DREAMING OF MELINDA, 1964

           

            It’s an old dream I've had before. Years ago. Times were so different. I guess it came to me because I saw a girl on the six o'clock news that looked like Melinda.

            There I am driving that old Chevy up to her hastily-rented motel room.

            She called me crying, just back from Hawaii; after no letters, no words.

            "Please, I need you," was all she had to say; and  I was driving along the coast as fast as a 283 can push itself.

            She's in a dirty green silk camisole and half slip. Her face is red-puffy and her hair knotted and greasy. There is a wild, dark glitter in her eyes. Her kiss tastes better than I remember, better than anything.

            I wipe her nose, and fluff up pillows on the damp bed. She is compliant as I push her down and sit and rock her softly in my arms, feeling the heat radiate out of her.

            "My god, you're burning up."

            "Umm hmm," trying to snuggle close, yet trying to fight off the old memories that are rushing back at her. Trying also not to let the fever win. Trying that the hardest.

            I see the prescriptions on the night stand, the first-aid look of the drugstore stuff scattered around the room. When I go in the bathroom, pads in the wastebasket remind me of  bloody field dressings straight from the battlefield. They are.

            She looks across the room at me with a programmed guilt girls had to display back then, and said some words probably originally written for Sandra Dee.

            "I couldn't have the baby. You know I couldn't." As if I had any say in it.

            She has no one. "The guy" was some sailor. I don't ask whether her parents kicked her out or if she just ran away. It would have worked out the same, either way. There was such an inevitability about it, back then. There was yelling, there was harsh judgment. God forsook her in about five minutes.

            She has no money. Half of the operation was borrowed from Lynne, who wouldn't help in person, Melinda sobs. Couldn’t get too close to the "bad" girl. But it was a lot of money, anyway. In my dream, I remember that Lynne hasn't had her own abortion yet, it’s still in the future.  I will pay for that one myself, and never remind her.

            The present me, watching this dream, knows what I paid in karma is so much smaller a part of the tab than Melinda, or Lynne or.... It is an ironic, rueful dream-laugh echoing down the years as I watch myself pick Melinda up and carry her to the back seat of the Impala.

            On the way to the hospital I wonder just how far down on the list of phone calls I was. Never mind. I'm the one here for her now.

            In the waiting room I call with a borrowed dime. "Al? ...How much money you got? . . . No, I'm serious!  ...Well, take my guitar down and hock it, ... the amp too."

            The doctor comes in. A tired old guy. He stands there, with that you-little-son-of-a-bitch look. "She's a very sick young lady. You waited an awful long time to get her here!"

            He is into his "you ought to be shot" lecture, filled with his own frustration. But it sounds rehearsed. Some look in my eyes makes him stop somewhere between abstinence and condoms; there is silence while the nurse shuffles the chart papers beside him.

            I think about explaining that I touched her down there but never fucked her. First boyfriend. But I don't.

            He might even have believed me when I told him "She just flew here yesterday to get it done."

            Al brought a big wad of cash while I sit outside Melinda's room. There was all his paycheck, all my guitar and amp, and some more. He sat next to me smoking Winstons until I let him off the hook.

            She is pale, almost always asleep, the glass bottle dripping stuff into her arm. I live on cigarettes and coffee for three days and remember to call my mom. Or maybe I just wanted to, but didn't.

            The bill was so much money that her family was finally called and, despite her dad's angry threats, somebody somewhere paid it off. I gave my money to her anyway.

            Waking, I lay here in the dawn and think about her. Her sleepy smile and her cracked-lip kisses there in the hospital ward. Where is she now, I wonder?

            As she lay there recovering, I really asked her to marry me and screw up both our lives; but there was this part of a plane ticket left and an aunt in Boston. Whatever didn't work out between us the first time was still there to still make it "not possible."

            "If the baby had been yours, it would have been so different."  I think Sandra Dee said that, too. And she smiled like Melinda did then. And she almost meant it when she said, "I still love you."  Was that supposed to be a reward?

            Over morning coffee now I think about those times. How I never get involved in discussions about abortion. How those fanatics want to bring back those days; want to make Melinda's daughters pay the same kind of penalty for the sin of illicit sex. God knows nobody should escape that justice.  I wonder if any of them had to stand there not knowing if the anti-biotics would work or if she would die. Do they really want to have it done by coat hangers again? Is that part of some 11th Commandment? 

            For a moment I wish they could find themselves alone and pregnant, in that time, in 1964. 

            No.

            What human would wish that upon another? 

            Pouring another cup, I’m surprised to discover I believe all those fanatics should, in the fullness of time, rot in hell.