The Love Children (24 page)

Bernice had left UCLA because of a failed love affair. During her sophomore year, her English professor, Gregory, had come on to her, and in time, she had fallen in love with him. But after
a year, he dropped her for another student. She couldn't believe it and wouldn't back off gracefully. She hung around him constantly, visiting his apartment, haunting his office. She felt he had just made a mistake and would remember that he loved her if he just looked at her the right way.

“I couldn't help it. I hated myself, but I just kept showing up during his office hours, day after day. He told me he was going to call the police if I didn't leave him alone. But I just couldn't. Has anything like that ever happened to you?”

“It sounds like you really loved him,” said Sandy, ever the diplomat.

“Oh, I adored him. I'd have died for him. I couldn't understand why he'd want to leave someone who loved him the way I did.”

I thought anybody would want to leave a person who loved them that way.

“Brad and I were still corresponding. We were pals during freshman year, though he was older than I was. He convinced me that the way to Greg's heart was to leave him. If he was without me, he'd start to long for me, Brad said. So I thought I'd try it. I wrote a letter to Greg, telling him I was leaving, but giving him my home address. I went back to San Diego and waited for six months, but I never heard from him. And I was working at McDonald's, which is lethal, I kid you not! And my mother . . . well, she was pressuring me to go back to school. I didn't know what to do.

“Then Rebecca came to work at McDonald's—she'd dropped out of UCLA too.” Bernice turned to Rebecca, who picked up the narrative.

“Yes, that was amazing! Kindred souls selling Big Macs! Actually, I ran out of money after my sophomore year. I was working to save up to go back to school. But some days it seemed like it wasn't worth it. Such disgusting work. I couldn't eat anything while I worked there. I lost fifteen pounds. The smell of grease . . .”

“And I told her about Brad and the commune, and she was fascinated . . .”

“It sounded ideal. I had always thought there should be another way to live. I didn't want to live like my parents. My father was a lawyer and I never saw him, he was always at work and he was so driven and, well, nasty, really. My mother was discontented even though she had this big house and fancy car and ladies to play golf with and a maid and all these clothes.”

“Me too.” Bernice said. “My father was very religious, a bulwark of the Episcopal Church. My mother was fragile, and he took care of her; he adored her. They were sweet, but it was so boring, their life, so repetitious; there was nothing in it, I felt. I wanted a little adventure, a little risk.”

“And I felt there should be sharing and equality in life.” Rebecca said. “Even before . . . well, my father got into some trouble. I don't know what he did exactly, but the government was after him for something, taxes maybe, hounding him, and he paid some fine. It was millions of dollars. He lost everything and then he had a heart attack and died, and my mother had to go on welfare and you should have heard her then!”

“Oh!” Sandy exclaimed in horror.

“Yeah. There wasn't even enough money for me to go to school, so I worked hard and got a scholarship, but my mother was in such bad straits, I quit after two years and got a job. I was living with her in San Diego, in a little apartment, and working in McDonald's, which was all I could get. It was horrendous; I hated it, but I was helping to support her.

“She felt horribly guilty making me quit college and do such disgusting work, and she pulled herself together and took a course to brush up on her skills. She got a job in a law office—before she met Daddy, she'd been a legal secretary. And before you knew it—bingo!—she landed herself another lawyer!” Rebecca laughed.

“Good for her!” Sandy exclaimed.

“We-ell,” Rebecca said, “he was married. But he left his wife for her and bought her another nice house, if not as nice as the one my father had bought us, but she was grateful for it; she was happy. I think she did it for me. So I could leave. By then, Bernice and I were friends, and we decided to hitch out here and see the commune and maybe stay here.”

Bernice picked it up. “I was scared to do it, but with Rebecca I was less scared, you know? So we came and I loved it here and Brad and I—well, we'd only been friends at school—but we hit it off when we met again. Maybe we were ready for each other. So I stayed.”

“Bernice and I ran the farm in those days, not that we knew much about farming . . .”

“We learned. We learned a lot. But now more people have come, and we do everything. We help with the horses once in a while, with the farm most of the time, and in the house, often. Like now,” she laughed, holding up a lump of pastry dough.

“Did Gregory ever write?” I wanted to know.

Bernice shook her head grimly. “Never. And don't tell Brad, but to this day I'm mad for him. How do you fall out of love with someone?”

It was an interesting question.

The newcomers were Stepan, Cynthia, and Lysanne, they said. Stepan was from the Soviet Union, Ukraine. He didn't have a green card and couldn't work legally. He had lived on a farm as a kid, before they sent him to engineering college, and he knew when to do what you had to do on a farm—plant, water, weed, whatever. He and Lysanne worked the farm while Bishop and Brad ran the horse ranch. They cared for the horses—fed them, exercised them, swept up the shit, and groomed them. Cynthia, who also helped with the labor of the animals, was in charge of the riding classes. She had been to school in England and had a
license. The classes were open to anyone in the area; there were seven students.

“The riding academy brings in about half of our cash,” Rebecca explained, “not that it's very much. We charge fifteen dollars a lesson, which means we can count on about a hundred dollars a week, given absences. It's not really enough to keep us. We eat the vegetables we grow, but we need an awful lot of other things—oats and millet and brown rice, for instance—and we need money for things like toilet paper and gas for the truck and fuel for the generator. Just keeping the generator going is tough. We have enough trees for wood to keep us warm in this room; we take turns chopping it. She laughed, holding up her arm to show us the muscles.

 

The pies were almost finished baking and dinner was ready when the back door opened and the aroma of horse manure penetrated the kitchen.

“Phew!” Bernice cried.

“I know, I know!” a woman's voice called back. “I'll go back out.” The door closed again.

“That's Cynthia. She cleans herself up in the stables, but sometimes there's horse shit on the path and it sticks to her boots.”

The door opened again. “There! Is that better?” the voice cried.

“Yeah!” both girls yelled.

There was a rustle of clothes being removed and a third woman entered the kitchen. Cynthia was taller than Bernice, slender, and athletic. She had long hair and wore blue jeans on her long, skinny legs. She stopped in surprise when she saw us.

Rebecca introduced us.

“Bishop's friends?” she asked. “He'll flip!”

“Where is he?”

“He'll be coming in soon. He and Brad are repairing the north corral—a couple of logs rotted out. They're just finishing up.”

The door opened again and a man and woman entered: Stepan and Lysanne, I guessed. Stepan was huge, tall and heavy, with a round face and thickish lips. He had large, pale blue eyes and was good-looking, with a sullen mouth that reminded me of Marlon Brando. Lysanne was small and very thin, but wiry; she looked strong enough to be a wrestler. She had bright pink cheeks and bright brown eyes and a happy expression, as if all the fresh air she worked in had cleansed her entire being. I liked her at first sight. I liked Stepan too; I wondered whose lover he was. It was going to take a while to sort out the dynamics of this place, I thought.

Then the back door opened again, revealing a tall, pale, skinny boy. There was electricity in the air as he entered. The whole kitchen stopped talking, watching his face, waiting. He looked around, a bit bewildered—what was going on? He spotted us, didn't take us in, then did, and his face exploded. He was smiling, then his body hurtled toward us; he was crying as he embraced us both, sobbing. We cried too, partly in shock—we'd never seen Bishop cry before. There was a loud clamor as everybody in the kitchen joined in talking or laughing or crying.

“How did you find me?”

“How are you?”

“Why did you come?”

“How are you?”

“Why didn't you write?”

“I knew he'd be thrilled!”

“How is my mother?”

“They're cute, aren't they? He said they were.”

“Why did you abandon us? Didn't you know we'd stick by you no matter what?”

“I know, I know. I'm sorry. I was so ashamed.”

“What's for dinner tonight?”

“Bishop, my father's dead!”

“What happened? Did he have a heart attack?”

The din in the kitchen went on as people pulled up chairs to the table and Rebecca, Bernice, and Cynthia prepared for the meal. Everyone was talking, laughing, babbling. We were still crying. Bishop tried to explain, Sandy tried to tell her story, I just kept stroking Bishop like a big dog I loved more than anything, and he kept touching Sandy and me, tears on his face.

“He killed himself, Bishop. With the car exhaust. He committed suicide. Can you believe it?”

“I can't believe
your
father did that. He was so calm, so gentle.”

Sandy sobbed. Bishop held her while she wept. The others gave them some space, then talked around them. I sat with Sandy and Bishop.

“Why did he do it?”

“I don't know!” she wailed. “No one knows! He just said he couldn't go on.”

“Had he read Beckett?” asked Rebecca, who was sitting beside Bishop. Sandy and I went on alert.

“Yes, why?”

“Oh, that's what his characters say. That they can't go on. Can't go on. But then they say they will go on.”

Sandy's tears fell anew, and she left the table. Bishop followed her. The rest of us looked at each other. “Did I say something wrong?” Rebecca asked.

I shook my head.

Cynthia was setting the table—practically hurling things at it—and Rebecca and Bernice were putting out steaming bowls of vegetables and grains in the center. Then a bowl of cabbage soup was set on each plate.

“Should we put their plates in the oven?” Rebecca asked, referring to Sandy and Bishop.

“The food will dry out,” Bernice said.

“But it'll get cold,” Rebecca countered.

Bernice shrugged and Rebecca got up, covered the plates with a dish towel, and set them in the oven on a low heat.

Stepan and Brad wolfed their food down; I'd never seen people so hungry. The food was bearable. I could do better, I thought, but then had second thoughts—maybe not, with their ingredients. No meat or fish, no butter or cream—no luxuries of any sort. Maybe I couldn't do better. An electric lamp hung over the kitchen table; another hung over the sink, but in other parts of the room there were kerosene lamps. I asked why they had both.

“We have generator,” Stepan answered me. “Expensive to run. We try save money. So we use kerosene. Cheaper.”

For dessert we had one of the apple pies made with Crisco. It was nowhere near as good as Mom's, made with butter. Not as flaky, and the flavor was not as good. It filled the stomach; that's all you could say about it. Maybe I could add something to this commune if I stayed. But maybe they wouldn't care, or even notice.

After dinner we had more coffee, not very good coffee, either, weak, probably made with some mediocre grocery store brand with something added to bulk it out. Chickory?

Sandy and Bishop came back.

“Sorry,” Sandy said.

“Sure,” a couple of people reassured her. They got their plates from the oven, sat down, and ate quietly.

When they had finished eating, Brad stood up and spoke as if at a meeting. Formally, he announced, “We're really happy that Bishop's friends Sandy and Jess have joined us tonight,” he said, as though he was the master of some ceremony.

Everyone chimed in, in agreement.

Brad turned to us then. “What are your plans? Have you come to visit, or to stay?”

I'm sure we looked dumb.

“Well, I mean, like, how long do you plan to stay?”

Sandy was embarrassed. She meant to stay, period. And I meant to stay as long as I felt she needed me. We were both noncommittal, saying we were unsure.

“Well, whatever you two do is cool, man,” Brad said, looking at Sandy and then at me. “I mean, you don't need a visa to come here. But the thing is, a commune has rules, it has to have rules. And our first rule is that anyone who wants to can come here and stay for one night free. But after that, to stay, you have to work.”

“Oh, we want to work!” I exclaimed, having already chosen my job.

“Yes!” Sandy agreed.

“Okay, good. Glad to hear it. We have three areas of work: the chickens, the horses, and the farm. Three of us have the horses pretty well covered. I mean, we can always use an extra hand, but we can take care of most things without help. Bernice and Rebecca do most of the care of the chickens—feed them, clean up the shit, sweep the coop, give them water, put ointment in their eyes, collect eggs. There's not that much to do with chickens, so they also take most care of the house—the cooking and cleaning, although all of us pitch in with doing dishes and marketing and stuff, and we each take care of our own rooms, clean them and change our sheets twice a month. We all share kitchen and laundry duty, we have a schedule on the wall. Stepan and Lysanne do most of the farming; Rebecca and Bernice help too, and we all pitch in sometimes, but that's the area where we need the most help. Especially in the spring and fall. So most new people are asked to help out on the farm. Would you be willing to do that?”