"Quit with the attitude. I need your help. You haven't even showed me what you look like in your dress."
"I told you it's fine. I just don't want to wear it for longer than absolutely necessary."
"You never liked dresses. What a luxury for you. When I was in school I didn't have a choice about dresses. It was either dresses or skirts."
"When you were in school-" I start to say something sarcastic but suddenly my mother's face is gobbed up and preparing to cry. Her hands fly up to the sides of her face as if to wrestle it back into a calm expression, then out comes a sob, so forceful I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.
"Kat, why didn't you tell me?"
"Tell you what, Mom?"
My mother slowly opens her jewelry box, removes the pregnancy test, and sets it in my hand. She's sitting next to me, the substandard mattress of the king-size bed sagging in the middle.
"You're supposed to tell me these things, Kat," she says. The sentence doesn't sound like me getting in trouble. It sounds like my mother needing something from me. "We're a team," she says.
"I didn't want to mess up your wedding."
She checks her makeup to see if it's becoming a disaster. "My wedding," she says. "Hand me a tissue, will you?"
I pull a Kleenex out of a box that is itself contained in a box called a cozy.
"When did you get the abortion?" she asks.
"What?"
My mother stands and pivots in her wedding dress, tears welling at the edges of her eyes. "Don't, don't, don't. I need you to not pretend right now. I need you to tell me the truth or, so help me. I found this test a month ago. I've seen your tampon wrappers in the bathroom trash since then."
"You knew I was pregnant a month ago?"
"I found it when we were moving."
"Why didn't you say something then?" I say, crying now, though it takes me a second to figure out why. "You could have helped me, Mom."
"I didn't want to believe it, and then everything with George happened. We were getting along really well."
"So I was right that you shouldn't have known."
This woman named Veronica who is my mom, on the verge of getting married, grabs my arms and digs her artificial nails into the soft skin. I can't tell if she's trying to hold me or throw me against the wall. "You should have told me. And I should have talked to you about it. We both fucked up, all right? What am I supposed to do? Do we get back in the car and go somewhere else, get a new job, start you at a new school? Do I marry this guy? 1)
"Does he love you?"
"I think he does."
"Then do it, Mom."
"I want you to be my little girl."
I'm wearing faded jeans and a zippered sweatshirt. Socks with holes in them and fingernails painted black with permanent marker. I'm looking at my mother and myself in the closet mirror and it's a perplexing reversal, me in frayed, worn clothes, my mother crying, wrapped in taffeta and lace. She sits back down on the bed and sniffs tears into her throat. She says, "George can't know this. You can never tell him."
"Why?"
"Listen to me, Kat. George has certain beliefs, certain ways of thinking that might not let him understand why you did what you did."
"What would happen if I told him?"
My mother pauses a beat. "That's not going to happen, Kat."
"You don't even seem to care about what happened to me."
She rises from the bed and consults a row of perfume bottles on the dresser. Choosing one with a tall, thin vaporizer she sprays it up into the air, letting the atomized haze of scent settle into her hair. "I do care, Kat," she says, "because I know how hard your decision was. I came close to getting an abortion myself once."
I am still thinking about George. "If I told him what happened, do you think he wouldn't marry you?"
"I think he'd make me choose between him and you. I don't think he'd let you live under this roof."
"And what would you choose?"
"This isn't fair, Katie. My wedding, all the house stuff, why did you choose to pull all this crap on me right now?"
"What would you choose?"
"He's got money. You know how happy I'm going to be when I can just have one part-time job? Do you realize how much you-and-me time that's going to free up? We've been waiting for something like this for a long time. Jesus, Kat, you could go to college."
"You'd choose him."
"I'd do what I always do and choose what is best for both of us."
"You don't want him to know, because you'd be ashamed of me."
"I'm not ashamed of you."
"Then why do I have to hide this thing that happened?"
"I know how hard this is for you."
"How? You know shit about what it's like for me."
"I know," she says, "because I came close to aborting you."
Santa Cruz, 1970.
Veronica climbed naked from the ocean. Scaly clouds kept the air gray and quiet except for the distant calls of sea lions. In the sand about twenty yards from a little peeledpaint green shack was a mattress covered with a floral-print fitted sheet. She couldn't remember how it had gotten out there or whose idea it had been. Whether it had happened last night or the night before. There were smears of sand on it, a footprint. But most conspicuously, dressed in blue jeans and nothing else, was Jerry, asleep on it. Still dripping from her swim, Veronica stood over him. Saltwater slid down her body and found its channels between her breasts, down her belly, collecting in the hair between her legs. She waited quietly for Jerry to wake up, knowing he would sense her and rise from his dream. He turned over on his back. Sunlight briefly split a cloud about a quarter mile off shore, sending a shaft into the water.
"Who are you?" Jerry said.
"I'm the one you shared this mattress with last night."
"Oh yeah."
"You do realize you're sleeping on a beach."
"I realize you're making it hard for me to sleep."
"Come on. Let's go get some breakfast."
Jerry pulled himself up onto his elbows. "I don't know about you, but I was just planning on ordering room service."
Veronica laughed and settled onto the gritty mattress. "I'm serious. Where did you come from?"
"San Diego or thereabouts. It's early."
"I won't embarrass you and make you admit you don't know my name. I'm Veronica."
"I'm Jerry. Nice to meet you."
These two people who'd been balling ten hours before shook hands. Jerry found his sandals and shook out the sand. They pulled the mattress back to the flaky green house and set it sagging against the outside wall. Inside, the others weren't yet awake. They slept in sleeping bags or wrapped in threadbare blankets. In the bedroom, a bed frame outlined three people curled together on the floor below where the mattress should have been. Jerry went to the kitchen, looking for food while Veronica put her clothes back on. Empty bottles crowded the counters. The refrigerator held little other than a copy of Life magazine and a jar of gefilte fish.
"You got any bread?" Jerry asked.
"Like, to make a sandwich?"
"That kind of bread would be good, too."
"I know a good pancake stand in town. They won't hassle us."
"Pancakes," Jerry said. "Okay."
Out behind the house they rediscovered their vehicleshis a Chevy truck, hers a Beetle. Both happened to be painted the same baby blue. The back of Jerry's truck was covered with a green army-surplus tarp that he pulled back to expose a mess of auto parts, beer boxes, clothes, plywood, and stuff salvaged from the beach. From a backpack he yanked a wadded T-shirt with a message on it: I Smoked Dope and All I Got Was Stoned. He found a flannel shirt and put that on, too.
"You like driving around with all that stuff in your truck?" Veronica said.
"You see crapola in there, I see a living. You wouldn't believe what some guys are willing to pay for these parts."
"Parts of what?"
"Expensive cars. I got a knack for finding
things that other folks don't realize are valuable."
"Is that what you're doing in Santa Cruz?"
"To tell you the truth, I have no clue what the hell I'm doing in Santa Cruz."
Veronica got into the truck. This guy's scent filled the cab. Funny how body smells, traded back and forth through sex, became intensified when the other person wears them. Veronica tried unsuccessfully to remember if Jerry had worn a rubber the night before. Jerry was pretty sure he hadn't. He remembered the surf, rolling in high enough to touch the bottom edge of the mattress, thinking how groovy it would be if they were washed to sea, the mattress their raft. But tides recede and people wake up to find themselves tragically sober, hungry, and resolutely not horny. Jerry looked at his watch but even though it told him what time it was, it didn't really mean that much to him.
The pancake stand sold pancakes on paper plates and you could walk around on the beach, eating them. Jerry ordered a short stack and Veronica ordered a cinnamon roll. They sat on a concrete abutment watching the surf. Jerry burned the roof of his mouth with the coffee. Veronica ate her pastry counterclockwise.
"How do you know Jonas and Caroline?" Veronica said.
"I know a Jonas and Caroline?"
"The folks whose pad we partied at last night."
"I don't know them. Some guy at a bar told me about the party and I went along. I only just got here yesterday. You live here?"
"San Fran," Veronica said. "I was visiting a friend."
"Where's the friend?"
"Beats me. She wasn't in town when I arrived. Are you passing through or setting up here?"
"I got a job up north, rebuilding tractors, eventually. My uncle set me up with this one guy, does jobs for all the apple farmers up there. Fixing manure spreaders. Stuff like that." Jerry wanted to slap his forehead. Manure spreaders? A chick like this is going to dig farm machinery? He stared into the swirling cream tornado of his coffee. Man, you roll into town, ask a dude at the first bar you set foot in where to score some grass, end up three sheets to the wind at a house party where they're playing the same damn Electric Flag album all night, pass out, and wake up on a mattress on the beach with a gorgeous blonde standing naked over you. What heaven was this? Even the coffee was good. Probably the best he'd ever had. And now look, the day was unfurling over the beach downright cinematically. The clouds were departing, taking his hangover with them. He had a truck load of Stutz Bearcat parts some lawyer in Eureka was willing to pay five hundred for, which would be more than enough to get up north and settle into his job as a shit spreader repair man. Problem was getting from Santa Cruz to Eureka. Fifteen bucks wasn't going to put a whole lot of gas in the tank, especially not after he spent another fifty cents of it on one of those deliciouslooking cinnamon rolls. Holy shit, Jerry thought, my cock! It was inside this girl last night!
"I was just joking about the manure spreader," he said.
"Sure you were," Veronica said.
"Why do I feel like I know you?" Jerry said.
"I look like a lot of people."
"You look like no one I've ever known."
"You ever watch TV?"
"You're an actress?"
"Not really. Ever see the Pop Hour?"
"Sure. That still on the air?"
"It was until a couple years ago. I was a featured dancer."
"No kidding. I must of seen you a hundred times."
"Probably not. I was only in eighty-seven episodes. Anyway, after that I moved to Frisco. Scene's really gotten to be a drag there, though. They take these tour buses to the Haight for fat tourists to laugh at the hippies. I got out a month ago after a boy got shot in front of my apartment."
"So you're not just visiting Santa Cruz?"
"I call it visiting if you don't have a place of your own."
"Did I already ask if you had any bread?"
"I don't. But I know how to get some." Veronica looked into her coffee and thought, I'm doing this. Here's aguy with four days of facial hair growth, grime under his fingernails, and a car full of probably stolen auto parts. Here's aguy who I want to leap into the arms of. The stupidity of the idea was precisely what made it so appealing. I will finally escape California, Veronica thought. A farm. This guy was heading to a farm. Maybe there would be orchards, and barns, and goats.
Back at the green beach house the residents had begun to stir. Some cat was preparing water for oolong tea over the barbecue pit while the spitting image of Mama Cass played an ocarina. Everyone's eyes were like doors that had gotten kicked open by cops the night before. Veronica showed Jerry to her car and opened the trunk in the front. Inside were clothes, mostly, some paperbacks, and a tire iron. She dug around a while, churning floral-print fabrics.
"It's not here," she said. "I had a brick of dope."
"What do you mean a brick?"
"A kilo. I was selling it bit by bit to pay for stuff. Goddamn it!"
"You sure we didn't smoke it last night?"
"We'd all be dead of smoke inhalation if we did. I'm sure it was here. I'm positive." Veronica kicked her bumper and tromped into the house with Jerry close behind. "Anyone seen Jonas? Where the hell's Jonas?"
A chick named Mimi pointed in the direction of the beach. Jonas was catching some surf, she said. Soon Veronica was standing on the shore, yelling Jonas's name at the distant figures riding the waves. After a while Jonas wiped out and trudged with his board up the sand.
"You stole my brick," Veronica said.
"Wha?" Jonas's hair dripped in front of his face. He flung it back and squinched up his eyes. Either the saltwater was getting to him or he was seriously baked. "I don't know what you're talking about, sister."
"Her dope, asshole," Jerry said. "Her kilo of weed."
"I didn't do nothing with your brick of weed," he said, scratching his balls, moving toward the house.
"Look, man, that dope is what she's been living off of. Be a good brother and give it back," said Jerry.
"I said I didn't fuckin' take your weed!" Jonas shouted over his shoulder, ducking through the sliding door, wiping aside the vertical blinds. Veronica started to follow. Jerry grabbed her elbow.
"No, you go get in my truck. I'll take care of this."
"It's my grass, I'll deal with it," Veronica said.
Jerry pressed the keys to his truck into her hand. "I ain't joking, woman. Wait in the truck."
Veronica gave in, went around back past the mattress, which already had a new sleeper, and climbed into the Chevy to sulk. She tried the glove compartment but found it locked. Behind the seat were a few issues of Playboy. She started reading an interview with jean Paul Sartre. About halfway through, Jerry startled her, tapping at the window.
"Get your shit," he said. "We gotta move." Jerry's lip was fat. Speckles of blood dotted his T-shirt.
"What did you do to him?"
"I got your dope back," Jerry said, thrusting a paper bag at her. "I'm serious. Get your fucking stuff now."
When she didn't move, Jerry started grabbing arm loads of Veronica's belongings from her car and dumping them in the back of his truck.
"What the hell? Where are we going?"
A kid with no shirt, thick glasses, and a skinny headband burst from the house and started yelling. "You think you can just get away with shit like that, man? Well you're fucked. You know that? This is a loving household, man. We don't grok that kind of antisocial behavior here."
By now Jerry had emptied the Beetle of Veronica's worldly and weirdly goods and climbed into the driver's seat. Others started trickling out of the house, shuffling nonconfrontationally in the gravel. Jerry gunned the engine. "Flower child rule number one," he yelled, "don't bogart the fuckin' dope." They sped away, churning up dust. Veronica watched the kid with glasses yelling with both hands configured in middle fingers.
"We're heading north. You and me," Jerry said. "How's that sound?"
"What about my car?" Veronica said.
"Your car was a piece of shit. I'll steal you a
new one."
After selling the auto parts to the gay lawyer in Eureka, for a lot less than originally quoted, Jerry and Veronica entered that part of California that is less about the ocean than it is about the ancient trees. Veronica rode with her elbow on the window frame, hand keeping the wind from whipping her eyes with strands of her long hair. Jerry's pheromones filled the truck, shuffling Veronica's thoughts: an animal asking a hunter for forgiveness, a mountain to be climbed, some waitress's phone number written inside a matchbook cover, swirling galaxies. They pulled off the road, climbed through the trees for a few yards, and made love on the cool forest floor. Later, a can of Schlitz beer rolled around on the passenger-side floor. They picked up a trio of Indian teenagers hitchhiking north and got them high for free. Jerry checked the rearview whenever there was a chance the fuzz might be on their tail, which seemed to be every two minutes. Then Oregon happened. Up the coast, through little towns, to their left Asia, to their right the heartland. Jerry pitched his tent on a bluff overlooking the surf.
"Let's stop here for good," Veronica said, "let's live here."
But Jerry kissed her and said "No babe, we got good things waiting for us up in Warshington."
The morning Veronica decided she was in love with this guy it rained. They walked naked on the beach anyway, throwing a piece of worm-eaten driftwood for a stray dog, standing in the surf. These days felt wrongly ordered, starting with a conception, then their introduction on the beach, then a honeymoon up the coast. Veronica sat in a state park restroom stall crying, gazing at what was definitely not a period in the panties. She considered roaming the campground asking randomly selected vacationers, Excuse me, have you seen my period? I seem to have lost it. What's it look like? Uh, kinda heavy, bloody? I was supposed to have it by now? Back in the tent Jerry, oblivious, rolled himself another spliff and dug a book on what it meant to be a Capricorn.
I don't even know this guy, Veronica thought. Then she thought, This is how it's supposed to happen, though. This is the part where I decide to get married.
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