Runaways to Red bank, NJ, Part II: Do I Look Like I Gottittagive?

 (I'd suggest reading Ruanways to Red Bank, NJ, Part I first. And maybe both of them when you have food and beverage to take you through. As always, I have run off at the pen. I can't help myself. My mind wanders, and I feel compelled to force you to wander, too.)

 Breakfast was silly. Truly. It was like the day Jean Ellen and I went shopping in Viana do Castelo, Portugal. At the shop with the gorgeous shawls, the shopkeeper realized we were the Americans and she just had to know about our country. First of all, you gotta understand that Europeans back then, who had not traveled could not at first grasp the size of the USA. Oh for Heaven's sake, until I went to New Mexico then California, neither could I.  I could simply pretend I did. The shopkeeper asked whether we had been to someplace called Mendocino, CA "in the recent."

We tried to explain that we'd never been and she looked confused. Apparently, in Italian, she asked my sister how we could have come to France and Portugal, but not been to all of our own country? I told Jean Ellen to tell her it would have been like their traveling to Moscow, it's so far. When Jean Ellen told her this, her eyes grew so wide I thought they would pop. Still, we managed to communicate in Italian, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. She put the closed sign on the door and we drew, laughed, talked  and finally understood that  her daughter was in Mendocino, and they had never been. I think that was the only store we got to that day in Viana.

All of this I tried to tell the Da Silva's, and they just wouldn't let me leave, plying me with more food than I'd eaten in a year. The Da Silvas were like that. The men who had long since gone off to fish, and this was their time; they sat down with me for their breakfast and plunked the baby in my lap, while a four-year-old named Stefan ran around then would come back and look up at me intently and kiss my knee. And one of the relatives had been to Viana do Castelo and seen Santa Luzia at night.  She understood completely what I meant about the magic. She was from Oporto.

I had ... ummm... ovos estralados (The non-accented first and third "s's pronounced with "SH") Fried eggs. It's all I could order in Portuguese and I told them I'd wanted to impress them. The rest of the time I said, in Portuguese, that I didn't speak it. This endeared me, so they only spoke in English, fluent or choppy. BOY, were they easy. We spoke of Portuguese embroidery and I told them I owned five shawls, and then we got to the men men--Portuguese men. We all blushed. Never mind. That's another blog, perhaps. When I am drunk. Oh. Wait. I don't drink any more. Still, another time, perhaps.  What we all recognized was that we had something to blush about.

I spent a completely carefree hour and a half. The baby slept, Stefen climbed on my lap, too, and I folded him a swan from the placemat. Life was good.

West Long Branch, N.J. -- a Shabby Sort of Heaven
It was just about 10:00 when I finally left in search of adventure. Naturally, they would take no money. My car headed south from Sea Bright, so I went with it.  Fifteen minutes later, there appeared the boardwalk of West Long Branch, calling loudly to me to the left. Partway down was an old diner, and some older men outside, lounging, drinking coffee and smoking cigars. This looked promising.

Having learned the joys of flying solo, I knew that grabbing a table two tables from the men, tucked away under the overhang, they would probably forget my existence within a minute and a half. One of the men looked like Burt Lancaster in Field of Dreams.  He was long, lean, wore a snappy vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He was not in sneakers; no, indeed. He had on highly polished brown shoes that went with his cocoa pants and muted paisley vest. And he had on a jaunty cap. He had stepped directly out of the thirties, I think. And handsome, in the way that age cannot touch.

He tipped his cap to me, winked, and nodded. Yes, I blushed. I'm not the kind of woman anyone bothers with, really. Middle aged, heavy, with a pronounced and floppy limp. Still, for that moment I can tell you I was acutely aware that I was a woman being noticed.

His gaze shifted as a man about half his age began to become a bit agitated over something. "I'm tellin' ya, I ain't got it ta give, Lou."

Lou apparently didn't believe this, but I could tell only by his body language.  Burt's buddy, a stocky bull of a man, kind of snorted, jerking his head toward the younger pair. Even his smile was bullish. I thought of Rod Steiger in Oklahoma, playing Judd. No class, a little pathetic in his attempts to flirt--he smiled at me when Burt did, but it just wasn't the same--and the look of a man who probably had hairy toes and liked to stroke his own chest hairs when he was alone with a woman, as his brand of foreplay. (Maybe I've been alone too long. Oh, well. The women will know what I mean.)

The discussion clicked up a notch.  "Yeah, but Tony, I gotta have it," said Lou. "Ya told me you'd give it this week, and this week was last week."

"Yeah, but I DON'T GOTTITTAGIVE!" Tony turned to Burt. "Pop! Help me here. Lou, do I look like I gottit ta give? If I haddittagive I'd give it, but I DON"t Gotitta GIVE. Pop! Tell 'im."

Burt stretched his legs out straight in front of him, unrushed, unrattled, slowly crossing them at the ankles. He shrugged and clasped his hands behind his neck, "Lou. He don't gottitta give. Look at 'im. He don'tlook like he gottit, does he? No, he don't. But IF he haddittagive, he'd give it, yeah."

He turned to me suddenly. "Look at 'im. WhaddaYOU think?"

I could not stop myself. "He don't look like he gottitta give, but I think he'd give it if he hadditta give, but he don't got it. ... I think."

There was absolute silence for the longest three beats of my life. They all laughed, Burt stood up and bowed to me, then sat down again and motioned our waitress --whose name WAS, no lie, Bella. Furthermore, clearly she had forgotten to shave that morning so she had a stubble, and her slip showed below her uniform, but she also adored Burt. She came over with the coffee pot and said, "Breakfast's on him. Ain't he a doll?"

I nodded. But after I smiled at Burt, I looked down, and started to read like crazy. As I finished my coffee and fumbled for a tip, Burt began to sing some song that started "Just because you are mine, I love you..." I can't remember the rest, because Rod and he stood and sang in harmony to me, while Lou and Tony grinned.

I curtsied and ran to the car. I could hear them laughing, but it was the okay kind. And for once in my life, I didn't feel old and invisible.

Before I got in, still blushing, I turned to stare down the nine billion steps to the deserted, stony beach. Nope. Couldn't leave. I got out my camera, my backpack, and my photographer's vest. (It had come in handy shooting Pennsylvania holiday parades and festivals. People thought I was a reporter.) I gritted my teeth and headed down. I walked and walked. Then I walked. New Jersey was near the end of the process of eliminating stone breakwaters that had no gap from the buildings (usually hotels) to the sea. AS I said in my earlier post, their goal was to make every beach in the state accessible--no one could own the shore. Too bad Connecticut never followed suit.

Anyway, after an hour or so, I kicked off my shoes, took my journal out of my backpack, sat on a log and wrote. And I wrote. And then I wrote some more.  This photograph is the only tangible thing I have from that day.

It was somehow close to 4:00,  by the time I climbed back into my car, exhausted, in pain, and contented down to those sand-filled shoes. 'And,' I thought, 'I still have tomorrow!  That's it. I'll go to Red Bank tomorrow.'