A check, which becomes a little cash. A call to Sunbeam, which becomes an untethering. A Google search for “Cape Cod Bed and Breakfast” — which becomes a send off.
Cute Husband and I grab our fuzzy chicken-legged baby and escape.
We hit the road after 5:00 on a rainy Saturday afternoon. We find Dennis Port off of Highway 28. The scrub pine thins out, grass gives way to sand, and houses climb higher on their stilts until finally we can peek around one and see … ocean.
I stick my toes in the cold wet sand while Cute Husband checks us in. I dip Edeny’s toes, too.
We are Hungry, and we ask where we should eat, and the woman says Italian? And we say — Are you kidding? And she says, seafood, then — you need to go to the Ocean House.
And we do, even after we see the menu and the price list that puts little holes in the pits of our stomachs, but this is an Escape so off we go.
It is about two blocks down the street. Serendipity.
We find the dark-wood paneled lounge, with tall windows peering out to gray ocean, just like a living room I once knew long ago. I consider the ache, but we do it anyway, and after a martini it aches less.
A lightning storm out to sea, cold vodka, and a bento box appetizer with seafood wrapped and fried, layered, chopped raw (FYI ahi tuna works with buttered popcorn, don’t ask me how).
I saw the lobster on the menu and tried to talk myself out of it. $45? And all the work is done for you? Puh-lease. Just pop those bad boys in the ole kettle for a bit, at $5 a pound. Besides I am a New England drawn-butter girl, and this sounds a little too fancy-fancy for me.
But Cute Husband makes me, and he orders the cod special and I save a bit of my martini and when the lobster arrives it is stacked, shelled, on a pile of jasmine rice.
Four sauces — one of them drawn butter — come in behind it in little squares. I slice into the lobster — pillowy and succulent, bring it to my mouth and it’s like a sea cloud and I may never boil another lobster again. (The chile, garlic cream and lemongrass squares? — Swiped clean. Untouched: the greasy puddle of drawn butter.)
I order the lemon coconut cake. We chat about celebrity deaths, the stock market and Great Houses Past. The coconut cake arrives with a chocolate spoon artfully posed in a pile of cream, with a shadow of itself sprinkled in cocoa on the plate below.
The bill comes — a week’s-worth-of-groceries bill– and we pay it and that’s when the server notices Schmoopy tucked into the sling, one foot sticking out, and congratulates us on our skills as new parents and we thank her without telling her how much practice we’ve had.
An ocean walk in the dark and then clean sheets, a puffy comforter. Chicken-Legs tucks in between us, up to her chin, “Guys this is great! We gotta do this more often!” She snores all night long.
Breakfast-by-the-sea, eggs and coffee and pastries and a rain-spatted window.
A text from Sunbeam, “I have work covered. No curfew for you, be free!”
“YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!” I text back (with just that many A’s,) and we hit the road and go South, just as South as we can go, driving and talking about lobster and the weather and Why Anyone Cares What Religion Anyone Else Is.
We stop in Chatham and then at the National Seashore and we try not to kill the cyclists or ram the bad drivers and we consider when we will have children old enough to go kayaking.
We find Provincetown and park and load the Schmoop into the sling and walk. It is a Portuguese festival because, apparently, this little crumb of the world is steeped in all things Portuguese and gay counter-culture.
Breeders. We are out as Breeders, with our mini-van and spawn in a sling, looking for coffee.
We have arrived at the Blessing of the Fleet (Serendipity!) and follow the parade to the Harbor — dancers and ship’s crews and a trolly full of backup for whatever God you want to pray to.
Two Yankee sailors and an Invocation.
A “critter tour” — you can take a boat out to pick up funky things from the sea bottom. We didn’t do this, but want to come back with the rest of our spawn.
I spent this trip figuring out how much I could cram into one cell-phone picture, with a baby in a sling.
This is the coolest store in the entire Commonwealth. They sell: lobster traps, old anchors, American Airlines First Class dinnerware, wedding gowns. And men’s underwear.
A local stained glass shop:
My new hero. Ellie — singing her heart out in a silky baritone.
I ask her permission to photograph her, and she says “yes” and I think: wow. To stand on a sidewalk and sing and know who you are amid the gawkers and picture-takers. I have less to be gawked at about — I am pedantic, vanilla, suburban — and I’m not that brave.
Lunch. The man at the parking lot told us the Mayflower Cafe was where to go. After asking him, we decided he looked sketchy and we didn’t believe him and then we go there anyway and realize when it comes to local, Sketchy is often Right On.
We eat clams — mine fried, his steamed — and drink more cold vodka — mine a martini, his a bloody Mary — and talk about gas prices and auto repair and Whether Our Lives are Hard or Easy.
People passing in the window peer in at our baby and wave to her and talk about how freaking adorable she is.
And then we drive home in a light gray rain. The pine scrub grows closer together, sand gives way to grass and then asphalt and then we are on the highway at foreign exits that grow closer to familiar exits until they are really familiar ones until they are the old comfortable worn ones and we turn off and then we are down a pretty green road and find a little tilty-floored farmhouse nestled in trees draped in honeysuckle, with beach towels drying/getting rained on on the front lawn.
“DADDDYYY MOMMA!!!”
Man those kids are freaking cute. Sunbeam looks intact. She slept with them in the big bed, she says, and after they tucked in the Fleet of Dolls the only room left was stretched across the foot, which was fine. I hope she found the extra blankets and pillows.
They ate biscuits and chocolate and made art and tomorrow they want to go to the fabric store and the Terror Tot indoor playground and a movie. We laugh and say “yes, yes yes!”
And we catch eyes over their heads, and clasp hands and squeeze and it’s really really good to be Home.
***
By the Sea Inn, Dennis Port, MA
http://www.bytheseaguests.com/
Ocean House
http://www.oceanhouserestaurant.com/
Provincetown
http://www.provincetown.com/
Mayflower Cafe
http://www.mayflower-ptown.com/
