California Girl

21

LYNETTE VONN LIVED up in Huntington Beach. She let Andy in without a smile. Straight black hair, early twenties, thin. Bell-bottoms made her look thinner. Barefoot. Yellow halter top with a work shirt over it. Big eyes. Andy saw in her none of her sister Janelle’s casual radiance.

Lynette made them coffee and they sat in the den. Green shag carpet, a TV with rabbit ears, and a Magnavox hi-fi on a rolling stand with clear wheels. Andy smelled marijuana and incense. The house was a small craftsman cottage with a chain-link fence around the backyard and an oil pumper beyond the fence. Through the den window the pumper looked like a monstrous steel grasshopper gnawing away. The night was cool and the windows were open. Andy smelled ocean and crude oil. The neighbors had the radio on, “Sunshine of Your Love” riding in with the smells.

Lynette told him she had left the Tustin home when she was fourteen. Run off with one of her brother Lenny’s friends, Preach. Preach was twenty-five, drove a chopped black Harley with the words God’s Outlaw painted on the tank in white. He could cook crank you wouldn’t believe, clear as glass, keep you high for days and a tolerable crash. Taught other Hessians how to do it. Preach also had a religious streak, carried around a bag of rattlesnakes tied to the top of the sissy bar of his hog, and that bag would swing up against her back if they slowed down fast, a creepy feeling but she never got bit. Preach had devised this kind of religious service for Sunday mornings where you’d listen to him sermonize and take the snakes out of the bag and wave ’em around, but Preach had sewn their mouths shut with a big needle and dental floss and when they started starving he’d toss them out and get new ones. Which was easy when you’re riding your Harley all around the desert giving lessons on crank production. But Preach had the other Hessians freaked out with those snakes and his own weird eyes-dark brown with blue around the edges. It was all rough sex, drugs, and fights until she ran out on him in Colusa, picked up a bus down to San Francisco, and moved in with a musician/heroin dealer. That lasted a year, coldest of her life, couldn’t ever thaw out in that town.

“Wow,” said Andy.

Lynette shook her head and sighed. “Pure crazy. I hitchhiked down here last year. Liked it and stayed. Had some money saved. I’m waitressing over at the Bear. I can’t get you in free but I can get you good seats once you pay your way in.”

Andy had been to the Golden Bear a lot. Seen the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary, and Pete Seeger and Dylan and all the folkies, but now they were doing almost all rock and roll, thank God.

“Did you and Janelle stay in touch?”

“It turned out that she wrote me a lot of letters but didn’t know where to mail them. I pretty much dropped out. When I got this place and got clean I called her and she came over. Brought the letters in a box. It was kinda funny seeing her for the first time in six years. My sister was two years younger than me and we weren’t very much alike.”

Andy looked at Lynette. My sister, he thought. “Maybe you were more alike than you think.”

Lynette stared at Andy with her big brown eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you both had a talent for what most people would consider trouble.”

“No question it was trouble.”

“The same kind of hunger for something,” said Andy. “But for what? To get to something better?”

“Just to get away, I think. Did you know her well?”

“No, not really. I admired her, though. Something about her.”

“She was pretty,” said Lynette.

“But more than pretty. Remember the guitar and tutu?”

“That tutu was mine.”

Andy looked out the window to the big oil pumper. It chomped away at the ground, drawing up the crude. He thought of Lynette throwing the rocks at them after the rumble by the packinghouse. And Janelle with the oranges she didn’t throw. And Janelle on the porch of the Holt Avenue house, shaking her curls and rasping out that song. And Janelle coming out of the White House nightclub in Laguna that night. With Jesse Black and the surf movie guy and Cory Bonnett the leather store owner. The way the streetlight cast her face in the fog. I’m so sorry what happened to Clay. Call me sometime.

For the millionth time in his life, Andy’s inner boot kicked his heart, hard, for never calling Janelle Vonn.

“Tough to explain,” he said.

“I’ll get the letters.”

When Lynette came back into the room she had a cardboard box half full of letter envelopes. She tilted it so Andy could see. A hundred, he guessed. She set it on the floor at her feet and sat back down.

“You should have told Nick about these,” he said.

“I don’t dig pigs.”

“Nick’s not a pig. He helped Janelle way back when the trouble started.”

She stared at him. Andy felt sized up. “I’m showing them to you,” she said. “If there’s something important, you tell him.”

Andy watched the oil pumper for a second. Heard the far-off hiss of cars out on Coast Highway. Then Hendrix on the radio.

“I never wrote back to my sister,” she said. She looked down at the box. Guided a strand of lank black hair behind her ear. “Maybe that’s why she wrote so much. It was kind of like she wrote and told me things because she knew I wouldn’t judge. Like she was writing only for herself. But I did love her. She knew that, before the end.”

“When did she write the first one?”

“Early sixty-one. After Mom killed herself and I hooked up with Preach. She-my sister-was eleven. She knew what I’d done. Said in the letter she wanted us to come get her.”

My sister.

“Her brothers were molesting her by then.”

“Just starting. They’d done it to me, too. That was one of the reasons I split.”

“You were afraid to tell?”

Lynette turned her face from Andy. Looked out at the oil pump or the moon. “Lenny’d hit you. Then Dad would hit Lenny. A week later, the same thing all over again with Casey. It was scary. You blocked it out. Ethan was okay.”

Andy moved and sat on the couch with Lynette. He looked down into the box and picked up an envelope.

“That’s an old one,” said Lynette. “From her birthday in sixty-two.”

It was pale green and square. Andy ran his finger over the four-cent stamp with a rose on it. Lynette’s name on the front but no address. He worked out a greeting card with a picture of a misty forest and the words Love Speaks in Moments of Silence.

He read out loud:

June 1, 1962

Dear Lynette,

Hey, sister, I turned thirteen today and graduate from seventh grade in two weeks! I’m still popular. I asked for makeup and a horse but don’t think I’ll get either. Dad still doesn’t work much. Everything is crummy but the new Elvis album is really good. Over a year since you’ve been gone and I haven’t got a note or phone call from you. That doesn’t matter as long as you’re okay. I love you anyway and I can visit you in my brain anytime I want!

Love,

J.

“My sister was optimistic then,” said Lynette.

Andy put the card in the envelope and the envelope back in the box. “Can I see a more recent one?”

Lynette leaned forward. Held her hair back with one hand and worked the other through the letters. She handed him a white legal-size envelope. It had Lynette’s name and a five-cent stamp with Madonna and child, but that was all.

“Did she always put a stamp on?” asked Andy.

“Every one. For six years,” she said quietly. “And always wrote the day’s date, even though she never mailed one. Eighty-six letters and cards. She spent three dollars and ninety-eight cents on postage. Imagine what that would cost today.”

Andy nodded and looked into Lynette Vonn’s earnest brown eyes.

He opened the letter, which was handwritten in black ink on a standard sheet of typing paper, and read out loud again:

August 11, 1967

Dear Sis,

They’re taking my Miss Tustin title away because I got a cover on Playboy! Can you believe that? I showed less skin to Playboy than I did in the swimsuit competition! What hypocrites. Screw them. I’ve had enough.

I’m leaving Tustin. Think I’ll go to Laguna Beach where it’s beautiful and I don’t know hardly anyone. I’ve got some financial backing and the Beetle from Roger to get me started. Maybe do more modeling because it pays well but you have to drive to L.A. and wait around for hours. Pretty much kicked the drugs and alky-hol but still like a little tequila now and then. You sip it, you don’t slam it with lime and salt like those dumb college boys. Everybody’s talking about LSD, how it makes you see things in a different way. They also say it’s really strong. There’s this guy in Laguna, Timothy Leary, and they say if you can experience LSD with him he’ll get you into the right groove.

Jesse got an early tape of some new Hendrix music and duped one for me. There’s this song called “Little Wing” that speaks right into my heart. Really pretty words and guitar and Jimi’s got a good voice. No Elvis, but you know what I mean. The guitar solo will totally blow your mind. $2.99 is a lot to pay for an album but it’s worth the extra fifty cents for stereo instead of monaural. ’Course, you can’t play a record when you’re riding on the back of a hog!

I always think about you. You’re like a myth to me now, this sister I had until she disappeared five lives ago. I mean years. I been through a lot and you’ve probably got some stories, too. Dad’s pathetic but the boys are long gone so that’s good. When I think of all the shit they put us through I’m surprised we didn’t just shoot them one night in their sleep. Woulda been doing them a favor, not to mention us.

Anyway, I love you in my mind,

J.

“Roger Stoltz, the congressman?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew he helped her out when I wrote that article,” said Andy, “but I didn’t know he gave her money and a car.”

Lynette nodded. “In one of the letters she said he went nuts for her.”

“Nuts for her,” said Andy. Felt a tingle in his fingertips.

“I can find the letter pretty easy.”

“Do that.”

Andy watched Lynette take a handful of envelopes, fan through them and then set them aside. She stopped midway through the second batch and handed him another legal-size white envelope.

“You’ve read them a lot,” he said.

“I didn’t get them till late last year. Had some catching up to do. I can tell by the envelopes what’s inside. The way she wrote my name, the kind of ink, the kind of envelope and stamp.”

“How many times have you read them?”

“Fifty, maybe.”

Andy opened the envelope. Lynette leaned over and read out loud with Andy:

November 19, 1965

Hello Invisible Sis,

How are ya? Had to write about this unbelievable deal that’s happening to me.

Did I tell you about Roger Stoltz? He’s this businessman and political guy who let me use his apartment in Newport Beach for a while and says he’s going to get me a car next week. He’s nuts for me and he’s got the money. Married and old, don’t know if you remember him or not. Marie his wife is really nice but has bad headaches. Roger is a real good guy and he’s not bullshitting me, you know, he says he’s going to do something, he does it. Had his dentist fix my cavities for free. Gave me five hundred bucks for some clothes and nice things. Says he’ll give me a job when I’m eighteen. He invented a cleaner called Orange Sunshine that’s mainly for driveways and streets. Roger doesn’t want anything in return. It’s just because he likes me. I don’t believe that for one second, but hell, he wants to help.

Did you see the Beatles on Sullivan in September? I just love them so much. Saw Elvis too and still love him but I think he’s getting sick of his own act. He’s mostly sneering rather than smiling but I don’t believe it. A guy that good-looking’s got no reason to sneer.

Love,

J.

“Stoltz,” said Andy. He thought of the telegram Stoltz had sent from Washington when his first article about Janelle and the Wolfman had come out. He’d always thought there was something odd about it. No mention of Janelle, really. No acknowledgment of her death and what it might mean to Andy or anyone else. Even himself. Something brief and military, like: Commendable article. Well done.

“You’re surprised,” said Lynette.

“A married man giving money and gifts to a girl who gets murdered? Yeah. I’m pretty damned surprised.”

“He rented her an apartment in Newport Beach. She wrote about going over there with him to see it. Big and sunny and right on the harbor. Expensive.”

Andy tried to shake the surprise out of his head so he could think straight. “How long did she live there?”

“Not long. It was off and on. She only wrote one letter from that address. She wanted to live in Laguna. Get a place that was hers. Not someone else’s.”

“That must have disappointed our Good Samaritan.”

“I can see right through him,” said Lynette. “Even in the letters I can tell he wanted her for the same things any man would want her for. But she never did it with him. At least that’s what she wrote, and I believe her.”

Stoltz!

“Did she keep writing after you moved here?”

Lynette shook her head. “No. We spent plenty of hours together, though. And on the phone.”

“Good times?”

“Yeah. She was in love with this singer. Jesse Black, down in Laguna.”

“Did she tell you she was pregnant?”

Lynette opened her mouth but didn’t speak at first. Finally she shook her head. “No. She died that way?”

“Eight weeks,” said Andy.

Lynette ran her long black hair behind her ears. Gathered the ponytail to one side and brought it forward over her left shoulder. Stared at the shag carpet. In this light her face looked Cherokee, like this girl he’d gone to high school with.

“Did you know that she was on the Sheriff’s Department payroll?” asked Andy. “As an informant?”

“She told me,” said Lynette. “They were after the Laguna Beach acid heads, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. And that Cory Bonnett cat. Guy that owns the leather store? I heard about him from some people at work one night. Bad dude. Not even the Hessians mess with him.”

Andy put the letter back in the envelope and dropped it into the box. Stood. “I need to take these with me,” he said.

“No.”

“I need them,” he said. “Nick needs them. This is evidence.”

She stood. “I’ve got three guns hidden in this house, and I swear to God if you try, I’ll use the nearest one. I shot Preach outside Tempe, Arizona. Just in the butt but it hurt like hell.”

Andy looked at her. Raised his empty hands like a bad guy and sat back down. “Don’t shoot. Can I just sit here and read awhile?”

“That would be fine. You want coffee, tea, or some hash?”

“Coffee is all.”

“It’s good black Afghani. Brought in by the Brotherhood.”

“I tried some once and couldn’t even type,” said Andy.

“That’s pretty much the point. I got some dexies that’ll cut the fog.”

“No. Thank you. I just want to read these letters.”

“Then stay and read them.”

“Why don’t you say her name?”

Lynette’s face reddened as she turned it away from him. She released the ponytail and a curtain of smooth black hair fell over her eyes. “Because it hurts to hear it.”

Because you left her to your brothers, thought Andy. Yeah. That would hurt.

ANDY READ Janelle Vonn’s letters while Lynette loaded up a small pipe with black crumbs and dabbed at them with a wooden match. She watched him silently as she smoked and Andy felt as if he were on display. It was usually him that made other people feel that way with all his questions. But no questions was worse. Lynette was trim and catlike with her bare feet tucked under her thighs and her eyes steady behind the hair. She finally set aside the pipe and melted into the couch.

Asleep by ten. Andy was maybe halfway through the letters. Some were four and five pages and he read them slowly. Bulletins from the great beyond.

Janelle was connected to everything. Neck deep in the Laguna LSD crowd. Neck deep with the Sheriff’s Department narcs. Neck deep with David, and Jesse Black and even Representative (R) Roger goddamned Stoltz and his asphalt cleaner empire. Neck deep with Cory Bonnett, who owned a store called Neck Deep. Neck deep with football coach Howard Langton and all the Miss Tustin people until they kicked her out like a leper. But neck deep was a terrible modifier because it made Andy think of Janelle in her baby blue sweater with the empty turtleneck. Up to her eyeballs…up to her elbows…up to her ears. He still couldn’t get that horrific picture out of his mind.

He covered Lynette with a blanket from a closet, then boxed up all the letters and cards and snuck out the front door with them.

IN THE Journal building he ran copies of them on the big Xerox machine, light flashing under the cover with each slow pass. Called home and Teresa said “Come and get me.” Voice thick with smoke.

Almost an hour and a half later he was back on the road with the letters in the box beside him and the copies in his briefcase and the coastal fog making halos around the streetlights on Newport Boulevard.

Lynette was still asleep on the couch. Andy set the box of letters on the floor. She had bunched up the blanket around her throat with both hands. A small automatic pistol had fallen to the cushion by her head. Andy plucked it up with a nervous heart. In the kitchen he popped out the little magazine. Five.22 longs. Shit. One in the chamber, too. Set it on the counter by the toaster and the Cap’n Crunch.

He shook Lynette gently by the shoulders. Weird girl, he thought. Felt like she weighed under a hundred. Won’t say her sister’s name but she’d shoot you for the letters.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

“Stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Get out.”

“Okay. The gun’s by the cereal.”

ANDY GOT HOME at two-thirty. Teresa was deep in sleep, didn’t want to be touched. He set the stack of copies on his typewriter stand in the laundry room, sat down, and kept reading.

His eyes moved while his imagination created scenes. He was not aware of the gentle sweet smell of the dryer or the insanely funny song of a mockingbird in the oleander bush outside. As he read, Janelle’s voice came clearly to him and he could picture her.

Roger showed me the apartment today.

He saw Roger Stoltz holding open the door of a sunny apartment overlooking the bay in Newport. Saw the look on his face when she stepped in. Proud. Hopeful.

Really a trippy place. Big window and the bay and sailboats all blue and white. Says it’s a gift for as long as I want it. No strings attached.

Saw Janelle take in the view, then turn and smile. Janelle trying to act happy. Trying to figure how she could let him down without breaking his soaring little heart. Without waking him from the dream that connected them.

Without making him furious.

Andy read it again and watched it again.

He heard the dialogue between Janelle and Stoltz. Not a lot of words. Almost formal. The age difference, he thought. Stoltz late thirties and Janelle sixteen. He saw Janelle’s beauty and health, the shine of her hair and the sparkle in her eyes. He saw the fullness of her next to Stoltz’s sparse, ascetic frame. How was it that her damage didn’t show? He noted Stoltz’s brisk mustache. The affected leather jacket. His eager eyes. Andy saw the blue ocean through the window behind them. The tide was ebbing and a pelican casually rode the onshore breeze.

A moment later Andy sat up. His arms were stiff and his temple was sore from where it had rested on his hands. Some of Janelle’s letters had spilled onto the floor.

He looked out to the first light of morning. Wandered into the kitchen for more coffee. Called Nick. Nick picked up on the first ring, said he’d been up most of the night.