After listening to the music—a folk mass with a girl who sang “The Prayer of St. Francis,” and lighting her candle, Sheila slipped out of the sanctuary, never speaking to a soul. And she did feel better. The music and the candles and communion gave her momentary peace.
At the Ramble in Diner she ate bacon and eggs and a homemade cinnamon roll before heading back to Lucas’s house. Who knows what horrible things they’ll be eating! She smiled for the first time since arriving in San Francisco.
Once back inside the faded orange house, ancient wood squeaked with each footfall like a nest of baby mice as she slipped up deeply-gouged steps to the second floor. On the landing, she noticed a set of stairs, thick with dust, ascending to a third floor.
Sheila entered the bedroom, and moments later Mary Beth sat up on the mattress. “I thought you’d never get back,” she whined.
Again, Sheila pictured Jane’s spotless house. How can she stand the filth and the smells?
Mary Beth rubbed her eyes, resembling a chubby little lost and needy kid. Apparently she’d been sleeping the whole time Sheila was gone.
“Are you going to stay?”
“For a while, if I can find somewhere in this house where I don’t feel like … an intruder.”
“You can sleep here. I’m sure Peace and Harmony won’t be back anytime soon. If ever.”
“What’s up there?” Sheila pointed to the ceiling.
“A big attic.”
“Is there a bathroom?”
“A sink and a toilet.” Mary Beth looked at Sheila sideways. “They work.”
“Maybe I could stay in that part of the house. Out of the way.”
Mary Beth hoisted her bulk up to a standing position. “Let’s go look at it.”
Built under the eaves, the room was full of dust clumps that flitted across the floor like small tumbleweeds as they walked around. Other than that, it seemed clean enough, although mouse droppings filled the corners.
At least I won’t be lonesome.
Years of smells from down below permeated the walls—garlic, onion, marijuana which she now could identify—but she’d be able to live with this. She’d get some scented candles. A door opened onto a narrow porch and a rickety-looking stairway wended its way down the house’s back wall. She wiggled a foot on the first step. In spite of its appearance, the stairway seemed sturdy enough. Going up and down here would give her a way in and out so she could avoid the others. “If it’s okay with Lucas, I’ll stay here for a few weeks.”
“Only a few weeks?”
“I want to go back to Long Beach, and I want you to come with me.”
“I told you, I don’t want to go back. Not for a long time. I like it here, Sheila.”
“I have to pay Lucas.”
“He wouldn’t let you.”
That’s how he maintains control. “I’ll pay you ten dollars a week. You can give it to him.” Sheila took a bill from her pocket and handed it to Mary Beth.
After turning it in her hand, as if checking to see if it was real, Mary Beth lifted her shirt and slipped the bill into the elastic band of her baggy pink underpants. “I can come up here and visit when things get boring downstairs.”
That means she’ll be here all the time. “Sure, whenever you want. Tomorrow I start looking for a temporary job. I have to move my suitcases up here, and I need some supplies.”
“I’ll help.”
As she entered the small grocery store, that was open even though it was Sunday, Sheila thought of her friends in Long Beach—Perry and Arlette—and how they always said, “Miss Minnesota—how’s everything with you?”
Not one person said a word to Sheila or Mary Beth in this store. Even the long-haired man at the counter had no greeting. It seemed as if the accepted way to behave in San Francisco, at least this part of San Francisco, was with complete disinterest—like people couldn’t be bothered with anything as mundane as good manners.
The first things Sheila bought, along with cleaning products, were some easy food items—peanut butter and jelly, cheese and bread, apples. A furniture store was going out of business, and she found a single mattress that had been part of a bunk bed set for next to nothing. Plain white sheets weren’t too expensive, and she bought a warm blanket at another store in the midst of a close-out sale.
“Why are all these stores closing?” Sheila said.
Mary Beth shrugged. “The area is changing. There are some new stores.” She pointed at shops with wild, colorful displays in the windows.
“What are they selling?”
“They’re head shops.”
“Head shops?”
“They sell bongs and stuff like that.”
Sheila didn’t ask for the definition of a bong. In one of these shops she found an appealing poster picturing Joan Baez and Mary Travers, with the words “Lonesome Valley” in block letters at the bottom. In a thrift shop that was also closing she found a yellow crocheted afghan folded up in a plastic bag. When she opened it the smell of talcum powder wafted out. Sheila imagined a sweet old grandmother making it. Her own grandmother had crocheted and displayed handiwork all over the house in Chambers. A rainbow-colored afghan made of six-inch squares sewn together had draped over the back of her sofa. Lacy doilies protected the dining room table. White snowflakes decorated her Christmas tree each year. Sheila didn’t know if Grandma still crocheted in the nursing home.
Sheila and Mary Beth went to get the mattress after they put all her other bags in the attic room. Together, they panted and shifted and fumbled with it up the hill to the faded orange house, and stopped several times on the landings, resting, before they managed to force it through the door and let it drop to the floor. They both flopped down on it and succumbed to giggles. For a minute, it almost felt like old times at Jane’s house.
On the first few subsequent mornings, Sheila woke up on this mattress, wrapped in the blanket and the thrift shop afghan, tears running down her cheeks, wishing for Jim’s arms around her, wishing for Grandma, wishing for someone to talk to, remembering all the long-ago conversations with the doll, and saying a prayer for help.
She’d brush away her tears, arise, clean up at the tiny sink, and after a breakfast of cold cereal and tea (she’d found a hotplate) go out looking for a job.
The third day, after stopping at several of the head shops where the people barely spoke to her, but scanned her knee-length gray skirt and pink blouse with barely concealed scorn, she stumbled upon a music store down a side street. It had a big window full of guitars. She walked in and waited, wondering if anyone would come to help her. No one else was in the store. After several minutes, an older man, with long white hair and a beard to match, came from a back room. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Matthew. I own this place. We don’t get many like you coming in.”
Doesn’t seem like many come in at all. “I’m looking for a job. I’ll do any odd tasks you might have.”
“Do you play an instrument?”
“The guitar. I can accompany myself.” It was the only thing she felt really bad about leaving at Jane’s. “I don’t have one.”
“Sing me something.” Matthew handed her a guitar from behind the counter.
In a shaky voice, Sheila started to sing, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” After thirty seconds or so, she got lost in the music and her voice strengthened.
“You sing beautifully,” Matthew said, when she finished. “An ethereal quality.” He smiled at her in a grandfatherly way. “Sure, I can use someone like you around here. Maybe it’ll draw in some of the old crowd. What do you think about the goings-on?”
“I just came to San Francisco a few days ago. My friend wanted me to move up for a while. She didn’t tell me what it’s like.”
“I’m against the war. Been to some marches myself. The other stuff I can do without.”
&nb
sp; It was decided that Sheila would start the following Monday and that she could work five days a week. Her pay of $25/week would take care of the attic room rent and the small amount of food she’d need. If someone wanted a guitar lesson she could collect for that. Sheila had found that everyone in the house, except for Mary Beth, left her alone. She had her Long Beach savings of a couple hundred dollars if an emergency exit became necessary.
Most nights by herself, tears continued to flow. Dreams full of yearning images kept repeating. One was of her and Jim sneaking away to camp out in his tent after Sheila had told her father that she was going to a slumber party, and asked Patty to lie for her, should he call. A spruce-scented candle she’d bought reminded her of the lake’s smell and pine needles. In her dream she was filled with a wish to stay at the isolated lake forever. This was how she originally felt. Jim had told her, “Any time you want, we can get married.”
She started to make some casual friends who came in the store, and Sheila enjoyed seeing Matthew each day. After a few weeks, she wasn’t quite so lonely during the day. She got involved with what they were all thinking about—Vietnam War protests.
Even so, the dreams persisted.
The Ramble in Diner where she ate her first breakfast had a pay phone, and there she called her father every week. The conversations were all alike.
“I knew this would happen. I could have put money on it.” He referred to the split-up with Jim. “Why the hell are you in San Francisco?”
Sheila kept telling him about coming to help her friend Mary Beth.
“You should be here helping your mother. Damn it, Sheila, I don’t understand what you’re thinking.”
“I have to be on my own. I called to see how Tommy is doing, not to go over all this. I’ve been worried about him.”
One time he said, “Tommy doesn’t see Rita anymore. For the best. A clean break.”
When she questioned Tommy about it, on one of the occasions when he was around and not running with his friends, he was vague. “Had to do it,” he said. Sheila wondered if he merely had done what Carl told him to do.
She seldom spoke to her mother, who was usually unavailable. When they did talk, her remarks were as vague as Tommy’s. “When are you coming home?” was about all she said.
Sheila would cut these conversations short. Nothing ever changed. They made her feel miserable, but she felt the necessity to at least check on Tommy.
After this phone call, Sheila would make one to Jane, who answered after one or two rings.
“I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” she’d say. “Anything new?”
“Not really,” Sheila would answer. “Mary Beth isn’t showing any inclination toward coming back.”
“This breaks my heart.” And, one time she said, “Would it help if I came up there?”
“Mary Beth has to decide on her own.” Jane shouldn’t see how we’re living!
“You’re right, of course.”
In October, the United States was caught off guard when the Soviet Union landed an instrument capsule on the surface of Venus. It immediately started sending back information about the planet’s surface and atmosphere. The space race was alive and well, and bolstered by a sense of competition.
Meanwhile, people continued to demonstrate against the war. Right around the same time as the Venus landing, fifty thousand peace marchers converged on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., demanding an end to the fighting.
CHAPTER 18
A Surprise Visitor
SHEILA SAT ON A HARD-BACKED, WOODEN CHAIR IN HER CORNER OF THE MUSIC STORE, strumming her guitar, getting ready to play “I’ll Never Find Another You.” One of her students had asked to learn it. He’d been coming in the store since she started.
When John would arrive, Matthew always whispered, “Your boyfriend’s back,” and Sheila always merely shook her head. It had been a year, but she still thought, I’m waiting for Jim.
Very quiet was the only way to describe John, even more quiet than Jim. Maybe about twenty-five. He kept his head ducked, never looked her straight in the eyes. But he had a mellow tenor voice, and she could tell by his shaking hands when she showed him a chord that he was interested in more than the music. He was one of her ten weekly students. And occasionally, a walk-in would request a short lesson.
“Working hard?” Matthew now came up behind her and placed a hand on Sheila’s shoulder.
“No. Just practicing. John’ll be here in a few minutes.”
They smiled at each other—soft, closed-lip, conspiratorial smiles. A gentle companionship had formed between the two.
Sheila sometimes thought, He must have had someone in the past who he waited for because Matthew seemed to understand exactly what Sheila was going through.
“Hard to believe you’re still here after so many months,” he went on.
“Where else would I want to be?”
“Glad of that. A lot more people milling around the place since you started. But I thought you’d go back to Long Beach. Start school down there.”
“I’ll do that eventually. This is an education in itself.” Every day she was learning more about music. Some of her students challenged Sheila with their requests. This song by the Seekers had easy chords. It shouldn’t take John much time to master it. The song made her sad. She hadn’t heard a word from Jim. Sheila didn’t tell Matthew that she wouldn’t go back to Long Beach until this happened, or until Mary Beth finally relented and wanted to return.
“They dig your singing.” Mary Beth curled like a plump tabby on Sheila’s mattress.
She had returned from the music store a short while before. Although seldom going downstairs when the other members of the household gathered together, Sheila had tried a visit recently, hoping to interest them in an upcoming peace march. If anything will do this it’s the music. “Those songs like ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ are some of my favorites,” she told Mary Beth.
“You have such a good voice. They want to hear more of it. Except maybe some different kind of songs. Lucas likes country, being from Texas and all. Can you do ‘I’ll Come Runnin’?”
“I could try.” What a dumb song.
Mary Beth’s jowls drooped lower. “I’m going to miss your singing when you leave.”
“We won’t worry about that.” Every so often Sheila brought up the prospect of returning to Long Beach, hoping that this would spur Mary Beth into action. It never did.
Even the strange other inhabitants of the house seemed to like her music, at least a bit. People had responded to Sheila’s sweet soprano since second grade in the youth choir at St. Cecilia’s. Her long red curls, pretty face, and angelic voice helped her through all the neighborhood changes. No matter where they lived in the city of Minneapolis, her mother took the kids back to St. Cecilia’s, despite the priest telling her they should go to their local parish. This was her mother’s only act of rebellion.
“Lucas asked me to do something by Janis—like ‘Down On Me,’” Sheila said. “I told him it’d be better to listen to a record.” Such a jerk! “What are they about, Mary … Willow? All they do is hang around, smoking pot, and living off Lucas’ trust fund. Do they know that guys are dying every day in this senseless war?” She had heard about two friends of Jim’s from high school who had been killed at Khe San. Then there was the Pueblo. From North Korea! How naive she’d been to think that any part of the military could be safe.
“We don’t talk about stuff like that.”
“It’s hard to watch them … with Lucas acting like some sort of patriarch.”
The serious people Matthew welcomed into the music store were passionate about the protests. They dressed like other young people in the district, they smoked some marijuana, maybe did acid, had some casual sex, but mostly concentrated on the peace movement. This, along with her music, became her only passions. She missed that
feeling of being loved, but her sense of purpose got Sheila through the rough, lonely nights.
She sat down on her mattress next to Mary Beth and stroked multicolored beads around her neck, almost like they were a rosary. “When I go back, you can go with me.”
“What about Lucas?”
“Does he mean that much to you?”
“Well, yeah, and …”
“What?”
“No one ever called me beautiful. Not since Daddy said I was his beautiful fairy princess. Lucas says that my sway when I walk is lovely, like a willow tree. All your life, people have said you’re pretty. You don’t know how this feels.” She gestured from her sagging breasts down to her bulging thighs.
“You’re a smart, loving person, with a lot to give to people. I can’t tell you what to do. I do hope you’ll go with me when I leave.”
Sheila stood and put some folded, clean underwear in a duffel bag. The three red suitcases had been hocked and her old work clothes put in a yard sale. “We’ll talk about this another time.”
“I want you to stay here with me forever, Sheila.”
“Forever? Are you going to be here forever?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Lucas loves me … I love him.”
“Are you going to get married?”
“How middle class is that?”
Sheila cringed at the words she knew Lucas had said to Mary Beth.
On Saturday, July 27, 1968, Sheila stood preparing a plate of rice and beans in the empty communal kitchen to bring up to her room. With no refrigerator, she had to visit downstairs at least a couple of times each day to get her food, always hoping no one else was there. She heard a knock on the front door, and waited a minute to see if someone would answer it. When no one did, she rushed down the hall to get it herself. She opened the door and there stood Jim on the porch, looking big and handsome as ever.
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