Chapter Five

I went straight to bed after we got home; my father was waiting up for me when I came trudging back into the house with four very tired Beatles. The jet lag was certainly catching up with them; I slowly recalled the feeling I had every time I’d arrived home from Europe--it had taken me about three days to get out of the European time zone and back into the Central U.S. time zone! I said goodnight to everyone and trudged upstairs, heading into the bathroom to wash up before the others had a chance to block me out of there and make me fall asleep with my makeup still on if I had to go crash across my bed to wait.

I fell asleep about five minutes after my head hit the pillow, spiraling into a heavy, dreamless sleep. Keeping up with those four lads was so exhausting! Thank god that those four had never been kids of mine; I would’ve gone crazy trying to keep up with them! And I thought that my cousin Helen had been hell to keep up with when she was a two-year-old... Helen Wheels from the very beginning...

I woke up with a start for some reason the next morning. After a few bleary-eyed moments and a quick roll onto my side to face my nightstand, I saw that the hands on my clock pointed to eleven-thirty. That woke me up like someone had pumped an IV full of caffeine into my system!

“Oh my god!” I said, leaping out of bed and grabbing my light robe at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t have possibly slept that late! I must have forgotten to wind my clock yesterday or something--I couldn’t have missed an entire morning with my favorite four guys!

Flinging my door open, I stepped into the hall, and, sure enough, the hall clock read eleven-thirty. I sighed with disgust, pressing one hand against my forehead. Lauren Ashley Donaldson, what in the world is wrong with you? I thought, rather pissed off at myself.

The guest room door was wide open; everyone must have headed downstairs a long time before that point. I took a little stroll down the hall and peeked in. The beds had already been made... and the ashtrays were empty... and the wastebaskets were cleaned out... and the towels in the bathroom were already replaced... and the suitcases were gone! It looked like no one had been in the room at all!

Oh my god... the whole visit had been a dream, a very vivid, realistic dream! I thought, leaning against the doorway and chewing on one of my nails. Maybe I’d been listening to way too much of the Revolver album lately; after all, that last song “Tomorrow Never Knows” was something that could inspire strange dreams inside one’s mind. So much for hanging out with the Beatles for a second time...

I headed downstairs for the kitchen, passing my mother by on the stairs. I groggily said, “Good morning,” to her as she gave me a little smile. She probably had a houseful of chores for me to take care of if I really wanted to be able to take the Cadillac to the concert by myself; some fun.

Claire was in the kitchen, already eating her lunch--a ham sandwich and cottage cheese with a big glass of iced tea--and studying a little piece of paper next to her plate. She looked up and said, “Oversleep much, Laur?”

I nodded silently, rummaging through the lunchmeat tray in the icebox; it looked like she’d taken the last of the ham for her lunch, so I had to settle for sliced roast beef. I took the beef out of the icebox, retrieved the bread from the breadbox on the counter by the oven, and carried it all to the table to make a sandwich for myself.

As I unwrapped the bread, I looked down at what she was staring so contentedly at. “Hey!” I shouted, realizing what she had in her hands--my ticket to the concert on Friday! “What are you doing with my ticket?”

Claire pushed herself back in her chair and gave me a confused look, like I was yelling at her in Portuguese or something. “Laurie, that one’s mine; they gave it to me before they left,” she explained, snatching the ticket away as I made a grab for it.

“What are you talking about? Who gave it to you?” I said, frowning.

“What’s wrong with you?” she replied, clutching the ticket against her chest. “Who do you think gave it to me?”

“Oh... they didn’t!” I cried. “You don’t mean to tell me that the Beatles were actually here in this house again?!”

Claire’s eyes were as wide as record albums as she stared at me incredulously. “Where have you been for the past twenty-four hours, Laur?” she said, pocketing her ticket. “Hell, you were out with them for half the night while I was stuck here with Peter and Alice playing Monopoly all evening...”

I sat down in the chair next to her and banged my head down on the oak tabletop. “Ouch,” I muttered, lifting my head up and rubbing the bump near my hairline. “Maybe that’ll knock some sense into me...”

“How in the world can you forget something like that?” Claire asked me before popping another spoonful of cottage cheese into her mouth. “I mean, it’s not like it happens every day or anything... we’re lucky it happens once a year...”

I looked up at her, resting my chin against my folded hands. “I thought it was a dream,” I said quietly. “Hey, wait a second... I thought they were leaving this afternoon! Why’d they leave so early?”

Claire swallowed her bite of food and said, “Brian called them from the hotel at about seven this morning--it woke the whole house up!-- and told them to get over there ASAP; the entire block around the hotel was already swarming with reporters from all around the country, and he wanted them back there way before their press conference this afternoon.”

“Why so many reporters? There weren’t that many there the last couple of times they were on tour.”

As she tugged the crusts off the bread, she explained, “Man, you do have a short memory span... you know that everyone in the press is going to be asking them about John’s whole Jesus quote that people are whining about. It’s like the number one story; they’re going to have the press conference on the news tonight, from what I heard.”

“Ohhhh... you’re right!” I said, drumming my fingers against the tabletop. I recalled the sudden furor that a quote by John in a teen magazine had caused in the Bible Belt in the southern states a couple of weeks earlier.

Claire had purchased the issue of the magazine, Datebook, for me while she was at the supermarket with my mother around that time, since there was a pic of Paul on the cover. To the left of Paul were a bunch of quotes from various celebrities on multicolored banners; sure enough, right there on a purple banner were the words “JOHN LENNON: ‘I don’t know which will go first--rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity!’” The article inside the magazine included, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now.” I barely took any notice of it upon reading it--I was more interested in the pictures, which I promptly tore out--then tossed it aside.

The magazine sat on my dresser untouched for about three days before Claire and I saw a segment on the news about people protesting against the Beatles because of the quote. I suddenly recalled the comments on the cover, as did Claire, and we raced upstairs to fetch the magazine from my dresser.

After we’d re-read the quote and the article as well, Claire had asked me, “Do you really think he said that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Most of the junk that they print in that magazine is bullshit that the editor or someone made up... but it almost sounds like something that John would have the guts to say if he was in a bad enough mood.”

I myself really didn’t care what John had said; I’d been hurt more by the painful sight of people tearing up pictures of the Beatles and burning their albums on the national news program than the quotes. I wasn’t very religious, likewise for my parents; religion wasn’t the top reason that I’d spent the past three years at Rosary--it was just a very good college with a small student population. Claire suffered an ulcer for John’s sake for a couple days after we’d seen the report on the news; she was worried that their trek through the South was going to be disastrous. I’d told her that it would all blow over in a week or so--but apparently it hadn’t done that, even by the time the Beatles arrived in the U.S. for the tour.

“They’re going to kill him,” Claire muttered, shaking her head as she finished the last of her sandwich. “My poor John... it’s not his fault that those people down south are so stupid and have nothing better to do than stomp all over Beatle records and light ‘em on fire!”

I laughed; leave it to Claire to whip up the dramatics when her Johnny was in trouble! “Oh, Claire, he’ll manage,” I laughed, sitting back in my chair. “They always do!”

“Yeah, well...,” she mumbled, clearing her dishes from the table. “I still don’t see how Mom and Dad can let you go with them on this tour with all this happening; if I was the one that was invited with, they’d practically have a stroke!”

I sat straight up in my chair, praying that my ears weren’t deceiving me the way my mind had been. “They’re what?” I squeaked, turning around to look at Claire at the sink. “You mean to tell me that they’re letting me go with?”

She nodded. “Boy, nothing is getting past you today, is it, Laurie?” she said sarcastically, scrubbing the dish with soap. “I don’t know how or why... but Neil managed to talk them into letting you go with. You’re supposed to meet them on the way to the concert on Friday night. Mary Kay and I are going to the show by ourselves; her dad is going to drive us there.”

I laughed. “Oh, come on, Claire; ditch this boring-as-hell town and hit the road with me and the boys! It’ll be a blast!”

“Yeah, right,” she muttered, rinsing the dish. “I start school in two weeks; I’d miss an entire week of classes if I did that. You’re lucky; you don’t have to start at Rosary until next month.”

“Well, those are the perks of college,” I said quickly. “But wait... how am I supposed to meet up with the guys on Friday night? There’s no way I could even get into the hotel to them; the entire police force is probably parked right outside the front doors, you know.”

“I don’t know; all I know is that’s what they told me to tell you,” Claire said as she dried the dish off. “Hey, I’m happy with how things are going right now; at least I’m finally allowed to go to their concerts. Maybe next time they come here I won’t have to bicker with Mom for an hour over whether or not I can go.”

“You’re in high school; I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to go,” I said, finally putting together my sandwich. “But why didn’t they just wake me up and tell me to go with them back to the hotel this afternoon? It would’ve saved a lot of time and effort if--”

“I asked them that exact same question, and Neil said that the press conference this afternoon is being held in their hotel suite and perhaps you wouldn’t want to be around for something like that. They all keep talking like this is going to be something really ugly... I’m really getting worried.”

“Claire, honestly; it’ll all be okay,” I reassured her. “If they were going to get their butts kicked, that would’ve happened to them in the Phillippines... I still can’t believe that Mom and Dad are letting me go with them on this tour! This is going to be so much fun!”

“Don’t rub it in... I see a few very long weeks of evening Monopoly tournaments ahead of me... plus all the chores that you can’t do while you’ re not here...” she said, putting the dish in the cupboard. “Well, I’m off... I gotta go give Mary Kay her ticket. See you in a while.”

“Yeah,” I said as she left the kitchen. I sat there for a while, eating my sandwich and staring at the yellow and brown shapes on the wallpaper in front of me. So I was going with the Beatles on tour... OH MY GOD!!! Could life possibly get any better than that?! I thought with a big grin. How am I going to make it through the next few weeks without bursting from happiness? Hanging out with the band for three weeks... going to a whole slew of huge concerts... seeing some sights all across the country (I’d been to Europe and Australia, but as for the States, I’d been to Wisconsin, Indiana and New York (if you counted our flight layover there on our way to Europe))... it was going to be the coolest thing that had ever happened to me in my twenty-one years!

After I finished my lunch, I ran upstairs and found my mother changing the sheets in her bedroom. I leaned against the doorway after she noticed me there and said, “So, um, you and Dad are letting me go with the Beatles?”

She sighed, rolling the bedsheets into a ball and tossing it into her laundry basket. “What choice did we have? I know you would’ve gone anyway if we said no... you’re a big girl now; you would’ve run off with them.”

“No, I wouldn’t have!” I replied quickly. “I couldn’t do something like that; I’d be too afraid that you and Dad would send out the FBI to find me, drag me back here, and have the Beatles deported. The worst thing that would possibly happen would be that I wouldn’t be speaking to anyone for two weeks or so.”

“Very funny,” she said, closing her eyes tiredly for a moment as she unfolded two white pillowcases. “Just because we’re letting you go doesn’t mean that we won’t be worried sick about you the whole time. You haven’t been away from home that long before in your entire life.”

“Sure I have; we were in Australia for at least three weeks when I was little, and--”

“I meant without your family.”

“That, too,” I clarified. “Remember freshman year when I had all those projects to do at school that last month before summer break? I stayed at school two weekends in a row to keep up with my research in the library... and I came back in one piece, didn’t I?”

“Well, of course you did; that was school. This is an entirely different situation, Laurie,” she said as she fluffed up the pillows. “I really don’t know what to expect from a rock and roll group on tour... after all I’ve read in the papers and such--”

“Oh, Mom!” I cried. “You’ve had it out for anyone that plays rock and roll ever since you read that Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin--and that was almost ten years ago!”

“Well... I suppose if Mr. Epstein is around, it should be all right; there won’t be any monkey business,” she said. “He doesn’t seem like the type that would tolerate that sort of thing.”

I had to suppress the urge to laugh; good god, Mom, they’re not teenagers! They don’t need chaperones! George is the youngest, and he’s still three years older than I am!

“I guess not,” I said, biting my tongue to keep from laughing. “So... I’m going to start packing my suitcases, okay?”

As I started turning away from the door, I heard her say, “Wait a second, Laurie... I’m not done talking to you yet.”

“Oh?” I said, turning back around. “What is it?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out for about ten seconds straight... and I knew from that look on her face, I just knew, what she was going to try and bring up... the most uncomfortable topic that a mother and daughter ever had to talk about in their entire lives! I dug my feet into the carpet, preparing for the worst. Oh, god, not this for the thousandth time... I’ve heard this speech a thousand times, practically every time I’d started dating some new guy! Hell, I’m surprised that I hadn’t heard it from her last winter after she’d remarked that Paul and I made a cute couple! Why, why, why couldn’t she be a cool mom like Anna’s? Anna said that she and her mother had talked about it once for about two minutes and that was it--no more uncomfortable, difficult conversations!

“What?” I repeated, whining almost as severely as Claire used to. “Is this going to be ‘the talk’ again? Because I think I know the whole story after hearing it so many times, Mom.”

“I know you know... but, Laurie, I just... well, I don’t know...”

“Mo-om! I know how to conduct myself as a lady. They’re not going to lay a finger on me, I promise!” I shouted, mentally adding or any other body parts, for that matter... And that was in all honesty, knowing that I had the ability to act like a truly prudish debutante if I had to; when you grow up having to deal with all those sickeningly rich people on Meryton Street and getting looked down upon if you don’t have quite as much money as they do, the very least you can do is act like you’ve had some upbringing and not act like you’re easy!

“Well, I hope you can act like a lady, like you said,” she said quietly. “And don’t do anything stupid, Laurie--”

“I won’t! Good lord... don’t you trust me? I’m twenty-one years old, Mom.” What on earth would her reaction be when I got married? Was she going to babysit me and my husband on our honeymoon? Ugh!

“All right, all right; this is nothing to argue over. I think you know better... I’m just warning you...”

“I’ve heard the warning before,” I said, rolling my eyes. This conversation was getting pretty old pretty quick; I wanted to melt into the floor so I wouldn’t have to listen to any more of it. “Can I please go pack now?”

“I suppose... go ahead...”

I dashed into my room, got dressed quickly, then rummaged through my closet before I found my three-piece suitcase set. I spent the whole rest of the day packing up everything I’d need in the next few weeks. The blouses, dresses, shorts, pants, skirts, and shoes I’d need were wedged in as tightly as possible in the largest of the three cases. In the smaller suitcase I put all my underwear and nightgowns, along with two bathing suits (hey, the tour agenda was going to take us to sunny California for a couple of days--maybe I could go to the beach... or at least to the hotel pool!), my super-light raincoat and three scarves to cover my hair just in case of lousy weather. All of my makeup, hairspray, shampoo and hair accessories went into my vanity case, along with a stash of extra cash just in case something came up, and a notebook and pen just in case I got bored and decided to start a journal or something... “My Life On Tour With the Beatles” by Lauren A. Donaldson--the newest best-seller on the New York Times book list! No... I couldn’t do that; I couldn’t brag to the whole world that I’d gone along with the Beatles on tour--that would look way too suspicious! Oh, I could just see the reaction of the nuns at Rosary if they heard what I’d done over my summer vacation; I’d be kicked out of school immediately!

I was so involved in preparing for my trip that I stopped running around my room packing late that afternoon when Claire shouted for me to come downstairs and look at something on TV. I ran downstairs to see her watching the CBS Evening News in the living room; they were about to show the press conference that had taken place earlier that day at the Beatles’ hotel. I sat down next to Claire in front of the TV and turned the volume up; I didn’t want to miss a word of it!

The first question right off the bat was directed right at John regarding the Jesus quote in the magazine: “Could you tell us what you really meant by that statement?” John paused for a moment; he looked pretty nervous. He said that he’d been talking to a journalist friend of his when he said the comment and wasn’t really thinking about public relations or anything.

He looked like he was getting pretty frustrated as he said that the whole situation had gotten out of hand here in the U.S. “I was using the name ‘Beatles’ because I can use them easier,” he said, explaining his choice of words, “’cause I can talk about them as a separate thing. I could’ve said ‘TV’ or ‘cinema’ or anything else that’s popular... or ‘motorcars’ are bigger than Jesus.” Then he stated again how worried sick he’d become about the whole situation. Another reporter in the room informed John that the radio deejay that had started the whole Beatle boycott thing in the South had demanded an apology from John, to which John replied, “He can have it, you know; I apologize to him if he’s upset and he really means it. Y’know, I’m sorry; I’m sorry I said it, really, for the mess it’s made, but I never ment it as a lousy or anti-religious thing...I can’t say any more than that; there’s nothing else to say, really.” He went on to say that he only meant that Christianity was losing contact with its followers, and Paul piped in, “And we all deplore the fact that it is, you know.” Then Paul made some sort of comment I couldn’t hear that everyone laughed at.

Someone said that many people viewed the character Eleanor Rigby in the song of the same name as a devoutly religious person and asked whether or not that was what they wrote the song about. I rolled my eyes; now they were just looking for any excuse to bring up the religion issue...

And that was pretty much it. No screaming or yelling at all on either side of the long table that the Beatles had been seated at. None of the Beatles had stomped off in frustration or anything. John had answered the questions straightforward and did the very damn best he could under so much pressure--my hour-long speech I’d had to make for my speech class freshman year looked like a piece of cake compared to what John had just done!

I looked over at Claire, who heaved a sigh of relief. “Ohhhh... thank god,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I’m soooo glad everything worked out okay.”

“So am I!” I said, laughing as I turned down the volume on the TV. “I think things should calm down a little bit now, don’t you? After all, he apologized for what he said.”

“He shouldn’t have had to, anyway!” Claire said, frowning. “He shouldn’t have had to apologize for what he thinks; that’s terrible!”

“Well, that’s just the way things work sometimes,” I said, standing up and stretching. “It’ll all be okay now; you’ll see.”

I had such an urge to phone them at the hotel and tell all of them that they’d done a great job during the interview, but I knew that it would be impossible to actually get through to their hotel room; dozens of other fans had probably already tried to get to talk to their favorite Beatle over the phone and had miserably failed. I was hoping that maybe they’d phone me sometime that night, but they didn’t, and I can’t say that I blamed them one bit. It must have been hard apologizing to the whole world on TV!

It took me a while to fall asleep that night; I was really getting excited about the next day! First a Beatles concert at the Ampitheater, then a trip across the U.S! I was thrilled about what awaited me over the next few weeks!

Continue to Chapter Six

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