The Love Children (23 page)

“I thought I'd make your mother a vegetable soup tonight,” I said, rising to help Dolores. “Do you think she'd like that?”

“Maybe. She's not crazy about vegetables,” Sandy said. “Who knows? She's not eating much, as you know.”

“Of course not. She's mad as hell,” Dolores said. “I couldn't eat at all when I was so mad.”

I turned to her in surprise. Given the mournful frailty of Sandy's mother these days,
mad
seemed a strange word to apply to her.

“Why do you say that?” Sandy sounded annoyed.

“Because I know she is. Remember when I used to be so weepy and helpless? I was really furious. At my father, at my mother. But I didn't think I could do anything about the situation. So I just cried. And when I ate, it was sweets, things with no nourishment, because they made me feel better.”

“And you think my mother . . . is angry . . . at whom?” Sandy's voice was cold as ice. She sounded very like her father.

“At him. For killing himself. Aren't you? I mean, how could he do that to you? Terrible. And he didn't even say good-bye.”

Sandy stared at Dolores. She put out her cigarette and started another. “So you can't go with us, Dolores,” she said, coolly resuming the earlier conversation.

“No, I can't, Sandy, much as I'd like to.” Dolores didn't seem to realize she'd been in any way tactless. “But I think it's a great idea. Bishop will be wild to see you.”

I opened some cans of chicken broth and poured them into a pot. When the broth was boiling, I added the two chicken breasts Dolores had bought for dinner for Sandy and her mother. I lowered the heat so they could simmer while I peeled carrots, onions,
green beans, and little white turnips. After half an hour, I took the breasts out and cut the meat off, then put the bones back in the broth. I tossed in a couple of handfuls of barley. I was making this up as I went.

I had asked Dolores to get asparagus, and now I washed and peeled and chopped it. I laid the vegetables on a platter together. They looked beautiful, and that was half my pleasure in cooking. Just looking at them made me happy. I was always happy when I cooked. Dolores and Sandy went on talking, but I had retreated when things had taken an unpleasant turn. I thought Dolores was right about Sandy's mother, but I knew Sandy did not like hearing that. I also knew that Sandy was angry at her mother, as if she were to blame for the suicide. I knew Sandy couldn't help what her mind was doing. When you're so horribly hurt, you cast around crazily looking for somebody to blame. I did that myself. I just hoped it would pass, for the sake of her relation with her mother, and for her mother's sake. Now Sandy was angry with Dolores. She was probably actually angry with her father, like Dolores said. But I didn't listen and barely heard them.

I removed the chicken bones from the broth and tossed the vegetables in. I opened a box of frozen peas and a can of cannelloni beans, which I drained. I would put these things in at the very end, along with the cooked chicken. I tasted the soup and added salt and pepper and a little thyme, tarragon, and basil. It was good, not great. I was disappointed. But maybe Sandy's mother would eat it.

When Mrs. Lipkin came down for dinner, I had the table set, the soup in a tureen, and crispy French bread hot from the oven in a basket. She ate a whole bowl of soup and some bread. And a black-and-white cookie afterward. I was deeply pleased. I went home happy.

I steeled myself on the drive home. I had been surprised by Mom's reaction to my coming home before Christmas, but I was sure she wanted me to go back to school, not to Andrews, but to some college or other. Maybe Moseley. She would want me to make up my finals at Andrews and finish the year someplace else. She would be horrified at my dropping out entirely.

But I had to go with Sandy. I couldn't leave her alone right now. Mom couldn't see what I could see, how close Sandy was to the edge—I didn't even want to think about it.

I tried to launch into the discussion tactfully, but Mom surprised me. She didn't argue. She must have sensed something. “Sweetheart, I admire your loyalty to your friend. And maybe this is the time for a break.” She didn't even argue.

School seemed terribly unimportant right then, just something you invented to keep yourself busy. Taking care of Sandy seemed urgent. I had seen how upset she had become at Dolores, and I felt it was important to keep her from tilting over into rage. I was impressed by Dolores; she had learned a lot during her ordeal. But I wished she'd learned some diplomacy.

We planned to leave at the end of the week and Mrs. Lipkin had asked me to cook a special dinner for Sandy's (and my) last night at home. Naomi was speechless—with anger, I suppose—that Sandy was not only abandoning her but also leaving her with the responsibility for their mother; Mrs. Lipkin was still on tranquilizers and barely aware of what was happening around her. I didn't see how Sandy could leave, but I also didn't see how she could stay. The impossibility added to the urgency. I sensed she was running for her life.

On Wednesday night, I roasted a leg of lamb, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, and everybody ate heartily. Even Mrs. Lipkin ate something. There was such a gentleness and grace about her. I felt sorry for her, but after a while, you expect a person to bounce back and start functioning, and if they don't, you
begin to blame them. I'm not saying I was right, but that's what I felt. I thought, her daughters need her and it's her responsibility because she's the mommy. Obviously, I didn't think mommies had the right to break down, to fall apart, to fail their children. Daddies either, for that matter.

The next day, I packed my duffel and drove over to Sandy's, who had packed one too, and once more we set out to find a Connolly at an unknown address.

So there we were
, on the road together in early January 1973, homing in on Bishop. I took the Mass Pike to Becket, a long, long ride through empty hills and sky. It was beautiful out there. When you grow up in an urban area, you don't realize how much open space there is in this country. Once we got off the Mass Pike, we had to go by feel. We went too far and stumbled into Monterey, a lovely town with a general store and a post office. We turned north again toward Becket. Snow was piled high at the roadside and on tree limbs and bushes. We reached a little town, Tyringham, and had lunch there, in a place my mother would have chosen, a little, locally-owned storefront restaurant called Ginger and Pepper. Ginger did the cooking, excellently, as it turned out. We had a delicious cream of asparagus soup and omelets with cheese and spinach. I told Ginger how much I liked her cooking and asked about Pepper. This endeared me to her and an hour and a half later, we were still there, Ginger leaning on her broom, telling us about her perfectly organized life, her four kids, her husband, and—the main focus of conversation—her worthless sister Pepper. She'd brought Pepper into the business to please her mother, but Pepper had contributed little and now did nothing at all, despite her name on the window.

I wanted to ask Ginger about the commune, but after listening
to her commentary, I had doubts about how she'd receive such a question. Better Sandy should ask: she was dignified and ladylike, and Ginger would treat her gingerly, I thought, smirking at my own pun. I tried to signal Sandy to risk the question, but she wouldn't. So eventually I thought of a maneuver.

“You know, we're up here searching for a friend. A high school friend. There was a death in his family and he's out of touch with them, and we knew he'd want to know, so we're looking for him. He's somewhere in this area, on a commune. Do you know of one around here?”

Her face changed. “Commune? Bunch of hippies?” She examined us more carefully.

“Yes. That's what we heard. We don't know where it is. But we thought it was really important that he know,” Sandy said with a mournful look.

“Oh, yeah.” She thought it over. Our long hair and jeans made us questionable, but we were clean, well spoken, and polite. We had praised her cooking and sympathized about her sister. She decided in our favor.

“Well, there is one out toward Becket. You go down this road as far as the body shop, then turn right. Go about two miles until you come to a gas station. There's a little dirt road leading off to the left. Take it as far as a farm with chicken coops; you can't miss it. Then make a left and go, oh, I don't know, a few miles, until you see a fork in the road. There's a big oak tree in a triangle of grass, and you take the right fork. Just keep going until you see a red barn. Turn down the next driveway; that's them.

“They come into town sometimes, bringing eggs to the grocery store, trading them for laundry soap and whatnot. I don't deal with them. They live in sin. You girls don't stay there, just tell your friend what he has to know and get out, you hear? Smoking dope and living in sin, no life for decent girls.”

Sandy and I gave each other frightened looks, which seemed to satisfy her, and paid the bill and left.

“I guess we won't be able to have lunch there anymore,” Sandy said as we left. “Too bad—that soup was delicious.”

Ignorant as we were about life on a commune, we had no idea that lunch in a restaurant would quickly become an unattainable luxury for us.

It took us longer than it should have, since we got lost and had to retrace our route and get directions from someone else, then got lost again, and might never have found the commune if we hadn't come across a UPS delivery man. Sandy ran up to him as he was getting back in his truck and, near tears, begged him for directions. He accommodatingly told us to follow him, and he drove us right to the commune. Around five in the afternoon, waving good-bye to him, we pulled into a long, muddy driveway that ran up to a ramshackle house with gray shingles, many turrets, and what had once been white trim. There was a red barn farther down the drive and some horses in a field.

We got out of the car and walked up the creaky wooden steps of the house. A storm door led to a glassed-in porch with some shabby furniture covered in old blankets. We opened the door and walked onto the porch; there didn't seem to be a doorbell. We knocked on the house door. Nothing happened. After a while, we tried the doorknob. The door was unlocked. We opened it, stepped over the threshold, and called, “Bishop? Anyone? Hello?”

Rock music—I recognized the Dead—was blaring. We walked into the small living room, which had a couch and a few chairs and a small stereo set on a table. We walked through the living room into a big kitchen, where two women stood at the stove, one stirring a pot, the other peeling apples. They glanced over at us. The kitchen was toasty warm, heated by a big wood stove in the middle of the room.

“Hi,” we said uncertainly. “Sorry for the intrusion, but we knocked . . .”

“Oh, yeah. That's okay,” one woman said. “When the radio's on, we don't hear anything.” She was about my age, nineteen or twenty, and she was wearing a kerchief on her head. It made her look old-fashioned. Like a servant.

“We're looking for Bishop Connolly. Is this where he lives?”

“Yes. You're friends of Bishop's?”

“Yes. From Cambridge.”

They both smiled at us. “Are you Jess and Sandy, by any chance?”

“Yes!”

“Does Bish know? He'll be over the moon! He talks about you two all the time. Take off your coats. This is the only room in the house that's warm.” She laughed. “I'm Rebecca, and this is Bernice.”

We made ourselves comfortable. The kitchen was big, with an old round wooden table in the center and a variety of chairs set around it. Old rockers and shabby armchairs were placed around the room; a breakfront stood against one wall, holding assorted dishes, many of them chipped or cracked. I guessed that this was the room they mostly lived in.

Rebecca was small and thin, with a delicate face, deep-set eyes, and dark, very curly hair. Bernice was taller and blonde, with a round face and small blue eyes.

They made coffee for us in a big aluminum drip pot, older than any coffeepot I had ever seen, and they chatted easily, working the whole time. They were preparing dinner—cabbage soup, millet and red beans with onions and chopped greens. Not too much work, except the millet, but they were also making a bunch of pies. I offered to help and ended up chopping apples and squash for the pies, which they were making with Crisco. My mother would have been outraged.

They told us about the other people in the commune. The oldest member, a founder, and someone we knew about, was Brad d'Alessio, whom Bishop had met in Nevada at the dude ranch. He was a dropout from UCLA and a friend of Bernice's. He had started the commune with Charlotte Kislik and Jerry Matthews, the three of them old UCLA friends. They had pooled their cash and had bought the old house for practically nothing, because it had no electricity or municipal water supply.

It was in terrible repair: in the first year they had to put a new roof on it. They were handy, and they got jobs in town and little by little made it livable. They installed a generator and began to plant the land, living in harmony until Charlotte and Jerry left to join some more radical friends who were impatient to change the country. They were now in hiding after a bomb they'd planted exploded at Enterprise University in Wisconsin, killing a night watchman. Bernice hinted that Brad knew where they were, and Rebecca told us, in whispered horror, that the FBI had been around, questioning him. But he claimed to know nothing.

Brad was a leftist, but against violence. He'd avoided the draft thus far and intended, if he was called up, to claim that he was a pacifist. Bernice insisted that he had never endorsed what Charlotte and Jerry had done. Not that we thought it was so terrible—except that they were careless about the watchman. After Charlotte and Jerry had left, Brad stayed on in the house alone, but he couldn't manage and was about to give up, when Bernice, Rebecca, and then Bishop arrived. I deduced from what Bernice said that Brad received them with despairing gratitude. He already had some horses—he knew a lot about horses—and he and Bishop developed a horse-training school and gave riding lessons. That kept them afloat for a while.