Chapter Eleven #2
Once inside their room, Nora collapsed first, face down on the pink flamingo comforter, while Leanne only halfheartedly washed her face and brushed her teeth before flopping down on the second bed.
Since they were running a little behind schedule, they’d missed their chance to go to the festival today. But at least they’d made it to California, and the festival was still going on tomorrow. Leanne fell asleep with the lights still on.
The following morning, they were up at dawn, eager, groggy, rushing to hit the road. And thankfully, Nora’s spirits had lifted at the prospect of catching the last day of the festival. Leanne’s was more like relief they’d made it and soon she’d have eyes on her mother.
Within miles of the Pink Flamingo, they were caught in the crawl of traffic—dozens of VW buses, station wagons, motorcycles, and flower-painted Beetles inching forward under a rising sun.
Some drivers leaned out of windows, passing bottles or offering peace signs to strangers.
A group of girls danced on the roof of a van up ahead of them, barefoot and glowing.
Demonstrators protesting the war marched alongside the trail of vehicles.
When Leanne and Nora finally got within sight of the festival and found a spot to park on the dusty grass shoulder, the sun was high overhead. They slammed their doors and jogged toward the gates.
Since they’d already missed the first two days of the concert, they were charged only six dollars for a day pass—though Nora had half-jokingly suggested they climb the fence, like a group of teenagers they’d seen scrambling over it at the back corner of the field.
“You think I came all the way across the country just to get arrested in California?” Leanne laughed breathlessly.
As they entered the festival grounds, they were hit by a wall of sound—drums, guitar feedback, laughter, and someone screaming joyfully in the distance. Leanne scanned every face for recognition but found none.
“Have you seen an older woman with a dog?” she asked each person who met her eyes. “About this big? Hairless?” She made motions with her hands.
All of them shook their heads.
Music pulsed from the stage, weaving through the scent of cigarettes, sweat, patchouli, and the unmistakable sharp tang of pot. Leanne had never smoked weed in high school, though she’d been offered some a few times at parties.
Tie-dye blankets covered the field like wildflowers, and everywhere people were dancing, swaying, spinning with their hands in the air like the music had loosened something inside them.
A guitarist launched into a solo as they entered the crowd. Would it be possible to sneak onstage and call her mother’s name out over the microphone?
Leanne didn’t recognize the name on the set list as it was belted out, but Nora started clapping, her face lighting up with recognition, her whole body moving to the beat. She shouted something over the music, but Leanne didn’t catch the name.
The music had taken her daughter too.
Then, a shift—the next set was announced, and Leanne recognized the names Ike and Tina Turner, knew the song belted into the microphone.
And just like that, she too was taken in by the music.
Instinctively, she sang along, the lyrics tumbling from her lips like they’d been waiting there all these years.
Her arms lifted in rhythm, her hips moving, laughter rising from somewhere deep in her chest. Letting go was not something Leanne usually allowed herself, but boy, did it feel good right now.
There was something liberating in this sea of strangers. Something unburdening. Here, she wasn’t a wife or a mother searching for her missing mother. Here, she was just a woman alive in the moment.
The autonomy didn’t last long. Guilt riddled her limbs for having even spared a moment in her search to sing.
Within minutes, Leanne unconsciously shifted to studying the crowd, her gaze scanning over the heads and shoulders, searching for her mother’s face, light hair, and eccentric clothes.
Concentrating on hearing just the slightest sound of her melodic voice—a voice she didn’t realize how much she’d missed until now.
But she couldn’t find even the slightest hint of her mom. Admittedly, given the crush of bodies and sound, she might not have been able to spot her.
“Hey there!”
A man brushed past, singing loudly, one hand raised for a high five, jostling Leanne to the side.
Dressed in a purple wizard hat, slouched at an angle, and a silver-stitched cloak thrown dramatically over bare his shoulders.
Bell-bottoms. No shirt. Magical runes painted in ink across his chest. Leanne did a double take at his getup as if she’d inhaled too much secondhand marijuana smoke.
He looked like a lunatic. Or a legend.
Then, without hesitation, Leanne slapped her palm to his. “Have you seen an older woman with a hairless dog?”
He nodded and grinned at her, then turned to Nora. “What’d you two think of Grandma?”
Both Leanne and Nora froze. The first clue that Eleanor might be here.
“I’m sorry—what?” Nora’s eyes narrowed.
“Grandma.” The man spun in a circle, cloak flaring behind him. “Rock-and-Roll Grandma was freaking awesome. Played a set earlier with Shep Moon. Made the crowd go wild. Gave him a run for his money! And the dog is hilarious looking.”
“Shep Moon?” Nora gasped, starstruck.
“The one and only.” The wizard wiggled finger guns at them before twirling and disappearing into the crowd’s haze of cigarette smoke like a spell had swallowed him whole.
Leanne and Nora stared after him, maybe in shock, before their gazes met, their lips pressed together to hold in their laughter.
“Do you think…?” Nora’s skeptical tone softened into awe.
Leanne looked out at the crowd, at the swaying bodies and the shimmer of heat on the stage. At the way Tina Turner had just kicked off her heels and was dancing like fire itself.
“Before now?” she said. “I’d have said no.”
She turned to her daughter, the beat of the music thudding beneath her feet like a second heartbeat.
“But we just drove across the country chasing Grandma…and now we’re standing in the middle of a field, high-fiving wizards and listening to Tina Turner.” She laughed, shaking her head. “At this point, anything’s possible.”
Nora beamed, eyes full of something close to wonder.
Leanne glanced back toward the stage—imagining Eleanor there, hair loose, hips swaying, voice rising. Imagining her mother not lost or slipping away but soaring—belting notes next to a rock star like she’d been born to be.
If the Grandma the wizard-man mentioned was her mom—and it sounded like she was—then Eleanor was fine. Safe. Having a good time, even.
Leanne wasn’t sure what her vision or the strange festivalgoer’s words meant, or the sudden sense of calm that overtook her.
But surely, they meant something.