Saturday June 24

It is somewhere around the Noroton, CT exit on I-95 that I start thinking of vacation not as a unit of time, or a destination, but as a sentient being — a petty, malicious sentient being with my specific harm in mind. Seven hours it takes me to get to my rented cottage, on a drive that ideally should only take five and a half hours, undertaken in driving rain that does not relent for longer than three minutes at a time all day, in the company of — apparently — every other citizen with access to a vehicle between Baltimore and Bangor, ME. At one point, staring out the windshield to no avail whatsoever, obscured as it is with sheets of rainwater, I mutter darkly, “I will not be dissuaded so easily, vacation.” But at least the visibility isn’t a genuine concern, since ill-advised highway construction had turned the northbound lanes into a parking lot; I had traveled exactly one mile in the last twenty minutes.

Arriving at last in town, I get lost, of course, and then I have to rush around looking for a place to eat before everything closes, and it’s still raining, not to mention pitch-dark, and it’s the Cape, which means that roads just change names on you for no apparent reason, and I inform The Prankster God Vacation that I have passed all his tests — I have persevered, in spite of the temptation to bail out at Exit 24, buy the Super-Duper Weenie franchise advertised on a roadside billboard, and make a fortune on the merchandising opportunities. “You have driven me to this, Prankster God Vacation — a vegetarian, considering a future in tubular animal-parts foodstuffs I can’t even eat! Find me a pizza place and the correct unmarked private gravel road, pitted with puddle canyons! DO IT NOW!”

He did, bless his cruel heart. One personal pizza and three sharp lefts later and I’ve got my feet up on the sectional, watching Grease 2. I haven’t seen G2 in many years, but back in the day, HBO ran it seventeen times a day and I watched it every single one of those times because I had a massive crush on Maxwell Caulfield. Even back then, I could sense the movie’s badness: the costuming and set design acknowledge that it’s the early sixties when it’s convenient, and don’t bother when it’s not; the pint-sized Adrian Zmed as a Travolta replacement is ridiculous even when you can’t see his panty line, which…you almost always can; the estimable Christopher McDonald is doing his best Piscopo, and I don’t know for whom that’s more embarrassing — me, for thinking it really was Piscopo, or McDonald, for fooling me thusly; the actor playing Louis is so unconvincing in his rendition of “attracted to girls” that I had to leave the room; and the “Love Will Turn Back The Hands Of Time” number oh my dear Lord in His heaven what the eff is that. Slo-mo jumps, two different colors of lamé, he’s dead and wearing silver goggles…brutal. Just brutal. I will give myself minor credit for the fact that Caulfield is probably doing his best acting here, and is cute, especially in his leathers, but the thing is, he’s…just jumping over parked cars in his vintage cycle. What the…what? And has anyone else ever noticed that Michelle Pfeiffer uses the same blocking in almost every movie she’s in? Scarface, Fabulous Baker Boys, Frankie and Johnny, this, she’s doing the same thing — looking down and to her right, overusing chewing gum as a character prop, smoking like she’s in a Newport ad, her physical presentation is always the same. I like her fine and I’ve never thought of her as notably limited as an actor, but once you spot it, it’s really obvious.

Sunday June 25

It’s still raining, which is fine with me; I have a backlog of Vanity Fairs to get through. Even trapped inside on a rainy day with nothing to do but eat saltwater taffy and read, I still can’t make myself care about Anderson Cooper. The article’s fine, and he seems like a nice man, but…eh. Don’t get the appeal.

Of course, the distractions just outside my window don’t help me focus, because the house next door is, I suspect, the set of a reality show called Hoya House, in which a whole family — every member of whom went to Georgetown, as I can tell by the Georgetown bumper stickers on all four cars, as well as the Georgetown sweatshirts, jogging shorts, ball caps, t-shirts, visors, bathing suits, and sweatbands every member of the house wears all the time — goes on vacation together and engages in sporty activities, with varying degrees of polish. Exhibit A: a teenage boy, kicking a soccer ball around the yard, hits the minivan seventeen times, gets bitched out by a parent, then trees the ball in a big spruce and has to go inside, defeated.

Exhibit B: the college-aged girl who performs an extremely lengthy and thorough pre-run stretching routine, heads out into the little lane separating our properties, and a mere three strides later snags a sneaker toe on something and stumble-flails the rest of the way out to the main road, windmilling her arms. I manage not to laugh out loud until I’m pretty sure she’s past the mailboxes, but…damn.

Later, when I’ve moved on to a Capote bio, a water-balloon fight breaks out on the Hoya House lawn. It is still raining, and I have jeans and a sweatshirt on, so I can’t quite figure out the purpose of this enterprise, unless the idea is that it’s already wet out so what the hell, which I guess I can get behind.

Monday June 26

It is a minor, but critical, indicator of maternal influence that, upon discovering a vintage two-volume Funk & Wagnall’s dictionary on the cottage’s bookshelves, I am thrilled — and that, when I look up “aquavit” and it isn’t in the dictionary, I am very annoyed. What, I ask you, is the purpose of such a grand, aged resource, if not to define such Edwardian victims of cultural extinction as “ormolu” and “piles”?

(It’s “a clear Scandinavian liquor flavored with caraway seeds.” You’re welcome.)

I’m preparing to go out for lunch when out of the corner of my eye I see movement in the Hoya House yard. I move to the couch to put my other shoe on, the better to observe a prospective Exhibit C, which this particular child seems like a lock for; he’s capering around with a badminton racket, delivering an enthusiastically ridiculous “beating” to the shuttlecock, and I just assume that the shuttlecock is going to land twenty feet up in the same tree that ate the soccer ball.

But…no. Of course not, as I should have predicted, because the child is a boy, and boys like to try to hit things — and kick them, and throw them — as hard and as far as they can. You’ll forgive the generalization, but if you have a brother, you know exactly what I’m talking about, that grim day when the kid discovers exactly what the sweet spot of a three iron can do, and the next thing you know, he’s driving the green with everything in sight — rocks, Barbie heads, lit firecrackers — and it is not necessarily a tendency that boys outgrow. At least once during any given set of tennis with the Biscuit, he’d get caught on his back foot, and I could almost hear the gears grinding: “I can get to this, but I’m going to hit it out, and since I’m going to hit it out, I’m going to hit it out, motherfucker,” and a forehand would rocket past me at eye level followed by a tiny but perceptible sonic boom, or he’d just sky the thing with a jai alai stroke and I’d have to wait for it to bounce off the MTV satellite and come back down.

This is, mind you, not a criticism. The same streak of boy in me that giggles at farts also loves that sort of chaotic play; my mother still has an entire drawer of Superballs confiscated from me and Mr. Stupidhead back in the eighties. But when a boy who wants to hit the stuffing out of a sporting object faces off against one that is specifically designed not to gratify him in that way — a Wiffle ball or, just for example, a badminton shuttlecock — it can take him to a Darwin Awards place pretty quickly. You can’t jump through the roof of the moon bounce, you can’t hit a plastic ball with cutouts in it 450 feet, and you can’t put a shuttlecock on the roof by taking a Darryl Strawberry cut at it, and if you try, it’s going to bite you in the ass. Alas, there’s only the one way to learn that, and that’s by uncorking a big old Ivan Lendl backswing, missing the thing completely, and racking yourself with the racket neck. And I mean to tell you, he racks himself. It did not strike a glancing blow. Not a “ping,” not a “(…biff)”, not a “doink!” We’re talking CRRRRUNCH. The kid curled up like a fiddlehead fern and dropped, and I made the same sound the guys in the booth always make when a low slider gets under the catcher’s glove, bounces through his legs, and shoots up to jam the umpire in the goolies — play stops, Kaat’s like, “Not sure what happened there, maybe it caught his instep,” they go to the replay, the ball slo-mos up into the jewel case, and all three of them go, “Auuuuuuuuccch,” and then Ken Singleton helpfully explains to the ladies in the viewing audience that “that really hurts,” like, thanks for the tip, Ken, I’ve never heard that bit of testicular lore before.

Seconds later, the same dude who treed the soccer ball appeared and earned his Older Sibling Scouts cruelty badge by standing over the badmintoneer, pointing at him, and laughing.

(I got mine by guffawing when Mr. S split his lip by walking into a tree. You’re welcome.)

Lunchtime at Arnold’s. Arnold’s is basically a big clam shack on Route 6, and you can’t fail to note that it’s across the street from a cemetery. Every time we passed it, growing up, we saw an ambulance in the parking lot; it never occurred to anyone in the family that the local rescue squad might like to eat lunch there. We just figured, well, salmonella is fast-acting, right? But then we finally ate there once, with much joking about probate law, and it’s good — it’s not health food, but if you like a fried clam strip, and I do, it’s good stuff.

I settle in at a table with a ziggurat of breaded clam bits and French fries, ready to eat and read, but instead, I eavesdrop on neighboring tables. This is one of the great gifts a solo vacation can give: the opportunity to observe America at rest. But I have to tell you, the parents of America do not seem all that rested to me. The table across from me features Mom, Dad, Grandma, and little Amelia — and Amelia seems like a pretty normal five-year-old to me, a little pesty, a little too much wandering, but she’s just hungry, not whining or hitting or really doing anything that out of bounds from what I can see. Still, her mother is quite evidently done with it, and complains to Dad that “she’s being intrusive, I just…can we not have her do that,” and then she doesn’t move or discipline Amelia at all, and it’s like, if bringing your child on vacation is not an actual vacation for you? If you’re following the letter of the law by leaving town, but the spirit of the law dictates that you don’t have to negotiate picky eating and barrage-y requests to play 72 holes of mini-golf in a row? Then just leave her at home with an aunt or grandparent for a few days. It won’t kill her, you’ll get to relax, and honestly, I look back fondly on our family vacations, but I can’t say I felt rejuvenated when we got home, because we were on top of each other twenty-four hours a damn day, in the car, in hotel rooms, sight-seeing, it was just constant — and I don’t mean this in an ungrateful “my parents took us on sucky trips” way. I’m looking at it from their perspective, and my brother and I got along reasonably well given the age difference, but…not exceptionally well. You know? I don’t think it makes anyone a bad parent to say, “You know, we love you guys, but…we’re going to go over here for a week. Behave yourself at Nana’s.”

I go out for almost every meal this week, always alone, and I bring a book, but when the food is actually in front of me, I eat and listen, and this is what I hear, what I see: exhausted parents who have not had minute one of alone time since getting in the car, little kids who have probably had too much ice cream and have probably stayed out a bit too late, teenagers who are vibrating with loathing for the entire undertaking, babies who don’t know where they are and don’t care about Wellfleet oysters in the second place. Americans don’t take enough vacation time as it is, and as far as I can see, this proves it, because whatever else parenting is, it’s a job too, and I don’t think taking some time off from it now and then is the worst idea in the world. Sure, everyone works hard and doesn’t get to spend enough time with family, and don’t get me wrong, my family took plenty of fun vacations — usually the Cape vacations, actually, where we had a big enough house that we didn’t have to be up on each other every minute, and we got to spend whole days at the beach with our dad, burying him in sand and flying kites and stuff, and the windy day when we didn’t anchor the inflatable raft and it blew off down the beach at 25 miles an hour and all three of us had to chase it, and we were all laughing and yelling and hoping it didn’t whap into anyone…I have a picture of that, the raft end-over-ending down the beach, Mr. S in full run after it, and my dad in the foreground all, “Hustle up, Ansel Adams, that thing’s halfway to Truro,” and it’s one of my favorite photos ever. And not every family I see is misery personified, obviously. But a lot of them do look…kind of tired. No judgments, really; it’s just interesting to me, the different ways people think of family, and build family, and structure that part of their lives. How it gets done. What happens in the little moments, how people get to them.

On a not entirely unrelated note: people are dressing their babies really cutely on the Cape this year. This one baby at the Lobster Shanty had a rockabilly cherries hat on that almost killed me. Adorable!

Tuesday June 26

Up to this point I have observed the comings and goings of Hoya House with the skeptical attitude of those stereotypical aliens who visit Earth and can’t figure out certain weird aspects of human culture: if they must have two white minivans, why not get the same make and model each time? why does that green bag of golf clubs keep going in and out of various trunks and backs of SUVs and porch doors like it’s the “sar-dines” in Noises Off? will any of them climb the hungry tree to retrieve their toys, which now number a soccer ball and two Frisbees, nestled in the second-story branches like Christmas gifts?

Now a Hoya is tiptoeing across the yard like a cat burglar, camera in hand. What the hell? …Oh. There’s a group of rabbits, whom I have christened The Foo-Foos (two Little Bunnies Foo-Foo and their mom, Medium Bunny Foo-Foo), living in the hedge, and the Hoya is trying to snag a family snapshot. I would make fun of the Hoya for this, but I did exactly the same thing this morning, committing a partial handstand next to the porch to frame a shot of them sitting under my car, eating clover.

And then, this: Teen Boya tries to kick a soccer ball, skims over the top of it by accident, and falls flat on his back. Badminton whips open the side door, yells, “OH, BURN!”, and whips it closed again. I don’t think these people should attempt any other athletic pursuits, but I’ve got to hand it to them, their comic timing is really good.

Wednesday June 27

I’ve had some rando conversations up here. I talked with a shop owner about how changing addresses had affected her jewelry sales; I got into a discussion at a used bookstore about baseball books (the proprietor didn’t have any, and said that she almost never does — because, she thinks, baseball fans hold onto their books about the sport in a way that fans of other sports don’t), and then we talked about “book-pile chic” (apparently it’s tres Paris-in-the-twenties to have stacks of books just sitting around your house willy-nilly — about time, I say). Today, a waitress and I have a debate about which is frumpier on a girl: baggy shorts, or pulling your hair through the hole in the back of a ball cap instead of using an elastic. She says it’s the former (“you’re not fooling anyone”); I say it’s the latter (“it’s never flattering; take five minutes and make a ponytail”).

Tomorrow I will have a conversation about golf, in a jewelry store, with a man who looks like Al Swearengen and is wearing a fantastic gold charm necklace, but for now, it’s time to search for the tackiest Cape Cod t-shirt I can find for Mr. S. Wing’s sister Toque has a hilariously awful Puerto Rico sweatshirt that she wears with pride, and somehow the knowledge of this possession mutated into a touristy t-shirt challenge in which, whenever either Mr. S or I goes out of town, we have to bring the other sibling a really fugly local shirt — the correct size, so it’s technically wearable, but embarrassingly cheesy.

It takes a good 15 minutes of shirt-bin-diving at a bric-a-crap hut on Route 6 in Wellfleet, but I prevail. The garment involves Budweiser branding, and it is mustard-colored. Mr. S can try to top that shit on his honeymoon but I don’t think he stands a chance.

Victorious, I stop in at a farmer’s market for produce, and what should my wondering eyes should appear in the butcher’s case but: fishcakes. Well, obviously. I have three for dinner and it is a fine meal indeed.

Thursday June 29

Has Provincetown gotten worse in recent years? Because my God with the tie-dyed candles and overpriced silver and hellacious parking lots and driftwood art, and I don’t remember it being so…not fun. I do have that one cool convo with the jewelry-store guy, but that’s ten minutes after I get there and it just goes downhill from there — you’ve never seen so many mom jeans in your life, or so much wolf art, and yes, it’s kind of funny that a kid is eating an ice cream cone and staring into the window of a sex shop, and the window display is…not the for-TV edit, if you know what I mean, like, if you really couldn’t figure out what a butt-plug does from the fact that it’s called a butt-plug, this display would clarify its recommended use for you beyond any possible doubt, and then the kid’s mom figures out what he’s looking at and yoinks him away from it by the non-cone arm so hard that his little sneakers leave the ground. But it’s…not funny enough. P’town retail workers must get homicidal on a daily basis, people leaving funnel-cakey sugar-prints on everything, kids breaking the dream-catchers…I beat feet after only an hour.

Friday June 30

Last lobster roll of the week. I come to the Cape in no small part to eat seafood in all its many forms, but I open and close the ceremonies with a lobster roll; it’s my favorite. You can get great seafood in New York, of course — I live around the corner from Brooklyn Fish Camp, and it’s really not overrated at all — but I have to say, it’s tough to find a lobster roll that isn’t all nouvelled up beyond recognition. The menu claims it’s lobster roll, but then it’s on ciabatta bread with sprigs of rosemary or a caper-reduction glaze or some damn thing, and they call the fries “pommes frites” so they can charge you $34.50, and it comes to the table looking like bonsai — um, no. Lobster chunks, mayo, hamburger bun, maybe a slice of tomato and a piece of lettuce, French fries, you eat it like a sandwich. I will eat the fancy kind, and I will enjoy it, but it is not a genuine lobster roll, and I wish they’d call it langoustine coupé au brioche or whatever, just so I don’t get my hopes up for the basic version.

The basic version is the best stuff in the world. Looks disgusting, makes a mess, but washed down with a lager, it’s summer on a plate. Love it. Can’t wait to go back in August and eat it again, five times.

(Pepper it before you put the top bun on. It cuts the richness. You’re welcome.)

July 3, 2006

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