Winnie #2
“And that’s a reason you can’t paint? Or see a concert?
” I was so sure that I was right, that my sister was wasting her talents.
I wonder how my life would have turned out if I’d taken a page out of my sister’s playbook and dedicated my life to something stable?
I try not to let my mind wander too far down that dead-end road.
Miranda let out a frustrated sigh on the other end of the line. “Back off. Why don’t you come home for a few days?”
“Because then I have to see Mom, too.”
Miranda was quiet a beat too long.
“What?” I pushed. “It’s not like it’s some big secret that we don’t get along.”
“I know, I just…wish it could be different.”
“Well, it’s not, and it never has been. Could you please stop trying to change it?”
Miranda sighed. “Alright, you win.”
Except it didn’t feel like a victory at all.
In late October, I saw Lincoln on the corner of Cole and Haight eating a peach and smoking a joint. I stopped cold and watched as he took a drag, held it, blew it out, and then bit straight into the peach, fuzzy skin and all.
Mom always peeled our peaches. I didn’t think I’d ever even tasted the skin before. And where had he even gotten a peach at this time of year?
As drips of pinky-orange juice rolled down his arm, his eyes fell on me and he broke into the biggest smile. “Well, well, well. I’ve been wondering when I might bump into you again.”
“I’ve been right here.” Even though I said it coyly enough, I immediately regretted the undertone of I’ve been right here, waiting for you…for six damn years.
I felt ravaged by the hungry intensity of his blue eyes and wondered if he was still seeing the girl he’d kissed at Magic Mountain.
“Well,” he said with a sly smile, “it’s been worth the wait.”
He still had that charisma, the ever-amused eyes that held people in thrall.
It wasn’t just me. Even in high school, he could reel people in: of course girls, but also teachers and even the BMOC football players.
If Lincoln wanted your attention, he made sure you gave it to him and were grateful to be doing it.
There was something else he turned on with me, though.
A reciprocal gratitude. Like, he knew he could have anyone in the room, but he wanted me.
Even more, he was a little awestruck to be getting me, as if my attention was precious to him.
He was wearing a Byrds T-shirt that was just tight enough to suggest a limber torso, which narrowed from shoulders to hips that were clad in dark velvet trousers.
He looked perfectly San Francisco dandy, not as extreme as the guys from The Charlatans, who wore top hats and waistcoats in a style that belied the electric sound of their music, but enough to convey that he was making the trend his own.
I wore a short shift dress in one of the bright, swirling patterns I favored, which showed off my legs, and I had a scarf knotted headband-style at the nape of my neck.
I was always trolling the vintage store bins for castaway Hermès and Chanel scarfs with stains or holes in them.
It was very important to dress as an individual, to reflect one’s identity, and I had begun to see myself as a poet in a line descended from Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elizabeth Bishop, and Anne Sexton.
My hair was very long, and it formed a curtain around my lithe, petite form, while the nipples of my small breasts declared through every fabric that I had no need of anything as confining and conforming as a bra.
I could tell Lincoln liked what he saw, and in that moment I felt beautiful and powerful.
We spent the day together, roaming the Haight, then up to the Presidio and along the Marina, talking and sharing a few hand-rolled cigarettes, breathing in the skunk of weed and hash that floated on the breeze like the guitar and softly sung folk melodies from people’s windows.
A brilliant blur in our peripheral vision, the psychedelic colors of concert posters, outrageously painted cars, and vibrantly dressed people went by.
I felt loose and warm with optimism and possibility.
Everything was just perfectly off-kilter.
When I looked at Lincoln, he had an aura to him, a magnetism that made the air around him vibrate.
I’d never been able to talk to anyone like I talked to Lincoln.
We loved so many of the same bands, movies, and books.
We could finish each other’s sentences about a recent piece in the Berkeley Barb and crack each other up with stories about our high school classmates.
When we passed a soda fountain that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere looking like something out of a 1930s film set, we both stopped walking at the same time, looked at each other, and said, “Root beer floats.” We were sitting on the split leather stools, leaning on the Formica countertop and slurping the sweet, pulpy mixture of ice cream and soda, when he leaned over and said with a silly grin on his face, “Will you go to prom with me?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” I blushed for real, not as part of the act, because I hadn’t gone to prom; he hadn’t been there to go with me.