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The Gate House :: Demille Nelson
Страница: 5 из 490This time, I didn’t want to look, but the man next to me said, “That’s where the Towers were. To the left.” He pointed in front of my face. “There.”
I replied, “I know,” and picked up a magazine. Most of the people I still knew here in New York have told me that 9/11 made them rethink their lives and put things into perspective. That’s a good plan for the future, but it doesn’t change the past.
The British Airways flight began its final descent into Kennedy, and a few minutes later we touched down.
The man next to me said, “It’s good to be home.” He asked, “Is this home for you?”
“No.”
Soon I’d be in a rental car on my way back to the place I once called home, but which was now a place that time had partly eroded from my mind, washing away too many of the good memories and leaving behind the hard, jagged edges of the aforementioned disappointments, resentments, and betrayals.
The aircraft decelerated, then rolled out onto the taxiway toward the terminal.
Now that I was here, and would remain here until the funeral, perhaps I should use the time to try to reconcile the past with the present – then maybe I’d have better dreams on my return flight.
PART I
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past .
– F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
CHAPTER ONE
A week had passed since my return from London, and I was sitting at the table in the dining room of the small gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, my ex-wife’s former estate, wading through old files, family photos, and letters that I’d stored here for the last decade.
After my divorce from Susan, I’d fulfilled an old dream by taking my sailboat, a forty-six-foot Morgan ketch named the Paumanok II , on a sail around the world, which lasted three years. Paumanok, incidentally, is the indigenous Indian word for Long Island, and my illustrious ancestor, Walt Whitman, a native Long Islander, sometimes used this word in his poetry – and if Uncle Walt had owned a forty-six-foot yacht, I’m sure he’d have christened it the Paumanok , not “I Hear America Singing,” which is too long to put on the stern, or Leaves of Grass , which doesn’t sound seaworthy.
Anyway, my last port of call was Bournemouth, England, from which my other distant ancestors, the Sutters, had set sail for America three centuries before.
I replied, “I know,” and picked up a magazine. Most of the people I still knew here in New York have told me that 9/11 made them rethink their lives and put things into perspective. That’s a good plan for the future, but it doesn’t change the past.
The British Airways flight began its final descent into Kennedy, and a few minutes later we touched down.
The man next to me said, “It’s good to be home.” He asked, “Is this home for you?”
“No.”
Soon I’d be in a rental car on my way back to the place I once called home, but which was now a place that time had partly eroded from my mind, washing away too many of the good memories and leaving behind the hard, jagged edges of the aforementioned disappointments, resentments, and betrayals.
The aircraft decelerated, then rolled out onto the taxiway toward the terminal.
Now that I was here, and would remain here until the funeral, perhaps I should use the time to try to reconcile the past with the present – then maybe I’d have better dreams on my return flight.
PART I
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past .
– F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby
CHAPTER ONE
A week had passed since my return from London, and I was sitting at the table in the dining room of the small gatehouse of Stanhope Hall, my ex-wife’s former estate, wading through old files, family photos, and letters that I’d stored here for the last decade.
After my divorce from Susan, I’d fulfilled an old dream by taking my sailboat, a forty-six-foot Morgan ketch named the Paumanok II , on a sail around the world, which lasted three years. Paumanok, incidentally, is the indigenous Indian word for Long Island, and my illustrious ancestor, Walt Whitman, a native Long Islander, sometimes used this word in his poetry – and if Uncle Walt had owned a forty-six-foot yacht, I’m sure he’d have christened it the Paumanok , not “I Hear America Singing,” which is too long to put on the stern, or Leaves of Grass , which doesn’t sound seaworthy.
Anyway, my last port of call was Bournemouth, England, from which my other distant ancestors, the Sutters, had set sail for America three centuries before.