Today, still curious about Abby, I went to a family thing at my father's best friend's house. The guy's name is Andy and I'm named after him and I like being named after him. But his brother is dying of heart disease along with his father and step-mother, who has cancer. Andy's wife's brother, a scyzophrenic, also joined the macabre party along with the diabetic younger brother whose a great guy but looking bad. As we were leaving Andy's father, whose extremely senile and deaf but who has always been kind to my father asked me how I had been.
I told him I'd been fine and asked the obvious question.
He smiled and said "whats the use of complaining."
On the road up to Maine there is water tank with Lobsters on the side. It sits squarely on the New Hampshire border and once its behind me I breath easier. But there won't be many people to talk to in Maine, just my nervous mother. My neighbor, whose in the room next to me as I write, is working in Boston and my sister is in Washington. But in some ways the worst this is that Chris, the gay antique store owner who I eat lunch with, is staying in San Francisco for the summer because his partner has parkinson's. Chris and I used to sit on the porch of Craig's bookshop, with Craig and Chris's little fluffy dog, and make fun of people passing by. This was every afternoon while I was working as a groundskeeper for the country club. This is how I know a lot of people and it is also where the front porch thing comes from. Its benign enough but what happened is that I came to know everyone and where to find their dirty laundry. Chris being a sixty year old gossip and all.
Everyone on Islesboro knows me but they don't. I know everyone but I don't. I'm not sure in retrospect if I ever had a serious conversation with Andy and I haven't talked to Abby in almost six years. Its funny how we communicate with the past through bonds we create and fictions we employ. If I saw the past sitting next to me in a Metro station with a beard and ringlets I think I would only give it a cursory hello. The past is not as important as memories of it. Things unfortunately are what they are and if they weren't, and if we didn't build paths backwards from our feet, than there would be more cause to complain.
Boston is a pretty mournful place but the trees in Maine are exactly where they have always been and the Lobster tank will still be there on the border, though the bridge changed and the ferry to the island is know chaperoned by coast guard cutters.
I don't have internet up there so I thought I would write something but it didn't turn out as what I thought it would turn out to be so I'll end it with a tremendous solace, the face of my beautiful dog.
5 comments:
I just posted that. Its freaking me out. My dog could be Anthony's brother.
he kind of is. he likes the simple stuff too. he is the simple stuff.
now I understand why you're the writer.
I think I'm supposed to resent that... but he's so cute! Not sure what to think.
take it as possibly the best compliment you could ever receive, better than anything any girl could ever call you, better than any Nobel Prize you could ever win. Truly.
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