Going Home

A familiar orange gravel gathers on my black combat boots.

My mother points out two men on the pier, welding a flying saucer together. For a cheap piece of crap it’s a surprisingly smooth curve, almost parabolic. The older white man has been at it since I first came here. I don’t recognize the younger black welder.

We get back in the car and drive down Tindall Island Road, passing an obese Jamaican-looking woman walking on the side of the road. Her bright green shirt – more like some kind of gown – stands out against the papyrus colored reeds.

I take a gulp of coffee to keep away the haze of last night’s Tylenol PM, and to avoid getting stuck in another cyanide car-ride daydream.

My mother’s little Hyundai rolls passed big houses in Greenwich, some of them dating back to the 1700s. One has a tree growing next to it, the branches poking holes through the windows. Mom tells me someone used to live here but I don’t catch the name – I’m preoccupied thinking that the side of the house and tree trunk would be called a strong vertical, although a few months of design class hasn’t told me how to feel about that.

We pass another big house with a tireless Cutlass in the yard, and it makes me miss my tree-trunk colored Cutlass. We pass a big house with a carved, wooden Stars-and-Bars in the yard and a banner saying, “Love it or Leave It!” We pass another big house with what looks like one of those end-of-hallway shelves by the road, filled with shriveling vegetables, and a basket, with a note: “$1.50 each.”

The tires crunch some old persimmons when we stop on the side of Cemetery Hill, to see if the bald eagle’s nest is still there.

It is not.

We turn off onto Hell Neck and a man with a blonde mustache is moving into a big blonde house. My mother waves while we pass through the stop sign. He does not wave back.

“Dumb fuck,” she barks in my general direction. “Always wave. Ain’t making it in this town.”

I look down at my boots, from which the dirt has fallen off, and wonder if going home is like this for everyone: like some kind of screwed up parabolic arc, where no matter which way I come in, I always end up reversing the angle of entry and traveling out, when I leave through the same door I entered.