by Randy Mixter
“I wish I knew.” Alex looked out on Ashbury Street. “I’ll ask Sarah to come home with me, but I feel bad doing it. She won’t know anyone there, and I’ll be gone for some time.”
“She can stay with us if she wants. We have the room.”
“Thanks Matt, I’ll mention it to her.”
“Listen Alex, no matter what, you keep in touch. If you go to Vietnam, keep your head down and do as you are told. Don’t try to be a hero too often. Unlike cars, bullets don’t swerve.”
Alex looked through the open door. In the lobby, Sarah embraced Celeste, both were crying.
“I hate goodbyes,” he said.
“We need to get back before Matt and Celeste leave,” Alex said to Sarah, later that morning, as they crossed over into the Golden Gate Park. “We will.” She replied.
They walked through the cluster of people mingling about on the hill. A few acknowledged Sarah’s presence, but she waved them off.
Sarah took his hand and led him past their usual place of rest. When they reached the crest of the hill, Sarah kneeled down, on the grass where she once danced.
She beckoned him to join her, and he knelt in front of her. She took both his hands and looked into his eyes.
“Tell me,” she said.
He hesitated for the briefest of moments before he began. From this point on, nothing will ever be the same, he thought before he spoke.
“I got my draft notice.”
Her eyes closed. When they opened, they were moist with tears. “Go on,” she said.
“I report for active duty in three weeks.”
Then he said it. He could not help himself. She was all he wanted, for as long as he lived.
“Come back with me. You can stay with my parents while I’m gone. I’ll be home from time to time on leave. Maybe I’ll be stationed nearby. I will write you every day, I promise. I love you, and I want you with me.”
A smile creased her face as the tears flowed freely across her cheeks. They dropped, one at a time, on to her shoulders and the straps of her white dress. She never stopped looking at his face and, when she spoke, her voice brimmed with sorrow.
“I promise I will always love you. I cannot do more than that right now. That is the only promise I am sure I can keep. Anything else might be a lie.”
He always knew he might lose her. From the day he met her until this very second, he knew she might never be his. Finding her had been a miracle. It was a miracle she had been his for the summer of love. Did he dare reach one last time into his box of wishes for the chance of a life with Sarah, or should he be content with the time she was his and let her go into the night, to dance forever in the splintered light of the moon.
She stood up and he followed her, their hands still together. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist and they walked back home, as close to each other as time would allow.
FAREWELLS
Before they left, Matt and Alex sat together on the porch swing, each with a beer in hand, and celebrated their friendship.
Matt raised his bottle in the air. “Here’s to a bright and safe future for both of us.”
“Your future might be more dangerous than mine,” Alex said as their bottles met. “Celeste is quite a handful.”
“I’ll admit she’s a mischievous little imp.” Matt took a long pull of his beer. “She’ll keep me on my toes.”
“She asked Sarah about staying at our place.” Matt looked at Alex. “Sarah said thanks but no thanks.”
“That was all she said?”
“Yeah, just that,” Matt replied.
Alex mulled this over. Was it good news or bad? Had she decided to go with him? Or did she have other plans?
“I have a bad feeling about keeping her, Matt, and I’m not sure it’s even fair of me to ask it of her.”
“Screw fair! You need to be cutthroat about this. You love her; she loves you, what else matters?”
“It’s just that I don’t want her to hate me for it. If I go to Vietnam, I’ll be there for at least a year. She will be in a different culture the entire time, without friends or family.”
“She will make friends, and she doesn’t have a family now,” Matt said.
“Maybe she will make friends, but she does have a family here, and here she is understood.” Alex drank some of his beer. “I don’t know. I just want her to be happy.”
“Well, good luck to you Alex. You two make a great couple. I hope it works out for you.”
“Me too,” Alex replied as he gulped down the last of his beer.
The talk had turned to the army, specifically how to survive boot camp, when Celeste interrupted.
“We should be leaving if we’re going to meet the landlord at four.”
Matt and Alex stood up. “I suppose you’re right,” Matt said, and then put his arms around Alex. “A handshake just ain’t gonna cut it.”
They embraced for several seconds.
“Great summer,” Matt said to him as they separated.
Alex shook his head in agreement. “That it was.”
Sarah made it to the porch in time to see them leave. Alex saw her sob and he put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder.
They were almost to the sidewalk when Alex shouted. “Hey, aren’t you forgetting your mattress?”
Without turning around, Celeste raised her hand and gave him the peace sign, while forgetting to raise her index finger.
Alex did not bring up the subject of their future for the remainder of the day. He planned to discuss the matter in the evening, while in bed, but Sarah was far too distraught and emotional to introduce the subject.
After an intense bout of lovemaking, he contented himself to hold her in his arms as she cried herself to sleep.
Sandman and Cactus Girl left the next morning.
Belladonna insisted Chick be present for their parting and pushed him out of bed at the ungodly hour of nine A.M.
After both commented on their appearance at a time in the morning when the two were normally in deep sleep. Chick and Sandman grasped hands and said their goodbyes.
Belladonna swore later that she saw tears in Chick’s eyes, but Chick insisted they were puffy from lack of sleep.
Aisha and Blossom ran to Sarah, and she knelt down to hug them. The girls cried as each told her how much they would miss her nightly stories.
Alex was close enough to Sarah to hear her say that she would come to them in their dreams with tales of princes and princesses in days of magic and enchantment. She would always be as near as their next dream and, if they looked hard enough, they might spot her hiding behind the evening’s brightest star.
He remembered the dream of Sarah before he met her. She smiled at him in that dream, smiled at him as if they had already met.
The girls kissed Sarah, one on each cheek, and then ran back to the open arms of Sandman, who they now referred to as dad. He raised each one high in the air before taking them in his arms.
Outside a cab’s horn signaled it was time to go. There were more hugs and tears as the women said their goodbyes. Both Isis and her daughter, Scarlett, cried freely at the thought of losing their close friends.
As they walked to the door, Isis whispered something in Cactus Girl’s ear that caused her to smile through the tears, and then the family picked up their suitcase of belongings and left the house.
The remaining houseguests waved to them from the porch as the cab left for the airport.
“I’m going to miss that guy,” Chick said, before yawning and heading back to bed.
SUNSET
“Do you believe in Heaven?” Sarah asked him as they walked to the park on Sunday.
He did not have to think about it. He looked her in the eyes. I believe in you, I believe in the power of love, and I believe in your parents.
“Yes,” he said. “I believe in Heaven.”
She said no more of it as they walked toward the hill.
They had spent the day sitting on the p
orch swing. He wrote his final article for the newspaper while she read a book of poetry. He sensed that she had come to a decision concerning their future together, but he was afraid to question her. Sarah’s answer would change his life forever. He had never believed words could hold so much power until now.
Once again, he imagined they were married. This porch was theirs, as was the swing. This was their Sunday ritual. He would write and she would read. Some Sundays they would stay indoors on the living room sofa, on other days, when the weather was nice, they would move outside, to the backyard.
In the fenced-in yard their children, a boy and a girl, would play while they watched, and at night their mother would tell them a story to guide them into sleep.
One day their young daughter would dance for them while they applauded and cheered. One day she would become a famous ballerina, and their son would eventually become a writer, like his father, not a soldier, because war had ended and they lived in a time of peace.
One day, in the distant future, their grandchildren would ask their grandmother to please tell them a story before bed, the one about the prince who saved a little girl’s life by slaying a mighty dragon.
“Once upon a time,” she would begin, “there was a kingdom of magic and miracles.” And she would wink at her husband who was listening at the doorway. They would smile at each other, and he would fall in love with her all over again, as he always did whenever she looked his way.
Near the top of the hill, they sat in the spot that belonged to them alone.
“Chick and Bella are leaving next Sunday. Did you know that?” she asked him.
“I didn’t know the day,” he replied.
For a while neither spoke. Alex watched a girl playing with her dog near the base of the hill. A young boy ran past them with a kite in tow, trying to catch a reluctant wind. There were fewer people here than on most summer Sunday evenings. Vacations had ended and schools were starting for the visitors and, for the flower children, it was a time of transition from a city of ashes to places where embers might be stoked into brilliant fire.
“You make it so hard for me Alex. So hard.” She did not look at him. Her eyes looked straight ahead to places he may never see.
“My work is finished here. You were responsible for all the good things that have happened recently, and I thank you. For good or bad, you provided us with a venue to express ourselves. You were the common person, the outsider, who saw what we were trying to do.”
“I saw what you were trying to do.” Alex looked at her and she turned to him.
“I was sent here to be objective, and I hope I was, but you were the only one I ever truly believed in. Of all the people I met, of all the people I talked to this past summer, yours was the only vision I knew as the truth. If the world changes, if one day we live in peace, then maybe many here and elsewhere were responsible. But in my heart, I’ll know that it was you, and you alone, who changed the world.”
“I couldn’t save you,” she said as her tears flowed.
“You never tried, and for that I’m grateful. My future was always in the hands of God. I could not have changed anything that happened, or will happen, to me. My family will always come first and I would never let them down.”
“Even if it means fighting in a war?” she asked so softly he barely heard her.
“My father fought for his country and, if asked, I will too. We fight for our country in different ways, but our goal is the same, a better place for us and our children to live.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw that the young boy had his kite in the air. It had caught a wind, high above the ground. A wind not felt on the grassy slope of the park.
“I can’t go with you, Alex.” Sarah smiled through the tears and he smiled back at her, with all the courage he could muster.
“I know I’ll never find anybody I love as much as you, and that makes me sad, but I can’t go with you.” She still smiled as the tears ran down her face. He wanted to brush them away. He wanted to tell her it was all right, he would be fine, but he knew it was not the truth. The world he thought he knew was about to end and he was frightened of the unknown.
“It was not an overnight decision. I thought about it long and hard. I want you to know that. It is important you know that I was not casual about losing you.”
Say it, he said to himself. Say it now. Make this the perfect moment, the moment that will last forever.
“I will never love anyone the way I love you,” he said. “I promise you this. For as long as I live I will never love another person as much as I love you.”
She looked at him and her smile grew brighter. “Come with me.”
She took his hand and they walked to the top of the hill. There, in the place where she danced on sun drenched days and moonlit nights, she put her arms around him, and he folded his around her. They danced together slowly, as the sun set behind the solitary tree, to a song as silent as the wind, and as beautiful as the hope of eternal love.
Above them, a kite found a mighty gust of wind and, for a fleeting second, rose like a skyrocket high above the earth.
STARLIGHT, STARBRIGHT
In their last week together, Sarah became playful. She was the Sarah of old, the Sarah of the early and mid-summer, delighting in the world around her. Her joy of life was infectious enough to brighten Alex’s mood. Her happiness was the lift he needed to live each day as it arrived. He came to think of Sarah as a jewel borrowed, not owned, a girl forever chased but never caught. He also accepted the mystery of her. He knew now she would always be the puzzle impossible to complete, the riddle hopeless to solve.
Each day spent together became an adventure; Sarah would have it no other way. For the first time since either had arrived in Haight-Ashbury, they left the comfort zone of the community and ventured into other parts of San Francisco.
On Monday, they took a cab to the zoo, and made a day of it. The sight of the many caged animals saddened Sarah, but she brightened when, while eating lunch, several squirrels ate peanuts out of her hands.
Before they left, the visited the monkey house on the recommendation of Skip and Benny. Neither was terribly surprised when two small monkeys walked to the front of the cage and stuck out their thumbs as if hitching a ride.
On Tuesday, they went on a trolley car tour of the city. They checked out Chinatown, where Sarah ate her first egg roll and Alex had a lunch of Chicken Chow Mien drenched in soy sauce.
Later, in the afternoon, they went to Fisherman’s Wharf on the bay, where they enjoyed snowballs and ice cream as they walked among the many fishing boats docked there.
They had a fish dinner at a small restaurant on a pier, which they both agreed did not compare to the Hope sisters’ nightly fare. Afterwards they visited the Wax Museum where Sarah held Alex tightly as they walked through the chamber of horrors and Alex complimented Sarah on her likeness to Marie Antoinette, before she lost her head.
On Wednesday, they took a cab to the Golden Gate Bridge and joined the many tourists walking its span. Alex calmed Sarah’s nerves at crossing the high open structure by holding her hand and talking to her as they walked. They traversed the almost two-mile span back and forth and Alex never once let go of her.
Thursday it rained. Alex took the opportunity to fine-tune his final article before submitting it. While Sarah sat next to him on the porch swing, reading a book of poetry, he reread his words. He thanked the many kind people he had befriended during the summer. In particular, he thanked his fellow housemates who he grew to know and love.
He saved the final paragraphs for Sarah. She, in many ways, represented the goodness of those around him. He read the closing words to himself.
I will try to remember much of what I saw here for the remainder of my days. There is, however, one memory I shall never forget, a young girl, eighteen years of age, dancing on a hill on a warm day in June. She wore flowers in her hair, this girl of summer, and her long blond hair soaked up the sun. I saw her on
my first day in San Francisco and many times since. The flowers she wore in her hair never wilted, and each day she was more beautiful than the day before.
I believe she will always be there, dancing on a hill. The flowers adorning her hair will forever be in bloom, and, no matter the day, season, or year, she will remain young and beautiful. And isn’t that the way all journeys should end, with a memory so treasured that time will never claim it.
They walked together to Haight Street, huddling under an old umbrella found among the boxes of the tranquility room. Alex dropped off the papers at the Western Union and then they waited in a small line at the only working phone booth in the area.
She came in with him while he made his last call to home. Before he hung up, Sarah asked to talk to his father. She told him he had a son of great courage, vision, and compassion, a son to make any father proud.
She said nothing for the longest time as she listened to the voice on the phone. Alex saw her eyes swell with tears as she held the phone. Then she said, “I will,” and handed the phone back to Alex. Neither spoke of what was said, and Alex never asked.
“Your father loves you,” Sarah said later, as they walked back to the house, and that was the end of it.
They devoted the remainder of the day to each other. They hid out behind the locked door of a candlelit storage room. They lay on their makeshift bed and talked, kissed, cuddled, and tickled each other when the topics of conversation became too heavy.
They emerged for a pasta dinner compliments of Belladonna before again slipping away to their sanctuary from the outside world.
A scratching at the door brought Alex to his feet. When he opened it, both Jezebel and Oswald were waiting outside.
“Why not,” Sarah said when Alex announced the visitors.
Jezebel made straight for the bottom of the bed, while her feathered partner pranced around the small room acclimating herself to the surroundings.
