My Beautiful Hippie Read online

  ALSO BY JANET NICHOLS LYNCH

  Messed Up

  Addicted to Her

  Racing California

  My

  Beautiful

  Hippie

  JANET

  NICHOLS LYNCH

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are

  the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance

  to actual persons is coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Janet Nichols Lynch

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  www.holidayhouse.com

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2800-7 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2799-4 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress cataloging-in-publication data

  Lynch, Janet Nichols, 1952-

  My beautiful hippie / Janet Nichols Lynch. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary Fifteen-year-old Joanne, raised in San Francisco’s Haight District, becomes involved with Martin, a hippie, and various aspects of the late 1960s cultural revolution despite her middle-class upbringing.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2603-4 (hardcover)

  [1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Hippies—Fiction. 3. Family life—

  California—Fiction. 4. Piantists—Fiction. 5. Feminism—Fiction.

  6. Vietnam War, 1961-1975—Fiction. 7. San Francisco (Calif.)—

  History—20th century—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.L9847My 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012016563

  To my girlfriends

  Tina, Marsha, Caryl, Jeffra,

  Patricia, and Regina

  because you were there

  for me then

  Chapter

  One

  I was in a hurry as usual, rushing down the hill on Ashbury Street. Only minutes before Denise’s bridal shower was about to start, my mother had sent me to the Sunrise Market for a tub of Cool Whip. I turned the corner on Haight Street and smacked right into him. I looked up into eyes of the palest blue, sparkly with humor, soft with caring. The sun lit up his wavy, honey-brown shoulder-length hair so that its outline appeared like a golden aura. Diagonally across his gauzy shirt was the rainbow strap of the guitar slung on his back.

  He was gorgeous, and what did I look like to him? The hem of the turquoise dotted-swiss dress my mother had made hit the middle of my knees, while all around me miniskirts were thigh-high. I wanted to be cool more than anything, but how was that possible with my mother dressing me?

  “Spare change?” he asked, palm extended.

  “Uh . . . no.” My fingers tightened around two quarters and three pennies, exact change. My mom knew what things cost. My dad had ordered me never to give money to panhandlers. I glanced at the boy’s bare feet. If they were clean, he was just some neighborhood kid playing hippie for the weekend, but filthy black and callused meant the real thing. His feet were somewhere in between.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Peace.” He splayed two fingers in farewell, about to slip away from me.

  “I play the guitar,” I blurted. I was teaching myself.

  “Far out.”

  “And the piano.” It was my life.

  “Ah, a kindred spirit! The soul of a musician.” His gaze searched my eyes. “You’re beautiful.” He removed his strand of love beads and placed them over my head.

  Next, I was paying for the Cool Whip and didn’t even remember walking into the market. Heading back on Haight Street, I nearly stumbled over the bodies that were sitting or lying on the sidewalk. It was 1967, the Summer of Love, and I was fifteen. The Haight District, the San Francisco neighborhood I had grown up in, was crowded with hippies, freaks, heads, beautiful people, flower children—they were called all those things—and the straights who gawked at them from cars and tour buses.

  I looked for my beautiful hippie, but he had been swallowed up in the mash of humanity and traffic. Hippies called everyone beautiful, I told myself, but I had already plunged headlong into a deep crush.

  Trudging up Ashbury, I tucked the love beads inside the neckline of my dress so my mom wouldn’t start asking questions. Two blocks up the hill from commercial Haight Street, I turned left on Frederick, my street, where things were a lot quieter. The hippies tended to swarm over the flatlands: Golden Gate Park to the west, and to the north, Page Street, Oak Street, and the Panhandle, the milelong skinny strip of green jutting out from the park.

  I loved our house on its tranquil block. It was a Victorian built in the late 1800s, one of the few that had survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. On the left was an octagonal turret with its third-story window, and on the right were two stacked and gabled bay windows. The facade was covered with scalloped shingles, and the whole structure was painted slate gray with white trim. At the street level was a three-foot retaining wall, topped with a wrought-iron fence enclosing our little yard. I scampered up the concrete steps leading to the gate, let myself in, and instead of mounting the sixteen steep stairs leading to the front porch, I took the walkway to the back door. As I entered the kitchen, I pressed my fingers to my love beads through my dress.

  “Finally, Joanne!” Mom greeted me. “What took you so long? I had expected some help around here.” She was short, with low-slung breasts and a bulging stomach, not particularly fat, but rather a natural product of over forty years of gravitational pull. She was wearing the new pink polyester knit dress she had made and a frilly hostess apron. Her swollen feet oozed out of matching pink high heels and her hair was a lacquered bubble; she had it done every Friday afternoon at the beauty salon.

  I set the brown sack of Cool Whip on the counter.

  “Not there, Joanne, the refrigerator! Haven’t you got any sense?”

  I opened the fridge and placed the Cool Whip on top of two other containers of Cool Whip. It was a bad sign. Mom in a panic over Cool Whip. Whenever she entertained, she had to have everything just right, like those pictures of food in Ladies’ Home Journal.

  The doorbell rang, and she dashed out of the kitchen to answer it. She scurried back in, yanked off her apron, and hurried out again.

  Jerry Westfield, the groom-to-be, slunk through the back door. “Oh, hi, Beethoven.”

  “You’re not supposed to be here!”

  “Hi, Jerry, nice to see you,” he said in a falsetto, then hooked an incisor over his lower lip. He was cute, tall and lanky, with big brown eyes and a single, reluctant dimple. My mother referred to him as a “catch.” He hovered over the hors d’oeuvres platter and began plucking the pickled herring out of Mom’s meticulous arrangement.

  “Hey, leave some for somebody else.” I grabbed a dish towel, twisted it from the ends, and snapped it at his butt.

  “Hey, you! Gimme that!”

  I shrieked as he chased me around the table.

  Mom returned to the kitchen, her fingertips pressed into her temples. “Heavens, Joanne! Stop that roughhousing.”

  I pointed at Jerry. “He started it.”

  “Falsely accused!” He was laughing, the sour cream dressing from the herring wedged in the crease of his mouth.

  Mom handed him a tray of manly sandwiches, still bearing crusts, and steered him toward the den, where my dad and my brother, Dan, were already glommed onto the boob tube, watching the Giants game. Mom dabbed fondly at Jerry’s mouth and reached up behind him to touch a dark brown curl that had inched over the button-down collar of his white Oxford shirt. “You’re going to need a haircut before the wedding. We don’t want you looking shaggy in the photographs.”

  “Sure thing, Helen.”

  She placed a double-decker bowl of chips and dips in his other hand.
/>   “Where’s the beer?” he asked.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Heavens!” Tiny beads of sweat appeared above Mom’s lip. “I’ll bring it in, Jerry.”

  As soon as he left, Mom addressed me in a hushed, frantic tone. “Go see what’s keeping your sister. I expected some help around here.”

  “Oh, Mommy! Everything looks perfect!”

  As I mounted the stairs, I heard shrieks of greetings and laughter erupt from the foyer and saw our fat black-and-white cat, Snoopy, scurrying beneath the furniture, back slung low and ears flattened. Denise was in our bedroom, seated at her vanity on the gold swivel stool with the furry pink seat, staring vacantly into the mirror. Only one of the orange juice cans that she used as rollers had been removed, the others still bobby-pinned together in neat rows over her head.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Mom is down there having a cow.”

  She offered the single long tendril of released hair. “Feel it. I’ve been wearing these things twenty-eight hours, and my hair is still damp.”

  “Bummer.” I hated sleeping on rollers, and anyway, my plain brown hair looked cool long, straight, and parted down the middle. “Can’t you hear all those ladies?” I reached for a bobby pin.

  “Stop it, Joanne! I’m not going down there with wet hair.” Miss Perfect. A few weeks earlier, she had come home crying because she didn’t weigh enough to be allowed to join Weight Watchers; she went on Dr. Stillman’s Quick-Weight-Loss Diet and nearly floated away on all the water she drank. She used to be smart and witty, a big sister I could look up to, but falling head over heels for Jerry Westfield had turned her into a ninny.

  “Is this how you’re going to act on your wedding day?” I goaded her. “Are you sure you want to get married so soon?”

  “What a question!” She rolled her eyes around our room with the rosebud wallpaper and the frilly pink homemade curtains that matched the frilly pink homemade bedspreads. “I’ll be getting out of here.” Her voice softened as she looked at me in the mirror with that nauseating glow she’d been wearing through her engagement. “Oh, Joanne, you’ll see! When you find the right guy, nothing but him will matter, and everything in your life will slip away.”

  “Not my piano!”

  She emitted a little puff of air. “I didn’t expect you to understand.”

  I got out the hair dryer, released the plastic hood from the nozzle, and blasted hot air over each orange juice can. Denise applied pearly-pink lipstick, rosy-pink blush, blue eye shadow, and thick eyeliner with little check marks at the ends. Together we got all the cans out of her hair. Denise stood, bent over, and brushed her hair forward to add volume. She flipped it back and arranged it in ripples over her shoulders. At last she smiled with self-satisfaction in the vanity mirror.

  “Jerry’s here,” I reported matter-of-factly.

  “Gerald’s here?” she gasped.

  “Uh-huh.” If her hair hadn’t turned out, I wouldn’t have mentioned it. “Maybe he wants to see what presents you get.”

  “Very funny. He knows this hen party is only for—Oh, my God! Jerry’s talking to Mother’s friends right now?”

  “Calm down. He’s in the den, watching the Giants game with Dad and Dan.”

  “That’s even worse! Gerald is antiwar and Dan is prowar. Gerald’s major is psychology, and Daddy doesn’t even believe there’s any such thing!”

  Denise didn’t get it. Jerry was eventually going to find out all about us unsophisticated Donnellys. It was only a matter of time. “Your bridal shower has been going on without you for a half hour.”

  “I need to compose myself,” she said wearily. “Tell Mother I’ll be right down.”

  As I passed Mom’s sewing room, I noticed Denise’s massive white wedding gown and four pink empire-waist bridesmaid’s dresses hanging at attention across the closet. Of course my mother had made them all. If she staged an event and it didn’t knock her off her feet for three days afterward, then she hadn’t put enough effort into it. After Denise’s wedding, Mom would have to go to a rest home or the nuthouse in Napa.

  Downstairs, Mom was relating her latest favorite story in her loud bray to a circle of her dearest, oldest friends whom she rarely saw. “He was her psychology professor! On the first day of class he looked out in that auditorium of three hundred brand-new freshmen, laid eyes on our Denise, and just had to have her!”

  “Isn’t he still a graduate student?” asked Maxine Fulmer. She had gained quite a bit of weight since her husband had left her for his much younger secretary last year. She wore an African-print kaftan, big jewelry, and no bra, her breasts basking on her front like seal pups.

  Mom’s mouth hung slightly open, as if holding her place in her story. “Jerry is getting his PhD, and soon he’ll be a psychoanalyst!”

  “He’s a Freudian?” Mrs. Fulmer flopped back on the sofa cushions and slapped her lap. “God help your poor child, Helen.”

  “Denise will be right down,” I announced.

  Mom drew me near and whispered, “Pass the hors d’oeuvres trays, Joanne.” She made her way to another group of friends and said, “He was her psychology professor! On the first day of class he looked out in that auditorium of three hundred brand-new freshmen, laid eyes on our Denise, and just had to have her!”

  I rushed over to my best friend, Rena, the one person I had been allowed to invite. Her eyes were done up like Twiggy’s, false eyelashes and two colors of shadow, and her lipstick was Yardley’s pearl white. Her black, waist-length hair was in snarls because it took so long to comb out. We greeted each other with squeals, waving two peace signs at each other and leaping around in circles. Nobody understood me like Rena.

  I glanced over my shoulder to be sure my mother wasn’t looking, then flashed Rena my love beads. “I met someone,” I whispered.

  “Where? When? Who is he?”

  “I’ll tell you later. Let’s go get the hors d’oeuvres before my mom has kittens.”

  As we passed Mom, she called, “I see you’ve recruited some help, Joanne. Thank you, Serena.”

  Rena cringed when she heard her hated complete name. After years of tremendous effort, she had succeeded in getting most people to call her Rena, but my mother had known her since we were in the third grade, and to her, Rena would always be Serena. It only proved that to become the person you wanted to be, you had to move far, far away from everyone who had watched you grow up.

  Our kitchen was yellow with barnyard wallpaper. My mom was wild about roosters. They were on our plates, towels, and appliance cozies. Rena eyed the large white sheet cake, which read CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR WEDDING, DENISE, THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.

  Rena looked at me knowingly and whispered, “The first day of the end of her life.”

  We howled with laughter. Rena and I had big plans. After college, we were going to live together in New York City, where she would act on Broadway and I would attend Juilliard and play recitals at Carnegie Hall.

  By the time we returned to the living room with the hors d’oeuvres trays, Denise had made her entrance.

  “Where will you live?” asked our cousin, Beth, one of the bridesmaids.

  “In an apartment near campus. A darling place on Shattuck.”

  “What’s your major?” asked Judy, one of Denise’s neighborhood friends.

  “Art history, but . . . well . . .” Denise gave a brave smile. “I won’t be returning to classes in the fall.” Usually the docile, obedient daughter, Denise had fought Mom tooth and nail to allow her to cross the Bay Bridge every day, alone, by bus to attend the University of California in Berkeley instead of going to local San Francisco State College. Now she was giving it all up after one year to marry Jerry.

  “Why would she continue?” asked Thelma Newman, my mother’s best friend. She was a small woman and, like my mom, wore a polyester double-knit dress and kept her hair in a lacquered bubble. “She’s getting her M.R.S. That’s really the only reason a girl needs to go to a un
iversity.”

  “It isn’t that,” said Denise, flustered. “Gerald’s stipend just isn’t enough for us to live on. I’ll be working as a secretary here in the city, on Market, while he finishes his doctorate. Then we’ll be set.”

  “What if you get pregnant?” asked Beth.

  Denise blushed beneath her blusher as if all the ladies were imagining her doing what it took to get pregnant. “Oh, we aren’t planning to start a family for several years.”

  “Thank God for the Pill,” said Judy.

  “Oh, Denise would never take such a thing!” said Mom, but I knew Denise already was taking it, having timed it precisely so that its effectiveness would kick in on her wedding night.

  “You’re getting a prenuptial agreement, I hope,” said Mrs. Fulmer.

  Denise cleared her throat and said in a whiny, indignant tone, “Oh, I don’t believe that’s necessary.”

  “No blushing bride ever did,” said Mrs. Fulmer. “Until now. Times are changing, Denise. Women are demanding their rights. Suppose you work for several years, your husband finishes his doctorate, sets up a thriving practice, and then dumps you for the prettiest patient with the biggest emotional problems. At least you would be assured of financial compensation, an opportunity to complete your education.” Recently Mrs. Fulmer had shocked all her friends by returning to the university herself to complete the degree she had started over twenty years ago. She wagged her finger at Denise. “I’d look into it if I were you, dear, for peace of mind.”

  The awkward silence in the room was pierced by Denise’s silvery laugh. “I trust Gerald implicitly.”

  “Look at that mound of presents, Denise!” exclaimed Mom, clapping her hands together. “Hadn’t you better get started?” She handed me the telephone notepad and a pen. “Joanne, you be recording secretary for Denise’s thank-you notes.” She handed Rena a paper plate with slits cut into it. “Here, Serena, you make the ribbon bouquet for the wedding rehearsal. Slip the ends in like so, the bows on top.”

  Denise unwrapped an olive-green fondue pot. Then an orange one. After the fourth fondue pot, she glanced across the room at Mom’s worried face. The two of them had fought over Denise’s choice of silver pattern, and the fact that she hadn’t gotten a single dessert fork only proved that Mom had been right in warning her against registering something so expensive.