Family Album

by Danielle Steel

  “Hungry, Sister?” She looked up to see a girl in what looked like a white bedsheet wrapped around her spare frame, with a tattered purple parka over it. The girl was smiling at her and held out a piece of carrot cake. Anne suspected it might be laced with acid or some other drug, and the girl in the parka saw her hesitate. “It's clean. You just look like you're new here.”

  “I am.”

  The girl with the carrot cake was sixteen and she'd been here for seven months, having come from Philadelphia in late May. Her parents hadn't found her yet, although she'd seen their ads in the “Personals,” but she had no inclination to respond. There was a priest who roamed the streets, offering advice, and to make contact with their parents if they wished. But not too many did, and Daphne wasn't one of them. “My name is Daff. Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

  Hesitantly, Anne shook her head. “Not yet.”

  “There's a place on Waller. You can stay for as long as you like. All you have to do is help keep it clean, and help cook the food on the days they assign.” They had also had two outbreaks of hepatitis recently, but Daphne didn't tell her that. Outwardly everything was beautiful and loving here. The rats, the lice, the kids who died from overdose were not something one discussed with a neophyte. And no matter, those things happened everywhere, didn't they? This was a special time in history. A time of peace and love and joy. A wave of love to counteract the useless deaths in Vietnam. Time had stopped for all of them and all that mattered was the here and now, and love and peace, and friends like this. Daphne gently kissed her cheeks and took her hand, leading her to the house on Waller Street.

  There were roughly thirty or forty people living there, mostly in Indian garb of rainbow hues, although there were some in patched jeans too, and outfits with feathers and sequins sewn on. Anne felt like a plain little bird in her jeans and an old brown turtleneck she'd worn on the trip, but a girl who met her at the door offered to lend her a dress, and she found herself suddenly wearing a costume in faded pink silk. It had come from a thrift shop on Divisadero Street, and she slipped her feet into rubber thongs, unbraided her hair, and wove two flowers into it, and by that afternoon she felt and looked like one of them. They ate an Indian dish, and someone had baked bread, she took a few hits on someone's joint, and she lay back on a sleeping bag feeling full and warm and content, looking around at her new friends, feeling a warmth and acceptance she had never felt before. And she knew she would be happy here. It was a lifetime away from the house in Beverly Hills, her father's angry edicts about Lionel … the perfidies of the people she knew … the stupidity of Gregory … the selfishness of the twins … the woman who called herself her mother that she had never understood … this was where she belonged now. Here on Waller Street, with her new friends.

  And when they initiated her three days after she arrived, it seemed suitable and right and loving. It was a supreme act of love in a room filled with incense, as a fire blazed warmly in the hearth, and the hallucination carried her from heaven to hell and back again. She knew she would be a different person when she woke up again. They told her that before she ate the mushrooms, followed by the tiny tab of LSD absorbed into a sugar cube. It took a little while for it to take hold on her mind, but when it did, there were friendly spirits there, and a room full of people she knew. Later, there were spiders and bats and terrifying things, but they held her hands while she howled and screamed, and when she felt her body racked with pain, they sang her songs, and cradled her as her mother never had … even Lionel had done nothing like this for her … she crossed a desert on her hands and knees, and then at last she came to an enchanted forest, filled with elves, and she felt their hands on her, and felt the spirits singing to her again. And now the faces that had hovered over her all night, and waited for her to be free of the evil of her past life, came forward toward her. Already, she felt purified, and knew that she was one of them. The evil spirits had been killed, they had left her, and now she was pure … now they could complete the ritual with her. Gently, they peeled away her clothes, and washed her with oils, each one gently massaging her tender flesh … she had come far that night, and parts of her were sore, but the'women gently massaged her, getting her ready now, reaching slowly into her, and stretching her as she screamed. She fought them at first, but they whispered so gently to her, and she could hear the music now. They had her drink something warm, and poured more oil on her, as her two guardians tenderly massaged her most secret place and she writhed beneath their hands, howling with agony and joy, and then her new brothers came, the spirits who would belong to her now, to replace the others she had left behind, and each of them knelt beside her as the sisters crooned, and one by one the brothers entered her, as the music grew louder, and birds flew high overhead … there were sharp arrows of pain at times, and waves of ecstasy, and again and again they came into her, and held her there, and left again, until the sisters returned, kissing her now and reaching far far into her until she could feel no more, and heard no sound. The music had stopped. The room was dark. Her past life was gone. She stirred, wondering if it had all been a dream but when she sat up and looked around, she saw them there, waiting for her. She had been gone for a long, long time, and she was so surprised at how many there were. But she recognized each one of them, and crying, she held out her arms and they came to her, embracing her. Her womanhood was complete, her sisterhood was sure. They gave her another acid tab as a reward, and this time she soared with them as one of the flock, dressed in a gown of white, and when the brothers and sisters came to her again, she was one of them this time, kissing them too … touching the sisters as they had touched her. This was her privilege now, they explained, and this was an expression of her love for them and theirs for her. She was to participate often in the ritual in the next few weeks, and when a new face arrived in the house on Waller Street, it was Sunflower who greeted them, with her blond hair woven with flowers and her gentle smile … Sunflower who had once been Anne … she lived mostly on LSD, and she had never been as happy in her life. And three months after she had come to them, one of the brothers took her as his own. His name was Moon, and he was tall and thin and beautiful, with silver hair and gentle eyes. He took her to bed with him every night, and cradled her, and in some ways he reminded her of Lionel. She went everywhere with him, and often he would turn to her with his mystic smile.

  “Sunflower … come to me….” She knew the magic of what pleased him now, knew best how to warm the herb potions he drank, when to bring him drugs, when to touch his flesh. And now, when a newcomer arrived, and they performed the ritual, it was Sunflower who went to the sisters first, gently pouring the warm oil over them, welcoming them to their tribe, and letting her swift ringers prepare them for the rest of the tribe. Moon was always very proud of her, and gave her extra acid tabs because of it. It was strange how different life was now from what it had once been. It was filled with bright colors and people that she loved, people who loved her too. There was nothing left of the lonely ugliness of her life. She had forgotten all of them. And when, in the spring, Moon felt her belly and told her she was with child, and could no longer participate in the ritual, she cried.

  “Don't cry, little love … you must prepare for a much greater ritual than that. We will all be there with you when this tiny moonbeam pierces the skies and comes to you, but until then …” He cut down on her acid tabs, although he let her smoke as much marijuana as she wished. And he laughed at her when it increased her appetite. The baby was just beginning to show when she walked down Haight Street one day, and saw a face she knew she recognized from the past, but she wasn't quite sure who it was. She returned to Moon in the house on Waller Street with a pensive air.

  “I've seen someone I know.”

  It didn't particularly worry him. They all saw people they knew at times, in their minds and hearts, and occasionally in more concrete ways. His wife and child had died in a boating accident just before he had walked out of his house in Boston one day and
come here. He saw them in his mind's eye, much of the time, especially during the ritual. For Sunflower to see someone she knew now surprised him not at all. It was a sign of her rising to a higher state, and that pleased him. This child, who was part his, would bring her even higher before it came. “Who was it, child?”

  “I'm not sure. I can't remember his name.” He had let her have one of the rare acid tabs he allowed her the night before, and the name Jesus kept coming to her mind, but she was sure it wasn't him.

  Moon smiled at her. Later, she would have more mushrooms and acid again, but she had to remain pure for the coming child, she could have only just enough to keep her in an enlightened state. But she could not soar too high now, or it would frighten the child. And this baby belonged to all of them after all. They had all shared in it, the brothers and the sisters. Moon felt certain that it had been conceived during her first night, when she was the center of the ritual. The child would be specially blessed and as he reminded her of that the name John came into her mind, clearly, and then suddenly she remembered him.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Are you sure?” Lionel stared at him disbelievingly. John had done this to him twice before. They had both dropped out of school three months before, much to everyone's despair, and they had come to San Francisco to search for her. Ward had refused to hear about it from Faye, and Bob Wells was afraid they were using it as an excuse to drop out of school, go to San Francisco, and join the gays living freely there.

  But Lionel insisted that Anne would go there. It was a haven for runaway kids, and though he didn't tell his parents, he felt certain that the runaways could live there for years without being recognized or turned in. There were thousands of them, crushed into tiny apartments, living like ants in the houses of the Haight-Ashbury, the houses painted a riot of colors, with flowers and rugs and incense and drugs and sleeping bags everywhere. It was a place and a time that would never come again, and Lionel instinctively felt that Anne was part of it. He had felt it from the first moment he'd arrived. It was just a question of finding her, if they could. He and John had combed the streets for months without success, and there wasn't much time left for them. They had promised to return to school by June for the summer session to make up for the time they'd lost.

  “If you don't find her in three months,” Bob Wells had said, “then you have to give up. You can only search for so long. She could be in New York, or Hawaii, or Canada.” But Lionel knew he was wrong. She would come here, to search for the love she felt she'd never had from them. And John agreed with him, and now he was certain that he'd seen her walking in a daze near Ashbury, wrapped in a purple bedsheet, with a crown of flowers on her hair, her eyes so glazed he almost wondered if she had seen him at all. But for an instant, just an instant, he had been certain that she had known who he was, and then she had drifted off again. He had followed her to an old broken-down house that seemed to be housing an entire colony of obvious druggies and runaways. The smell of incense wafted right out into the street, and there must have been twenty of them on the steps, singing an Indian chant, and holding hands, crooning and laughing softly and waving at friends. And as she came to the stairs, they parted like the Red Sea for her, helping her up the stairs through their midst, as a gray-haired man waited for her in the doorway, and then carried her inside as John watched. It was the strangest sight he had ever seen and he tried to explain it to Lionel, describing her again.

  “I have to admit, it sounds like her.” But the others John had found had too. Every day they split up and wandered through the Haight-Ashbury looking for her. If she was there, it was amazing they hadn't found her yet. And at night, they went back to the hotel room they had rented with the money Lionel had borrowed from Faye. They usually ate a hamburger quietly somewhere, they never went to a single gay bar. They stayed unto themselves. And in the morning, they started all over again. It was a labor of love the likes of which Faye had never seen. She had flown up several times to join them in their search, but as Lionel finally explained, she only hampered them. She stood out in the crowd of flower children, her shirts were starched, her jewelry reduced to a minimum was still too much, her jeans were too clean. She looked like exactly what she was, the mother of a runaway from Beverly Hills, looking for her child, and they ran from her like rats. Finally, Lionel had told her straight out. “Go home, Mom, we'll call you if we see anything. I promise,” She had gone back then to work on a film. She had urged Ward to take a co-producer on this one, because he was drinking so heavily, and things had gone from bad to worse with them. He still refused to even speak to Lionel. And when Lionel called her to report on what he had seen in the Haight-Ashbury, the moment Ward heard his voice, he hung up on him. It made communication with Faye extremely difficult for Lionel and Faye was furious. Eventually, she put in a separate phone for Lionel to call her on. But she noticed that the children avoided him as well, they were afraid of what their father would do if they talked to him. The twins never answered the phone Lionel called her on, as though Ward would know if they had talked to him. They had taken him at his word, and Lionel was abandoned by all save Faye, who loved him more than ever before, out of compassion, her own loneliness, and for what he was doing to find Anne. She spoke to Mary Wells as often as she could and expressed her gratitude for John's help. They seemed to have accepted the situation gracefully. They loved their son, and they accepted hers as well. It was far more than she could say for Ward, who had never spoken to the Wells since the morning Bob had thrown him out, the day he'd broken the news to them.

  And things were no longer the same between Ward and Faye either. He had actually gone to the Super Bowl with Greg despite Anne's running away. He had insisted that the police would find her eventually, and when they did he would punish her, and put her on restriction for the next ten years if that was what it took to put some sense into her. But it was as though he couldn't cope with anything more, and he left with Greg, and had a great time at the Super Bowl. He seemed surprised to learn that the police had not located Anne when he came back, and in the ensuing weeks, he began to pace the floor at night, pounce on the phone the moment it rang. He finally understood that it was serious, and the police had told them bluntly that it was possible that their daughter was dead, or that she was alive and they would never find her again. It was like losing two children at once, and Faye already knew that they would never recover from it. She had buried herself in her work to ease the pain, to no avail, spending whatever time she could with the twins when they were free. But they felt it too. Vanessa was quieter than she had ever been before, her big romance died shortly after it began, and even Valerie was more subdued. She hardly seemed to wear makeup anymore or go out. Her miniskirts were less intentionally shocking, her wardrobe hadn't grown. It was as though they all waited to hear something that they might never hear again, and as each day passed Faye grew more fearful that her youngest child was dead.

  She began going to church, which she hadn't done in years, and she said nothing at all to Ward when he didn't come home at night. At first, he came home at one or two o'clock, when the bars closed, and it was easy to see where he'd been, but eventually he began to not come home at all. The first time it happened, Faye felt sure he had been killed. But when he walked in at six o'clock the next morning, tiptoeing in with the newspaper under his arm, there was a look on his face which frightened her. He wasn't drunk, he was not hung over, he offered her no explanation at all, and suddenly she remembered a name she hadn't thought of in years … Maisie Abernathie … she remembered when Ward had gone to Mexico with her for five days fourteen years before, and Faye knew obviously it wasn't the same girl, but it was the same look on his face … the same way of avoiding her eyes, and suddenly she completely withdrew from him. He came home less and less, but she was so numbed by pain and tragedy that she felt nothing anymore. She was barely hanging on to her own sanity. Her days were filled with work, her nights were filled with guilt, and in between she did whatever she could fo
r the twins, but their entire family had fallen apart in a few brief moments.

  Eventually she heard the rumors at MGM. He was involved with the star of an important daytime TV show, and according to rumor, the affair was serious. She just prayed that it didn't turn up in the columns so she wouldn't have to explain it to the girls. She had enough on her hands just then, and just when she thought she couldn't stand any more Lionel called her that night. He had gone out with John that afternoon and followed the girl John had been so sure was Anne, and he was sure of it now too. She looked drugged and completely dazed, and she was heavier than she had been before, and wrapped up in what looked like a purple sari, but they were both sure it was Anne.

  Tears rolled down Faye's cheeks as she listened. “Are you sure?”

  Lionel said that they almost were, as sure as they could be. She was so dazed-looking and so wrapped up in her strange garb, surrounded by the members of her odd little sect, it was difficult to get close enough to her to find out if it was Anne. It wasn't as if one could yell “Anne” and have her wave back. And Lionel hated to raise his mother's hopes and then disappoint her. “No, we're not sure, Mom. And we wanted to know what you want us to do now.”