The Myth of Perpetual Summer Page 29

  “You make it sound like it could be months.” Months of here, alone, working my mind-numbing job, going to parties I don’t care about with people I don’t really want to know. Or I could be doing something that matters.

  “That’s why I live in my bus. I want to be able to go anywhere. And I don’t want to be with anyone but you. What’s tying you here?”

  A thunderbolt hits me: I am not bound here just because Griff picked it years ago. As always, I’m complicating the simple by worrying about what other people want, instead of what I want.

  And I want to go with Cody. I want to do things that matter. That will help Maisie. If Cody and I don’t work out, I’ll figure out the next step on my own, just like I did when I came to LA. I am young. I am free. Unlike Margo, I’m not abandoning anyone to fight for this cause.

  Before my self-talk can change direction, I throw my arms around his neck and say, “I’m tied to nothing but you. So yes, I’ll go.”

  * * *

  It turns out two might live as cheaply as one, but two adults living in a VW bus is too cramped, even for Cody. By the end of November, we’re renting a room with a kitchenette and a bath in a house near Berkeley’s campus on a week-to-week basis. I’m volunteering for CORE and filling in part-time at a coffeehouse where Cody sometimes plays. The best nights are the ones when he’s performing, when I feel as if he’s singing only to me.

  If someone had told me when I left Mississippi a year ago I’d be this deliriously happy, I would have laughed in their face. But I am. Our life is simple. Uncomplicated. Spontaneous. Finally, I have the freedom my California dreams promised.

  As we leave the coffeehouse late one damp chilly night, the air between us is electric. I can’t wait until we walk the few blocks to our room. I grab his hand and pull him into a small neighborhood park surrounded by a brick wall.

  “Why, Tallulah James, are you trying to take advantage of me?” He sets down his guitar case on a picnic table and wraps his arms around me.

  “Indeed I am.”

  “Remind me to sing to you more often.” His words are slurred and breathless as his hands roam over my secret familiar places.

  Making love out in the open reminds me of our first time. It must for him, too, because it drives him deeper and just a little wilder. Afterward, our disheveled clothes are soaked with sweat. The chilly air is welcome against bits of exposed skin. His forehead is pressed against mine, our foggy puffs of breath mingling between us. He gently rearranges my clothes before his own.

  His arm is tight around me as we walk out of the park. “I can feel you drifting away already,” he says softly, not unkindly.

  “What do you mean?” I tighten my grip around his waist, confirming I’m right here.

  “It’s always like this. Just when we should feel the closest, when you should be able to share everything in your soul, you back away.”

  I can’t become my parents. It seems no matter how I try to maintain the wall between then and now, something dark and ruinous always seeps through.

  “You’re imagining things,” I say. “I’m just . . . content.”

  “All right, so, tell me one special thing about your life in Mississippi.”

  “Welllll.” I draw the word out, as if I’m sorting the vast number of special things my home held. But all I’m doing is looking for one that won’t change the way he looks at me.

  I decide to tell him about Maisie. I tell him about our summers in the orchard, about her Pappy Stokes and his bees, about the long connection between our families, about her quitting school and going into domestic service even though she was way too smart to be polishing silver and being bossed around by Mrs. Delmore. As I speak, a cold emptiness sits just below my heart. I realize how very much I miss her. I miss having someone who already knows the dirty secrets in my family, someone who understands my life without me having to drag it out for show and tell.

  As we walk into our room, he says, “She sounds like a good friend. But you’ve spent the past twenty minutes telling me about her, not about you.”

  I kiss him on the cheek. “I’m exhausted and need a shower to get rid of this cigarette smoke.” I drop my coat on the bed, hurry into the bathroom, and close the door. I lean with my back against it and close my eyes.

  The door pushes against my back. I step away and let it swing open.

  “What happened to you that’s so horrible that you can’t trust me with it?” he asks with pain in his eyes.

  I stand there for a long moment, reaching deep but once again falling short of being able to drag the past out and lay it before him. “Nothing horrible happened. I’m just tired.”

  “What am I to you?” His tone borders on cold.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I love you with all of my heart. But I have no idea what I mean to you.”

  I am terrified what I feel for you will overcome me, wipe out my will to live if you leave. If I admit it or if I let you see the ugliness hiding in my blood, it will give you a weapon to destroy me.

  “I feel the same.” As soon as I say it, his face hardens.

  “Well, it doesn’t feel that way. For you, this relationship is all sex and no substance.”

  I reach for him, as I always do, to show him what I can’t seem to find the strength to say.

  He pushes me away.

  I’m so hurt, I lash out. “I thought that’s what guys call the ideal relationship. Why can’t that be enough for you?”

  “You are unbelievable.” He turns around and slams the bathroom door behind him.

  I allow myself a good cry in the shower and convince myself it’s unfair of Cody to demand more than I can give. When I come out of the bathroom, he’s in our bed asleep, or pretending to be asleep.

  We spend the next few days in a mix of exaggerated politeness and silence.

  Finally, time and our chemistry wear us down and, without acknowledgment or apology, we go back to the way we were. Me pretending I’m giving as much as I’m getting, and him letting me believe it will be enough.

  28

  1965

  Berkeley, California

  The day is overcast, the air San Francisco chilly. I’m filled with snakes and shards as we approach the antiwar protest. I spent my childhood living with this walking-through-a-minefield tension and hoped never to experience it again.

  As always, Cody reads my mood. “Relax. This is a march for peace. Civil disobedience, remember?”

  Every month I hold my breath, fearing Cody will be called up for the draft. LBJ’s escalation in Vietnam has increased the number alarmingly. Unprotected by student deferment or the Canadian border, how long will Cody’s luck last? But the draft isn’t the only shadow creeping at our backs. A distance is growing between us. And in the dark of night when I can no longer distract myself, I fear we are simply a habit, one Cody doesn’t have the will to break, and I don’t have the strength to heal.

  “I’m fine.” A lie. I’m back in my bedroom closet on Pearl River Plantation waiting for the hurricane of my parents’ violence to pass.

  He puts an arm around my shoulder. “I can tell you’re nervous. Talk to me.”

  What good will it do to shine a spotlight on my fears? Without the illusion of strength and fearlessness, will there be anything left in me for Cody to love?

  “I’m really okay.”

  He stops dead and the stream of people heading onto campus flows around us. “Dammit, Tallulah. I’m sick to death of being shut out.”

  Does he think I want to lay my soul bare in the middle of thousands of people?

  “How much farther in do you think you can get?” I say suggestively, and start to walk on.

  He grabs my arm and stops me. “Why do you always do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Dodge. Deflect. Hide. I swear to God, sometimes I feel like you’re a stranger.”

  “How can you say that? We’ve lived together for months.”

  “And that’s what makes
it so fucking sad.” He walks away, leaving me dry-mouthed and angry.

  I consider turning around and going back to our apartment. But the idea of Cody being shipped off to die in a jungle halfway around the world fills me with so much fear that I move forward to add my voice to the chorus against the draft. I keep Cody’s blond head in sight in the crowd. As I move in tandem with him, fearing being separated by more than a few feet, it strikes me how dependent I’ve allowed myself to become. How long will it be before I slip into Daddy’s kind of immobilizing gloom when Cody’s physically or emotionally unavailable?

  The mass of people becomes dense. Cody’s talking to a girl I recognize from the coffeehouse—Stephanie, or Samantha, or something feminine and S-ish. She’s touching his arm; no doubt baring her innermost emotions and insecurities, speaking directly to his heart. I’m used to girls flocking around him. Today for the first time, it sparks panic.

  Can I give him what he wants? After all this time, am I going to admit my lies of omission—that I’m only eighteen, when he thinks I’m twenty-two? How will I explain that I don’t want the children he talks about because of the twisted sickness that runs in my blood? Is truth—Cody’s most precious commodity—delayed so thoughtfully and in such a calculated way better than no truth at all?

  The crush of people is suddenly on the move, marching our parade of antiwar chants and placards. I shuffle along, my mind on Cody and not the war or the draft or any higher cause. Suddenly there’s a flurry of movement off to my right. Two men push into our ranks, flailing fists, shouting that we’re all communists and cowards.

  More people surge in from the sidelines, shoving, shouting.

  A kid is on the ground, curled and covering his head from the kicks of a burly man in a seaman’s jacket. I throw myself at the man, trying to knock him away, give the kid a chance to get back to his feet. The man catches me with a forearm and flicks me off like a flea.

  A knot of struggling bodies knocks me to the ground. My cheek hits the pavement. A heavy foot lands between my shoulder blades, knocking the breath out of me.

  Get up. Get up. You’re going to be crushed.

  A scuffling foot kicks my thigh.

  Tennis shoes, loafers, and boots engage in brutal dance before my eyes.

  My breath gone, I’m drowning just like I drowned in that river.

  But no one is here to save me.

  The movement around me ebbs. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the ground. Sixty seconds? Six minutes?

  Then gentle hands come to my rescue. Cody?

  But it’s a stranger. Cody’s moved on with the crowd.

  I sit on the curb and wait for the shaking to stop, waiting for Cody to come looking for me. But he doesn’t. He cares more about the march than about me. And that crushes me more than the boot in my back.

  After a while, I pick myself up and walk back to our apartment, where I clean the scrape on my cheek and lift the back of my shirt to see a foot-size bruise.

  Cody knew I was afraid in that crowd. And still he left me.

  I sit on our bed in the dark, waging an inner war of my own. The entire day points to one thing: Cody and I are in serious trouble. Do I want to fight or surrender? To fight means to give up even more of myself. And I already feel far too dependent.

  The door to our room opens. “Tallulah?”

  “I’m here.”

  He flips on the overhead light. “Oh my God! Are you all right?”

  Sitting next to me on the bed, he pushes my hair away from my scraped cheek.

  “I got knocked down.” I pull away from his touch. “And you left me.”

  “I figured you came home, since you didn’t want to be there anyway.”

  I’m so furious I can’t breathe. “When that fight broke out, you didn’t even look for me!”

  “I should have made sure you left. But dammit, you are wearing me down.”

  “You’re trying to make this,” I motion to my cheek, “my fault? You knew I was nervous, and you just walked off with that girl.”

  “Treat me like a stranger long enough, and I suppose I begin acting like one. I can’t love enough for both of us, and God knows I’ve tried.”

  “You’re saying it was okay for you to abandon me out there because I don’t love you enough?”

  “I’m saying it’s time to stop dragging the carcass of our relationship around and bury it in the ground. I’ve seen what not giving up on a lost cause did to my parents. I won’t do that to us.”

  “You’re leaving me?” I remind myself I was just ready to leave him. Easy to think when it’s not really happening.

  “I never really had you, did I?”

  “I love you!”

  “You love me?” He jumps to his feet, shoving his hands roughly through his hair. “Now you love me?” He shakes his head, and I’m stunned by the anger I see in his eyes. “Do you know how you’ve made me feel, declaring my love for you, never hearing it in return?”

  “Haven’t I shown you that I care? I moved here. I was at that march, a place that terrifies me, because of you.”

  “And yet, still I don’t know the reason it terrifies you. Or any other fucking thing about what’s going on under your skin. I don’t know what you think love is, but to me it means sharing everything.”

  “I do love you, Cody. I just . . .”

  “I’ve respected your boundaries, thinking one day you would trust me enough to let me see the wounds you’re hiding, let me help you heal them. But it’s clear you don’t want me to. Now I’m bone-dry. There is no more love in me.”

  My whole body is shaking. If I had shown you the truth, you would have been gone long before now.

  He grabs a canvas duffel and starts throwing his lyric notebooks and clothes into it. I watch in silence as he picks it and his guitar up. He stops with his hand on the doorknob, perhaps offering one last chance for me to open a vein for him.

  “Take care of yourself, Tallulah.”

  And then he’s gone. Out of my life in an instant, wrenching my heart from my chest and throwing it in the dirt.

  29

  August 1972

  New Orleans, Louisiana

  Unable to sleep after leaving Ross in the garden last night, I surrender the effort at 5:00 a.m. I drag myself to the kitchen in search of coffee. Gran is already sitting at the table, fully dressed, the cup of coffee in front of her cold enough the cream scums the top. She’s so lost in thought that she startles when I speak to her.

  “You unable to sleep, either?”

  She pushes herself up from the table. “Let me get you some breakfast. Ross has a nicely stocked refrigerator for a bachelor.”

  “Sit, Gran. I just need to start with a good dose of coffee.”

  “You know how I feel about breakfast.”

  “I do. And I believe you. But this morning, I’m not sure my stomach will accept any donations.” I pour my coffee and sit across from her. As I do, I recall Ross’s promise not to desert me. I hold on to it. I could do this alone, I know I could. I’ve survived worse alone. But I’m surprised to find I don’t want to. In fact, I’m tempted to wait until he comes down to tell Gran about Walden’s guilty plea.

  As if conjured by my thoughts, Ross comes through the back door wearing shorts and running shoes, hair and gray T-shirt drenched with sweat. He pulls up short. “Excuse my appearance, ladies. I thought I’d be back and cleaned up before anyone was up.”

  “You always run this early?” I ask.

  “In the summer. Can’t stand the heat once the sun comes up.” He fills a glass from a water pitcher in the refrigerator. “Do you run?”

  “Only if I’m being chased by a bear.”

  He leaves the room chuckling.

  “I know yesterday got away from us,” Gran says, turning her coffee cup in slow circles on the table. “But I think we should call Dharma as soon as the hour is decent.”

  “Want me to heat that up for you?” I start for the Mr. Coffee, hoping to dodge the sub
ject of Dharma.

  “No, thank you.” She waves a hand over her still-full cup. “I don’t really drink coffee anymore. It just gave me something to do. It’s an hour later in New York. So do you think if we wait until seven?”

  “Gran, I’m not so sure calling Dharma is that urgent right now.”

  “I know she can’t get here in time for this morning’s hearing, but she’ll want to talk to him. And she’ll need to plan, so she can be here for the trial.”

  I kneel in front of her. “Gran,” I take her hands in mine. “There won’t be a trial. Walden is pleading guilty. He asked Amelia not to tell us because he wanted to do it himself. But that was obviously just a way to keep us from knowing ahead of time and arguing with him.”

  She sits blinking, and I’m not sure she understood me. Then her face clears. “Then we must call Dharma right away! If she can speak to him before the hearing, he’ll change his mind. Call your uncle and get her number.”

  “Has she kept in touch with you or Walden at all?”

  “You didn’t keep in touch, and you still came when you knew Walden needed you.” She pauses. “I understand why you did what you did, Tallulah. I made my choice, and you made yours. But that’s behind us. I’m sure Dharma—”

  “I already called Uncle Roger. He as much as threatened me if I called Dharma about Walden’s arrest.”

  “Don’t you think we need to give her the chance to decide on her own?”

  If only Margo had let us weigh in before tearing our family apart, maybe we all would have been better off. “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I do. I just hope she’s listed.”

  “If not, maybe Ross’s private investigator can help.” The hopeful note in Gran’s voice tells me she’s in for a huge disappointment. Even if I do find Dharma.

  “I’ll use the phone in the library.” I pause at the doorway. “Maybe you should be the one to talk to her.”

  Gran offers a watered-down smile. “Oh, I don’t think it matters. She never heeded me any more than anyone else.”

  She never heeded anyone. “I’ll do my best to convince her. But, Gran,” I pause on my way out of the room. “Don’t get your hopes too high that we’ll get Walden to change his mind.”