Gypsies

“I think we should be in a hurry. Yes.”

Karen ordered a club sandwich and a Coke. Michael asked for a hamburger and Laura ordered the salad. Waiting, Karen spread out her hands on the yellowed marble counter. “Things feel different now.”

Laura said, “I know what you mean. I can do things I couldn’t do before.”

“Because it’s more urgent. That’s what I feel—the urgency.”

The waitress brought lunch. Karen looked at Michael, who looked at his hamburger. Tides of sunlight bore down through the big green-tinted windows. Everything was still; the air-conditioned air was still. Poised, Karen thought.

“Eat up,” Laura urged. “We ought to get moving.”

It was Karen’s first trip to San Francisco.

Gavin had been here a few times on business. He always said it was a beautiful city. And it was, Karen thought—from a distance. She liked the hills and the old white scalloped buildings; she liked the low clouds racing in from the ocean. But once you got into it, it was a city like any other city, same crowded sidewalks and diesel buses and neighborhoods you had to avoid.

They checked into a Ramada I

But there were more immediate things to worry about.

Each of them carried one of the three big suitcases up a carpeted flight of stairs to the second floor. The room was big and smelled faintly musty, but the sheets were crisp and the towels were clean. The bathroom was a temple walled with mirrors.

Laura unpacked the postcard Jea

But Karen shook her head firmly. “It’s late already. I’m tired.”

“Well—food and a night’s sleep sure wouldn’t hurt. There’s a coffee shop in the lobby—will that do?”

“I want to shower and turn in early,” Karen said. “You two go, all right?”

Laura hesitated at the door. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. I just need some privacy.”

Michael ordered yet another burger. Laura said, “You’ll kill yourself with that stuff, you know. They shoot the cattle full of hormones. It’s disgusting.”

Michael smiled. “All of a sudden you’re a vegetarian?”

“I just think, if you’re going to eat meat, you should really do it. Big thick steaks from big fat cows. There used to be a restaurant not too far from here that would cook you a steak for a reasonable price. I mean real meat, not gristle and TVP.”

“You used to live around here?”

“ Berkeley. But that was a long time ago.”

“The sixties,” Michael said.

Laura smiled to herself. It always sounded odd when people said “the sixties” like that—like the name of a place, an address. “Yes,” she said, “the sixties.”

Michael took a big bite out of his burger. “You were a hippie?”

“That’s really a dumb word, Michael. I always thought so. It’s a Time magazine kind of word.”

“Well,” he said, “you know.”

She nodded reluctantly. “I guess you could say that’s what I was. A Berkeley hippie, anyhow. I came down to the Haight sometimes. I danced at the Fillmore—I guess that qualifies.”

Michael said, “There was a thing about it on TV a couple of years ago. The Summer of Love.”

Laura’s smile receded. “The Summer of Love was nothing but hype. It was the end of everything. Ten thousand people trying to live in the Panhandle. You know what Haight Street was by the end of the so-called Summer of Love? It was where a lot of homeless teenagers went to get hepatitis. Or VD. Or raped, or pregnant. It was a disaster … everybody was talking about going away.”

Michael said soberly, “Like you did.”

“Yes.”

“You went to Turquoise Beach.”

“Well, that’s where I ended up.”

“Is that what it was like here—I mean when it was good? Was the Haight like Turquoise Beach?”

Laura shook her head emphatically. “The Haight was unique. It was full of all these crazy idealists, poets and saints—there’s no way I can sit here and tell you what it was like. It was like holding the world in your hand. Turquoise Beach is good, you know; it’s the best I could find. But it’s slower there. There isn’t the passion. There isn’t—”

But she found herself faltering.

Michael said, “I didn’t mean to get you upset.”

He sat across the table from her, her sister’s child, very eighties in a slash haircut and tight T-shirt. Strange to think that he had not existed in 1967. She thought suddenly, He could be mine, I could have had a child like this one, I could have raised him. Instead I moved away to Never-Never Land… where you can be young forever. Or almost forever. Or until you wake up one day, gray-haired and menopausal.

“I know what it’s like,” Michael said, and he was talking softly now, almost to himself. “Looking for a better world—I can understand that.”

Laura put down her fork. “Do it,” she said. Her appetite was gone. Her voice had hardened. “Do it, Michael. But look hard, all right? Don’t give up too soon.”

Karen showered and then stretched out on one of the big twin hotel beds. The mattress was hard—she had gotten used to the old plush beds back home—but that was all right. She had intended to order something up from room service, but she discovered she didn’t feel like eating. She had opened the horizontal blinds, but there was only the blankness of the parking lot outside.

She looked at the telephone.

She picked up the receiver, thinking she might call room service after all. But when the hotel operator answered Karen found herself asking for a line out, and maybe this was what she had meant to do all along; maybe this was why she had sent Michael and Laura out on their own.

She called Toronto.

It was the number Gavin had left her all those months ago. She thought, If the woman answers I’ll hang up. But maybe Gavin would be there. Three hours difference, she thought. Back home it was di

She waited through the fourth ring and then the fifth and then her impulse was to put down the receiver, drop it right now, but there was a faraway click and then Gavin’s voice saying, “Hello?”

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “It’s me.”

Gavin said, “Christ, Karen—where are you?”

“Pretty far away.” But that sounded silly. “In the States,” she added. She didn’t want him to know exactly.

“What the hell are you doing down there?”

“We had to get away.”

“Michael is with you?”

“Sure he’s with me … of course he is.”

“You know you left a righteous mess up here, don’t you? I filed a report with the police. I had to let them into the house. It was strange. All those Mayflower boxes stacked up. It was like the Mary Celeste. And the school’s been calling me about Michael. Have you got him in school, at least?”

“Michael’s all right,” she said defensively.

“Do you have a rational explanation for any of this?”

None that you would understand, Karen thought. “Not really.”

“You had some kind of breakdown, is that it? You took Michael and you left town? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” she said.

“You understand this looks very bad. This could weigh against you when it comes to custody.”

She didn’t understand at first. Custody of what? Then it dawned on her. “Gavin, that’s crazy!”

“Obviously it’s not something I anticipated. I mean, I was the one who left. I admit that. But I talked to Diane and it seems to us that Michael might need a more stable home environment.”