A Good Distance

by Sarah Willis

  My mother tried to kill us both in a great act of passion and rage. That night I leave my family for almost ten years.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After the trip to the nursing home, and our stop at Draeger’s, I head home. There are no messages on the machine. It’s not like Todd at all. He always calls me at noon, and it’s at least one now.

  In the kitchen I wipe a smudge of hot fudge off my mother’s face with the tip of a wet paper towel. “There you go,” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says, very sweetly.

  How could I have ever been so mean to this woman? “Mother,” I say. I’m tired of this Mrs. Morgan stuff.

  “What, Jennifer?”

  My breath catches. I smile like an idiot. “Hello,” I say. We’re going on three hours of me being me. I want to sing and shout, but I am careful of hope.

  “Hello,” she says, with a smirk, like I’m nuts for saying hello to her. Maybe I am.

  “Would you like me to tell you about Jazz’s father? About the ten years I was away?” I’ve never told her. I promised myself I’d never tell her because of what she said about Jazz. But tomorrow she won’t even remember what I told her, and in the long run, it’ll be just as if I kept my promise.

  “Yes,” she says. “I’d like to know.”

  She seems so normal right now, I think as we walk into the living room. Maybe it was never really Alzheimer’s at all. Or maybe hot fudge is the cure.

  She sits on the couch and I sit next to her, turning toward her, crossing my legs underneath me. I can feel a tight stretch across my knees, an ache in my thighs, but damned if I’m going to give up sitting cross-legged yet.

  “Jazz’s father’s name is Hunter Phillips. I met him in San Francisco.”

  As I walk through the snow to Lannie’s, I swear I will never speak to my mother again. Once again I’m freezing. I add another promise; I’ll never run away again in the winter.

  It’s one A.M. when I get to his house.

  “What the hell happened to you?” he says when he lets me in. At least he’s here, I think. I’m so glad he’s here.

  “I fell,” I say, feeling the bump on my head.

  “Where have you been?”

  I walk past him and sit on the plaid couch. It’s filthy and makes me sad. “I ran away last night. Well, I was coming here, but I crashed in the schoolhouse and got picked up by the cops this morning, and they took me to—”

  “The cops? You got picked up by the cops?” He looks paranoid, like my getting picked up by cops is a problem for him.

  “It’s got nothing to do with you. But then my mom wouldn’t get me. When she did, I ran away again. I’m never going back.” I take off my shoes and rub my feet, trying to warm them up. My toes are numb.

  “Where’s your stuff?” he says.

  “I didn’t bring anything. It’s a whole new life now, Lannie. I’m not bringing anything from the past. Nothing. It’s you and me now.”

  There’s a pause before he says, “Good. Cool.”

  But nothing’s good about it.

  In less than two weeks we’re fighting all the time. The coke is making us mean. We fight over whose line is thicker, who needs the last downer. The place is a mess, and when I straighten it up, he tells me I can’t open certain drawers and that I’d better not touch the pot in the basement. I tell him he’s an asshole, and he slaps me across the face.

  The next morning I’m gone before he even wakes up. I can’t find any coke to take with me—he has gotten better at hiding it—but I know where the money’s stashed. I take three hundred dollars, the price of a slapped face.

  I stand on Cedar Road and stick out my thumb. It’s late March, the end of 1971, and the snow and ice of just two weeks ago has melted. I’m seventeen, with long brown hair. It doesn’t take long to get picked up.

  I’m going to San Francisco. Where I was born.

  The first ride takes me as far as the highway, although the guy offers to take me to his place. He’s just joking around and wishes me good luck. It takes two more rides to get to Chicago. I sleep in a motel and buy myself an atlas. I didn’t study my geography and am not sure of the best way to go. I’m also edgy as shit, depressed, and keep thinking about turning around and going back. Maybe Lannie will be sorry he hit me. Maybe he’ll give me more coke to make up for it.

  The sheets are like sandpaper. The light too bright in the bathroom. The room too hot. I sleep on the blanket with my clothes on. My eyes feel as if there are hot pokers stuck in them. I dream I’m doing cocaine. I wake with a headache that blinds me.

  It’s mostly guys that give me rides. They ask me questions and I make up answers. “My name is Esca Echo,” I say. “My parents are dead. I’m going to live with an aunt in California. She’s in Days of Our Lives and she’s going to get me an audition.” The way they smirk makes me mad, but I learn to make up better lies. Somewhere in Wyoming, I tell one old guy the story about my mother trying to kill us in the car. It’s the first time I tell the story. Later I get better at it and can tell it with all sorts of great details. It gets longer each time.

  In Salt Lake City I go to a Salvation Army Thrift Store and buy clothes and a knapsack. In the motel I take a long shower and throw away the clothes I’ve been wearing for six days. Now there’s nothing left of Cleveland and my old life. Even my bruises have healed.

  But I really want some coke. I feel empty without it. On coke I’m more fun, smarter. Now I just feel tense and uneasy, stupid and not worth much. I’m sure my mother doesn’t miss me at all. I almost call her once, but then I don’t.

  Just the other side of the mountains, I get picked up by some hippies in a Volkswagen van that has vines and flowers painted on it. I arrive in San Francisco in style and get dropped off on Haight Ashbury with $152.00 left to my name.

  Just a few feet away, standing around some motorcycles, are two big guys and a woman, all wearing heavy black leather jackets. The woman laughs loudly, and I turn and walk the other way. Many of the stores are boarded up, layers of ragged posters pasted to the boards. People sit on the sidewalks, their backs against the buildings, their clothes like the posters behind them, ragged and layered. One woman’s talking in a stream of monotone words even though there’s no one near her. I thought San Francisco was going to be all hippies with flowers in their hair.

  Now I see them. They’re here, too. I see jean jackets and suede-fringed coats and guys with long hair and girls with long skirts. Music drifts out doorways. I hear a riff of Jimi Hendrix, then, from a narrow store with sandals in the window, just a line: “Help, I’m a rock.” A black man with a huge Afro plays a guitar, his case open on the ground, and just as I had imagined, a girl with a baby in her lap sits against a building, handing out flowers—white carnations. I take one and thank her. She smiles wildly and gives me the peace sign.

  I get to a corner and don’t know where to turn. On Clayton there’s a group of hippies about my age standing by a doorway. I slow down as I walk by, and someone passes me a joint. I take a toke and pass it on to someone who is now standing behind me. Now I’m in a line. The line, with people dressed like me, looks inviting. Curious, I follow them in the door and up the stairs to the second floor.

  We proceed down a hallway to a large room with old furniture—chairs with the stuffing coming out, scratched tables, stained couches. There’s a old plaid couch, just like Lannie’s couch, and I want to sit on it. Then I see the sign. It’s the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. This is the waiting room. I stay in the line. Maybe they can tell me where I can sleep tonight. Maybe on that couch?

  The girl in front of me wants a pregnancy test, so I say I do, too, afraid they’ll turn me away if I ask where I can sleep. I wait an hour before getting my history taken, and when the woman who introduces herself as Fern starts asking me questions, I am more than ready to tell her everything. That I’m homeless, from Cleveland, tired and edgy, that I don’t know how I am going to support myself, and that I might be pregnant—something I
’ve decided is true in the last hour. Fern takes my blood pressure and temperature, and tells me a woman’s counselor will see me before my test. She’ll give me pamphlets listing places I can stay. Fern’s kind, with a soft smile, and I want her to be my mother. I don’t tell her this, but I know I would if I were on cocaine. I miss the way I talked when I was high, the fluid sentences that poured out of me and seemed to mean so much. I’m beginning to suspect, though, that they didn’t mean much at all.

  She leads me to a bathroom and I pee in a paper cup.

  I wait another half hour for a blood test, sure now that not only am I pregnant, but have some awful disease. I’m edgy again. People are staring at me. Finally the woman’s counselor calls me into a small room covered with pictures of female anatomy and a poster about self breast exams. She has pudgy fingers and tiny white teeth like a baby’s. Her name is Paula. She, too, is friendly and asks me questions. When I tell her I have never had a pelvic exam, she hands me a plastic model of a vagina, explaining the whole thing to me, showing me the speculum and wooden sticks the doctor will use. Then she gives me flyers for everything imaginable, including places to get organic food and free yoga classes.

  “Does this place hire people?” I ask.

  “Well, some,” she says. “Most of the people who work here are volunteers, like me. You can be trained to take histories, or be a woman’s counselor, or work the hotline. I’ll give you the name of the person to talk to.” She has this wonderful, melodic voice.

  “Do you need a roommate?” I ask.

  She laughs. “No, not really. But there’s a message board in the waiting room. Check it out. I’ll call you when the doctor’s ready.”

  I sit on an old stuffed chair in the waiting room for another hour. The plaid couch is full, which is for the best. The less I’m reminded of Lannie, the better.

  Finally Paula calls my name and escorts me to the exam room. She leaves me there. I put on a blue paper robe and wait.

  I wait for a long time. On the walls are cutout figures from rock posters; Janis, Jim Morrison, and Bob Dylan are grinning at me. I can hear people talking about drips and sores. Someone’s collecting money for pizza. Finally the doctor comes in with Paula.

  The doctor tells me to spread my legs, and Paula holds my hand. It doesn’t hurt much. What I feel most is curiosity. What really do I have down there? How might it work? With my eyes closed, the doctor’s fingers inside me, I imagine the diagrams Paula showed me, like there is a map of me. I’m surprised when the doctor pulls his fingers out, tells me to sit up. It only took a minute. Aren’t I more complicated than that?

  “Well, you’re not pregnant,” he says. “If you’d like birth control, talk it over with your counselor, and I’ll write you a script for a diaphragm or the pill. Let me take a look at these slides, but you seem fine to me. Other than that, you’re done.” He leaves the room, and Paula asks if I’d like to talk to her about birth control. I tell her not right now, but I’ll be back, as a volunteer.

  “That would be nice. Good luck.”

  When I leave the Free Clinic, it’s dark outside. There are still people walking around but not as many, and the people sitting against the buildings look even dingier than before. I look around for a taxi, but after ten minutes I start walking. About five blocks farther away, I see a cab and flag it down, asking the driver to take me to the closest cheap motel. Not a good idea. The room smells of bleach and cigarettes. I curl up on the bed and shake. This is the place I have run to.

  I’ve been without coke for almost a week now. Lannie told me the stuff was pure and when we wanted to quit, we just would, no problem. I was stupid to believe him. I’m stupid and alone, and I shake all night. By morning my whole body feels weak and sluggish. I stay in the motel room all day, get a little food from a place next door. By nighttime I don’t tremble anymore, although now I’m sweating, cold sweat. I keep taking hot showers, but I have to sit in the dirty tub, I can’t stand up for too long. The next day I feel better. I’ve kicked coke by running clear across the country. Maybe I’m not so stupid after all.

  The next day I leave my suitcase at the motel and wander around the town, asking for jobs. Everyone says no, but nicely. The woman at Tracy’s Donuts gives me a free doughnut. I glance at every pay phone I pass.

  Somehow, I end up back at the Free Clinic. I go inside and am immediately comforted by the old furniture, the posters, the drawings on the walls. I ask a good-looking guy with long hair if I could speak to Hunter Phillips, the man in charge of volunteers. He is Hunter Phillips.

  “I’d like to volunteer as a woman’s counselor,” I say.

  “Great. We can always use volunteers.” His has wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but he’s not old, maybe thirty. His hair’s in a long braid that lays across his shoulder and over his chest, almost to his waist. “The next training session starts in three weeks. They’re twice a week for two months. A lot of effort goes into the woman’s counselor training. Sure that’s where you want to start?”

  “I’m sure,” I say.

  “Good. I’ll get the schedule.” He comes back with a piece of paper. Hands it to me.

  “Do you have any jobs I could do now? Anything? Like cleaning, even?”

  “New in town?”

  I nod. “But I was born here.” As if he wants to know that. And I only lived here for three months. “I don’t have much money.”

  “Well, we hire mostly from the volunteers, but I know the guy that owns The Sprouted Wheat. Tony. He told me one of the dishwashers just quit. Tell him I sent you. It’s just down Haight a few blocks.” He leans against a wall. “So, where you from?”

  “Cleveland.” I say this like I’m ashamed, then blush.

  “Cool. I’ve never been east of the Mississippi.”

  “You’re not missing much,” I say.

  “Well, I hope you like it here. It’s a good town. A little different than in the sixties, but it’ll come back.”

  I don’t know what he means. We just stand there, looking at each other.

  “Good luck,” he says.

  “I’ll be back, to take those classes,” I say.

  He nods. “Peace. I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Yep. You will.”

  I work at The Sprouted Wheat for two years, eventually becoming a waitress and barely surviving on two-seventy-five an hour, tips, and all the wheat bread I can stand. I tell people that my mother tried to kill me, and they all want to take care of me. For a few months I live with one of the waiters, then with three people in an upstairs apartment on Clauge. I become a woman’s counselor at the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, and good friends with Paula, whom I eventually do move in with. I don’t do cocaine anymore—I remember too vividly that awful week, and besides, it’s too expensive now that I actually have to pay for it—but I do enjoy pot and a few quaaludes and occasional acid. I give myself limits. No hard stuff, no shooting anything, no first-date sex. I keep my first two promises.

  I don’t need a driver’s licence, since I walk everywhere, or take the trolleys. I get paid under the table, so I don’t pay taxes. I get my medical care at the Free Clinic. There is no paper trail, no way to find me.

  I write a letter to my mother and never mail it, and one day I can’t even find it. Now that I can’t find it, I decide it said everything perfectly and I could never do that again. I think about calling her, and my palms sweat. I tell myself I will call her tomorrow night. What’s one more night after so long? I sleep well, thinking I will call her tomorrow, knowing I won’t.

  What could I say? I’m sorry? Would she?

  Two and a half years after I walked into the Free Clinic, they hire me as intake coordinator, but that’s just a title they make up for me. I do all sorts of odd jobs, like answering the phones and cleaning the exam rooms. The plaid couch is still here, and sometimes I take naps on it, hardly thinking about Lannie at all.

  One night, after counseling a girl who ran away from Indiana who thinks she has crabs, I w
rite Peter a short letter—it feels easier to write him than my mother—telling him where I am, even giving him my phone number. I don’t hear back from anyone.

  The clinic is like a big incestuous family. We work together all day, party all night, celebrate birthdays, holidays, and the days the temperature goes above seventy. We fight about programs, salaries, and whose dog puked in the waiting room. Someone’s always not talking to someone else, and there’s much shuffling as we sit down for staff meetings, trying to figure out who to sit next to, and who not to sit next to. The Haight area is improving, businesses moving back in, less crime. George Harrison does a benefit concert to raise money for us, and he comes into Medical to meet us. We walk around in a daze for days. I pretend I have lived here my whole life.

  Almost three years after running away, I call my house. Peter answers the phone. Within two minutes we’re shouting at each other. “Well, she tried to kill me!” I yell. “What do you expect me to do!”

  “Oh, grow up, Jenny. I don’t believe you. Jesus fucking Christ, she’s been nuts since you left. She said she said something she shouldn’t have. Nobody tried to kill you. You’re so goddamn dramatic.”

  I take a breath in that hurts my chest and shout, “What the hell do you know? You’re Mister Perfect, Mister Goody Two-shoes. You don’t know what this world’s all about!”

  “Oh, yeah?” he says. “Try telling that to the draft board!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hey, Jenny, what do you care?” He hangs up on me.

  I should have hung up on him first. How dare he call me a liar?

  Still, I get worried. But the war’s almost over, right?

  I call my house a week later. Peter answers the phone again.

  “Are you going to Vietnam?”