(January 11, 2018, 8:51 am)
If you use your imagination... this is a five star location. We search for a few minutes of privacy and peace. Her existential anxiety about driving on the freeway overwhelms her on the way to this spot. The hidden access road off of the onramp to the 95 confuses her and she pulls over after contemplating entering the hostile lanes of high-speed traffic... I leave my car and approach hers with a familiar and petulant sense that she doesn't want to be with me after all. She sits in her mini gripping the wheel with both hands at 10 and 2 and glares at me like an angry housecat. She growls that she couldn't follow me to the spot if it meant getting near the highway. My irritation melts as I remember her recent panic attack on the way to the Cape. We leave her car at the Marriot parking and I drive across the bridge and to the exit.
We sit together on a weathered public bench and preside over the wetland inlet across from the Newton Historic Boathouse. I picture us... overdressed for work in the warm sunshine like Myrna Loy and William Powell enjoying an afternoon hiatus. She calms beside me, and we imagine the uninspired asphalt, broken bottles, and men wasting the workday in idling late model pickups evaporate into a view of what was, in 1903 Norumbega park. I paint a verbal impression of the laughter of courtship in canoes and along the river... men trying to impress and women in their bustles, frills using their colorful parasols to conceal favoring glances and the desperate longing of young love. I mention 1903 as the spot earned its public reputation and remains to this day- a place for a fine romance. She lights a cigarette as I share that in 1903 at the height of Edwardian sensibility- cuddling and kissing were deemed immoral and in need of punishment. To this end on this section of the Charles- Boston passed an ordinance banning kissing and levying a $20 fine on offenders ($500 today). The Herald jeered at the puritanical busybodies behind the law stating that "At that rate it is estimated that over a million dollars' worth of kisses are exchanged at that popular canoeing resort every fine Saturday night and Sunday."
I glanced at her... She wasn't listening. She don't think she ever listens... at least not to the details. I like to think sometimes my words help her relax or slip into quiet personal reflection, but it's hard to say. She looks at me as she always does... slightly squinting and puzzled as if I were a creature either out of place or time or both, and asks softly almost to herself, "Where did you come from?"
I smile and say, "Louisiana."
"Huh" she remarks absently as she seems even more perplexed. She leans in and touches my face tentatively. I feel as if she is investigating a dream... she calls me by my given name... and we break the 1903 Law.
