However the more I thought, the more I realized no matter how far or fast I drove up the parkway, my life would still be waiting for me at home. What the hell was I going to do about this stillborn novel that sat so lifeless on my desk? For the first time in my writing career, I had discovered that a novel could be like a love affair that starts off with long kisses and dancing in fountains, but then turns into your sixth-grade teacher before you're even aware of what's happening. It had reached the point when I didn't even like to go into my study because I'd take one look at that pile of pages and desperately want to beam up to another planet. Any planet, so long as there were no books, deadlines or Italian editors there. Evil Irene had said it best: "All the rats are jumping ship, Sam. Even your best friend in the world – your imagination."
That was what astonished me most. Until recently it had been so simple. Every couple of years I would sit down with a couple of characters in mind and start typing. As I got to know them, got to know their habits and the way they saw the world, their story would walk out of the fog and right onto the page. I think it had also been easy because I was nice to them. I never forced them to do anything. Not all of these characters were my heroes, but I respected all of them and allowed them to follow whatever course they chose. Some writer said that in every book he wrote, there came a point when the character took over and he just let them do what they wanted. For me that happened on the first page.
What was most disturbing about this new one was how embarrassingly flat it was. Characters said and did things but you didn't believe any of it because I hadn't been able to put any blood in their veins or a beating heart into their fates. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, who had sort of succeeded at creating life, but not really. Like the doctor's monster, I could see how patched together and badly stitched my creation was. I knew it was going to go awry if it ever got up enough energy to stagger off the operating table and walk into the world.
I was hungry. Hungry and tired and worried. I was going home to a house that was too big for just me and my dog, Louie. I'd bought the place when a house in the country with wonderful new wife Irene, a white puppy and a big room to work in sounded like the best things on earth. Now the house was haunted, the dog was a misanthrope and my study had turned into Room 101 from 1984.
With these cheerful thoughts marching through my head as I entered Westchester County, I suddenly had an inspiration: I was going to go home. Home to Crane's View, New York, where I'd spent the first fifteen years of my life.
Although I passed near the town every time I drove to New York, I hadn't been back there for at least a decade. I'd never been very nostalgic and spent almost no time thinking about my old days. My second wife Michelle once said she'd never known anyone who spoke less about their past. I thought about that, then said I was frankly suspicious of people who went to too many class reunions or pored over photo albums and high school yearbooks. It seemed to me something was wrong there – as if they had left something essential behind, or were realizing life was never better than back whenever. So I skipped all of my reunions, lost the few yearbooks I'd kept, and indifferently shrugged at who I had been growing up.
The last time I'd been to Crane's View was when Michelle and I were married and she insisted I take her on a guided tour. She was a fanatical romantic and wanted to see everything. We visited the high school, had lunch at Charlie's Pizza, and walked up and down Main Street until even she grew bored of what little there was to see. But those were the days when I was happy and didn't need a history to sail on into my wonderful future.
It was already seven o'clock when I drove off at the exit, but since it was high summer, the sky had the golden light of fresh-baked bread. The winding road to town went past beautiful trees and large estates hidden behind high stone walls. When I was young, my parents used to take my sister and me on Sunday drives. How many times had we ridden past these impressive houses and heard my father proudly announce the names of the people who owned them as if he knew them personally?
And whatever happened to that nice institution, getting into the family car and just taking a drive? Sometimes you'd be out for hours, the parents talking quietly in the front seat, the kids swapping punches or whispers in the back, all of you delighted to be out together for the day in the big old black Ford or gold Dodge station wagon. Sometimes you'd stop for an ice cream or even better at the miniature golf course three towns over where other families out for their rides had stopped too.
Memories like slow-moving tropical fish swam through my mind as I rolled toward Crane's View. That's the corner where Dave Hughes fell off his bike, Woody Barr's house, St. Jude's Church where all my Catholic friends crossed themselves whenever we walked by. As expected, everything seemed smaller and gave off the faint aroma of a cologne you had once used but not for years.
It struck me I didn't think much about my childhood because I had had a good one, albeit nothing special. A wholesome meal that filled me but didn't stand out in any way. My father worked for Shell Oil all his life and liked nothing more than to pad around our house in sneakers and khakis, smoking his pipe and fixing things that didn't always need to be fixed. My mother was a homemaker in the days when that wasn't a dirty word. They married straight out of college and enjoyed each other's company for thirty-four years.
We spent our summers in a small house in a town called Sea Girt on the New Jersey shore. We had a dog named Jack, a series of station wagons; we ate dinner together in front of the television set watching either Walter Cronkite or Perry Mason. For dessert we'd have Breyers vanilla ice cream covered with Bosco chocolate sauce. Television was black-and-white, your hair was a crew cut, girls wore dresses. What could be simpler?
Just past the high school, Scrappy's Diner was my first stop of the evening. Decent food, the closest pay telephone to the school, and the patient good humor of its owners made it one of the two important places for kids in Crane's View. The other was Charlie's Pizza, but it was so small all you could do there was buy your slices of pizza and hang around outside on the street while you ate.
The diner, on the other hand, was large, air-conditioned and full of comfortable screaming-turquoise Naugahyde booths. There was music and a menu we could afford. It was ours. Kids own nothing – everything is either promised, borrowed, longed for or exaggerated. Scrappy's gave us a place to plan, dream and regroup. The way it broke down, if you needed to meet on your way to somewhere else, see you in front of Charlie's. If you needed to talk, it was Scrappy's.
The place was almost empty when I entered. I stood a moment in the doorway and let a quazillion memories hit me square in the brain. Every corner and booth was full of my life. Just seeing the room and smelling the familiar aroma of Bunn-O-Mat coffee, frying meat, body odor, floor cleaner and wiped tables reminded me so vividly of another now that had once been as important as today's. I sat at the counter and turned the revolving seat left and right.
A young waitress wearing too much lipstick and too little energy came over. Everything about her emanated that slumping spirit that comes from being on your feet too long or just being eighteen years old and life weighs too much for you.
"What'll you have?"
"A menu, please."
She opened her mouth to say something but stopped and closed it. Instead she slowly reached under the counter and came up with a long red menu. "Today's specials are turkey pot pie and meat loaf." She sighed.