Penny’s voice came back in force on Thursday morning, and Thursday night there was a celebration around the bonfire in honor of Carlynn Shire, the straight woman doctor who turned down marijuana and hashish and LSD and cheap wine, who had given them Shanti Joy and had allowed them to hear Penny’s true voice in song for the first time.

Lisbeth was typing letters for Carlynn when Alan walked into the reception office at the Carlynn Shire Medical Center the following afternoon. He stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips.

“When the heck is Carlynn coming home?” he asked.

Lisbeth turned to look at him. She understood Alan’s frustration. She, too, felt the void Carlynn left by not being at the center, and Alan had to be experiencing it at home, as well. That they were unable to communicate with Carlynn except through that one phone call from Penny made her absence that much more difficult.

“This weekend, I’m sure,” Lisbeth said. “She has to be back by Monday, because her appointments start up again then.”

“I feel like I don’t know her anymore,” Alan said glumly.

“Oh, Alan, that’s silly.”

“I know, but I haven’t gone a day without talking to her in over ten years.”

“Maybe she’s been seduced by communal life,” she joked, but Alan looked so distraught that she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. “Why don’t we go get her?” she suggested.

Alan looked surprised. “I’d thought of that myself, actually, but I don’t even know where she is, exactly.”

“Well, we know she’s in a commune in Big Sur,” Lisbeth said. “We can ask around. The locals will probably know where it is.”

Alan looked at his watch. “All right. If you’re serious, let’s do it.”

“Let me call Gabe and see if he wants to go with us,” she said, excited at the thought of the adventure.

“It’s nearly four o’clock,” Alan said. “I have some notes to finish up. Should we wait until tomorrow?”

“No,” Lisbeth said, suddenly anxious to get on the road. “Let’s go tonight.”

“We won’t be able to find anything in the dark,” Alan protested.

“I know a lodge where we can stay,” Lisbeth said. Lloyd Peterson had once told her about a lodge he liked in Big Sur. “Might be tough to get a room, since it’s a Friday, but let me try. That way, we’d be there bright and early tomorrow and could start looking.”

Alan nodded and smiled. “I can’t wait to see her,” he said. “Thanks, Liz.”

There was a full moon hanging in the sky over the ocean, but the winding road was still too dark for Lisbeth’s comfort. They were nearing Big Sur on Highway One. The little reflectors built into the line in the middle of the road formed a long string of lights, and she and Alan were alone out here. It was spooky, she thought. They didn’t see another car as Lisbeth’s Volkswagen Beetle crept around each curve.

“It’s actually better to drive this road at night than in the daytime,” Alan reassured her. “You can see the lights of cars coming around the curve. In the daytime, you’d have no idea what’s waiting for you around the bend.”

Lisbeth supposed he was right, but still she turned each corner gingerly, her stomach beginning to protest a little. Gabriel had been unable to come with them, and she was driving, since Alan thought he was a better navigator. The green bug strained a bit on the inclines, and she was relieved when they found the road leading to the lodge. She pulled into the parking lot close to the building.

Inside the lodge, the man behind the desk handed them a key.

“It’s for one of the cabins behind the main building,” he said. “Number four. Very nice. Fully furnished.”

“We need two beds, though,” Lisbeth said.

“Right,” the man said. “It has two twins. You can push them together if you like.”

“Thank you,” Alan said. “And by the way, we’re looking for a commune that’s near here. Would you know of it?”

“That depends on which one you’re looking for. There’s a few of them. Gordo. Redwood. Cabrial. What do you want to go to one of those places for? Just a bunch of filthy hippies.”

“We’re picking up a family member who’s visiting there,” Lisbeth said, disappointed to learn there were several communes in the area and trying to remember if Carlynn had mentioned the name of Penny’s. None of those names sounded familiar, and she wondered if this had been such a great idea, after all.

But Alan looked unperturbed. “You go ahead to the cabin,” he told her. “I’ll stay here and get directions to the different communes.”

It was a bit unnerving walking to the cabin alone. The path through the woods was lighted, but Lisbeth was still relieved when she found the cabin and stepped inside. It was spare, with a living room, bedroom, small kitchenette and bathroom with a claustrophobic shower, but it was clean, and luxurious surroundings were not what she and Alan were after.

Alan returned to the cabin around ten o’clock, several sheets of notes in his hand.

“Well,” he said as he lay down on one of the beds, fully clothed, “I think we can find her if she’s at one of these three places. If she’s somewhere else, we’re out of luck.”

Lisbeth fell asleep quickly, but it was only a short while later that she was awakened by Alan shaking her shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, trying to see her watch in the dark. “What time is it?”

“It’s eleven,” Alan said. “And I can’t sleep. I’m going to take the car and those directions I got from the innkeeper and see if I can find her. Do you want to go with me?”

“No.” She sat up. “And I don’t want you to go, either. You’ll just be wandering around in the dark out there on those little roads.”

“Better than lying here staring at the ceiling.” Alan picked up her car keys from the old dresser and left the cabin.

Carlynn had the commune practically to herself. Many of the adults and nearly all of the children, who’d been roused from their beds in what seemed to Carlynn to be a misguided attempt at adventure, were on a moonlight nature walk. From where she lay on her mattress in Penny’s cabin, Carlynn could hear the occasional cry of a baby, and she knew that at least Shanti Joy Angel and her parents were nearby. That gave her some comfort. It was remarkably light outside tonight. There was no fog at all, and the moon was full, which was precisely why the nature seekers had grabbed this opportunity for their walk.

An hour earlier, Johnny Angel had come to Cornflower, asking her if she would take a look at Shanti Joy.

“She has a fever, I think,” Johnny had said, and Carlynn had walked with him over to Rainbow.

She found Shanti nursing strongly from Ellen’s breast, and her forehead felt cool to her touch.

“What made you think she had a fever?” she asked Johnny.

“She was crying, and she hardly ever cries,” he said. “And she seemed flushed to me.”

Ellen and Carlynn exchanged a smile. Johnny was an over-anxious new father, and it was not the first time he had come to Carlynn with a concern about his baby daughter since her dramatic birth. She didn’t mind, though. She welcomed any chance to hold the baby.

She rested her hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Shanti is fine,” she said. “And you are going to be an exceptional dad.”

She left Johnny Angel and his family and walked back to Cornflower alone, enjoying the play of moonlight on the trees and shrubs and glad that Penny had gone with the walkers so she had some time for herself. She was longing for home. It had been a wonderful week, but she’d had her fill of rice and vegetables, naked children, guitar music late into the night, and wondering over breakfast who had slept with whom the night before. Tomorrow she would head back to Monterey, her work here finished, and all she could think of was seeing Alan and her sister and Gabriel. She’d tried not to think too much about Alan this week, knowing she couldn’t talk to him and that thinking about him would only make their separation that much harder, but now her head was full of him, and she felt near tears as she drifted off to sleep.

“God, I’ve missed you.” It was a man’s voice, soft and close to her ear, and Carlynn’s eyes sprang open to see Alan sitting on the side of her bed, his hand stroking her hair back from her forehead. Moonlight bathed the room and allowed her to see the love in his eyes. She sat up with a girlish squeal of delight and threw her arms around him.

“I’m dreaming,” she said. “Are you really here?”

There were times she had wondered if she truly loved Alan or if theirs was a partnership based on a passion for their work rather than for each other. But in that moment, she knew the truth. Her love for him filled her.

“I’m really here,” he said. “Are you ever coming home?”

“Oh, yes! Tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long, and it’s been terrible not being able to call you. And how is everyone? And what’s going on at the cen—”

“Come with me now,” he said. “Lisbeth and I drove down here to spirit you away from this place and take you home with us.”

“Is Lisbeth here?” She peered behind him.

“We rented a cabin not too far from here. She’s there. And you will be, too, if you’d get up and get dressed.”

“How did you ever find me?”

“Well, it wasn’t easy,” he said. “I visited another commune before coming here. This place seemed deserted, but I heard a baby crying. I went to that cabin and the baby’s father—”

“Johnny Angel,” she interrupted him with a grin.

“Whatever you say.” Alan smiled with a roll of his eyes. “He told me where you were. Said everyone else was out on a nature walk or something.”

“Yes, they are. I should probably wait till they get back before I—”

“Come now,” Alan pleaded. “They’ve had you long enough.”

“Okay,” she agreed. She lit one of the lanterns so she could dress and pack her suitcase. On the back of one of the sheets of directions Alan had brought with him, she scribbled a note to Penny, then left the cabin with her husband, arm in arm.

“Oh!” she said when they reached the area where her car was parked. “My car’s nearly empty. Keep an eye on me in your rearview mirror in case I run out, okay?”

“These roads would be a bad place to run out of gas,” Alan said. “Especially at night.”

“I know,” she said. “I think I’ve got a smidgen left. But just in case, watch me.”

“I’m never taking my eyes off you again,” Alan said, squeezing her shoulders.

Carlynn’s car made it to the cabin without a problem, although the needle was below the empty line by then. They would have to find gas somewhere in the morning and bring it back to her car before she drove it anywhere, but for the moment it didn’t matter. She and Alan awakened Lisbeth, and the three of them spent much of the rest of the night lounging on the two twin beds and talking. Carlynn told them about life at the commune, assuring both of them that she’d had nothing to do with the bed-hopping that left them wide-eyed with disbelief and disgust. She told them about the drugs and about healing Penny’s voice, and that Penny would be in a musical next year about hippies and long hair. She told them about the infant, Shanti Joy, and the moment she started breathing in her arms.

“I didn’t want to let go of her,” she said wistfully. “I felt so strongly connected to her.”

“Because you saved her life,” Lisbeth said.

“I guess,” Carlynn agreed. She told them about the tiresome food she’d eaten that week, and Lisbeth laughed, promising to go out early in the morning to find some bacon and eggs to bring back and cook in the cabin.

It was nearly four in the morning when the three of them fell asleep, Alan and Carlynn wrapped in one another’s arms, Lisbeth stretched out on her twin bed alone. Outside the cabin, the fog began creeping in from the ocean, hugging the coastline and easing its way through the trees, silently covering Big Sur in a milky-white shroud.







34






JOELLE WAS TWENTY-EIGHT WEEKS PREGNANT AND ATTENDING her first childbirth class, which was held in one of the large, carpeted meeting rooms at the hospital. Gale Firestone, the nurse practitioner in Rebecca’s office, was the instructor, but everyone else in the room was a stranger to her, and she was the only pregnant woman there without a partner. A couple of the women had other women with them instead of husbands, but she had no one.

Her mother was going to be her birth partner, and Ellen was going to sit in on childbirth classes in the Berkeley area to prepare herself for that role, but she would only be able to attend a couple of the classes in Monterey. Joelle told her that didn’t matter, just as long as she got herself to Monterey when she went into labor, and her mother had promised to be there for her.