Home Again

I practically ran from the customs check out into a muggy Friday afternoon in the bowels of Terminal 4, JFK. Winding up around a helix towards the Airtrain station it was white face after white face and I was bouncing along with Medeski, Martin and Wood. The pack on my back weighed nothing. There is an elevator that climbs two stories from ground level to the platform. It is a shiny glass box. The platform is scrolling LED banners and a cheery bing! announcing the arrival of each sleek monorail snake. Last stop on the Airtrain is Jamaica station, transfer to the subway and the LIRR. But first you need a ticket.

Great banks of touchscreen Metrocard machines stood empty waiting for poking fingers; bing! and the hall was instantly inundated by the passengers from the Airtrain. They formed orderly lines behind each machine. I stepped up and was walleyed—I’ve bought a thousand Metrocards but only for the subway. Besides, it was all discrete options: Refill or New Card? Airtrain+Metrocard or just Airtrain? I asked the man at the machine next to mine but he was equally confused. We were both strangers. Around us people approached the machines confidently, danced through the options, and marked the time while their debit cards processed with anxious foot-tapping. I wanted to tell someone, “I need to get to Penn Station. How should I go?” But this was a time for the poker face. Aware of holding up those behind me, I sheepishly canceled my transaction and walked back to the end of the line to watch what the others did.

The second time around I got a card and walked through a futuristic gliding two-paned gate that opened and shut in perfect silence.

The LIRR train was full of people heading into the city for a night out, dressed up, drinking brown-bagged cans of beer, talking a mile a minute in thick Long Island accents. I felt like I knew everyone on board.

The man in the seat in front of me takes Fridays off in the summers and usually spends them with his son; but tonight he was meeting “the boys”. He was sitting with three women friends he had run into on the train. They were on the way to a girls’ night out. Their banter was incredible—Work is slow and How’s Bobby and Gawd, that night don’t remind me. They seemed to manage a comprehensive review of the months since they had seen each other last.

(You might remember from an earlier posting this story about Oti: Driving through the neighborhood he spotted someone walking and, seeming excited, pulled over to greet him. “Charlie, How?” “Fine. You.” “Fine.” “Nice.” And we drove away. A few seconds later Oti said, “That was my good friend. I haven’t seen him in years!”)

Next, the incredible herd moving through Penn Station and onto the subway platform. In Accra I have a basic policy of looking twice at any obruni I see on the street. The ex-pat community is small and incestuous enough that I have a fair chance of knowing a random white face in town. The technique doesn’t play as well in New York. Ambling down the platform I looked half a dozen people up and down thinking, Don’t I know you? Were we in a class together sophomore year? Or maybe I was just looking for that glint of recognition in the great underground hive of anonymity. The subway! Nobody met my eyes.

Got off at 18^th St and walked up to street level where I approached a punkish girl dressed in denim and black with spiky hair and asked to borrow her cellphone (mine had a dead battery). She happily assented. Glancing up the west side the block (8^th Ave between 16^th and 17^th) I counted four restaurants: Thai, Mexican, sandwiches and wraps, and a diner. Exactly none of those foods is available in Accra.

Two hours later I was walleyed again in the great hall of Grand Central Station. I stepped up to the ticket window and spoke to a real person: “One-way to East Norwalk, please.” “What?” “Just one single, one-way to East Norwalk, please.” “No East Norwalk.” “Oh. I thought there was a train at 9:17.” “Not to East Norwalk.” “Is there any train that stops there?” “No.” “Um…” “Listen, there’s no station at East Norwalk. Where do you want to go?” “Well, it’s one of the Norwalks.” “Not East.” “Okay, what Norwalks are there?” “The 9:17 stops at South Norwalk and West Norwalk.” “Well…South Norwalk then.” “Ten twenty-five.” I only had a twenty. “Sorry, I don’t have a quarter.” He was visibly irritated; there was a line behind me. By the time I got my change I had taken at least 90 seconds in total.

I have never been a good golfer and this vacation was no exception. But a couple miles’ walk with my dad, uncle, and cousin on the verdant green carpet of the Weekapaug while the morning sun burned the dew off the back nine—golf didn’t have much to do with it. We returned home to a table erupting with bagels, cheese, five kinds of smoked fish, fruit, juice, and coffee. I ate a bagel cut in quarters with a different kind of cheese melted on each piece. On the porch we talked and read the newspaper; some of us fell asleep in hammocks or Adirondack chairs. There are spots in the shade and spots in the sun, and spots under a leafy tree that provide some of both. Out in front of the house the bay was full of ripples.

After the weekend we went back to Montclair where I slept in my own bed, sat on the swing on the front porch late at night, played the piano, and ticked off the episodes of the final Sopranos season On Demand.

The night of July 3^rd was the annual campout at Caumsett State Park on the north shore of Long Island. Five of us rode Rich’s Buick down the dirt track to the fishing beach. We set up camp just before the sun set and started the charcoal going. Some time later the park security came and made us take down our tents, but by then we were a couple beers deep, eating sausages and watching across the Sound as nine simultaneous fireworks displays bloomed over the Connecticut coast. We weren’t going anywhere. The night was a success. In the end we rolled out our sleeping bags in the open and got ravaged by sand fleas.

Returning to the parking lot in the morning dragging coolers, tents, and trash bags, we found the Buick under investigation by official types who wanted to revoke Rich’s fishing permit. Adam, far and away the best negotiator in the group, made an effort at damage control, but his overtures were roundly rejected by a smug officer not much older than ourselves. Growing tired of our appeals, he addressed all of us: “Hey, I could give you all summonses for trespassing. How would you like that?” As we looked around blankly (How could one reply? Oh, please, anything but that! We’re so sorry!) I think he realized how much of an ass he was being. His demeanor changed and his chest deflated slightly under his blue uniform. They took the permit and sent us on our way.

On the weekend we went back up to Rhode Island and to the bay full of ripples. It was late one night and four of us shoved off in a rowboat. The bay was quiet and dark except for a bright spotlight shining from beyond the golf course that runs along the eastern shore. At times it seemed to follow us. For a while we rowed towards the sandbar hoping to walk around, but after a few minutes of hard pulling in the channel found that we were fighting against an incoming tide, going nowhere. Instead we turned and made for the house and found ourselves assaulted again by the squinting, bright-white ember of the spotlight. A row of young evergreen trees along the edge of the golf course obstructed the beam, and the light played through like rays from a UFO. My cousin said, “I’ll do a monologue on the light.”

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call:

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

On the way in the oars lapped the water like wooden tongues and the oarlocks squawked with each stroke. When the boat crunched up against the sand we got out and fixed the stern line to a cleat, then heaved the anchor out into the bay where it landed with a hearty plop. I could hear my aunts’ and uncles’ voices on the porch, desultory conversation and laughter.

Wednesday night I was back in New York on 19^th St near 5^th Avenue. I met my friend outside her office building and we walked to Madison Square. There was a small, open tent set up and about a hundred folding chairs, and the warbling sound of a Hammond organ. It was the Lonnie Smith trio, playing a free concert as part of the park’s summer series. We found a bench next to a lawn dominated by a large sculpture that looked like a big, leafless tree dipped in liquid silver. The Flatiron building glowed in soft evening light. I felt full to the brim and perfectly light, as if I had taken a deep breath of spearmint-sharp air that filled up my whole body down to the tips of my toes.

My aunt once wrote, “I feel like a balloon on the fingertips of everyone I’ve ever loved,” and mostly I felt so buoyant. But my family also gives hugs as filling as Thanksgiving dinner, and I had many helpings. They say you can never go home again, but they’re wrong.