Chapter 14

I had to wait in a detention room on the second floor of the Venice police station for four hours! It was a bare little cubicle with a bench and a door. Nothing else. The bench was up against the bare pale green wall and was bolted to the black and white tiled floor. There was one small barred window.

I waited and waited and it got dark outside and I worried about Owl. I just knew he was having a bad trip. I wanted to be with him! I could help him.

An overhead grill-light came on. It glared down on me.

Finally the door was unlocked with a loud jangling of keys outside in the hall, and was opened. Mother walked in. A policeman closed the door but didn't relock it.

She said, "Oh, Juli, thank God you're safe. Your father and I have been worried sick!" She came toward me, intending to hug me, but I didn't get up. I just sat on that hard wooden bench and looked at her. She faltered and stopped. Her eyes had a funny empty look. I knew she was coked up on tranquilizers. Her fingers writhed on her big purple purse.

She was breathing fast from the unaccustomed exertion of coming up the steep stairs. She said resentfully, "That was a terrible thing you did to us! That note. That awful, insulting note. We love you, Juli. Robert and I love you!" She puddled up. She opened her purse and brought out a white laceedged handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes.

"Mother, why did you lie to the police and tell them I was seventeen?"

"I wanted to find you! I had to find you, Juli!" She looked around for a chair. She sat on the bench beside me. She put her purse on the floor and tortured the handkerchief with restless, cruel fingers that lived apart from her conscious mind. She reached for me and grabbed me. I was pulled against her purple dress, against the stiffness of her bra and the loose softness of her pendulous breasts, against the fat of her arms and into the perfumed, gin-breath, sweaty intimacy of her body aura. She moaned, "I need you, Juli. I need you."

"Mother...."

"You're all I've got left! I'm so alone...."

I struggled free of her and stood up. "You had no right to have me dragged into a police station like this!"

"But I had to find you!" In spite of the tranquilizers there was a frantic, hysterical edge to her voice. "You've got to come home with me, Julie. Robert has left me. Your father has left me! He wants a divorce!" She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. "Oh, God. He doesn't want me anymore." She began to cry and it was real.

She was pathetic. I could only feel pity for her. But I couldn't blame dad for finally leaving her. I said, "What happened?"

Mother spoke through a watery whine of self-pity. "He c-came home one night ... you know how late he stayed out. He has another woman. I know it. He doesn't even try to ... I'm not pretty enough any more. I'm not sexy so he's got himself a young slug ... a wife can tell ... but he came home ... three days after we went back to the house, after you'd left us ... he was so shocked at what you'd done, he wanted to hire private detectives ... maybe if I'd let him find you sooner.. .I don't know, I don't know---"

"Mother, did he come home and just tell you he wanted a divorce?"

"Yes! Yes! He told me ... he came home and he could see I wasn't feeling good. I was sick. I had taken one of my powerful sleeping pills, the yellow ones, and it hadn't worked so I took one of the small ones, and I was so dopey. ... And he got mad for no reason. . . and he started breaking my things ... my medicine...."

Her "medicine" was her gin. She couldn't even think of an original pretense.

". . . and he yelled at me and called me terrible names and said he was through and he was going to get a divorce. When he said that, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I got a pain in my chest and I couldn't breathe and everything went around and around. ... "

"And he moved out?"

Mother nodded and blubbered. "Th-that night. He p-packed his suitcases and I-left me."

"And he hasn't been back?"

"No, not once. He's got himself an apartment somewhere..." She was shaking. Her world had been torn apart. "Please, Juli. Please! PLEASE!"

And I was torn apart. I didn't want to go back with her. I couldn't! But I felt I had to! Pressure from a life of subtle social conditioning welled up in me ... she IS your mother ... you owe it to her ... you can't be so selfish ... she raised you ... she needs you ... obligation.....

I didn't know what to do! I stood there before her and tried not to see her cry and tried to twist off the hook of my conscience and tried to say something that would soothe her and reassure her ... And I hated her for putting me on the spot, for dragging me out of my wonderful new life and back into her sick mire of crippled emotional dependency.

"Mother, you have friends ... woman friends. They used to come over every day! Some are divorced. They know what you're going through. Maybe one of them will come live with you for a while."

"No ... you can't abandon me, too, Juli. You're my daughter! My own flesh and blood!" She raised a tear-streaked face beseechingly. Her eye make-up was running. She looked awful.

"But I'm really happy where I am now, Mother, with the tribe. I'm one of them now."

"You can't mean that, dear. This is just a phase, an infatuation, an idealistic..." She searched in her fuzzed mind for words. ". . . phase. Your real home is with me. Now that your father has stepped out of our lives we have to stick together." She coughed on phlegm and scrabbled in her purse for a small pack of Kleenex.

"No, I want to stay with my new family. I wish you'd come to the tribe house and meet them. I know you'd...."

"I won't go near that place ... that neighborhood! I won't allow you to go back there, either! You've been brainwashed or something, Juli, and you don't know it." She wiped tears and chewed her upper lip free of lipstick and asked fearfully, "Have you been taking your pills? I know you've been doing things with those hippies!" 'Hippies' came out coated with loathing and contempt. "I heard about you coming to the house in that painted foreign car with a Negro! Mrs. Rand told me you were inside the house with him for nearly an hour!"

"We were talking." I couldn't tell her the truth. Not because I was ashamed but because she couldn't have handled it in her condition.

"You haven't..." She chewed her upper lip again briefly. "You didn't let him ... do anything to you ... did you?"

"No, mother!"

"Thank God!" She wiped her eyes. "If you had any idea how I've worried!" She got to her feet. She sniffled and snorted and said, "I have my car outside. We can go right home. I shouldn't have driven with all the tranquilizers in me, but I had to come get you when the police called. But you can drive us home. We won't bother with your things where you've been staying. I'll buy you new things. We'll go down tomorrow and shop...."

"I'm not going back with you."

"Oh, Juli!" The stricken look twisted her face again.

"I'm sorry, mother." I shook my head helplessly and clenched my hands and found myself weeping, too. "I just can't!"

She closed on me. I was in her arms again. "Dear ... dear ... tell me the truth ... are you taking drugs? Are you hooked?"

I withdrew, angry, appalled and yet close to laughing. "Of course not! Zeke is against drugs. And so am I."

"But I need you, Juli."

I shook my head. I was miserable. I wished she would go away and not claim me!

She saw my determination, I suppose. She slumped. "I see. Your mother doesn't count ... you must hate me as much as Robert...."

"No, I don't hate you, but...."

"Will you see me again? Can we meet somewhere and talk? You can do that much! That's not too much to ask! Dear God "

"All right. All right ... I'll call you."

"No! I want to see you! Tomorrow. I'll drive in and pick you up somewhere and we'll have a long heart to heart talk. Woman to woman. I'll meet you in Santa Monica, at the Visitor's Booth on Ocean Avenue. You know, where we stopped that time and got out and looked down at the highway and the beach and the pier and everything."

I knew. I sighed and nodded. "All right, mother."

"At Noon? Is that a good time for you? Noon?"

"Yes."

She embraced me again. "Oh, Juli--. "

"Can I leave here now?"

"I think so. I'll tell them downstairs ... the truth...." She left the room.