Sleeping Beauty (14 page)

“Yes,” Anne said gravely. “Thank you.”

Eleanor gazed at her. “Of course you could know a lot more than you're letting on.”

“I could,” Anne agreed, “but that would come out if I ever asked you for help.”

Eleanor sighed. “It's totally impossible to get you to talk about something you don't want to talk about. You ought to be a scientist doing top-secret research.”

“Instead of a psychiatrist?”

“Well, one or the other.”

“I can't be either, if I don't go to college.”

There was a silence. “I liked school,” Eleanor said. “But I would have died before I told my parents that.”

They reached Eleanor's house and sat on the front steps. Anne opened a bag of potato chips and held it between them. “I liked parts of it. I liked finding out how things work and why people do the crazy things they do.”

“I liked math,” Eleanor said. “I loved it when the numbers came out the way I wanted them to. It made me feel totally powerful.”

“I liked learning about strikes and riots and wars and how they ended. We had mock trials in class, and I liked finding out who was at fault and making sure they got punished.”

“I liked English Composition. I could make up stories and nobody called it lying.”

They contemplated the street scene, waving to their friends. Anne sighed and took another handful of potato chips. “I don't know what I'm going to do.”

It was easiest to do nothing. There were no timetables or schedules in Haight Ashbury; the days flowed into each other like long ocean swells, and when they were gone, they left no trace. Eating, sleeping, dancing, singing, even standing in line for food stamps, all happened when anyone wanted them to happen. Groups drifted together when they were in the mood; people ate when they were hungry and slept, day or night, when they felt like it; and the sense of free-floating time without urgency always was the same. And the seasons flowed into each other, just like the days, leaving no trace when they were gone. And then it was spring again, a year since Anne had arrived.

“A little dull around here,” Eleanor said one day in April when a long spring rain had ended and the trees were shaking off drops of water beneath a cloudless sky. “How about going for a ride?”

“In what?” Anne asked.

“I borrowed a car from the friend I was with last night. I've been all over San Francisco in streetcars and buses and I'm tired of it. And you haven't done it at all; you always want to stay put. Come on. I'll even teach you to drive, if you want.”

The car was an old Studebaker convertible that clanked and gurgled ominously, but Eleanor seemed unconcerned. She drove fast and intently, hunched over the wheel, reading street signs aloud, turning sharply when she made last-minute decisions to check out an interesting-looking street. “I think we're going to need some money to go over this thing,” she said as she turned at the sign for the Oakland Bay Bridge. “Do you have any change?”

Anne gave her a handful of quarters. She was reveling in their speed. The wind blew her hair and made her feel she was flying. For an hour the city had spun past in a blur of
pastel-colored houses and bright gardens, the gleam of cable cars' lacquered wood, and the kaleidoscope of the streets: women in flowered dresses, men and women in sober business suits, police in uniforms, nannies in white dresses, waiters in black trousers and long white aprons in outdoor cafés, children in jeans and sweatshirts. It was a life infinitely larger and more wondrously varied than Haight Ashbury, and Anne suddenly realized how good it was to be part of the whole world.

In Berkeley, Eleanor drove more slowly, past small shops and restaurants, and then she turned into the hills that rose above the town. “Let's go there,” Anne said. “Maybe we can climb that tower.” She pointed to a white campanile rising above the trees. As they came close to it, she gazed at the people they passed. “Where are we? It looks almost like the Haight.”

“The university,” Eleanor said. “Berkeley. You should have seen it last year; God, it was a great show. Speeches, marches, sit-ins . . . fantastic vibes. I never did know what it was all about; I'm not sure all of
them
did. They talked a lot about free speech, but it looked to me like the more they talked the more they had it. I don't know; I wasn't part of it, but it looked weird to me. All those kids who never left home until their mommies and daddies paid for it, and they're here because their mommies and daddies keep on paying for it, and then all of a sudden they're yelling that they want free speech. I figured I already had it in the Haight so I went home. I thought they were really stupid.”

“Were you jealous?” Anne asked.

Eleanor shot her a glance. “Maybe.” Her voice was subdued. “Probably. They're not stupid; they're a lot smarter than me. They get along with their parents and get their way paid to college.”

They drove up the hill, past classroom buildings, past the campanile. “Do you want to see if we can climb it?” Eleanor asked.

“I'd just like to walk awhile. Could we?”

“Sure.”

They walked in silence, and Anne looked at the students walking and bicycling and sprawling beneath trees. It didn't look like the Haight, she thought. These people had something to do. They wore backpacks or carried their books; they sat on benches reading books; they lounged on the steps of buildings with books piled beside them. Suddenly, sharply, she wanted to know what was in those books.

“Let's go in,” she said, and walked toward one of the buildings.

“We can't; we don't belong.”

Anne went inside and stood in the long corridor. She breathed deeply. “I remember that smell. It's a school smell.” She opened a classroom door and walked to the front of the room and read aloud what was written on the blackboard. “ ‘Fathers and daughters in the novels of Jane Austen.' ” She read it again, silently, and wished she could be in this class.

Outside, she contemplated the students with their books. She had read Jane Austen, but alone, not with any help. Everyone around here knew more about Jane Austen than she did; they knew more about everything. They'll be able to do anything they want with their lives, she thought. And I'll be braiding flowers in the Haight.

The campanile was ringing. “Hey, what's the hurry?” Eleanor demanded as students rushed past them on their way to class.

Anne moved to the side. “They all have things to do.” She felt left out.

“Everybody has things to do,” Eleanor said.

“We don't.”

“Sure we do. We eat and sleep and sit in the park and sing and give flowers to people to make them feel good . . .”

“It isn't enough!” Anne blurted out. She kicked a stone across the sidewalk. They were almost alone in the expanse of grass and trees, and she pictured the students taking their places in the classrooms, opening their books, learning things. “I don't mean
you're
not enough,” she said to Eleanor. “You're wonderful. You're the best friend anybody
could ever have. But it's like we're atrophying back there. We're like . . . specimens in a museum. Nobody gets any older in the Haight; nobody grows up. Don't you feel that? Don't you want to do other things? Like learn how to write, and maybe get published? Or do some more math and feel powerful? I don't feel powerful. Do you?”

“Well, I never was,” Eleanor said. She watched Anne kick another stone, and she kicked one, too. They kicked stones as they walked. “I was always pretty weak, you know; I mean, basically I just went along. The only time I didn't was when I came out here, and I did that 'cause I was with a guy. I didn't tell you that, but it's true.”

Anne looked at her quickly. “That doesn't mean anything. You're not weak at all. You just haven't figured out how to believe in yourself. I believe in you; I think you can do anything. I think lots of people live their whole lives and never find out all the things they could do with themselves, and then they get old and they look back and wonder what happened because not very
much
happened and now they're about to die. If I was old, I'd be really mad that I hadn't tried to do everything I could as fast as I could.” She took a deep breath. “So I think we should come here.”

Eleanor frowned. “What?”

“We'll come here, and we'll learn everything, and then we'll do something big and important so people will talk about us and wish they were us. Nobody'll ever do that if we stay in the Haight all our lives. Ellie, listen.” She put her hand on Eleanor's arm. “We can do it. We'll live in the Haight, for a while anyway, 'cause it's cheap, but we'll come here every day. And we'll study together.”

Eleanor shook her head. “I'm not smart enough.” She walked on. “I told you.”

Anne caught up to her. “That's not the problem. The problem is that you think your parents want you to be smart, so you say you won't do it. Listen, they didn't want you to be smart; they wanted you to be dumb.”

Eleanor shot her a glance. “They wanted me to go to college.”

“They wanted you to do what you were told, just do it, don't debate it. Isn't that right? Why would a smart person do that? A smart person wants to know what the alternatives are; she wants to try everything and find out what feels best for her. And what does a dumb person do? She stays home and follows somebody else's itinerary and never complains. Isn't that what your parents wanted?”

Eleanor stared at her. “They said they wanted me to be smart.”

“They probably meant it, but what do
they
know?”

They burst out laughing. “You're good,” Eleanor said. “Pretty convincing.” They came to the car. “Maybe you ought to be a lawyer.”

“Instead of a psychiatrist or a research scientist?”

“Well, whatever. You could probably do anything you decide to do.”

“What I've decided,” Anne said as they drove off, “is that I'm going back to school.”

“School?”
demanded Don Santelli the next night at dinner. “Why would you go to school when you've got all this?”

“Because,” Anne said. It was her sixteenth birthday, and she was lingering over birthday cake with Don and Eleanor after everyone else had drifted off. The cake had eighteen candles. “I love it here and everybody's nice, but it's always the same. It doesn't go anywhere.”

“Exactly why we're here,” said Don. “If we wanted to go somewhere, we would have stayed wherever we came from.”

They smiled. “It's like the park,” Anne said. “I can see the beginning of it, and a little way in, but I can't see far enough to know what kind of place it is or what I might do inside it. That's my life. I haven't got any idea what it's going to be like in the middle and at the end. Once I thought it was going to be awful”—her voice wavered and she steadied it—“and it would go on that way forever and there was nothing I could do about it. But I did do something and I found all this, and it's wonderful, but I don't want it to go on forever, either.”

“Forever sounds fine to me,” Don said defensively. “This place is the best there is. It has people who make you feel good and a place to belong. What more do you want?”

When I grow up, I'll be better than all of them. And I'll be very happy.

The thought came and went swiftly, but for that brief moment, Anne saw again her flowered bedroom, her packed duffel bag, and the morning light as she walked to the railroad station. I will be better than all of them, she thought. I will be happy.

“I want to know things,” she replied to Don. “I keep asking
why.
It's always in my head.
Why did this happen?
I have to understand things, or I don't feel right. I don't feel
whole.”

“Whole,” Don echoed, shaking his head. “I don't get that.”

“It's just that I can't stand it when there are loose ends dangling.” Anne met his puzzled look. She cast about for something they could share. “And also, if I learn a lot, I'll be able to do things for people who need help.”

“That's your problem? You want to do good deeds? Anne the Good.” He shook his head. “You can't make people happy and solve the problems of the world by working at them; nobody pays attention. You stay with us, Annie; we're the example; we're the ones who'll change the world. People can see how loving and
sane
we are, and they'll want to live like us, and then there won't be any more unhappiness. Everybody will be happy.”

“And asleep,” Anne said with a smile.

He did not return her smile. “They'll still be plenty awake, and plenty alive. You didn't make fun of us when we took you in; you liked us a lot and you sure weren't in any hurry to leave.”

“I still like you. And I'm not in a hurry to leave; I want to stay here. But I want to go to college, too.”

“You told me you didn't finish high school.”

“I didn't. But there's a GED test I can take, and if I pass it, I get my high school diploma, and then I take the SAT test
and some Achievement tests, and if I pass them, they'll let me in and I'll be a freshman.”

“God, you've
researched
this thing. And where's all this supposed to happen?”

“Berkeley,” said Eleanor. “I guess I'm going to try to go, too.”

Don reared back in his chair. “Listen, we're
happy
here. Why are you messing it up? Damn it, all those problems out there . . . we don't even have to think about them as long as we stay here where it's safe. I thought you felt the same way.”

“I did, for a while.” Impatience flared inside Anne; why couldn't he understand? He's afraid, she thought; he's where I was a year ago. But I don't ever want to be like that again. She met Don's defensive look. “It was really nice, thinking you'd always take care of me, but I just can't believe that anymore.
I
have to take care of me. But how do I do that? I don't know anything; I feel so dumb! I need to know things, millions of things, I have to pile them up like . . . like filling a storeroom. Like if there's a blizzard coming, you know you can take care of yourself if you've got everything you need in the storeroom. That's what I want, to be ready for bad things. That's why I'm going to school. I'll still be here, Don; we'll still be friends, but you can't talk me out of this. I have to do it.”