A Connecticut Memory

A CONNECTICUT MEMORY

For Carmen

His mother looked so sad standing there at the beach holding onto her melting soft serve in a wafer cone that he could only think of one thing. The ending of Truman Capote’s short story “A Beautiful Child,” when Truman remembered his late friend Marilyn Monroe and thinking of her tragic end, he wondered why everything in life had to turn out so rotten.

What was she even doing in Florida? This part of Pasco County looked like a “Mad Max” movie with junkers speeding up and down US-19 on daily trips to the beach with no regard for life. The scenery surrounding the highway certainly had no regard for good taste. Billboards with lawyers with frosted tips and capped teeth dominated the airspace above the roadway. Strip malls with gun stores stacked on top of nail salons stacked on top of movie rental places stacked on top of pet groomers larded up both sides of the death trap. But this was all they could afford now, he supposed. At least this is where his father had taken her.

Picture: Ten years earlier, at the end of a cul de sac in Hamden, Connecticut. The buzzing chainsaw sound of cicadas overwhelm the block of manicured lawns on the hottest day of the year in mid-July. It is 1985. The woods next to the yellow house, where Jack lives with his parents, won’t be torn down for several more years, and to the cool wild of the forest is where Jack likes to go best on his summer vacation. Sometimes he lets Rusty the trusty Irish Setter lead the way, even when that is a mistake, and the dog gets him hopelessly lost in the woods, once so bad that the police had to get involved, and his mother had to form a search posse to find him. “There he is!” someone finally cried late in the day. Once Jack emerged from the woods in a spot he had never gone through before, with prickers tearing at the skin on his arms, he sobbed when safely back in his mother’s arms. He was nine when that happened, but he’s ten now. Rita, his mother, a small woman with soft brown eyes and olive skin, born in Paraguay and living in Connecticut for the past ten years, is his best friend.

At night, they say the Lord’s Prayer together before she tucks in him for sleep. And sometimes with tears in her eyes, Rita asks him why he chooses his father’s side in the vicious fights that rock the house. He tells her it’s because he is worried that he will hurt her. It’s his way begging for her to stop, so she won’t make him angrier than he already is. He asks her to lay down, not stand up for herself, and wait for the storm to blow over. It’s what he tries to explain to her, but the words come out all wrong and she looks confused. ‘Why does he have to be ten!!?’ he wonders aloud when she leaves the room. ‘What a stupid age!!’ He wishes he was older so he could work in a city like his father and take care of her, the two of them living in peace, away from the man whose car only appears in the house’s driveway on weekends.

On that particular July day, he is hosting a birthday party later. His mother invited four friends to come over. He is not so popular, so if all four friends do come, it will feel like a big party. Either way, there will be ice cream cake, with those crusty chocolate bits layered in the cake that make it wonderful. And maybe Rita will get all the books he asked for for his birthday. She knows he likes to read, what he likes most in this world. Still the birthday party is hours away, he forgets about it now. He still has the whole morning to explore the woods. Maybe he will stop by and visit his neighbor friends? He likes them even if he doesn’t like either of the brothers’ parents. One is a gym teacher who moonlights as a butcher at the A&P on weekends and he mistreats the family dog. Poor Penny, what a wretch. The other is a frowning, prematurely grey woman whom his babysitter, a much older lady herself, calls a “witch.” The two of them go to the same church so she would know.

He plays with a stick in the driveway near the defunct water well, as he further mulls on what he will do that morning. His father is home that day because it is a Saturday, and just then, he spots him leaving the house, mounting a nearby John Deere lawnmower. He watches that for a little while, long enough to see when his father mows circles around Mrs. Gentry who sits Indian style in the middle of the lawn underneath their apple tree. She prays to the thing, she always does that, with her eyes closed, the apple tree that only produces hard, sour crab apples. Sometimes she prays to the algae-covered pond that lies yonder. His father says Mrs. Gentry is “batshit crazy” but he gives up on getting her to move when she is in one of her praying spells. Later his father will go back and mow the spot where she was praying. Mrs. Gentry also has a son with problems. It’s a sad story.

Suddenly John is in front of him on his bike. His neighbor friend, the older of the two brothers. “Do you want to dig to China? See if we can at least hit water?” he asks.

“Sure,” Jack says. “My place or yours?”

“Mine,” John says. And the morning’s plan is settled. Jack grabs his bike that rests on its side toppled over by the well, and off they go down the street, passing by the other algae-covered pond. Once they get to John’s, they ditch their bikes out front, and head to the back where the swings and jungle gym are. Where they will do their digging, where they always do their digging.

On the short walk to the backyard, John points up at the sky, and exclaims, “Moon, moon, go away. Go away and come back another day!”

Jack is right. The moon is out even though it is morning. It’s strange but he has seen it before. He laughs at what John said, but doesn’t want to get too distracted. “Let’s start digging, c’mon,” he says. “I bet we can reach China by my party if we start now. Let’s disappear and start new lives.”