Epilogue

Felicity has her second baby, a girl. She gets to enjoy her girls until they are one-and-a-half and three. On a snowy day in 1973 she drives into the back of a parked truck and dies. She has her seat belt on but she still dies. She had everything she always wanted but she loses it. How is this fair? As soon as he can function, Dean raises the girls himself. He does this for eight years. Then he marries a divorced hairdresser with two boys of her own. She becomes like another sister and we don’t lose Felicity’s kids.

Tyler and Sara are still being moved all over the eastern U.S. They move to New Jersey when the boys are in high school. When they have to leave New Jersey the twins stay behind. They earn degrees at Rutgers and get married to New Jersey girls. Their weddings are one month apart. They each have three children, two boys and a girl. Tyler has the most financial success of anyone in the family.

Gertie and Jason have two boys. After fourteen years of marriage Jason has an affair so blatant that Gertie cannot ignore it. She has to leave him. Jason turns mean. Gertie has a really bad five years and then she remarries. Both her sons marry. One has two girls. The other has one child out of wedlock, he marries a woman with two girls and then they have twin girls.

Robert marries Ellen. They also have to travel around. He is in the shoe business. They have a son and twin daughters, who are beautiful, but bald for the first two years of their lives. Their son is married and has two children, one boy and one girl. One of the twins is married, no children yet.

Emily marries twice. Both marriages end badly. She lives in the South for quite a while. Rebecca lives with her for a while. She has two daughters by her second husband. She’s an accountant. She eventually moves back to Smithvale. One of her daughters is married, no children.

Rebecca never marries but she is the family link. Everyone in the family likes her and relies on her. She lives with Augusta who is 89 and doing fine. Hobart died of prostate cancer at 81. She has 13 grandchildren and 17 great grandchildren so far. Rebecca is also the family historian and a computer whiz.

Morgan marries a guy who fixes jets. She is a mail carrier. They live by a river and have two daughters. Morgan keeps her feistiness and her sense of humor. We hold all our family parties at her house.

Annie is my friend for forty years. She finally met the man of her dreams and after a lengthy courtship they marry. They have two children, a son and a daughter. I am privileged to watch them grow up over summers when they visit from Florida. Annie teaches elementary school.

Me, Zoe, I am lucky and unlucky. One month after my first arrest by the city police, the county police come to my school to arrest me again. The school secretary warns me. I turn myself in and only have to stay three hours. I don’t get fired. Thank goodness it’s an “alternative” school. After two court-appointed lawyers and after I call the DA a hypocrite (I do know how to sabotage myself), I am convicted through a plea bargain of a felony for possession of a controlled substance. I am sentenced to two years probation and two years of psychotherapy. I should have fought harder but I cannot bring myself to borrow any more money from anyone. The psychotherapy is good. I obviously need it. I teach at the same school for 23 more years. I become an assistant professor, and a department chair. I get a master’s degree. I feel I do a good job as a teacher. I get to send hundreds of students to college or help them get a GED. When I leave there I can’t get another teaching job. Even with a “Relief from Disability” signed by a judge. The climate has changed. Public school parents won’t have this and I don’t blame them. I take an architecture course and they tell me that a felony conviction will prevent me from being a licensed architect. I retire early. I work temp jobs. I’m a cashier. I will be a felon all my life. It’s OK. I was perhaps way luckier than I deserved to be.
I have quit smoking three times, but as I write these words I continue to puff away. The cosmic roulette wheel doesn’t let you get away with these things forever.

Lena and Linda hire a $5000 attorney and are convicted of misdemeanors. I don’t see them again.

Luke dies too young, although not as young as Felicity. I don’t know about it until after the fact. Augusta knows, but she doesn’t tell me. A mutual friend tells me that he died of a drug overdose. I hope that’s not true.

Chapter 29 - Busted

I was looking out the window when the police cars pulled up. There were two. They pulled up fast, lights flashing. I can’t for the life of me remember what color they were. Three policemen and one policewoman came across the front yard running. I was really scared. I was home alone. I wanted to run downstairs through the kitchen and out the basement door, but there wasn’t time.

I opened the door at their very authoritative rap and stepped back as they swooped into the living room. Our living room was small. You could see it all in one glance. There was very little in the way of furniture. A stereo system took up one wall under the window with all the albums filed neatly into crates except the few I had been playing. On the opposite wall was a mattress on the floor with a quilted cover and piles of pillows. There was an American flag forming a canopy on the ceiling in front of the fireplace at the end of the room opposite the door. This flag enraged the police who showed how they felt with looks and eyebrows rather than words. They did not pull it down completely only pulling one corner away from the ceiling letting the flag flop down, but not letting it touch the floor. Nothing fell out when they loosened the flag so the search went on.

I tried to stay out of their way and the one policewoman hung around me to make sure I did. Across from the fireplace was a three-story wall of windows with no curtains. A stairway went down along the wall of windows and another stairway went up. The bathroom was on the same floor as the living room and was quickly dealt with but I couldn’t see where they looked and I knew there was nothing there.

Downstairs was the kitchen, a tiny dining ell and the door to the basement. Up the other flight of stairs was the bedroom. I don’t remember them searching the bedroom. I think the whole search was just an act. Someone had told them right where the stuff was. But they made a good show of it. They got into the cupboard and looked through the flour and sugar scattering flour everywhere, all over my clean dishes sitting in the dish drainer, all over my clean floor.

Oh, I was plenty scared. I was shaking uncontrollably. I never pictured such a thing happening in my life. It was quite surreal.

And then they went out into the basement, behind the furnace and found the baggie full of tabs of sunshine acid, the yellow barrel type, the good stuff. I wasn’t sure they could prove it was ours being that it was outside our apartment in the shared basement, but thinking it over later, I was sure someone had squealed, had informed and told them where the hiding place was because, after the little ‘search show’, they went right to it. Much later, it dawned on me that hardly anyone knew the hiding place.

At the time, though, I was way too busy being scared. I had on a little sun dress which was pretty bare and what with my nerves and my shivering I was covered in goose bumps even though I was hugging myself tightly. When it became clear that I was going in the squad car to jail, I asked the police woman if I could change into something warmer and less revealing. The men did not want to wait but she let me. I hadn’t given them any trouble and I was polite. To tell the truth, I was in shock.

After I changed my dress for jeans and a blouse, they took me out the front door. I was wearing handcuffs. My shock deepened. They cuffed me in front of my body, not behind my back and led me across our front lawn to the car where they did that head thing while they put me in the back seat. I’m sure I cried.

They drove downtown and parked behind the Public Safety Building, a parking lot I had never seen before. They took me into the jail, into a land where you could not enter or leave any space without waiting for someone to unlock a really serious set of bars. The doors clanged open and shut.

I was fingerprinted, photographed and strip searched, but sent to a cell in my own clothing. Yes I wanted a cigarette, I wanted about ten cigarettes, but I wasn’t allowed any, nor did I have any. I didn’t ask for a phone call. I didn’t want anyone to know. Maybe the system could just swallow me up. Augusta and Hobart, I did not want them to know, not my cute little innocent parents who did not belong anywhere near this place.

I was in a cell by myself, right next door to a heroine addict who was in withdrawal and very sick. She kept puking and moaning, asking that someone do something. Finally they switched our cells so she would be closer to the guards and I got the pukey cell. Luckily most of the puking must have been dry heaves.

In the morning I was faced with my two little sweet parents walking down the hall towards me and the courtroom for the arraignment. I had been on TV. Everyone saw me. The entire Taylor clan was traumatized. Smithvale was traumatized. But I was the most tramatized of all. Life can change in a minute and mine just did.

Chapter 28 - The Shit Hits the Fan

The Shit Hits the Fan
Chapter 28


It’s Tuesday, mid-August. I’m home alone. I’m following my usual morning routine. I have no cigarettes so I’m not in a good place. Cleaning and grooming give me no peace today. I’m on autopilot. Finally, it’s about 11 am. I hear a knock at the door, then silence. If it was someone I knew they would be yelling, “Zoe, Zoe.” No yells. I shrug and continue with the casserole I’m making for dinner, tuna noodle, I know, yuck. It’s cheap and it stretches. What can I say?

The knock comes again, louder this time. I head up the stairs to the front door. When I peer out I see a sort of nerdy guy who comes here once in a while to see Lena. He has someone else with him, a very beautiful young woman. Now this is an unlikely pair. I don’t want to open the door, but I do. Nerd guy says don’t I remember him; his name is Tom. I do remember him, but have never spoken to him, however, I say, “I know who you are.”

“This is my cousin,” he tells me, “she’s moving here from Chicago.”
“Poor baby,” I say.
I introduce myself. She tells me her name is Rose.
“What can I do for you?” I say.
“We’re here to see Lena,” Tom says.
“Lena’s somewhere babysitting,” I say (of all things – but it’s true. Lena’s practicing. She wants to have a baby she has decided. Her ex will be the father.)
“Do you mind if we wait for her awhile,” he says.
“It could be a long wait.” I say.
“We’ll wait,” he says.

Now I have two virtual strangers on my hands. I can’t exactly show them into the drawing room and leave them. There is no drawing room. Tom takes the beanbag chair and Rose sits on the couch-bed.

“Would you like some coffee or tea?” I say, always the hostess.
“Coffee,” they say together.

I go down to the kitchen, make three cups of coffee and carry them back up. My brain is buzzing from lack of nicotine. Now I’m going to add caffeine to the mix. I need to run around the block. But I can’t, there are two people in my living room.

“How could you stand to leave Chicago?” I say.
“I came to help out my aunt,” she says. “But I do need to find a job.”
“What do you do?” I ask.
“I’m a dancer,” she tells me.
Oh my god, a dancer, in my living room. I love dance – ballet, tap, jazz. I don’t care. I wish I was a dancer, I think.
“What kind of dance?” I ask her.
“Go-go,” she replies. “I’m not an exotic dancer,” she warns, “strictly cage dancing.”
“I don’t think we have any go-go clubs here,” I say.

I spy the morning paper. I pull out the classifieds and hand them to her. I find a pen.

“Look in here,” I say.

I know there are no go-go jobs in our newspaper. After all, I’ve been to just about every club in the city with Annie. I just don’t feel right about these two. It’s making me nervous. I’m already on edge from coffee and no cigarettes. When I’m with strangers and on edge, I talk a blue streak to cover my nerves and any uncomfortable silences. This is not a good thing.

“Maybe you could sell a local club on the idea?” I babble. “There must be other dancers here who would love a job like that.”

I describe several clubs to her that I think would be appropriate. She dutifully writes them down on some notepaper I give her. Hey, we have time I think.

“Let me look up the numbers for you,” I say, grabbing the phone book. I’m a job counselor.

“That’s not necessary,” she says, but she writes down the numbers.

I’m so antsy by now there are free radicals or bouncy ions or something flying all over the room. I want them out of here. I clear the cups away to the kitchen just to have a breather. When I come back Rose says that they think they will go. They’ll see Lena some other time. Tom stays behind after he sends Rose out onto the porch.

“Give me a minute,” he says.

“Now what,” I think.

Turns out he’s having an acid emergency. He wants to buy five tabs of acid. This has nothing to do with me. I don’t own any acid. The stuff belongs to Lena and Linda. But he won’t go away. Rose keeps sticking her head in the door saying, “Is everything OK, and Tom keeps waving her off.
Finally, I reason that if I sell him one tab of acid then maybe they’ll go away and maybe I can buy a pack of cigarettes. I tell him to go wait on the porch with Rose. I call Lena and tell her who’s here and what he wants. She says to go ahead and give it to him. He’s a regular customer. I ask if I can use a little of the money to buy cigarettes.

She says, “abso-fuckin-lutely.”

“Thanks, Lena,” I say, “See you later.”

How gullible am I, how naïve, how stupid? To any normal person this would smell like a set-up. But these are my friends. My instincts are trying to tell me no, don’t touch this. But my cigarette addiction and my too-many-fiction-heroes brain are canceling out the no. I put my head out the door and beckon Tom over.

“I can only sell you one,” I say.
“How much?” he asks.
“Two dollars,” I say.

I don’t know what Lena charges but this seems like a fair price to me. And it will cover a pack of cigarettes with some left over for Lena.

“Wait out on the porch,” I tell him.

I go into the basement. I retrieve one tab of acid from the baggie over the furnace. I go back upstairs and beckon Tom back into the house. I take the two dollars and hand over the tab of sunshine. They finally leave.
I feel weird about the whole encounter but once I am alone, and once I have my cigarettes, I try to put it out of my mind. I have known for a while that not all “hippie freaks” are about peace, love and changing the world. Some just want to get high. Some are just there to rip off people who are high. But I think my friends are loyal to our small “family” group. I don’t even stop to think that some of my behavior with Luke may not have struck a positive chord with his sister. I’ve never asked Luke, but I don’t think I’ve actually wounded him. I could be wrong though.