My Beautiful Hippie Read online

  Jerry had not gotten that haircut he’d promised my mom, and he wore love beads over his powder-blue dinner jacket. They would be in every single wedding picture, and there wasn’t a thing Mom could do about it. Nor Denise.

  Denise was a beautiful bride, with her long, dark hair in a cascade of ringlets beneath her veil and her full-skirted white brocade gown trailing behind her. I felt sad for her. She was passing from my parents’ house to her husband’s without ever getting a chance to live for herself.

  I was not a bridesmaid but performed the music instead. I played “Here Comes the Bride” on the organ, and when Denise and Jerry snuffed out their individual candles and lit a big one together, I played my guitar and sang a song I had composed for the occasion, “Now We Are One.” Candy Lambert had once said that when I sang I sounded like a bullfrog; another time like a mosquito. When I hit the final high note, Candy nudged Lisa and pointed at me. She opened her mouth wide, rolled back her eyes, and shook her jaw, causing Lisa to snicker. My voice tightened, forcing my vibrato to go out of control, making me sound something like a mosquito.

  At the wedding reception in the church hall, the buffet table was packed with salads, relish dishes, and casseroles assembled by the members of Mom’s garden club. I loaded my plate high, while Rena followed behind me, forming tiny islands of a few selected items, repulsed if different foods touched one another on her plate.

  “Did you notice that Lisa and Candy are here?” Rena asked.

  “Did I? Candy was making fun of me while I was trying to sing and made me goof up. Hopefully it’s so crowded in here, we can avoid them.”

  “We’d sit with them if they asked us, right?”

  “You can if you want,” I snapped.

  “It looks like Lisa got another nose job this summer.”

  “Yeah.” Lisa was the only person I knew who had had plastic surgery. I didn’t think her nose looked bad to begin with, just Italian, but the first surgery had left a little bump in it. Now nothing much was left but a pert little ski jump. She was also the only girl I knew whose mother let her get her hair bleached.

  Rena and I found a good spot at a table and dug in, whispering hilarious observations about the wedding guests.

  Suddenly Candy and Lisa were at our sides. “You sang real good,” Candy said. She turned to Lisa, and they snickered together.

  Lisa was pretty, except for her too-small nose and her blond hair that didn’t match her olive complexion. Candy’s features sank into a hollow at the center of her face, and she had a short bubble haircut that exposed puffy earlobes. I wondered if she would seem less ugly if she weren’t so mean. I wondered why mean girls were popular.

  Lisa was wearing the latest style, a white frilly blouse and a jumper that scooped beneath her bust line, emphasizing her big boobs. Candy was wearing a ribbed poor boy top, a tweed mod cap, and a brown wide-wale corduroy miniskirt, broader than it was long. I made a mental note to tell Rena later that Candy’s bulging thighs in her mottled textured hose looked like sausages in casings. My mom wouldn’t let me wear either outfit, claiming they wouldn’t look good on me. I didn’t understand this reasoning, knowing what every teen girl knows in her heart: the latest fashion looks good simply because it’s the latest fashion.

  “Pretty good eats,” said Candy, nodding toward our plates. “We’ve got something that will make them taste even better!” She opened her clutch purse to reveal two joints, bulging and ineptly rolled. “Want to smoke some grass?”

  My heart began to thump faster. Did Rena and I dare try pot now, on my sister’s day of days, with two in-crowd kids I didn’t trust? I had heard it was hard to inhale marijuana the first time. What if I was struck with a humiliating coughing fit?

  “Since when do you smoke pot?” I asked. The in-crowd kids were drinkers, not dopers. At a football game last fall Lisa had gotten so drunk she’d vomited all over her flower-power tent dress and passed out. The story that got around school was that Kent had to scoop her up and toss her in the trunk of his dad’s Cadillac to keep her from stinking up the interior. She came to while he was hosing her down in her backyard, before hoisting her through her bedroom window.

  Candy put on her leering grin. “This summer I got a three-joint-a-day habit.”

  Alarms were sounding in my head. Pot users did not consider it a habit.

  “I want to try it, Joanne,” said Rena.

  I looked around. My parents were still busy with the receiving line, greeting all their guests alongside Denise, Jerry, and his parents. It was stuffy in the crowded hall, and if we four girls slipped out, it would seem like we were going for some air.

  We went out the side door, around the corner to the picnic tables. The outside lights weren’t on in that area and the place was deserted.

  Candy handed a joint to Rena.

  “Don’t you want the first hit?” Rena asked her.

  “No, no. This grass is just for you guys. It might only be enough for two.”

  “Yeah,” said Lisa. “Candy and I got stoned before the wedding and still have a buzz on.”

  Rena placed the joint between her lips, and Candy held a match to its end. It didn’t catch.

  “Suck harder,” said Candy, lighting another match. “Haven’t you ever done this before?”

  “Lots of times.” Rena inhaled so deeply, she began to sway and hyperventilate.

  “You sure you’ve done this?” asked Lisa. “We gotta get back before my parents miss us.”

  “Let me try.” I put the joint in my mouth; it was soggy from Rena. Candy handed Rena the matches, and she and Lisa left us fumbling in the dark. I tried so hard to light that joint, I wore it out. Grass started poking through the paper. Rena and I examined it.

  “Hmmm, looks too green to burn,” said Rena. “Doesn’t it have to get dried out first?”

  “Hey, wait.” I held the joint under my nose and sniffed. “It’s grass, all right.” I bent over, yanked up a handful of lawn, and flung it at Rena in disgust.

  In the dark, I could see Rena’s eyes, drooping at the corners. “How are we going to live this one down?”

  I laughed. Rena laughed. It was embarrassing, but it didn’t hurt, not the way Candy’s making fun of my singing did. As we walked back inside, I was relieved we hadn’t smoked pot. I could have done something stupid, and then Denise would never have forgiven me for ruining her wedding.

  During the bride and groom’s dance, Denise and Jerry didn’t stand apart from each other, stomp their feet, and wave their arms the way kids danced. They foxtrotted to “Blue Moon.” Denise’s left hand with the winking diamond ring was held high in Jerry’s right hand, and his left hand lightly touched her waist. I hadn’t known Denise could foxtrot, nor did I know where she had learned it. After a while my parents, Jerry’s parents, and their friends joined in, Jerry and Denise fitting right in with the swirling, foxtrotting older couples. Denise no longer seemed a mere three years older than me, but somehow had advanced an entire generation. My sister was now one of them—a grown-up.

  Later the DJ got around to spinning some of the songs of the current decade: The Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” the Monkees’ “I’m a Believer,” and the Turtles’ “Happy Together.” As Rena and I dug into our second pieces of wedding cake, the Doors’ “Light My Fire” came on. I bounced to the beat of the music but froze when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see Pete Wattle. He, Dan, and Jimmy Howe, who was now serving in Vietnam, had been buddies since junior high.

  “Wanna dance?” asked Pete.

  I did but had to consider who was asking. Pete was hilarious, always cracking jokes and pulling pranks. I had been laughed at enough for one day. “Buzz off.”

  His face was flushed from the champagne he and my brother had been helping themselves to, but he still seemed steady on his feet. “No, really. I want to dance with you.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Why? Because this song is far out!” He grinned, exposing the cute gap between
his two front teeth. He had grown his blond hair out and swept it across his forehead, surfer boy style. His acne had cleared up, and he’d lost or grown into his baby fat. He actually looked pretty cool.

  If I got up to dance with Pete, Rena would be left alone. She leaned into me and whispered, “Say you’ll do it if Dan will dance with me.”

  I relayed the message to Pete, and by the organ solo of “Light My Fire,” the four of us were doing some heavy-duty rocking out. Pete was a pretty good dancer, or at least he didn’t look like he was spazzing out, like Dan. I closed my eyes and felt the music seeping into my brain, the beat pulsing deep in my bones, and the release of all the tension brought on by the wedding. The song changed to the Airplane’s “Somebody to Love.” I kicked off my high heels and spun around in stocking feet. My steps grew wider, and soon I was leaping across the dance floor.

  Pete jogged after me, his face crumpled with frustration. “Don’t be hopping all over the place, Joanne.”

  I ignored his pleas, and he soon gave up on my galloping, sashaying, and weaving. I was alone in the music, flying high, Grace Slick wailing, “Don’t you want somebody to love? Don’t you need somebody to love?” Yeah, I did, and I thought of my beautiful hippie.

  After that song, Rena and I flopped, sweaty and panting, at a table next to her parents.

  “Your mom did a wonderful job on this wedding,” said Mrs. Thompson.

  “Thanks. I’ll tell her you said so.”

  “And Denise was a beautiful, blushing bride. A girl’s wedding day is the most important day of her life,” gushed Mrs. Thompson.

  “Yeah, right,” said Mr. Thompson, “and a marriage certificate is a man’s death warrant.”

  Mrs. Thompson gave him a wide-eyed, wounded look as he stared blandly back. Her face shattered like glass, and she ran out of the room.

  “That was really mean, Dad,” said Rena.

  “Ah, hell. Come on, Rena. We’re going.”

  “It’s early. I can walk home.”

  He stood. “We’re going,” he repeated, and headed for the door, not even bothering to turn around to see if Rena was following.

  Rena raised a peace sign at me, more like a sign of surrender than a farewell.

  Left alone, I reached for a handful of chocolate-covered mint patties; then, realizing I was too stuffed to eat another bite, I stashed them in my satin clutch purse for later. I would forget about them, they would melt into the lining, and after that, every time I opened that purse, I would smell mint and be transported back to Denise’s wedding day.

  Mom’s friend Maxine Fulmer came over to talk to me. I knew she was there because I had seen her untouched sunflower seed tofu loaf in its disposable aluminum baking pan, parked among all the polished silver serving dishes on the buffet table. She had brought a guest, a thin, pale man with a pageboy who looked quite a bit younger than her and reminded me of Chopin.

  Mrs. Fulmer introduced him to me as Quentin Allen. He extended his hand across the table, and when I shook it, I noticed how good his long, pale fingers would be for piano playing. Whenever I didn’t know what to say to somebody, I said something stupid to fill the silence. “I’ve never met anyone whose name starts with a ‘Q.’ ”

  “What’s more unusual is someone whose name starts with ‘Q’ but without a ‘u’ following it. Now, that’s impressive.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Qadir, Qamar, Qihael. Need I go on?” He smiled with one side of his mouth, which made him boyishly handsome. He extracted a gold cigarette case from his hunter-green velveteen jacket, snapped it open, and offered its contents to me. I declined but was flattered. I’d never been offered a cigarette before.

  “I’ve been looking for you, Joanne,” said Mrs. Fulmer, her speech slightly slurred from the champagne she was sipping. “I just had to compliment your music at the ceremony. You play with such feeling. Such expression. Truly, it’s a gift.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Fulmer.”

  “Call me Maxine, dear. These titles alienate the generations, don’t you think? Besides, I’m not even Mrs. Fulmer anymore.”

  I asked Maxine a question I probably shouldn’t. “Do weddings make you sad?”

  “This one does. Denise is much too young. Too bad she and Jerry couldn’t just live together for a while.”

  I was shocked that a person of my parents’ generation would suggest such a thing. “You know my mom wouldn’t go for that.”

  “It’s becoming widely accepted,” Maxine insisted. “Denise will see it’s not easy for a girl to return to college once she’s left. She’s been brainwashed into thinking getting married and having children will make her a happy, feminine, well-adjusted woman with a fulfilling sex life. Society says education for girls only dooms them to unhappy, dead-end careers and celibate, frustrated lives without orgasm.” I was embarrassed by her anger and sex talk, especially in the presence of a man. I didn’t know what “orgasm” meant. Everything I knew about sex I’d learned by secretly reading Valley of the Dolls while babysitting, and parts of it I didn’t understand.

  “Girls don’t dare become interested in law and medicine,” Maxine ranted on. “It will only lead to the frustration of applying for positions filled by men. No, no. Teach them cooking and sewing and”—she clawed quotation marks in the air—“ ‘the role of woman in society.’ I read in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique that in the last decade, the IQs of teenage girls in America have actually gone down!”

  I thought of Denise in junior high, reading one book after another—Dickens, Austen, J. D. Salinger, Joyce Carol Oates—and then in the summer before her freshman year, something happened to her. She grew boobs, big pointy ones, and all her dates and hair arranging put a limit on her reading.

  “Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant,” Maxine muttered.

  “Oh, no, not Jerry!” I said, defending my new brother-in-law, whom I liked so much. I leaned close to Maxine to whisper their secret. “Denise is on the Pill.”

  “So she can support him,” Maxine almost snarled. “That’s the other subject they teach you girls in high school, isn’t it? Typing—so you can support a man attending a university for a real profession, so you can type his dissertation instead of writing your own. That’s what those male chauvinist pigs want, and they always get what they want!” She stopped, nearly panting.

  If Quentin was insulted by her talk, he didn’t show it. He smoked his cigarette, putting a lot of wrist motion in it and following through with a sweep of his arm. He was the most stylish smoker I’d ever seen.

  Chapter

  Five

  On Thursday nights my parents went out to dinner and on to their ballroom dance lessons. It used to be a treat for Denise, Dan, and me to eat TV dinners on trays in front of the boob tube watching The Mod Squad, but now, with Denise married and Dan off at his new pizza delivery job, Thursday nights were even better. I had the whole house to myself to practice the piano as loudly and long as I wanted. But that night was special. I was going to sneak off to Martin’s with Rena.

  My parents left the house at five-thirty, and I waited a full ten minutes before charging down to Walker Street to Rena’s house.

  When she opened the door, she seemed surprised to see me. “Oh, Jo! I forgot! I can’t go!”

  “Why not?”

  “Look, I’ll show you! It’s fantastic!” She led me into her living room and opened the pink entertainment section of the San Francisco Chronicle. “The American Conservatory Theater is casting The Crucible, and they’re having auditions tonight! It’s about the Salem witch trials, and they need a bunch of teenage girls to spaz out and act like they’re possessed by the devil. I’ve been rehearsing all afternoon. Watch!” Rena rolled her eyes and jerked her arms around, then dropped in a heap to the floor as if her skeleton had dissolved to Jell-O. She sat up with a grin. “Pretty convincing, huh?”

  “Yeah, but you promised you’d come with me.”

  “I know, Jo. I’m sorry. Can’t you g
o alone?”

  I hugged myself. “I’d be too scared without you.”

  “We’ll go tomorrow!” Rena said brightly.

  But I was psyched up to go right then. I had selected the perfect outfit. I had rehearsed all the cool things I’d say to Martin. I started to trudge home, but when I got to Ashbury, I turned left toward Haight.

  I passed a couple of scary-looking Hells Angels astride their Harley choppers. I was pretty certain the one with scraggly hair, a black beard, and a beer gut was the famous Chocolate George. He wore a denim shirt with the sleeves ripped out as a vest, dotted with peace buttons. My eyes slid away from him, and I walked a little faster. The Hells Angels had once held the entire town of Hollister hostage, and even more terrifying, they had been prosecuted for gang rape. Dozens of Hells Angels had rolled into the Haight and decided to hang around and drop acid. They seemed peaceful enough, but still they made me nervous.

  I sat at the trolley stop, and when it arrived, I got on. Every fiber of my being told me not to do this. Every newspaper clipping about abduction, rape, and murder that my mother had ever read aloud to me rose in giant letters in my mind. Simply, I would be killed, and it served me right because when my parents went out, they trusted me to stay home with my TV dinner and piano.