Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  She was stronger than Naomi. Maybe she always had been. She would go to the reunion, and she would tell Naomi not ever to set foot in Montpelier. She had to. They had a secret to protect, and the only way to do it was to turn away from each other, although sometimes, God, it seemed she was the only one of the three of them who understood that.

  Chapter Eleven

  SAN FRANCISCO

  1968

  The San Francisco house Carole had come to after leaving New York was a great dowager of a place at the edge of Haight-Ashbury. It had a sagging roofline and a weedy, overgrown yard. It wasn’t one of the good communes—one of the political or famous communes they wrote up in the Examiner or Time. It was just a big old house that was falling apart. People came and went. You never knew who would be there from one day to the next.

  When Carole arrived, she came through the open front door and saw Rachel sitting cross-legged on the floor in a circle of seven or eight lackluster people. Rachel’s hair covered her shoulders almost to the elbows like a great dark shawl, and she looked up and stared at Carole for several seconds over the tops of her little wire-rimmed glasses, then jumped to her feet and shouted and danced like they were long-lost sisters. “Of course there’s room,” Rachel had screamed. Hadn’t she said so in all those letters? Later, in the kitchen eating spaghetti, Carole brought out the packet of letters she’d taken from the drawer in her parents’ apartment, all opened by now. “But there were more,” Rachel had said.

  In a long, breathless monologue, Rachel explained how the nuns had made her pack everything in the middle of the night when her water broke. They’d taken her by taxi to a hospital outside the city, where she’d had the baby. The couple from New Jersey came to the hospital for the birth and expected to take Pepper away with them, but Rachel refused to sign the papers, even though she was tripping on the anesthesia. The nuns had been furious. They wouldn’t bring the baby to her until he was screaming with hunger. “Next baby I home-deliver,” she said.

  She’d stayed with that girl she’d met at the home who’d been taken in by her aunt and uncle in Rochester. She lived with them for two years. The uncle was cool, she said. He helped with the babies, took care of them while Rachel worked at a temp agency and her friend waitressed. But it was so boring. She wanted more action. In the spring of 1967 she got a ride with some university students she met at a gas station. They were heading west. One of them was Morgan. She pointed to a very tall, spindly-legged, black-haired man standing against the counter, who smiled broadly, just like Rachel, and gave Carole the peace sign in greeting. He was from Hardwick, Rachel explained, a little town in Vermont near the Canadian border, and someday they were going to go back there and build a geodesic dome in the woods. They’d plant a garden and have six kids. “Morgan is brilliant,” Rachel said. “Everything he touches is a work of art, and I can’t wait to have children with him. They’ll be spectacular children,” she said.

  Carole stole a look at Pepper, who didn’t seem to have heard.

  “And what about you?” Rachel said. In a million years she hadn’t thought Carole would come. She’d never written back, for one thing.

  “My mother died,” Carole said, which was all she needed to say to Rachel to make her face collapse in sympathy. Rachel brought her to a room on the second floor with a sliver view of the city if you stood way to one side of the window and a single mattress on the floor. Carole sat there on that first day, her suitcase beside her, and thought, What now? She’d had her hopes pinned on this all the way across the country and now here she was.

  Although Carole didn’t know it at the time, she had arrived in Haight-Ashbury just months after its heyday, on the cusp of its steep and rapid decline. Hard drugs and crime were beginning to roll through the district, filling the vacuum left by the flower children who were already vacating for Sebastopol and Santa Cruz and Oregon. On some days Haight Street was just a sea of chrome, hundreds of motorcycles glistening in the sun and Hell’s Angels taking over the sidewalks and bullying passersby. On other days it was a wasteland.

  Her memories of the year in San Francisco all held a nightmare edge. Her family was gone. Her mother was dead, and her father must have hated her. On top of that, the weather was always gloomy, and nobody ever bought lightbulbs. They were too much of a luxury, so instead of getting new bulbs, they moved the ones they had from lamp to lamp until only a few good ones were left, and all of them in the bedrooms. The common areas were always dark, and people got used to feeling their way around the place.

  “So if you’re not doing drugs and you’re not into sex, what in hell are you doing here anyway?” a fifteen-year-old girl named Jaya asked Carole once. Jaya was typical of the kids who passed through the house—lost waifs who were very sure of themselves in matters of sex and drugs, but children in the important ways. They got sick a lot, ate poorly, and didn’t see the point in picking up after themselves. That day Jaya slipped Carole some speed, saying it was an aspirin, then followed her around and watched the speed take hold. Carole hadn’t known at first that she’d taken anything, only that she felt suddenly punched up with energy, that she had this stunning new optimism and could live smack in the present. No future, no past, just pure moment. Pure now. She walked all the way to the marina that day and back. When she got home, she cleaned the kitchen until early the next morning. She asked Jaya for more.

  She was on speed again the night she got a job waitressing and busing at Magnolia Thunderpussy. She was willing and energetic, and she knew a thing or two about restaurants. Magnolia hired her on the spot and taught her how to make outrageous ice-cream sundaes like Marty’s Montana Banana and Pineapple Pussy. Her life fell into a rhythm of late nights on speed, getting up midmorning, and going first thing to find Pepper, Rachel’s precocious, bright little boy who called his mother by her first name. Rachel would yell out to whoever was around that she had to go to Golden Gate Park for a demonstration or down to Market Street to throw blood on people. It was always something like that. And whoever heard her was expected to keep Pepper out of trouble, but God, look at who they were! Carole was the only one who ever really did it. She was the one who sought him out, gave him baths, combed his hair, and took him to the library and the playground down the street. Then Rachel would take a sudden interest in him and sweep him off to the combat zone to make sure he understood that life was not the peaches-and-cream existence of the commune. Or she’d march him up to see the mansions on Nob Hill so he could see the Wasteful Way Those People Lived. Rachel said he was acquiring street smarts. “Remember knowing how powerful you really were but your parents thinking you couldn’t do anything?” Carole didn’t remember any such thing.

  “They arm kids in the Congo at six, did you know that? They make fighters of them. And gypsies. Those kids are on their own, even younger than Pepper. We pamper kids in this culture, and then they don’t stand a chance in the real world. I won’t do that with Pepper.”

  “Those kids in Africa get shot,” Carole said.

  “That’s the beauty,” Rachel said. “This isn’t the Congo. All the advantages. None of the disadvantages.”

  One night in March, after she’d been there a year and was used to the sounds in the house, Carole woke very late; she heard an unfamiliar noise on the stairs. She sat up on her mattress and listened, and sure enough, it was the sound of someone barefoot on the stairs. But the sounds were too light and playful to be one of the adults. She got up and opened her bedroom door in time to hear the front door open and close, so she followed, pulling on her bathrobe as she went. Outside, the night air was cool, and there was a slight wind coming from the Bay and up the street. She stood on the porch and peered out into the night.

  Pepper stood, barefooted and wearing only his pajamas under the light at the corner of Stanyan and Seventeenth. He turned and ran down the sidewalk, right past the house, a spindly little thing with arms spiraling, making noises like an airplane. He didn’t see her as he ran past, and she didn’t want to s
tartle him by calling out, so she went down the steps to the sidewalk and followed him. At midblock he turned and came her way, stopping short when he saw her there.

  “Pep,” she said.

  He grinned.

  “What are you doing out like this?”

  “Playing,” he said.

  “Let’s go back,” she said, and he came with her willingly, still making airplane noises as if there was nothing at all unusual about his being outside.

  Just before they reached the house, she saw a soldier on the other side of the street. He was clean-cut with a shaved head and a khaki uniform that even from a distance looked crisp. Lots of soldiers came through San Francisco on their way to or from Vietnam, but usually the only way you could tell was the haircut. People swore at them or worse if they showed up in uniform like this guy. The soldier watched her and Pepper walk up the street and onto the stone steps to the house. Once she was inside, she checked from the living room window, but he was gone, and she was glad. The sight of him and the way he’d been watching her made her feel queasy. It was dangerous for those guys to come around the Haight. People hated them.

  When she woke the next day, she could tell by a thin ray of cloudy light coming in slantwise from her window that it was late in the day. She lay in bed and listened for sounds in the house but heard nothing. She went down the hall to the bathroom, peering into empty rooms as she passed. She listened for sounds from the turret, but that too was quiet. “Pepper?” she called, and received no answer.

  Being alone gave her a luxurious and rare feeling of peace. She took a long, blistering shower and shampooed. If there was enough sun, she would dry her hair in the little yard out back. If not, she would dry it on the radiator in the kitchen. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, peering in close for the details of her face. The speed wrecked her appetite, and she’d lost more weight. Her cheeks were slightly hollowed, her eyes deeper set. Her body was thin but well muscled, her legs strong from the walks up Stanyan Street to the house. You’re letting that body go to waste, Rachel sometimes said. Carole’s abstinence was famous in the house, like she was some kind of saint or pariah, one or the other. But her body was only a body. A vessel—she’d heard that term as a kid, and it fit so well. A vessel that held her, not a thing in and of itself. Not like Rachel, who was all sexual urgency with Morgan, so the house reeked of their lovemaking most of the time. She looked again. This was how she looked to other people, but she didn’t feel at all like it.

  She put on a cotton robe and belted it tightly, then she took a hit of speed and sat down on the toilet seat to wait for the very slight sweating, the feel of her heart quickening, the sense of excitement. She checked outside for sun, but there was none. It was a gray drizzly day, with dark clouds settled low over everything. Just as well, because soon her pupils would start to dilate and the murk of the house would feel better than bright sun.

  In the kitchen, she boiled water on the stove and made some instant coffee, then pulled a chair over to the radiator and sat with her back to it, fanning her hair over the hot metal bars, fluffing it to hasten the drying, restlessly turning this way and that to expose the hair underneath to the heat. She heard footsteps in the hall at one point and stopped to listen. People went barefoot or they wore sandals. These footsteps were hard, made by real shoes. Real heels and soles. “Who’s there?” she said, standing and crossing the kitchen.

  The hall was dark, lit from behind by the open front door. She saw the silhouette of a man, a soldier. “Hey,” he said.

  But not any soldier. He came toward her, his arms out as though he expected to embrace her, and she took a step back. “Carole,” he said, and hearing the voice, she knew. She felt cold and sick, with the hopeless feeling that again and again he would find her and keep on finding her for time everlasting. He was blocking her access to the front door. The back door was open, but beyond it there were trash barrels and junk. If she tried to run, she’d get caught up in all the debris. How had he found her? She backed away, trying to imagine an escape route. No one knew she was here but Rachel. Only Rachel. And why? Why now?

  Afraid, she backed into the kitchen and flipped the switch, but the bulb was dead. The only light came from a bluish strip of fluorescence on the stove, and she could barely see his face. She went behind the table to keep it between herself and him. “What?” she asked. All she could think was that something had happened. He knew something. Something about Rita. It was over.

  “At ease,” he said. He had on one of those caps with a point that sat low on his forehead. He could be anybody. If she passed him on the street, she might not know him. But he wasn’t anybody. He was Eddie. “I came by to say hello. Shit. I’ve been in ’Nam. I’ve got exactly twelve hours in San Francisco, and this is the reception I get?”

  He was slightly out of focus because she was at that point in the cycle of speed, just past the peak. “You never just come by to say hello,” she said.

  He picked up one of the kitchen chairs. Dropped it in place, and she jumped. “Sure I do,” he said. His head jerked to the side, like he had developed a tic. She couldn’t be sure.

  “How did you find me?” She tried for the calmest voice she could. No point in upsetting him. Not if he was wrecked, which he might be.

  He undid the button of his shirt, took out some pieces of paper, and handed them to her. In the bad light and with her eyes dilated the way they were, she couldn’t read them, but she didn’t need to. She knew that one was a letter from Rachel that had been in her mother’s drawer. The other was a graduation picture of her that had been ripped from the proof sheet.

  “Your letters were never opened. Quite a woman, your mother. She had a thing about privacy, but I guess you know that.” He opened the refrigerator. “What do you have to eat around here?” He pulled out the jug of Thunderbird wine and swung it to the table.

  “I don’t have money, if that’s what you want.”

  “Who said anything about money?”

  “I just—” she began. “The last time.”

  “Well, this isn’t the last time. This is a guy dropping in on an old friend. A little hospitality wouldn’t kill you, a little ‘Nice to see you again, Eddie. What have you been doing with yourself lately?’ ‘Oh, thank you for asking. I’ve been in fucking Vietnam getting fucking shot at while you’ve been sitting here in your hippie house doing drugs and balling like a jackrabbit.’ That’s what I want. A little fucking respect, because you have no idea what it’s like over there.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, that’s cool. Sure.”

  “Good,” he said and took a long drink from the jug of wine. “You look good. Yeah. You do.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You lost weight, but you’ve got some size on you. I like that. Not like those gook broads. Another species. Like fucking an otter.”

  Carole drew away from him.

  “So?”

  “So what?” she said.

  “So how do I look? Huh? Now it’s your turn to tell me I’m looking pretty good myself.”

  “Sure, yes,” she said. “You look fine.”

  “You can do better than that,” he said. “Say it like you mean it.”

  “You do,” she said. “You look good. The service and all. It agreed with you.”

  “The service did not fucking agree with me.” He smacked the table with his open hand.

  “Okay,” she said. “All right. Sorry.”

  There were sounds at the front door, and Eddie visibly jumped. People were coming into the house, coming down the hall toward the kitchen. Pepper burst into the kitchen at a run, saw Eddie, and stood staring at him with frightened eyes. He was used to strangers, so it wasn’t that. It was the uniform. Even at four he knew this wasn’t right. Then Rachel was standing in the doorway behind Pepper, squinting through the dark at the stranger. “He’s just leaving,” Carole said, blurting out what she hoped was true, as if she had any way to make that happen, anything to head Rachel
off. The second that Rachel recognized the uniform, and she had already, Carole could see it in her posture, the gathering rage of finding somebody who’d actually gone over there, who’d killed women and babies and napalmed a zillion acres of jungle and all the rest of it right here in the kitchen. Her kitchen.

  “Like hell,” Eddie said. She noticed his hands twitching and that tic again with his head. “We were just getting it going.”

  “Who let you in here?” Rachel said. “I mean, who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Who let you in?” Eddie said, mocking her.

  “You’re in my house.”

  “Door was wide open,” Eddie said, smirking.

  She looked at Carole. “He’s not a friend of yours, is he?”

  “No,” Carole said.

  “What was that you said?” He’d been tipped back in his chair and now he brought it forward with a bang. “Let me tell you—”

  Rachel walked over to where he was sitting, stood over him, and spat in his face.

  “Oh, Rach,” Carole said. “No.”

  Eddie drew his hand slowly across his face to wipe away the spit. He looked at it, then reached over to Pepper, who was standing at the stove, and wiped it on Pepper’s shirt. He looked at Rachel. “You bitch,” he said softly. But she wasn’t scared. She drew herself up and spat again. Eddie was on his feet in a flash, his fist out, and Rachel dropped like a stone. It all went so fast then. Pepper was screaming screaming screaming. Carole rushed over to Rachel. She thought she was dead, the way she lay there, but she sat up on her own, holding her face in both hands. Eddie was standing over them both. “You see what she did?”

  “What she did?” As if that justified hitting her, knocking her to the ground. “You come in here where you’re not wanted and hit a woman half your size and then you say it’s her fault?”