Hoffman and I drive from Manhattan to Cape Cod Friday night.
We leave in the late evening.
(We learn later that traffic was so bad the following day, it took six hours to drive from Boston to the Bourne. We made the right decision to travel at night).
Waiting for Hoffman, I realize that I am wrecked from laundry, packing, and setting up food and kittylitter for the cat. I feel wiped. I feel flu-ish. I feel ready for bed. (It feels like... you haven't slept in nights, that you might have a sore throat, and that you may have fallen out of a slow moving vehicle (some time last night?) bruising and cutting up your legs, your hips. (Yet there is also this (false) sense that your body will recover)
I mean, this is what the body does... right?
I make a cup of coffee at home, put it in a saved paper cup, and sit in my fancy, shiny, clean lobby.
Hoffman arrives grinnng and gallanlty grabs my bag without asking, and we pile into his vintage, beige '80's volvo sedan.
We are off.
We are off... strutting down the Henry Hudson, hurtling across the Cross Bronx Parkway, humming down the Merrit, finally released to banal I-95.
Along the way, there is the heavy overhang of trees, of lush greenery, with the car windows down and the skyroof open, I am having sweet flashbacks to my suburban Connecticut adolescence, boating down the Merrit in my (just right) convertible safron VW, my headlights alluding to secluded real estate, to the priviledged privacy of tree-laden Connecticut.
Hoffman and I get lost, but there is little traffic so our meandering is without penalty. After Providence, we make an unintended breif visit to Wheaton College which was historic and impressive.
We get to my parent’s condo around one thirty.
Hoffman sleeps upstairs and I down.
I sleep in fits because of my late coffee and the residual buzz of late night driving.
In the morning, I find Mom at the kitchen counter with coffee and paper.
Mom and I are stiff with each other. My climb up the stairs is labored and noisy. Does this frighten her? Who am I? (these days)
(Usually) I am all smiles in the morning, eager for my morning coffee buzz. But now I am in perpetual, rankled, old man mode. What is there to smile about? I mean what the f*ck is this?
Right?
My mother, who often enjoys me and enjoys living through me, enjoys hearing about my career wins and personal stumbles,
(now) seems scared of me.
She takes the blame for all that goes wrong in her children's lives.
And I can't help but allowing a little of this guilt to grow.
Why DID you have me? This is lfe has not been good, too much mess, too much confusion, too much anguish (for me).
Look at you! You’re eighty and perfectly healthy.
We have coffee. I ask her to put on a new pot because the first one has become bitter and muddy.
Hoffman clammers down from his private suite.
My Mother loves company. I forgot this. I have not had my friends around my parents in decades because I always had the idea that my Dad wouldn’t like it. I’m not sure if this is true now. My mother is soaking up Hoffman and I am now reconsidering my decision, the last 25 years.
Hoffman and my mother are both talky people. I don't have to do any heavy lifting.
They discover (on their own ) they both went to University of Wisconsin! they both LOVE the NYT’s crossword! they like math! (all of this through the miralcle of caffeene)
During coffee, I consider how I will shower, have time to nap, and if my mother should come to the screening tonight.
There is a film-makers party at Captain Kid's in Woods Hole for the film makers at ten, my mother can’t stay up past nine.
Maybe its not such a great idea for her to come.
I have the impulse to maker her go, to experience our life, my film, her son’s film in her own community of Woods Hole. But my family has lost interest to our connection to the outside world.
(also) I ‘m worried about raining on Hoffman’s fun.
I suggest (instead) to employ my mother’s g-d given talent, the real estate tour. She is amazing at assembing facts and innuendos of suburban communal life, while weilding her SUV and relenting to her own misgivings at missing out on this or that real estate opportunity. It has the mesmerising effect that this in the only community worth investing in. And if you don't, you have missed a rare opportunity for the good life.
We drive through Ballymeade Country Club and downtown Falmouth in mom’s newish Cadilack SUV.
(In New York JayZ would drive this elegant gas guzzler)
Hoffman is up front and I am in the back. We’re like a gay couple co-broked from Hell’s Kitchen to Falmouth.
We circle Ballymeade Estates; a Cape Cod Disney Village - brandnew mini-mansions - historic rooflines, cedar shingles, plastic doors, vinyl windows.
We drive down main street, bustling and quaint.
“Kathy Bates was born here. Not that one, the one who wrote America the Beautiful”
We drive past horse farms and ponds. We drive through an organic hippy co-op villlage. We drive past Cape Cod after Cape Cod house. We drive home.
Later, we drive to our screening 15 miles away in salty, smart, Woods Hole. Hoffman drops me off at the Land Fall.
The Land Fall is one of those cavernous,nauticle, seafood joints on the water. Preppy looking kids in polos bartend amidst the hopeful glint of continued waspy summers by the sea. Sitting at the bar is like wathching the new kids of broadway, all these lean tanned summer co-eds... ah yes, what a relief, tradtional white upper middle class is (alive and well) in the beer stained fish joints of Cape Cod.
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