it had been sabotaged from the very beginning. Without his mother’s toxic support, Hal might have given Emily a chance and they might have had a normal relationship. But, probably not. Mrs. Watkins didn’t make Hal drink, and she didn’t make him hit his wife either.
The rush hour traffic finally caught up to us and we had to slow down until we were barely moving. Every once in a while, Donald groaned in frustration, no doubt counting the minutes until he could smoke again. To the west, the foothills were bathed in a soft peaceful glow. It would be dark in less than an hour.
“This is a sad job we have,” Donald muttered.
I looked over at him in surprise. “Yes, it is. Nobody ever needs our services for a happy reason.” I hesitated. “Okay, you can smoke, but you have to lean as far out of the window as possible.”
“Really? Thanks!”
I sighed. “You’re welcome.”
We drove the rest of the way home in companionable silence.
Chapter Four
When I was nineteen years old and still suggestible, I allowed my friend Leslie to talk me into dropping acid with her. We were at a party on the bohemian (i.e. seedy) edge of Beacon Hill celebrating the end of our first year at Boston University.
I’d known Leslie since the third grade and whenever I’d gotten into trouble—ditching classes, smoking cigarettes in the park, getting drunk at my sixteenth birthday party, hitchhiking to the Newport Folk Festival—it was always with her. We’d been inseparable all through high school and so far through college.
Although it never occurred to us we ought to be sexual (“alternative lifestyles” weren’t quite yet in vogue), it’s clear to me now that had one of us been male, he or she would have been my first ex-lover. Instead, we were simply best friends: innocent, sweetly clueless women who dated men but preferred each other’s company to anyone else’s.
As soon as we arrived at the party, a fashionably gaunt man with long flowing hair handed each of us some blotter acid and advised us to hurry since everyone else had already dropped theirs twenty minutes ago.
“We want everyone to be in sync,” he explained.
I looked at Leslie. “I don’t know about this.”
“Oh come on, Rachel. It’ll be a new experience.”
It was May 1969 and everyone was being urged to use psychedelic drugs to blow their minds and thus expand their ordinary limited consciousness. And so, before I could stop her, she swallowed her portion. Throughout our years together, it had been Leslie’s genius that got us into trouble and mine that got us out—usually at the last possible moment—mainly because I could think faster than almost everyone around me and even more importantly distinguish the truly dangerous people from the merely wacky. But I couldn’t help Leslie, I reasoned, if I couldn’t understand her and so I swallowed mine as well.
About forty minutes later, I tapped Leslie on the shoulder and informed her I’d figured the whole thing out. We were part of an unorthodox but valid experiment in which some people had been given LSD and others a placebo, the point being to see if those of us who had been given the placebo would begin to imitate the ones who were genuinely under the influence.
“It just stands to reason,” I explained, lifting my arms to include, at that moment, the whole gestalt of everything.
Leslie stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “That’s brilliant,” she said, pulling me down to the floor. For the next hour, we crawled around on our hands and knees trying to guess which people were under the influence and which ones were faking it.
“I bet they’re faking it,” Leslie would say, pointing at a couple of women who were tossing record albums out the window, or a group of men trying to light their hair on fire.
“I don’t know,” I’d reply. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell.” Although I was trying not to notice, it seemed as if I could actually
The rush hour traffic finally caught up to us and we had to slow down until we were barely moving. Every once in a while, Donald groaned in frustration, no doubt counting the minutes until he could smoke again. To the west, the foothills were bathed in a soft peaceful glow. It would be dark in less than an hour.
“This is a sad job we have,” Donald muttered.
I looked over at him in surprise. “Yes, it is. Nobody ever needs our services for a happy reason.” I hesitated. “Okay, you can smoke, but you have to lean as far out of the window as possible.”
“Really? Thanks!”
I sighed. “You’re welcome.”
We drove the rest of the way home in companionable silence.
Chapter Four
When I was nineteen years old and still suggestible, I allowed my friend Leslie to talk me into dropping acid with her. We were at a party on the bohemian (i.e. seedy) edge of Beacon Hill celebrating the end of our first year at Boston University.
I’d known Leslie since the third grade and whenever I’d gotten into trouble—ditching classes, smoking cigarettes in the park, getting drunk at my sixteenth birthday party, hitchhiking to the Newport Folk Festival—it was always with her. We’d been inseparable all through high school and so far through college.
Although it never occurred to us we ought to be sexual (“alternative lifestyles” weren’t quite yet in vogue), it’s clear to me now that had one of us been male, he or she would have been my first ex-lover. Instead, we were simply best friends: innocent, sweetly clueless women who dated men but preferred each other’s company to anyone else’s.
As soon as we arrived at the party, a fashionably gaunt man with long flowing hair handed each of us some blotter acid and advised us to hurry since everyone else had already dropped theirs twenty minutes ago.
“We want everyone to be in sync,” he explained.
I looked at Leslie. “I don’t know about this.”
“Oh come on, Rachel. It’ll be a new experience.”
It was May 1969 and everyone was being urged to use psychedelic drugs to blow their minds and thus expand their ordinary limited consciousness. And so, before I could stop her, she swallowed her portion. Throughout our years together, it had been Leslie’s genius that got us into trouble and mine that got us out—usually at the last possible moment—mainly because I could think faster than almost everyone around me and even more importantly distinguish the truly dangerous people from the merely wacky. But I couldn’t help Leslie, I reasoned, if I couldn’t understand her and so I swallowed mine as well.
About forty minutes later, I tapped Leslie on the shoulder and informed her I’d figured the whole thing out. We were part of an unorthodox but valid experiment in which some people had been given LSD and others a placebo, the point being to see if those of us who had been given the placebo would begin to imitate the ones who were genuinely under the influence.
“It just stands to reason,” I explained, lifting my arms to include, at that moment, the whole gestalt of everything.
Leslie stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “That’s brilliant,” she said, pulling me down to the floor. For the next hour, we crawled around on our hands and knees trying to guess which people were under the influence and which ones were faking it.
“I bet they’re faking it,” Leslie would say, pointing at a couple of women who were tossing record albums out the window, or a group of men trying to light their hair on fire.
“I don’t know,” I’d reply. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell.” Although I was trying not to notice, it seemed as if I could actually
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