My Beautiful Hippie (24 page)

My heart was beating fast. “What do you mean ‘move on'?” I asked cautiously.

“There are some people I know who have a house in Sacramento who will let me stay with them.”

My vision blurred with my tears. What about me? I wanted to scream at him. What about us? I knew we'd have to part someday, but I was not expecting it to be so soon or so sudden.

“Hey, this isn't good-bye, Joni. I'll still come down to the city to see you, and you can come see me.”

He reached for me, but I crossed my arms and twisted away. I looked up into the tree where his beads hung, far out of my reach. I knew how it would be. Martin would promise to come visit me, stick out his thumb, and end up someplace completely different. Whole weeks and months would go by in Martin time while I sat waiting, waiting, waiting.

“You're wrong, Martin. It is good-bye.” I faced him and stuck out my hand to shake. “So long. It's been nice knowing you.”

“Joni, Joni, don't be that way.” He scooped me up in his arms
and somehow my arms went around him. I sobbed and sobbed and wondered how I could ever let him go.

I looked into those beautiful eyes of my beautiful hippie, and even as angry as I was with him, I wanted one last kiss. It was sad and sweet, long and loving, and then I broke away and ran down Hippie Hill, across Stanyan, and up Frederick Street.

I didn't stop until I reached my very own pink bedroom. I had intended to throw myself on the bed and cry some more, but Mom had set a letter on my desk. It was in a thin, pale blue
par avion
envelope used for overseas mail, but it wasn't from Jimmy. I tore it open. Its author introduced himself as Jimmy's sergeant. He said he knew I was Jimmy's girl; Jimmy had talked about me all the time. The sergeant felt this letter would be a kinder, gentler way of letting me know. The news was hard enough for me to take. It would be harder for Dan.

I found him in the den watching TV. I shut off the set, and when he opened his mouth to protest, he looked at me and didn't speak.

I sat next to him on the sofa. My tears for Martin's leaving and Jimmy's dying were all mixed up and flowing down my face. “I'm sorry, Dan. I have bad news. It's Jimmy Howe. He . . . didn't make it.”

“That can't be right! Where'd you hear that?”

I set the letter on his knee. “At your New Year's Eve party, Jimmy asked me to write him, just as a pen pal, you know, and well . . . this one is from his sergeant.”

Dan looked down at the letter a long moment. “I don't want the fucking thing! Get it off me!” He slapped the envelope, and it fluttered to the carpet.

At first I couldn't believe Martin was really gone. He'll miss me, I thought. He loves me too much to leave me. I moved like a zombie from school to home to piano lessons and master classes to home again, going through the motions of living, waiting for Martin to come back. It amazed me, actually, how much I hurt. Wasn't I an independent girl, leading a rich, full life? How could Martin's leaving matter so much? Love happens. It's hard to understand what all it can do to a person.

At school, Rena had eased into Lisa's place in the in crowd, yukking it up with Candy Lambert. Rena and I were friendly, but the closeness we'd once shared had evaporated. Isn't that the way with friendships? One person is your best friend one year, and then it's someone else the next. But I'd thought Rena and I would be for always, even when we were old ladies. Some days I looked across the school yard expecting to see Suyu in her usual spot, waving her arms, caught up in her imaginary practice. I thought of her far away at MIT and hoped she was happy working with her computers.

One day I opened the Ravel
“Sonatine”
Dr. Harold had given me nearly a year ago. I'd done nothing but picked at it on occasion, never taking it in for a lesson. Now I began to practice it in earnest. Is it possible to live inside a piece of music? I could say I lived in the Ravel. That piece was my consolation,
my shelter, my purpose. Still, there were times when I couldn't concentrate at the piano. I caught myself playing more and more softly so I could hear my thoughts, and sometimes my hands slipped off the keys and I was just sitting there, staring vacantly at the music but seeing Martin's face.

One afternoon, I was startled to find my mother beside me on the piano bench as if we were about to launch into “Heart and Soul.”

“Did you and Martin break up?”

“We were never going steady.”

“Did you stop dating?”

“We never went on dates.”

“I don't see him coming around anymore.”

“He moved away, Mom.”

She patted my shoulder, which made me cry. “You'll have other boyfriends, Joanne.”

“Oh, Mom, it hurts. I never thought anything would hurt this much.”

“I know, honey.” She kissed my hair. “Give it some time.”

She didn't tell me to stop moping, and she didn't say what a lazy good-for-nothing Martin was. I was impressed by how sympathetic she was. Later that afternoon, though, I overheard her on the telephone gloating to Thelma, “The hippie's gone. Good riddance! Joanne is pretty broken up about it, but she'll snap out of it.”

I wished I could snap out of it. My problems seemed so much smaller than everyone else's. Denise and Jerry were still separated. In November Nixon was elected president. Another Dick. It seemed the Vietnam War would rage on. Dan stopped doing push-ups. He stopped going out drinking with his buddies. He stopped saying much at all. Sometimes late at night I heard Mom helping him change his sheets. He had night sweats that soaked his entire bed.

I forced myself to get out more. I roamed the neighborhood, which was much quieter. By then the Free Clinic had closed its doors,
and so had the Matrix and the Trip Without a Ticket. In all, I counted eighteen vacant storefronts on Haight. Love Burgers was still around, and so were Tracy's Donuts and the Psyche Shop. I tried not to superimpose Martin on all our favorite haunts.

One afternoon after school while drinking tea in the Tangerine Kangaroo, I got to playing the Ravel in my mind, as I often did. I came to a part I wasn't sure of, and it annoyed me that I couldn't think what came next. I eyed the piano sitting alone in the corner. I went up to it and started playing Ravel. Over the past year, something had happened inside me, so that a slip of the finger or the sound of a shutting door no longer bothered my performance. I just didn't care anymore that I wasn't perfect, and that changed my playing. Being an accomplished pianist was no longer a destination, but a process. Each time I sat down at the piano I tried to make music, and sometimes I would be satisfied with my efforts, while other times I would be discouraged, but that's just the way it is with anything worth doing.

I reached the section of the Ravel that I was wondering about, and having played what came before it, I had no trouble continuing. When I finished the movement, I was startled to hear applause. I turned around and bowed. Practicing in public, I suppose, was a kind of performing.

One stormy night while I was home alone practicing, I thought I heard a knock on the back door. I paused, listening, and then decided it was only the wind. A few minutes later the doorbell startled me.

I turned on the foyer light, looked through the peephole in the front door, and saw Pete Wattle, soaking wet.

I opened the door to say, “Dan's not here.”

“Can I come in a minute?” Pete asked, wiping his feet on the mat.

I reluctantly opened the door wider to let him pass, irritated that he'd interrupted me. “Dan is working the late shift. I can tell him you stopped by.”

“What's going on with you?”

“Me? I'm just playing the piano.”

“Can I listen awhile?”

“I guess. It's just practicing, though.”

Pete sat on the sofa, and I went back to hammering out the four measures I'd been working on. The sound of his breathing was annoying. I couldn't concentrate with someone else in the room. I wished he'd leave.

“Why do you play the piano so much?” he blurted.

I stopped to glare at him. “Because I hate it.”

“Okay, dumb question.”

“Dan will probably be real late. There's no use hanging around waiting for him.”

“I know.” He looked around the room but didn't rise from the sofa. “Hey, Joanne, Simon and Garfunkel are coming to the Masonic Auditorium. Wanna go?”

“How much?”

“You wouldn't have to pay.”

“Why not?” He didn't answer, color seeping into his face. It took me a few seconds to realize he was asking me out on a date. “Oh.” I didn't know what else to say.

“Forget it.” He got up and let himself out the front door.

I listened to his footsteps and heard the front gate clank before darting to the door, flinging it open, and shouting against the wind. “Yes! I want to go! Thanks, Pete. They're my favorite.”

“I know,” he hollered back.

I was surprised at how nervous I was, waiting for Pete to pick me up. It was, after all, my first official date. I was wearing my denim bell-bottoms and tie-dye T-shirt. Dad took one look at me and said, “No daughter of mine is wearing pants to the Masonic Auditorium. Go change, Joanne.”

I stomped up to my room and changed into a dress and heels. Pete's eyes popped when I answered the door. He was wearing a suit and tie, so I was glad I'd gotten dressed up, too.

At his car, he unlocked the passenger-side door and paused. “Do you want me to open the door for you?”

I shrugged. “Why not?”

“A guy has to be careful these days. Some girls think it's being polite, other girls have a cow.”

After we parked, I got out while Pete ran around the car to the passenger's side. He seemed disappointed to see me standing on the curb waiting for him. “I thought you liked me to open the car door for you.”

“When you unlock it, you might as well open it, but I'm not going to sit around waiting.”

Pete pretended to remove a notepad from his jacket pocket. “Likes to have the door opened for her getting into the car—check. Does not like the door opened getting out of the car—check.”

He made me laugh, and that felt good.

At the concert, the audience was quieter than usual. At times we could even hear the music. While Simon and Garfunkel sang “Sounds of Silence,” Pete took my hand.

Afterward we went for late-night sandwiches at the Tangerine Kangaroo. It was strange to be sitting there all dressed up, with someone other than Martin.

“I know Dan is freaked out about getting drafted,” said Pete. “I feel for the guy. I'm hanging on to my student deferment as long as I can. I don't want to kill anybody.”

Martin had once said those same words to me, and I liked hearing them coming from Pete. He could merely have said he didn't want to die.

When I asked him what he was studying, he said, “Computers.”

“I know somebody who studies computers at MIT.”

“Wow! He must be a genius to get in there.”

“She.”

“Wow,” he said, shaking his head. “Far out.”

On our porch, I thanked Pete for a lovely evening.

“I think you're cool, Joanne,” he said, and then he kissed me soft and quick.

Nothing stirred in me like when Martin kissed me, but I figured that was okay.

Pete kept asking me on dates, and I kept accepting. We didn't have much in common. He took me to car shows that didn't interest me, and I took him to classical music concerts that made him fidget. We both liked going to the movies. In his arms I could heal from the loss of Martin, take a rest, knowing I could never fall in love with him. He was comforting and safe. He never came on hot and heavy. He was a lot of laughs. Sometimes we included Dan in our plans, which seemed to pull him out of his self-pity.

One day I was walking home from school, smiling to myself about something Pete had said. Rena caught up with me and bumped my shoulder. “Hey, you. I've been yelling for a block trying to get your attention. You look happy. Are you in love?”

“No, but I'm in like.” I realized I was doing better, and a lot of it was because of Pete. I confided in Rena about how I felt dating Pete, and it was almost like old times between us.

I dropped her off at Walker Street and hiked on up the hill to my house. I opened the mailbox, and there was the postcard. It had the white dome of the capitol building on it and a big, fat camellia in front of that. It said
WELCOME TO SACRAMENTO
.

Martin's message was brief: “Hey, Joni, I love you! I miss you! Come visit! Next Saturday would be cool. Don't know how much longer I'll be around.” Below were his address, a peace sign, and his signature.

Damn! Damn! Damn you, Martin!

I was almost past him, nearly back to normal, and now this! Hope welled up within me like a poisonous weed. Here was Martin, wanting to see me, and how could I refuse him?