Authors: Cora Brent
My folks were expecting that I would be arriving this evening with plans to visit though the Fourth of July on Tuesday. Brian had been intending to drive out separately and stay through Sunday night. Now I was going to have to explain to them that the latter part of that plan wouldn’t be happening. My mother’s inevitable disappointment would be a particularly tough pill to swallow.
I turned sharply around
a narrow corner. Some sections of Boston were positively medieval with their contracted streets. In light of the afternoon’s events, Cross Point Village suddenly didn’t seem like such a fine vacation. My parents’ fawning attention over their only daughter was just about the last thing I felt like dealing with. But lately I’d been feeling some guilt over my rare ventures home. Tomorrow was the annual Polaris Lane block party. It was an event created by own parents many years back it had assume a life of its own. And then a few days after that was the summer firework holiday which in an American small town was practically biblical in reverence. Happy Birthday America translated directly into the opportunity to drink and make very loud noises.
With a sigh I pulled into the parking garage. It cost a tidy sum for the privilege of parking a hundred yards from my apartment but I couldn’t imagine not having a car. When my heart’s restlessness got the better of me the road was my best friend for a few hours. I always returned from a drive to the beach or the mountains feeling more clear headed than when I left.
My apartment was tiny and expensive but I couldn’t help but be proud of it. If I just squinted into the
gaslit streets I could swear John Hancock was holed up nearby practicing his signature or the window silhouette of Julia Ward Howe was frowning over the third stanza of
Battle Hymn of the Republic
.
Halfheartedly
I picked up the phone and dialed.
“Dad. I’m heading out now so I’ll be there by about six. One thing, Brian’s not coming.
No, he’s not coming tomorrow either. He got stuck at the office. Literally. Look, just explain to Mom, would you? Love you too. Yes, my tires have plenty of air.”
I hung up before my mother could grab the phone away and pepper the line with a thousand and one questions. After tossing a few more things in
to my already bulging suitcase, I heaved it onto my shoulder and cast a fond look at my lonely apartment before locking the door.
It usually took
about two and a half hours in fair traffic to reach Cross Point Village, which sat in the corner where Massachusetts met New York and Connecticut. Given the fact that we were in the thick of a humid summer and next week was a holiday, I expected there to be more than a few travelers heading toward the mountains. Truly, there were about six hundred packed station wagons stuffed with impatient families. An angelic looking little girl grinned down at me from the back seat of her parents’ boxy Ford van and then extended her middle finger. I flipped mine in response and she stopped smiling. I could see her shrieking at her parents and pointing out the window so I gunned the engine of the BMW and sped away. I felt mildly pleased and at the same time rather disgusted with myself.
Interstate 90 stretched across
the state like a dirty tongue. I relaxed and began to settle in for the drive, pausing briefly to deposit toll fees into outstretched hands. I hadn’t been out this way since Christmas, when the entire region was covered in an icy canopy which ceased being so cozy and entertaining once the jingle bells stopped ringing. The early evening air was hot but I kept the air off and the window open, enjoying the fresh scent of summer as I left the city behind and looked ahead to the clear mountains. Boy, it was easy to forget how miserable the New England winters were when all sides were surrounded by green ease.
I foraged through
my tape collection and selected Bruce Springsteen. I always had mixed feelings when I returned to Cross Point. My earliest impressions of my hometown were that every adult had already lived there for a hundred years and would live there for a hundred more. My blood ties to CPV stretched back more generations that I cared to count. My parents, born there and married there, had never thought of leaving.
Grace and Alan Durant began dating in the eighth grade and as these things go, eventually settled into a comfortable existence on Polaris Lane with a family business to run and a square front lawn to maintain. For a long time they thought they were going to be reproductive failures but then my older brother Tony finally came along when they were in their early thirties. Two years later my entrance into the world was a nice supplement.
My parents were now on the graying side of sixty and had always seemed to lead a pleasant, placid existence. Their only grief in life came from Tony. My older brother came screaming out of the womb with that Up-Yours attitude which led to late night doorbell rings from any one of the handful of Cross Point Village’s finest, not to mention earsplitting phone calls from irate fathers whose nubile daughters were fair game to Tony Durant.
We’d never been close, my brother and I, not even in those early years when siblings tended t
o group together just because they were stuck with each other. He was always leading around a pack of the most troublesome Cross Point boys who probably wouldn’t have paid me any attention even if I wasn’t Tony Durant’s little sister and expressly off limits.
“Fuck with my sister,” he always said, “and I’ll fuck you up.”
Said by someone else it might have been dismissed as brash grandstanding. But Tony kept his promises, particularly the violent ones.
Even now I thought of Tony as a perpetual Peter Pan
, only more ominous. When I gazed at old family photos and found his defiant sneer it seemed impossible we’d grown up in the same house. Tony dropped out of CPV High two months before the end of his senior year. It might not have made a difference at that point; rumor was there was no way the administration was going to let him walk with his class when he scarcely managed to show up. That was the greatest battle in the Durant Family War. My father called Tony a lousy loafing miscreant. Tony flicked a cigarette at him and laughed, “You square little prick,” while my mother threw her body between them before one killed the other. In the end my brother shrugged, packed a bag, and disappeared for a year and a half.
As for me,
the only time I vividly recall earning my mother’s disappointment was when she caught me with her hidden copy of Erica Jong’s
Fear of Flying.
I was thirteen and the whole ‘zipless fuck’ angle left me a little shaken but eager to find out what the hell it all meant. So even after Grace removed the dog-eared book from my sweaty little hands I was determined to do some research of my own.
Of course the Cross Point Village Library proved woefully insufficient for this endeavor. Even if I’d been able to articulate what I was looking for, I would never have had the guts to sho
ck old half-blind Mrs. Hennessy who had been the librarian since around the time of the Hindenberg disaster.
As such, life had yet to present me with a coherent version of a ‘zipless fuck’.
I’m not sure I would have taken the option anyway. But after the Brian disaster, I was beginning to feel the lack.
The ‘Welcome to Cross Point Village’ sign looked rather
spotty and abused but I smiled ruefully when I saw it. As I turned down the main street which in grand tradition was titled Main Street, I figured I could navigate this place with my eyes closed.
I peered down the
calm strip fading establishments and realized a few key letters of the Durant’s Drug Store sign were missing. Thus, my father was the proprietor of ‘Durant’s rug S ore’. I didn’t see Alan Durant’s ancient Dodge parked out front. Oddly enough, he might have finally decided to trust Nancy, his long suffering counter clerk, to close out for the night.
Aside from a few kids careening around on bicycles, there weren’t many people
about. I was grateful. I needed a good night’s sleep before facing mass pleasantries. As the bell of the Congregationalist church choked out a 6 pm chime, I left Main Street behind and turned down the maze of side streets which bordered the center of town.
Polaris Lane was a dead end street at the south end of town.
Twenty one distinct homes lined the narrow street and once it was the largest piece of my world. Now, every time I made that right turn it seemed just a little smaller than it had before. When I was a kid I often puzzled over the very name, repeating it silently in my head and wondering over the coincidence. Polaris. The North Star. The way home. God, I never wanted anything so badly as to get away from it.
I stopped in front of the modest Cape Co
d style house, braking in front of the maple tree. I noted with some displeasure that the tree was certain to drop leaf detritus on my white luxury vehicle. As I placed the car in park I turned to stare critically at the house I’d been raised in. The hedges were mildly overgrown and the driveway needed to be resurfaced.
“Angela!”
They poured out of the front door, radiantly beaming, before I even opened the door.
I grinned in spite of myself
. I had thought this was the last place I wanted to be but unconditional adoration did have its pluses. Grace and Alan Durant were folding me into a crushing parental embrace before I’d even gained my footing next to the crumbling curb.
“My beautiful girl!” My mother exclaimed, affectionately patting my long curly hair.
“Missed you, kid.” My father tousled my hair as if I were five.
Grace had baked enough chicken tetrazzini to feed fifteen people. In between hearty bites my parents examined me as if I were a curious museum exhibit and issued a slew of questions.
How was my job? Was I getting enough sleep? And what about that nice young man I’d planning on bringing home?
I swa
llowed a bite of Italian bread and took a sip of wine, delaying the moment.
“Actually,” I finally said. “I’m not going to be seeing Brian anymore.”
My mother’s eyes widened. “What? Why?”
I shrugged, carefully keeping my eyes cast down. “Just didn’t work out.”
My father nodded vaguely but my mother’s mouth pursed into a little mew of disappointment. Poor Grace, she was virtually frothing at the mouth for grandchildren. Contrary to all his wild liaisons, Tony turned out to be quite careful. At least, no happy accidents had ever stepped forward. And at the rate which I managed to secure long term relationships, my ovaries may as well just wither away and perish.
I tried to change the subject. “How’s business, Dad?”
My father winced. Durant’s Drug Store had been a landmark for over sixty years. But as the fortunes of the populace continued to decline, it was getting increasingly difficult for him to keep the doors open. Anyway, with neither one of his children eager to take the reins it seemed he was only deferring the inevitable.
“Hanging in there, Angela,” my father said reluctantly. He patted my hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Have you thought about what we talked about last time? Branching out into other merchandise to broaden your customer base? Or re-opening the deli counter?”
But Grace Durant had little patience for shop talk. “I need your help, Angela,” she interrupted. “I have six apple pies to bake for the party.”
I peered out the window at the row of houses which were as familiar to me as my own face in the mirror. There was the Johnsons’ fading blue monstrosity, the Kilbournes’ trim gingerbread style Victorian, the Bendettis’ ramshackle ranch. I knew them all. Most neighbors didn’t leave Polaris lane. They just faded away and their children built new lives on top of the old ones in the homes they’d grown up in. At this same time tomorrow the street would be closed off and crammed full of activity as the annual block party got underway.
“How is the old neighborhood?”
My mother refilled her wine glass. “Well, the Cortez girl got divorced and moved back with her two little sons. And you know Mary Bendetti’s cancer carried her off in January.” She paused, frowning. “That boy of hers has been skulking around the last few months.”
“Marco?”
She nodded. “It seems he’s still trouble. Gave his poor mother a fine share of grief in his time. And now Diane Kilbourne says he tosses his snuffed cigarettes into her tulip garden.”
I tried not to smile.
“Well, I suppose there are worse things he could do.”
My mother stared moodily into her wine glass as she considered the downhill
slide of the neighborhood. “Mary left equal shares of the bar to Marco and Damien. I was hoping Damien would come back and take over the house but as far as I know he’s staying in New York.”
I found myself wondering curiously about Marco. I hadn’t exactly been in his orbit back at CPV High. Or even before then. He had a hell of a reputation which stretched ba
ck to junior high. Grown women stopped and stared when he sauntered past their purse-clutching frigidity. I supposed I was one of the very few local girls who had come of age in the early part of the decade without having been felt up by Marco ‘Banger’ Bendetti.