Do this. I stumbled to the bathroom and managed what Dagmar calls her “PTA dance” in front of the sink. “Wash your essentials,” she’d instructed a twelve-year-old me. “Pits, tits, and ass.”
I threw on my black slacks, white turtleneck, and gray sweater—an acceptable outfit for a granddaughter in mourning. No time to change the bandages. I had barely finished inhaling a hard-boiled egg and finding Dad in the den, when the doorbell rang.
”I-I’ll get it,” I told him.
Gabriel presented me with a box of peanut brittle. “For the shivah house,” he said. “I refuse to bring you one more fruit basket or box of butter cookies. So, here you go. Certified kosher-dairy. Peanut brittle lasts forever. Invite me over for New Year’s Eve, and it will still be good.”
My exhaustion vanished. I waved him into the living room.
”I hope you like peanut brittle. I’m a huge fan. I could live on peanut brittle and Cheerios. Well, not exactly. You look good in gray. So, Miss Friis, would you like to join me this morning?” He voice was clipped and breathy, with a Chatty Cathy quality like Leona. He almost sounded nervous, which didn’t make sense for a guy who was twenty and one of my sister’s “close friends.” Or was he?
”I-I just g-got up and…um…”
”Peanut brittle is one of my favorites,” Dad said, advancing on Gabriel with his hand extended. “Good morning, Gabriel. It’s good to see you.”
”Professor Friis.” Gabriel shook Dad’s hand. “I was wondering if Hope could come with me for an hour or so.”
”D-Dagmar is g-gone again,” I said, which was true.
Dad ran his fingers through his hair. What if he asked how Gabriel knew she was missing?
He didn’t. Instead he looked at his watch. “If you can’t find Dagmar, let me know. I’ll leave Josh here to help Mrs. Friis, and I’ll go help you look as well.”
Done.
”That was clever,” Gabriel said, escorting me to his uncle’s station wagon.
I smiled for the first time in eons. “I know.”
This is not a date. This is not a date. I sat two feet away from Gabriel in the front seat and looked out the car window at the stores along Shattuck. Still, I felt physically closer to him than when we sat nearly thigh to thigh at Sproul Hall. Just the two of us in this enclosed space, his aftershave insinuating itself up my nose. A tightness thrummed deep inside.
Gabriel tapped a three-four rhythm on the steering wheel.
”I-I h-have to be b-back by one th-thirty,” I said, picking a time that seemed to make sense in the nonsensical collision of Paris-Then and Berkeley-Now.
Gabriel turned on Hearst into campus. “I’ll have you home by then. Holler if you see a parking space.”
Holler is hardly my style. I glanced at the scar between Gabriel’s lip and nose. My LSD brain had conjured up Mr. Zipper Mouth. I must have been looking at his scar in the hospital, and at the party, too, whenever he found me. Did I ever call him that to his face? I bit my lip and felt embarrassment creep into my cheeks.
”Well, I’ll be damned. Would you look at that?” Gabriel pointed to a group of people marching up the street, row upon row of them, four across. “The judge must have dismissed them early so they could make it to the assembly. I can’t believe it.”
I folded my arms across my chest and looked away.
”We’ll catch up with them later,” he said. He didn’t mention Dagmar.
The Greek Theatre was mobbed. If it were indoors, we would have been turned away, but this was one of those open-air amphitheaters. Gabriel took my hand and led us to a grassy spot by the top tier. We sat further apart than we did at Sproul, but closer than we were in the car. His hand stayed on top of mine. The birthmark on his left earlobe looked like a tiny onyx earring.
The back of my neck tingled. I dragged my focus away from Gabriel to the reason why we were here.
The stage far below us looked like the square in front of an ancient Greek temple, but we were definitely in the middle of the twentieth century. President Kerr stood in front of a podium with a microphone. Dozens of people, men mostly, were on the stage with him, along with a few policemen.
”There’s Mario Savio,” Gabriel told me, pointing to a curly-headed guy a couple of yards from the stage. “He looks like a munchkin from here, but don’t underestimate Mario. If you want to organize an act of civil disobedience, he’s your man.”
”W-was it w-worth it?”
Gabriel cocked his head. “To disrupt the university and occupy Sproul?”
I nodded.
”Absolutely. We aren’t out to overthrow the administration, Hope. That’s pure bull. We simply want to set up tables and distribute pamphlets on campus. It’s a basic right in a free society. So what if some of us lean toward the far left politically. You should see how many libertarians and conservatives have joined the Free Speech Movement. And it’s not just the students and some of the faculty. Ed Landberg, the guy who owns Cinema-Guild? Well, he’s giving the money from tonight’s showing of Chushingura to us. And he lent us the movie projectors and films for the sit-in at Sproul.”
I nodded again, and licked my lips.
”Hey, I’m sorry. I must sound like I’m on a soapbox here. It’s just that this matters to me.”
”M-me, too,” I said automatically. Really? I thought about the protests on campus and the occupation at Sproul Hall. That’s what my grandmother’s prayer shawl was all about. Pursuing justice. Sometimes you have to act. Sometimes you have to open your mouth.
I looked back at the stage. President Kerr was talking about “the full and free pursuit of educational activities on this campus,” whatever that meant. He promised to “abide by the new and liberalized political action rules and await the report of the Senate Committee on Academic Freedom.”
What new policies?
”The departmental chairmen believe that the acts of civil disobedience on December second and third were unwarranted,” Kerr said, “And that they obstruct rational and fair consideration of the grievances brought forward by the students.”
Gabriel shook his head and muttered something I didn’t catch.
Kerr continued. “The cases of all students arrested in connection with the sit-in at Sproul Hall on December second and third are now before the Courts. The university will accept the Court’s judgment in these cases as the full discipline for those offenses.”
I wondered what happened to Dagmar at the Berkeley Community Theater and whether she was going to go to jail again.
”The university will not prosecute charges against any students for actions prior to December second and third; but the university will invoke disciplinary actions for any violations henceforth.”
Mario kept shaking his head, too. I saw his mouth moving, but we were too far away to hear what he was saying. As soon as President Kerr stepped back from the microphone, Mario walked toward the podium. Gabriel leaned forward, his body tensing, his eyes on Mario. I shaded my eyes and craned my neck, straining to see what was happening.
A rumble of protests echoed from the crowd nearest the stage. Then I saw two policemen grab Mario. My stomach lurched. He hadn’t done anything wrong. What about these new, improved policies for political activity on campus that we just heard about?
One of the policemen wrapped his arm around Mario’s throat and forced his head back. The other one seemed to twist Mario’s arm. As Mario went limp, they dragged him off the stage.
So much for free speech on campus.
Suddenly I was on my feet.
”Unfair,” I shouted, making a megaphone of my hands.
Why are people so afraid of other people’s ideas, or values, or religions? What had we, supposedly civilized human beings, learned in nearly a thousand years since…well, for me, since this morning?
Anger blasted through me. “Unfair! Unfair
! ”
And then my words were swallowed up with others, all over the Greek Theatre. Some men had scrambled on stage to help Mario, but the police and faculty members were holding them back.
I felt Gabriel’s arm around my shoulder. “You tell ‘em, lady. Now let’s go before the rush.”
I frowned. “It’s n-not over.”
”I have to talk to you someplace quiet, and we only have until one thirty.”
Curious, I didn’t say no.
We found a parking space on Telegraph Avenue—which Gabriel dubbed a minor miracle—and walked past Caffé Med. “There will be a mob here tonight,” he said. “Maybe even for lunch. Let’s try that new café on the corner.”
Tidbits on Telegraph had red-checkered tablecloths and plastic daisies in tiny wicker baskets. “A throwback to the fifties,” Gabriel said, after the waitress seated us. The place was nearly empty.
The tuna sandwich looked good, but who wants fish breath when you’re out with a guy? I chose egg salad on whole wheat—rye was out of the question—and a cherry coke. Gabriel ordered a Reuben and coffee, plus fries for us to share.
Then silence. We sat across from each other. I cleared my throat. One of the plastic daisies had a fake ladybug on its petals.
Gabriel coughed. “Dagmar is a force of nature. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
My mouth turned sour. I folded my napkin in thirds.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I didn’t dare look at Gabriel. It’s always about Dagmar. I shouldn’t have come.
”Hope, I’m just going to spit it out, so please let me finish before you say anything, okay?”
A chuckle bubbled up. I am the Empress of Non-interruption. “Okay,” I said.
He reached across the table and touched my hand. “I know we got off to a bad start at the Halloween party and the hospital. The doctors at Alta Bates told me you would remember very little about what happened, but what do they know?”
I nodded and counted three beats. He started again before beat four. “But I’d really like to get to know you better. We had a good time together at Sproul, right? I mean even if it was a sit-in.”
I nodded again. Yellow flecks highlighted his brown eyes. I wanted to ask him to make his eyebrows dance again, just for fun, but he was suddenly acting very serious.
”You’re way more my type than Dagmar is, even though you’re four years younger than I am.”
He inhaled. I forgot to breathe.
”Dagmar has a way of getting what she wants, I don’t have to tell you that. She and I know each other because she hangs out with friends of mine who are a lot more into the Merry Pranksters and Haight-Ashbury scene than I am. What I mean is, she’s not my style.”
The waitress stood over us with our food. Gabriel let go of my hand. He didn’t take it again when she left. I dipped a French fry in ketchup and munched, nurturing the tiniest hope that this monologue was going where I wanted it to.
Gabriel sipped his coffee. “So. I am wondering if you are interested in…you know…in —what do they call it?” He made little air quotes. “Exploring a relationship?”
He took another sip. “If you are, then I’ll make it clear to Dagmar that she and I are just friends of friends.”
Sip three. “But if you don’t want to get into trouble with your sister, I totally understand.”
Sip four. “Okay, now it’s your turn.”
I focused on my sandwich, the heat rising in my face. I wanted to reprise Gabriel’s wonderful words, the parts where he said he liked me and wanted to be with me. Me. Still, I had to know. It mattered.
”H-how…um…c-close are are y-you and D-Dagmar?”
”You mean are we sleeping together?”
I put hands on my lips and shut my eyes, and I managed to nod. Please, please, please tell me the truth.
One full measure of silence. “We’re not. But I’ve gotta tell you…Geez, Hope, I’m a regular red-blooded twenty-year-old male. I have… I’ve had… some experience. But casual sex doesn’t do it for me. If you don’t mind my saying so, that’s what your sister is all about.”
I dared to open my eyes. Gabriel’s open, honest face seemed to match his words. Relief flooded through me. He bit into his Reuben. Sauerkraut landed on his sweater. “I’m such a slob,” he said, picking it off. He had the kind of thick curly eyelashes Leona told me she always wanted.
Then I had to be honest, too. “If-If I c-called you M-Mister Z-Zipper Mouth, I-I’m sorry.”
”What?”
”At the h-hospital.”
He touched his scar. “You cussed like a pro in the kitchen, and in the ambulance, and in the emergency room, but you didn’t say that. When I first found you, you came at me with a screwdriver and nearly drove it into my chest. The screwdriver, remember? You know, the one you were using to unscrew your jaw.”
My face felt like lead. I did what? The table swayed. The room swiveled from side to side.
”Hope, you don’t remember that?”
I couldn’t even shake my head.
”You told me that the stork had put your jaw in crooked and that you were making adjustments. You were not happy when I took the screwdriver away and tried to stop the bleeding.”
I almost killed myself over my damned stuttering? My mouth went dry. My sandwich blurred. And then Gabriel was sitting next to me in the booth, his leg touching mine. An un-pressed but perfectly clean handkerchief appeared in my hand.
”Mr. Zipper Mouth,” he whispered. He touched my bandages. “I’ve been called a whole bunch of names, especially when I was little, but I don’t remember that one. See, Hope? I knew you were someone special.”
He pressed his lips to the ugly side of my face. “I bet you’ve been called a ton of names, too. And you know that saying about sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never harm you?”
My chin managed to dip toward the table and then come up again.
”Well, that’s a crock, right? Words can gouge out your insides, right?”
I took a shuddering breath and wiped my nose.
”Here’s the thing. We can’t control what people call us or how they describe us. But we don’t have to let them define us. You know what I mean?”
The best I could do was shrug.
Gabriel kissed my cheek. And then my lips. Once. Twice. Soft, gentle kisses that sheltered me from my thoughts about that horrible night until I started to feel fine. So fine. Oh, so fine.
Gabriel stayed on my side of the booth. I devoured my sandwich and we decided to share a hot fudge sundae for dessert. He told me about his cello, and about wanting to fight the disease that killed his mother. I told him that my grandmother died of cancer, too, and that, besides singing, which was my life’s passion, I liked to hike, and I once had a pet snake. I told him that I adored licorice, just like my grandmother, but I had understandably lost my appetite for it since Halloween.
Then it was suddenly 1:20 and we had to leave. A guy with an FSM armband stopped us as we were walking hand-in-hand past Caffé Med. Gabriel introduced me as Dagmar’s sister.
”Dagmar’s back at her place,” the guy said. He rolled his eyes. “She missed you something awful this morning, Altman.”
Inhale. Slow release.
We didn’t say much on the way home. After Gabriel parked in front of my house, he touched my cheek. “Are you ready for this?”
I nodded.
”Good luck,” he said.
”G-good l-l-luck b-b-ack at you.”
We walked inside together. Dagmar was still wearing her funeral clothes, which had begun to smell ripe. She flung herself at Gabriel. He held his arms out while she nuzzled his neck. I clenched my jaw—and my fists.
She frowned at me. “You didn’t tell The Great Dane about the court case, did you? Because everyt
hing is going to be fine. Judge Crotchety was a trip.”
”Judge Crittenden,” Gabriel said.
”Well, he was crotchety to me, Gabey-Baby. You would know if you had been there. That was such a disappointment. Anyway, His Honor granted a postponement until December fourteenth. We have a whole week to figure this out. Plus, I saw the charade at the Greek Theatre, when they took Mario away, and then they brought him out again, and he told everybody to clear this disastrous scene and get down to discussing the issues. Cal is jumping! I can’t wait to see what the Academic Senate is going to say tomorrow.”
She tickled Gabriel under his chin. “How about staying for dinner tonight? We have to do the shivah thing. Poor Grandpa. I’m sure my parents won’t mind.”
Gabriel gently brushed her hand away. “Another time maybe. I have a strategy meeting tonight. I can’t stay. Hope, thanks for coming to the Greek Theatre with me and…ah…everything. Are you sitting shivah tomorrow night, too?”
I nodded. Dagmar crinkled her forehead. “That’s right. It’s only Monday. So much has happened since Grandpa’s funeral.”
And it’s not over yet.
There seemed to be a closed-door policy for each of the bedrooms at the Friis house for the rest of the afternoon. Which was just as well. Maybe everybody needed to be alone as much as I did. In Grandpa’s room, I studied the white satin bible that the temple’s sisterhood had given to me for my confirmation last spring. It had THE HOLY SCRIPTURES and MIRIAM HOPE FRIIS embossed in gold letters, and I was supposed to carry it with me at my wedding. Squinting at the miniscule print, I read and reread the Abraham and Isaac story in Genesis, chapter 22. God tells Abraham to bind Isaac, and then to put him on an altar and slay him with a knife. When Abraham gets out his knife, an angel stops him. I memorized every word the angel said. That would be my speech. But would it be enough? And what strength of LSD should I give Avram? Was the current dose in 1964 more than what he would have eaten in ergot-infested rye bread in 1099? Less? By how much?
This whole plan was ridiculously risky, but I wasn’t in agony about the decision anymore. I felt sure that if Avram knew how mistaken he was, he would want me to try.
The Ninth Day Page 18
