The Lake

TEN

When she got home late that afternoon, she had a story ready: A purse snatcher had grabbed her shoulder bag when she came out of the movie theater on Market Street, she had fought him off, and that’s how the sleeve of her granny dress got torn.

One look at her parents and Leigh knew that the story wouldn’t wash. They were standing in the living room like a couple of mannequins left behind in a hurry—Dad sideways near the window, head down and turned her way, one hand on the back of his neck, Mom in front of the fireplace, facing her, the fingers of both hands mashing her lower face. Mom’s eyes were red, accusing. Dad’s eyes were haggard, blank.

Obviously, they both knew.

Leigh forced a smile. It felt crooked. “I guess I’m in for it now,” she said.

Dad’s eyes stopped looking blank. “If you see an amusing side to this situation,” he said in an icy voice, “I would appreciate your filling us in. We fail to see the humor.”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve put us through?” Mom asked, lowering her hands and clutching them in front of her waist.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

“You’re sorry,” Dad said. “Well, so are we.”

“How… how did you find out?”

“They interrupted the Giants game,” Dad said.

“My God, how could you do such a thing?” Mom blurted.

“And there you were.”

“It made your father physically ill.”

“I’m sorry I lied. But you wouldn’t have let me go if I’d told you about the demonstration.”

“You’re goddamn right about that.”

Leigh cringed. She’d rarely heard her father use profanity.

“Kids are over there dying, for godsake, and here you are in a getup like some kind of hippie freak, holding hands with a bunch of long-haired creeps who want nothing better than to destroy a way of life—”

“Nobody wants to destroy anything.”

“Bullshit!”

“We just want the war to stop.”

“I’m not going to debate the war with you. That isn’t the issue.”

“It is, too.”

“How do you think Colonel Randolph would feel,” Mom asked, “if he saw how you—”

“He’d still have his son,” Leigh snapped, “if it weren’t for that murdering bastard in the White House.”

Dad turned white. He crossed the floor so fast Leigh didn’t have time to move, and slapped her hard across the face.

She was stunned. Dad had never slapped her before.

Whirling around, she ran to her room, slammed the door, and threw herself down on her bed.

She had stopped crying by the time Dad came in. He sat on the edge of the bed. He had been crying, too. He stroked Leigh’s forehead, lightly brushing the hair aside. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know. Me, too.”

“Your mother and I… we try to understand. If we didn’t love you so much, do you think we’d care one way or the other if you were out there?… You could’ve been hurt…”

“Maybe I was. Did you ask?”

“No. Were you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Well, that’s lucky. How did your dress get torn?”

“One of the…” She almost said “pigs,” but she didn’t want to start him up again. “A cop grabbed me. But I got away from him. Then I took off. I was supposed to let them bust me, that was the idea, but I figured you and Mom would really hit the ceiling if you had to come and bail me out.”

“You’re right.”

“I guess you hit the ceiling anyway.”

“I spent four years of my life fighting for this country, honey. I can’t help it, but my blood just starts to boil when I see a bunch of pampered kids who never worked a day in their lives spitting on everything that—”

“Don’t get started, okay?”

“Burning the American flag.”

“Dad.”

“Mouthing off about ‘the establishment.’ My God, it’s the dreaded ‘establishment’ that puts the food in the bellies of these people… I’m the establishment. Me and all the other people who worked our butts off so that our kids could maybe have it a little better than we did. And we’re the enemy? Am I a warmonger? Is Colonel Randolph? Do you think he likes this war? My God, the man’s been devastated by it.”

“Then he should be out there marching against it.”

Dad shook his head, sighed. “I would never wish anything bad on you, honey. I certainly hope you don’t have to learn this the hard way. You’re all idealistic right now, and you’re sure that peace and love will rule the world if you just march around and sing a few songs about it. But I’m afraid you’re in for a rude awakening. There are bad people in this world.”

“Tell me about it,” she muttered.

“I intend to, whether you like it or not. There are people out there—and governments—that would be more than happy to wipe out you and me and your mother, our country if they’re given half a chance. Guys like your pals Castro and Ho Chi Minh.”

“They aren’t my pals. Neither is LBJ.”

He ignored that and went on. “Guys like Charles Starkweather and Richard Speck.”

She’d heard of Speck but didn’t know who Charles Starkweather was.

“Do you think your pacifism would work on them? Turn the other cheek on them, and they’ll cut it off for you.”

“I get the message.”

“Do you? I doubt it. I think your mind’s been so twisted around by all your long-haired friends that you don’t know which end is up anymore. We’ve been pretty lenient with your weird outfits and anti-everything buttons and staying out till all hours at that place in Sausalito. But we trusted you to have more sense than to get involved in something like this today. We brought you up to know better.”

“You brought me up to do what I think is right,” Leigh said. “And I think it’s right to protest the war.”

“Well, you’re mistaken. And it’s high time for a crackdown.”

“Let me guess. I’m grounded.”

“At the very least, young lady.”

“Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

“You can feel free to speak whatever you like, but I will not allow you to march with the Great Unwashed and get yourself thrown in jail.”

“I didn’t get thrown in jail.”

“Not this time. And believe you me, you won’t get another chance at it. Not while you’re living under this roof.”

Leigh pulled the pillow down over her face. “Are you done?”

“We just want what’s best for you, honey.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You’ll understand someday when you have kids of your own. Now why don’t you get cleaned up for supper. We’ll try to start out on a new foot, okay?”

“All right,” she muttered.

When he was gone, she took her robe into the bathroom. She pulled her dress over her head, turned it around, and looked at the buttons pinned to the front. A peace button. One with Uncle Sam pointing, not his finger but a revolver. One read, “Make Luv Not War.” Another, “The Great Society: Bombs, Bullets, Bullshit.” Another, “War is Unhealthy for Children and Other Living Things.” Dad had called them “anti-everything buttons.” He was so blind. Couldn’t he see that they were pro-peace and -love?

Leigh let the dress fall to the floor. She moaned from her aches as she bent down and untied the leather thong around her left ankle. The bell strung through it jingled softly. She set it on the counter.

Reaching behind her neck, she untied the other thong. She held it up and stared at the dangling ornament. She had found the thing in the sand near Point Reyes Station a few months ago. She didn’t know what it was. Maybe that was why she had kept it. The small, rounded thing with one side curled inward seemed too light to be a stone. It looked and felt like ivory. She suspected it might be some kind of shell or fish bone, though its shape was so peculiar that she couldn’t imagine what kind of creature it might have once belonged to.

It came with a hole through the middle, so she had strung it on a rawhide lace from one of her old hiking boots and made herself a necklace.

She thought of it as her “sea-thing” necklace. Sometimes as her lucky necklace.

It hadn’t brought her much luck today.

She set it down carefully beside the ankle bell and looked down at herself. Pressing in on her left breast, she flattened it enough to let her see the reddish-blue mark across the ribs just beneath it. A police nightstick had done that. The same nightstick, wielded by the same pig, had left a bruise the size of quarter on the jut of her hipbone.

That fucking Gestapo pig.

Leigh had seen lust in his eyes when he went at her, ramming low with the end of his stick. He was aiming between her legs. But she moved fast enough so it pounded her hip instead.

Leigh turned around. She looked over her shoulder at the mirror and saw three strips of bruises across her back. The seat of her panties was shredded and speckled with blood from when they had dragged her by the feet. She pulled the panties down and wrinkled her nose at the sight of her scraped buttocks.

Yeah, Dad, she thought, tell me about the bad guys.

Three days later, Leigh was on a TWA flight to Milwaukee.

From her parents’ point of view, the Bay Area was a hotbed of radicalism. A month with her uncle Mike and aunt Jenny, two thousand miles away from it all, would keep her safe from such influences and give her a chance to learn how people look at things in the solid, down-to-earth Middle America.

She didn’t have to go, of course. They wouldn’t force her. If she refused, however, she would be restricted to the house for the entire summer.

Leigh decided to take her chances with the boondocks.

Once she agreed to go, Mom and Dad changed. They seemed a little giddy. The Prodigal Daughter had returned. Instead of slaying the fatted calf, they took her out to dinner at the White Whale on Ghirardelli Square. Leigh let herself slide back, at least for the time being, into the role of the well-bred daughter. She didn’t want to spoil their mood. Besides, acting rebellious would have been difficult; she enjoyed fine restaurants too much. The dim lights, the quiet sounds of people dining, the pleasant aromas and delicious food. She could never walk into one without starting, right away, to feel good.

Her parents seemed to forget that the trip to Wisconsin was a ploy to remove Leigh from harmful influences. It was a special vacation for her. She would love it—the woods and lake, the swimming and boating and fishing. They wished they could go with her, but of course Dad’s job made that impossible. On second thought, maybe they could arrange to come up for a week later on. It would be terrific.

Mom took Leigh shopping the next day. At Macy’s on Union Square, they bought a conservative dress and shoes for the flight, two sundresses, an orange blouse, white shorts, a modest one-piece bathing suit, and an assortment of undergarments. Leigh went along with her mother’s suggestions, though she fully intended to spend most of her time in T-shirts and cutoffs.

At Dunhill’s, they bought a soft leather tobacco pouch and a tin of Royal Yachtsman tobacco for Uncle Mike, a pipe smoker. At Blum’s, they bought a box of candy for Aunt Jenny. They ate lunch there and finished with a dessert of Blum’s fabulous lemon crunch cake.

Leigh expected to be taken home when they returned to the car after lunch. Instead, Mom drove her to North Beach. “You’ll need some reading material, I think.” They went to the City Lights, then to a secondhand bookstore across the alley. Mom waited while Leigh loaded up with paperback editions of Franny and Zooey, Soldier in the Rain, Boys and Girls Together, The Ginger Man, In Cold Blood, Love Poems of Kenneth Patchen, Just You and Me, and The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Mom raised an eyebrow at the selection but kept her opinions to herself and paid for all the books.

Leigh woke up on Tuesday morning feeling excited. The trip, to be sure, was a form of banishment. But she found herself looking forward to it anyway. The trip would be an adventure. She’d be on her own during the flight and, if her aunt and uncle would stay out of her hair enough during the visit, she might even be able to enjoy herself. At least they weren’t her parents—maybe they wouldn’t try to control her life while she was there.

At the boarding gate, Mom wept. Dad gave her a fierce hug.

“Be on your best behavior,” Mom said.

“Save some fish for us, honey,” Dad told her.

“You’re definitely coming out, then?”

“We wouldn’t miss it.”

Leaving them, she hurried along the boarding ramp with light, quick steps. She almost started skipping. She felt free and wonderful.

When she reached her seat, she opened her purse and took out her peace button. She pinned it to the top of her crisp, proper, Macy’s dress. Then she tied the rawhide behind her neck, opened her top button, and slipped the sea-thing in. It was smooth and cool on the skin between her breasts.

The pin and necklace let Leigh feel more like herself.

They can change where I go and who I see, she thought, but they can’t change who I am.