She smiled, appearing genuinely pleased by Teri’s presence. “This is so incredible. I saw Judy a couple of months ago, over at the Farmers Market. First her, and now you. Really incredible.”
“Judy’s still in the area?”
Peggy nodded. “She married a cop. Can you believe that?”
“No,” Teri said uneasily. Going back was a strange and uneasy odyssey, she decided. As ridiculous as it sounded, because they had all undoubtedly changed over the years, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking how much Peggy had changed. Not in her trappings, of course, because those hadn’t changed at all. But the wallflower was gone now. Her smile was genuine and easy, and seemed more open than Teri remembered.
“They’ve got a three-year old girl,” Peggy said. “And they just bought a new house in the Henderson subdivision.”
“That’s a nice area.”
“Yeah, they must be doing all right.”
“How about you?” Teri asked, trying to be tactful. “Are you doing all right?”
Peggy smiled. “Better than ever.”
“You live alone here?”
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. There wasn’t the vaguest hint of regret or sorrow in her voice, and it occurred to Teri that her friend had learned something about herself since their last get-together. Peggy was no longer on the outside looking in. She had quit coveting those around her, and she had learned to be happy with herself. It was a lesson Teri wasn’t sure that she, herself, had learned.
“It’s my own little corner of paradise,” Peggy added.
“It is beautiful here.”
“I like it.”
“Especially the view.”
Peggy nodded. “So… how about you? You and Michael still together?”
“Separated,” Teri said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No need. It was the right thing at the time.” There was more to it than that, of course. But Teri wasn’t in the mood for stirring it all up again. Once the sediment started rising, she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep her emotions under check and her thoughts clear. So she sidestepped the issue as best she could and left Michael there for some other time, maybe some other occasion that wasn’t quite as awkward. In his place, she asked Peggy about the house plants and the furniture and about what had been going on in her life all these years. They reminisced about the old times, about how naive they had all been, and how the world had turned out to be even scarier than anyone imagined, and how the good times seemed dimmer and more dreamlike than either of them cared to admit. There was still an aura, as Peggy put it, about those times, even though it had faded over the years. Some of the faces had faded, too, she admitted.
“Have you seen any of the others?” Teri asked.
“Not in years.”
“Me, neither. Funny how easily people drift apart, isn’t it?”
“The cycle of life,” Peggy said, philosophically.
“Yeah, I suppose.”
They had come full circle now, and Teri had enjoyed the journey more than she had ever imagined she would. But it was drawing down to the end, and it was time she got to the reason she had come here in the first place. “Do you remember Dr. Childs?”
“From the clinic?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure, I remember him.”
“You ever see anymore of him?”
“Not since college,” Peggy said. She shook her head, a sly smile working its way into her expression. “Now there was an odd duck if ever there was one.”
“Odd duck?” Teri said. She had never heard anyone refer to Childs as an odd duck before. In fact, she couldn’t recall having ever heard anyone speak ill of him at all. This was going to be interesting. “How so?”
“Oh, you know, him the good doctor and all.”
“I’m sorry. What am I missing?”
“Genesis?”
Times had been different back then. And they had been young. And what they had put in their bodies hadn’t mattered much as long as it swept them away for awhile and eventually brought them back again. Some, like Mark Bascom, didn’t even care if it brought them back. He died of a heroine overdose in ’71, and Teri had always thought that his death had been the death of the group. Things had never seemed quite as carefree or spontaneous after that.
Genesis, though… Teri had forgotten about that stuff. It was something they were into for about six months during her senior year. Like LSD, it came in a convenient little sugar cube and sent you out into new, uncharted territory every time you took it. She had tried it three, maybe four times altogether, and had quit after that because it always seemed to leave her with a headache that hung on longer than the trip itself.
“Yeah?” Teri said, still not making the connection.
“Where do you think it came from?”
“From you.”
“Where do you think I got it?”
“Childs?” Teri asked. It was almost too incredible to believe. They were talking about the man who had been her doctor for most of her adult life, the man who had given vaccinations to her son, who had set Michael’s arm after he broke it playing racquetball, who had done the biopsy on the lump under her left breast and had assured her repeatedly that it was benign. Sweet Jesus, what was she hearing?
“I went by the clinic every Friday afternoon,” Peggy said flatly. Her smile was gone now, and her bright blue eyes seemed as if they had faded a bit. She stared past Teri, out the window into the countryside. “He’d give me enough to pass around for a week or so, no charge. Said he’d rather have us using something he knew was safe than something off the street.”
“You never told anyone?”
“It was the only reason you guys let me hang around,” Peggy said. “If I would have told you, you would have gone to him yourselves. You wouldn’t have needed me then.”
It stung to hear that, though Teri knew it was true. They would have gone to Childs directly, and Peggy would have quietly faded into the woodwork, and no one would have missed her one way or the other. She would have become the remnant of a bad trip, a memory better forgotten.
Peggy said something about how lucky they were to have made it through those times alive, but Teri didn’t hear the words. She only heard the sound of Peggy’s voice. It was a sound that she knew she’d probably never hear again, even as she was leaving and they were both saying how nice it had been to see each other and wouldn’t it be nice to stay in touch from now on.
Teri thanked her again, and made her way down the walkway, through the white picket fence and out to her car. When she looked back, the front door had closed. Peggy had disappeared back inside, out of the sun and away from the past. It was a place that Teri thought she wouldn’t mind being herself. Sometimes, maybe most times, the past was best left in the past.
[76]
The Garden Restaurant, which was a quaint, family-owned place, sat on the south side of town, just off the river. The cobblestoned patio, beneath a canopy of vines and flowers, overlooked a huge bend where the Sacramento River lazily flowed past, almost without making a sound. Sunlight seeped through the canopy, casting a warm, amiable blanket over the area.
D.C. folded back the front page of the Chronicle Sporting Green, and folded the paper again to make it more manageable. The Warriors had lost. Nothing new there. That had become one of the few things he knew he could count on these days. Everything else seemed to be playing against the odds.
He took a sip of water, and glanced across the river at a small, private boat dock where high water had drawn a line half-a-dozen steps above the surface. It wasn’t unusual to find him here in the early afternoon, after the lunch crowd had thinned and the din of conversation had settled. Beyond the fact that Cecelia had been difficult this morning and he could hardly wait to get out of the house. The Garden provided one of his few respites when he was here in Northern California.