Gypsies

She thought of Laura twenty years ago, in the hotel in Santa Monica.

2

It was 1969, a bewildering year. Karen was working on an English degree at Pe

Karen had come home for the Easter break. Home that year was the house in Polger Valley, an old steel town in the Mon Valley, its ancient mills revived by the war in Vietnam. Daddy had taken work at the foundry; Karen’s mother was working part-time at the hairdresser. Karen had mostly paid her own tuition at Pe

Daddy was sulking the weekend Karen came home; Tim was absent. The scenario was familiar.

Her mother took her aside after di

At least that was the theory. In practice it was more difficult. But she tried to be objective.

“We had a letter from Laura,” her mother said.

Her voice was restrained. She didn’t want Daddy hearing this. Daddy was in the room he called the den, a tiny room off the downstairs hallway, watching TV. Karen and her mother sat in the kitchen. The kitchen, Karen thought, was the most reassuring room in the house, and therefore the best room for bad news. Karen focused this moment in her mind: dishes stacked on the drainboard, her mother in a flower-print housedress, the envelope clutched in one hand. “Laura’s not in Berkeley anymore.”

Karen blinked. Not in Berkeley? “Well, where is she? Is she coming home?”

Mama shook her head and handed Karen the letter.

The letter was very brief. It explained that Laura had dropped her courses and moved in with some friends, that “you might not be hearing from me too often,” that “I want to find a place for myself in my own way.” The return address on the envelope was in Los Angeles.

Her mother said, “I haven’t mentioned this to Daddy. You know how he is.”

He would be angry, Karen thought. Her new objectivity allowed her to understand that Daddy was often angry with his children. She had not yet fathomed the reason why.

Her mother did something astonishing then. She reached into the pocket of her housedress and took out two one-hundred-dollar bills and pushed them across the kitchen table toward Karen.

Karen looked at the money, bewildered. “Take it,” Mama said. “Household money. It doesn’t matter. Take it and go out there. Find her and try to talk some sense into her.”

I have finals, Karen thought. I have to study. I can’t take the time.

But she could not bring herself to say any of this. Instead, faintly awed, she took the money and folded it into the pocket of her Levi’s. It made an uneasy presence there.

Her mother said, “You always were the sensible one.”

She booked tickets and a hotel room through a travel agent. The process was frightening—she had never traveled so far in her life. “Is this a vacation?” the travel agent asked. “I don’t know,” Karen said. “I guess so.”

She rented a car at the Los Angeles airport, J mapped out a route to the hotel and followed it scrupulously, showered, and then drove to the address Laura had written on the envelope.

She was dismayed when she saw the house. It was a single-story box at the foot of a canyon road. The blank walls had been painted canary yellow; the paint was peeling. A motorcycle was parked in front.

She knocked on the frame of the screen door. There was a pause, then the door wheezed open. The man inside was tall and very thin. He was wearing a sweatshirt and tight, threadbare jeans. He had a beard.

“Hey,” he said. He seemed confused. “You look like Laura.”

“I’m her sister.” Karen’s eyes began to adjust to the dimness. The room was a mess. An open mattress, a water pipe, bundles of clothes… “Can I talk to her?”

“Laura? Laura’s not here. Hasn’t been here for a couple of days.” Blankly: “You want to come in?”

Karen shook her head. She took a notebook and a pen from her purse and scribbled the address of the hotel. “Will you give this to her?”

The man shrugged. “If she shows up.” He hesitated. “It’s Karen, right?”

Karen paused on her way down the concrete steps. “You know me?”

“She talked about you.”

And so there was nothing to do but wait. The waiting made her feel guilty, passive. She ought to be doing something. But what? Hire a detective? It was ludicrous. And she couldn’t afford it. She waited by the phone and tried to bury herself in the texts she’d brought with her. Faulkner and Sir Walter Scott. The books blended in her mind, a weird double exposure, all these strange families haunted by the past. When the phone finally did ring—a day before her return ticket came due—she jumped as if she’d been slapped.

She yanked up the receiver and said, “Laura?”

“It’s no good you coming here, you know.” Small, distant voice. “I mean, I appreciate it. But it’s pointless.”

She gripped the phone with all her strength. “I want to see you.”

“I appreciate that. I don’t know if it’s possible.” “Today,” Karen said. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

There was a long silence then, the ticking and whispering of the Bell exchanges.

“All right,” Laura sighed. “You’re at some hotel?” She repeated the address. “I’ll be over later.” Click and hum.

Karen was faintly shocked when she saw her sister, though obviously she should have been expecting this: Laura looked like a hippie.

“Hippie” was a word Karen had heard mostly from the TV news. Scruffy people in protest parades. Drug abusers. At Pe

I Like me, Karen thought. She was the sensible one.

She had sensible friends.

Laura wore ancient denims and a T-shirt that had been dyed a blinding variety of colors. Her hair was braided and she had painted what looked like the signs of the zodiac on her fingernails. Karen felt strangely outmaneuvered by this, this visible declaration of eccentricity. She might be able to talk her sister out of a bad idea, a stupid plan: but a wardrobe was too concrete. That’s why they dress this way, she thought, to bother ordinary people.

Laura came into the room and sagged limply into a chair. “My guess,” she said, “is that you’re here because Mama sent you. Right? ‘Go find Laura, talk some sense into her.’ ” Laura mimicked the broad Mon Valley cadences of her mother’s speech.

Karen felt stung. “Mama gave me the money, yes.”

“So you think she’s right? I’m crazy?”

“You don’t have to be defensive about it. I don’t know—ere you crazy?”

“Yes. It’s a common condition.”

“You want to be talked out of it?”