Sleeping Beauty (13 page)

“No, you're it. You are a very attractive girl. Could you slow down? You're walking too fast for me. Where are we going, anyway?”

Anne stopped, her eyes cold. “Go wherever you want; just stay away from me. I don't want you here. I was having a nice time and you're ruining it.”

“Oh, come on. We're supposed to be together; that's what it's all about. I mean, look . . .” He pulled her to him and wrapped his long arms around her. “The whole thing is love, right?” She was struggling and he tightened his hold. “We could have fun; we could have a good time together—”

At that echo of the past, Anne screamed, shattering the quiet street. People whirled about and came running. “Why'd you have to do that?” he exploded. “You didn't have to act like I'm some rapist; I wanted to
love
you.”

“Come on, let's run.” A tall young woman grabbed Anne's hand, and before Anne had time to think, she was running across the street and along the sidewalk on the other side, toward the park, her hand held in a firm grip. People scattered to make way for them and they ran and ran, stretching their legs in long flying leaps, their hearts pounding,
their sandals slapping against the sidewalk, their blouses wet with perspiration in the hot sunshine of the May afternoon.

“Oh, marvelous,” gasped the young woman as they reached the park. She flung herself on the cool shaded grass beneath a tree, pulling Anne with her. “It was good, wasn't it? God, I love to run like that. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Anne said. Her face was flushed and bright with surprise. “I really am. I feel wonderful.”

“Running always does that, and it doesn't matter whether you're running from or to. I'm Eleanor Van Nuys. Pleased to meet you.”

“Anne Garnett. Thank you for rescuing me.”

“Sandy would've let you go; he doesn't believe in force. But you're great to run with. We should do that once a day whether we need it or not. How long have you been here?”

“A month. What about you?”

“Oh, forever. A year. I came right after I finished high school. My family had my whole life strategically planned: I was going to graduate from college and get married right away to a somewhat older rich man who'd settle me down, have three kids—a girl, a boy, and I don't know what the third was supposed to be—and make a lovely home in the suburbs and a
très chic
roughing-it summer place in Maine. So what could I do but take off? I couldn't stand it every time they pushed me to do this or that to get ready for my future, and they grounded me when I went out with boys who weren't good for my image, whatever that means, and I just got to totally hate everything. Especially all the arguing.”

“Arguing about what?” Anne asked. “What did you want?”

Eleanor shrugged. “Who knows? My own messy future instead of their tidy one, I guess.” She was tall, with long, tangled red hair, a small mouth that was always in motion, talking or singing or whistling—“You cannot believe how my parents hated my whistling; it drove them absolutely bananas”—green eyes that narrowed to angry slits when she saw a wrong being done, and a fierce temper that could
explode like a Roman candle, leaving her and everyone around her stunned and breathless. “I do have that problem; my temper. But I figure it ought to mellow out by the time I'm twenty-five. Most people ease up when they get old, don't you think? How old are you?”

“I'm nineteen, too,” said Anne.

Eleanor tipped her head to the side and studied Anne's face. She reached out and brushed Anne's black hair away from her eyes. “More like seventeen, but you can be whatever you want, as far as I'm concerned. Where're you from?”

“The East Coast.”

“Really? Me, too. Where?”

There was a pause. “I'm not really from the East Coast,” Anne said slowly. “I guess I just don't want to talk about it.”

“Okay with me. What would you like to talk about?”

“You.”

“Really? I love to talk about me. Let's see, what else is there? I like to read, especially biographies, because I like knowing that people who turned out really great had as much trouble with their parents as I have. I try to sit through horror movies, but I just can't do it—”

“Why do you want to?”

“Oh, some guy told me it builds character to face your nightmares and walk out knowing that they didn't turn you into a blubbering idiot. He might be right, but I can't stand the tension. And then there's the other possibility: what if I end up blubbering?”

“Maybe you
should
blubber sometimes,” Anne said, surprising herself. She had not volunteered an opinion or had a real conversation with anyone in all the time she had been in the Haight. “If you don't cry when things are scary, you probably don't care very much about anything or anybody, and then you're hardly even human.”

“You're not talking about movies, are you? You're talking about real life. You really believe that? I'm usually afraid to cry. It's like, if I was really grown-up, I'd be able to cope with my emotions and incorporate them into my persona in productive ways.”

Anne smiled. She felt the unfamiliar stretching of her muscles and knew it was her first smile in more than a month. “You read that somewhere.”

Eleanor grinned. “I've got this neat psychology book; you can look at it sometime, if you want. It uses a bunch of fancy words, but it really has good stuff in it. Like what I just said; it means you're supposed to master your emotions instead of drowning in them. You're supposed to use them to solve your problems with the tools you've got, the personality you've got, instead of going to pieces over the things that happen.”

“You can't always solve them,” Anne said, her voice low.

“Well, then, you run away from them,” Eleanor said cheerfully. “Like everybody around here did.” There was a silence. “Anyway, I think the reason you're not supposed to collapse in horror movies is because you're supposed to know they're fake. My problem is I forget. I get mixed up about what's real and what isn't. I think of whole stories sometimes and I can't be sure whether they're about people I know or whether I just imagined them.”

“You should write them down,” Anne said. “Maybe you're a great writer and you don't even know it.”

Eleanor tilted her head. “I might. That's not a bad idea. But don't tell anybody; they might think it's too much like work. Anyway, I gave up on horror movies because I don't think they're worth a damn in building my character. Another guy told me I should go rock-climbing to build my character. I think I might like that, but the opportunity never arose. Do you like them? Horror movies?”

“No. Or horror books either. I hate being scared. Who are all these guys who give you so much advice?”

“Just guys. Every guy I've ever known has given me advice. Do I look like I need it?”

Anne shook her head. “You look like you can take care of yourself.”

“Well, sometimes. I like guys, though, and maybe I send signals without knowing it, asking for help. I'm not always sure about what to do next, you know. I kind of go in spurts,
and sometimes I wonder how I got where I was and why I'm there and where I might end up next. How about you? Do you have guys telling you how to behave, trying to teach you to do things their way?”

Anne jumped to her feet. “I have to go.”

“Where?” Eleanor looked up but did not move. “If you don't want to talk about something, just change the subject. I don't get insulted. Do you really have to go? 'Cause if you don't, we could talk some more. I'm having a great time. I thought maybe you were, too. I thought maybe we could be really good friends.”

A small flame of gratitude flickered to life within Anne. For the first time since she had left home, the cold, hard dryness inside her began to soften. Slowly, she sat down, and very slowly she smiled, a wider smile than the first one. “I'd like that,” she said.

*   *   *

From then on, Anne and Eleanor were together every day. They strolled the streets of Haight Ashbury and the park, they joined clusters of people who made room for them in their lazy conversations and songfests. It seemed to Anne that everyone was filled with love and kindness, and they tried to make everyone happy by reaching out to anyone who wandered by. They accepted differences in each other, and so they were casual about the snappishness Anne still could not always control, and the way she shrank from their touch. And they were just as casual when she began to relax as she grew accustomed to them and closer to Eleanor. All that summer Anne responded, without realizing she was doing it, to the undemanding warmth of people she barely knew: an atmosphere of easygoing affection that was like a salve on the wounds she had brought to the Haight.

And then it was autumn. The sun's rays were lower, casting a warm glow on the houses of the neighborhood, and the shadows of trees lay like long feathers across the festive streets. Anne had been there for six months. She was still the only one, it seemed, who was not always in physical contact with someone in that climate of touch and feel and love. But
still, she belonged, and even though she never danced or sang with the others, she liked listening to their harmony and watching their sensual movements.

She went with them when they headed for streetcars to hand flowers to commuters. She stood in line with them to fill out forms for unemployment compensation and food stamps; she bought groceries and ate her meals with them; she traded her favorite books with them. Often she slept on the third floor of the house Don Santelli had taken her to, but frequently she stayed in Eleanor's house, or the two of them would stay in yet another house, on other mattresses or cots or couches, waking up to have breakfast with a different group and then going outside to spend the day with still others. In all those ways, she was part of the fluid life of the Haight without completely joining it, and she thought it was enough. She didn't need touching, and she certainly did not need love.

It was that September that Anne realized she could greet by name more than a hundred of her neighbors, and she met more every day and learned all about them. They made it easy, because they talked about themselves all the time. They never asked questions, saying they respected everyone's privacy; instead they told their life stories and their views of the universe to anyone who would listen. Anne liked to listen. She also remembered everything she was told, and the next day or the next week she would greet people by name and ask them about something important to them. She hadn't realized how much that meant to people, or how good she was at it, but she learned very quickly that it paid off in popularity. People liked her, they liked talking to her, and soon they sought her out so she could be their listener.

“You ought to charge,” Eleanor said as she and Anne walked to the grocery store at the end of September and were stopped by people every few steps. “You could call yourself a psychiatrist. Nobody'd ask for a diploma; they'd just be totally grateful for somebody who listens and cares about them. And they'd pay you. They should, too.”

Anne grinned. “They'd find other ears in a hurry if all of a sudden mine cost money.”

“No, they'd want you,” Eleanor insisted. “I could organize it for you, make appointments and send bills and collect your money and all those things.”

Anne gave her a look of mock astonishment. “A respectable job. Your parents would freak out. Eleanor comes to her senses and gets a job. Almost as if she never left home.”

“Home is nothing like here,” Eleanor said emphatically. “Even if I did get a job.” She walked in silence, her face suddenly brooding, and Anne knew she was thinking of home. They all did that now and then: they withdrew into some private place to remember, because some word or picture or stray thought had brought back their homes in that mystical glow that bathed Anne's family whenever she let herself think about them. Then they would remember all the problems of growing up that they hadn't been able to handle, and soon they'd rejoin the conversation and be part of the group once again.

“Anyway, it wouldn't be a real job if I did it for you,” Eleanor said. “I wouldn't take pay; I'd do it to help you. That's what makes life good: friendship. Not money. Money fouls up everything.” She pulled out her wallet to pay for the groceries, and they both broke into laughter. “Well, it's nice to have when you're hungry,” Eleanor said, counting her change. “You're eating at my house tonight, don't forget.”

“Oh, I can't. I promised Don I'd help him with his birthday dinner.”

Eleanor sighed. “I told you I had somebody I wanted you to meet.”

“And I told you I don't want to meet anyone.” They left the grocery store carrying string bags bulging with food. They wore long, flowing sundresses and sandals and walked leisurely in the dappled light beneath plane trees that swayed gently in the afternoon breeze. “We keep going through this; why can't I be happy sleeping alone?”

“Because it's unnatural. I've got all these guys and you haven't even got one. I know you don't want to talk about it,
but you've been here six months and it's time you tried something new. There's tons of neat guys around; more than enough for both of us. Why won't you at least try? This is an essential part of growing up. Go to a movie with us, have a pizza, sit around and smoke—”

“I don't smoke.”

“I know and I love you anyway. But you do other things. How about bed? However old you really are, you must know all about it, and you must have fooled around a few times; everybody over twelve does, these days.” She peered at Anne's face. “I know, I know, the subject is taboo. Okay, forget it. But would you do me a favor? Would you please come to me first when you feel like having a guy? So I can recommend somebody and make sure you're all right? Will you at least do that?”