by Ann Hood
“I don’t know,” Nora was telling us. “I don’t know if we’ll ever hear from her again.”
In third grade, Susan Perry’s mother had died suddenly. That morning she’d braided Susan’s hair and handed her a lunch of peanut butter and jelly, a banana, and three Oreos. Two hours later the principal rushed into the classroom looking terrified. “Susan,” she said, “please collect your things and come with me.” We’d all watched Susan as she slowly gathered her books and her pencil case, lifted her green wool coat from its hook, and followed the principal out. At first we thought she was lucky somehow, that something wonderful must have happened. But a few minutes later, the sounds of Susan’s sobbing echoed through the school.
No one explained until the next day, when our teacher had us make sympathy cards for her. I hadn’t realized that mothers could die at all, never mind so quickly. Of course soon enough I learned that Paul McCartney’s mother had died when he was fourteen, and John Lennon’s had died when he was seventeen, and I learned how that made them creative and sensitive. But Susan Perry, when she returned to school a week later, seemed exactly the same. Still, her father was known as Poor Mr. Perry, and a year later they moved to Ohio where they had relatives.
Mrs. Perry had died of a brain aneurysm, which meant a clot in her brain exploded. I was pretty sure if she had a choice, she wouldn’t have died. Was Nora’s mother leaving on purpose worse? Then I thought about my father, all the way across the world in Japan instead of on his way to the Beatles concert and I thought I might start to cry, too, just from missing him so bad. But at least he was coming home.
“She sent us one postcard,” Nora said. “From Haight-Ashbury.”
“Where’s that?” Jessica said. For some reason she was still whispering.
“San Francisco,” I said. “It’s where all the hippies are.”
“Your mother is a hippie?” Jessica said, her eyes widening.
Hippies, at least as far as we knew, smelled bad, walked barefoot, took drugs, and handed people flowers.
Nora looked like she was about to cry again. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
Peter patted her hand. “She’ll come back,” he said.
“You think so? Really?” Nora said, hopeful.
“Of course,” Peter said. “Mothers don’t leave their families.”
That was a dumb thing to say, since obviously Nora’s mother had left them. But it did seem to make Nora feel a little better.
“What did she say on the postcard?” I asked her.
“Just Peace and Love,” Nora said with a sigh.
“She is a hippie,” Jessica said.
“She said she was oppressed by the patriarchy and its expectations of women,” Nora said.
“What the heck does that mean?” Peter asked.
I actually felt like I knew the answer, but we didn’t have time to get into all of that. I thought about the women’s group that my mother had gone to at their house. I thought about Betty Friedan and her book. Was she maybe a little right? If Nora’s mother had actually left, didn’t that mean something Betty Friedan said made sense?
“What she didn’t say,” Nora said with a sigh, “was goodbye.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Till There Was You
Even though this news of Nora’s mother leaving the family and moving to Haight-Ashbury to find herself was confusing and scary, I knew we needed to get moving or our entire plan would be shot. So when Nora said, “Wow, I kind of feel better telling you,” I felt hopeful.
“I’ve been holding that in all this time,” Nora said. “And making it sound like my mom was at home. Making it sound like she really cared about me.”
I wondered if a mother who left like that could still care about her kid. But we definitely didn’t have time to explore that right now.
“I’m glad you told us,” Peter said.
“I am, too,” I said, surprising myself.
Knowing this made Nora seem less weird. She was just trying to seem normal. She didn’t want to be Poor Nora, she just wanted to be Nora. I respected that about her.
I linked my arm in hers, like Dorothy does to the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.
“Ready to see the Beatles?” I said.
Nora smiled. “Yes!” she said.
We held on to each other as we hurried down the stairs and onto the train. It felt good to be close to a friend again.
This time I paid super close attention to each stop, and as we approached the station to switch to the Blue Line I called, “This is our stop!” so that no one could make an error.
Our train to Suffolk Downs was crowded with kids going to the concert. I could tell because they were clutching signs or albums or even just by the expectant looks on their faces. It was like all of us were in on something huge and important together, like we were making history.
A girl standing across from me started to sing.
“There were bells, on a hill, but I never heard them ringing . . .”
And another girl joined in, “No, I never heard them at all . . .”
And a third sang with them, “Till there was you . . .”
Then I was singing and Nora was singing, too, our arms linked, our bodies swaying.
When we’d finished “Till There Was You,” right away someone began, “Ooh I need your love, babe . . .”
The whole subway car, everyone, was singing now, loud and joyous.
“Ain’t got nothin’ but love, babe! Eight days a week!” we ended in unison, our voices raised together with so much hope and even love that I swear the whole train shook.
* * *
* * *
Suffolk Downs was built for horse racing. Peter had wondered if the Beatles would be standing in the dirt of the actual racetrack. I’d told him that was stupid, of course they’d be on a stage, but then he wondered if the stage would be in the dirt. Who cared? Peter, I guess. He was quirky like that. I was starting to realize I liked quirky people. Maybe even more than plain old regular people like Kim and Becky. And Michelle. People were already swarming into Suffolk Downs, throngs of them, giddy girls and even parents who looked like they were excited, too. All twenty-five thousand of us seemed to have arrived at once, and we didn’t even have to walk really—we just got pushed along. The building loomed across the parking lot, and we slowly made our way to it.
Even though it was evening, it was still light out in that way August stays. And it was still hot. And humid. I was practically choking on the smells of Aqua Net hairspray and Dippity-do and too many perfumes and sweat and just hot people.
“Hold on to each other!” I called out to the fan club, but the people around me misunderstood and everyone grabbed everyone else’s slippery, sweaty arms. Most importantly, I was holding on to Nora and she was holding on to Jessica and Peter was holding on to me. The worst thing that could happen would be to lose each other because I had all the tickets. I clutched Nora even tighter.
Eventually we were almost at the entrance. I could see the people in red jackets collecting tickets and bright lights beyond the doors. My heart was doing a weird ballet, leaping and jumping and twirling.
All of a sudden, Jessica shouted, “Look!”
She broke free and started pushing her way through the crowd—in the wrong direction.
“Jessica!” I shouted. “What are you doing! Get back here!”
But she didn’t. She kept moving off in the direction of something I could not see.
“What should we do?” Peter asked me. He must have secretly chewed gum because his breath was all hot and Juicy Fruit smelling.
“We have to go after her!” Nora said. “We can’t lose her! In Boston!”
I could still see the tippy top of Jessica’s head, but it was getting harder to follow it as she wove her way away from us.
Nora had already sta
rted off in the same direction, so Peter and I had no choice but to follow.
“If we miss the concert—” I began, but the crowd was too noisy for any of them to hear me.
It was almost as hard to get out of the crowd as it had been to be part of it. My father had read an article about how salmon actually swim against the stream. That’s what I felt like. Except salmon weren’t as angry as I was.
Jessica was way across the parking lot, at the very edge of the crowd, standing by a shed.
“Are you crazy?” I said when I finally reached her.
“Look,” she said, pointing to the inside wall of the shed.
All I saw were horseshoes lined up there, no doubt to shoe the racehorses.
“We were this close to getting inside and you run all the way over here to look at a bunch of horseshoes?” I said.
Honestly, I felt like when a character in a cartoon gets so mad that steam comes out of its ears. If I were in a cartoon, that would be what was happening.
But Jessica seemed oblivious to the fact that she’d dragged the entire fan club away from the entrance to the Beatles concert, across a hot asphalt parking lot, to a stinky shed to gaze at horseshoes.
“Dunstan,” she said all dreamy. “And the horseshoe.”
“Who’s Dunstan?” Nora asked, bewildered.
“A long time ago, like around 959, in Ireland, a blacksmith named Dunstan was visited by the devil,” Jessica said.
“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Is this one of your stories about luck?”
“The devil had hooved feet, and he demanded that Dunstan make him a horseshoe,” Jessica continued, as if I hadn’t said anything. “But Dunstan was clever and he nailed a red hot horseshoe onto the devil’s foot, causing him to scream and writhe in pain.”
“Jessica,” Peter said, “this is interesting but the concert’s about to start.”
As soon as he said that, music came through the air.
Peter must have seen the horrified look on my face because he said, “Don’t worry. That’s just Barry and the Remains, the warm-up group.”
“The devil begged Dunstan to remove it, and Dunstan said he would under one condition—”
“Jessica! We have to go!” I said, and I tried tugging her into motion. But she stayed put.
“The devil had to respect the horseshoe forevermore and never enter a house with one hanging above its door,” Jessica said.
“Great,” I muttered. “Can we please go back now?”
“I need one of those horseshoes,” Jessica said matter-of-factly.
Peter seemed to consider this idea. “Wouldn’t that be stealing?” he asked after a moment of thinking.
“Hanging a horseshoe facing up, like a U, over your door keeps the devil out,” Jessica said, as if that explained everything.
First it was four-leaf clovers and lucky pennies. Now, when we were about to see the Beatles—live!—she had to have a horseshoe.
Jessica started walking right into that shed. True, it wasn’t locked or anything, but still we had no business in there and even less business helping ourselves to a horseshoe.
“See how they all have seven nails?” Jessica said over her shoulder because she’d gone right in while the rest of us hovered at the entrance. “Seven is a lucky number.”
We all watched her study the horseshoes lined up on the shelf, as if she needed to choose the perfect, luckiest one.
“What if we get arrested?” Nora said, her voice scared and hushed.
“We’re not breaking the law,” Peter said sensibly. “Jessica is.”
“We are aiding and abetting,” I pointed out.
Jessica turned around, smiling, a horseshoe in her hand.
“This is really, really a good sign,” she said. “I’ve been wondering where I could get a horseshoe. For luck, you know? And I couldn’t figure it out because I don’t know anybody on a farm or who owns a horse. And just like that, a horseshoe presents itself to me.”
“Not exactly,” I reminded her. “We were minding our business in line when you made a beeline over here.”
Jessica shook her head. “I need seven lucky things and this is number six,” she said.
“Is this for some kind of merit badge?” Peter asked her. “Like a psychic badge or the occult?”
Jessica laughed. “There’s no such thing, silly,” she said.
She studied that horseshoe like it was the most valuable thing in the world, her hand tracing its curved bottom and smooth iron.
Meanwhile, the crowd inside Suffolk Downs was cheering wildly as Barry and the Remains started their next song.
“We have to go,” I said, for the millionth time. “The show has already started and the Beatles might be up next.”
Jessica opened her large bag, the one she’d made for her Embroidery merit badge. Basically she’d embroidered a bunch of red and orange flowers and attached that fabric to an old bag of her mother’s. Luckily, the horseshoe fit inside. There was no way we could walk into the concert carrying a stolen horseshoe.
“Okay,” Jessica said, all perky. “Let’s go!”
We walked all the way back across the parking lot, which had started to grow dark. There was still a line to get inside the arena, but it had thinned. Most people were already in their seats listening to the next warm-up act, Bobby Hebb, who had just started to play.
“See?” Nora said. “The Beatles haven’t come on yet, and Jessica has her sixth lucky item.”
“Did you say you needed seven?” Peter asked Jessica.
She nodded. “I read this book on how to bring on good luck and it said that if you collect seven lucky items you’ll have good luck.” Jessica looked at us. “I really need good luck, you guys.”
“What’s the seventh item?” Nora asked.
“The lock of someone’s hair who you love,” Jessica said.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” I asked.
Jessica grinned. “Paul McCartney, of course.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
In My Life
By the time we got inside and made it to our seats, Bobby Hebb was done, and the Cyrkle, yet another warm-up act, was playing. I actually liked one of their songs, “Red Rubber Ball,” which WPRO played a lot. If I wasn’t (a) waiting for the Beatles to finally come on, and (b) worried that Jessica had scissors in that bag of hers and was going to chop off a lock of Paul’s hair, I would have definitely enjoyed them singing that song more than I did. As it was, I just felt nervous.
After the Cyrkle finished, there was an intermission that allowed me to get my bearings. First of all, we were in the middle of a dirt field with the racetracks surrounding us. About a football-field length away stood the rickety stage. They must have built it in a hurry just for tonight. The people on the stage looked tiny because they were so far away and I wondered if we’d be able to even see the Beatles clearly enough to tell one from the other. Of course, I knew who was who just by where they stood. Paul was always on the left, George was always in the middle, and John was always on the right. Ringo was the easiest because he was the drummer. I wanted to see John’s long thin nose for myself, and Paul’s bedroom eyes, and even Ringo’s rings. George didn’t have anything in particular that was special, which was one of the reasons he wasn’t anyone’s favorite Beatle. Still, I’d like to see him, too.
Intermission took about a million years, but eventually the next warm-up group took the stage. All of these warm-up groups seemed like a form of torture, but I had to admit it was kind of exciting to hear the Ronettes, the all-girl band who sang “Be My Baby.” They had on short skirts slit up the thigh and big beehive hairdos and lots of mascara and I was relieved that I could see all that if I squinted real hard.
As the Ronettes left the stage, Peter leaned toward me and said in a voice full of awe, “Trudy, the Beatles are next.”
Then he did the creepiest thing. He took my hand and squeezed it. Normally I would have recoiled, or maybe even slapped him. But there was something so special about this night that I actually squeezed back before I yanked my hand away. It was kind of like singing on the subway, loud and happy, with all those strangers. Tonight I was doing things I’d never do on any other night.
There was a pause that somehow filled the air with an excited electricity. I guess that was what anticipation felt like. Then, out of nowhere, a black limousine appeared and drove right up to the stage. The doors flew open and out jumped the Beatles! A shriek so loud went through the crowd that I bet my mother heard it back in Rhode Island. I didn’t even realize it at first, but Nora and Jessica and I were part of that shriek, our mouths opened and pure joy spilling out, joining every other girl in Suffolk Downs.
I was grateful that my father had splurged on the most expensive tickets—$5.75! Each!—because even though the seats were set far away, I could kind of see the Beatles. They had on shiny black suits with green collars, and their shaggy mop-top hair. For a second I thought I might actually faint. Luckily, Jessica was grasping my arm, hard, and maybe that’s what kept me upright.
John was at the microphone and that voice I first heard on The Ed Sullivan Show was suddenly singing one hundred yards away from me.
“Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music . . .”
The only word to describe what happened when John started to sing is pandemonium, which was my favorite vocabulary word in fifth grade, and the screaming was so loud I could barely hear the Beatles. People were dancing and jumping and pulling on their hair through the whole song, and they didn’t stop for the next thirty minutes, which was how long the Beatles played. Only thirty minutes. But it was the best thirty minutes of my life, from that first song, “Rock and Roll Music,” to the very last song, “Long Tall Sally.”
In between they sang “Day Tripper” and “Nowhere Man” and “I Feel Fine” and “Paperback Writer” and “Yesterday.” How can I describe what it felt like to hear the group you’ve loved forever singing live, almost like they were singing directly to me, even though there were all those other people there. Imagine if a character you loved in a book, like Jo March or Nancy Drew, suddenly appeared right in front of you, a living breathing person? That’s kind of how seeing the Beatles felt, like I’d conjured them up and poof! Here they were.