CHAPTER 23




“Are you sure?” Lionel stared at him disbelievingly. John had done this to him twice before. They had both dropped out of school three months before, much to everyone's despair, and they had come to San Francisco to search for her. Ward had refused to hear about it from Faye, and Bob Wells was afraid they were using it as an excuse to drop out of school, go to San Francisco, and join the gays living freely there.

But Lionel insisted that Anne would go there. It was a haven for runaway kids, and though he didn't tell his parents, he felt certain that the runaways could live there for years without being recognized or turned in. There were thousands of them, crushed into tiny apartments, living like ants in the houses of the Haight-Ashbury, the houses painted a riot of colors, with flowers and rugs and incense and drugs and sleeping bags everywhere. It was a place and a time that would never come again, and Lionel instinctively felt that Anne was part of it. He had felt it from the first moment he'd arrived. It was just a question of finding her, if they could. He and John had combed the streets for months without success, and there wasn't much time left for them. They had promised to return to school by June for the summer session to make up for the time they'd lost.

“If you don't find her in three months,” Bob Wells had said, “then you have to give up. You can only search for so long. She could be in New York, or Hawaii, or Canada.” But Lionel knew he was wrong. She would come here, to search for the love she felt she'd never had from them. And John agreed with him, and now he was certain that he'd seen her walking in a daze near Ashbury, wrapped in a purple bedsheet, with a crown of flowers on her hair, her eyes so glazed he almost wondered if she had seen him at all. But for an instant, just an instant, he had been certain that she had known who he was, and then she had drifted off again. He had followed her to an old broken-down house that seemed to be housing an entire colony of obvious druggies and runaways. The smell of incense wafted right out into the street, and there must have been twenty of them on the steps, singing an Indian chant, and holding hands, crooning and laughing softly and waving at friends. And as she came to the stairs, they parted like the Red Sea for her, helping her up the stairs through their midst, as a gray-haired man waited for her in the doorway, and then carried her inside as John watched. It was the strangest sight he had ever seen and he tried to explain it to Lionel, describing her again.

“I have to admit, it sounds like her.” But the others John had found had too. Every day they split up and wandered through the Haight-Ashbury looking for her. If she was there, it was amazing they hadn't found her yet. And at night, they went back to the hotel room they had rented with the money Lionel had borrowed from Faye. They usually ate a hamburger quietly somewhere, they never went to a single gay bar. They stayed unto themselves. And in the morning, they started all over again. It was a labor of love the likes of which Faye had never seen. She had flown up several times to join them in their search, but as Lionel finally explained, she only hampered them. She stood out in the crowd of flower children, her shirts were starched, her jewelry reduced to a minimum was still too much, her jeans were too clean. She looked like exactly what she was, the mother of a runaway from Beverly Hills, looking for her child, and they ran from her like rats. Finally, Lionel had told her straight out. “Go home, Mom, we'll call you if we see anything. I promise,” She had gone back then to work on a film. She had urged Ward to take a co-producer on this one, because he was drinking so heavily, and things had gone from bad to worse with them. He still refused to even speak to Lionel. And when Lionel called her to report on what he had seen in the Haight-Ashbury, the moment Ward heard his voice, he hung up on him. It made communication with Faye extremely difficult for Lionel and Faye was furious. Eventually, she put in a separate phone for Lionel to call her on. But she noticed that the children avoided him as well, they were afraid of what their father would do if they talked to him. The twins never answered the phone Lionel called her on, as though Ward would know if they had talked to him. They had taken him at his word, and Lionel was abandoned by all save Faye, who loved him more than ever before, out of compassion, her own loneliness, and for what he was doing to find Anne. She spoke to Mary Wells as often as she could and expressed her gratitude for John's help. They seemed to have accepted the situation gracefully. They loved their son, and they accepted hers as well. It was far more than she could say for Ward, who had never spoken to the Wells since the morning Bob had thrown him out, the day he'd broken the news to them.

And things were no longer the same between Ward and Faye either. He had actually gone to the Super Bowl with Greg despite Anne's running away. He had insisted that the police would find her eventually, and when they did he would punish her, and put her on restriction for the next ten years if that was what it took to put some sense into her. But it was as though he couldn't cope with anything more, and he left with Greg, and had a great time at the Super Bowl. He seemed surprised to learn that the police had not located Anne when he came back, and in the ensuing weeks, he began to pace the floor at night, pounce on the phone the moment it rang. He finally understood that it was serious, and the police had told them bluntly that it was possible that their daughter was dead, or that she was alive and they would never find her again. It was like losing two children at once, and Faye already knew that they would never recover from it. She had buried herself in her work to ease the pain, to no avail, spending whatever time she could with the twins when they were free. But they felt it too. Vanessa was quieter than she had ever been before, her big romance died shortly after it began, and even Valerie was more subdued. She hardly seemed to wear makeup anymore or go out. Her miniskirts were less intentionally shocking, her wardrobe hadn't grown. It was as though they all waited to hear something that they might never hear again, and as each day passed Faye grew more fearful that her youngest child was dead.

She began going to church, which she hadn't done in years, and she said nothing at all to Ward when he didn't come home at night. At first, he came home at one or two o'clock, when the bars closed, and it was easy to see where he'd been, but eventually he began to not come home at all. The first time it happened, Faye felt sure he had been killed. But when he walked in at six o'clock the next morning, tiptoeing in with the newspaper under his arm, there was a look on his face which frightened her. He wasn't drunk, he was not hung over, he offered her no explanation at all, and suddenly she remembered a name she hadn't thought of in years … Maisie Abernathie … she remembered when Ward had gone to Mexico with her for five days fourteen years before, and Faye knew obviously it wasn't the same girl, but it was the same look on his face … the same way of avoiding her eyes, and suddenly she completely withdrew from him. He came home less and less, but she was so numbed by pain and tragedy that she felt nothing anymore. She was barely hanging on to her own sanity. Her days were filled with work, her nights were filled with guilt, and in between she did whatever she could for the twins, but their entire family had fallen apart in a few brief moments.

Eventually she heard the rumors at MGM. He was involved with the star of an important daytime TV show, and according to rumor, the affair was serious. She just prayed that it didn't turn up in the columns so she wouldn't have to explain it to the girls. She had enough on her hands just then, and just when she thought she couldn't stand any more Lionel called her that night. He had gone out with John that afternoon and followed the girl John had been so sure was Anne, and he was sure of it now too. She looked drugged and completely dazed, and she was heavier than she had been before, and wrapped up in what looked like a purple sari, but they were both sure it was Anne.

Tears rolled down Faye's cheeks as she listened. “Are you sure?”

Lionel said that they almost were, as sure as they could be. She was so dazed-looking and so wrapped up in her strange garb, surrounded by the members of her odd little sect, it was difficult to get close enough to her to find out if it was Anne. It wasn't as if one could yell “Anne” and have her wave back. And Lionel hated to raise his mother's hopes and then disappoint her. “No, we're not sure, Mom. And we wanted to know what you want us to do now.”

“The police told us to call them.”

“What if it's the wrong girl?”

“Apparently, it happens all the time. She'll probably turn out to be another runaway they're looking for. They said not to hesitate to call if we think we know where she is, and there's a Father Paul Brown up there who knows every kid there. He helps them out all the time.” The boys knew who he was, and agreed to contact him as well as the police. “Do you think I should fly up tonight?” She had nothing else to do at night now once she left work. She never saw Ward. He made almost no pretense about coming home at night, and he seemed to be waiting for her to confront him about it, but she didn't have the strength. She wondered if the rumors were true, that it was serious. It seemed incredible after all these years to get divorced, except that that looked extremely likely now … if they could just find Anne … and get Lionel back in school first … then she could deal with Ward's affair … and a divorce … her private line for Lionel rang at midnight that night, and she knew it could only be he. Ward never called anymore when he wasn't coming home and he would call her on their usual line.

She picked the phone up and held her breath. “Li?”

“The police think it's her too. We pointed her out to them today. They have half a dozen undercover cops working narcotics details out there, and looking for runaways. And they went to talk to Father Brown. Apparently her name is Sunflower. He knows who she is. But he doesn't think she's as young as Anne.” Anne would be fourteen and a half by then, but she had always looked older than her years, as they all knew, especially recently. He also didn't tell Faye the rest of what Father Brown had said, that she was living in a sect that indulged in strange sexual and erotic practices that involved group sex. They had all been busted several times, but it seemed impossible to prove either what went on, or that any of them were in fact minors. Everyone claimed to be over eighteen, and it was impossible to prove differently. He had also told them that LSD was involved heavily in what they did, and “magic mushrooms” and peyote as well. And the worst of it was that this girl they were following was with child. But he didn't dare tell Faye that yet. If it was the wrong girl, there was no point worrying her about that. “Mom, do you want her arrested, or just questioned?” They had never come this close before, and Faye felt her heart sag as she thought of her child. It had been five months since she had seen Anne, and God only knew what had happened to her in that time. She didn't dare think of it, and forced herself to concentrate on what Lionel had asked.

“Can't they just take her away, and have you take a good look at her?”

Lionel sighed. He'd been over that all day with them. “They can, if it turns out to be Anne. But if not, and if the girl isn't a runaway, and is of age, she can sue them for false arrest. Most of those hippies won't, but they're pretty cautious about that. I guess they've been burned a couple of times.” He sounded so tired, her heart went out to him, and Faye sighed. She wanted Anne back, at all costs.

“Tell them to do whatever they have to, sweetheart. We've got to know if it's her.”

He nodded at his end. “I'm meeting the undercover guys at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. They're going to stake out the house, and follow her again. If we can just talk to her, we will. If not, they'll bust her for being under the influence, or something like that.”

Faye sounded shocked. “Is she on drugs?”

Lionel hesitated as he looked at John. They were both sick to death of the Haight-Ashbury, the filth, the drugs, the scum, the scams, the kids. They were almost ready to give up, but now … if it could just be her … “Yeah, Mom. It looks like she is. If that's Anne. She doesn't look too great.”

“Is she hurt?” There was such anguish in Faye's voice that it tore at his heart.