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Full Table of Contents: Surfing the Interstates: Complete Chapter Guide
Chapter One: Thumb Out
Tossing and turning, I finally awake. Twenty-one and broke. Already past noon, the mid-July sun in its full glory. I’ve been crashing in Ledge Acres’ servant’s quarters in the back of our sprawling 1865 farmhouse. Jimmy Matsudo’s old room. One foot already out the door.
We’ve lived here thirteen years. Twenty-five acres at the end of a dirt road, an hour from Grand Central Station. Close enough for my father’s daily commute, far enough to pretend we’re living in Vermont.
Jimmy was our live-in gardener when I was ten. Japanese man with some dark story about killing someone. My father didn’t seem to mind leaving him with Mama and us kids while he worked in the city. Jimmy was an older guy, athletic and hardworking, but surprisingly gentle. Once I spied him through his window while he meditated—sitting cross-legged, placing incense cones on his knees, letting them burn all the way down without flinching. He taught me so many things that stayed with me. Pet a dog’s cheek in circles with your knuckles, he’ll be your friend for life. Twist your ankle? Lie on your back, raise your foot, and shake it until it feels better. How to take plant cuttings and root them in sand.
Getting up. Survey the clutter. 1943 Harmony Cremona, I’ve nicknamed “Mona,” safe in her battered hard case. Brand new Kelty backpack loaded—tent, sleeping bag, mess kit, few days’ food. Sony cassette deck with carefully recorded mix tapes: Dead, Allmans, Airplane, CSN. Colombian weed and Bambus tucked away. Water bottle full. Everything I own.
Wander the empty house. My father—moved to the city. The younger kids—scattered to camps and day school. The two older sisters—somewhere. My mother—has taken Nana to the Senior Center.
Passing the living room doorway. Stop.
The July heat can’t erase the ghost of that first Christmas at Ledge Acres. I was eight, trying out my new downhill skis in the front yard when something made me turn back toward the house. Through that window—God, that window—I saw everything. Home. Family. What it meant to belong somewhere. I stood transfixed, leaning into my poles, watching the glow from that beautiful tree Nana had decorated with tinsel, one strand at a time. Hours of patient work, each strand placed with loving care. The pillaged presents spread out for yards around, the fire crackling. Everyone inside together—my sisters in matching nightgowns, my brother toddling around in footie pajamas. My mother’s face soft with exhaustion and joy. Even my father looked content, sipping ginger ale in his wingback chair. Thirteen years ago. Before things fell apart. Before we learned to walk on eggshells. Might as well have been a different family.
Kitchen. Silent. No smell of Sunday roast. No Nana making Toll House cookies. Just the refrigerator’s hum. From the laundry room—washing machine churning.
Last year I was passing by when movement through the open door caught my eye. My father had my mother pressed against the dryer, holding her wrist with one hand, backhanding her with the other. The sound of it—sharp, final. Just a glimpse, but enough to see her body go limp, accepting it. His face in profile: angry, unhinged, like he was whipping a horse. The same man who’d given me the belt when I was nine for hitting my sister. “You never hit a woman,” he’d said, making me drop my pants for the punishment. “Never.” The righteousness in his voice as leather met skin. The lesson he was teaching his son. And here he was, the son of a French count, hitting my mother while the washing machine covered the sound. My mother, who’d given him six children. Who’d moved seven times for his ambitions. I slipped away, unnoticed. Never said a word to anyone. What was there to say? Who would believe it? Even now, my hands make fists remembering. But I did nothing.
My parents’ room. My eye falls on my father’s dresser—where he’d stack his roll of hundreds each night. Nothing there.
Something pulls me to the small closet by my mother’s dresser. A tin box. Beneath some jewelry—a roll of twenties. Four bills. Eighty dollars.
Pocket change to my father. Salvation to me.
Pulse quickens. Should I leave a note? No time. She’ll understand.
Like finding an escape hatch in a sinking submarine.
I pocket the bills.
Back to Jimmy’s room. Wrestle the backpack straps onto my shoulders. Grab my guitar. Down the hall. Out the door. Past the lilac bushes lining the gravel driveway.
Turn back once more. The weeping willow my mother loves. Stone wall with its massive staircase. Tired white farmhouse. Stately oak. Bittersweet farewell. Divorce final. Estate under contract. Two thirds of my life lived here. End of an era.
Hiking down the mile-long dirt road. Feeling the full weight of my carefully selected burden—pack, 35 lbs—Mona in her battered but still bulletproof case, 15 lbs. Final hill’s crest—glimpse the stone aqueduct leading to Byram Lake. Fond memories of my dad taking me fishing years ago flood back, somehow softening my resentment, tugging weakly at my resolve to leave. I flash on that time he hooked a massive brown trout in the Mianus River Gorge, yelling for the net. The image of it jumping out of the water, sun reflecting on its impossible speckles—gone in an instant.
My father. Scowling. Blaming me for his loss. What made him so controlling? So intrusive? So demanding? So unforgiving?
Resolve restored.
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