We boarded the train at 7 AM, my father, my sister and I. It was August 1985. Four years later I would take this same train to New York City, and my mother would leave the station in tears before I’d even board the train. “What’s wrong with her?” I’d say to my father, who would have come in from Chicago to accompany me to college. I’d be too preoccupied with my own fears of leaving home for the first time to consider my mother’s feelings, but on that morning in 1985 I was fairly certain she was feeling glad to be rid of my sister and me for the week. My father was taking us to Washington D.C.
August 28, 1985
1. The Power of Love, Huey Louis and the News
2. St. Elmo’s Fire, John Parr
3. We Don’t Need Another Hero, Tina Turner
4. Freedom, Wham!
5. The Summer of ‘69, Bryan Adams
6. Freeway of Love, Aretha Franklin
7. Dare Me, The Pointer Sisters
8. Take on Me, A-ha
9. Life in One Day, Howard Jones
10. Cherish, Kool and the Gang
As the train left the station and we settled into our seats, my father went to the dining car and returned with three cups of coffee. I had never had coffee and had no interest in the beverage, but I drank it anyway because in the first place I was tired and figured I could use the caffeine and in the second place because it seemed like the adult thing to do. Gotta start drinking it sometime, I thought.
Every adult I knew drank coffee, a drink seemingly as essential to their lives as oxygen. Is there any coffee? they’d say. Who wants coffee? Would you like more coffee? I need coffee. Morning, noon and night the subject was coffee. Even in August. Which never made sense to me. “How can you drink coffee when it’s so hot outside?” I asked my grandmother one Sunday morning as we sat eating breakfast in the enclosure. She had remodeled her kitchen and turned the back porch into an actual room with walls and a bay window and took to calling it “the enclosure.” I continued calling it “the porch.” She sipped her coffee and shrugged her shoulders. “Because it tastes good,” she said. Habit. Addiction. Boredom. Any of those would have been acceptable answers, but taste? Like beer, cigarettes, and wearing flip-flops in public, coffee was one of those things I never developed a taste for. The cup I had on the train that morning was the only cup I’ve ever had.
When we arrived at Grand Central Station in New York City, we had to transfer across town to Penn Station to continue on to D.C. We had some time to kill, so my father enthusiastically suggested we rent lockers, ditch our bags and explore the streets of Manhattan, but my sister, apparently having seen one too many episodes of Cagney and Lacey chasing down drug dealers and murderers, wanted no part of it. She planted herself on a bench beside a marble pillar and refused to exit the building. Had a fire broken out, she most likely would have chosen to stay and die of smoke inhalation rather than step out onto 42nd Street and risk becoming a victim of one of the many crimes sure to be occurring at that very moment. Manhattan to her is like coffee to me, although where I at least drank a cup she wouldn’t even take a sip. And still won’t.
We covered all the main attractions during our stay in D.C. The Capitol, The White House, the Watergate Hotel. Inside the Smithsonian we saw Fonzie’s leather jacket and Archie Bunker’s chair, and from the steps of Lincoln Memorial we took pictures of the Washington Monument reflected in The Pool. “We should come back at night,” I said, “when it’s all lit up.” I had seen a postcard of the Lincoln Memorial taken at night and it looked like quite the thing. Sensing enthusiasm, my father agreed and later that day, when we were in our hotel room and darkness fell, he stood up and said, “Okay, let’s go.” “Go where?” I said. “To the Lincoln Memorial. I thought you wanted to see it lit up.” I was surprised he had remembered and hated to let him down but the truth was the moment had passed. In the first place I was tired and in the second place “The Muppets Take Manhattan” was on HBO, a channel we didn’t have at home, and in the days before DVR, YouTube and Netflix, before even VCRs were as ubiquitous as blenders, opportunities to see a favorite movie were limited and unknown, so when it aired on TV you watched it, American landmarks be damned.
With my father, disappointment always arrives with a quiet sigh. So quiet his mouth often never even opens. The sigh escapes through his nose as a stream of air, followed by silence. A casual observer might mistake this for breathing, but those familiar with the event know it as much more. Between the two of us, my sister was usually the cause of this sigh, but in this case, that night in the hotel room, it was me, which surely pleased my sister. Surely, the words I’m glad it’s him and not me this time ran through her head. In Washington D.C. my father could do only as much as my sister and I wanted, which, on that night at least, was watching Miss Piggy get mugged in the middle of Central Park. Had I looked over at my sister I’m sure I would have seen her nodding her head knowingly. You see? she’d be saying. I was right to stay inside.
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| My sister and I, leaning against the Lincoln Memorial. |
With my father, disappointment always arrives with a quiet sigh. So quiet his mouth often never even opens. The sigh escapes through his nose as a stream of air, followed by silence. A casual observer might mistake this for breathing, but those familiar with the event know it as much more. Between the two of us, my sister was usually the cause of this sigh, but in this case, that night in the hotel room, it was me, which surely pleased my sister. Surely, the words I’m glad it’s him and not me this time ran through her head. In Washington D.C. my father could do only as much as my sister and I wanted, which, on that night at least, was watching Miss Piggy get mugged in the middle of Central Park. Had I looked over at my sister I’m sure I would have seen her nodding her head knowingly. You see? she’d be saying. I was right to stay inside.
