the quarry

discomfortable

b's parents are back from an extended vacation, and his mother has joined us at the cape. on my recent trip to new york, i coordinated with her to drive back up together. five hours. i was a little nervous, but it actually could not have gone better. we talked the entire way. no awkward lulls. not even lame road talk. it was good.

i'm less chummy with b's father. he's a tough nut to crack, perhaps in part owed to his career in the psychiatric arts. around him, i'm paranoid that he sees through my calm exterior and secretly despises me for being the wingnut who has trapped his son and glommed on to his family. yes, i know this is likely not the case.

i've been driving around one of their cars, which they graciously didn't mind me driving back to new york. the transmission has been acting a little funky, and b suggested that maybe i should take it for an oil change. i thought this was an excellent idea, a way for me to say thanks for the use of the car. i mean, no one likes having to deal with taking cars for servicing, right?

on top of that, i thought i'd wash the car before they got back, but i ran out of time. (and, well, i'm not totally sure i know *how* to wash a car.) so, after the oil change, i brought it to a car wash. the whole thing was kind of fun -- they had a giant url up on the wall, so i called b to check it out. from hundreds of miles away he watched the jetta make its internet debut as it was handwashed, handdried, vacuumed, and buffed, and then he watched me hop in and drive away. some days, i freaking love technology.

i called the parents to tell them when i'd be arriving, and b's dad picked up the phone. he started to tell me not to take the car in for the oil change, and i interrupted to say i already had.

[silence.]

you didn't have to do that.

i know i didn't. i wanted to.

[silence.]

i've also been instructed to never take the car in to be washed ever again.

i'm not totally sure if i crossed the line here somewhere, or if they merely didn't think it was necessary for me to go to the trouble and expense, and don't want me to feel as though i need to go out of my way to please them. b has tried to assure me it's the latter.

my mother sure did a number on me. she's a perpetual pleaser. she wants everyone to love her, always and at all times, and she goes so far out of her way to make people happy in ways she thinks they want to be made happy that she doesn't listen to what they actually want. she then gets upset when people don't do backflips of gratitude for her quasi-selfless acts.

she spent my childhood to instill these atrributes in her only daughter. when i would go out to dinner with my friends' parents, she would give me money to take along, and insist that i offer to pay my own way. imagine, a nine-year old whipping out $30 at dinner and saying please, let me pay for what i ate. i felt like some kind of upper-middle class oliver twist.

then there were the acts of charity i was forced to suffer, such as being dragged along to the manicurist to get my nails done (i *hate* getting manicures) or returning home to find that a very expensive and ugly pair of jeans had been purchased in my honor. this in and of itself would be fine, but as a rule any and all such giving gestures were to be dragged out at a later time and used as an example of my selfishness and ingratitude. my mother exhibits a martyr syndrome rarely seen to such an extreme degree within the modern civilized female, causing her to emit unprecidented quantities of toxic resentment into the atmosphere. it was like living in a mental zoo.

so i swore to myself, swore, that i would never expect thanks for things i did for others that they didn't ask for. if someone asks a favor, fine, i'd like to be acknowledged. but sometimes, you perform unsolicited good deeds that the recipient may or may not enjoy. you can't expect any thanks. you don't always get a tickertape parade.

so now, i'm trying to apply this rule. no one asked me to bring the car to be serviced, or have it washed until it sparkled. i may have just inconvenienced them. i may have done the wrong thing. it's just hard to make your way into a new family when they have cultivated an entirely distinct manner of relating to one another, and have their own sets of expectations as to how one should express their thanks.

don't even get me started on learning the rules of the house, and which things matter, and which things don't, and when to help out, and when to stand back and let things happen, and when to keep people company, and when to make myself scarce and let them have their own space, and whether i'm a guest, or a boarder, or gradually, fitfully, possibly starting to become part of a new family. it's all totally over my head.

monday.

i have my period for the second time this month. while it's a relief that i'm not with child, it still feels kind of unfair, this blue moon of menstrual cycles. b woke me up to take some advil around 5am because i was moaning in pain in my sleep. my whole body is achy and i feel like i have the flu.

today is b's only day off this week, but i'm not sure yet what we'll do. he's gone to the general store to get some pancake mix. he spoils me.

i'll miss what we've got here, grown attached as i have to the easy domesticity of it all. i hope we can find a way to recreate it somewhere else, outside of this perfect environment. it's not always obvious -- amidst my ever-expanding sentimental yearning for other experiences -- that i'm happy like this: cooking dinner, washing dishes, renting movies, and generally cohabitating in an endless stream of how was your day, dears and i'll get its.

so i'm going to try not to be miserable, despite the searing pain just below my gut. b's mom is here, too, and i think we're all going to go to the beach. again, no right to complain. if only i felt in sorts today, things would be near perfect.

in other news, someone made their way to my blog last night by searching for "fellatio training for young girls." i feel dirty.

a brief summary of my life circa 1992

i was in new york city for 27 hours. aside from my whirlwind social plans, i found myself surprisingly bored. i thought there'd be all this stuff i wanted to do, but when it came down to it, i didn't feel like being there. i spent most of the day on friday hanging out in my apartment and looking through my high school yearbook.

some highlights:

first page. a message from a car-less boy who lived on my way home. he thanked me for all of the rides, and wrote "don't forget what you're leaving behind: me!" i wish i had hooked up with him at some point. he was totally cute, and probably would have made a great boyfriend.

page 5. there is a picture of me in a big group of people, which includes the aforementioned curtis and two of my best girl friends. my hair is really thick and dark and long, and it's parted to the side and hangs half over my face. i have a whistle on a chain around my neck. the caption says "beware of seniors: they travel in packs."

page 22. a picture of me and my best friend. he looks about 13, but is totally adorable and i can see why i fell in love with him the moment we met. he has a wedge haircut that falls in his eyes and wears a button-down shirt from the gap, where he worked at the time. i'm wearing something oversized and black. we're in the library, sarcastically holding up a copy of "go to the head of the class," which we were playing as part of this thing called "activity day." someone has written "amanda is a crack dealer slut" with an arrow pointing to me.

page 59. clubs. you can find my head, as if disembodied, floating in the back row of the student staff of the high school newspaper, the oracle. i didn't write a thing for them all year. i'm standing next to tanya p., who i would later punch in the face at the "grease" cast party, two weeks before graduation.

page 61. spanish club. i look good there, smiling and happy, instead of awkward and camera shy. at that age, a real feat.

page 65. my name is listed as the stage manager of "i never sang for my father," and our theater director has written me a lovely note, praising my creativity and begging me to stay involved with the theatrical arts. i'm also pictured in a crew photo for "hello dolly," which we put on my sophomore year. i was the company manager. i had bangs.

page 88. my english teacher confesses that i'm one of his all-time favorite students. i peeked at what he wrote in every other person's book, just to make sure mine was unique. it was. still a major source of pride.

page 115. my page. my senior pic looks totally weird, because my head is cocked off to the side like it's 1961. they chose it for me out of the 20+ professionally posed options because i hated them all and avoided the issue. i have a lot of things written to various people of various initials that are still funny to me now, especially mentions of the weekend that me and my three girls went to a cabin the middle of nowhere to do tequila shots and smoke unprecedented amounts of pot. i included a few polaroids that i scrambled to take at the last minute, my favorite being the one of me and my two best boy friends, who are still my best friends to this day. we were standing outside in what used to be the smoking section, high up on a giant cinder bench, and it had just started to snow. i was wearing a black top and black tights under dark denim shorts (yes) and chinese slippers. my quote was from catcher in the rye: "i knew the part about being a deaf mute was crazy, but i liked thinking about it anyway."

page 117. my friend sue has signed next to tanya's page, and has graciously reminded me that i appear in a picture there.

page 156. my other friend sue has signed, among other things, "you and dave at michael's party HAHAHA." i had forgotten that i fooled around with him once. he is now a somewhat successful actor. i saw him in a play last year with everyone's favorite indie actress, but i didn't wait around to say hello. i wonder if he remembers how it is to kiss me. i remember it of him.

page 181. class memories. a picture of my nursery school class, wrongly captioned as elementary school. i can still name about 70% of the people in the picture. i am in the back, with my hair up in two high pigtails, wearing a brown corduroy jumper with a navy turtleneck underneath. my friend kristin and i are in the back row, looking at each other, smiling the evil smiles of two girls amidst a plot of peewee terrorism. after graduation, we would confess to justin that it was actually us who broke his arm. he didn't just fall off the swing. he was pushed. we never meant for him to get hurt.

last page. a boy i had a long standing crush on and almost went on a date with once wrote the sweetest thing. "you're truly talented," he said. "keep writing."

i think of my friends now: one, a high profile entertainment lawyer in l.a. who makes more money in three months than i've made in the last three years; another, an actual lighting designer for an actual theater company in the pacific northwest; another, social working and pregnant and married to a mexican housepainter in san jose. the last page boy is now a music composer in new york with his own band and a cd and a growing number of off-broadway plays under his belt. my best boy friends are on either coast, one a successful fashion editor for a major magazine, and the other just finished filming a major motion picture in which he has a starring role. each living their dreams, the ones they've had since i knew them so well.

i know some people look through old yearbooks and think, "i can't believe i was that person once," but not me. i'm still the same. i'm still her, looking blankly at the camera, waiting for my real life to begin.

once

I was in love with someone whose handwriting I'd never seen. Thinking about it made my heart pound, but it was all I could do.

That lone light in the observatory. I'm like Gatsby on his lawn, he'd said.

I knew what he meant. I knew, at night, when I was meant to be hard at work in the office the school had given me, he was walking by and looking up at my light. He knew I was inside.

I could feel him breathing out there. The nights were long and difficult alone in that building, which groaned with age and old souls.

I parked around the circle, casually, and each night he passed by my car with a lump in his throat, fearful that at any moment I might step in or out of it. There was one path between the college center and his dorm, and in the evenings I inhabited all of it.

Unable to bear it any further, he had asked me to leave my car open that night. I wonder what he thought about being inside that space of mine, where I'd once kissed gruff teenage boys or otherwise had come of age, if it gave him the same strange pleasure it gave me just knowing he had been there. I looked around and tried to imagine his impression: the peculiar driver's seat my father had installed, the coffee cup my lips had graced just a few hours before, the girlish scent of vanilla mingling with the last lingering bits of my perfume. The air rippled with his senses.

My name wasn't on the envelope. Inside, along with the gift, I found a few simple sentences. I traced them again and again. His hands. Someday they would hold me, write their fair script across my person. Someday, I'd be theirs.

Did you get it? he wanted to know.

Of course I did. It was... it was just lovely.

tears and babies

Further evidence that my hormones are raging at a pre-natal level: I cry every time someone wins a gold medal. Which is, you know, like every event.

(Well, except for that creepy Swedish guy who won the triple jump. It irritated me that he was acting all macho, when his sport of choice is basically advanced prancing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of rhythm gymnastics and synchronized swimming, so I'm all for the seemingly sissy sports. But come on, you don't need to be swaggering around like you've just run into a burning house and saved someone's life.)

Also I just heard on the radio that schoolteachers are now using purple ink, not red, to grade papers. They think it's friendlier, more supportive. It has changed the way Staples shocks their shelves; they now carry entire packs of purple pens. This made me cry, too. I really have no idea why, but yay for purple! I guess for a generation raised on Barney and gay teletubbies, it's a really comforting hue.

I don't *actually* think I'm pregnant, I just find it fun to toy with the idea when I need an excuse for my irrational behavior. I'm tempting fate, I know.

One of my good friends from college is about to have a baby for real. I'm travelling to New York this weekend, in part to make sure I see her before she gives birth. I've basically missed the whole pregnancy, which I feel kind of bad about, but it's been easier to ignore it and pretend it's not happening. Still, I can't wait to be home and unemployed in a month or two while she's still on her maternity leave. I can show up at her door with a half dozen bagels and some ben and jerry's, and we can watch soap operas and read cosmo while the kid snoozes quietly on the sofa between us. It will be just like college, except instead of kittens we'll have an actual baby person to look after. You know, and we probably won't do bong hits.

new friend

Yesterday morning, the tide schedule and the shellfishing schedule and B's work schedule all magically aligned, and so, after sleeping in slightly, we headed out to the bay. While scouring the ankle-deep waters, I came across the largest hermit crab I have ever seen. This thing could barely fit in the palm of my hand. I scooped it up in the elbow of my hand rake so I could show B

Out of nowhere, a little boy appeared behind me.

WHOA. That's huuuge!! Can I have it? His voice had that raspy little boy quality that made you know he was excited a lot.

I sized him up. He was probably about 7. or 10. (I have no idea really -- there's just babies, kids, and teens as far as I'm concerned.) Will you throw it back when you're done?

He assured me that he would, and started showing me his collection of crabs: hermit crabs, lady crabs, crabs we don't know the name of, and one lone, dreaded spider crab, which he kindly put away when I confessed that it creeped me out.

Okay, let me just show my friend, and then he's all yours. By now, he was already holding the giant crab in his hand, so we walked over to find B together. Check it out!!! the kid said to B as though they were old pals. He was kind of growing on me.

Okay, well... enjoy him I said, by way of sending him off on his way. But the kid didn't leave.

Whoa, look, here's another hermit crab! I looked. There was, indeed, another crab.

And another and another. The kid followed me around with his bucket, turning over rock after rock, showing me what was underneath with an enthusiasm I haven't mustered in about 20 years. When I found an oyster, he'd want to see it. It felt kind of nice to have a little companion, who praised me for having good eyes and bravely picked up things I wouldn't dare touch.

Special thanks to typepad for losing the rest of my story!

sterling pass

I went for a walk today, with a notebook and a pen. I even jogged a little. I've started to feel less like an idiot with a bandana on my head, though deep down the 16 year old in me is filled with disappointed rage over this fashion move, despite its being necessitated by the wind. It was one of those odd white days, where it never really rains or gets sunny. Looking at the weather forecasts, you'd think it's always one or the other, but there's plenty of days just like this with no weather to speak of.

I made it to the beach before I realized that there'd be nowhere to sit and write. I remembered a lovely granite bench I had found about 2 months before that overlooked the bay from another, more remote angle, so I turned around and set out to find it. I made a couple of wrong turns. Along the way, I spotted an old tennis court hidden in the woods, with a homemade wooden loveseat facing the arena. It was the bench version of a log cabin: pieced together from handcut tree trunks, craggy and aged by decades of harsh New England winters, and inviting as a fairy tale. I didn't see a house nearby. I contemplated the bench for a couple of moments, but ultimately decided that using it would be trespassing and walked away. I know this goes without saying, but back in the day I wouldn't have hesitated. As you age, the people of this world stop cutting you so many breaks. You're old enough to know better. Or so it seems.

Eventually, I found the bench I was seeking, and was pleased to find out that it has its own name and quotation etched across the seat. The water was stormy and the tide was high, though, and after one pitiful sentence I realized the gusts were just too fierce for my little notebook. Feeling inspired by the brackish marshes and their exotic birds, I had had a lot to write down, a lot to say, but somewhere between that bench and this house it all floated back out of my mind, carried out to sea in the wind.

problems

I have to get a handle on myself.

On my way back from Stop and Shop, traffic slowed to a standstill. There was a bad accident up ahead. I got nervous about what I'd see as I crawled my way past, but by the time I got up there all people and or bodies had been carted away. There were two cars, and they looked like they had hit head on. One was on the lawn of an antiques store, the other still in the road, facing me. Its entire front end was gone. I worried for whoever had been inside.

So I decided that life is short and, even though I'm trying to eat healthily, stopped to get an ice cream. (Actually, I had already decided to stop, but this new found justification was going to free me from any subsequent guilt that might ordinarily occur.) There's a place on Route 6 that I pass every time I go grocery shopping, and B's sister once told me that it was really good. Homemade.

By the way, I've been craving ice cream like a maniac for the past 24 hours, to the point where I think I might be pregnant.

So, once inside, I deliberated my order very carefully, because last time I did this I totally got the wrong thing, and when you're allowing yourself one small treat and it ends up being sucky, well that's just the worst. I examined the different containers of ice cream -- all of which were unlabled, so I had to do a lot of list-to-case cross referencing.

Can I help you? One of the guys behind the counter, tan and handsome in a most popular boy in school kind of way, gave me that look that said are you going to order already? There was no one behind me in line.

I'd like a.... small...

I panicked and ordered the first thing I saw. Cookies and cream. Then I remembered how Oreos add the additional sins of white flour and trans fats, and I jumped ship. No wait! Chocolate chip. In a cup.

Now, B thinks I'm paranoid and generally believe that all strangers give me nasty looks or otherwise treat me poorly for no reason, and as such he won't have it when I start telling stories like this. But, the guy was a little rude. Just a touch. Barely noticeable subtext but still definitely there.

What size? His tone indicated irritation. I mean, why was he getting all irritable about the size? I'd already said the size. In fact, it had been the only thing I was sure of, from the moment I first thought about getting the ice cream in the next town over. Besides which, it's not like they were busy. It's not like a lot of people eat ice cream for dinner, at 6:30 on a Friday night. (God, this just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn't it.)

Anyway, while he scooped I eyed the tip jar. It had the names of the colleges all of the ice cream scoopers would be attending in the fall. This is a common Cape trick, and I'll tell you, it's damn effective. You know deep down that they'll be buying booze and condoms and cigarettes with their tip money, but when you see the jar, all Tufts this and Skidmore that, with that proud sprawly handwriting, all you can think about is some earnest, determined kid with chocolate ice cream all over his arm, missing out on all sorts of beach parties, scooping his poor heart out to raise money for tuition and books.

Somewhere in my complicated American past I fully ingested the notion that tipping is somehow inextricably tied to karma. I am forever on a quest to find the right tip: not too much so that I feel guilty for being frivilous with money, but enough so that I can believe that I'm a generous tipper. Good deeds beget good deeds and so on.

So I decide to tip him. Then, as he hands me my change, I remember that he was a little rudish, and I spontaneously put the change in my pocket. Maybe he'll be nicer to the next customer. I say thank you like nothing has happened, but we both know the truth: I am a heartless, greedy miser.

He mutters thanks under his breath, and I know it's sarcastic, and I feel myself sinking a little. I think about turning around and dropping my change into the jar, but it's too late. I'm already halfway out the door.

Aside from my indecision, the worse problem is the regret. (In fact, it's actually the *cause* of future indecision.) I sit in the car and think about how I'm a terrible person, and how little it would matter in the grand scheme of my financial future if I tipped a college kid a couple of quarters. I barely enjoy my ice cream.

I know this is not normal, this mountain of regret that I carry around, over not just weighty but even seemingly insignificant events. I wonder if it's some kind of documented psychological affliction. Sure, I'll get over this, just like I will the rest of the issues that currently plague me, but I have to believe that there's some point to it.

Maybe I can find some way to use my powers for good, and not for self-flagellation.

the desk

my mother called me today, sounding panicked. she was cleaning out the bin.

ever since my father died, we have kept a storage bin full of his things. when my grandmother died, too, her stuff got piled in on top of it. no one goes to the bin. every three months of so, my mother complains about how much it costs and how she cannot continue to pay to store things that nobody uses.

all i want is the desk, i say.

the house i grew up with came equipped with an enormous, airy space that led from the entry way at one side of the house to the screened-in porch at the other. it also led into the kitchen, and into the hallway that went upstairs the back way. one wall was covered with built-in shelves, which were filled with books and embarrassing pictures from my childhood. there were two skylights, and the room was always filled with light and air, even in winter. we called it the family room.

in one corner of the family room was my father's desk. to this day it is the biggest desk i have ever seen. it was made of dark german wood, with intricate carvings in a style i couldn't name. bavarian maybe.

when my father was serving in the army -- which he had joined to pay for school -- he was stationed in germany. he and my mother travelled all over europe from the base. back then, europe was dirt cheap for americans, and they celebrated their luck by buying a colossal trove of giant, handmade furniture. whoever handled shipping from the base was a buddy of my dad's, and so they were able to ship everything back free of charge.

i'm not sure how, as young married people in small spaces, they were able to bring the furniture with them move to move. my mother and i pondered it this morning. she tried to remember where the desk was in the house in connecticut. she couldn't.

well, where was it when we lived on macy road?

mom, i only lived there until i was three.

our main house, though, was the one that really defined our family, and also the one that defined the desk. it fit perfectly in its corner and hunkered down, waiting for the mail to arrive.

when my dad had work to do, he did it at his desk. we kids were pretty much forbidden from playing there, which naturally made it irresistable. aside from which, my father deposited all of his change in a giant ashtray that sat off to one side, and often there were quarters. i'd borrow from it whenever i got the chance: first for candy, later for videogames, later for cigarettes.

on each side of the desk were elaborate doors that opened to a stack of shelves hidden behind. my father kept all sorts of cool stuff in there, though i can't really remember what. each door opened via skeleton key, but i was able to crack the lock with a sword-shaped letter opener that he kept in a marble pen holder next to the big ashtray. the middle drawer, which rested over the knees and had the same type of irrelevant lock, was the most interesting -- it was here that my father kept his checks, his banking statements, his cash, and all things money. (he also stored his prescription pad in there; my mother was no stranger to this drawer either.)

when my dad was at the desk he was usually grumpy, he was usually not to be bothered. i have memories, though, of finding my way into his lap, made especially easy by the wide german chair with its thick arms and saddle seat. it was an important space to occupy, my father's attention. i envied the bills and their effortless ability to matter.

somehow, as much as the desk came into its own in that house, where it had room to breathe and set and be fully appreciated in all its glory, so did my father become the man i remember at that desk. he was home, he was awake, and often, he was alone. always the good father, standing guard in the corner, worrying so we wouldn't have to, absorbing the shock of the world.

and so, it came as no surprise when my mother told me that she had spoken with my brother, and that the only thing he really wanted to keep from the bin was the desk. it was a relief -- i knew if we were both fighting for it, we'd stand a chance.

my mother is going through a menopausal crisis. she cut her hair really short, not because she prefers that style, but because she thinks she's too old not to have old lady hair. it's time i act my age, she said. she's almost 60, but she could pass for a decade younger, at least. part of her freak out is a control thing. she doesn't have the job she wanted, or the man she always thought she'd retire with, or the grandkids she had planned on, and her children are both basically vagabonds at this point, so now she's taking it out on her stuff.

i'm giving you four plastic storage containers, she informed me last week. you can have whatever you can fit in them, and everything else is going in the trash.

okay, fine, it's her house, and if she doesn't want to store my crap in her ridiculously huge basement, it's not really fair of me to complain. some people can't deal with having a lot of stuff around. especially when that stuff comes with memories.

i don't know how we'd move the desk here. i'd have to hire someone. i'm not sure it will even fit in the door. it needs to be refinished. are you going to do that? etc. etc. etc.

but it's my dad. it's like the last piece i have of him. and, though i can't even imagine a time when i'll live in a place big enough to have it, i have to know it's out there. i have to be able to see it, to run my fingers over the carved wood like i used to while he paid the bills. i still have the letter opener, sitting in a box, just waiting for a chance to jimmy open its lock.

i, adult, will have a seat before it, organize my papers, and the promises of my childhood will unfold.

i want this desk. i need this desk. it's the most important material object in the world. but the thing is, i can't tell my mother this. she can't know my weakness.

so just give it some thought, i say, casually. it's a really nice desk.

on the beach

the waves rush in calmly as they recede, pink with sunset. the water is warm on my ankles. i watch a woman chase her children around the beach as they squeal their giddy blonde screams, father standing by, carrying beach chairs. the seagulls, for their part, swoop up clams in their claws, drop them from great heights, break them open on the rocks. (sometimes, once cracked, the meal causes an argument with the other, more aggressive birds who haven't yet mastered the trick.) piping plovers pick through what's left, running around like robots, looking for morsels in the sand. i'm searching with them, turning over shells, trying to find something to fry or shuck or stuff for dinner. i can see his silhouette down the beach, bent over, raking through the earth, doing the same. dead crab corpses are everywhere. my flip flop comes off in the clay.

sometimes, it seems to make no difference where i am, who i'm with. but not today. not now.