MAY-MALIBU, CALIFORNIA
Malibu in the month of May is as beautiful as Malibu is
beautiful year round. Each month has a warm, bright sameness. December, January, and February may have a
cool feel of summer gone, or maybe a grey tint in the atmosphere, but the
season differences actually play more in nature, the arrival of the Monarch
butterfly, their cocoons on the eucalyptus trees and then the emergence of
thousands of new butterflies. The dead
jelly fish that wash ashore by the tide or the purple slugs that do the same
and that the scientists come out and harvest at low tide on a sunny
afternoon. These are the noticeable
changes as the year passes.
The young woman bent over the flower garden reaching for
more dried blossoms to deadhead from the red geranium bush. There were pink and dark pink and red
bushes. They were lush. Their dark green leaves filled in and pushed
the flowers up and together. The leaves
were varied greens, soft and impossible not to stroke and pull. Nasturtium grew prolific beneath the
geraniums and covered the ground until they met grass. The grass grew to the patio’s cement. She stood up and took in the salty breeze while
looking at the horizon, the blue and
pink horizon with the pier off to one side and moored boats bobbing with
the sway of the water. It was afternoon
light and a summer’s heat was turning cool as a blue porsche pulled up in front
of the trailer that belonged to the girl’s mother.
A tall, handsome man stepped out of the porsche, walked
around the front of the car and up the step, “My name is Tom. I am Gary’s friend.” Gary worked around the trailer park which
everyone called-the cove. Garry lived in
a trailer with his wife and two kids.
They were in their early twenties.
“Oh sure, I know Gary, the young woman said.” He had helped her mom with repairs on the
trailer a few times. “I am Candy.”
“Well, I wondered if you’d like to go to a movie? I am
actually a projectionist in a movie theater in Santa Monica-but I have the
night off and a good movie is playing tonight, I think that you would enjoy
seeing it.” “Sure,” she answered. Her heart was racing. This would be her first date. She had turned 15 last week and that was the
magic age to be allowed to-go out.
“Well, I will be back for you about 6-o.k.?”
Six came and she and her mother were waiting inside. Her mother had a pot of hot coffee on and was
moving around the kitchen, a little woman in a little kitchen. Candy was sitting at the bar between the
kitchen and living room. “Do I look
nervous?” she asked her mom. “You look
great, honey.” She was wearing her new
jeans with a purple velour top and expensive sandals. It wasn’t an extremely warm evening but still
not cold. She looked beautiful because
she was young, she was untouched and she had the innocent trust and happiness
of a young person just beginning to be aware of her attraction to the opposite
sex. There came a knock on the door and
Tom came in and made pleasentries with the mother. He shared information about his family, his
sisters. His mother had passed away two years before and his father left, in a
divorce. “If you will give me your driver’s
license please, I will jot down information about you." Candy’s mom requested. He reached in his wallet and handed the license to the mother. Candy began to feel odd. She hadn’t seen this coming. Both Tom and her mother looked at her with
smiles on their faces. So, with business taken
care of, the couple left the trailer on their date, her first date. It was a pleasant
date and they planned for another soon.
The following day her mother told her that she didn’t want
her to go out with boys her own age.
That she was afraid that her daughter would be with a gang of drunken
kids on Highway 101 and get in a fatal accident. Someone could get killed and likely it would
be her. She thought this over. There were no teenagers living in the cove only
a younger boy and an older one that was away in the service, overseas. The valley kids came over in the summer and
on Holidays but it was like they existed in separate castes. So Candy gave this new rule no more thought.
“And Candy,” her mother added, “if you become pregnant, don’t
be afraid, just come home and we will take care of it.” (Many mothers in this culture and in this
era-the sixties- were putting their girls on birth control.) But this mother was older and torn about what
to do.
Tom and Candy dated over a period of two years. Tom would marry and divorce another woman
during this time. Candy would date many
men until she would marry at twenty and stay married for twenty years, raising
children until the divorce.
At age 83 Candy died napping under a warm California sun,
slightly inebriated.
