THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY. See ya here next Tuesday.
Until then,
Denise
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Tales of Brookline: SCITUATE
SCITUATE 10/13/91
The red light on her answering machine was flashing.
She was still misty-eyed over what could only be a visitation from my grandmother. The choir at 11:30 Mass had suddenly sprang into "How Great Thou Art," a favorite hymn of hers. It was a good thing Debbie had not left early when her contacts began to irritate me.
"Hello, Miss Woman...such a sexy message, Miss Woman," the message began. Debbie recognized the voice of Madelyn, a former coworker she cashiered alongside at the grocery store. She assumed Debbie was working at the Ball & Chain, the old grind. She was on her way to Scituate and would call her tonight.
She played the message again. Had Madelyn left? Oh, no. Debbie did not feel like staying here, cooking and cleaning and reading newspapers all day.
She boiled water for more coffee. She attempted to do the huge pile of dishes in the sink, filling it with hot, sudsy water. When her bright red thumbnail broke after struggling with the milk ring inside the glass stolen from "The Red Lobster," she gave up.
The phone rang. It was Madelyn.
"Thought you left," Debbie said.
Madelyn had left a message on her answering machine, bursting into laughter about the Ball & Chain.
"Well, I didn't know I was so sexy!" Debbie shouted, in the empty, clean sunlit apartment.
Madelyn was going to Scituate to visit her parents. After a few more words, she said, Would Debbie like to come?
"Yes!" she said.
A horn honked. Debbie grabbed the Travel Section and was out the door, with her pocketbook, camera, and red nail polish.
An old man drove up the hill, passing the stop sign.
"What an asshole! Who taught him to drive? He shouldn't be driving!" Madelyn shouted, in between drags of her cigarette.
And with that, she clicked her tape deck. A country tune came on. "You're an asshole this morning, you'll be an asshole tonight, I have a feeling, you'll be an asshole the rest of your life."
They sang along and she shut it off. She clicked through one mainstream station after another. They stopped to get gas. Debbie thought of my hometown, and how she would be familiar with gas stations again soon.
A tour bus barged in front of them on the entrance to the highway. Click.
"Have you always been an asshole or have you worked at it your whole life...Someone even told me you have an asshole for a wife."
Click. Back to more mainstream stations. Mainstream disco. Mainstream rock and roll. Neil Young. Sugar Mountain. Old Man. Orange and russet and red touches in a highway foliage mostly still green.
Disco. Debbie thought of her dancing days, sometimes going out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The pulsating beat. The flashing lights. The rotating silver sphere. What happened to her?
Madelyn told her about her oppressed childhood, the priest who couldn't talk to her when she lived with a Jewish man, the nuns who punished her and her sister for having a Catholic mother and a Protestant father in the days when Protestants and Catholics were taught to shun each other.
"You're lucky you're not scarred for life," Debbie said, as they drove by the austere white church across from the Cohasset town green. She drove along country roads that she knew Debbie would like.
Her parents had dinner waiting and they were served soon after they arrived in the driveway, greeting the hundred-year-old cat. Madelyn barraged her quiet mother and friendly father with tales of the highway dirvers, the asshole song, the way the judge on public TV had used the words "elongated penis," how men were always flashing Debbie. Her father showed Debbie various news clippings of maritime disasters in Scituate and the recent article about debt-laden Stop and Shop.
They burst into laughter about the asshole song, Madelyn singing all the words for the benefit of her parents.
"Relieves the tension," her father agreed.
"You just have a bag of tricks," Debbie giggled. "You have got to be the funniest person I ever met!"
"And I called his mother the other night, played my machine-gun tape and hung up. Then I laughed my ass off!" Madelyn informed her parents.
"She knew it was you," her father said quietly.
"Who else would it be?" Debbie burst into ridiculous laughter.
"Has she called you since?" her father said.
It was going to be dark soon. Madelyn's parents urged her to show Debbie Scituate.
"Oh, it's beautiful," Debbie gasped.
They were on top of a hill, overlooking cozy New England shingled houses and a cove. They drove along the small coastline, out onto "The Cliffs," beach grass and goldenrod, growing alongside the road. They stopped at a large parking lot, a shopping center on the water. Debbie stepped onto the rocks, feeling confident in the cold air and sat on a large rock on the shore of a small inlet, ducks floating behind her.Tall grass, a marsh lie beyond. Madelyn snapped a picture of her in long black boots, heavy navy sweater, aqua fringed scarf. Her face was light, her eyes barely lined with blue liner.
Natural.
They walked into a drugstore.
"You shouldn't have lent her money," Madelyn said. "Now you're up a creek. I think she gives it to one of her beaus to buy drugs and that's not right. She's a good person..."
"It's Dave," I said.
"Who is he?"
"Well, he's got a cute face. Looks young. He has kind of a slouchy look. Like a hood," she said.
The shy cashier smiled.
Madelyn fiddled with the new film on the counter, inserting it into the camera. By luck, a former roommate had left it behind, rewarding Debbie when she cleaned her room.
"Hope they come out," she worried.
She discovered the lighthouse, the buoy-laden white fence, the yellow and orange berries growing alongside it.
"We'll go to Minot Beach," Madelyn said. "There's Lover's Lighthouse." It flashed three numbers, the Morse code for "I Love You." How sweet, Debbie thought.
"I have to have a picture of it," she said. She trampled the long grass along the cement walkway, walking down to the railing and ducking to take a picture. So far away in the gray blue water, beyond the rocks and the beach. It looked small in the window of her camera.
She stopped the car at a beach, below the hill. She walked in the tall dune grass, finding a hidden path. She stooped to take a picture of this lovely, lonely beach, a small cove with waves stretching across the sand, slapping at the rocks below. Gray cottages in the distance. Silken, silver waves in the near dusk.
Onto the fishing pier. Lobsters, a gray sign with red letters said, from a distant dock beyond the boats. Across the boat-filled deserted harbor. Beside the large pond which now reflected the several houses, all in a row, in its clear pool.
"This is what contest winners are made of," Debbie said.
She liked the lovers' lighthouse and the lonely beach and the duck-filled cove the best.
The red light on her answering machine was flashing.
She was still misty-eyed over what could only be a visitation from my grandmother. The choir at 11:30 Mass had suddenly sprang into "How Great Thou Art," a favorite hymn of hers. It was a good thing Debbie had not left early when her contacts began to irritate me.
"Hello, Miss Woman...such a sexy message, Miss Woman," the message began. Debbie recognized the voice of Madelyn, a former coworker she cashiered alongside at the grocery store. She assumed Debbie was working at the Ball & Chain, the old grind. She was on her way to Scituate and would call her tonight.
She played the message again. Had Madelyn left? Oh, no. Debbie did not feel like staying here, cooking and cleaning and reading newspapers all day.
She boiled water for more coffee. She attempted to do the huge pile of dishes in the sink, filling it with hot, sudsy water. When her bright red thumbnail broke after struggling with the milk ring inside the glass stolen from "The Red Lobster," she gave up.
The phone rang. It was Madelyn.
"Thought you left," Debbie said.
Madelyn had left a message on her answering machine, bursting into laughter about the Ball & Chain.
"Well, I didn't know I was so sexy!" Debbie shouted, in the empty, clean sunlit apartment.
Madelyn was going to Scituate to visit her parents. After a few more words, she said, Would Debbie like to come?
"Yes!" she said.
A horn honked. Debbie grabbed the Travel Section and was out the door, with her pocketbook, camera, and red nail polish.
An old man drove up the hill, passing the stop sign.
"What an asshole! Who taught him to drive? He shouldn't be driving!" Madelyn shouted, in between drags of her cigarette.
And with that, she clicked her tape deck. A country tune came on. "You're an asshole this morning, you'll be an asshole tonight, I have a feeling, you'll be an asshole the rest of your life."
They sang along and she shut it off. She clicked through one mainstream station after another. They stopped to get gas. Debbie thought of my hometown, and how she would be familiar with gas stations again soon.
A tour bus barged in front of them on the entrance to the highway. Click.
"Have you always been an asshole or have you worked at it your whole life...Someone even told me you have an asshole for a wife."
Click. Back to more mainstream stations. Mainstream disco. Mainstream rock and roll. Neil Young. Sugar Mountain. Old Man. Orange and russet and red touches in a highway foliage mostly still green.
Disco. Debbie thought of her dancing days, sometimes going out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. The pulsating beat. The flashing lights. The rotating silver sphere. What happened to her?
Madelyn told her about her oppressed childhood, the priest who couldn't talk to her when she lived with a Jewish man, the nuns who punished her and her sister for having a Catholic mother and a Protestant father in the days when Protestants and Catholics were taught to shun each other.
"You're lucky you're not scarred for life," Debbie said, as they drove by the austere white church across from the Cohasset town green. She drove along country roads that she knew Debbie would like.
Her parents had dinner waiting and they were served soon after they arrived in the driveway, greeting the hundred-year-old cat. Madelyn barraged her quiet mother and friendly father with tales of the highway dirvers, the asshole song, the way the judge on public TV had used the words "elongated penis," how men were always flashing Debbie. Her father showed Debbie various news clippings of maritime disasters in Scituate and the recent article about debt-laden Stop and Shop.
They burst into laughter about the asshole song, Madelyn singing all the words for the benefit of her parents.
"Relieves the tension," her father agreed.
"You just have a bag of tricks," Debbie giggled. "You have got to be the funniest person I ever met!"
"And I called his mother the other night, played my machine-gun tape and hung up. Then I laughed my ass off!" Madelyn informed her parents.
"She knew it was you," her father said quietly.
"Who else would it be?" Debbie burst into ridiculous laughter.
"Has she called you since?" her father said.
It was going to be dark soon. Madelyn's parents urged her to show Debbie Scituate.
"Oh, it's beautiful," Debbie gasped.
They were on top of a hill, overlooking cozy New England shingled houses and a cove. They drove along the small coastline, out onto "The Cliffs," beach grass and goldenrod, growing alongside the road. They stopped at a large parking lot, a shopping center on the water. Debbie stepped onto the rocks, feeling confident in the cold air and sat on a large rock on the shore of a small inlet, ducks floating behind her.Tall grass, a marsh lie beyond. Madelyn snapped a picture of her in long black boots, heavy navy sweater, aqua fringed scarf. Her face was light, her eyes barely lined with blue liner.
Natural.
They walked into a drugstore.
"You shouldn't have lent her money," Madelyn said. "Now you're up a creek. I think she gives it to one of her beaus to buy drugs and that's not right. She's a good person..."
"It's Dave," I said.
"Who is he?"
"Well, he's got a cute face. Looks young. He has kind of a slouchy look. Like a hood," she said.
The shy cashier smiled.
Madelyn fiddled with the new film on the counter, inserting it into the camera. By luck, a former roommate had left it behind, rewarding Debbie when she cleaned her room.
"Hope they come out," she worried.
She discovered the lighthouse, the buoy-laden white fence, the yellow and orange berries growing alongside it.
"We'll go to Minot Beach," Madelyn said. "There's Lover's Lighthouse." It flashed three numbers, the Morse code for "I Love You." How sweet, Debbie thought.
"I have to have a picture of it," she said. She trampled the long grass along the cement walkway, walking down to the railing and ducking to take a picture. So far away in the gray blue water, beyond the rocks and the beach. It looked small in the window of her camera.
She stopped the car at a beach, below the hill. She walked in the tall dune grass, finding a hidden path. She stooped to take a picture of this lovely, lonely beach, a small cove with waves stretching across the sand, slapping at the rocks below. Gray cottages in the distance. Silken, silver waves in the near dusk.
Onto the fishing pier. Lobsters, a gray sign with red letters said, from a distant dock beyond the boats. Across the boat-filled deserted harbor. Beside the large pond which now reflected the several houses, all in a row, in its clear pool.
"This is what contest winners are made of," Debbie said.
She liked the lovers' lighthouse and the lonely beach and the duck-filled cove the best.
GOING HOME
GOING HOME 10/13/91
"You always go 'back home.'" I realized what a miserable life I was leading. for the first time. I felt alive! I quit my job in New York 5 1/2 months later and plunked myself down in Boston.
I wanted to make a change. A new life. But was it?
A year later, I found myself back in New York. A weekend wedding in Manhattan. I knew in an instant. I had made the right decision. Was it the girl in sneakers and a suit, walking tired past the buildings of 42nd Street?
In recent months, I started to attend church more often. Searching, wondering, waiting for the answer! Trying to understand.
A sense of peace and unbelievable happiness has filled me since I made the decision to return home.
A clean feeling. Going back to where I belong, my roots, Sunday drives on winding country roads, the salt-kissed air of lonely New London harbor. A quiet early night's sleep, deep in the woods. Lots of trees, changing color in the fall, shaking their leaves in the breeze.
"You always go 'back home.'" I realized what a miserable life I was leading. for the first time. I felt alive! I quit my job in New York 5 1/2 months later and plunked myself down in Boston.
I wanted to make a change. A new life. But was it?
A year later, I found myself back in New York. A weekend wedding in Manhattan. I knew in an instant. I had made the right decision. Was it the girl in sneakers and a suit, walking tired past the buildings of 42nd Street?
In recent months, I started to attend church more often. Searching, wondering, waiting for the answer! Trying to understand.
A sense of peace and unbelievable happiness has filled me since I made the decision to return home.
A clean feeling. Going back to where I belong, my roots, Sunday drives on winding country roads, the salt-kissed air of lonely New London harbor. A quiet early night's sleep, deep in the woods. Lots of trees, changing color in the fall, shaking their leaves in the breeze.
Monday, February 14, 2011
TALES OF BROOKLINE: Walk-a-thon Impressions 1991
"Are we there yet?"
He pulled a red wagon, its contents full of things for the walk; plastic water bottles, a panaxonic radio playing disco tunes, hats, visors, lunches. His small son walked beside him, his long white "Walk for Hunger" tee shirt pulled over him. The entire family wore the matching white tee shirts as they walked alongside the disco wagon.
She closed her eyes. All she could see was the Charles River, its refreshing blue waters peeking from between the trees.
Is this the bridge yet? She did not realize there would be several more, before passing finally, from Cambridge into Boston.
Beach Field. Nice name for a checkpoint stop. Laying on the grasses beside the Charles River. A brass band started to play. No vocals, just some enthusiastic players bowing and dancing to their own music.
On Commonwealth Avenue, one woman held up a sign. "YES!" it said.
The proper town of Newton, where young college boys sat on the porches of white Victorian houses, pretending to read The Globe and listen to radios as thousands of Bostonians walked by.
How many more miles?
Beacon Street. Back Bay. Lovely. Something like New York. Elegant. So long ago.
Boston Common in the Spring. The Public Garden on a dewy Spring morning. Swan boats all in a row. Fenced tulips in rose, yellow, lavendar. An arch of balloons, bobbing over the entrance to the Boston Common. Thousands, although it's only seven o'clock in the morning. Free hats, visors, plastic water bottles, stickers.
Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Isn't there a trolley that runs through here?
WALKATHON IMPRESSIONS 91
Harvard University. What a place for a campus. Elegant lawns overlooking the Charles River.
It first became visible through a sprinkling of trees, small boats in a quiet cove.
Dusty paths ambled through woods and thickets as trees dipped down to rest in the River.
Lavendar cherry blossoms clustered its banks. A dixie band started to play on the riverbank and someone let out a scream. "Yeee-hah!"
Girls wearing Indian dresses and skirts danced to the beating of bongo drums on Harvard's campus
UP NEXT: GOING HOME (the decision to move back to Connecticut) and a side visit to SCITUATE, the home town of my bosom buddy at the time, Pam Mitchell. (You can friend her on Facebook.) Here's to you, "Boston Pam!"
He pulled a red wagon, its contents full of things for the walk; plastic water bottles, a panaxonic radio playing disco tunes, hats, visors, lunches. His small son walked beside him, his long white "Walk for Hunger" tee shirt pulled over him. The entire family wore the matching white tee shirts as they walked alongside the disco wagon.
She closed her eyes. All she could see was the Charles River, its refreshing blue waters peeking from between the trees.
Is this the bridge yet? She did not realize there would be several more, before passing finally, from Cambridge into Boston.
Beach Field. Nice name for a checkpoint stop. Laying on the grasses beside the Charles River. A brass band started to play. No vocals, just some enthusiastic players bowing and dancing to their own music.
On Commonwealth Avenue, one woman held up a sign. "YES!" it said.
The proper town of Newton, where young college boys sat on the porches of white Victorian houses, pretending to read The Globe and listen to radios as thousands of Bostonians walked by.
How many more miles?
Beacon Street. Back Bay. Lovely. Something like New York. Elegant. So long ago.
Boston Common in the Spring. The Public Garden on a dewy Spring morning. Swan boats all in a row. Fenced tulips in rose, yellow, lavendar. An arch of balloons, bobbing over the entrance to the Boston Common. Thousands, although it's only seven o'clock in the morning. Free hats, visors, plastic water bottles, stickers.
Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Isn't there a trolley that runs through here?
WALKATHON IMPRESSIONS 91
Harvard University. What a place for a campus. Elegant lawns overlooking the Charles River.
It first became visible through a sprinkling of trees, small boats in a quiet cove.
Dusty paths ambled through woods and thickets as trees dipped down to rest in the River.
Lavendar cherry blossoms clustered its banks. A dixie band started to play on the riverbank and someone let out a scream. "Yeee-hah!"
Girls wearing Indian dresses and skirts danced to the beating of bongo drums on Harvard's campus
UP NEXT: GOING HOME (the decision to move back to Connecticut) and a side visit to SCITUATE, the home town of my bosom buddy at the time, Pam Mitchell. (You can friend her on Facebook.) Here's to you, "Boston Pam!"
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental. The names of the characters are the work of the author's imagination.
Up Next: TALE OF B'LINE: Walkathon Impressions 91
See ya here next week. After this, we will have one more TALE OF BROOKLINE: Going Home and Scituate. Up up next, stay tuned for the long-awaited: THE SINGLE MOM OF CACTUS COUNTY, a novella about my trip to Arizona in the 90s.
Until then,
Take care.
Denise
Until then,
Take care.
Denise
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