Leigh (18 page)

Denying her little sister was harder, and her mother knew that. “Ladybug, I’ll come home for Christmas just like I
would have anyway. I miss you, too. How is your friend Lucy?”

“She’s okay. But she’s not you.”

That made Leigh grin. “I love you, ladybug. Bye.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

Leigh hung up and walked into the parlor where Kitty, wearing half-glasses, was reading. “Mom isn’t happy about my staying.
But I just can’t go home.”

Kitty looked up. “I understand, dear. Your mother reminds me a little of your great-grandmother Lily Leigh Kimball. She thought
Chloe, your grandmother, was a china doll. Miss Lily wanted to be able to set Chloe down where and when she wanted her and
she expected her daughter to stay put. No one ought to try to do that to another person. And you’re going through one of those
awful times when life comes in like the ocean and sweeps you away.”

Leigh sat down on the arm of her aunt’s chair and gave her a half smile. “Thanks for letting me stay.”
For understanding.

“Have you thought about what you’d like to do while you continue to look for Mary Beth?”

Leigh sighed. “It’s a little late for classes anywhere. I think I should get a job and pay you room and board.”

“You may get a job, but I don’t need any room and board from you. For heaven’s sake, you’re family.”

L
eigh stood behind the cash register near the end of her first day of work. She’d gotten the job at the little shop where she’d
applied that day with “hippie” Dane at her side. She still had hopes that Mary Beth might walk by. At least this
job gave her a reason to hang out in the Haight-Ashbury area. Learning to run the cash register had been no stretch, and she
just had to dust and learn where everything was in the store. The proprietress would work the same hours as she did for the
first week, and then she’d be on her own. Leigh hoped that there would be lots of customers to distract her from the troubles
of her life.

Her mind was much too busy chewing painfully over and over on where Mary Beth could be, the upcoming nuptials of Frank and
Cherise, why she’d kissed Dane and let him kiss her—and why it had affected her so. She couldn’t think about it without reliving
the sensations he’d triggered in her. No other man had ever affected her this way—except Frank. And Frank was marrying Cherise.

The bell over the door jingled. Leigh looked up and froze.

“Hi, Leigh,” Mary Beth muttered.

Leigh scanned her friend and didn’t like what she saw, but simple, bone-deep relief sluiced through her anyway. “
Mary Beth,
I’ve been so worried!”

Mary Beth—much thinner, dirty, bedraggled—shrugged. “What are you doing here?”

“I was worried.” Leigh held onto the edge of the counter to keep herself from rushing over to her friend. She wanted to hug
Mary Beth, but her appearance, her stance warned Leigh away. “I came to California looking for you.”

Mary Beth nodded. “I saw you once with that guy. Who is he? Are you dating him?”

“He’s just a friend.”
Of my stepfather.
Then her lips tingled with the memory of Dane’s kisses. Those weren’t
friendly
in any sense of the word.

“Well, I just wanted to say hi.” Flashing the peace sign, Mary Beth turned to go.

“No, Mary Beth, wait.” Leigh stepped around the
counter and hurried forward. “Why don’t you come home with me for dinner? I’m staying with my Aunt Kitty. She’d love to meet
you.”
Don’t leave me. Let me help you.

Mary Beth stood, looking at her. She looked drugged, hungry, subdued. “Okay, why not?”

That evening in Kitty’s parlor, Leigh sat on a tapestry sofa across from Mary Beth. Her friend had tucked her bare feet under
the light-blue kimono Aunt Kitty had loaned her after Mary Beth had taken a long hot soak in the claw-foot tub upstairs. Mary
Beth’s clothes were spinning in the dryer off the kitchen. Leigh tried not to stare, but this Mary Beth had none of the spark
that her friend had always possessed in abundance. Her eyes were sunken, and dark circles rimmed them. Where had Mary Beth,
the eager puppy dog, gone? Leigh felt like crying. But at least she’d found Mary Beth—or Mary Beth had found her.

Anyway, now Leigh could help her friend. Everything would work out all right. But first, did Mary Beth know about Chance?
And should she tell Mary Beth? Might that derail her friend again?

On the loveseat, Mary Beth and Aunt Kitty were having a discussion on early blues singers. A conversation that ignored all
the issues Leigh wanted to discuss with her friend. What did she care about Bessie Smith? What did that have to do with 1968?
There were things she needed to discuss with Mary Beth. What about going back East? What about school?

“Mary Beth, do you know that Chance is dead?” Leigh asked abruptly, unable to hold back any longer.

Absolute silence in the parlor was the only reply. There was only the sound of the dryer spinning in the distance.

“Yeah, he had a bad trip.” Mary Beth looked away.

Leigh waited for some further comment, some expression of sorrow. Something that would sound like Mary Beth.

“That happens,” Mary Beth finished and turned to Kitty. “I really like your pad.” She gazed around at the room, where a fine
collection of early-twentieth-century art glass was on display.

“Thanks.” Kitty smiled. “I like it. I’m glad you came. Leigh has been worried about you.”

“What are your plans?” Leigh asked her friend.

“Plans?” Mary Beth looked at her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language.

“Yes, we both should have been finishing college this year. I came to find you.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Leigh echoed. “Because you’re my friend. Because I was worried about you. I was afraid you’d gotten hurt in Chicago.”

“Chicago,” Mary Beth repeated, as if finally catching something of what Leigh was saying. “That was a heavy scene. Heavy.”

Leigh felt like slapping Mary Beth. She was acting like a caricature of a hippie, not Mary Beth.

Kitty intervened. “Well, I think we’ve discussed old times long enough. Why don’t you two turn in for the night? We can discuss
the future tomorrow after a good night’s rest and a hearty breakfast. What do you think?”

“Cool,” Mary Beth assented.

Leigh took the hint from a pointed look Kitty sent her. There was always tomorrow. “Fine. I am tired.”

This strange Mary Beth with the hollow cheeks and emaciated body followed her up the stairs and perched on the rose-pink bedspread.
She watched Leigh prepare for bed and then joined her at the sink, where they both brushed their
teeth like they had so many times during childhood sleep-overs and in the dorm. Mary Beth got into bed first. Leigh turned
off the light and climbed in on her side of the bed.

“Have you talked to my parents?” Mary Beth asked in the darkened room, her first
real
question of the evening.

“Yes.” Leigh didn’t know what to add.

“What did they say?” Mary Beth pressed, for the first time showing any interest in what Leigh had to say.

“They… they said that you were an adult,” Leigh repeated what she remembered from her conversations with them. “That you didn’t
need them telling you what to do and that maybe our generation would finally bring about revolution. That capitalistic America
was long overdue for one.”

“Oh.” Her friend sounded… what? Leigh couldn’t identify the emotion. Mary Beth had been “blunted” somehow, and Leigh didn’t
know what more to say. How had Mary Beth gotten along with her parents?

Leigh recalled Frank’s description of his mother’s bland acceptance of everything he did, good or bad. And she thought of
her mother, who had a firm and usually negative opinion about everything Leigh did and didn’t mind giving it. Why couldn’t
parents be more like Grandma Chloe, who loved, tried to speak the truth, but never tried to control or dominate?

“Thanks for worrying about me,” Mary Beth whispered in the dark. “ ’Night.”

“ ’Night.” Leigh lay on her side watching city light flow into the room from the tall window beside the bed. She didn’t know
what she’d expected upon finding Mary Beth. But whatever it had been, this wasn’t it.

* * *

In the early hours of morning, Leigh suddenly opened her eyes. In the moonlight she saw what looked like the light-blue kimono
Mary Beth had been wearing lying on the floor. She rolled over and patted the other side of the bed. She was alone. She sat
up and threw back the covers. She ran lightly to the bathroom first. It was empty. She checked the den. Also vacant. Then
she hurried silently down the stairs and walked through the rooms, heading for the kitchen. Had her friend gotten up for an
early-morning snack? The kitchen was dark and quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator.

Leigh switched on the light. A note written on Aunt Kitty’s shopping list pad sat on the table. “I needed a fix. Don’t look
for me anymore. M.B.”

Leigh slid down onto a kitchen chair at the small table for two. She re-read the note, rejecting what it said, all it implied.
Her heart pounded in her ears, tears pooled in her eyes.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, holding the note. Aunt Kitty came into the kitchen, tying the sash of her beige robe.
“What’s wrong?”

“Mary Beth left.” The words plummeted through her like an avalanche. She handed her great-aunt the note.

Aunt Kitty sat down in the chair opposite. “I’m so sorry.”

“None of this makes any sense. Marijuana isn’t addictive.”

“But some people are prone to addiction. At least, that’s what I think. And if a person prone to addiction gets a taste for
being high…” Kitty shook her head and sighed.

Leigh burst into tears.
No, not Mary Beth.
Had it been all for nothing? Had she come all this way in vain?

Kitty rose and came to her. She patted Leigh’s shoulder, murmuring comforting words.

Leigh stood up and rested her head on her great-aunt’s slender shoulder. “I wanted to save her.”

“A person has to want to be saved. Obviously, Mary Beth isn’t there yet.”

“Why? Mary Beth would have been the last person I would have expected to…”

“Leigh, from what your mother told your grandmother, Mary Beth was extremely impressionable and her parents were odd themselves.
Maybe they didn’t give her a solid foundation or maybe they tried and failed. Parents aren’t always to blame. Mary Beth is
just one of thousands of young people seduced by the nationwide vibrations from the‘Summer of Love’ here in 1967. ‘Flower
power.’ ‘Make love, not war.’ ‘All we need is love,’ “ Kitty recited the pat phrases.

Leigh folded her arms in front of her stomach. She felt as if a gaping space had opened in her midsection. “What do I do now?”

“What she says.” Aunt Kitty nodded toward the note on the table. “Don’t look for her. She doesn’t want to be found—”

Leigh couldn’t accept this. “But—”

“Where’s your purse?”

Leigh looked at Kitty. “Why do you ask that?”

“Where’s your purse?” Kitty repeated.

“Hanging on the hall tree in the foyer.”

“Go get it.”

Returning, Leigh was astounded and unable to hide it. She held out her open purse. “My money’s all gone.”

Kitty nodded, not looking surprised. “I took my purse to bed with me. I should have taken yours, too. But… Let’s see if she
lifted anything else.”

Dumbfounded, Leigh trailed after her aunt as she walked from room to room, tallying what Mary Beth had stolen. Two
small pieces of art glass, a pair of eighteenth-century spectacles that had sat on top Kitty’s secretary in her den, and some
cash Kitty had had in her desk. “I’d better call the police,” Kitty said matter-of-factly. “The art glass is insured, so I
have to put in a theft report to make a claim.”

Stunned into silence, Leigh sat down on the carved Victorian loveseat in the den while Kitty dialed the police. Soon, an officer
came to take down a description of the art glass and spectacles. Leigh watched, but said nothing.

“They’ll probably turn up in antique stores in town,” he said, looking at his notes. “We’ll send out a description of them
to the reputable dealers,” the officer said. He turned to Leigh. “I wouldn’t bring any more hippies home. Some of them are
harmless, but some of them get into drugs way over their heads. She’s probably on heroin now, or coke. Or maybe she just has
a taste for acid. In any event, she isn’t to be trusted anymore.”

Leigh wanted to rail against him, tell him he didn’t know Mary Beth—how sweet she was, how smart. But the words melted on
her tongue, sour and bitter. She merely nodded.

Kitty walked him to the door and then called to Leigh to follow her to the kitchen. “I think we need a hot cup of tea. Or
maybe we should just have coffee. I won’t sleep anymore.”

Leigh made no answer, just wandered into the kitchen and sat down.

“This isn’t your fault, Leigh. Mary Beth has chosen her path to destruction, and there’s no way you can save her or stop her.”
Kitty filled the yellow-enamel kettle at the sink. “You came and found her. She could have decided to stay here with us and
get back to her life. But she didn’t.”

“I don’t understand.” Leigh ran fingers through her long hair, feeling for sleep tangles. “I just don’t get it.”

“Of course, you don’t. But this isn’t the first generation that’s waded out into deep waters and foundered.”

“What do you mean?” Leigh glanced up.

“Ever hear of the Roaring Twenties?”

Leigh nodded.

“Well, that was my generation. Speakeasies, bathtub gin, and the Charleston.” Kitty set the kettle on the stove and lit the
gas burner. “I spent the whole decade in an alcoholic haze. And then I nearly died on some colored wood alcohol I got at a
club.”

Leigh gawked at Kitty.

“Don’t look so shocked. Your generation isn’t the first to turn its back on conventional mores. We flappers talked a lot about
Freud and inhibitions and wanted to rid ourselves of ours.” Leaning against the counter, still in her robe, Kitty smiled sadly
and shook her head. “I thought I was ‘the thing,’ all right. No one could tell me how to live my life. Not even my parents,
who loved me so much, or my brother, who’d suffered so much in the war. Or even my beautiful best friend, your grandmother.
Kitty McCaslin had all the answers, but unfortunately, she hadn’t even figured out the questions.”