The dogs lie in the passageways, idle as exercise equipment.
I am not a dog owner, really.
My covenant to them is three, sometimes four, walks a day. I scrub the soiled door mat, become giddy at treat time, and sit on the floor of the large, ivory kitchen alongside them as they pant and stretch. They lie pointed toward me as if I were Gandhi, about to speak. But I am only a fair weather hugger—I cannot fill those empty cups, those bored, patient eyes. Why do they look at me?
I am alone in a house in New England.
I am the newcomer at church.
I am the nice man in glasses, walking his dogs.
I am an alcoholic, foreshortening my life bottle by bottle, breathing in the poison of a lifetime of articulate disapprovals, postponing the dishes, making myself laugh.
I'm too busy hugging myself.
I've read that Natalie Wood, in fact, deftly paddled and steered the dingy that windy night and succumbed only yards from shore.
I need there to be a God, a Lord of the middle-aged, of those who struggle—almost successfully—to forgive themselves their trespasses, their idiosyncrasies, the rosy, affluent scorn of old lovers' faces in 5 a.m. dreams.
Ten summers ago my uncle died in this town, and I had to buy a fleece jacket for the unseasonal cold. Today the sun bakes the macadam, and I lay my palm on it before the dogs cross, like a young mother tests a baby's milk on her wrist.
At the same spot, we stop and I stare at the old white house rising from the driveway: so elegant and cool in its necklace of ferns. Who could have guessed a decade later I'd live in same the town, removed like a polyp from the big city—I don't miss it. But will anything be the same after this summer, living so close to my beloved island but barred from it? Smelling the ocean but never seeing it.
Stuck in town.
When Gary finally comes, will we fall back into our usual walk around the block, its familiar scents and threats?
Down Elm and up Pine.
One more time before bed.
July 2, 2017
April 18, 2017
Pennsylvania Summers
When I was 10 I'd lift an arm protector from my grandmother's ancient furniture and marvel at the bold rectangle concealed beneath. Brick-red and ivory and Hunter green—the stitched bouquets freshly picked, tight as Braille.
The many summers had bleached everything, leveled the surface, and it was difficult to find secrets—but not impossible—when I was 10.
Conversations overheard from another room were franker, had a different tone, but never do I remember anything said about my father—or my mother.
The calf skin of his Oxfords was brittle, and the shoulders of his sports coats sagged on their hangers, but my grandmother's eyes moistened when I appeared, downstairs, in the stuff.
The present and past had a collegial relationship in the large old house, telling different versions of the same stories but never sitting down to the table together—at lunchtime, when bees gorged on fallen plums at the end of the yard and bluebirds rocked the wooden houses hung on the clothesline posts.
It was hard to get my grandmother to talk about the past as she folded maraschino cherries into angel food batter or rubbed knuckles of delicates together in Borax in the bathroom sink.
But I sat on the lid of the hamper and watched—when I was 10.
When storms came through we all gathered in her bedroom—so habitually that I wondered if they were visible anyplace else. Cathedral tall, the single window in the room faced north, its sheers turning to neon in the darkness as we counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder.
Butter, milk, eggs, and bread—the crust breaking away from the loaf in golden sheets—came to the house, but no chums or old girlfriends of my father ever did, and his fable was never interrupted by evidence, or the bawdy corroboration of a war buddy—even though I was only 10.
My grandmother still drove out to pick string beans or raspberries, angling the huge old Buick precariously on the side of the dirt road, and we pulled up to orchard stands for peaches, the engine never entirely cooling down in the July afternoon.
The hub caps, like chrome chef's bowls, came off as she drove, and I'd have to run back to get them. The steering wheel was large as a yacht's, with a stentorian, musical horn. The smell of the interior—of old car—if you have not known it can be compared to nothing else.
It persisted in the airless darkness of the garage—when I was 10.
The many summers had bleached everything, leveled the surface, and it was difficult to find secrets—but not impossible—when I was 10.
Conversations overheard from another room were franker, had a different tone, but never do I remember anything said about my father—or my mother.
The calf skin of his Oxfords was brittle, and the shoulders of his sports coats sagged on their hangers, but my grandmother's eyes moistened when I appeared, downstairs, in the stuff.
The present and past had a collegial relationship in the large old house, telling different versions of the same stories but never sitting down to the table together—at lunchtime, when bees gorged on fallen plums at the end of the yard and bluebirds rocked the wooden houses hung on the clothesline posts.
It was hard to get my grandmother to talk about the past as she folded maraschino cherries into angel food batter or rubbed knuckles of delicates together in Borax in the bathroom sink.
But I sat on the lid of the hamper and watched—when I was 10.
When storms came through we all gathered in her bedroom—so habitually that I wondered if they were visible anyplace else. Cathedral tall, the single window in the room faced north, its sheers turning to neon in the darkness as we counted the seconds between the lightning and the thunder.
Butter, milk, eggs, and bread—the crust breaking away from the loaf in golden sheets—came to the house, but no chums or old girlfriends of my father ever did, and his fable was never interrupted by evidence, or the bawdy corroboration of a war buddy—even though I was only 10.
My grandmother still drove out to pick string beans or raspberries, angling the huge old Buick precariously on the side of the dirt road, and we pulled up to orchard stands for peaches, the engine never entirely cooling down in the July afternoon.
The hub caps, like chrome chef's bowls, came off as she drove, and I'd have to run back to get them. The steering wheel was large as a yacht's, with a stentorian, musical horn. The smell of the interior—of old car—if you have not known it can be compared to nothing else.
It persisted in the airless darkness of the garage—when I was 10.
January 13, 2017
Inauguration Day
However that happened ... he's there ... and let's go says Nicole Kidman.
I liked her in "The Others." I wondered why Tom Cruise let her go—so peachlike and tiny waisted, a perfect doll.
So I tried to imagine them fighting in the car, avoiding each other on weekends, drinking separately, secretly. Why lay an ace down upon the table? Is one so confident of winning the game that lovers—with their morning scent, their habit of draping a leg over yours on windy March nights, their dull prurience and fascinating innocence—can be discarded?
However that happened ...
My face, map-wide and shapeless, a pancake of worry, looks like it has been dropped from a great height. My clothes don't fit. Something is pushing outward, like a baby's fist, just below my right rib. I push it back with my right hand.
I have had 16 doctor's appointments in 3 months. I am tired of running downtown.
No impassioned appeal can turn things back, no eloquence or status, no confidence, no righteousness or bravery. We have arrived here—limping, stoned—we have awakened in an empty bed, and the mirror cannot lie.
Not even Meryl Streep can save us.
The ace is somewhere else, now: in private determination, the reluctant wisdom of age, in the sort of quietness that long walks bring. Nothing will be easy but it will still be rich, slightly sexy, and well worth having—the little satisfactions of John Updike and Bach, the surprise of nameless brooks in the woods, and the ability to remember without the tearful misery of loss.
The grand gestures—the crash diets and all-night rows—belong to an earlier time.
Let's go.
I liked her in "The Others." I wondered why Tom Cruise let her go—so peachlike and tiny waisted, a perfect doll.
So I tried to imagine them fighting in the car, avoiding each other on weekends, drinking separately, secretly. Why lay an ace down upon the table? Is one so confident of winning the game that lovers—with their morning scent, their habit of draping a leg over yours on windy March nights, their dull prurience and fascinating innocence—can be discarded?
However that happened ...
My face, map-wide and shapeless, a pancake of worry, looks like it has been dropped from a great height. My clothes don't fit. Something is pushing outward, like a baby's fist, just below my right rib. I push it back with my right hand.
I have had 16 doctor's appointments in 3 months. I am tired of running downtown.
No impassioned appeal can turn things back, no eloquence or status, no confidence, no righteousness or bravery. We have arrived here—limping, stoned—we have awakened in an empty bed, and the mirror cannot lie.
Not even Meryl Streep can save us.
The ace is somewhere else, now: in private determination, the reluctant wisdom of age, in the sort of quietness that long walks bring. Nothing will be easy but it will still be rich, slightly sexy, and well worth having—the little satisfactions of John Updike and Bach, the surprise of nameless brooks in the woods, and the ability to remember without the tearful misery of loss.
The grand gestures—the crash diets and all-night rows—belong to an earlier time.
Let's go.
October 19, 2016
Contact Paper Fan
Jan Chozen Bays says the mind "fritters away its energy" dwelling in the past or—even worse—in future worry or fantasy.
It's true, all that pain is like biting the fingernails too deeply, or smoking too many cigarettes too fast.
But on this warm October morning, I think of my Aunt Ada, 85, sitting in her rocker and fanning herself with a giant, homemade cardboard fan covered in thick contact paper printed to look like stained glass. Heavy as a frying pan, she waved it in front of her face and gave little pushes with her nylon-stockinged feet against the floor. The delicate smile behind her eyeglasses—twinkling, conspiratorial—was timeless.
Any moment she would slice up a peach, or write a letter.
The memory of it enriches me, still.
It's true, all that pain is like biting the fingernails too deeply, or smoking too many cigarettes too fast.
But on this warm October morning, I think of my Aunt Ada, 85, sitting in her rocker and fanning herself with a giant, homemade cardboard fan covered in thick contact paper printed to look like stained glass. Heavy as a frying pan, she waved it in front of her face and gave little pushes with her nylon-stockinged feet against the floor. The delicate smile behind her eyeglasses—twinkling, conspiratorial—was timeless.
Any moment she would slice up a peach, or write a letter.
The memory of it enriches me, still.
October 12, 2016
The Attic Star
I conceived a dislike for her when she told our agent she wouldn't sell us the front porch bench. Long and low under the tank-shaped front window, the short spindles of the back like piano keys, it seemed to define the house—as I had first seen it in photos.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
Carrol with two r's had paid cash for the house in 2006, coming in from the exclusivity of Mt. Desert, sampling Ellsworth life like you might try a decaffeinated tea or a new hairstyle, her father funding everything with the transfer of some golden island property that must have made her purchase as easy as picking up wine. Somewhere, also, implied or guessed, there had been a successful divorce.
So that a decade later it had a full line of Swedish appliances. The farmish balustrade of the front porch, just a box of painted boards without ornamentation, was pulled away, leaving a theater stage with large, thickly-planted ferns for footlights. Now the posts were longer—sexier—as they met the floor planks. The kitchen was gentrified with hanging copper skillets and Le Creuset. Bowling balls of smooth Bar Harbor granite held the bedroom doors open. A gazebo was placed on the lawn.
She had agreed to Friday, September 16, then informed the team, about a week before, she would not be attending closing. Booked into a motel at the edge of town, I walked past the house the evening before fantasizing that I might see her in the driveway, stuffing the car with some last-minute boxes. Stepping a little bit up onto the driveway in the dusk, I would say "Well, you're cutting it close!" But the house was dark, and the curtains were drawn. I headed back out the Bucksport Road with my Gruyere and flagon of Cabernet in a plastic bag that knocked against my knee as I walked, no snappy introduction made.
September 3, 2016
Labor Day Weekend
On Saturday, the tropical storm comes closer, transforming the morning air into the ocean, blowing the leaves of the trees back and upright like little green sails.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
A breeze furrows through the house like high tide.
The northwestern sky is periwinkle blue, but a bilge of dark gray is cutting through from the south. I keep the kitchen door open and the copper pans resound like gong buoys.
The barometer brings with it the first cool weather, flooding August off like an unreachable, insufferable island. Our noisy window units, on a rich diet of Kilowatts all month long, are silent.
Between the houses the light is patchy and changeable. August was monochromatic, motionless, run aground—but in these first days of September we lurch then ride a small current forward.
A lusty but casual relationship, summer took too long to end—I'm glad it's over.
But I think I'll remember one week in July—our cottage right on the bay, the lobster boats gliding on the flat aquamarine surface, the ice cold water splashing over my legs—for a long time yet.
August 4, 2016
Rumination While Pulling Weeds
Is there a part of life that lies beyond the apparent? Have I been wrong to persistently, bitterly deny it?
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
Are lives that ended still going on someplace, like the overpayment of a utility bill: money that finds its way back, an unexpected check in the day's mail—a beloved character, familiar energy, orphaned from its old form, randomizing the tides like the moon, putting the compass out of whack?
I am too hard on myself.
I prepared for loneliness and received it. And now life goes on like a party across the hall. I smell the beer and the onion dip.
Life asks for a certain generosity, a small down payment of faith. My flawless suspicion, a talent for mockery, didn't really come in handy, though I kept them laughing in college.
The best thing you can do for someone else is to believe him: "So-and-so was right about that" is the truest sort of fame. I think what we ask from the past is validation. Unfortunately, it isn't coming.
So we beat on with Fitzgerald, into this confusing, flawed middle age, a gallery of withholdings and hesitations—a chilly place.
A couple of old photographs will have to suffice for warming the heart, and perhaps the idea, gingerly conceived, that we will receive a little generosity, too.
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