And Paris Is Beautiful Too
Katherine says we should tell the world the Gold Coast is beautiful, a real find, and I say Paris too, we should tell everyone we know, and she says we should also tell them about Rome and Florence, and I say München and Berlin, we should definitely tell everyone we know about those 2 cities, and she says Madrid and Barcelona, delivered so well it sounds urgent.
Bologna’s our 1 real find (and not really) on this trip. Fewer tourists. Something in the light during a rainy morning walk, something in the gray sky working like a reflective umbrella on a fashion shoot (I’d narrow my eyes movie-star/move to the shutter when I wanted to make it that way). We took great photos against textured walls in the old ghetto section: Katherine and Eben, me and Eben, Eben 9 months old. We ate a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano. They’re famous for their Parmigiano-Reggiano. Said that way it sounds pretentious but we’re gnawing the rind.
3 weeks away already, a percentage-chunk of his young life, make HOTEL (the word) home, each new hotel (for him) home. Born in a hotel room and, god damn it, died in a hotel room, O'Neill’s words, my dad knew/taught/wrote about O'Neill, about Shakespeare (1 book: O’Neill’s Shakespeare), and every April I drove home to watch him teach his 1-month seminar at the Renaissance House, moving, reading, pointing, spitting, seeing through the words, the scenes, then showing us, and I carried his briefcase, car to class, kid-proud (like Biff with Willy before truth comes in), and the words I know (he told me to memorize more) I know (mostly) from him and it’s too far away, and he died 3 months after his last Shakespeare class (Hamlet) (of course) and after, I still feel it when I let myself, after just 1 whole day it was too far and I screamed at him don’t go too far, too far away.
The train turns inland, away from the Gold Coast, our last stop before Paris before leaving, so the sea goes away and some beauty. Not as many palm trees, my favorite, starting with summers in Hollywood, Florida, the Attaché by the Sea, giant pool, learning to swim, and I was only 5 and jumping off the high dive, eyes closed, holding nose. 1 time my body tipped and belly-flopped. My first time winded, gut-punched, no perspective, thinking (I think) how this pressing not-breathing might never stop. My parents were sitting on lounge chairs, that’s what I remember, drinking cocktails with another couple, that’s what I remember, and I swam bad-breathless to the edge and they were laughing, that’s what I remember, not at me but at something someone said, and the pool was pool-blue and everything exaggerated—the sun and the chlorine smell and the blue and the pressing—and they didn’t see, didn’t know, and I swam to the edge alone and got out of the pool alone. I wrote about Hollywood (not Florida), about a father’s Belmondo-style dreams, and about a man craving Technicolor life, and stories of not quite making it and not making it and
it's land all around
then water again and palms
then Marseille (more city than Cannes)
then land again and no more views of water and the train’s TRAIN moving
and she's teaching my son to drink, showing him how to use his mouth on the water bottle, so there won’t be so much spill, something I still don’t do right. I watch the her and him of us. US. She does it quietly like she’s teaching me.
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Red Card
Three red Queen Elizabeths line the postcard and she’s looking young. It’s the day before New Year’s. The postcard’s from Crow. He writes our three names then an ampersand then Happy Holidays then XO and his name.
At Camp Echo we took care of our kids but not really. We made sure the bunk stayed clean and got everyone to the mess hall on time but if they needed to fight things out we let them until we saw blood. We disappeared during weekly trips to the beach and at Six Flags we stayed lost until the buses were leaving the lot. We sang Henry the Eighth I Am and the kids loved that. Crow’s accent was theirs and mine was almost right but laced with some mocking and we showed them the black and white video, Hermits bopping, on our phones. We brought them milkshakes from outside so they wouldn’t complain. So they’d tell their parents what great counselors we were. So we’d get a decent tip when they picked up their kids.
I looked Crow up twenty years later when we were in London right before the virus. He came to see us. We talked about camp and the kids we remembered from our bunk and about the other Brit counselor who ordered Big Mathews instead of Big Macs and taught martial arts. We drank pints and ate fish and chips at a pub near our hotel. My son loved saying fish and chips in a British accent and he loved eating fish and chips and since that trip we talk British when I walk him to school. Sometimes we sing Henry the Eighth I Am and sometimes we stop to look at the turtles in the tanks on Columbus Avenue. The turtles mostly just float. Sometimes he asks when Paul, Crow’s real name, will visit us in NY. I tell him after the virus.
When the postcard comes I show him the stamps. He asks who the first queen was. I don’t know. I don’t know the first English queen. I don’t know the first queen of all time. Kids like to know firsts and lasts and bests and worsts. Kids like to put things in terms of infinity.
The queen’s face is in side-view. She looks more like a statue. Like her head is a bust and not real. I’ll write Crow an email in a few days. Fill him in with a few sentences. Make a reference to the camp. I’m keeping the postcard with the three stamps on my desk to remember to write.
There was one kid we hated. We let the toughest kid in the bunk beat him up. He knocked out one of the kid’s teeth. The parents took the kid out of camp early.
I yell at people to put their fucking masks on. My kid hates that. He hates when I make them back down. After New Year’s the numbers will skyrocket and then plummet. At Six Flags Crow and I took the roller coaster. When my kid and I fight I sometimes get him a blueberry muffin from Zabars. I think Crow just had hip surgery. He was a great soccer player. I should say football.
The red stamps are a very specific red. I’m sure it’s not called Buckingham Red or Royalty Red, but it should be. It’s bloody-nose red. Sometimes I just want to punch, feel that power, see the other fucker, they’re always maskless, on the ground. My palms have calluses from pull-ups. My kid talks about killing and punching too much since he started first grade and maybe some of it’s on me.
My kid wants to see the postcard again. He asks why Paul wrote so little. I tell him maybe Crow likes talking more than writing. I tell him maybe Crow will visit us soon. I tell him maybe when he gets bigger, we can all have pints with our fish and chips. He asks what’s bigger. A pint or a gallon. He asks what XO means.
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