I Thought You Were Dead

On a whim I went back to my old hometown, Middle Haddam, Connecticut, last year as I was zipping through the state. I parked the car and walked all around town, beginning at the first house, the one with the cowboy wallpaper, the one where Dad brought home the terrified hound and the one where Mom threatened to leave.

Not in that order. The hound relaxed and Mom stayed put. Wallpaper’s probably still there. Nothing seems to have changed. Except me.

“I wonder if Sandra Hale still lives here,” I asked the grumpy postmistress.

She nodded toward a little old man twirling the knobs of his post box.

“That’s her husband. Ask him.”

He smiled at me.

“I’m a very old friend of Sandra.” I hesitated. What if..? “How is she?” He nodded and explained she was right outside in the car.

“San’,” I said as I rapped on the closed car window. She looked almost exactly the same: thick, reddish hair, pale skin with freckles. Sensible glasses. Exactly my age. Which would make her husband my age.

I rapped again. She was fooling with her checkbook and looked up with irritation.

“What do you want?” she growled as she rolled the window down just two inches.

“San, it’s me, Reedie!” I exclaimed joyfully. Had not seen this woman since I first married in 1961. Boy, she looked great!

“Oh, Reedie,” she cried and opened the door. Just about time, I thought, then stuffed that away. “Gosh what are you doing in Middle Haddam?" She looked me in the eye. "I thought you were dead.”

Well. Welcome back.

Then we hugged and she told me all about her life married to Richie, that old man, and he came out and stood aside our floods of girlish reminiscing. They had followed his Army career and come home to take care of her aging parents who had finally died off, leaving Sandra and Richie a house just above our old grammar school.

Our old pal, Doris, who lived in the next town, had once married briefly and lived quite cheerfully on her own. This one and that had died or moved away. We soon ran out of common folk to catch up on.

Then she had to go somewhere and drove off.

Dead, huh?

I got a better reception from the one real estate broker in town who bought my mother’s last remodel and remembered her with proper respect. She actually apologized to me for updating a bathroom.

“Your mother was so clever at tucking a bathroom into a tiny space,” the broker said.

“What? You’re destroying my mother’s work after.. let’s see.. only fifty years? That's a hell of a note!”

She smiled thinly. Oh hell, I’m just a ghost.

The door of the little Episcopal church where I tied that unfortunate knot was locked. Just as well, I thought. A bosomy lass came out of the brick Rectory where Dad stopped for a post-sermon martini many a Sunday. Good enough reason to listen to Father Love’s bromides, apparently. The bosoms glanced at me, got into her car and drove off. Boy, am I dead or what?

Another house my mother rescued, the one across from Sandra’s house. This diffident homeowner apologized for not having furniture up to Sally Stevens’ standards. I waved my hands helplessly and tried to reassure her. I did note, without saying anything of course, that my favorite maple trees were no more. Not her fault, they were about 200 years old when I left 60 years ago. Still. Her furniture looked just fine, better than anything Mother could afford.

“Ah, Mother's sconce,” I pointed out as I left.

“I love that sconce!” she dithered happily.

I headed down the twisty River Road past Gretchen’s house where her wonderful grandmother just keeled over dead one fine September afternoon and I had to go get poor Gretch’ from St. Margaret’s School way over in Waterbury. Haven’t seen dear Getchen but once since I married and moved away with my la de dah Yalie husband. Her brother, a skinny kid terrified of his beautiful mother, killed himself at Parris Island boot camp. Some one else found Gretchen then but I didn’t live there.

None of the old, shingled cottages had seen a carpenter’s hammer. I’d love to see Gretchen again and Sandra and Doris, my bridesmaids but I was walking in a parallel universe. At last I came to the lovely big river and Mary Starr’s summer cottage right on the shore. The dark screens of the river-facing porch were exactly as I remembered. Up the green painted steps and I’d be on the comfy flowered couch among the grownups, their dripping ice teas and gins, their cigarette smoke and loud, husky laughter.

Mary Starr was a jolly, fat woman who loved everybody, dogs and cats included. She was just taking a batch of bread out of the oven.

“Go ahead, hon, just pull the end offa that loaf and see if it’s any good,” she’d say. “Here’s the butter. Sal, you got to feed this girl!”

Mary Starr and her bigger, fatter and sooner dead husband, Alan Starr—man, they could cook and could they eat. Lobsters with bowls of butter and lemons. Shad, shad roe, bluefish, swordfish, steaks as thick as your thigh on the charcoal grill. Crispy on the outside, red and rare in the middle.

“Let’s see if you can pick this up with your toes,” Mary would say, tossing a dime on the bare wood floor when we kids got bored. This was before we learned to drink. My pal, Tinkie, same age, and I would madly scrunch our toes to win the dime and another and another. My mother rolled her eyes but Mary waved her off. “Good for their feet. Going to be ballerinas one day, Sal. You’ll see.”

The Starrs owned a brass bell factory where Tink’s mother, Margo, worked as a secretary in those desperate last years before cancer took her. Yes, there was Margo pulling on a long cigarette filter, very elegant, keeping an eye on Tink. No shenanigans, that was Margo. Tink was a complete orphan at thirteen.

All our lives changed when Margo went.

But the river remains the same. I doubt any house in Middle Haddam has seen a single new two by four since I left. Mother still rules. And I am, to Middle Haddam, still dead.