Winnie
The day we met in front of her friend Rachel’s place in the Marina felt like when we used to wake up and run barefoot into the kitchen to pull out boxes of cereal and read or draw before Mom got up, when the whole day still felt full of possibility.
In her crisp Bermuda shorts and polo shirt, Miranda looked about as different as possible from me in the flapper dress that I’d hemmed to way above my knees.
Miranda smiled and I hugged her like we hadn’t just seen each other at graduation.
It was weird, but I missed my sister more when I saw her—or rather, I missed her fervently in that first flush of seeing her again, and it was like every game of tag, every adventure we’d acted out together under forts of blankets and pillows, was suddenly alive in those hugs of reunion.
“I’ve missed you,” we both said at the same time, then we laughed and said “jinx” and laughed some more.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I said, linking my arm through hers.
“Me too,” she said, and for once her voice sounded weightless, carefree.
Miranda let us into Rachel’s place, the top two floors of a townhouse that had been converted into apartments.
It was weird to me that my sister’s oldest and best friend was so different from her, having barely finished her community college degree before marrying her high school sweetheart and moving to the city and having a baby.
I was impressed, though, that Rachel’s husband was going to take care of their four-year-old for two whole days while his wife went to a bunch of concerts with us.
I wondered what it would be like to have a man do that for you.
Growing up at Hartley Vineyard, it was pretty much all women doing everything. I tried not to feel jealous.
Plus, their place was gorgeous. It might have been overrun with kid junk, but the apartment felt big, with a bright living room full of plants, and a sliver of a view of the bay from the window in the guest room where Miranda was staying.
“Can I crash here, too?” I asked. “We could both fit in that bed, right?”
“Only if you shower first,” she replied, lightly enough, but I probably did smell pretty ripe.
I hadn’t used the shower in a few days. There was always a wait for it in the big Victorian two blocks off Haight, where I shared a room with two other girls.
Plus, the tiles were pretty moldy, so I never felt like I got really clean—after a few days, you stopped noticing the unfortunate side effects of that.
The idea of a proper bath and bed was pretty appealing.
“You got it,” I said, flopping on the clean handmade quilt as my sister winced and wrinkled her nose. “So…you excited to act your age for a few days?”
“I’m excited to see Jim Morrison.”
“I know. He is far out.”
“When do you think we should head out there tomorrow? I want to make sure we can see the stage.”
“I dunno. We’ll get there when we get there. Time runs differently here.”
“But the concerts run on a schedule, don’t they?”
“Sister! Chill out. We’ll get there.”
As I sank into Rachel’s pillows, I closed my eyes.
My last joint was wearing off, and I was full from a nice big slice of pizza the Diggers were handing out, the only thing I’d eaten that day.
Bless the Diggers and their anticapitalism; the free food and clothes they provided kept broke artists like me from starving and freezing some days, though it was always a mystery where it all came from since they were starving actors themselves; it wasn’t like the San Francisco Mime Troupe most of them were part of was making a lot of dough.
Now a nap was all I wanted in the world. I did not need my uptight sister buzzing in my ear.
Miranda knew. She knew me so well.
I heard her sigh, rustle around a bit in that overstuffed suitcase of hers, then I heard the door gently click shut, and I was out.
The next day, all clean and well rested, I was happy to let Miranda have her way with the schedule. She had come all that way, after all. And anyway, I was pretty desperate to see Jim Morrison, too, and The Doors were supposed to be one of the first bands onstage Saturday.
Miranda and Rachel refused to hop on the back of any Harleys, though, no matter how much I reassured them that the Angels had been shuttling people everywhere safely all spring long.
So we took one of the buses, which were probably less safe than the motorcycles, but I was in a mood to be agreeable.
In about ten minutes, though, I regretted that choice—if the ride had lasted any longer than an hour in that death trap, I probably would have thrown up the entire contents of my stomach, and since that included a delicious pancake breakfast Miranda had made, I was not inclined to let it go.
As soon as we were released and my stomach settled a bit, I lit a spliff—I wanted to pace myself, and also not offend my sister too much, though I was impressed that she and Rachel took a few puffs, and before noon at that.
We streamed with the rest of the fish toward the amphitheater, which had something like 4,000 seats for the tens of thousands of us showing up that day.
Our tickets didn’t entitle us to seats but to a picnic blanket on the surrounding grass, so we pushed as close to the stage as we could, setting up Rachel’s plaid blanket, which promptly soaked through with the dew on the ground.
“Okay, one of us has to stay here to guard our spot at all times,” said Miranda.
“Aye, aye, Captain,” I said. The weed in that spliff was good and strong and I was starting to feel that fuzzy, throbbing distance that made everything feel so soft.
Miranda rolled her eyes, and then—hallelujah, oh joy of woman’s desiring!—she laughed. I laughed.
Then Rachel laughed.
Then we were on the blanket rolling around and practically peeing in our pants we were laughing so hard.
It was perfect.
It was crazy sunny, and thank god Miranda had thought to bring hats and long-sleeved shirts and umbrellas or we would have turned into lobsters before lunch.
I was in love with the day and my sister and all the people setting up around us, passing around jugs of orange juice and thermoses of coffee and cookies and bread and joints and tabs—not yet, I told myself, though I could barely contain my excitement about the trip I planned to take later.
The stage and seats and the heaving mass of the rest of us were nestled in the majestic shadow of Mt.
Tamalpais, a ridge that we all said was the silhouette of a Miwok girl who had saved her tribe, then lay down on the earth to rest. I tried not to think too much about what Gretchen, a girl from a class I took on early American literature, who’d been raised on a reservation in Nevada, had said about stories like the one complimenting Mount Tam: that they were meant to assuage the guilt of conquerors.
She didn’t much like the way we hippies used images of Native Americans in concert posters, either.
“What’s an Indian chief got to do with a concert at the Fillmore?
” She had me there, but I put my faith in Kesey and Garcia not to lead us astray.
The Hare Krishnas had set up a big tent about half a mile away and people started bringing back paper plates of their deliciously fragrant vegetarian foods.
I’d had plenty of Krishna meals in the Panhandle and the park, and my mouth watered when I saw my favorite lentil daal, which I’d been told was very healthy so I was less inclined to fret over eating it.
If I was careful, I could look like Twiggy in short dresses and pants that hung off my slender hips.
In those days, I associated big meals and ample thighs with Mom and the winery and Napa and everything I was trying to get away from.
As I hopscotched between blankets and people and lawn chairs to get us some food to share, I wondered how I would find any of the college friends I knew were supposed to be there in a crowd of that many people.
We hadn’t thought to meet at a specific time and place; we just assumed we’d find each other, which now felt impossible in the raucous mass.
But I was content enough with Miranda and Rachel that I didn’t feel like I needed to go looking too hard.
Once I’d loaded up a plate, I headed back, chewing on a piece of curry-soaked naan, inhaling the smoke billowing from hundreds of pipes and bongs and joints, letting the sound of laughter and talk and guitars and drums from all around fill my ears and vibrate through my body.
There was a treat for every one of the senses, and the vibe was so good, so full of generosity and goodwill, I almost cried with overwhelming happiness.
One of every three blankets had some kind of sign atop a stake in the ground: “Bring the troops home” and “Hell No, Nobody Goes,” amid an absolute wildflower field of peace signs, some of which had been made of bright orange paper poppies, since the real ones had died off by the end of May.
And the concert hadn’t even started yet. I still had that to look forward to. It was better than Christmas Eve, better than that moment right before a first kiss, better than that very first puff.
The effects of that spliff had long since worn off. This was life I was feeling. Cosmic, intense, beautiful life.
If only I could feel this way without drugs all the time, I thought.
Just when I finally saw Miranda in the distance, reclining on our blanket and smiling like she was also the happiest she’d ever been, I caught a glimpse of Lincoln a few yards away.
I froze and followed him with my eyes.
Lincoln Salyer.
Is it really him?
I hadn’t seen him in six years, not since he was a gangly teenager with enormous hands and bony elbows and floppy chestnut curls constantly getting into his Caribbean blue eyes.
Yes, that had to be him. The hair and hands were the same, though his arms and shoulders had rounded.