This Body (22 page)

Here she was, a week later, awakening — but awakening into the same dream. She was meekly resuming the rhythm of someone else's
life, having given up her own with hardly a whimper.

Lioness, my ass
.

She had felt different up north, though. She thought she had seen a way. She had felt young and vibrant at the concert, and
in Ashland the full flush of youth glowed within her. She was Merlin the magician, aging backward.

The week clicked in and out of focus in her mind like slides in a projector.

This is what I did on my summer vacation. This is the parking lot of the Shoreline Amphitheater, where the concert was. See
those twin peaks? That's the tent over the main stage
.

You're not going to bore us with the whole thing, are you
?

I might
.

It was her intermezzo, her interlude, up north. Time stopped, shifted, and restarted in a different direction — and at a different
speed.

I forgot who I was and who I had to be
.

From the moment they pulled into the concert parking lot at high noon, the swimming ripples of the summer heat so high off
the macadam that Katharine felt as if they were going under, she knew that it would be no ordinary day. And when she stepped
from the cool, rational confines of the black-and-white interior of the Range Rover into a world, odd and unpredictable, with
its wide-wale spectrum of heat and smells and noise and colors, inhabited by the strange and unusual, she knew she was leaving
normal behind. She fought it for a long time. It threw off her senses and her equilibrium. Nothing was as it seemed.

A huge tailgate party surrounded them — hatches of cars elevated, coolers perched on the lips of opened trunks, the smell
of coals and lighter fluid, hot dogs, hamburgers, and an occasional chicken, mostly teriyakied.

It took her nasal memory a second or two to identify the softer but more acrid smell of marijuana, and she feared that she
had made a mistake letting the girls footloose at something like this. She could hear Philip's voice, swirling around her,
trying to soothe and caution her, “You agreed. Now let it go. Don't make it miserable for them just because you said yes.”

. . .

Driving the long, dark miles of highway from LA to the concert, she had discussed and argued with herself about what she should
do when she got close to home.

Katharine had always carried on conversations in her mind. They were the normal discussions most people have with themselves.
At least, she assumed they were normal. This was another question she had always been too afraid to ask anyone. But now it
was as if the different personalities in her brain had been given speaking parts, and it was getting crowded inside. Certain
voices were easy to distinguish as the residue of people in her life. She could recognize her mother's gentle and sometimes
needy voice —
Take care, Katharine, watch out
— Philip's logical, unflappable voice —
For God's sake, Katharine, it's not as if the world is going to end
— and her father's often irritatingly optimistic voice —
It will all work out; it was all meant to be. It just means that there's something better on the horizon
.

There were other voices that she didn't have names for. There was the sarcastic one that was always trying to tell her what
to do, as if it knew better than she did. Then there was the voice that whispered with its ingratiating, persuasive, chummy
lilt. It was a shadowy presence outside herself that felt familiar enough to be disconcerting. It was as if it sat on her
shoulder, just tall enough to lean over and whisper down the length of her ear canal.

I'm hearing voices. Maybe I should be committed
.

At first, she was going to turn off onto the exit to her hometown.
What are you going to tell the girls? How are you going to explain this one
?

As the sign for her city flashed above her, her hands stayed still on the wheel, and the exit slipped by.

All right. I'll drop the girls off and then come back
.

In the parking lot, she was torn.
You can't leave them alone. They're your responsibility now
.

Maybe Ben and Marion are here. Maybe I'll see them. It's something they might do together
.

You're here. You might as well try to enjoy it
.

As they walked to the entrance, Katharine thought she saw Ben or Marion a dozen times. She hurried the girls along this way
and that, to pull up alongside someone wearing a shirt similar to one of Marion's, or walking pigeon-toed like Ben in those
black, high-top boots that looked so terribly hot and uncomfortable. But they were not them.

At the entrance, she got frisked.

A hip-looking security guard with round sunglasses reminiscent of John Lennon's stopped her to check the backpack that she
had stuffed full of needful things from Thisby's apartment — clothes and sunscreen and hats and Band-Aids. When the guard
returned her pack, she started forward, but he stopped her again. “I'm sorry, but I have to pat you down.”

The girls were disappointed that they didn't even get stopped.

It had been kind of fun to get frisked. It was almost as if she were a …
a dangerous woman
.

At the midway, they split. They made arrangements to rendezvous there every three hours, unless a band was playing — then
they would meet right after it finished.

A mother couldn't have said it better. But I didn't say it. Philip would have been proud of me. It was Quince's idea
.

To the right was a flea market, the vendors selling a hodgepodge of concert wear and accessories, silver and beaded jewelry,
East Indian-inspired baseball caps studded with dime-size mirrors and other sparklies, and anything in Rastafarian green,
yellow, red, and black. The temporary tattoo and body-piercing booths were doing a brisk business. Katharine watched a girl
get her nose pierced. The young woman almost fainted when the gun went
pop
! through her flesh; her friend teased her for being a wimp.

The cloying smell of burning incense spread from punks that lined most of the booths' tables and shelves. A tendril of smoke
spiraled right into her brain, and Katharine tripped back in time to Ben's room, rancid with stale incense, the punk burning
holes in the carpet, Marion complaining of the smell, and Katharine wondering what other smells the incense was covering up.
She regressed deeper into memory. She was a sophomore in high school. There was a party at some senior's house. She had gone
with a girl who lived on her block but who normally hung around with a faster crowd. They drank tequila sunrises at the girl's
house beforehand, the only time Katharine had ever been drunk in high school. The backyard, full of the in crowd, and full
of marijuana smoke, had tables covered with food for when the reefer madness hit them and they got the munchies. Katharine
saw a guy who she had always thought was cute, a football player two years older and with all the right moves.
God, I even remember his name. Stef Djordjevic
. Before she even knew how she had done it, she found herself backed up against the patio wall, making out with Stef Djord-jevic.
She remembered the incense burning — sandalwood — and his tongue, his body pressed up against hers, his crotch matching hers,
hard and pressuring, his insisting they go to his car — her resisting — his urging. She had gotten scared and bolted, the
alcoholic fog dissipating in the anxiety. She remembered finding her friend intertwined with some other senior and demanding
that they go home.

The next day she had felt that the scarlet letter A — for Alcohol — was seared across her forehead, but her parents continued
in their befuddled ignorance. She had a hangover but was sicker with the memory of being prodded by Stef Djordjevic. She felt
way over her head and had vowed to never give up control like that again.

Katharine continued down the concourse hung with banners spelling out various political causes: safe sex, abortion, Greenpeace,
Amnesty International, animal rights, marijuana legalization. She scrutinized those collecting literature who had the contours
of her children. She was mad if they were standing at the marijuana-legalization booth, frightened if they were at the abortion-rights
table, proud if they were supporting Amnesty International, and disappointed when she realized that none of them were her
children.

This is ridiculous. I don't belong here. I have no reason to be here. My children aren't here. And even if they were, what
would I do
?

She could never think past the image of spotting them, walking along together, Ben protecting Marion from the slea-zoids who
appeared to be all around her. The frame always jammed up and then melted, the center curling back until there was nothing
left to burn.

On a patch of grass half a dozen people were sitting on folding chairs, holding large purple viewfinders like snorkeling masks
over their faces. A man in his late forties, in tie-dye from bandanna to drawstring pants, was pulling more viewfinders from
a large cardboard box and speaking softly to the vendor next to him. “My distributor really blew it. I could have sold two
thousand of these today.” He turned and addressed the group. “This is an LSD flight simulator, and I'm your pilot …”

Katharine turned away —
what suckers
— and retraced her steps to the entrance. She continued on to the left of the split; the scent of food was so heavy, she
could walk on it: grilled chicken and beef over open pits, frying onions, garlic, curry, saffron, and hot barbecue sauces.
People were walking around with corn on the cob, meat and vegetables on skewers, huge turkey legs that they were tearing with
their teeth and fingers like Tom Jones.

In front of a small stage off to the left, a large group of people periodically crowed with approval. It took Katharine a
while to realize that the person on the stage, who was dressed in a G-string and an unbuttoned leather vest, was picking up
cement blocks attached to chains that were hooked to rings threaded through his nipples. The ringmaster was explaining how
Mr. Lifto was next going to use the ring through his penis to lift — The announcement of what exactly he was going to lift
with the ring through his penis was lost as Katharine turned away from the trajectory of sound and went up the ramp to the
amphitheater.

The amphitheater was bowl-shaped, funneling to a stage that looked impossibly tiny, where roadies were setting up for the
first group. At the separation between the grass seating and the rows of orange-colored chairs, large video screens puffed
like sails.

Along the lip of the stage ceiling there was a computerized message board espousing all manner of politically correct statements:

RECORDS DON'T KILL KIDS — BULLETS DO

and

THE EARTH IS NOT DISPOSABLE

Most of it was hip trivia, though, meted out in short phrases like sound bites:

                
AVERAGE LENGTH OF SEXUAL INTERCOURSE
—

            
IN HUMANS IS
—

                    
TWO MINUTES

                75%
OF AMERICAN WOMEN
—

            WEAR THE WRONG
—

                    
BRA SIZE

                
PERCENT OF NUTS SQUIRRELS LOSE
—

            
BECAUSE THEY FORGET WHERE THEY PUT THEM
—

                    50%

Everything was whirling around her. It was overkill — the sounds, the smells, the Hardbodies, the Winter People — that's how
she thought of the two groups of young people who surrounded her.

She watched a Hardbody — a tanned, shirtless young man — pull a Ziploc bag from inside the waistband of his jeans. Amber-colored
liquid sloshed from side to side, leaving gold droplets clinging inside. He poured a third of his large soda into the grass
and, after slitting the seal of the bag, tipped the alcohol into the cup. He took a sip, the hard, flat muscles of his stomach
shivering, and passed the cup to a young friend, who grinned and sipped and passed it to a third member of their group, a
girl in low-slung shorts, her underwear rising high over each sun-bronzed hip, and a crop top with
SOME LIKE IT HOT
printed on it.

The Winter People — their wraith bodies clad head to toe in black with silver accessories, their pale skin already reddening
— passed around a conch shell no bigger than their palm, a Bic lighter held over the length of the lip.

Thisby had been one of the Winter People, Katharine realized, seeing Thisby in her mind's eye. She's at an event similar to
this one. She's wearing the bell-bottom jeans and the denim halter top Katharine had found in the bedroom. She even has an
authentic Woodstock necklace on, the silhouette of a bird perched on the neck of a guitar. A narrow thong of rawhide is tied
around her forehead, the beaded ends tickling an earlobe. A roach clip in sunflower filigree is clipped to the inside of her
halter top. She's out cold, unconscious, on the lawn. Her friends have ditched her, leaving her to sleep it off and afraid
to be in the vicinity when she wakes up to find her face almost blistered by the sun — the roach clip gone. And she has missed
the concert.

Chords crashed, and the first band began to play. Katharine watched as a group of kids down the slope started running in a
clockwise circle, a haze of kicked-up red dust hovering overhead like a familiar. Every once in a while, a body was hoisted
over the running mass and passed on shoulders until it was sucked back into the maelstrom.

The boys in the band tried vainly to incite the crowd. “Don't let the deciders decide for you. Fuck the deciders. Your anger
is a gift”. The crowd in the orange seats responded dutifully, but the grass crowd seemed too busy with their alcohol and
their drugs and their hair to react at all.