long island summers

On summer weekends when I was a kid, we would often drive to Aunt Ellen's house on Long Island. The two hour drive was usually slow and stale, with no air conditioning and the smoke from my mother's Salem Lights stifling us. My father would miss the exit and we'd have to turn around at Jones Beach. We'd stop and buy a box of Entenmann's chocolate chip cookies when we were almost there.

Aunt Ellen and Uncle Joe had seven kids. All of my cousins were older than me, except Liz, who was two years younger. She was fun but had a bad temper. When she got punished in her room she would scream so loud we could hear her in the backyard. When she was really mad she would slam her door into the wall, creating a doorknob-sized hole in the wall. If she was mad at you she'd throw something of yours down the hole. Mostly she threw Aunt Ellen's cigarettes into the void. I wanted to marry my cousin Bill. He was cute and once gave me a black eye while playing frisbee. Kay was my favorite. She would give me rides on the handlebars of her bike and let me hang out with her friends. Hers were the first boobs I saw in person. They were huge.

When Mom was pregnant with my sister Erin, Dad took me and my brother Chris to Aunt Ellen's. It was fall so the cover was on the pool. Chris tried to walk on it and fell under the cover. Dad and Kay jumped in, fully clothed, and saved him. Afterward Dad hung his money on the clothes line to dry. (That was the same day Bill gave me the black eye). When we got home Mom saw my black eye and heard that Chris had almost drowned. She said Dad could never take us there alone again.

Aunt Ellen had a huge in-ground pool with a diving board. All the kids in the neighborhood would come over to swim. Aunt Ellen would grease up a watermelon and throw it in the pool to see who could lift it up and out of the water. An elderly couple whom we called Uncle Frank and Aunt Mitsy would visit for drinks. Uncle Frank would sit on the diving board and act as lifeguard. He was legally blind. Dave, the boy next door, would always ask us to swim in his pool. We wouldn't because it was small and above ground. He had a crush on me. Kevin, the boy across the street, had no pool and would swim in ours. I had a crush on him.

Some weekends we would sleep over. We'd have dinner around a large round table with a lazy susan. It was the only one I'd ever seen and I loved it. There was a large organ in the living room that no one knew how to play and we'd get into trouble for touching it. Aunt Ellen had HBO, and we'd all sit on the floor watching Saturday night movies. I first saw Grease and Terms of Endearment sitting on that floor. (I thought Debra Winger got cancer from having too much sex). Some nights we'd skip the movie and chase fireflies in the yard. We would always have sparklers, even when it wasn't the Fourth of July. We would sleep in my cousin Rob''s room. It smelled of incense and had glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. He was a stoner. In the morning, we would run barefoot into the yard and step on sticky slugs. We'd sprinkle salt on them and watch them bubble and die. I would always feel bad but I'd do it anyway. We'd spend the day swimming, riding bikes and chasing the ice cream truck. We'd eat hot dogs, Dad would drink and tell stories, and Mom would smoke and swim without getting her hair, or her cigarette, wet.

We would all fall asleep under a blanket on the drive home. Mom would yell "John!" every time Dad would swerve or close his eyes. I would keep my eyes closed and guess where we were - on the highway, on the bridge, in the tunnel. When I would hear the turn signal being used more often I would know that we were close to home. When I was really little, I would pretend that I was asleep so Dad would carry me up the stairs and into bed. I would sleep and dream that I was swimming.