Back at the old camp ground again June 14, 1985

 

Here again, like a ghost, only years later and under quite different circumstances.

I’m tempted to think of this place, the Highland Camp ground, as the same place we went to that Fourth of July weekend in 82, but it’s not.

The only memories here are those of despair, Louise and Ruby trapped after Louise’s latest lover left her in the lurch, no job, no home, no money to get a new place with winter coming and the camp ground getting ready to close.

Why I’ve come all this way without knowing where they live annoys me.  It reminds me of how all those years ago I went to Scranton without a clue as to where they were, hoping luck or fate would let me run into them again.

Then like now, there are too many faces on the crowded streets and too few clues, no trail of bread crumbs I can follow that will lead me to them.

Maybe like then, I’m trying to prove to myself that they are actually gone.

How far have then gone this time? Surely not Portland again. Even Louise must realize she can’t keep bouncing from coast to coast. She needs some logical reason for change other than just the desire for it. Although Louise has never needed a real reason in the past; she simply went and hoped for the best, expecting good things to happen simply by showing up somewhere.

Which brings me back to my original thought: What the hell am I doing here? What do I expect to find except cold ashes or the potential for trouble?

I tell myself I’m here to see my daughter yet know it’s more than that.

I’m here to settle something, some basic unresolved conflict, we could not come to terms with at previous encounters, despite all the letters back and forth.

Both Louise and I have avoided an issue we’re both too scared to speak about openly, or perhaps something we are only vaguely aware of, teasing us like the shards of a half-remembered nightmare.

I came here expecting a miracle, sleeping in my car with the hopes fate would let me get a glimpse of them, which did not happen.

Rain pounded on the hood of the car; which may explain why the police never bothered me, even though I spent a restless night waiting for their knock on the driver’s side door.

I woke to sunlight, a hazy sun shinning through a dense fog, with a patched sky promising more rain.

Perhaps I expected to find Louise hanging out at the first bar I stopped at along the road into this place, where I might find her engaged with some new boyfriend, her expression shocked at seeing me walk through the door, still angry at my last cruel letter.

I kept thinking about the last time I’d made an unannounced visit, the time before her flight to Portland, where I got a glimpse of my then seven-year-old daughter playing happily in some other man’s yard.

Louise was less than thrilled at seeing me, partly because I did not come with a wheelbarrow full of money.

She equates love and caring with cash, letting men sweep her off her feet if they can provide for her, dumping them when she discovers they can’t.

She blames other people – most often me – for her failures, and at some point, she will have to accept responsibility for her own actions – but only God knows when.

What am I doing here? Looking for more abuse? More rejection? Am I expecting love to shine through Louise’s veil of hate the way the sunlight was through the clouded sky, hoping that that she will come to realize her perceptions of me have been wrong all along?

I remember brief moments of joy when we reconnected that Fourth of July, the giggles we had spending time in my car together, eating shelled peanuts, throwing the husks out the window hoping nobody would notice.

I’m here because I know I’ve failed, too, and need somehow to fix it, but knowing I can’t fix anything if I don’t find her.

 

 1985 menu


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