The Rag and Leaving for Scranton

I couldn't have been gone more than five minutes, but by the time I popped into the kitchen loking for a promised glass of Pinot Grigio, The Rag was already there, glass in hand. I hate when this happens, and it happens all the time. He never says anything much, just appears, and sits there with a brooding look while Siss and I talk. His presence never fails to set up an awkwardness and Siss never fails to include him without telling me....even on this "sisters' weekend". The last time I was in New Providence I brought Sig along to meet my only sister. We stayed in a great B&B across the street from Siss' house (part of this B&B was the converted apartment where The Rag used to dwell), and planned a glorious picnic in a grove near the old Civil and Revolutionary War cemetery with the many matter-of-fact inscriptions to entertain us. Not quite "died with his boots on" but just as forthright. However, when we sat down on the grass, The Rag immediately wandered away by himself and never said a word to anyone all day. Hence his moniker,"The Wet Rag", coined by Sig that very day.

This time around, I sat on Siss' back porch, deep into my second glass of wine, waiting and praying for him to just go home. I know that he asked me a question, which shocked the bejesus out of me. We were talking about the vacation I had just taken with Sig to Moab Utah, a mountain biking Mecca. I was laughing about having to rent a full-suspension bike because I had come to the famous Slickrock Trail and only owned a hard-tail. Suddenly this voice piped in, "What's a hard-tail?", and I honest-to-God didn't recognize whose voice it was. It was The Rag. It is telling that such an unmemorable question sticks out in my mind, but answering it spared me at least two minutes of his woodenness.

The back porch is one of my favorite things about Siss' place. It is low and shady, opening onto a lush lawn where fat robins wrestle with earthworms. Siss and I have tea there in the early mornings of every visit. We are Irish by both heritage and upbringing, and drink tea with milk, and I use sugar. It is another comfort food for me, bringing back memories of a snowy childhood. These days, Siss "nukes" hers in the microwave in a styrofoam cup when she is leaving for work in the morning, but not when I am there.

On this evening, we finished our wine and had dinner in the kitchen. The entree could have been anything, but the punctuation of those tomatoes and the crisp, curly lettuce, and the blueberries for dessert, made the entree irrelevant. I got what I came for except, of course, for The Rag. To add insult to injury, he stayed for a mivie as well, and Siss and I got no further time together until the next day.

I creaked down the steep stairs early the next morning, excited to get the trip underway. I tried to stay off the middle of the risers, but in houses this old the entire stair creaks. So what. Siss was up anyway, and already drinking tea (out of a real cup) on the back porch in her jammies. What did I expect? This is a woman who makes rounds with the surgeons at 6 A.M. I joined her in my own jammies, jersey pants printed with moose, a souvenir of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a t-shirt. For once, The Rag was nowhere to be seen. I had said nothing to her about last night, or about any of his other intrusions, because it is her house, but this time we had agreed that this time it was to be a "sisters only" trip. She had actually requested to go to Sig's place on her birthday trip, seeing that he's a nice guy and treats her like royalty, but The Rag is nowhere near a nice guy. Still, I held my tongue, which amounts to a recurring theme in the sisterly relationship; the one that was heading for the skids.

It takes about three hours to get to Scranton from Siss' house. There are many ways to untangle the knot of roads that lead out of Lancaster County, none convenient but all both quaint and beautiful. They all end up taking you north on Interstate 81 through low, mounded mountains and old coal towns with picturesque names like Tuscarora, and not-so-picturesque names like McAdoo (pronounced "Mackadoo") and Scotrun, which Siss always swore looked like "Scrotum" when she saw the road sign. I settled into the passenger seat of her mint-green, metallic Volvo wagon, watching the pastures and cultivated fields give way to the maples and broad-leafed oaks I remembered so well. In August, it was already evident that the seasons were about to change. The leaves looked tired and rusty, the greens having deepened to forest and their size giving them a discouraged droop. In Houston, the leaves skip the yellows and reds and go directly to brown. They tend to hang onto the tree until the next year's growth pushes them off. This means raking leaves in the spring. Well, the rich man gets his ice in the summer, but the poor man gets his in the winter.

During the drive, we talked about our extended family, some of whom live in Scranton. We did not intend to see anyone but each other on this trip, but juicy gossip helps the miles fly by. For instance, we have a cousin (male) who has been in and out of rehab several times for alcohol and/or drug abuse, is chronically out of work but manages to brag about having "bought" cars for all four of his sons, and worked the system to fake disability to support his lifestyle. I know this guy well. He is ten years my junior, being the son of the youngest of my father's siblings, and I used to babysit him when he was a little creep. Now he is a big creep. The last time I saw him, he called me "artsy-fartsy", which made him feel better about himself. I, in my turn, told him exactly how offensive I found him, which made me feel better about the whole world.