. I found him lounging on a front porch swing, reading Steinbeck's
Travels with Charley
. He sprang up to greet me.

“Whoa, Joni! What a surprise! Why aren't you in school today?”

“I ditched.”

He gave me a kiss. It wasn't passionate, but rather like a cool glass of water I'd been thirsting for. “I think I've been thinking about you so much I willed you here. Come on in and meet everybody.”

We went into the house and sat around talking to a bunch of his housemates I didn't care about. Together we fixed dinner and ate. The whole time I was thinking I just wanted to be alone with Martin, to hold him in my arms, to kiss him and kiss him.

Finally he led me to a bedroom with bare walls and clean surfaces. In a corner were a huge backpack and a bedroll, neatly packed. “You nearly missed me, Joni. I'm headed out tomorrow.”

“Where to?”

He shrugged. “To wherever my thumb takes me. I'm off on my great American adventure.”

“Where's your guitar?”

“Pawned it to buy this stuff. Pretty neat setup, huh?”

“Martin, I didn't come here just for a visit. I want to stay with you.”

He actually laughed. “I don't think your piano will fit in a backpack.”

“I don't care about that.”

“Yes, you do. You
want
to want to live like me, but in fact you don't. You need to get home, Joni, finish high school, go to college, and play those recitals in Carnegie Hall.”

“I'm not good enough for Carnegie Hall.”

“You don't know that. It's too soon to tell. Anyway, Carnegie Hall is beside the point. You'll play those recitals somewhere.”

“How do you know?”

“It's who you are. You won't be able to stop yourself.”

I held him tight and buried my face in his chest. “I have to be with you, Martin. You're the only one who understands me. I've tried to live without you, but you've left this big, empty void in my life that I can't fill. Can't you come back to San Francisco? Can't we find a way to be together?”

He pressed his forehead against mine. I saw that he was crying, too. “We want different things,” he whispered. “Couldn't you see that from the beginning?”

I didn't want to see it, not even now. “I can't let you go!”

“We've got tonight.”

We fell on the bed and caressed and kissed for a very long time. Finally, he whispered, “Let's make love.”

I turned my face to the wall and felt my tears drip off the side of my nose onto the pillow. I didn't know much about sex, but I did know that making love was the beginning of a relationship, not the end of one. Martin cuddled against me and massaged little circles in my back until his hand went still and he began to breathe deeply. I told myself, Leave, you've got to leave. There's no place for you here. I thought about my parents back at home, calling the school, finding out I hadn't gone today, thinking of Lisa Girardi, and worrying about me.

Martin was right, of course. My place was home with Mom
and Dad. They were the ones who loved me, who would never abandon me. My life was that of a regular middle-class teenage girl, who just happened to have lived in Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

When I got up, the springs of the bed creaked. Martin rolled into the hollow of the worn mattress. I stared at his calm, moonlit face, but I didn't touch him. Good-bye, my beautiful hippie, I thought, and then I crept out of the house.

I cried nearly the whole train ride back to Emeryville. Not with audible sobs, but merely with tears trickling down my face. I thought I heard a rending sound. It was my mind letting Martin go, or trying to. Yearnings such as I had do not die sudden deaths. This could take years. I thought how chemotherapy sometimes kills the body before it can kill the cancer, but no one ever dies of a broken heart, not without the help of a gun.

It was nearly one a.m. when the Amtrak bus pulled into the Ferry Building Station. Public transit had stopped running at midnight, and I had no doubt worried my parents long enough. I used nearly all my savings to take a taxi from the Embarcadero to my house. I would tell Mom and Dad the truth for once. I would try to be a better daughter. They were good parents, and if they'd hurt me or made some mistakes, they had merely done the best they could.

I paid the cabdriver and let myself in the gate. On our small lawn was a yellow square of light shooting out from the kitchen, where my parents were probably waiting up for me.

They weren't there. In fact, the house was empty. Underneath the salt shaker was a note from Mom. “Joanne, fix yourself some dinner if we don't get home in time. Dad and I have gone looking for Dan. Love, Mom.”

Wasn't Dan . . . ? Hadn't Dan . . . ? He hadn't been able to look into our faces, and now I knew why.

Awhile later my parents shuffled through the back door. They moved slowly, in a state of shock. Mom sank into a kitchen chair, gazing vacantly before her, while Dad put the coffee on to perk.

“Joanne, did you know Denise left Jerry?” asked Mom.

“Yes,” I replied softly.

She went on as if she hadn't heard me. “Their apartment was one of the places we looked for Dan. Jerry was there alone. He admitted he and Denise haven't been living together since the beginning of summer. I just don't understand. Why are all my children running away? You're the flighty one, Joanne.”

“I'm not going anywhere, Mom.”

Dad told me how he had lied to the United States government. When Dan didn't show in time to board his train out of Oakland, his recruiting officer called our house, asking where he was. Dad told him we had gotten our dates confused, that Dan was off saying good-bye to relatives. He promised that Dan would be on the next train out of Oakland the following day.

“This happens sometimes,” the recruiting officer had said. “Just have him here tomorrow and everything will be okay.”

First we had to find him. If the government found him first, he would probably have to go to jail for going AWOL.

Dad had just poured the coffee when Jerry and Denise came through the back door. They told us about all the phone calls they had made and all the places they had looked for Dan.

The phone rang. Mom started. Dad looked toward the hall. It rang again. “I'll get it,” he said.

“Listen, son,” we heard Dad say into the telephone, “everything's all right. I talked to your recruiting officer, and he said you can ship out tomorrow. He understands about cold feet. You're not in trouble with the law, not yet. There's still time to set things right. . . . No, son, we're not mad. Maybe a little disappointed . . . Straighten up, Dan! Be a man! Now, listen, I'm going to wire you some money. Make sure you're on the next flight to San Francisco.”

Dad returned to the kitchen. “He's okay! He's coming home. He just lost his nerve is all. He took the Greyhound bus to Vancouver, Washington, and was about to cross over to Vancouver, Canada, when he lost his nerve again.”

“We raised him right,” said Mom. “He has a conscience.”

“Let's hope so,” said Dad. He returned to the phone to dial Western Union.

The big question was in all our minds, although no one spoke it: Would Dan use the money Dad wired him to fly home, or would he use it to start a new life in Canada?

Dad took off work, and I didn't go to school. My parents, Denise, Jerry, and I all got into the Oldsmobile with Dan to see him off at the Oakland train station. Nobody said much on the drive across the bay. We were all bleary-eyed from staying up most of the night. Dan's flight from Vancouver had gotten into San Francisco at eight a.m., and Dad had gone over to the airport to pick him up. Now we were running late for Dan's ten o'clock train departure to Fort Riley. We had to park several blocks away because hundreds of other families had already arrived to drop their boys off.

We stood around with only a few minutes to spare before Dan had to board the train. Denise and Jerry were holding hands. In the early hours of the morning, Denise had told Jerry she was returning to Cal as an English major in January, and Jerry had told Denise that he had redirected his dissertation to “Making Meaning of Psychoanalysis through the Women's Movement.” With my parents' help, they had talked things out and had decided to get back together.

Now I could see that Mom was trying hard not to cry. Dad delivered his pep talk to Dan in a steady, strong voice. “We're proud of you, son. You're doing the right thing. When Uncle Sam calls you up, you've got to serve, no questions asked. You'll come out of this thing okay, God willing.”

I stared hard at my brother, burning his face into my memory,
thinking of Jimmy Howe disappearing into the darkness at the top of our stairs.

It was time. We gave Dan last-minute hugs, and then he boarded the train. We thought that was the last we'd see of him, but then his face appeared at an upper-deck window. He spotted us and broke into a wide, forlorn grin. I waved so furiously it felt like my hand might fly off my wrist. Dan looked right at me and splayed two fingers. Peace.