Chapter 3
Our apartment door was unlocked. That meant they were waiting up for me.
I entered and saw mother in a pink wrapper, her dyed brown hair up in curlers, sitting by the open window. She said ritually, "Thank God you're back safe."
"Oh mother!" I snatched off my sunglasses and headed for my room.
"Just a minute, Miss Show-off. I want to talk to you." Her voice was slurred. I saw the half-empty glass dangling in her hand.
The apartment was quiet. I asked, "Where's Dad?"
"Your father is out making his rounds of the local topless bars. As usual."
She brought her glass to her lips. Her eyes flickered and she lowered it without drinking. She said angrily, "Where've you been all this time?"
"With friends."
She snorted. She looked up at me with resentful, dead eyes. "David told me what kind of friends they are. Dirty, sex-minded beatniks!"
"They're hippies."
"Bums and little whores! Is that what you want to be, Juli? A little two-bit slut who sleeps with anyone who happens to wear old clothes and a beard and spouts 'Peace' and 'Love' all the time?"
She made me furious! "That isn't the way it is at all! Just because you're getting old and fat and never enjoyed your life you don't want anyone else to have any fun or act any different."
We were enemies, mother and I. Absolutely alien to each other. She couldn't ever see anything good about me.
She paled and her eyes turned mean. "I don't want you getting mixed up with those awful freaks! Before you know it you'll be taking dope. You'll wind up in an insane asylum!"
"I suppose you and Dad don't take dope? Your purse is full of pills. Wake-up pills, energy pills, tranquilizers, sleeping pills, diet pills, and that isn't enough-you have to get drunk every afternoon and night, and Dad has to work and exercise like mad and go out to bars to keep himself distracted because he's afraid to slow down and face himself and you and this junkie life of yours!"
"How dare you call me a junkie!"
"You are and you know it. You couldn't give up any of those pills. You'd go crazy!"
"I wouldn't!" There was genuine fear in her eyes.
"Then do it! Stop drinking all the time! Stop depending on those things! Stop being a slob. Lose some weight. Try to be a real wife for Dad, and a real mother to me. If you'd-"
Her face twisted. "Shut up! I don't need advice from my own daughter on how to behave! If I acted like you I'd go around practically naked all the time, tempting men, having no respect for anything or anyone--"
"I respect those who earn my respect."
She drank from her glass. She swallowed heavily. A thin, unnoticed trickle of liquid went down her chin and dripped on her wrapper. She finished the drink. She smiled pathetically. And complained, "You expect me to be perfect. You've got to learn to be tolerant. I love you, Juli, even if you don't love me. You're all I've got."
It was hopeless but I tried once more to make her see. "Mother, you're trapped in a way of life that doesn't make any sense. Dad manages an appliance store and sells plastic junk to people just like you who don't need nine-tenths of that stuff. They buy it because they're told to buy it on TV and in magazines and newspapers."
"If people didn't buy those things your father would be out of a job."
"Good! Then he could do something productive and really useful for society!"
Mother shook her head. "Dear God! Listen to her! Nothing we do is good enough. All she can do is criticize! We raise her, we spend all kinds of money on her, send her to college so she can earn a good living if she doesn't find herself a likely man to marry and she spits on us and acts like a little whore! She runs around all the time with God knows who in that bikini that shows everything she's got!" Mother glared at me. "Where did you get that dirty old sweater?"
"A friend lent it to me because it was chilly out."
"Take it off. It's probably full of fleas and lice."
"If it is I've got them by now anyway, so it doesn't matter."
"Go take a hot shower. I've got some disinfectant soap you can use."
She was serious! I said, "Go to hell!" I ran into my room and slammed the door.
I took off the sweater, my bikini, put on a robe, opened my door and slipped into the bathroom. Mother didn't look around. I took a quick shower and returned to my room.
I went to bed naked.
I couldn't sleep.
I felt so sorry for Dad. I couldn't understand why he had stuck with mother all these years. Did he enjoy being denied and put down all the time? Did he get some kind of weird subconscious masochistic kick out of living with a woman like mother? Hadn't he known what she was when he married her?
I only knew for sure I wanted out! I wanted out of the society and culture which had produced our "normal" family in our "normal" house in San Marino ... and which provided me with David Krayne as a "normal" boy friend.
I wanted Owl and Zeke and the others in the tribe. I wanted them to be my family!
I had a weird feeling of not-belonging, of being in the wrong place. Mother, and even Dad, had been strangers to me for years. More and more I had the sensation of being alien to them.
I wasn't happy with them. I didn't care about college if it only led to a marriage like the one I had observed all my life ... to a big, over-priced thirty-year monument to a mortgage bank ... and to the kind of inner and outer life that would drive me to seek escape in pills and a bottle. I wanted out!
I had a weak, sick sensation in the pit of my stomach. My heart thudded in my chest. I got out of bed and went to the window of my room. I stared out at the beach ... the Ocean Front walk ... the parking lot.
I heard a tambourine being shaken somewhere near ... young voices ... Then I saw three hippies, two boys and a girl, all barefoot, strolling along the Walk. Fog was rolling in from the ocean, but they didn't care. They were happy and content.
I watched them until they passed out of sight. I smiled. I had made a decision. I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately.