Forbidden
Fruit
Eight Miles high.
The Byrds
For Sandra, Michael was forbidden fruit. All her life she had been kept away from that kind of person and life-style; in fact, she had hardly spent a single day that didn't have a goal or purpose to it. But Michael was different, and she found that exciting and attractive. He was the focus of her late-developing rebellion against the prim and proper lifestyle in which she had been raised, the one big act she knew would meet her parents' disapproval.
Sandra Riddet's "plunge," as she described it, dropped her into a cold surf. No longer was the plastic bubble of family protection there to shield her. No longer could she live her cosy life doing the nice things expected of her. She had a beach bum on her hands, and the stink of marijuana was in her house.
Before life took her from one world and flung her into another, Sandra had a good thing going. Born into a conventional Methodist family in LaGrange, Illinois, she began singing in the church choir as a child and never missed a Sunday. By the time she was ready for college her father, Wilfrid Riddet, had become president
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of Imperial Type and Chemical Company. He shipped her off to fashionable Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she majored in music, sang in school operettas and musical comedies, and thought about going on stage. She acquired an interest in art and dabbled in oil painting. Wherever she went, she took her sketch pad or easel along with her.
At the time she met Michael, Sandra had finished her two years at Stephens, worked for a time at Disneyland, and was going for a degree at Long Beach State. Like many college girls of her social and economic position, she had plans to spend the summer in Europe. When she met Michael she already had her tickets and her luggage. But it was spring break, that lovely hiatus when everything comes to a stop and fun takes over.
Michael, of course, had nothing to do, so they went walking on the beach, and he would play his guitar for her. He didn't really know how to play, but that didn't seem to matter. He made up all kinds of stories about himself, saying he was a musician in a Long Beach club or a medical student. It was a different story every day, and deep down Sandra probably knew none of them were true, but she chose to ignore or even believe them. They were just part of his charm, and she thought he was cute even though he looked exactly like what he was — a beach bum.
The fact was that Sandra hardly knew Michael at all, but in three weeks she was madly in love with him anyway. Her infatuation had begun the first time she met him; no one had ever had the same effect on her.
They started dating on April 16, and on May 13 they were married. There never was a proposal, just a suggestion — "Let's go to Las Vegas and get married" — as if it were a dare. They drove all night to Vegas, and Michael found a friend in a bowling alley, and he and another
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friend became the witnesses. In midmorning the foursome walked into the office of a justice of the peace to find out when they could have the ceremony. A woman seated at a desk informed them that the fee was twelve dollars, which Michael paid in pop bottle money.
Sandra had put a dress in her suitcase when she left, intending to change before the wedding. At the moment she was wearing a pair of slacks and a blouse, and Michael sported a T-shirt and jeans. Both of them were barefoot. The lady said to them, "Sit there in the hallway." In a moment a door opened at the end of the hall and a man waved them toward him. They shook hands and were invited into a small room.
"How's the weather at Balboa Island this week?" the man asked.
"Oh, it's beautiful."
Without further delay he began asking the questions and they recited the marriage vows. In five minutes it was all over, and they were married.
They had gone in just to learn the details of what they had to do to get married. Given a little more time, they probably would have decided not to get married after all. But married they now were; so they went to a tavern around the corner and had a few beers with their two witnesses, watched Art Linkletter on television, and left Las Vegas.
Before they were married, Michael had confessed to Sandra his failures, his insecurity, and his unemployed status. He tried to show her every ugly side of himself so she would know whom she was getting involved with, but her infatuation blinded her. For his part, Michael considered all her qualities and realized she was the kind of person he wanted to be with, even though he thought her to be his intellectual superior and she was definitely from a different social world. They were in love, and that plus
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her rebelliousness against her upbringing were all that mattered.
What fascinated Michael about Sandra was her ability to appreciate life. She helped him enjoy studying flowers, listening to the sound of waves on the beach, watching a puppy across the street or a boy throwing a ball in the air. Under her guidance, he was learning for the first time to observe closely what was going on about him. But for three days after they told each other, "I'd like to marry you," Michael sank into one of his moods of hopelessness. He had failed so many times, and he was afraid he was psychologically not strong enough to handle marriage.
The drive back to California without sleep was more a nightmare than a honeymoon. They went first to Santa Barbara, where Michael intended to look up a relative. But they pulled in exhausted and spent their wedding night in the car, Sandra sleeping in the back seat, Michael in the front. One day later they drove back to Balboa Island, where Sandra shortly took a job as waitress on a floating restaurant, the Reuben E. Lee, and Michael went surfing. He would go paddling by on his board and wave to her as she was carrying trays.
Their revised plan called for Sandra to make her trip to Europe in June and come back in September without telling her family what she had done. After several days of being Mrs. Michael MacIntosh, however, she was feeling so guilty and so overcome about not telling her parents that she had to call them. She was still excited by her quick marriage, but once their cover was blown, everything changed.
Two or three months of excitement followed, but actually the marriage went badly from the beginning. Sandra had deceived herself into thinking that she was the key who was going to turn Michael the right way. She was sympathetic toward his unhappy childhood, and she also
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saw he had a great deal of potential, charm, and ability. It soon became clear, however, that not only was she not the one to change him, but that he had no desire to change.
