Chapter 16
The next day I tried to talk myself into not going into Santa Monica to meet mother. I slept late. I busied myself with tribe activities ... But I couldn't escape the clock, my awareness of the time, and my conscience. I had promised!
So at ten minutes to twelve I walked out of the house and headed for Main Street. I made a deal with myself. I'd wait until Noon exactly, and if the bus didn't come by then I was off the hook, and could go back to the house. I would have given fate and mother her chance.
The bus swept around the Venice Circle and wheezed open beside me two minutes after I reached the stop. I had to go through with it.
I found mother parked three meters away from the Visitor's Information Booth on Ocean Avenue. As I approached I saw her notice me. She had been sitting like a corpse. Her mouth widened too quickly into a smile. She reached over and unlocked the passenger side door. High noon on Santa Monica's busiest street, regularly patrolled, and she was afraid.
She was wearing her lime-green suit and white, lacey dickie. It was too warm and too tight for her. A dew of sweat was on her forehead and upper lip, and had dampened her hairline. The closed car was stuffy, and she was steamy, but she had even been unwilling to roll down a window.
I left the door open and sat on the outer edge of the front seat. I let my bare left foot luxuriate on the deep-pile aqua floorboard carpet. My right foot rested on the warm cement curbing. I wore only the same pedal pushers and blouse as before. My long blonde hair was clean and combed straight.
Mother said, as I settled onto the seat, "I was afraid...."
"I'm not going back with you."
She seemingly didn't hear me. Her mind was set up to run a course and nothing would stop it or alter its direction. "I had to take four tranquillizers this morning. They don't do me any good at all. I'm so nervous!" Her fingers were at it again, writhing like alien worms, out of her control. It was weird and frightening to watch her hands and listen to her.
I saw tears puddling in her eyes. "Mother--. "
"I'm having a nervous breakdown. I know it! I tried to call Robert last night but he wouldn't even talk to me! I can't sleep. I haven't slept for a week. I just lie there tossing and turning ... " She had been talking with her head bowed. She turned and beseeched me with watery, pleading eyes.
"I don't want to go back there, mother!"
She sobbed. Her beginning double chin wobbled. Her fat, sweaty body seemed to squish in its layered trap of rayon, cotton, nylon, dacron. I could smell her deodorant fighting a losing battle. "Don't you love me at all, Juli? Not even a little bit? Don't I mean anything to you at all?"
"Yes, but "
"You've got your whole life ahead of you! There'll be all the time in the world for you to play at this hippie business later ... but I need you now, for just a little while. Juli ... if you only realized ... if you only knew what I've been going through!" She couldn't maintain her composure. She cracked and wailed and clutched and pawed me close again. Huge sobs wracked her. "Oh, Juli, Juli, Juli ... "
I was twisted around awkwardly, holding her and being held, still trying unconsciously to keep one foot outside on the curb, outside in touch with freedom. There was nothing I could say except yes or no. I felt helpless, torn apart, on a terrible spot.
"Please, Juli, come home for a little while ... just a little while ... Oh, God, please ... I can't go on alone...."
"You'll be all right, mother. Dad'll come back...."
"No, he won't! You didn't hear him! It was terrible the things he said to me! He doesn't want me any more. And you don't either. I'm begging you, Juli! I'm begging you!
Dear God, what more can I do? You're holding my life in your hands, don't you realize that, dear? I can't face another night alone in that house! I can't!"
I couldn't get free of her. She held me like a vise. She held me with nineteen years of social conditioning. Maybe even instinct was part of it. My mother was begging me for help. Yet I sensed she was faking, putting on, exaggerating...
"Just come back for a few weeks, dear, please! Just two weeks. That's not much to ask, is it? You can give your own mother that much time from your life, can't you?"
How do you say no? Owl had been right the night before in his acid high. He had known ... had seen...
Two weeks...
"Juli ... " The hysterical, desperate edge I had heard the day before returned to her voice. Her fingers dug into my arms. She lifted her face from my shoulder and her eyes ... the look in them I'm afraid of being alone. I think about suicide. I was in the bathroom last night with a razor blade in my hand I came so close to doing it ... "
"No, you couldn't "
"I WILL!" She screamed!
It shocked me!
"YOU'VE GOT TO HELP ME!"
"All right, I will. I will." There was no alternative. Not then.
"Oh, thank God!" She disintegrated into a welter of sobbing and weeping.
And I sat there with her head in my lap, feeling her tremble, feeling myself tremble, sick inside, wanting to take back the words.
Mother lifted her head from me and she was smiling through her tears ... triumphantly? ... and she said, "We'll be a good team, Juli, you and me, you and me and your father can go to hell! We don't need him as long as we have each other." She dug more Kleenexes from her purse and wiped her eyes and said, "I don't think I can drive, dear. Do you want to get your things. . . no! Leave everything! Don't go back to that house and those hippies for anything! I'll buy you new clothes, whatever you want! It'll be something for us to do!" She smiled and squeezed my hand.
I didn't care about clothes! I agreed to drive, and to drive directly back to San Marino, because I was a coward. I couldn't face Owl and Zeke and the others.
I went around to the driver's side and climbed in as mother slid over. A tiny dead feeling had come to me, and as I drove east the deadness grew larger and larger.
The freeway
San Marino...
The house.
The bright, forces chatter from my mother. The thousands of familiar things that made up my room-cell in the house-prison in the city-compound.
I sat in my room and rolled a sheet of paper into my pink portable and slowly tapped out: "Dear Owl "
The deadness was complete.