I.
“Hey. I have kind of a weird question for you.” His voice echoes in that weird empty telephone way. “When you write your parentheses… do you still put that little dash in the middle of them? Because I’ve been doing it like that for four years and I just had this thought—I wondered if you still do that.”
I’m amused that he’s calling to ask that. I’m amused that he ever picked that up from me at all—the kind of thing he would have teased me about four years ago. He actually adopted it and kept doing it, and when everything else has changed for us, he kept my parentheses.
II.
Chad lets me take the wheel of the boat for a few minutes, for a photo opportunity. I take it because it’s an opportunity to try something I’ve never tried before, and might never get to try again. He stands next to me and tells me what to do, what buttons to press and what levers to pull, and explains right of way and the buoy system on the water. When I relinquish pilot again, he hands me the map and tells me to find where we are. I’m learning things.
“Look for that buoy. There we are. See how the water level changes, and how they mark it on the map?” he says. I look at the creases, and the publishing date. “Does anything change about the lake from year to year?” I ask, thinking about erosion and how high tide is slightly different every day. “Nope,” he replies immediately, almost before I’ve finished asking. “Nothing ever changes.”
In the no-wake zone, speed limit is 5 miles per hour. Not fast enough to make a wake, to create waves that beat up against the other boats and knock them against the dock, to wear down the bridge supports. In the no wake zone, the goal is to drive the boat as if we have to convince everyone later that we were never there.
III.
We never would have heard the car if not for the music—the guy was backing his boat right down our little beach, where the three of us lay with our eyes closed. At the last minute we heard him and scrambled out of the way just in time. We sat off the path, watching him launch while a familiar old folk song wafted out of the open car windows: “If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I am gone. You can hear the whistle blow, a hundred miles. A hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, a hundred miles, you can hear the whistle blow, a hundred miles.” It played three or four times before I realized it was on repeat. That one song, that one verse. The old man was alone with his car and his boat, a hundred miles.
IV.
Opening day: new season begins at Amsterdam’s city pool
Another day at the city pool. Another hot, boring summer—by mid-July, we wish school would start back up again. Another night waiting for the sun to go down so the house will be hotter than the backyard and we can go sit in the porch furniture and try to figure out how to get alcohol, where to drink it, and what to do once we’ve done that. Another horde of mosquitoes chasing us inside to watch another episode of Futurama and go to sleep to wake up late—again.
V.
I’ve gone a hundred miles, five hundred miles—one thousand, one hundred and ninety-one miles from this no-wake zone, this town where nothing ever changes. And things have changed.
I come from a town of 18,000—now it’s a town of 15,000. I rode my bike past my old house a few weeks ago at dusk, when you can see into the upstairs picture windows. When we lived there, you could see a wine-red wall and a deep blue wall with purple sponging. Now it’s white. When I left, I had just finished going to my classmates’ graduation parties. Now, I’m going to graduation parties for my brother’s friends.
In the past six months there have been two drug busts in houses across the street from where my ex-boyfriend grew up. At least twelve houses on their street are for sale. The old immigrant two-family houses from the Rug City era are becoming unoccupied and dilapidated. Some of them are drug houses. Amsterdam’s drug of choice is cocaine. The police now wear bulletproof vests at all times, and the fire department changed their uniform so they wouldn’t be mistaken for police officers and shot at. Hagaman and all of Amsterdam’s parks have curfews. Fastrak scans IDs and cops hang out there at night and somebody pulled a gun at Stewarts’ on Market Street a few weeks ago. They kept it on the down-low though.
The “bad” neighborhoods are moving up, and the people I know who used to live in those neighborhoods are moving out, locking their doors and not answering them unless they’re expecting you. Another old factory building just burned down the other night; they’re still investigating whether it was some kids fooling around or insurance fraud. It could be either one, but everyone who lives in the area was evacuated and camped out behind the Noteworthy Indian Museum at 2:30am on Wednesday night. Everyone else drove to Rite Aid to watch the blaze.
Five years ago I was leaving the country for the first time, and everyone thought I was crazy. Now, most of my friends are out of town, and quite a few of them are out of the country—in Europe, India, Brazil, South Africa. They’re playing, working, studying, or looking for direction in their lives. Five years ago my friends were getting their first jobs, and now my sister’s friends have jobs and go to parties that my friends go to. There are new jobs now, though. Businesses have moved and gone out of business and new ones have come in. Amsterdam has a local open mic night and a new Dunkin’ Donuts, a Target and a Super-Walmart, new townhouses and developing condos. I heard there is a bookstore downtown, but I haven’t been. No one ever used to go downtown and I don’t think they do now.
