Summer of '69 Read online

  “Thanks, zitface.”

  “You get a lawyer?” I ask.

  Milton darts his eyes at the back of Arno’s head. There’s something he doesn’t want him to hear. He’ll tell me later.

  At Nathan’s, we get hot dogs, Cokes, and fat, greasy crinkle-cut French fries. (Robin never liked this place. She thought it was too dirty and noisy.) When Arno goes to the bathroom, I lean across the table to Milton. “What’s the story?”

  “The old-Austrian-boys’ network,” Milton quips. “My parents had Judge Wagner over for linzer torte and a chat. Everything’s been ironed out. The understanding is, I pay for the damage, and the charges get knocked down to malicious mischief. And because I’m seventeen, I qualify for youthful offender status. Two or three years’ probation, and as long as I don’t mess up, the record gets expunged.”

  “And no more guns and Molotov cocktails, right?”

  Milton’s eyes shift left and right, then he leans closer and whispers, “We blow up the Great Neck draft board and call it a day, okay?”

  What! He can’t be —

  Milton leans back and grins. “Wish you could see your face.”

  Arno returns to the table. “What’re you homos whispering about now?”

  “What’ll happen next week when you get busted with all that acid,” I reply. I’ve finally figured out what’s bothering me about Arno and his bulging sock of LSD. It’s not only that he doesn’t need the money. It’s not just that his real motive for being a dealer — so people will admire him and think he’s badass — is flawed. It’s that, after my recent run-ins with border agents, and with all the other hassles in my life, the last thing I feel like doing next weekend is being in Arno’s car or at the festival feeling paranoid about getting busted. It’s another one of those reality-check moments. Back in high school, I’m not sure I actually ever believed we could get busted. Well, guess what, Toto? We’re not in high school anymore.

  “You’re still coming, right?” Arno asks Milton.

  Milton lowers his eyes. It dawns on me that a three-day drug-infused art and music festival might not be the best choice for someone who’s been warned to stay out of trouble. “I can’t.”

  “Aw, man.” I’m completely bummed. “You sure?”

  “I can’t risk it,” Milton says. “Especially with Mr. Drug Kingpin over here.”

  So much for our last big hurrah of the summer. Arno crosses his arms and grouses, “That’s right — blame it on me.”

  “He has a point,” I argue.

  “So you’re saying that if I didn’t bring the acid, you’d go?” Arno asks Milton.

  Milton hesitates, then shakes his head.

  “I rest my case,” Arno says to me. Then to Milton: “So we can have your tickets?”

  “I’d like to sell them,” Milton says.

  Arno gives me a look and mouths, Tinsley.

  I’m about to break the news to him that she’s been grounded by her mother and that I haven’t spoken to her since Milton’s birthday. But then, from close by, comes “Mom, is that a boy or a girl?”

  Jesus Christ, not this again.

  Sitting next to us is a woman with dyed-blond hair, wearing a too-tight T-shirt and short shorts. She and her two blond kids are staring. The boy who asked the question looks like he’s nine or ten.

  The woman starts to rise. “Come on, kids, we’re moving away from this hippie trash.” The kids obediently pick up their trays and follow.

  “Girl,” I call out after them.

  The boy looks back and frowns.

  “It’s the ponytail.” Arno runs a hand over his own hair, which partly covers his ears and in the back ends thickly at his shirt collar. “Mine’s more acceptably long. But you’ve crossed the line.”

  I wave him off. “Frequently wrong. Never in doubt.”

  Milton laughs so abruptly that he coughs out a half-chewed French fry. The radio earpiece falls into his soda. He fishes it out and sticks it back in his ear.

  Arno can’t let go. “Cut it a little shorter. It can still be long. Just not so long that it attracts attention everywhere you go.”

  “What about when everyone else’s hair is as long as mine?” I ask.

  “Never.”

  “The oracle hath spoken yet again.” Milton sniggers.

  Nothing eggs Arno on more than when we don’t take him seriously. “When are you gonna figure out that this long-haired hippie-dippie shit is just a fad? Remember when it was spit curls and duck’s asses? Tapered pants and engineer boots? Now we laugh at those guys.”

  “This is different.”

  Arno rolls his eyes. “Oh, really? All these barefoot flower people eating brown rice and alfalfa sprouts? You don’t think they’re gonna get tired of being dirty and hungry? And free love? Enjoy the crabs and clap, man. This whole back-to-the-land thing? Isn’t that why we had the industrial revolution? So we don’t all have to be farmers anymore?”

  He is so good at getting under my skin. “You don’t get it, Arno,” I tell him. “You’re never gonna get it.”

  Arno sits back and smugly crosses his arms. “We’ll see who doesn’t get it.”

  Dessert at Carvel. Robin would always get vanilla swirl with sprinkles in a cup, never a cone. She didn’t like it dripping down her hand on warm nights.

  I’m bummed about Milton not going to the festival, but it should still be an outrageous weekend of music and fun, plus an opportunity to catch up with Cousin Barry. (I can always hang out with him and Zach while Arno’s off peddling his wares.)

  We’re paying for our cones when from the parking lot in the back comes the loud revving of a car engine followed by the squeal of tires.

  We join a crowd watching a Corvair do donuts, the acrid smoke of burning rubber in our noses. Clouds of white billow from the wheel wells while the car spins in a tight circle. This teenage ritual sacrifice of tires dates back to the aforementioned days of spit curls and engineer boots. Is Arno right? Will people someday look upon long hair, bell-bottoms, and peace symbols with the same amused disdain that we feel watching these nutjobs shred tread and transmissions?

  The Corvair gives way to a souped-up Nash Rambler that draws chuckles from the crowd. By now there must be forty people watching.

  And one of them is Tinsley, about thirty feet to my right. She’s turning her head away when I spot her, which makes me think that she saw me first. A guy with longish hair, bushy sideburns, and a thick black mustache is standing close behind her. He’s wearing jeans and a leather vest with no shirt underneath. His chest is covered with curly dark hair.

  His hands are on her shoulders.

  “How would you feel if your mom and I got divorced?”

  When I roared into the garage on the BSA a few minutes ago, the paterfamilias came out of the house. He’d been gone all weekend without explanation. I guess with Alan at camp, he doesn’t feel the need for pretenses anymore. I was sure he was going to give me grief about having a motorcycle. Instead, he suggested a stroll.

  So he wants to get divorced. What am I supposed to say? Gee, Dad, sounds fantastic. Really happy for you. Come to think of it, except for the fact that you show up here to sleep and change clothes, it kind of feels like you’re already divorced. But all the same, thanks for asking.

  “Why?” It’s a stupid question, but I want to hear him answer it.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he says.

  “Give it a try.” The words probably surprise me as much as they surprise him. Have I ever given the paterfamilias an order before? I expect him to react, but he doesn’t. Then it hits me: Is it possible that, thanks to the Great Bathtub Turd Incident, he’s realized that I no longer need to bow before his bluster?

  He stares off. Still not much eye contact. Whenever our eyes met in the past, it always felt like he was looking inside me for all that should have been there but wasn’t: The desire to win. The desire to become a capitalist tool. The desire to be golden. Now I just can’t look at him, period.

/>   He rubs the back of his neck. “There’s nothing left. You had to know that. The separate bedrooms. The silence. There are things a man needs, Lucas. I’m not just talking about sex. I’m talking about love and affection. . . .” He trails off, but he’s said enough to leave me feeling profoundly ill at ease.

  It’s January 1967. I am fifteen and have begun to grow my hair long. At home, I am accused of being fresh, sullen, and uncooperative. With Presidents’ Week vacation approaching next month, Dad announces that he and I need to spend some special time together. I think not, but he proposes that we go to Aspen, the mecca of American skiing.

  Mom has to stay home with Alan, who won’t ski anymore. He used to, but he refused to go to ski school and thus never learned to turn. At the top of a slope, he’d aim his skis downhill and go straight to the bottom, where he’d drop to his butt and drag to a stop.

  None of us saw what happened on that icy day at Bromley the year Alan turned nine. But it wasn’t hard to imagine him flying down the hill and plunking down in his customary drag-butt manner. With scant friction on the hard-packed slippery snow, he slid farther and faster than usual and smashed into the ticket checker’s booth. One front tooth was knocked out cleanly. The other had to be removed by a dentist in Manchester that afternoon. Alan hasn’t been on skis — and has been wearing a bite-plate with two false front teeth — ever since.

  In Aspen, Dad signs us up for a private lesson. We’ve never skied in powder and want to learn. Our Austrian ski instructor keeps saying “Rhino.” “Rhino, we ski face of Bell Mountain.” “Rhino, you follow me.”

  Dad and I are mystified. Does the instructor think Rhino is Dad’s first name? Did someone tell him that’s how all Americans begin each sentence?

  This goes on all morning until we realize that Rhino means “right now.”

  Rhino becomes our private joke. “Rhino, I go to the bathroom.” “Rhino, I order dessert.” Dad and I don’t talk about life back home, about me quitting tennis, not doing my chores, or doing badly at school. We just ski. It’s actually fun. Fun with Dad. A unique concept.

  One day, while we’re eating lunch at the Sundeck at the top of Aspen Mountain, Dad starts chatting with an attractive woman. She laughingly says that she thought Dad and I were brothers. Dad shows his teeth a lot and converses animatedly with her. I am old enough now to recognize the heightened level of charm he saves for social occasions and flirtations with attractive women. But, hey, it’s vacation. We’re just having fun.

  That evening Dad and I have dinner at the Copper Kettle, his favorite Aspen restaurant. It feels special. The food is delicious. Afterward, I’m bushed from skiing all day and ready to hit the sack, but Dad wants to go hear music. This is odd. He never listens to music at home. But, hey, it’s vacation.

  We walk along the sidewalk, snow falling out of the dark sky and the scent of wood smoke in the air. This is really cool. We’re going to listen to music together. Another first. He takes me to a crowded place where people sit at long tables drinking mugs of beer while an oompah band plays. Not exactly the tunes I had in mind, but I’m ready to go with the flow.

  Especially since it’s beer that’s flowing. When Dad orders a pitcher and pours us each a mug, I can’t believe it. Not only does he hardly ever drink at home, but I’m fifteen. There is no possible way that this can be legal. Thus, it is beyond cool. Together in Aspen, on our own and far away from the rest of the world, Dad and I are father-and-son party animals. It feels like I’m with a whole new person. Someone who for once isn’t being judgmental or critical. Someone who just wants to have fun . . . with me.

  I finish my beer and Dad pours me another. At this point in my life, I’ve hardly had any drinking experience. After two mugs at an altitude of eight thousand feet, I’m three sheets to the wind and feeling no pain.

  I don’t remember exactly when the woman from lunch joins us. All I know is that her name is Sharon, and once again Dad is chatting her up unctuously. He pours me a third mug of beer, lets me finish it, then puts me in a cab and gives the driver a hotel room key and fifty bucks to make sure I get there safely.

  Not a whole new person after all.

  On the sidewalk near our house, the paterfamilias has just said something about having never felt this deeply in love before. How Antonia is the true soul mate he never dreamed he’d find. I guess all those other women — the Hazels, the Sharons, plus the ones I never met but sensed were the reason for his “late nights at the office” (when he worked for himself and could make his own schedule) and “business trips” (when his businesses were nearby) — weren’t his soul mates. They were simply the women an iconoclast like him gets to cheat on Mom with.

  He’s never spoken to me this honestly, this frankly before. I guess this, too, is part of the post – high school landscape. I gaze across the street at our neighbors’ well-kept houses and neatly trimmed lawns. The only sounds are cicadas and the distant hum of a lawn mower. Despite my antiestablishment leanings, this summer I’ve come to realize that this has been a good place, maybe even a great place, to grow up. In a roomy home, in a safe neighborhood with lots of space to play and a private country club. Children never go hungry here. They have their own bedrooms. Not only was Chris expected to drop out and go to work when he turned sixteen, but until he went into the army, he had to share a bedroom with a younger brother. And how many millions of kids would think he had it pretty good compared to them?

  So, let’s face it, folks, I’ve had it good. Only, Rhino I can’t look at the person who made it all possible. That Presidents’ Week trip to Aspen two years ago was the last time any of us traveled anywhere together. How convenient that on the top of Aspen Mountain we should run into an attractive woman who happened to be skiing alone. How strange that the paterfamilias should suddenly decide he wanted to go listen to music. How remarkable that we should run into the same woman (alone again) at the beer hall after the paterfamilias had gotten me plastered.

  And that was supposed to be our special time together? Pardon my French, but give me a fucking break.

  “Is Antonia the one you went to the classic-car rally with?” I ask.

  The paterfamilias does a double take, then stares at me with wide-eyed stupefaction. I explain that I saw her in the MG with him when Robin and I drove out east to catch the ferry to New London on our way to Maine.

  He looks down at the sidewalk and says “We’re deeply in love” for the second time.

  A cramping sensation seizes my guts. How is a son supposed to react when a father tells him he’s deeply in love with a woman who’s not his mother?

  “She lives in New Jersey,” he volunteers. “So I’d probably move out there. She’s got young boys who could use a father.”

  To get to the very closest parts of New Jersey takes at least an hour — more in any kind of traffic. Depending on where in New Jersey Antonia lives, the drive could take a lot longer. If he moves there, am I supposed to visit?

  “What about Mom and Alan?” I ask.

  “I’d make sure they’re okay,” he says. “They seem to do fine without me.”

  What, exactly, does that mean? Alan may not be a kid anymore, but he’s still the paterfamilias’s child, still living at home, going to his special school. But he won’t be going to special schools forever. What then? What happens to people like my brother? Are they sent away someplace? Mom would never allow that. So then . . . will he always live with her at home? And if something happens to Mom, then with me? It’s hard to imagine true-love Antonia taking on that responsibility when she has children of her own. So that means the paterfamilias would leave Alan in our hands. Emotionally, I guess he did that years ago. But at least he stuck around to be here in an emergency.

  Now he’d really be gone.

  From Mom.

  From Alan.

  From me.

  For good.

  This is the guy Mom says loves me?

  So here we are on the sidewalk on a summer afternoon, talking about
a future in which he walks away from his family to take over a new one. One where he feels appreciated by the new love of his life and needed by her children. All he has to do is divorce Mom and he’ll be golden.

  It reminds me of the last time he asked for my blessing to do something that was important to him. When he asked if I’d mind if Rat Fink Johnny became his doubles partner. What did he expect me to say? At that point, I hadn’t picked up a racket in nearly a year. He knew I hated playing competitively. The only reason he asked was because he felt guilty and wanted me to absolve him of that burden.

  It’s the same thing now, isn’t it?

  He wants me to say something like I understand, Dad. Don’t worry about shirking your responsibilities to your family. Go to Antonia. After all, she’s the soul mate you never thought you’d find.

  That’s not what I say. What comes through my lips is “Do whatever the fuck you want.”

  I’d rather have a bottle in front of me

  Than a frontal lobotomy.

  It’s truly mind-blowing how many small brown glass bottles are in the medicine cabinet in Arno’s parents’ bathroom. A regular pharmacological cornucopia. A few moments ago, I was in Arno’s room listening to Blind Faith and helping him paint one side of each of his homemade acid tablets a festive violet color. Acid usually has a name (Orange Sunshine, Blue Cheer, Purple Haze), and Arno’s come up with Violet Rush. The Woodstock music and arts festival is less than a week away, and he doesn’t want potential customers thinking he’s trying to burn them with tabs that look more like aspirin than acid.

  After giving the paterfamilias my answer to his question, I started walking and ended up at Arno’s house. I just couldn’t be in my house after that. Arno was happy to have someone help him paint each of his two thousand tabs with a mixture of blue and red food coloring.

  I was headed for the kitchen to get something to drink when I remembered the built-in bar in the den where Mr. Exley makes his vodka martinis. I poured myself a nice big glass of orange juice and added some vodka. Or maybe I poured a nice big glass of vodka and added some orange juice. Anyway, I was headed back to Arno’s room but wound up in his parents’ bathroom instead.