The visit to my family in the Blue Hills had been comforting, but I hadn't said a single word about Alice's possible pregnancy. Not to my parents or sisters or brothers. At the dinner table I saw how proud my father was of his wife and family and I asked, if I would feel the same way with a little one. Alice still hasn't answered the phone. I can only imagine what she is thinking. Probably only skiing with her father.
On December 24 I walked around Boston without seeing a single woman with whom to have sex. Maybe Alice had blinded my lust in that way. We still haven't spoken. She is skiing in the Appalachians. Not exactly the Alps. Ande is my sole friend here. I didn't go over to see him or Therese in Brookline, not wanting to see my old love Hilde, but on the phone he asked, "Will you ever live here again?"
"I doubt it. Boston is too racist and too small."
In comparison to New York Boston is a backwater village. Amazing that I left at the age of 24 and not before. My drinking blinded me to its barren existence.
I wish I could find Linda Imhoff. My long legged divorcee mistress from 1971. I lost my virginity to her on the Charles after an Emerson Lake and Palmer concert. In plain view of everyone.
I am not in touch with any of my high school or college friends. Blonde Libby is in New York. My sole remaining college friend, Neil, has retuned from his medical studies in in the Dagupan City, The Philippines. He has been in Staten Island for the holidays. I see him upon my return. Chuck moved back to Cincinnati and the hundreds of other friends have disappeared from Boston without a trace.
My mother and father look well and they were worried about my being bored.
"Bored is a paradise after New York."
Truthfully I hate the suburbs. Thankfully our neighborhood was situated in the Blue Hills and on Christmas morning I hiked up to the top of Chickatawbut. From which, I can see the expanse of the teenage years. My Brother Frank was in our old bedroom with his DC girlfriend, who works for the CIA. I slept in the basement.
He had put on a little weight. Regina was great, but I sense a loneliness in her, although she seemed satisfied with David. Pammie and I didn't fight once. A miracle, because it was not as if she has buried her ax of anger. Patrick suffered dizziness, but has progressed on guitar, dreaming of heavy metal. Michael was dying to tell Mom and Dad about his gayness. I said up to him, but we got through the holidays without that announcement. In the morning I said good-bye to everyone. My mother slipped me $100 before I got in Ande's father car. I drove away without any regrets about leaving.
I drove Ande's father's car down Route 28 to 128. I passed Big Blue, its bald summit with the weather tower and radio station such a familiar sight. A granite flat top surrounded by second-growth pines. To the north the woods giving way to my hometown and Mattapan into Boston. Big Blue haunts me. Has ever since 1960 when my mother put in the family station wagon and told me my dear childhood friend drowned in Sebago Lake in Maine. Not a day goes by without my thinking about him.
After turning south I-95 cut through the Neponset River flood plain. The Interstate climbed from this depression at Sharon onto a plateau to Providence, where the highway sliced through Rhode Island's capitol to create urban blight which lead to the migration to the zombie suburbs.
South of the capitol the state prison stood in plain view of I-95, taunting prisoners of the loss of freedom. Not that anyone driving on that road was free. The next stretch were the Pines, a forest because little else grew on the primordial soil. Snow was a thin sheet over the harvested corn fields.
New London with its sub base. Any view of the naval yard is blocked by a field on the high bridge. For motorists and Soviet spies. Next up the Connecticut River and then New Haven and Bridgeport. After that New england dwindles into the Tri-State area. New York and Manhattan and the East Village.
This morning my mother kissed me good-bye and went off to work. I wish I had enough money to send them on a trip to Hawaii. Maybe some year.
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