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Sample Prose and Poetry by Frank Finale

Below are four of the twenty-one stories and personal essays by Frank Finale appearing in "To The Shore Once More, Volume II."

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Table Of Contents

Foreword
by George C. Valente

Introduction
by Rich Youmans

Chapter One
Essay: A Dinner In The Atlantic Highlands
Poem: Alien
Poem: Survival
Poem: The Age Of Faith
Essay: Memories Of Asbury Park
Poem: Release
Poem: Ringing A Bell
Essay: Scenes From Ocean Grove
Essay: Special Cop
Poem: The First Time
Poem: No Snow Day
Essay: Autumn Boardwalk In Belmar
Poem: The Old Mill
Poem: Drawbridge
Essay: The Grand Hotels

Chapter Two
Essay: It Was A Very Good House
Essay: The Monarchs
Poem: Metamorphosis
Essay: Seaside
Essay: A Winter's Sketch
Poem: A Winter's Night
Essay: Boardwalk Games
Essay: Island Beach State Park
Poem: The Shell

Chapter Three
Essay: A Walk In Pine Beach
Essay: New Year's Eve, 1969
Essay: Canoeing Down Cedar Creek
Poem: Lines For Summer
Essay: Pine Barrens Reveries
Poem: Retirement Village
Poem: Freeze Frame

Chapter Four
Essay: Climbing Barnegat Lighthouse
Essay: Three Encounters With The Natural
Poem: The Beast
Poem: The Animals
Poem: Flamingo: At The Cape May Zoo
Essay: The Stranded
Essay: Gamboling In A. C.
Essay: Weekend In Cape May
Poem: The Artist

Biographies
Artists
Frank Finale / dust jacket, inside back panel

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Memories Of Asbury Park

The first time I saw Asbury Park was in the spring of 1965. Having moved from Brooklyn to Point Pleasant at the age of twenty-two, I was searching for a place that had some of the excitement I was used to in the old borough: movie houses, their marquees flashing the latest Hollywood stars, or nightclubs from which the familiar beats of rock tunes flowed as patrons entered; a potpourri of people chatting and laughing, calling to each other from second-story apartment windows, or harmonizing on street corners. Brooklyn vibrated with colors, lights, and sounds, whereas Point Pleasant seemed to undergo a blackout every evening in the off-season, with shops closed tight, sidewalks empty, and area nightclubs few.

When I asked a local one afternoon where I could find some action, he suggested two places: Seaside Heights, which was located just a few miles south, and Asbury Park. "But Asbury Park is better. It's open all year 'round on the weekends," he said, a wild smile crossing his face. I needed no further convincing, and set out in my "new" car—a '55 Chevy Belaire with cream-colored top, blue-green body, and white interior. For reasons that mystified the garage mechanics, the car destined to become a classic did not start well in the rain and stalled out consistently near the tops of high bridges. But I didn't care: neither problem threatened that afternoon, as I set out on what would be until then the longest trip I had ever taken in the Belaire. I didn't quite know where I was going, except that Asbury Park was due north and one of the main train stops along the coast. After about thirty-five minutes—during which time I had to ask directions only once—I found it.

I'm not sure what I had expected, but I was surprised to see a crowded town with office buildings and hotels that were several stories tall, and a downtown business district where shoppers walked hurriedly from store to store, bundled with packages. The flagship department store, Steinbachs, rose three stories and took up an entire triangle-shaped block. Making a right turn off Main Street, I drove wide-eyed down Lake Avenue, on the right side of which Wesley Lake glittered in the midday sun. Farther down, on the corner of Lake and Saint James, I came across the Mayfair, a gigantic movie theater that dominated the avenues. Unlike any theater I had ever seen, it had Spanish stucco, Baroque columns, a tall balconade, and a bell tower that rose high above the lake.

This was more like it, I thought, the boredom of Point Pleasant fading away as I drove. To my delight, I discovered next to the theater a bit of Coney Island's atmosphere in the form of the Palace Amusements; the arcade took up a whole block and had bumper cars, a Tunnel of Love, a carousel, a fun house (which you entered through an actual rolling barrel), a mechanical gypsy fortune teller, and pinball games galore. Farther down, a Ferris wheel as high as the bell tower turned slowly, its riders facing the lake where a giant swan boat glided serenely. A couple of pedal boats built for two followed like small cygnets.

Near the end of the surreal avenue, a circular glass carousel house spun into view, its arched windows decorated by screaming, Medusa-like faces. Inside, brightly painted ponies pranced up and down and around and around to the organ music. I was tempted to stop, but instead followed Lake Avenue as it curved left into an especially wide thoroughfare—Ocean Avenue. If Lake had been active, Ocean seemed frenetic. Within a few blocks, I counted numerous nightclubs: The Stone Pony, Mrs. Jay's, the African Room, the Student Prince, all within walking distance of one another. Across from them, running parallel to the avenue, lay the teeming boardwalk. At the south end, lights bounced and flashed at the Casino pier, which I eventually discovered had an indoor skating rink. Farther down, a roller coaster roared under sweeping gulls, and windmills rose from miniature golf courses. Up and down the boardwalk, I noted the many booths that could satisfy my taste for sweets—hand-dipped chocolates, salt-water taffy made on site, cotton candy, frozen custard, lemonade, and ices. I spotted the kiosk-like booth of Madame Marie, the gypsy fortune teller; there, painted on a whitewash background, a big eye stared back at me, surrounded by a ringed planet and the words "Temple of Knowledge." At the north end stood the Paramount Theater and Convention Hall, and, across from them, the imperious Berkeley-Carteret Hotel. The Paramount, I later learned, featured large rock concerts with bands such as the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and the Who, and Judy Garland had once stayed in one of the Berkeley-Carteret's two hundred fifty-four rooms.

Turning at the hotel and traveling south on Kingsley, I spotted the icon of Asbury Park: the oval face and crazy, toothy smile of Tilly, a little imp made bright with neon lights on the wall of the Palace Amusements. His dark hair was parted in the middle and slightly turned up on each side like two little horns. Reminding me of the zany face at the Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, he made me feel a little more at home in my new state.

That first ride of the circuit was one of many I would take in the months to come. I began going to the Mayfair Theater, where Spanish stucco was hand-sculpted, the ornate campanile (whose chimes no longer worked) rose one hundred seventy-two feet high, and the auditorium seated two thousand. It was one of the most ornate theaters I had ever seen, with its marble stairs, crystal chandeliers and crushed velvet carpeting in the lobby, and its uniformed ushers who would lead me to my seat. The first time I went up the magnificent, curved marble staircase and onto the large balcony, I stared in wonder at the ceiling's nighttime "sky," complete with twinkling stars and an occasional cloud. Because of its wide CinemaScope screen, a novelty back then, the theater showed many re-released, visually stunning movies, such as Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments.

After the movie, I would often go to the Student Prince and listen to Joe Finn, an Irish folksinger who played guitar. A number of the songs he sang were sing-alongs, and he always ended the night with a rousing, "I don't wanna go home / I don't wanna go home / I'm having too much fun / Send the bartenders home / Send the ladies home / But save me just one." I met an actor-writer there who said he was writing a novel about the Jersey Shore that he would title I Don't Wannna Go Home. I couldn't have agreed more.

It was there in October that I also met a woman I first spotted singing along to Finn's songs, her long red hair bouncing to the music. When the song ended, she stood up and turned around. She was tall, curvy, and had a bright smile. During a break in the set, I sauntered over, introduced myself, and asked if I could join her. Her name was Barbara, and she had a clear, bell-like voice and green-brown eyes with gold flecks. After talking for a while, trading information about places to go and things to do, I asked her for a date. I told her that I wasn't interested in getting married or having children. She laughed and said, "I'm not interested in getting married, either, but I have three children from a previous marriage." I gulped, but we agreed to meet for dinner.

That first date led to others, and over time we discovered things in each other that we liked and didn't want to throw away. I admired her calm, take-charge attitude when other people normally panicked. One time, while we were passing a boarding house on the way home from a date, she spotted smoke. Without hesitating, she grabbed my arm and told me to tell the people in the next house to call the fire department. As I did, she ran into the boarding house and began knocking on doors, alerting the boarders and helping them out. I also liked the way she cared and went out of her way for other people, as she did for the young waitress that needed a place to live after leaving an abusive husband: Barb put her up for a couple of days and helped her secure a room of her own. Our song became We'll Sing In The Sunshine. I moved to Asbury to be closer to her.

That summer, when not with Barb, I wrote by Sunset Lake (the second of the town's three magnificent lakes, the last being Deal) or walked up and down the boardwalk. But most of my time was spent with her. In July, she and I took her three children to see the fireworks. Asbury always put on the biggest and best display of all the surrounding towns: it lasted for half an hour or more and crescendoed with a finale lasting three or four minutes. The boardwalk shook as if in the middle of a tremendous thunderstorm, and the pungent smell of powder, smoke, and, for some reason, damp newspapers filled the salt air. The two older boys—Michael, six, and Alan, four—enjoyed them, but one-year-old Steven only cried, "Loud!"

When fall came and the leaves turned colors, Barb and I decided to continue our relationship. That Christmas, I gave her money to buy gifts for the children and a small tree for the apartment. When spring bloomed, we were still together. We went up to the boardwalk dressed in our best to watch the Easter parade: the ladies in hats and gloves, matching shoes and bags; the men in suits with red roses in their lapels; the babies in their bonnets. Not too long after that, we married and moved away from Asbury to Bradley Beach and a bigger apartment.

Throughout the next thirty-plus years, Barb and I weathered the shoals of life—illnesses, lack of money, family crises, deaths. The same could not be said of Asbury Park. Its decline began with the race riots that erupted in the early seventies, around the same time that many of the downtown stores began migrating into the emerging malls; when Steinbachs finally left in the late seventies, it took the heart of the district with it. Fewer visitors arrived every year, and more residents moved away. In the late eighties, the Palace Amusements closed, and plans for reviving the oceanfront sank when the developers went bankrupt. Hope seemed to have run out.

Recently, Barb and I visited Asbury for the first time in many years, and were saddened by what we found. Pigeons had taken over the old Steinbachs building, now boarded up and crumbling. Where the Mayfair Theater once rose over the lake, there was an empty lot with rubble. The Palace Amusements building had been deemed structurally unsound and cordoned off; paint peeled off Tilly's face and manic smile, and his neon lights swung in the wind. The Ferris wheel had been taken apart and sold. The circular glass-and-brass carousel house remained, but the hand-painted wooden ponies were gone, replaced by a skating rink.

Along Ocean Avenue, the skeleton of a ten-story, half-finished condominium rusted in the ocean breeze, cutting off two lanes on the left side of the avenue; it had become the unofficial symbol of the derelict city. The Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen had gotten his start and revisits every so often, was still there, though under a new manager who is attempting to restore the famous club to its glory days. Our favorite spot, the Student Prince, had been turned into a go-go bar, with a male counterpart, Zippers, on the corner nearby. The day we visited, a disheveled man with a gray beard sat with his back against the wall, his legs sprawled across the sidewalk and his head tossed back. He was drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag.

Fortunately, not everything proved to be so bleak. The Paramount Theater still featured concerts and plays, and Convention Hall—a huge brick building with lanterns and flying seahorse decorations—continued to host boat shows, wrestling matches, and rock concerts; Bruce Springsteen and the reunited E-Street Band had used it to rehearse for one of his U.S. tours. The red-brick Berkeley-Carteret, restored in 1991 with four spoke-like buildings surrounding a central tower, reminded me of what Asbury had been, and could be. Farther down, Madame Marie's Temple of Knowledge still stood, its all-knowing eye staring out blindly.

Everything that dies has a way of coming back; Springsteen sang it, and I've seen it for a fact. That day, I wondered if Asbury would ever return to its former self. Walking along Ocean Avenue, I found the possibility hard to believe. It was high summer, noon, and no one walked the streets. The few shops that remained operative had their corrugated metal doors and windows rolled down. An old newspaper tumbled across the deserted avenue and into the empty parking spaces. They were all empty.

Despite this, I couldn't help but hope that Asbury, the once lively city where Barb and I had met, would someday rise from its own ashes. I turned up onto the near-deserted boardwalk, where only an old woman sat mumbling to herself and occasionally laughing out loud. Staring out over the wide expanse of beach, I thought of the nights thirty years ago when I first walked these boards, the crowds thick and the neon hot under the summer stars. I thought of the first time I met Barb, her bell-like voice echoing Joe Finn's lyrics, her laugh sounding a perfect note. I thought of the city's beautiful lakes, and their adjacent parks. I thought of the restored Berkeley-Carteret, the Paramount, and Convention Hall. I thought of all the changes and the possibilities, and for a moment I was glad to be in this wild city by the great Atlantic, where the tide rolls in twice a day, through hard times and good.

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The Grand Hotels

One of my favorite pastimes during the late sixties and early seventies was to walk along Ocean Avenue in Spring Lake. Part of the reason was natural beauty: on one side of the avenue, beyond a spacious boardwalk and beach, the voluminous Atlantic Ocean extended to the horizon, and the steady roll of its whitecapped breakers always soothed my mind. Yet what truly captivated me stood on the opposite side, facing the Atlantic: Spring Lake's grand hotels, whose ornate domes, towers, columns, and gables seemed to rise out of the sand and create an enchanted atmosphere, like that of sandcastles on a beach.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to three of the most famous: the Monmouth, the Essex and Sussex, and the Warren. Once their elegance and majesty lent an air of grandeur to the whole avenue. Now they are gone, either torn down or abandoned, and their absence can still be felt by those who once knew them.

And still remember...

Taking up a city block, the Monmouth was the largest of the four. One of my sons, when he was in the third grade, would always call it "the mammoth," after the large, extinct elephant that he was then learning about in school. He thought that, because of the animal's size, the hotel must have been named after it. It was an imaginative idea—and wholly plausible.

Like all the grand hotels, the six-story Monmouth was a site to behold. Built in 1905, the rooftop had dormer windows all around it, as well as a central dome and, toward the front of the building, two polygonal towers. (I was never sure why the towers had been built—lookout points? decoration?—but, as with most architectural flourishes from that era, they gave the hotel a distinctive appearance.) A tall flagpole rose from the middle of the dome, and Old Glory waved in the sea breeze throughout the seasons.

Along the front of the building, the upper floor had a red-brick facade with white-trimmed windows. On the floors below, the bricks changed to a sandy yellow, and a number of the arched windows had white balconies. Over time, the Monmouth came to be one of the most recognized buildings in Spring Lake, partly because of its location. The main entrance of the hotel did not face the ocean; instead, it stood opposite the lake after which the town was named. As such, it became part of a favorite setting for many artists and photographers: Spring Lake in the foreground, a white swan cutting across the surface, and, in the rear, the manicured lawn, circular driveway, and great, columned entrance of the Monmouth—a truly elegant sight. Eight colossal columns, set in pairs, supported an ornate portico. The columns rose about three stories high and had twin spiral designs that crowned their capitals. Those columns seemed as if, like Atlas, they could support the world, and they would never fall.

But fall they did. The Monmouth closed in 1974 because the land was more valuable than the hotel. A year later, the wrecker's ball knocked it down so houses could be built in its place. My wife, Barb, and I stopped there one day after the dust had settled and most of the rubble had been cleared. We looked at each other and sighed. The space the Monmouth had left was almost palpable. While walking by broken bricks and splintered sticks, a glint from the rubble caught Barb's eye. She bent down and picked up a key attached to a piece of oblong cowhide, imprinted on which was Room 316 Monmouth. We still have it—a key to a vanished era.

Looking at that key now and feeling between my fingers the stiff, smooth cowhide and the cold metal, it opens the creaky door of my memory. I think of driving or walking past the Mammoth, and how Barb would tell our sons about the formal ballroom dances, the live orchestras, and the famous people who attended dinners there. Always the boys would be impressed and want to go to such events. “Perhaps when you're older,” their mother would say. Then their attention would turn back to the small Matchbox cars they had brought with them.

On the next block, north of the Monmouth, stood the six-story Essex and Sussex. Together, the two hotels dominated Ocean Avenue: they were like two anchored ocean liners, commanding the attention of anyone who walked by. Tourists would stop to look. Some took pictures.

The Essex and Sussex presented a vision of symmetry. Two gable-roofed, red-brick extensions anchored the ends, each with a three-story, white-columned porch, each mirroring the other. Between the two extensions and the front entrance ran two long, recessed portions of the hotel, each with five identical rows of windows, each with white trim stunningly set against the light yellow brick. But it was the front entrance—the grand front entrance—that dominated the Essex and Sussex. Stone steps led to six paired, white Ionic columns, each of which rose three stories to a railed porch. Three more stories of red brick faÁade and white-trimmed windows were topped by a mansard roof with triple dormer windows built into each side and topped by a gold-tinctured cupola.

The hotel even served as a backdrop in a couple of movies: Ragtime (1981) and Once Upon A Time In America (1984). Barb and I were delighted to discover in those films the hotel that we passed so often—even though we never went in. We never needed to reserve a room at the Essex and Sussex, since we lived only a few towns away, in Bradley Beach. The opportunity to attend a party there never arose, either. And as for dining, there were cheaper places to go on our meager budget. We were admirers from afar.

Still, it was like seeing an old friend every time we passed. And perhaps, as in some friendships, we took it for granted. We assumed it would always be there. But in 1984, the eighty-five-year-old hotel closed. Condominiums were all the rage, and the new owners wanted to capitalize on the trend. However, their planned, two-hundred-six-room hotel-condominium never opened, and in 1993 other owners took over, intending to turn the building into luxury senior citizen apartments.

As I write this, in fall 2000, the place still remains closed, and it appears more run down, paler, than ever before. Its picture-postcard days when wealthy shore people attended the formal balls, reserved rooms, and took in the ocean's bracing salt-tonic and the lake's tranquility seem to be over. On the north side of the Essex and Sussex, a pattern of vines straggle up the wall, and a high cyclone fence guards the perimeter of the building.

Gargoyles. I first spotted them perched on the roof of the Warren Hotel's Beach House in the 1970s, and each time I passed thereafter I was beguiled into seeing if they were still there. It excited my imagination to know that this house from another era had mythical creatures inhabiting its rooftop.

The Victorian-style Beach House was about four stories high with brown cedar shakes and white trim. A porch with small white columns curved languidly around its first floor, and its roof had many of the prerequisite Victorian accoutrements, in addition to gargoyles: gables, turrets, and two brick chimneys. I later discovered that the ridges in the roof were occupied by terra-cotta griffins, and that the house was once owned by a poet in the 1890s. Ah, those poets. No wonder I felt drawn to the house.

This past summer, to my dismay, I learned that the Warren Hotel and its Beach House were going to go the way of the Monmouth, with the land being divided into eleven tracts for housing. Barb and I decided that, before those Victorian structures could be sucked into the black hole of the past, we would pay a visit. Located a few blocks north of the Essex and Sussex, the Warren's Tudor-style wood-frame structure, with its bell-shaped central roof and conical towers on either end, immediately brought us back in time. We walked up the wooden front steps to a porch with maroon indoor/outdoor carpeting and a row of white wicker chairs, perfect for spending long, idle hours by the sea.

As we entered the front door, the gentleman at the desk asked if we had reservations. We told him we just wanted to look through the hotel— to pay our last respects, as it were. He said that they were having their last wedding this afternoon—“two hundred guests, a small wedding.” However, since guests had not begun arriving yet, he said he would allow us to walk around. Pointing to the banquet room across from the desk, he suggested we start there.

Upon opening the door to the dining area, we felt a sharp drop in temperature. I thought of the thousands of weddings that must have taken place here over the years. We looked at the twenty round, wooden tables with cane chairs all empty now, and Barb shuddered with a chill. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She whispered, “I can almost feel the lives of the people that have passed through here.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “It reminds me of the hotel in The Shining."

We moved to the lobby, which was full of wicker and antiques. A Victorian Christmas tree, complete with a gold bow on the top branch and decorated with pearls, angels, and camellias, lent a warmer, friendlier spirit to the place. Barb seated herself in a hooded, cobra-like wicker chair that she fell in love with instantly. "I want to buy this when they auction off the furniture," she said. I sighed; it was difficult to visualize this place being dismantled piece by piece, then sold off to the highest bidder. I tried not to think about the final torment: the wrecker's ball.

Leaving the lobby, we ambled down Peacock Alley, a carpeted, wide furnished hallway that led to the other side of the hotel. Along the hallway, crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the walls were decorated with framed paintings. At one point we passed a locked E. Patricia Molloy Room. I wondered what would happen to her bronze dedication plaque, which commemorated the one who "left her indelible mark in the history of the Warren Hotel."

Before leaving, we stopped at the Beach House to look up at its gargoyles and griffins. A man and woman were photographing the house from different perspectives. I fantasized that they might be from some big, glossy magazine, perhaps doing a photo essay. In reality, they were probably like Barb and me, getting one last look at a unique house that would soon fade into history.

Driving out of town, I wondered who might buy the gargoyles and griffins. Even if someone did, it would be similar to taking an animal from its natural habitat and placing it in a showcase: the effect just wouldn't be the same. Good-bye, my gargoyles. Good-bye, my grand hotels. Good-bye. Good-bye.

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A Winter's Sketch

Summer is now but a warm memory on some family's videotape, or a quick picture taken for the photo album. The beach is not that summer's beach, that playground for children with their pails and shovels, that leisurely resort area for adults lying on beach blankets under colorful umbrellas. Now it is a beach from another time—more primeval, embraced by the sounds of blowing winds, crashing waves, and shushing sands. The winter beach is one of expanse, of boundlessness. No human voices exist here, only the shrill cries of the swirling gulls above the ocean, rocks, and sand.

There is an elemental, unraked beauty to the desolate winter beach. The sand ripples over the once-clear boardwalk that leads onto it. The tiny grains pile up along the ribbed snowfences, leaving only the stark tops of their posts showing. Farther out, along the beach, the sand rises and dips and swirls into patterns that only an artist could create, a perfect wildness. The wind howls, and the sand responds. Everything is in flux. The beach you step on today will not be the same one you step on tomorrow. But you will never know it. Nature repeats itself endlessly, ever changing, ever unchanged.

Along the tideline, the rough waters bite into the shoreline, leaving foot-high, cliff-like escarpments. Just before it, thousands of shards of shells have been blown upright like tiny tombstones, each with its own miniature dune formed behind it. In fact, the calligraphy of the entire strand is cluttered with scallop and clam shells, dark-blue mussels, crab bits, shiny egg cases of black skate, tangles of brown seaweed. There is also the glitter of beach glass: turquoise, amber, bright emerald...beautiful gems born of sand and polished by the sea. The waves rush in, and a piece of driftwood humps up out of the sand like an out-of-place python, inspecting its surroundings.

A lone figure—a woman in a dark, hooded coat—braves the weather and needle-sharp wind. Near an ice-bearded jetty, she stops and stoops to pick up some object from the tide. Rising and straightening herself, she looks into her gloved hand at a smooth piece of frosted-blue sea glass—a rarity. A sharp wind whitecaps the waves. Farther out, a flock of geese fly south parallel to the shore. They are like cloves against the pewter-colored ocean and the wispy-white, arctic sea smoke that erases the horizon. The immensity of ocean and sky envelop the geese; one can almost sense their small, warm heartbeats as they fly toward their destination. It evokes lines from a poem by William Cullen Bryant: "All day thy wings have fanned / At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere..."

Shadows inch from the shells, pool in the shallows of the sand, slowly overtake the beach. The woman watches. She holds the blue glass firmly in her hand. Overhead, the first stars appear, faint yet clear. Shadows deepen toward night, and the wind cuts across the beach like a scythe. The woman doesn't move. She closes her eyes. Through a frozen sea of thoughts, memory breaks free—days of crowded beaches, of bathers rushing through the endless breakers, of a man, alone in the surf, who offers his hand. The tide flows around his feet, his skin is slightly tanned, and his smile shines as bright as the miniature suns glittering along the waves. Slowly, her memories emerge, and with them a yearning for the summer that was, the summer that is yet to come.

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Weekend in Cape May

Angel of the Sea, the Wedding Cake House, Sea Holly Inn, the Abbey, the Gingerbread House, the Pink House...Barb and I passed each one as we drove toward the Queen Victoria, our favorite of Cape May's many inns. Actually, we weren't driving directly toward the Queen Victoria; rather, we were casually cruising around the narrow streets of Cape May, trying to take in the unusual and intricate configurations of the many Victorian houses with their porches, columns, towers, peaks, cupolas, and gingerbread trim.

“Look at that one!” Barb said, pointing to a tower with arched windows that rose above the sidewalk trees. “It could be right out of a Gothic novel!”

“Maybe it's haunted,” I said, slowing down and gazing up at the iron railing that rimmed the top of the five-stories-high tower. For that moment, I half-expected to see a weatherbeaten sea captain gazing out toward where his four-masted bark once sailed the high seas.

As we passed the Pink House, Barb pointed excitedly. "Oooh, it looks almost good enough to eat!”

“I think you're just hungry, Barb,” I said. Still, looking at the inn's pink-confection clapboard and white gingerbread trim, I couldn't help but feel my own sweet tooth begin to stir.

On we drove, feeling like two kids gazing through a kaleidoscope—with each street corner we turned, we found another astonishing combination of colors and forms. Finally, while driving down Ocean Street, we spotted the Queen Victoria, perched on its corner one block in from the ocean. "It feels good to see the familiar faÁade again," I said, and Barb nodded. Every April for the past several years, Barb and I have come here for a short "getaway" vacation, and it's become a tradition we both happily anticipate. Built by a Delaware River pilot in 1881 and later restored, the inn has a mansard roof, sloped turrets, gables, and a red-brick chimney—all the requisite Victorian charms. The bottom two floors, painted in an eye-refreshing mint green, have high arched windows, while the third floor is done in a pinkish-red, as if it had taken on the color of the many sunsets it had witnessed. While the Queen Victoria is just one of more than six hundred Victorian structures in Cape May's Primary Historic District, for us it has become a favorite spot to experience the ambiance that has led to the local catch phrase, "Our Future Is In Our Past."

Pulling into the driveway, we spotted Joan Wells, the innkeeper. A passionate gardener, she was kneeling and religiously tending the alyssum and heather that grew along the small iron fence bordering the property. At the sound of our tires she looked up, and her smile bloomed.

"Frank, Barbara, how wonderful to see you again!" Wiping her hands, she quickly walked over to where we were retrieving our overnight bags from the trunk, then led us toward the front porch. Shaded by a green-and-white striped awning, the porch had enough rocking chairs to make a confident cat nervous. Looking at them, I remembered the many evenings when Barb and I had sat there, as the last of the sunlight touched the alyssum and the first stars appeared overhead. Walking up the front steps, I couldn't help but feel as if I had arrived home.

After checking in, Barb and I went to the inn's next-door annex, Prince Albert Hall, and climbed the stairs to our second-floor room. This was where we usually stayed, and, upon entering, we found nothing much had changed. It still had the same sitting area with a small TV, a mini-refrigerator, a settee, and a marble-top coffee table with magazines such as Smithsonian, Life, and Travel. It also had the same queen-size, canopied, wrought-iron bed with the thick mattress and fluffy pillows that, as always, immediately lured us in. We both slipped off our shoes, plumped down on the bed, and sighed our comfort. Turning toward each other, we lightly kissed. “Two days and nights all to ourselves,” Barb said, smiling. “Free at last!” I exclaimed, and raised my arms as if in triumph.

One of the many reasons Barb, who has arthritis, likes to return here is for the whirlpool tub and special herbal bath grains. The first thing she always does upon arriving is to soak in the tub for twenty minutes or so; it relaxes her pain, bubbles away her stress, and, with sweet scents, refreshes her disposition. That afternoon was no different. Ritualistically, she set up the things she needed—towel, shampoo, conditioner, a special body lotion, luffa, and book to read. After preparing the bathwater, she slipped in, leaving only her head showing in the ghostly vapors above the water, and began humming a mysterious tune. It was her river of Lethe, where she could forget the bills, her pain, the many things that might have gone wrong over the weeks and months. I knew that when she emerged from the foam of bubbles like Aphrodite, it would be as if she were reborn. “I'm ready to take on the world,” she always said, and she looked it.

While Barb hummed and soaked, I sprawled on the bed and gazed out the window into the leaves of a nearby tree. Somehow, it enraptured and transported me back to childhood, when I would climb the maple tree in our front yard, draw strength from its trunk, feel connected to the earth and closer to the sky. It released my imagination, and I dreamed about faraway places. Each leaf was a different land: Istanbul, Prague, Lisbon, Athens, Singapore...I closed my eyes, imagined going down a cobblestoned street of cafes and small shops selling incense, spirits, candies...

“Are you going to use the whirlpool?” Barb interrupted my reveries, her shining hair slowly dripping onto the carpet. I looked at the clock; a half hour had passed, even though it had felt like only five minutes. “No, I'll just shower; it's quicker,” I said, and immediately wondered who conditioned me so well to save time. What would I do with the fifteen minutes I saved? Too bad I couldn't accumulate the time and donate it to someone who might need it. It especially seemed out of place here; Cape May was not a place to track time, but to meander, to get lost, and to find one's self again.

After I showered and dressed, we decided to go for a walk. Gaslight lampposts adorned the thin-as-six o'clock walks as we ambled up one street and down another, gazing at the many pastel-colored houses. White-picket or wrought-iron fences bordered gardens of tulips, daffodils, pansies, hyacinth, and lilac. One street had a sign tacked onto an elm that swelled the sidewalk and tilted the curbing. “Caution, trees lean out into the street,” it read. We were delighted to find nature being given the right of way in a town that seemed to have appeared out of time, like Brigadoon.

Barb let out of sigh of contentment. "Sometimes I wish we could just move here, find a little Victorian cottage and spend the rest of our days able to walk these streets anytime we wanted."

"Ah, but then it wouldn't be special," I said.

"Either that, or every day would be," she countered. "I just want things to go at a quieter pace. Think about it: you teach all day, you come home bone-tired, you nap, you eat dinner, then you go back to your writing until you can barely make it to the bed and drop off to sleep. And I feel I'm constantly running—to the supermarket, to my mother's, to any of the million places I have to be on a given day. Tell me, when was the last time we actually fell asleep in each other's arms?"

I stopped short. "What does that have to do with anything?" I said. "You think there's something wrong?" I could hear the annoyance in my voice—not because the question had been asked, but because I couldn't provide an answer.

Barb smiled and took my hand. "Not at all. I'm just saying that life—normal, daily life—seems to sneak up on us, and sometimes it would be nice to slow down. That's all." She leaned over and kissed my cheek, and whatever tension I had felt immediately evaporated—as if I, too, had entered my own river of Lethe. Or maybe it was just because the day was too perfect to spoil. I looked at Barb, her red curls bouncing in the sun, her freckled hand circling mine; her green eyes took in everything, from the highest spire to the smallest petal, and the entire street seemed to center around her intensity and light. Looking at her, I wondered why in the world I would ever not have her in my arms every chance I could.

We made it back to the Queen Victoria in time for high tea, which is usually served at 4:00 P.M. at a long, heavy, wooden table in the dining room. Before returning to our room, we stopped in the sitting room to look over the menus from area restaurants; all of the walking had made us long for an early dinner. After going back and forth between seafood or Italian, formal or relaxed, we finally decided on a place called Tricia's, which had a romantic waterfront location, a nice range of entrees, and a BYOB policy that would ensure we could bring our favorite chardonnay. It seemed a little pricey, but we wanted something special. After all, it wasn't every day we were able to step back into the Victorian era.

Our choice couldn't have been better. After stopping to pick up the chardonnay, we walked the few blocks up Beach Avenue to the boardwalk. The restaurant extended on a pier over the beach, and one wall of windows looked out toward where the whitecaps broke along the coastline, creating scalloped outlines along the sand. We were seated by a window, and the waiter came immediately to light the candle on our table and take our order. We both chose the smoked salmon appetizer, then Barb ordered her usual, veal marsala, while I asked for the prime rib, rare. The waiter went off and quickly returned with an ice bucket and two glasses for the chardonnay.

The meal was one of the most delicious we've ever had: the salmon and veal were so tender you barely needed a knife, and the prime rib seemed to be two inches thick. Between courses, the waiter brought us small dishes of lemon sorbet to cleanse our palates, and at the end of the meal he set two finger bowls before us. Sitting in the candlelight, as the fire of the setting sun streaked across the eastern sky, I raised my glass. "Here's to the good life," I said.

We toasted, and the sound of the crystal struck a perfect note.

We finally emerged from the restaurant to a night sky of stars and a sickle moon, with the surf sighing in the background and the turrets and cupolas glowing in the ghostly moonlight. Or maybe they just seemed to glow as we walked toward the inn, Barb's hand once again in mine, and all seeming right with the world. Back in our suite that mood continued: we found our bed turned down, the room tidied up, and a piece of dark chocolate—Barb's favorite—wrapped in gold-colored foil on the pillow. This was one of the things I enjoyed most about the Queen Victoria: good service with chocolate thrown in. I always felt as though elves had come in when we weren't around, cleaned up the place, and left a little gift.

Barb and I quickly undressed and slipped between the sheets. She leaned over and kissed me. "It was a beautiful day," she said.

"It doesn't get any better."

"Here, I have a present for you." She took her chocolate, unwrapped the foil, and held it up as if it were an actual gold coin. "From me to you, Mr. Finale."

"But you love this chocolate—it's your favorite!" I protested.

"No," she said. "You're my favorite. And every day, by the way, is special with you." She kissed my lips. "Some are just more special than others."

She reached over and turned out the light. The rest of the night went just as perfectly as the day, and when we finally did fall asleep, we were holding each other as if we would never let go.