“I’m afraid I’m responsible,” Patsy said. “If it’s any consolation, I like your beard.”
“Thanks,” he said, his face lighting up. “Melissa’s nuts for it too.”
“Now that he’s up you can come in and see the bedroom,” Melissa said. “That’s our real view.”
Patsy went in, and agreed, for the bedroom window looked out over the southern part of San Francisco, over thousands of slanting roofs and white buildings, with churches in the distance. She looked down into the tiny yard below and saw a calico cat walking along a fence. The bedroom was like the living room, furnished with a mattress and cushions, a bookcase with a vase of yellow flowers sitting on it, and a small TV on the floor. There was a tiny balcony just off the bedroom. “It’s a great place for smoking pot,” Melissa said, indicating the balcony. “It’s just great on foggy nights.”
Melissa’s dark hair had been loose, but as they walked back to the living room she gathered it and hastily bound it with a rubber band. Watching her move, it struck Patsy how like Lee she was, although she was tall. She moved like Lee; and the rooms, for all that they were expressive of Barry and Melissa, were like Lee’s rooms in their cleanness and colors and receptivity to light. Even Barry brought Lee to mind—as tall as Bill, as gentle and shy as Peter.
She found, as she sipped a cup of Melissa’s coffee, that she liked Melissa and Barry very much and enjoyed being at breakfast with them. They were clearly happy, and very sweet to each other, Melissa chattering, Barry mumbling and looking at her mischievously and shyly. Patsy felt odd and old and not quite normal. It had been so long since she had been with people who seemed fully happy with each other that it was hard to get used to. Melissa ate more oranges than anyone she had ever known, and Barry became hungrier as he grew wide awake and soon went to the kitchen to make himself a peanut butter sandwich. “Don’t put the peanut butter knife in the honey jar,” Melissa said. “It gloms up the honey.”
“I never do,” Barry said mildly.
“You do every time I don’t mention it,” Melissa claimed.
Barry came back eating his sandwich and trying to keep the honey from dribbling onto his beard. “Hard to eat,” he said. “Only bad thing about beards.”
Patsy would have liked just to sit and visit with them and perhaps find out what they did or ate or worked at that made them both look so healthy; but the morning was passing and she was no nearer to her sister. When she finally brought her up, Melissa and Barry looked at each other a little guiltily.
“We don’t really know where they are,” Melissa said, “but I’m sure I can find some guys who can find them. I guess it was that girl friend of Miri’s who told about her being pregnant. Last week she got very paranoid and was sort of expecting her folks to show up any minute and drag her back to Texas. They moved somewhere over near the Hashbury. She really doesn’t want to go back to Texas.”
“They?”
“That’s kind of the bad part,” Melissa said. “I don’t know if you know it, but Miri doesn’t have much sense about guys. The guy she’s living with is a very hostile person.”
“Negro.”
Melissa nodded. “We don’t know that he’s the father, though. He’s been around long enough, but some others were around too.”
“He might not be the father,” Barry said quietly. “She was fucking lots of guys, for a while.”
“How pregnant is she?” Patsy asked, suddenly quite depressed by the prospect before her.
Melissa and Barry looked at each other indecisively. “Four or five months,” Melissa said. “It’s hard to say.”
“Not to put down Miri or anything,” Barry said, “but we were sort of glad when they left. Stone was bad to have around.”
“Stone?”
“That’s his name. He was always hitting us for money. Or trying to. I think your folks must have cut her off, or something, to try and get her to come back—I don’t know. They were pretty broke. Then he tried to come on with me one day and Barry was going to beat him up, but Stone was gone and I managed to cool Barry off before he got back. It was just a deteriorating scene.”
“I can imagine,” Patsy said. “How did Miri get mixed up with him?”
“He found her at a party, probably. I always thought it was more a hate thing than a love thing. Stone needs a white chick to hate and Miri was glad to have someone hate her, for a while. She was very down on herself, and she stayed high a lot.”
Patsy’s depression deepened. She went into Melissa’s kitchen and rinsed the orange juice off her hands.
“I should have come a year ago,” she said. “My folks should have come eighteen months ago, it sounds like. I better go find her, if you can tell me where the boys live.”
“Sure. The guys are over on Clay Street. They’re really nice, and I think a couple of them were pretty hung on Miri, but Stone scared them off.”
Barry stood up and scratched his head and looked pained. “Listen, maybe we better go with you,” he said. “That guy’s rough. He beat the crap out of Miri two or three times that I know of. I think he’s got her scared to leave him. You want me to come along?”
“I’ll go with her,” Melissa said. “You have to go to work.”
Barry, it turned out, worked part time in a bookshop on Polk Street. Melissa worked part time in a laundry. “It ticks my folks off, but it’s not bad,” she said. “Neither of us wants to work all the time.” She disappeared into the bedroom and came out shortly, clad in jeans and a heavy sweater. Barry was still looking pained.
“It’s not so important to go to work on time,” he said. “I can call and tell them I’ll be late. I don’t want you two getting into it with that guy.”
“Look, I can handle Stone,” Melissa said. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Once,” Barry said. “This time he might handle you. Set him off and he’s liable to beat the piss out of all three of you.”
Though she had never seen him, Patsy was beginning to be distinctly frightened of the man named Stone, and for all Melissa’s assurance, she was for having a man along. She remembered the one time she had almost been beaten up, the night Sonny Shanks had abducted her in Phoenix, and she thought how nice it would be if her old menacer could be there to take her into the Hashbury. When it came to violence he was the one person who came to mind who could be put up against anybody. Barry, for all his height, looked too basically gentle, and Joe Percy had sounded in no shape for trouble.
But Melissa carried the day. They left Barry standing in the kitchen looking pained and trying to decide if he wanted another sandwich. “He’s overprotective of me,” Melissa said as they went down the steps. “He’s got to learn sometime.” They walked over a street and into a little park that just covered the top of a hill. From it they could see the bay and one end of the Golden Gate. The edges of the fog had not yet receded from the hills to the north of the bridge. The bay was very blue in the sunlight and the houses sloping down all around the park were white and gray.
“I see why people like this city,” Patsy said.
“Oh, it’s great,” Melissa said, as if they were discussing the value of air.
They walked down the hill, along Clay Street and across Fillmore, and up a slope beside another little park, one that seemed to be terraced and flat on top. Miri rang at a brown house and they went in and woke up an apartmentful of boys. They all had long, long hair and the same friendly slightly sheepish air that Barry had. Some remained in sleeping bags and smiled out at Patsy from beneath their hair, but two dressed and wandered around looking pained at the sudden invasion of girls. One devoted himself at once to getting a record on the phonograph. They approached the question of Miri’s whereabouts delicately, as if they had to feel their way to it, and one boy named Martin finally told Melissa that Miri was living somewhere near Clement Street. A good bit of mumbling went on while Patsy stood by feeling awkward. Martin finally located an actual address, and Melissa thanked him.
“What a lot
of nice-looking boys,” Patsy said, once they were on the street again. “Why do they all act so shy?”
Melissa shrugged. “A lot of guys are like that out here,” she said. “They don’t quite know what to do about girls. Some of them try to come on but most of them just sort of hang around being brotherly. Barry was even that way with me, for a while. It’s great, though, once you get them trained not to be scared of you.”
They walked back to Fillmore, Melissa brooding. “He wasn’t so much scared of me,” she elaborated. “I think he was just scared I’d leave him, for a while. I had been hung up with this anthropology professor at Cal and the guy was a lot older than Barry and more experienced and I guess Barry thought I’d go back to him.”
“From what I’ve seen of Barry, he needn’t worry,” Patsy said.
“Isn’t he great?” Melissa said, coloring. “He’s six five.”
The address Martin had given them was several blocks off Clement Street, near the neck of Golden Gate Park. The apartment was in a drab two-story house on a very unadorned street of drab two-story houses. “The flat parts of town just aren’t as nice,” Melissa said. But Patsy had passed beyond aesthetics into a state of shaky apprehension at the thought of suddenly coming face to face with Miri—and possibly her lover as well. She knew she must look like the most WASP of WASPs and almost wished she had borrowed some less middle-class clothes from Melissa. She felt strange in her stomach, and very uncertain as to what she must say or do. Again, Miri’s name was not on the mailbox, but the address said apartment five, and they went in.
Melissa too looked a little apprehensive. “Maybe Stone won’t be here,” she said.
But Stone opened the door of apartment five. Patsy had been expecting a large man, someone heavy. Stone was medium height and thin and rather light. He wore a green fatigue jacket with the collar turned up and dirty Levi’s. He had a thin straggle of mustache and a Ho Chi Minh goatee, and he looked no less threatening for being thin. He focused on Melissa, not Patsy, and his look was one of instant resentment. Behind him Patsy could see the edge of a green couch, a pulled-down windowshade, and a cigarette smoking in an ashtray.
“Who you want?” Stone asked.
“I want Miri,” Patsy said, and meant it. Few certainties had ever come to her as quickly. Stone turned his resentful eyes toward her, but Miri had heard her and stepped into view behind him. She wore a thin gray sweatshirt that showed the slight bulge of her pregnancy, and her hair had grown very long. Her face, which Patsy remembered as rounded and girlish, was pale and very thin. She was very surprised, and for a moment her face opened and betrayed a quick delight at the sight of her sister, but then Stone turned and looked at her with hard hostility and the look turned Miri’s face into a mirror of his, so that even before Stone spoke his hostility was reflected in Miri’s gray eyes.
“Just go away,” Miri said. “I don’t want you and I don’t need you.”
But Patsy was not to be put off. She stepped past Stone into the room and Melissa followed her.
“You’re not invited in here,” Stone said, but Patsy didn’t look at him. Miri repeated what she had said, her lips trembling. She had drawn very tight.
“Then get some manners and invite me in here,” Patsy said, looking at the room. It was rugless and wretchedly furnished, with a sofa and a mattress and a small white portable TV. “I’m your sister and I’ve come a long way to see you,” she went on. “Why shouldn’t I be invited in?”
She turned to face Miri, and before anyone could speak or move Miri unwound. She hit Patsy in the face, a wild hard slap that rocked her back two steps and left her momentarily stunned and dizzy. Patsy sank onto the green couch, holding her cheek and looking at her sister in disbelief. The slap had connected squarely, and it took a minute for her head to clear. Miri had drawn tight again. Melissa looked worriedly at Patsy. Stone turned and walked to the other end of the room, quite impassive, as if he had decided to pretend the two women weren’t there.
“What did I say to deserve that?” Patsy asked. But the feeling that welled up in her as she looked at the cheap dusty room and at Miri’s legs, a bruise on one shin, and at her dingy black skirt, was that the slap should have been for Garland and Jeanette, who had fiddled and worried for two years and been afraid to do anything; and for her too, for forgetting her sister for so long, for pretending that Miri could take care of herself, just because she was nineteen. The slap was for all of them, for not having come sooner.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry,” Patsy said tearfully.
“I won’t go back,” Miri said, still fierce. “I won’t live in Texas. I’m staying with Stone. I won’t live with them. They don’t want me.”
It was true enough. As she stood, Garland and Jeanette would not want her. She was not the daughter they loved, or thought of themselves as loving, whichever it was. She was thin, bedraggled, pregnant, and defiant.
“No, I don’t want you to live with them,” Patsy said. “I want you to live with me, in Houston. I have a house now. Jim’s gone.”
“Don’t talk about it!” Miri yelled, almost screaming. “I won’t talk about it.” She drew back her hand as if to slap Patsy again but then stopped and began to bite her lips.
Stone was standing across the room looking sullenly away from them all. Melissa stood behind Miri and was trying to tell Patsy something with her lips, but Patsy couldn’t make it out.
Patsy’s head had quit swimming and she stood up looking at her sister. “Listen,” she said, “if you think I’m going back and leave you in this mess just because you cut loose and walloped me one you better think again. Have you been to a doctor yet?”
“Just to see if I was,” Miri said sullenly. She kept glancing at Stone, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“You could introduce me to your lover, at least,” Patsy said. “He doesn’t have to stand in the corner just because I’m here. My glance doesn’t turn men to stone, or anything, no pun intended.”
Stone turned and gave her a look that would have turned her to ash, could it have been converted into heat.
“His name’s Stone,” Miri said.
“Which name? Is it the fashion just to have one these days?”
Stone didn’t leave his place near the corner. “Who the fuck are you to come in here?” he said.
“I’m Patsy Carpenter,” she said, deciding to treat it as an introduction. “I’m Miriam’s sister. I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your first name, Mr. Stone.” She saw Melissa smile slightly, but Miri looked embarrassed and scared.
“We never asked you,” he said. He had a low voice, with a touch of college in it. “You’re not going to come in here and bust up our life. You’re not taking her back to Texas.”
“Why not?” Patsy asked, facing him. “I can’t see that you want her. You don’t even look at her.”
Stone crossed in front of her with a sullen shrug, as if to say all conversation between them would be automatically irrelevant, and raised the windowshade and stared resentfully into the street. Two Italian children were attempting to learn to skateboard on the sidewalk across the street. Patsy saw that Miri was crying. Streams of tears wet her thin face. Melissa put her arm around her and was trying to get her to sit on the couch. Miri resisted but Melissa kept murmuring to her and pulling her toward the couch and finally Miri sat down. Her arms were trembling. Melissa went over and rummaged near the mattress; she came back with a shawl, which she gave to Miri.
“You should have kept in touch with us, honey,” Melissa said. “We didn’t know where you were living. We had to ask the guys.”
“It’s not really ours,” Miri said. “We just borrowed it for a few days from a guy who’s out of town. We were gonna move across the park when we got some bread.”
Stone turned when she began to speak and looked at her with the same look of hostility he had given her at the door.
“Listen, tell these cunts to get out,” he said. “They’re your people, you tell them to go. We don’t
need two bad cunts in here criticizing where we at and how we live. They think you’re too fuckin’ good for me an’ that’s all they’ve got to say and we already heard that, didn’t we?”
Miri was still crying. “I’m not too good,” she said pathetically.
“You sleazy bastard,” Melissa said, furious suddenly. She went over to face him. “Anybody human’s too good for you the way you act. I wouldn’t let you keep my cat. This is her sister—do you know what a sister is?”
“I don’t care what a sister is,” he said, looking back out the window. “I know what a bad cunt is and that means you. And her in the green too.”
Patsy felt at a loss. She knew what she meant to do but not how to accomplish it. Miri simply looked sick. Her eyes were strange, and though she was clearly reacting to a great strain, she seemed barely aware of what was happening. The cigarette had burned itself out and the room smelled of ash. What she wanted most was to get her sister out of the room where Stone was, so she could try and talk to her. But there was no other room, only a small bathroom. There was no kitchen. A carton of soft drinks sat by the mattress.
She decided the best thing to do was to join Melissa in the verbal fray. Perhaps they could drive him out, at least for a while.
“Look, Mr. Stone,” she said, “I don’t know how good or how bad you are but I have a friend coming in a little while and if you call me names like that when he’s here there’s apt to be trouble. I just thought I’d warn you.”
“There you are, now,” Stone said, looking down at Miri. “Didn’t I tell you? They got the marines right outside. They going to take you right back to Dallas, and it don’t matter what you want and it don’t matter what I want. And they didn’t have no trouble finding us. You told those motherfuckers on Clay Street right where we’d be.”
“No, listen,” Patsy said. “All I have outside is one middle-aged friend, and I’m perfectly willing to listen to what you and Miri want. There are plenty of things I’d like to know about this but I don’t see why I can’t talk about them without being slapped and called names.”