Howie and Carly arrive, naturally sparkling but also subdued. They’re full of countless stories from the victory tour, encounters with stars and sycophants, yet there is a feeling of deep exhaustion at their core. For the first time, I can see a slight hint of effort behind their affection. Unconditional love, conditioned by new demands on a previously unencumbered life.
We flip through their latest photographs together after dinner, and I am reminded of that first night, almost a year ago, when scenes from their exotic existence together unfolded on an illuminated sheet tacked to the wall.
“I wish I could have gone with you,” I tell them.
“It was something to see,” Howie replies. “Ain’t easy being handsome for a living.”
“What about the wardrobe?” I ask. “Did you get it yet?”
“Not yet, gringo. Still waiting on that prize. But how about this velour jacket? Scored it at the big flea market in Berkeley.” He turns around to show the Japanese dragon embroidered in the soft black material on the back.
We ooh and ahh and keep looking at pictures until Amanda stands up suddenly.
“It was better with you here,” she says. “There, I mean. With us. You should stay with us.”
“Oh, we missed the Coves!” Carly tells us. “You are our numero uno familia segundo.”
“A-fucking-men,” Howie testifies.
I look to my parents, Mama teary, Papa nodding approvingly. I’m grateful they’ve made this happen, again. And here in a musty summer house six hours north of Salem I am aware, for perhaps the first time, that where we are is less important than who we are with.
* * *
Steve, Enid, and their kids arrive a few days later, adding a new layer of chaos. The adults pad around in their Docksiders, sample the wines Steve collected on his recent vineyard tours, take turns cooking odd foods: salmon pâté balls stuffed in avocado holes; greasy green beans with chunks of garlic; blueberry ginger cookies; chicken with burnt skin; scallion pork dumplings, burnt in the pan. They drink, play Yahtzee and shoo us away.
Howie is the center of everyone’s attention. “What’s Phil Donahue like?” “Who did you meet in Hollywood?” I scoff. Where were they when we were posting fliers and lobbying voters?
I finally manage to get him away from the group and show him my cabin.
“It’s a score!” he says. “Bachelor pad extraordinaire!”
“I like having a place to myself,” I confirm. “Separate.”
Howie lays on the bed, stares at the ceiling, and runs his hands through his hair. “Kind of like your Secure Position?”
“It is,” I say, not having made that connection but in total agreement.
“I’ve been thinking about that notion,” he tells me. “All this time on the road, I’ve been thinking about where my secure position is.” I want to suggest Chestnut Street but I know that’s not where he’s going. “I’m thinking it might not be LA. I’m not getting the good vibe there. But that’s where the work is. I don’t know, we’ll see. But if I’m honest, it’s Berkeley. I’m home there.” I nod, knowing and resigned. “You need to come out. California! You haven’t been there since … when?”
“Since I was five.”
“It’s time, amigo. It’s time. You’ll see. The people are decent, nature is everywhere, and the girls are cute as can be. We’ll eat tacos, walk the Golden Gate, and hit the naked beach near Pacifica!”
“Can I stay with you?” I ask, ready to fly.
“As long as you want. Any time you want. Just ask the folks.” He sits up and puts an arm around me. “You have a second home there.”
“It’ll be my ninth, but that’s OK,” I tell him. “I can handle one more.”
* * *
These moments with Howie are fewer than I would like, but I have a new distraction to occupy my time and thoughts. The nanny working for the family in the mansion up the hill grabs my attention by the throat. I’ve seen her coming and going on the path, little kids in tow, all blonde hair and white teeth, but we’ve yet to meet in person. That hasn’t stopped me from making her virtual acquaintance in the privacy of my sleeping bag. As Penny made me forget myself and Gretchen made me forget Penny, so the summer goddess on the hill has possessed me anew. I forget what is missing and obsess about what might be.
Then one night, Yahweh decides to show mercy. He brings the vision to my cabin door in tight jeans and white Izod concealing a body built for a centerfold.
“Hi, I’m Sarah. From LA,” she tells me.
“California?”
“Maine.”
“LA’s in California…”
“Lewiston-Auburn, silly. We call it LA.” She walks over to my RadioShack Realistic SCR-1 and presses EJECT. “Damn the Torpedoes? I don’t know this one,” she says, holding the white Tom Petty cassette. “Do you like James Taylor?”
“Sure,” I say, nodding. I like anything right now.
“Maybe I’ll bring some by…”
“Sarah!” A gruff command from the top of the hill, plainly urgent.
“I have to go,” she says, suddenly scared and already out the door. “Maybe we can hang out after my kids go to bed?”
I look for her over the next few days but she never shows. I sneak up to the mansion on the hill a few times, even knock once, but no one answers.
“What are you doing up there?” Papa says when he sees me ambling back down the dirt road one morning. He’s wearing a red T-shirt with gold deco lettering: MARRIED.
“Nothing. Just looking around.”
“For the babysitter?”
“Who?”
“I saw her. Give me a little more credit than that. I don’t blame you. But I think they went sailing for a few days.”
“Oh,” I frown.
“I want you to take your brother and sister down to the dock,” he says.
“Babysit?! It’s vacation,” I whine, but he flashes Papa eyes and I know I’ve lost.
* * *
I’m the only one who knows how to put a worm on a hook, and I do so dutifully. “I don’t want to fish,” Amanda sighs. “Me, too,” David echoes. “I don’t want to.”
“Just fish,” I tell them. Just shut up and fish.
My experience fishing has taught me that this activity is typically 99 percent waiting and, if you’re lucky, 1 percent fish. But Mount Desert Island isn’t typical. This is a place where hummingbirds visit you while you swim and summer goddesses appear at your door. So I shouldn’t be surprised when a silvery school erupts beneath us. Suddenly, it’s impossible not to catch a fish. Just drop a line and pull. It’s thrilling. Magical. Until it becomes the scene of an epic fish massacre. After five minutes of hooking and landing we are inundated with dozens of flopping fish. Back at the house Papa informs us that our gift of thirty-seven slayed pollock is all but worthless.
“The only thing mushier than grilled pollock is oatmeal. Maybe we can make a stew.”
He does, and it is disgusting. I go to bed hungry.
Sarah finally returns around eleven thirty. The lantern is still burning, as it has been each night before, but I fell asleep a while ago. “Are you awake?” she whispers, closing the heavy log door against the settling cold.
“Yup,” I assure her, rubbing my eyes.
“OK if I come in?” I nod eagerly, sitting up and trying to get my bearings. “It smells kind of fishy in here.” I shrug. “I brought some music. Where’s your player?” she asks, pulling a white cassette from her back pocket. Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon. I pop it into my little deck.
We position ourselves on the bed and start to kiss, as if we’d been discussing it all along. It actually seems like it’s the only thing to do. Getting to know one another in any other way would be mere nuisance. Whatever we do here, no one will know anyway.
Atjeh starts whimpering from underneath the creaking springs of my bed and I kick her out of the cabin. She claws at the door for the next ten minutes and then finally quiets down.
I wrap my arms around Sarah, rubbing her back as we rub tongues. When I reach for the clasp of her bra she leads my hands around to her chest, putting her covered breasts into the palms of my hands. I feel like an archaeologist who just discovered two precious golden eggs, and I clasp them reverently. She moans softly in my ear and I start to fill my pj’s, thumbs circling the padded center of her bra cups in search of nipples. Sarah grinds her Dorothy Stratten body against me but when I try to slip my hand under the polo shirt she forces it down between her legs. I feel the heat below the denim, a vague dampness, and my blood surges down, evacuating all my extremities save one.
We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna do it.
I probe with my mouth more deeply into hers. She tastes like Jolly Ranchers—pure, fruity, so different from Gretchen’s menthol smokes and Tab residue. I press the heel of my palm against her tilting crotch, searching for some elusive release, then slip my fingers up toward the waistband of her jeans. She grabs my wrist and moves my hand back up to her breasts, coos again in my ear.
“I should go,” she says but then she kisses me again and we are back at it. Mud Slide Slim plays through another three times. Somewhere around the middle of the fourth round of “Hey Mister, That’s Me Up on the Jukebox,” I unsnap her jeans and raise the elastic band of her panties with shuddering knuckles. I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
We’re gonna do it. We’re gonna do it.
Sarah bites my earlobe, her voice raw and impossibly sexual. “I’ll get in trouble if they know I left the kids alone in the house.”
“You left them?”
“Yeah, the parents won’t be back until after one. They always stay out that late. And they drink a lot, so they come home and don’t notice much. They just make a lot of noise and then flop into bed in their clothes.”
“You can stay with me.”
“You’re different than the LA guys. Sweet.” She rubs my thigh the way you scrub a floor. “I’ll come back again. I like you.” We kiss once more, long, and then she walks out the door. “Keep the tape,” she says. “And think of me when you listen to it.”
The one thing I don’t need is to hear “Love Has Brought Me Around” again. I huddle under my sleeping bag, trying for a solo performance, but my crotch kills and I can’t seem to do much with it.
“Blue balls,” Papa tells me in the morning when I explain what kept me up all night.
“What?”
“Was it the au pair from up the hill?”
“I hung out with her for a little bit.”
“You mean made out?” he prods.
“Do I need to go to the doctor?”
“Nope. You need to go back up to your cabin and finish what you started.”
“But she went home.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he says, sipping his coffee loudly. “Do you have any Playboys up there?” I shrug. “Well, go and use them. Everything’s backed up in your pipes. You need to clear the system. It won’t feel better until you do.” I don’t know how to respond. “Go on,” he nudges. “Better than getting a VD shot, right? That’s what ends up happening if you go all the way.”
“It does?!”
“With the wrong girl. We’ll talk about it later. Go.”
* * *
The summer days are chaotic, noisy, unplanned. Adults fly in different directions, making exotic foods, disappearing without warning, yelling about Ronald Reagan and welfare reform, whispering about cocaine and cancer. The kids lose themselves in puzzles, arguments, and the woods.
I call Uli every morning to let him know how far I didn’t get with Sarah the night before. “That’s so basil,” he says each time, breezing past the failures and focusing on the details. “What color are her panties? Is her bra padded or lacy?”
Atjeh absorbs the wild spirit of Maine, nipping and barking relentlessly. David stomps around the house in flippers and mask, shouting “I love you, Papa!” through a snorkel. At dinner, Atjeh gnaws the snorkel in half.
“It’s not easy defending this dog,” Papa says. “But look at those eyes.”
Howie retreats to his room with Carly more than ever.
We are all together in the studio, but something is keeping us apart. Papa says it’s just the summer way, “Time to do your own thing.”
We are banished each evening at seemingly random times, and I return to my cabin to console myself with Sarah’s utter, amazing, forever foreplay that is never consummated. Human beings can’t possibly be meant to withstand this kind of abuse! Papa said, “When you can, you’re going to LOVE it,” but I can’t and I don’t. Strangely, I find myself missing Gretchen. She may not be as pretty or well-endowed as Sarah, but she’s easy to be with in ways I never considered.
* * *
Amanda, David, Rebecca, and Matty are banging at the cabin door, then bursting in, filling the space with their noise and bustle.
“Howie’s making pancakes,” Amanda trills.
“Can I read this comic, Lou?” Matty asks from the corner.
“Come have pancakes!” David says. “He’s making them shaped like flying saucers!”
“Get out!”
The kids touch everything on their way out, a begrudging pancake train of brats.
“Pollock stew?” Howie calls when I finally show.
“Blech. How come you’re up?”
“Rough night around here,” he says softly, flipping a UFO burnt side up. “Rough night. I don’t like sickness.”
I nod, flashing on the late-night echo of Enid’s horrible bark.
“So we haven’t talked about our next move, hombre.” Howie shakes his head, clearing his mind and changing the subject. “Burt does Cosmo, he gets Smokey and the Bandit. I do Man of the Year, but I’m not Paul Michael Glaser just yet.”
“Burt didn’t actually show everybody his penis,” Carly says, shuffling into the kitchen, bleary but beautiful.
“That should make me a bigger star!”
“Not based on size,” says Papa, his perm sagging and askew, cup of coffee in one hand, newspaper in the other.
“I didn’t get into this line of work so people could forever comment on the length of my dick!”
“Should have thought of that sooner.” Papa fake sighs, pats me on the head.
“I think you should go back on Donahue,” I say. “All they talked about was whether or not it’s right to have naked guys in magazines. They should do another one, talk about the new masculinity.”
“Big word,” Papa says.
“Amen, niño. I can’t complain about being on a national TV show, but shit…”
“What about that other show?”
“Which? Merv?”
“Yeah, Merv.”
“I actually got the call: ‘Do you want to do the Merv Griffin Show?’ At least, that’s what I thought they were asking. But I don’t have Hollywood ears or something, because what they actually said was: ‘Do you want to do Merv?’ See? I hear, ‘Do you want to be on the Merv Griffin Show,’ a big fucking afternoon television show. So I said hell yeah, and they said, ‘Well, if you want to do Merv, you’ve got to do Merv.’ And I go WHAT? And they said it again. ‘You gotta DO Merv. You gotta suck his dick.’ And I said, I don’t think so. I don’t think I want to do Merv.”
“Howie?” Mama says.
“Princess!”
“Are you talking with my son about sucking Merv Griffin’s penis?”
“Well, this isn’t a case of actual dick sucking. It’s a cautionary tale. The temptations of stardom and those who prey on the tempted…”
The warm pancake smell turns from amber to acrid as we realize all at once that no one is watching the pan.
* * *
I escape the after-breakfast banter and lie flat on Howie and Carly’s sheets. I think I smell their waking sex, imagine how it looked, stretch my body, escaping into their warm world. My hand hits a hard object under the pillow and I pull out Howie’s journal.
I feel my heart stop with the idea, already morphing into action, that I am going to read the latest installment. Not that this is off-limits. He always says it’s an open book. But as my own journal gets more and more private, the idea of reading his feels increasingly treacherous. I close the door silently and sit against it.
He has underlined the title for this entry: “Alive in the Middle of a Post Card.”
Mid-morning in Maine where Americans vacation with “Summer Drinks” rules. That means get your own. The day is filled with constant rapid fire organizing and moving, kiddie shuffling and doggie dodging. A lot of people in a little house. I’ve kept pace by imbibing intense drugs and bouncing off the wall. Today, I’ve had it up to here and come out of bed grouchy because screaming little Rebecca and Dave have broken into my dreams with absolutely repulsive kidlet squeals. Carly takes a birth control pill and we both feel the relief inherent that our present “vacation” is only a temporary plight.
I am sick of children and the wolf-coyote “Dog” that pretty much is a 90% source of irritation and 10% pure awe.
Food is King here and governs the flow of everyday TRAFFIC. I am yet to submerge myself into anything but food, kids, drugs, and ponds. I think it’s time to clean some cobwebs out and pay attention to restful things.
I fling the book onto the bed and take this in. When he says he is sick of children, I know he means the little kids, not me. And I am sick of them, too. It explains why he and Carly are around less than ever, taking off when they can, sleeping until after we’ve all left for the pond. Why Papa takes long runs alone on the carriage trails every day and Mama bakes treats, picks berries, goes antiquing. She ends every day with a swim in the pond. Steve and Enid stay close to home, leaving the kids to wander. Matty gets lost in the woods for real and we have to call the police. A state trooper picks him up a mile down the road around dusk. Everyone cries, scolds, eats more pollock stew. The more scallions you sprinkle on top, the easier it is to swallow.