 | Lynne and her mother lived in half a clapboard house that had long ago staggered, stooped and settled where it fell, alongside a salt-parched road that backed up a hill and away from a fishing village called Brooklyn. Not the real Brooklyn; Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. No one fished from the wharf at Brooklyn anymore. No one lived in the other half of the clapboard house. |
No one Lynne knew had ever been anywhere. Except for her mother, but she didn't count. Lynne's mother grew up in Queens, New York. The only place she'd ever travelled was to Brooklyn, Nova Scotia. She and three friends had rented a beach house one summer. Lynne's mother had liked Nova Scotia so much she'd stayed.
Why couldn't you have gone to Paris? Lynne complained.
Love at first sight, was her mother's only explanation.
Whether she'd fallen for Nova Scotia or for Lynne's father, Lynne had never been sure.
Either way.
Winters, Lynne froze in Celsius in half a clapboard house a few minutes walk from a white sandy beach. Summers, she suffered her city cousins in Fahrenheit in an air-conditioned apartment in Queens. By now Lynne knew everyone knew that it was supposed to be the other way around. |
 Enter a temperature. Click outside the box. |
Even the soil is richer in the States, at least south of where the glaciers got to, in places a dark mixture of three million years. Loam, sweet loam. Hardwood, gnarled and hard as history itself: hickory, many kinds of oak, flowering trees as old as dinosaurs. If bluegrass came out of such places, and Creole cooking, and the ancient, crumbling institutions of race and class, it is no surprise. In cold Canada the harshness, like the soil, is a thin cover over everything, so our music is sadder, elemental and low. Just the red soil of the Cypress Hills is rich, because it stayed above the glaciers, and is too deep to know. Robert Allen, Standing Wave |
 | Lynne didn't see what the big deal was. She had flown unattended minor plenty of times. She'd spent a dozen summers in New York City already. What more could there possibly be to see? |
Two weeks down, one to go.
What more there could possibly be to see so far included: a man peeing himself on the 7 Train, a car crash on the Long Island Expressway and the bones of Lucy, the oldest woman ever, on display at the Museum of Natural History. Now all subway cars smelled like urine. The expressway was boring without the flashing lights. And Lynne went to bed worrying that bored Museum night watchmen might rearrange Lucy's bones in the night.
| Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village... the rhythm the rhythm - and your memory in my head... Allen Ginsberg, Kaddish, 1961 |  | |
 | If Lynne's aunt and uncle were indeed happy to have her visit, they had funny ways of showing it. First it was a visit to what her uncle kept referring to as "the old neighbourhood" even though, as far as Lynne knew, she had never been Itallian. |
The uncle was Lynne's mother's brother. He was so skinny the rounded ends of his backbones showed through his shirt. He had a weird habit of holding his head in his hands when he spoke.
Lynne's mother was fat and spineless. She clutched at the back of her neck when she spoke.
Lynne hoped to take after neither of them.
Lynne's mother was fat and spineless. She clutched at the back of her neck when she spoke.
Lynne hoped to take after neither of them.
If the cousins were trying to impress Lynne, they had yet to find a way. Fish sticks were their idea of sea food. Coney Island was their idea of a beach.
"This is just a kind, glad feeling which is not a vacation, it is an awakening.
They don't anticipate it until they are down in it and when they get home
they have lost it. It is only for those few hours that we don't count."
Djuna Barnes, The People and the Sea
They don't anticipate it until they are down in it and when they get home
they have lost it. It is only for those few hours that we don't count."
Djuna Barnes, The People and the Sea
It was 98 in the shade, only there wasn't any. They were walking around and around Chinatown looking for a restaurant that didn't want to be found.
It's Chinatown, the uncle said. The cousins laughed.
It stinks, Lynne said.
She doesn't get it, the cousins sniggered.
I get it, Lynne said. Maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
It's Chinatown, the uncle said. The cousins laughed.
It stinks, Lynne said.
She doesn't get it, the cousins sniggered.
I get it, Lynne said. Maybe she did and maybe she didn't.