by Liza Rodman
That summer on the Cape, Mom waited for Tom’s wife to die. I imagined Tom at his big house in Stoughton, carefully instructing the nurses in white starched uniforms how to take good care of his wife while he was at the beach, getting some air as she insisted he do, and then gently kissing her dried-up old forehead and tiptoeing out of the darkened room. Poor old, dying Mrs. Tom, I thought. I wondered if she knew my mother was counting the hours until she died and that Tom didn’t spend any time at the beach getting fresh air.
As soon as Mom saw Tom’s car speeding up the RC’s driveway, she would put on her favorite pink lipstick, send us to Auntie and Uncle Hank’s apartment above the office, grab a bucket of ice, a bottle of rum and a handful of little bottles of Coca-Cola, and head to the motel’s most expensive room by the pool with Tom in tow.
Some nights when she knew she wouldn’t be returning to our room, she’d send us home with Cecelia. Those were good nights because Tony would usually show up and Cecelia would cook us all dinner. Sometimes it was American chop suey, and sometimes it was what she called a Portuguese special, and she’d put a steaming bowl of sausages and pasta on the table. It didn’t matter what Cecelia cooked; the fact that she cooked at all made it special. Mom taught cooking in her home ec class but was usually too busy to cook for us at home and instead opened a can of something and heated it up on the stove—that was Mom’s idea of dinner.
Other nights, Mom left us with a couple of nuts who worked at the Royal Coachman, Mark and Debbie. Debbie’s eyes were usually half-closed, and Mark’s were so red they looked like they must hurt. They would drive us around town in Mom’s car with the windows wide-open, screaming “FUCK YOU! NO, FUCK YOU!” at each other, swerving across the road and slamming on the brakes so hard Louisa and I would fly forward, hit the back of the front seat, and land on the floor in a heap. They always had a six-pack of beer on the seat between them and threw the empties out the window as they drove along. Mom told us littering was what bums did, but I didn’t say anything. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was make Mark or Debbie any more mad than they already were. One time when we were driving home from doing errands in Hyannis on the Mid-Cape Highway, Debbie got so mad she screamed, “I hate you! FUCK YOU!” and reached over and grabbed the wheel, giving it a hard yank.
“WHAT THE FUCK?” Mark yelled as he tried to right the wheel, but it was too late. The car veered off the road, and when the tires hit the sand in the grassy median, it flipped over once before coming to a stop upside down in the grass, the wheels still spinning above us. I don’t remember much after that, except that Mom was glad none of us got killed, and she told Debbie not to worry about it—she was ready for a new car anyway.
I never told Mom about the beer.
13 LIZA
I was standing with Mom near the wooden trash bins at the back of the motel when I saw Tony’s Oldsmobile drive up. Nancy Sinatra’s hit, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ ” was blaring through the open windows. As he pulled into a parking space, he switched off the radio.
“Hey there, Little Liza!” he called to me, and waved.
Little Liza. The only other person who ever called me that had been my great-grandmother, Nana Newquist. But she said it “Lil’ Liza” and with a thick Swedish accent. After church every Sunday we’d go over to her house and she’d greet me at the back door with a sugar cube sitting in an inch of coffee. “Hey, Lil’ Liza! Ready for a cuppa with your nana?” I loved hearing it again, from Tony. Little Liza.
I was about to wave back when Mom said, “Who the hell is that?” My hand froze at my side.
“It’s Tony,” I said. “Cecelia’s son. I met him the other day.”
She looked at me, doubting whether I was telling the truth, but before she could speak, Tony walked over and put his hand out to Mom.
“Hi, I’m Tony Costa, Cecelia’s son. Joan said she had some work around the motel for me today.”
I gave Mom a See? I told you so look, but she ignored it. Mom took his hand, her eyes suddenly bright, a little smile turning up the corners of her mouth.
“Well, hello, Tony. I can’t imagine why we haven’t met before. I’m Betty, the head of housekeeping.”
“Hello, Betty. Nice to meet you,” Tony said.
“Your mother is one hell of a hard worker,” Mom said.
Tony nodded. “Yeah. I wish she’d clean my house!” They both laughed. Then he turned to me. “Hey there, Liza. Nice to see you again.”
I felt myself blush under my tan.
“What’s Joan got you doing today?” Mom said.
“I think she needs a load of trash taken to the dump.” Tony looked over at me. “Hey, why don’t I take Liza here for the ride?”
Tony looked at me and grinned. Like any man who was nice to me, he reminded me of Grampa Georgie and of my dad—tall, gentle, suntanned, and for some reason eager to have me around when no one else seemed to be.
“Great. Take her sister too, would you? They’ve been underfoot all day. I could use the break,” Mom said, and went back to the office. Seemed she’d had enough of chatting up Tony.
I felt like reaching out so my fingers would once again disappear into his large, warm hand. But I didn’t dare. It wasn’t so much that he would slap my hand away—somehow, I knew he wouldn’t. It was that Mom would.
I ran to get Louisa, and soon we were sitting in the cab of the Royal Coachman’s utility truck with Tony, headed down the driveway with a load of the motel’s trash. Turning around in the seat, I saw Mom standing in the office door, watching. I put my hand up to wave, but before I could, she turned and disappeared into the motel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I looked over at Tony. His face was angular, with strong bones that came to a point at a dimpled chin. His skin was smooth and dark, his teeth were white and really straight, and he wore his thick, black hair parted on the side with a clump hanging down over one eye. He had on granny glasses, which made him look smart even though they slipped down his nose all the time, and he kept pushing them back up and giving them a little adjustment with his thumb and forefinger. He sniffed a lot, as if he had allergies or a cold, through a nose that was just a bit too large for his face. I liked the way he looked.
I sat back and smiled; I felt so grown up sitting next to him on the seat, our legs almost touching. We drove the long way through town, up Route 6A and then onto Bradford Street.
As we neared the Dairy Land in the west end of town, Tony said, “Hey, girls, either of you like ice cream?”
Louisa and I both squealed “YES!” and in the next breath added, “Chocolate is our favorite!”
He laughed at our simultaneous glee and turned into Dairy Land.
“You two wait here. I’ll just be a sec.”
We watched him walk up to the window and lean in to give his order to the girl inside.
“Maybe he’ll get us a double scoop!” Louisa said.
I gave her a hard pinch, and she shrank into the door on her side of the front seat.
“Shut up! And don’t be greedy,” I said. “If you get all greedy, he may never let us ride with him again.”
She whimpered quietly but didn’t say another word. She knew better than to challenge me if I was in one of my moods. Like Mom, I had my share, and a lot of them were directed at Louisa. Whereas I was covered in painful, unsightly eczema, Louisa had flawless olive skin that looked as if it had been poured smoothly over her bones. Whereas my hair was so curly combs got stuck in its tangle, hers was thick and wavy, almost luxuriant, and softly framed her face and deep brown eyes. And whereas I didn’t even have a nickname, besides references to Dumbo and Bambi, hers was Brown Bear, for all her adorable beauty. And I made her suffer for it.
When Tony returned a minute or two later, he handed us our cones through the window. Then he climbed in and we drove back onto Route 6, heading to the Provincetown dump. As we drove out of town, Tony turned on the radio, switching through the channels until he found a song he liked: “(You’
re My) Soul and Inspiration.”
“Yes!” he said, turning up the radio and singing along to the chorus: “ ‘Without you, baby, what good am I?’ ” I knew the words by heart but didn’t dare join in. Mom always yelled at me that I “ruined” songs by singing aloud to them.
We drove along, the summer air rushing around us, each of us trying to finish our ice cream before it melted all over the place. I was as happy as I’d been since I realized the RC had an Olympic-size swimming pool.
* * *
Soon, Tony was a familiar face around the RC, loading the pickup with trash, fixing a leaky toilet, or helping move large appliances and furniture. He was big and strong and did a lot of the jobs around the motel no one else seemed able to. I heard one of the guys at the front desk say, “Tony could pick you up and throw you out that window, if he wanted to.” (I didn’t know why he’d ever want to do such a thing and didn’t ask.)
Louisa and I would watch for him to arrive at the motel so we could ride along on his errands. Most days we weren’t disappointed. Auntie would call out, “Here comes Tony!” and we’d run to meet him as he drove in or rode his bike up to the motel. We became his regular companions as he made the rounds to the town dumps in Provincetown and Truro with the bed of the RC’s truck piled high with trash. Within a few blocks of leaving the motel, there would be a flock of seagulls following us, and whenever we hit a bump, loose papers and other scraps of junk flew out and down the road behind us. Unless it was raining, we drove with the windows down, Louisa’s and my hair flying around our faces and getting stuck in the ice cream on our cheeks and chins. The truck radio was always on. Tony told me he loved Top Ten music, and the summer of 1966 music didn’t disappoint: the Beatles and the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones and the Supremes and the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Righteous Brothers and the Mamas and the Papas (although whenever “Monday, Monday” came on, he’d switch stations with a quick jerk of the dial) and Johnny Rivers, who sang my favorite song, “Poor Side of Town.”
Driving around with Tony at the wheel, the windows down and the radio volume up just about as far as it would go, I felt like every eye of Provincetown was on us as we passed. No matter what the errand was, as soon as Tony jangled his keys in our direction, Louisa and I would bound to the truck like puppies, excited just to drive through town with him, and sometimes, if he had time, he’d push us on the swing set next to the Dairy Land. I loved that he never seemed to be in a rush or eager to get rid of us. Unlike every other adult in our lives, he seemed to like just being with us.
Tony talked a lot about his father, a war hero, he said, who’d drowned while saving the life of another sailor in someplace called New Ginnie. He told us that his real father had been a lot smarter than his stupid stepfather and how he wished and wished his mother had never married the lowlife jerk and how Tony’s half brother was just as stupid. (I was glad I didn’t have one of those.) But when he asked about our father and what he was like, I told him we didn’t have one either because it was easier than the truth.
In spite of his occasional visits, Dad remained a stranger to me. When Mom slammed the door on him and threw him out of her life, she pretty much threw him out of ours as well. I would tell people I didn’t have a father because I couldn’t explain things I didn’t understand. I was sad and ashamed. Nobody else’s parents in the Irish Catholic neighborhood where we grew up had divorced. None.
Tony nodded and reached over with his free hand to give my leg a sympathetic squeeze and a pat-pat-pat. I looked at his fingers touching my thigh. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a man’s hand on my leg before.
Tony was different. Unlike Mom and Grampa Georgie and even Cecelia, he didn’t smell of liquor, he didn’t swear, and he never seemed to shout or get angry. When Grampa Georgie drove, he was always yelling at somebody: “What an asshole” or “Light’s not gonna get any greener, buddy!” But Tony never yelled at the car in front of us or pounded on the steering wheel. Instead, he told stories and asked us about school and living at the RC and our house in West Bridgewater. And he sang along with whatever song was playing on the radio. After a few times riding with him, I finally dared ask if I could sing along too, and he laughed and said, “Sure!” like he really meant it. And he was thoughtful. Whenever he’d light one of his Parliaments while it was raining and the window wasn’t already open, he’d make sure to open it a crack so the smoke wouldn’t fill the truck. He was really good at blowing smoke rings, and I’d poke their holes with my finger before they disappeared. Once I asked him if he would let me try, and he just laughed.
“No way, kiddo! You’re too young to smoke! Maybe in a few years, if you still want to try it.”
“Oh, I will!” I assured him, feeling happy and grown up.
Whenever he took us on his errands, he would buy me and Louisa some sort of sweet treat, Lorna Doones, which he said were the best cookies in the world, or our other favorite, orange Popsicles, even though we made a mess. Just when the syrup was about to drip on the seats, he’d reach over and wipe the drips off our bare legs before they got the seat all sticky. Then he’d pull out a roll of paper towels and help us clean our hands of syrup. He was funny that way; he didn’t like messes of any kind and would always be wiping things clean, even when they weren’t dirty, like the handles of his tools, the bed of the truck, or the steering wheel. It was as if he could never get anything quite clean enough.
Sometimes Tony drove us all the way out of town to the Pine Grove Cemetery on the edge of the woods in Truro. He said he liked to go there and think because it was quiet and peaceful and with two babies at home he needed a lot of quiet and peace. Even the sound of too much change in his pockets could drive him nuts. He loved his sons, of course, but he really, really wanted a daughter, he said, maybe two so they’d be sisters, like me and Louisa. We’d walk through the rows of old tombstones, some of them so worn by time and the weather that you couldn’t see the name of who was underneath our feet. If it was raining, we just sat in the truck—Tony smoking his cigarettes—and watched the hawks and crows fly through the scrub oak and pitch pines, their squawks piercing the otherwise silent woods around us. Now and then Tony would forget the time and we’d be gone until almost dark. I wanted to ask if his wife and babies missed him, but I didn’t dare. I had met Avis a couple of times, and she seemed nice, even if she and the kids all looked sad and like they could use a hot bath. On extra-special nights, Tony would take me and Louisa out for a drive to Race Point Beach, where the air was cooler and the crowds were gone, leaving the parking lot and the sand dunes empty and quiet. It was almost like our own private beach without another person in sight. He also liked to stop at the salvage yard, even if it was closed for the day; Tony somehow knew how to get in. Some evenings we wouldn’t get home until after sunset, hungry and tired and ready for bed. Mom didn’t seem to mind, or even much notice.
14 THE PROVINCE LANDS
The Pilgrims called it the Province Lands. Most Americans and even many Cape Codders don’t know that the Pilgrims first landed not at Plymouth but at Provincetown. They spent a frigid winter trying to survive but just over half of the 132 passengers and crew aboard the Mayflower died from scurvy, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, as well as at least one drowning—that of Dorothy Bradford, the future governor’s wife, who either fell or jumped off the Mayflower and died in the icy waters of Provincetown Harbor. In the spring, the Pilgrims decided the tip of Cape Cod was too inhospitable, and most of them set sail across the bay for Plymouth, where they finally settled for good.
Life was hard for those who remained in Provincetown, particularly after they denuded the land of its old forests, leaving it a moonscape of marshes and sand, sand that blew across the barren land in the incessant wind. And while whaling was also grueling work, at least there were a lot of them. Until the mid-1800s, whales were so plentiful in the waters off Provincetown that one could be harpooned from the beach. Immigrants, particularly fishermen from Portugal and the Azores, flocked
to its bountiful shores.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the quaint fishing village had been discovered by the likes of Charles Webster Hawthorne and Edward Hopper, Eugene O’Neill and Edna St. Vincent Millay, who painted and wrote famous works in little shacks that dotted the sand dunes less than a mile from Commercial Street. When they and their fellow writers and artists arrived, most of them fleeing the heat and stench of New York and Boston summers, they found a quiet, sleepy downtown with unpaved streets and small shops and cottages so close together that residents knew when their neighbors were cooking bacon for breakfast. The artists came for the promise of another cloudless day and a mirror-flat bay smelling of sun-warmed sand, seagrass, rose hips, and bayberries. But mostly they came for the quality of the sunlight, said to be the best in the world for artists.
But Provincetown’s bucolic reputation for tranquil beauty and social tolerance had a dark and violent underside. In the early 1920s, the KKK burned a cross on the lawn of St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church because it embraced the ever-increasing immigrant population—ironic, since a huge percentage of the population was immigrants. Nonetheless, the angry minority let its hatred be seen and heard. Mercifully, the town rallied to defend the church and its Portuguese immigrants, and the KKK left and went searching for more xenophobic brethren.
In those days, more than sixty narrow wooden wharves stretched out into the sheltered bay. Deep-sea fishing was then and remains one of the world’s most dangerous occupations, and when fishermen came home after months at sea with the holds of their ships finally full, they would kneel on a wharf, bending to kiss its rough planks, and thank God that they had made it back from the roiling Atlantic one more time.
* * *
By the 1960s, Provincetown had been discovered by the world beyond the artist community. Norman Mailer described it to Jackie Kennedy as “the Wild West of the East.” From Memorial Day to Labor Day, its two main thoroughfares, long since paved, were swarming with bicycles, Volkswagen Beetles covered with peace-sign decals, Harley-Davidson motorcycles ridden by tattooed men in leather vests, their long hair under WWII army-green helmets, and crowded family station wagons, with striped beach chairs tied to the tops, all headed to the end of MacMillan Wharf or the beach. Souvenir shops, stores dedicated to selling only leather or penny candy or beach umbrellas, had all but replaced the fishmongers, Portuguese bakeries, and dusty bookstores. From end to end, the air around Commercial Street smelled of burnt sugar from the cotton candy and candied apples sold out of many storefronts. It smelled of fried clams and grilled hot dogs from John’s Footlong. It smelled of suntan oil and stale sweat, and when a bikini-clad girl on a bicycle or in a camper van full of teenagers passed, it smelled of patchouli oil and marijuana.