Island
Living 43: Staten Island is Everywhere
by A. D.
Coleman |
|
Trudging up
the steep hill in Golfe-Juan along which the Chemin
de la Gabelle ran, there in the south of France
last July, looking for a house I'd lived in briefly
as a young boy, I began to doubt the wisdom of this
pilgrimage. I hadn't regained my full strength from
the car crash in Rosebank ten days earlier. I couldn't
inhale fully, because my breastbone ached, and holding
my torso at the angle demanded by that degree of
incline brought on the torn sensation that I still
felt in and around my chest. Though I wore the new
Panama hat to which I'd treated myself in Arles
when I got there a week earlier, the sun and heat
still came through, and I felt myself sweating more
than usual in that climate. I began to worry about
fainting in the road, and considering stopping and
turning back.
To bolster my
courage and keep my mind off my discomfort I recited
the first poem I'd ever written, produced while
I was living there at age seven and a half, in response
to a dog that had scared me regularly when I came
home at dusk after a hard day of classes and after-school
play:
A dog will bark
when it is dark.
He will not bark
when it is sunny.
When it's sunny
he'll call you honey.
But when it's dark,
he'll bark.
My father, I recalled, had been so impressed with
this when I came home and recited it that he'd written
it down. I couldn't remember writing it, or the
dog who'd inspired it, but was glad to have the
poem, and grateful to my father for preserving it.
There's a line that runs directly from that poem
to this very essay you're reading: From then on,
in some ways, writing has served me as a medium
for memory storage, important because so much experience
seems to slip away, so quickly.
Then, suddenly,
I came around a bend and there it was: Villa Florentine,
number 625, looking much as it had in 1951, but
smaller. The same chiselled sign on the front columns.
The ornate gates to the driveway were locked, and
behind them I could see a garage and a smaller building
that hadn't been there half a century ago. The garade
blocked my view of the main house, but what I could
see of the upper stories seemed unchanged from the
outside. The high stone-walled reservoir around
whose edge I'd walked (to the dismay of my parents)
still occupied one corner of the grounds, and the
old stone wash-house still stood next to it.
I don't recall
this event, but my mother (who never forgot it until
she succumbed to Alzheimer's and forgot everything,
including my name) recounted this tale often enough
that it became part of the lore of my past. So it
pleased me -- and I'm pleased to confirm -- that
I received excellent treatment and compassionate
care at the St. Vincent's here, good enough (aside
from the hospital food) to balance out any previous
less than loving attention at any other institution
under the watchful eye of the patron saint of hospitals
and lost articles.
It appeared
the lot had become subdivided, with no access to
the villa through those gates, so I walked around
to a path on the side to get a better look at the
main house. I realized that, improbably, it looked
something like the house I bought here on Staten
Island over thirty years ago, and have lived in
ever since: roughly the same size, also stucco over
brick, also perched on a hillside with terraces
and a garden . . .
I didn't find
a way into that part of the grounds, and even though
I saw no signs of life it didn't seem right to hop
the fence. So I made a few photos with my digital
camera and walked back out to the road. I took a
few more pictures, jotted down some notes; then,
tired and hungry, I pulled out my lunch -- a small
cheese-and-onion quiche -- and my bottled water,
and sat down on a ledge across the road.
I'd just started
to eat when a sudden loud barking right behind me
almost made me drop my food. I turned around to
see a big yellow dog, like the ghost of my nemesis
from that previous life. I told him I'd known his
great-great-great-grandfather, and threw him a bite
of my cheese pie, then recited my poem to him as
he gobbled it down and trotted off, placated.
Though I'd noticed
a car in the garage, I'd seen and heard no one around,
and felt uncomfortable about intruding into anyone's
privacy by using the intercom on the gatepost. Resigned
to merely observing the place from the outside,
and perfectly happy with that direct link to my
own past, I brushed the crumbs of lunch off my pants
and began putting my notes and camera away, when
a DHL truck pulled up to make an express-mail delivery.
I watched the driver ring the buzzer; a few minutes
later, a pleasant-looking older woman came around
a corner of the smaller house, reaching through
the gate to get the package and sign for it.
I took it as
a permission, crossed the street, and stood quietly
to the side as she and the DHL courier finished
their business. When he turned to go, she looked
at me quizzically. In my best French, I explained
my presence, sketching out my personal history in
that town and that villa. I'd been born in New York
City, where I live now, I added. But she had relatives
in New York, she told me. Where in the city did
I live? Staten Island, I replied. Excitedly, she
called out to someone while opening the gate and
beckoning me in.
She and her
husband -- they're M. and Mme. Jean Martos, Jeannot
and Lisette to their friends and relatives -- spent
the next several hours plying me with cold beer
as we talked about that villa, the town, and other
matters. They had bought the subdivided plot to
build on it the handsome, comfortable one-story
house in which they lived, giving the adjacent gatehouse
to their daughter. The villa, they told me, hadn't
altered on the outside but had undergone complete
remodelling on the interior; I wouldn't recognize
it now. Besides, the owner was away; impossible
for me even to peek inside. So I contented myself
with the smells -- eucalyptus, roses, geraniums,
and especially mimosa -- that trigger my sensual
meory of that locale more quickly than anything
else. And with the view from their patio, across
the well-tended gardens of their house and the villa,
down the hill and over the town to the beach and
the sea, a vista that (with the exception of TV
antennas on many rooftops) looked as it had when
I'd seen it last, in 1953.
M. and Mme.
Martos had lived in the area for many years; they
knew the school, of course, and told me much about
the changes in the town, and in that region -- a
sleepy little village in the early 1950s, now heavily
subsidized by tourism, gentrified, modernized in
various ways yet remarkably preserved in others.
We enjoyed these reminiscences greatly. But here's
why they'd welcomed me in, the part that astonished
us all: Lisette Martos originally came to France
from Italy, and has a cousin, John Peduzzi, a policeman,
who lives with his wife Anna . . . on Staten Island.
In Eltingville, to be precise. Turns out I'd come
all the way to France to revisit a house I'd lived
in half a century ago, only to find there the relatives
of someone who lives a few miles from me here.
Eventually it
came time to leave. Jeannot and Lisette walked me
out to the gate. I promised to contact the Peduzzis,
and we said our goodbyes. It had cooled down, and
dark clouds were scudding in. I turned south and
let gravity pull me down the hill I'd struggled
up a few hours earlier. When I was a child, the
walk to school along that road had seemed an extraordinary
and lengthy journey every day. Even with two beers
in me, on my adult legs it took just twenty minutes
to make my way down past the school to the station.
The rain started as my train pulled out. The next
morning I flew home.
•
People who've
suffered collision injuries like mine told me that
this would take time to heal fully, possibly even
months. So I was careful; I didn't lift anything
too heavy for awhile, and generally watched my step.
However, when I got home I started to work daily
in my garden, pushing myself just to the point at
which things began to hurt a little, then stopping.
By the end of July I'd made a complete recovery
-- and, just as importantly, the garden had come
back from the jungle that my neglect had encouraged
to a better-tended space that looks . . . well,
more than a little bit Mediterranean.
So, all in all,
I'm better than good, just fine. I haven't replaced
the car yet, and don't know if I will. Not out of
fear -- I've driven two rental cars since, without
any anxiety, and don't feel any nervousness behind
the wheel. But it's a considerable expense and nuisance
to maintain one. I'm going to see if I really miss
it, or if simply splurging more often on taxis and
the occasional rental for a weekend or a week won't
fill my automotive needs just as well and for much
less money and bother. Meanwhile, I've cleaned up
an old ten-speed bike I had sitting around, and
have started to use that for errands and other local
travel. One of the aspects of European urban life
I enjoy is the continuing presence of bicycles as
an everyday form of transportation; that seems to
suit Staten Island very well. And I can use the
exercise.
In retrospect,
the entire experience strikes me as a transformative
dream. That car crash changed my life. I'm still
not sure how my childhood years in France shaped
me, but my connection with that phase of my experience,
and with that specific place, now feels stronger
than ever. So, as a volunteer cultural ambassador
and self-appointed spokesperson for this neighborhood,
I hereby unilaterally and informally declare Golfe-Juan
the "sister township" of Stapleton. To
cement the bond, I'm naming my big yellow house
on Van Duzer Street the Villa Florentine Artists'
House. You'll see a sign to that effect hanging
outside of here early next year. If I can arrange
it, starting next summer, we'll initiate an ambitious
cultural events and exchange program. Stay tuned.
(Last of
three parts.)
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Copyright 2000 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
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