The Longest Way Home

by Andrew McCarthy

  “Let’s get out on the water,” Seve suggests, and we quit the apartment hunting and hop on the first water taxi that comes to the Fells Point Landing. It’s headed to Fort McHenry, the old military base made famous during a battle in the War of 1812, after which, upon seeing the American flag still flying, Francis Scott Key wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner” and set it to the tune of an old English drinking song. The entire fort and interactive displays are dedicated to this song, including a brief movie intended to stir feelings of patriotism and moisten the eyes. At the climax of the film, the screen drops away and through the glass wall behind it, we gaze out upon the actual banner yet waving, o’er the land of the free.

  When the lights come up, the crowd seems more confused by the jingoistic assault than moved by patriotism. I find Seve leaning against a wall, shaking his head.

  “When did patriotism become so aggressive?” he asks.

  “September eleventh,” I mutter in return.

  We wait down by the dock for the boat back, and then the wind blows through us on the bow of the water taxi. “Where to, tour guide?” I ask my friend.

  “Let’s go up to Mount Vernon.”

  Once home to the blue-blooded gentry and captains of industry during Baltimore’s rise, Mount Vernon is filled with formidable nineteenth-century marble homes, radiating out from the nation’s first monument to its first president. It was the hub of town before the Inner Harbor was restored and sucked life back toward the water. On the corner of Biddle and Morton, Seve stops in his tracks.

  “I bought my first car right here, on this corner,” he says. “I was dating a girl and her father was putting a For Sale sign in the window when I walked up—a Chevy Biscayne.”

  We walk on. Perhaps it is because of the oppressive late-afternoon heat, but the streets here are deserted and lifeless. I see a formidable beaux-arts building.

  “What’s that?”

  “Good idea,” Seve says, and we’re through the revolving doors of the old Belvedere Hotel. We slide into the Owl Bar at the back of the lobby. There’s not much life in here either, but at least it’s cool. With its stained glass windows, red tile floors, and a heavy wooden bar backed by a beveled mirror, the Owl has the comfortable feel of the speakeasy it was in the 1920s. “This was always old Baltimore to me,” Seve says, looking around the deserted room.

  Perched high above the bar is a replica of an owl. Legend has it that the owl’s eyes would wink when the booze was flowing and the Feds were scarce, and if the bird’s gaze was fixed, it meant there was trouble afoot and mum was the word. Etched into several of the stained-glass windows flanking the owl is a children’s nursery rhyme.

  A wise old owl sat on an oak.

  The more he saw, the less he spoke.

  The less he spoke the more he heard,

  Why aren’t we like that wise old bird?

  I’ve often thought that Seve applied the old owl’s wisdom to my relationship with D. He was there nearly from the start. After D’s and my first, brief encounter in a hotel lobby in Galway, and after our subsequent exchange of e-mails, Seve was with us a few months later to witness our casual one-hour coffee swell into four days of intensity.

  “That’s lightning,” was all Seve said to me when we were alone in my room, just down the hall from the one D had taken. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  I had no idea what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. “Yeah,” I bluffed, “don’t worry about it.”

  Over the next four dizzying days the three of us traveled the west of Ireland, with Seve acting as chaperone. He and D got on immediately, with the bickering banter of siblings. What might have been an awkward triangle quickly evolved into a playful trio.

  “You deal in facts,” D said to Seve, summing up their relationship, “I deal in feelings.”

  When she finally got on a train and returned to Dublin, I walked for hours alone along the misty and windswept beach in Lahinch and wondered what implications those few days had for the rest of my life. Seve said very little. He listened as I explained with certainty how my path had just taken a turn I had to follow. He gently wondered what this would mean for my life back in New York. Another friend would have strongly advised me to walk away—take my infatuation, head home, and let it pass. It would have been the prudent counsel. And yet he didn’t; having seen what he saw and experienced what he did between D and me, Seve simply stood by my side and said, “Be careful, my friend.”

  And that there was someone who understood what it was I was moving toward, without my having to say anything, was invaluable to me as my life began to unravel and then slowly put itself back together.

  It’s 104 degrees when Boog Powell, a slugger I remember from very early in my youth, throws out the ceremonial first pitch at 7:01 in the evening. The humidity is resting steady at 94 percent. Because the Orioles are struggling so badly—as they perennially do—tickets were easy to come by. We just stand out by the front gate of Camden Yards, and people come running at us to unload their extra seats. The baseball stadium was built in the retro ballpark style that launched a trend and helped spearhead the revitalization of Baltimore when it opened in 1992; I’ve always wanted to see it.

  A skinny guy with bright red hair promises us his tickets are right behind the dugout and offers them at less than face value. Buying tickets on the street outside a venue was something I used to do often. Reading a scalper’s pitch and potential for scam is an art form, but this is an Orioles game in Baltimore, not a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey, and the urgency and potential for being ripped off are minimal. Still, I walk away and let Seve handle it.

  “Deal, Seve. They just better be good.”

  And they are. In fact, they’re the best seats in the house, front row, right behind the Orioles dugout—as promised.

  “Who would have thought, someone told the truth.”

  “Baltimore, baby,” Seve says.

  A vendor comes down the aisle, shouting, “Ice-cold water. Tasty beer!” His face is pouring sweat. The first few innings roll past with little action. Neither the Orioles nor the Angels get a man on base. The normal rhythm of the game—practice tosses, warm-up swings, and covert signals—asserts itself. From the sparse crowd around us come halfhearted encouragements. “We’ll get ’em next time, J.J.,” and “Get wood on it, baby,” and after a called third strike comes a baseball favorite, “That’s bullshit!” echoing out onto the field. I haven’t been to a baseball game in several years, and although I’ve never before set foot in Camden Yards, I feel as comfortable here as in my living room.

  When my brothers and I were kids, my father occasionally took us to Yankee Stadium, and it is my fondest memory of childhood—even then, it was how I thought a childhood ought to be. I can remember, as a very small boy, sitting behind a large pillar and leaning over to see when my father said, “Look now. That’s Mickey Mantle, he’s one of the best ever, this will be the last time you’ll ever see him.” And I watched as the small figure far away struck out and hobbled back to the dugout. Another time we went to Fenway Park in Boston; we sat far out in right field and I couldn’t see anything over the other patrons except second base. When a fast runner got on with a single, and I complained I couldn’t see, my father said, “Just keep your eye on second, he’s gonna steal.” And when he did, and my eye was glued to second, I felt like my dad knew everything there was to know.

  Yet this was the same man who, several years after the Boston game, took my Little League buddy and me to Yankee Stadium. I hadn’t seen much of my friend since we moved several towns away, and when my mother suggested I invite him to go to the game, I was excited. My father had recently bought a used, battered Jaguar sports car. It only had room for two passengers, except for a tiny jump seat in the back, and my father insisted on taking it to the Bronx. I let my friend sit up front and I squeezed into the back. As we set out, our spirits were high.

  Driving through Harlem in upper Manhattan, the Jaguar overheated a
nd broke down. This was not unusual; the car had constant problems. But this was in the 1970s, when Harlem was a very different place than it is today. Quickly, my father grew tense. A man approached us and, trying to help, suggested, “I wouldn’t leave that car here.” We looked for a nearby gas station. My friend proposed calling his father, who might be able to help. It was then that my father snapped at him, suddenly and ferociously. My friend was shocked; I could see him fight back tears. I was mortified, and my father busied himself with getting us out of there. We never made it to the game, and I never saw my friend again, so deep was my teenage shame.

  In the bottom of the fifth, the Orioles break the no-hitter and the meager crowd has something to cheer about. That baseball unfolds in its own time, at its own pace, and isn’t subject to any clock is something that makes the game increasingly attractive in our multitasking world. Meandering conversation is as much a part of the experience as the game itself. Our exchange rambles from batting helmets and rosin bags, to the name of that hotel in Galway we stayed at years ago, to Patti Smith and John McEnroe, to the two marines who were killed in Afghanistan the day before. A foul ball is hit high in the air and drifts our way. We rise. As it begins to fall it is coming straight for us. I can see the laces of the spinning ball. When it lands two rows behind us I’m relieved—I didn’t want my hands burning from a catch I knew I would try to make. The Angels score two runs in the seventh inning, and the O’s come back with one in the eighth. With a bit of cunning, a base runner takes an extra base in what is one of the more intangible aspects of the game. “There’s just something about watching someone run the bases well,” I comment to Seve.

  “You have a keen instinct for someone who does something well,” my friend says.

  I turn to him. One of the nicer things about Seve is his ability to compliment or criticize with insight and without ownership, as if he’s talking about a simple fact that is worth noting. And in doing so, he is able to elevate the discussion to a higher significance than that of the mere observation being made.

  “I do?”

  “You do,” he says, “and you know you can trust it.”

  “Which? Trust my instinct or trust what the person is doing well?”

  “Both.” Seve is quiet a minute and then he goes on. “I never heard you say you wanted to be a world traveler.” It’s an odd segue, and I’m not sure what to say. “It’s not that you consciously started traveling to learn to trust people, but I think you wanted to trust people and inherently you don’t. And in your travel you’ve learned to trust yourself, and if you can trust yourself, then you can trust others. You took your son to the Sahara because you could trust yourself in that situation. And you need to know that. And if you could trust people there, with your son’s life . . .” The Angels come up and quickly load the bases, and Seve continues. “That’s what’s so good about you getting married to who you’re getting married to. She recognizes and embraces humanity; you’re just the opposite. To learn the things you had to learn, you had to go out and deal with people, and I know that’s not something you easily do. It’s something that’s difficult for you, but travel helps you in that.”

  I nod, taking this on board. The Angels’ Vernon Wells steps to the plate and hits the first pitch on offer deep into the bleachers for a grand slam. The bulk of the already dwindling crowd heads for the exits.

  We linger to the bitter end and are among the few remaining fans when the final out is recorded. By the time we are on the street, the area around the ballpark is nearly deserted.

  A few blocks away we find the crowd, down at the Inner Harbor. The long promenade by the water is jammed with families, couples, and swarming teens. A band is performing on a temporary stage. The patios of the waterfront restaurants overflow. The USS Constellation, the last surviving Civil War–era vessel, built in 1854, sits at anchor, its tall rigging motionless in the heavy air.

  “Can we get out of here?” I ask.

  A water taxi is just getting ready to push off.

  “Where you headed?” Seve calls to the older man untying the lead.

  “Canton,” the man shouts back.

  Seve turns to me. “Let’s go see if my sister is around.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “Do you try to be a complete jerk?”

  We climb on board.

  Drifting away from the pulsing mass, we pass the aquarium and a former power plant, now a Hard Rock Café, and chug past pier five and the Seven Foot Knoll lighthouse. On the wrought-iron balcony that encircles the red building, a solitary couple is dancing in the humid night. I am reminded of a recent conversation with D—while we were preparing dinner.

  “I just don’t know whether the ceili should be Saturday night before the ceremony or Sunday, after,” she said.

  “The what?”

  “The ceili?”

  “We’re having Irish dancing?”

  “You didn’t think I was going to get married without dancing, did you?”

  I took an onion out of the bowl on the counter and began to slice it.

  “Would you get out the feta and pass me the olive oil?”

  I reached deep into the refrigerator and handed D the cheese and slid over the bottle of oil. “And where is this ceili going to be?”

  “That’s what we need to decide. We could do it at the hotel next door to my folks’ house, or in their backyard, but if they’re going to have the dinner on Saturday night, it would be a lot for them to have a ceili there too, especially on the same night.”

  I stopped cutting. “Your parents are having a dinner? For who?”

  “For everyone coming in. Are you going to chop that onion, luv?”

  “Everyone? How is everyone going to fit into your parents’ living room?”

  “Well, not everyone, just the relations coming up to Dublin. You can’t expect my parents not to do something for their brothers and sisters. And the Americans who are coming, we need to do something with them for the weekend. We can’t just give them a ‘welcome drink’ cocktail party at the Shelbourne on Friday and say, ‘See you Sunday morning.’ They’ll have come a long way and we’ll need to—”

  “Whoa—whoa, we’re giving them a ‘welcome drink’ party at the Shelbourne Hotel? When did we decide all this?”

  “Nothing is decided for sure, that’s what we need to do. I’ve just been talking to Mum and Dad. Now, Dad is insisting he make dinner for the family, so that’s done. If you don’t want to do that, then you call him. But he’s planning the menu and he’s going to do it.”

  “But if he’s going to have the dinner on Saturday, then the ceili has to be on Sunday.”

  “Perfect. That’s what I thought too.”

  “Wait a minute. What happened to the picnic idea?”

  “We’re having that, too.”

  “But—”

  “I need that onion, luv. Are you going to chop it?”

  “Here, you do it, before I start crying.”

  The water taxi drops us at the Canton Waterfront Park. Seve’s sister lives just up the hill from the water. Once a run-down neighborhood of shuttered canneries, this part of the city has become one of Baltimore’s trendier places to live, with a buzzing bar and restaurant scene. Seve’s sister is out and we walk two blocks farther on to O’Donnell Square, a narrow strip of green anchored by the Messiah Lutheran Church on one end and a firehouse on the other.

  “I used to come here to play basketball in the CYO league,” Seve says. We circle the square, looking in a few of the crammed bars playing loud music to see if his sister is around. We walk past a storefront shop that looks more like the living room of a college student. The folding glass-paneled front door is wide open to the heavy night and Middle Eastern techno music blares. Couches line the exposed brick walls and low tables are scattered around under dim lighting. A Marilyn Monroe poster hangs beside one of Manchester United soccer club. It’s deserted, except for a young guy sitting behind a counter in the back, deep in the shadows
.

  “What’s this joint, Seve?”

  “Never seen it before.”

  The young guy hops up when we cross the threshold. “Welcome,” he says with a thick accent. He has dark olive skin and jet-black hair.

  “Hi, what is this?” I ask—it comes out in a worse way than I intended.

  “This is my place, Anubis Hookah Lounge. Have you ever smoked the hookah?”

  “No,” and “Sure,” Seve and I say simultaneously. Seve turns to me. “When did you smoke a hookah?”

  “In Qatar, dude.”

  “Please,” our young host says, spreading his arms, “sit. You are most welcome here.” And we take the front couch, looking out past the hood of a Dodge Ram pickup truck and up into the trees lining the square and the suddenly low-hanging night sky.

  Our host is an Egyptian named Karim Kamel who came to America several years ago and just recently opened his hookah lounge. Karim lists a dozen flavored tobaccos for us to choose from. “You come at a good time. Once the bars close, we are slammed.” I smile at his American vernacular, spoken in a thick Egyptian accent. “Why do you laugh?” Karim asks.

  “I’m not laughing,” I protest. “You’re great. I’ll take the mango.”

  “Apple,” Seve says. And Karim hurries away. The wind begins to pick up and blows strongly through the trees outside. Then we hear distant thunder. “A place like this would absolutely not have been possible here twenty years ago,” he says.

  Once we are puffing away at our hookahs, Seve leans back and closes his eyes. We smoke in contented silence for a while. The whipping wind is blowing in on us now, moving the hot air, and the thunder is closer. And then, as if we were in midconversation, Seve speaks again. “I assume her parents are very excited.” Seve spent Christmas in Dublin with us a few years ago and D’s parents, particularly her mother, fell for his charm.