Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

down like pack animals, toting coolers and lawn chairs, Coleman lanterns, fishing gear and guitars. They converged, along with the Halcyon-Wilson household, on a central loading dock, then stood in line for registration.
    “Pick a duty,” said D’or, when their turn came.
    “What?”
    “What work duty do you wanna do?”
    “Wait a minute,” said DeDe. “Nobody mentioned any work duty.”
    “It’s in the brochure, Deirdre. Don’t be such a damn debutante.”
    DeDe would have put up a fight then and there, but the children were watching, and she didn’t want to inaugurate their stay by setting a bad example. “What are the choices?” she asked icily.
    D’or read from a list posted at the registration table. “Kitchen, Security, Garbage Patrol, and Health Care.”
    “Which one are you picking?”
    “Garbage Patrol.”
    DeDe grimaced, but the choice made perfect sense for D’or. The woman loved to clean more than practically anything. “What’s Security?” DeDe asked.
    D’or shrugged. “Patrolling, mostly. Keeping an eye on things.”
    That sounded tame enough. Better than Kitchen, certainly, and a lot less icky than Health Care. “Put me down for that,” said DeDe.
    They were issued orange wristbands—plastic hospital bracelets, actually—which indicated they were festivalgoers rather than performers or technical people. This smacked of concentration camp to DeDe, and she couldn’t help saying so.
    “I know,” said D’or, “but there’s a reason for everything. All of this has evolved from past experience.”
    After registering, they walked back to their gear and waited with the other women for the shuttle. It arrived ten minutes later in the form of a flatbed truck—much to the delight of the children, who invariably applauded any form of transportation that promised to place their lives in jeopardy.
    As they bounced along a rutted dirt road into the wilderness, DeDe shouted instructions above the engine noise. “Hold on to something heavy, Edgar. Anna, stop that…. Sit down this minute.”
    D’or threw back her head and laughed, a strange primal glint in her eyes.
    Ten minutes later, the truck lurched to a stop in a clearing near the river. DeDe hopped down first, grateful for release, then gave the children a hand. Readjusting the belt around their double sleeping bag, D’or said: “Now we’re on our own. Where you wanna camp?”
    DeDe shrugged. “Someplace pretty.”
    D’or scanned the map she had picked up at registration before pointing downriver to a clump of trees. “The party-hearty girls are over there. The S and M group is half a mile behind us.”
    “Swell,” said DeDe dryly. “What else?”
    “Mom,” chirped Anna. “Let’s go down there. It’s pretty next to the river.”
    DeDe draped her arm across her daughter’s shoulders. “Sounds good to me. What about you, Edgar?”
    “I like the river,” said her son.
    DeDe turned to D’or. “How’s it look on your map? Anything we should know about down there?”
    Her lover caught the irony in her tone and reprimanded her with a frown. Then she said: “The Womb is up at the next cove, but that’s fairly far away.”
    “The Womb,” echoed DeDe, deadpanning. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”
    D’or lifted the bundled tent and began to stride toward the river. “If you’re going to be snide about everything, I’d rather not hear it.”
    DeDe let it go. Turning back to the twins, she checked for dangling or abandoned gear, then said: “Now stick close, you guys. This is uncharted territory we’re heading into.”
    “Oh, sure,” said Anna, rolling her eyes.
    DeDe helped Edgar rearrange the weight on his backpack, then hurried to catch up with D’or. “O.K.,” she said. “Tell me about the Womb.”
    “Don’t patronize me.”
    “I’m interested, O.K.?”
    D’or hesitated, then said: “It’s a place women can go when they need emotional support. This is a big festival … people can get hurt.”
    DeDe visualized a tent full of wailing women, all boring the Birkenstocks off the poor dyke who’d pulled Womb duty. But she now knew better than to say so. “It sounds very supportive,” she told D’or.
    When the time came to pitch their tents, they chose a stretch of riverfront property separated from the other campers by a stand of madrone trees. No one, not even D’or, had the slightest idea as to which plastic rods went where, but the process of finding out drew the family together in a way