My Beautiful Hippie by Janet Nichols Lynch Read Free Book Online Page A

clutch purse for later. I would forget about them, they would melt into the lining, and after that, every time I opened that purse, I would smell mint and be transported back to Denise’s wedding day.
    Mom’s friend Maxine Fulmer came over to talk to me. I knew she was there because I had seen her untouched sunflowerseed tofu loaf in its disposable aluminum baking pan, parked among all the polished silver serving dishes on the buffet table. She had brought a guest, a thin, pale man with a pageboy who looked quite a bit younger than her and reminded me of Chopin.
    Mrs. Fulmer introduced him to me as Quentin Allen. He extended his hand across the table, and when I shook it, I noticed how good his long, pale fingers would be for piano playing. Whenever I didn’t know what to say to somebody, I said something stupid to fill the silence. “I’ve never met anyone whose name starts with a ‘Q.’ ”
    â€œWhat’s more unusual is someone whose name starts with ‘Q’ but without a ‘u’ following it. Now, that’s impressive.”
    â€œIs that even possible?”
    â€œQadir, Qamar, Qihael. Need I go on?” He smiled with one side of his mouth, which made him boyishly handsome. He extracted a gold cigarette case from his hunter-green velveteen jacket, snapped it open, and offered its contents to me. I declined but was flattered. I’d never been offered a cigarette before.
    â€œI’ve been looking for you, Joanne,” said Mrs. Fulmer, her speech slightly slurred from the champagne she was sipping. “I just had to compliment your music at the ceremony. You play with such feeling. Such expression. Truly, it’s a gift.”
    â€œThank you, Mrs. Fulmer.”
    â€œCall me Maxine, dear. These titles alienate the generations, don’t you think? Besides, I’m not even Mrs. Fulmer anymore.”
    I asked Maxine a question I probably shouldn’t. “Do weddings make you sad?”
    â€œThis one does. Denise is much too young. Too bad she and Jerry couldn’t just live together for a while.”
    I was shocked that a person of my parents’ generation would suggest such a thing. “You know my mom wouldn’t go for that.”
    â€œIt’s becoming widely accepted,” Maxine insisted. “Denise will see it’s not easy for a girl to return to college once she’s left. She’s been brainwashed into thinking getting married and having children will make her a happy, feminine, well-adjusted woman with a fulfilling sex life. Society says education for girls only doomsthem to unhappy, dead-end careers and celibate, frustrated lives without orgasm.” I was embarrassed by her anger and sex talk, especially in the presence of a man. I didn’t know what “orgasm” meant. Everything I knew about sex I’d learned by secretly reading
Valley of the Dolls
while babysitting, and parts of it I didn’t understand.
    â€œGirls don’t dare become interested in law and medicine,” Maxine ranted on. “It will only lead to the frustration of applying for positions filled by men. No, no. Teach them cooking and sewing and”—she clawed quotation marks in the air—“ ‘the role of woman in society.’ I read in Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique
that in the last decade, the IQs of teenage girls in America have actually gone
down
!”
    I thought of Denise in junior high, reading one book after another—Dickens, Austen, J. D. Salinger, Joyce Carol Oates—and then in the summer before her freshman year, something happened to her. She grew boobs, big pointy ones, and all her dates and hair arranging put a limit on her reading.
    â€œKeep ’em barefoot and pregnant,” Maxine muttered.
    â€œOh, no, not Jerry!” I said, defending my new brother-in-law, whom I liked so much. I leaned close to Maxine to whisper their secret. “Denise is on the