Arrived in East Boston on a Saturday night. We get lost because the roads split into roundabouts, so Dan and Marta come to rescue us in a catering business parking lot. It’s dark, but the neighborhood is in full swing – children riding their bikes to the corner store, families sitting on the front stairs, calling out to each other. Cars in a traffic jam. Down the street Diva’s is closed, but pulsing with purple lights, the windows filled with child mannequins dressed in club wear. There are pay phones still intact and people use them.
We fall asleep to the sound of a baby crying, someone calling out to close a window, the click and whir of clothes in the dryer. The sun wakes me early, so I grab my camera, still in my nightgown, and sneak into the hallway to capture the morning light. I tiptoe through the apartment again to the back porch, to see the neighborhood waking. You can track generations of tenants through the lawn ornaments preserved in the back yards – two cows overturned on their backs, which Jeff later mistakes for two cats. A swing set sinks into the grass. The upstairs’ neighbors have lost their laundry on Dan and Marta’s porch, and the pair of shorts stays there for the rest of our trip. I am thinking about the baked eggs with tomato and bacon from Scup’s, the homemade side of pickled fennel, onions and peppers, because it’s almost dinner now and I’m hungry. Thinking about how nice it is to step into someone’s life, even if it’s only for a weekend.
i love morning light and the “disappear” photo, too. your hand has faded into thin air.
I would love a house with that staircase in it.
Good times! It’s a shame we never made it into Diva’s!
i’m not sure what we’d buy in diva’s, but i regret not having taken a picture!
I love this. The staircase shots and the secret garden are my favorites.
lizard, that’s sweet, thank you!