Moving On (113 page)

She went over and knelt by Miri to see what should be salvaged of the garments there. They were mostly sweaters and jeans, with a few skirts and no bras and a pair or two of panties. Miri sat on the couch and looked at Stone. Patsy could find no shoes at all.

“My god,” Patsy said. “You must have some shoes. Where are her shoes?”

“She left ’em someplace,” Stone said. “We been living light.”

To Patsy’s great relief he seemed to have turned off his hostility. He suddenly looked totally apathetic. Miri, again reflecting him, seemed apathetic too. But in a way it confused the scene even more. She had come up the stairs prepared for any sort of wildness—blows, screams, curses, and police. She expected to have to drag Miri away inch by inch. But Stone stood at the window and Miri sat on the couch and they both looked as if they had forgotten what was happening and had no interest in it. Patsy was at a loss. There was nothing to gather up, no suitcases to pack, nothing. The few garments by the mattress were simply not worth bothering about. There seemed literally nothing else to do but take Miri by the hand and lead her out. Stone had shrugged it off and Miri, once she was in his company, seemed to be completely passive. Patsy didn’t know what to do. She sat down beside her sister.

“Is it your child?” she asked, looking at Stone. The problem had just occurred to her.

“Might be.”

“Oh, shit,” Patsy said. “What an incredible goddamn mess. I have a genius for screwing up and even I couldn’t screw up this bad.”

“No mess,” Stone said. “You just takin’ her away. I knew somebody would, sometime. It’s always happenin’. You get mixed up with some chick with redneck kinfolks ’n’ sooner or later some redneck gonna come and take her away.”

Patsy didn’t want to argue. She wanted to leave. “You think anything you want of me and I’ll think anything I want of you,” she said. “Since we don’t know one another, that’s what we’ll have to do. Could you at least tell me what my sister’s been taking to make her like she is? I might need to tell a doctor.”

He looked at Miri wearily, as if he wished they were both gone. “She takes this and that,” he said. “Little speed, little acid, smoke some grass, few pills—whatever we run into.”

“No wonder she doesn’t know where she is,” Patsy said. “Look, I’m not trying to banish you from her life forever. I don’t know what I think about the future. I just know she’s in wretched shape and needs to be healthier. I assume you had your chance to take care of her and now I’m going to have mine. But I’ll give you my address and phone number and you might give me an address where I could reach you. I don’t know what might come up.”

Stone shook his head, as if talk of addresses was completely senseless. “You leavin’, Miri?” he asked in the gentlest voice he had used, but the way he said it was ambiguous. Patsy could not tell if it was a question or a statement.

“Isn’t there going to be a party somewhere?” Miri asked.

“Come on, honey,” Patsy said, taking her arm. Miri stood up and looked at Stone briefly, but whatever impulse had caused him to speak gently had been only momentary and he was looking at both of them with clear hostility again, the same hostility that had been in his face when he first came to the door that morning.

“Goodbye,” Patsy said. Stone turned away and said nothing.

When they were in the hall, on the stairs, Miri looked at Patsy hostilely and said, “Why didn’t you invite him too?”

“Not now,” Patsy said.

Joe and Melissa were relieved to see them. The two young men were looking at the Morgan as if it were a beautiful piece of sculpture. But the Morgan was a problem. There were six of them. Since Stone had been no trouble, Melissa decided the young men were dispensable, but that still left four. Finally Patsy and Miri and Melissa took a taxi and Joe followed in the Morgan as a kind of rear guard. Miri was silent, but quite passive. They decided to go to Melissa’s house, where Miri could clean up a bit. Once in the taxi, Patsy relaxed—a little too soon, as it happened. Miri was sitting on the outside, and when the taxi stopped for a light on California Street she simply opened the door and got out. She was out before Patsy could move. It was very awkward, for the light changed just then. Miri got across ahead of it, and it was hard to pursue. Fortunately, though, she was not running, nor even trying to lose them. She wandered into a big grocery store, where they caught her, and once caught she was quite passive and went back with them to the taxi, talking about the grapefruit in the store.

Barry was gone when they got to Melissa’s. Miri seemed to recognize the house and did not seem frantic. Melissa showed her the bathtub and she immediately wanted to take a bath. While it was running Melissa offered to run out and buy Miri some shoes and a decent sweater and skirt and Patsy gave her some money. Joe made plane reservations and went back to the hotel to check the two of them out. They were a well-functioning team; only Patsy had nothing to do. There was a plane to Dallas in four hours.

Once Joe and Melissa were gone, Patsy kept hearing the water running in the bathroom and became worried. Perhaps Miri was drowning herself. She peeked, very cautiously. Miri had filled the tub to the very top, and was sitting in it. All her clothes were stuffed in the bathroom wastebasket. Her hair was wet and she was fingering the medallion around her neck and humming softly. It was an old deep 1920s tub; the water covered Miri’s breasts.

Patsy was relieved and went and sat in Melissa’s quiet, bright room, in the rope chair by the bay window. She could see a corner of the little park where they had walked. She heard the tub draining, in the silence, and then heard it begin to fill again. She was puzzled, and peeked a second time. Miri was standing with her back to the door, her feet on a towel, waiting for the tub to fill again. Her hips seemed very slim.

She was still bathing when Melissa returned with the clothes. In the end she emptied and filled the tub four times. Melissa said let her, it was harmless enough. They put the clothes inside the door. Then they dropped their guard again and Miri almost got away. Patsy wanted to see the view from the bedroom again, and while she looked Melissa sat on the mattress sewing up a hole in one of Barry’s sweaters. They were chatting, not worried about Miri at all, when they heard the living room door shut. “Barry?” Melissa asked, surprised. But it was Miri leaving. She had slipped quietly out. They rushed out and caught her before she had gone a block, but it gave Patsy the jitters. She was glad when Joe returned. Miri sat in the living room plunking softly on Barry’s guitar, her black hair still damp from the several washings she had given it. Joe Percy sat down by her and began to talk to her as if they were old friends, and Miri warmed to him and began to chatter, still playing the guitar. They talked about Simon and Garfunkel, and about the Jefferson Airplane. Then Miri got up and began to walk restlessly around the room, carrying the guitar.

“Let’s go on to the airport,” Joe said. “We can walk around until the plane leaves.”

Melissa decided to stay with them until the end, and Patsy was just as glad. They called a taxi and just as it arrived Barry arrived too, carrying a sackful of vegetables and a paperback copy of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. He decided to come along and folded himself into the front seat of the cab while the four of them squeezed in the back. Miri was silent. She looked strained again, and a little wild. As the taxi curved onto the Bayshore freeway Patsy glanced back at the hills and white houses and wished for a moment that all was different, that she could walk around with Joe and Barry and Melissa and see the city. As it was, she could scarcely be conscious of anything but the troubled face of her sister. She could hardly believe that Miri seemed to know her so little, so intermittently.

At the airport they thought to pass the time by watching the planes come in, but Miri’s face was tightening. She looked wild and tense and scared of the crowds, and they were all worried. “Maybe we ought to feed her,” Joe suggested. Patsy was dubious, but it proved a good suggestion. The airport restaurant was not too crowded. Melissa ordered Miri some chicken noodle soup, while the rest of them had coffee. The waitress brought a little plate of crackers and Miri ate them all before the soup came. Then she ate all the soup and did not protest when Patsy asked if she would like a grilled cheese sandwich. Patsy ordered it and Miri ate it all.

It dawned on the four of them simultaneously that Miri was starving. They ordered her a salad and some milk and a hot roast beef sandwich. Miri ate the sandwich and asked for another. While it was coming, she asked Patsy what color Davey’s eyes were. “I couldn’t tell from the pictures you sent,” she said, wiping her mouth. Barry regarded her with wonder and a certain amount of envy. He was hungry but Melissa wouldn’t let him spend their money in an airport restaurant. “Could I have some ice cream?” Miri asked. She felt her hair to see if it was dry. She had ice cream and pie and coffee and leaned back in the booth, looking like a sane, clean, and somewhat somnolent girl who would like to take a nap. The rest of them, excepting Barry, felt almost slack with relief. Barry had not been tense. Patsy took advantage of the lull to call Jeanette. She told her to have Davey and Juanita ready. They were all going to Houston that night. Miri was okay but might react badly to Dallas. Jeanette was numb with gratitude and agreed to everything.

On the way to the loading gate Miri walked ahead with Barry, talking rapidly. Joe and Patsy and Melissa all felt bushed, although Melissa made a pretense of it being all in the day’s routine. Patsy felt so grateful to all of them that she feared she would start crying if she tried to express it. At the gate she thanked Melissa rather awkwardly and Melissa smilingly passed it over by giving her messages to Lee, messages which it would not matter if she forgot. Barry put his arm around Melissa as they were waiting. They made a great tall couple, Patsy thought. She resolved to sing their praises to Lee and Bill. Patsy had brought nothing to read and Barry pulled the Kesey book out of his jacket and pressed it on her, assuring her he could get another the next day at the bookstore. As Miri was quiet, and waiting awkward, they waved and wandered off to window-shop in the airport stores.

Miri was sitting comfortably in one of the seats in the waiting room yawning and looking out the window, and Patsy and Joe stood by the railing that separated passengers from guests, talking awkwardly about things that didn’t interest them. Joe looked a little ragged, and Patsy remembered that he had his love problem. She had wanted to talk to him about it, but she felt too odd and choked to want to do it there in the airport; she felt she had only a few threads of control left. Joe apparently felt somewhat the same way and they chatted without hearing each other and looked out at the blue sky over the brown hills of the peninsula. Tiny cars sped by at the foot of the hills. When the flight was called they were both glad, and they looked at each other finally. Tears started in Patsy’s eyes.

“Okay, thanks, buddy,” she said. “Please don’t get your dumb heart broken.”

Joe shrugged and grinned, as if to say such things were not in his power to prevent, and then he reached across the rail and hugged and kissed her. Patsy picked up her purse and got her ticket ready; Miri got in line with her, still yawning. Joe stood at the rail watching. “I’d know you for sisters anywhere,” he said. “What a pair of broads.” They both looked pleased.

“Hollywood to the end,” Patsy said, turning to wave goodbye.

“I accompany you,” he said. “Call me if I can help.”

“Oh, Joe,” she said, and the line pressed her into the plane.

“Want to read?” Patsy asked when they were both settled, but Miri merely nodded. They were both silent as they waited for the plane to fill, and silent as it taxied out the runway. But their silence was pensive, not awkward or hostile. Both looked out the window at the hills with the cars speeding at their feet, or at the planes coming in one after another over the water. It was a pleasant silence, as if both were glad that for a few hours nothing would be expected of either of them except that they sit. They were flying first class and it was very comfortable. As they went up, the white bank of evening fog was just pushing at the line of hills; the sun shone on the fog and made it brilliantly white, white as a cloud. In a few minutes they were over the Sierras, very beautiful and rough and capped with snow. Patsy had never seen mountains so clearly from the air. They shone beneath the plane, and all California stretched beside them, brown and white and blue at the horizons. Joe and Melissa and Barry would scarcely be back in the city. And then Joe would be driving intensely down the freeways, most of the night probably, unless he chose to stay in San Francisco and drink. She hoped Melissa and Barry would ask him to dinner; she didn’t like to think of him drinking alone. It had been a hard day. She was tempted to have a gin and tonic but remembered that she had to drive to Houston. She could not afford to get too relaxed.

She was not allowed to relax, anyway, for as they were passing over Nevada, Miri, who had been sitting quietly, leafing through the Kesey book, opened her little purse and before Patsy noticed what she was doing took out a marijuana cigarette and lit it. Patsy caught the faint odor and looked around to discover to her horror that Miri was offering marijuana to the well-dressed middle-aged couple who sat across the aisle. The man looked startled for a second but immediately recovered his aplomb and he and his wife declined and spoke kindly to Miri, who offered the cigarette to Patsy. The stewardess came just at that time to take dinner orders; though she must have observed what Miri was smoking she treated it with the utmost cool and merely let down their trays. “Look, please put it out,” Patsy said. “Please. Wait until we get home. I don’t want you having your baby in jail.”

After one more draw Miri complied. “I guess I better save it,” she said, looking into her purse. “I don’t know anyone to buy it from in Texas.”

She ate her food when it came, but Patsy hardly touched hers. She was tight with apprehension. It occurred to her that the cool stewardess had probably told the pilot, who would probably radio the Dallas police. Narcotics agents would be waiting for them when they got off the plane. She thought of making a personal appeal to the stewardess, or of having Miri flush it, but she knew Miri wouldn’t want to and in any case her paranoia was accompanied by a kind of fatalistic lethargy. All she did was sit and worry. The land darkened; lights winked far below. Miri read in the Kesey book. “I met him,” she said, and talked in her light voice about a party, but Patsy was too glazed with worry to hear.