Wed 12:30-1:15pm class w/Grace

Public Travels
by
Beth Cameron

Mrs. Suburbia never used the subway system, too many people, too dirty, too hot in August, after all she was a product of the bedroom communities south of the city. She understood malls and little leagues and day spas and looking after her family. Big Ed, her husband of twenty years, father of her two children, had driven off in the Lexus with his passport and his twenty-two year old p.a. two days ago and didn't say a word to her as he brushed past her and got into the car. She told the children he had gone on a business trip, but she didn't know where the hell he had gone, and deep down inside she really didn't care. And today she was going to Boston, alone.

All she knew of the red line train from Braintree to The Republic of Cambridge in the summer was that it cut across Boston carrying mostly kids from the South Shore to the Big City, the "goth" kids including her sisters' brood of misfits would stay on and ride all the way to Alewife and hang out on Mass. Ave., but the majority of the burbies got enough foreign travel, enough cross-cultural exposure just going into the City.

Two such burbies already abroad the train, Ben, overweight, with curly hair, bad skin and eyes buried behind babyfat cheeks and Alicia overweight, too, with greasy long hair, a natural blonde, with good skin; but with the heat of summer, her face was pink and with her hair in a ponytail, there were red rims of both ears exposed, they looked like pig ears. She tickled Ben as they talked in whispers. Ben snorted loudly in spurts, moving coquettishly away from the tickler.

Doors open at Quincy Adams and Mrs. Suburbia, a woman of forty, dressed like twenty, enters the train, shaking slightly but not noticeably and sits across from Ben and Alicia. She flips open her cell phone, checks her messages, closes it and drops it into her bag, then looks across at the teens. "Where are you kids going?"

Alicia springs into information mode and leans back in preparation for a long conversation, Ben is interested too, and straightens up in his chair, attentively. "We're going to Boston to hang out," Ben says. "I'm going shopping," adds Alicia, "My mother gave me money to get school clothes 'cause I hate the stuff she buys me. She won't let me use her credit cards no more, so she gave me two hundred dollars to get stuff for school, like I might find anything with that!"

Mrs. Suburbia smiles and looks at Ben, possibly hoping for more pleasant banter that the surly girl offers. "Yeah, her mother told her I had to go with her, as her bodyguard," snorts Ben, giggling and poking Alicia in the side. "Shut Up!" she retorts as she belts Ben in the stomach rolling her eyes, "Jeeze!" Looking at her with a rogueish eye Ben adds, "So you gotta buy me a CD or something to pay me back and a Big Mac or a Pizza at Downtown Crossing."

"My son's around your age, he's getting ready for college and I've got to get him and his roommate lamps for their dorm room. It's so dark in there," says Mrs. Suburbia. "Where's he going?" asks Ben. "Well, he's decided to listen to his father and attend Bentley College for Business, because opportunities like this don't come along every day and I think he's finally getting excited about going. He wanted to travel abroad for a year with some friends, but my husband said he had to get an education first. I think he'll be happy at school once I fix up the room for him, it'll be just like home. I'll miss him."

"Are you two headed for college this fall?" "Nope, back to high school for our senior year, then I'm going to Massasoit," Ben answered. "Ben, Massasoit's a shit school for retards!" snapped Alicia. "I know, but I can hang out and party for two years then transfer out. My aunt lives right next door to Stonehill College and I can go there and live for free with my aunt, all meals included," beamed Ben quite pleased with this arrangement. "Sweet!" cheered Alicia.

"Stonehill was on my son's list, they have a great international program that he was very interested in," offered Mrs. Suburbia somewhat sadly. "Yeah, well, I've already traveled abroad," said Ben, "When I was a kid, I went to England and Dublin with my youth group."

"That sounds wonderful. How was the food?" quizzed Mrs. Suburbia. "I don't remember much, I was twelve or thirteen, but seemed like everything was fried, I mean everything! Thank God for MacD's and Pizza Hut. "Well, yes, I have heard that English food isn't good. They're known for their bad food. The English simply can't cook," whispered Mrs. Suburbia with contempt.

"My son bought an International Youth Hostel Card before he was accepted to Bentley. Did you stay at hostels on your trip?" Mrs. Suburbia leaned forward to learn more from Ben. "Yeah, we stayed at this hostel in Edinburg, it was awesome, tons of students from all over the world and everyone hanging out together till two in the morning, even the chaperones were drunk out of their minds," Ben informed her, noticing that he now had the attention of people on both sides of the aisle and was delighted to be steering the conversation. He continued, "We weren't always at hostels though, in London we stayed at a Hilton Hotel and I had my own room."

"Sweet!" piped in Alicia, who wanted to get back into Ben's conversation, but hadn't been further than the Canadian side of Niagra Falls with her father and his new bride in their RV, never on water, not even aboard the water shuttle from Hingham to Boston, so the best she could do was to support Ben's story with "Ou!" "Wow!" "Ah!" and the occasional, "Sweet!" Her eyes were locked onto him and she hung on his every word, and he was loving it.

More to impress Alicia, rather than the middle-aged mother, he went on building onto his global travel, "Yeah, we could order drinks from room service." "Didn't they have a minibar in the room with cokes, orange juice and water, like they have in the Hilton's here?" questioned Mrs. Suburbia, "my husband and I used the minibar at the Hilton in Wisconsin when we visited his sister there and we drank everything in it after all the cheese we were forced to eat." "Heck the minibar was locked tight," said Ben authoritatively, "but it didn't matter 'cause I just picked up the phone and called room service and got bottles of gin and vodka sent up, and no one gave a shit how old I was, so long as I signed for my order when the guy knocked at the door. I had half a dozen girls in my hotel room drinking and watching pay tv, man, it was unreal, watching these Swedish movies and jumping around on the beds. My parents would have freaked if they knew what they paid for, lucky for me my mother's credit card just had the hotel total on her billing statement, I checked."

"I had a blast," sighed Ben euphorically, "Everyone should go to London. In the middle of the night you can walk down this wicked wide street called The Strand and there are all these drunks sleeping on cardboard with blankets and dogs sleeping on the blankets with them. They talk to you, real polite-like, one guy said, 'Sir, do you have any money for my dog's food?' in this real cool English accent, so I gave him some change, English coins are wicked heavy, so I was glad to get rid of them, and his dog got up and gave me his paw. It was cool. And this other guy walked over and let me have a drag off his cigarette, so I gave him some change, too, and he took off his Yankees baseball cap, bowed and said, 'Cheers, Governor!' It was awesome. There were some girls in blankets too, girls my age, sleeping on the street, but they looked really skanky."

"Did you like Ireland?" inquired Mrs. Suburbia, adding that her husband was Irish. "What part of Ireland is he from?" replied the world traveler, "maybe I stayed there." "Well, actually, he was born in Dorchester, but his mother's people came over on the boat from Galway," she said sheepishly. "No, I didn't get to Galway, just Dublin," reaffirmed Ben acknowledging his limitations, "And I can't say the people there were all that pleasant. I asked them if they were with the IRA and no one seemed to know what I was talking about, so I told them how we have parades in the States to support their freedom. It got friendlier though when we went into pubs where they were playing music. Everyone was drinking and singing and shouting rebel cheers and laughing, dancing and carrying the party out into the streets. That was cool. In Dublin we stayed in this really cheap hostel next door to Bono's hotel in Templebar, and the hostel was packed. This one guy was on a top bunk over Joey Callabrizzo and in the middle of the night, he leaned over and puked on Joey's head, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Joey jumped up with puke in his eyes and ran out of the room without a noise and never came back, guess he slept in the hall. So Joey wouldn't sleep on the bottom bunk for the rest of the trip and he wouldn't take off his baseball cap neither. It was too funny. Everyone on the bus was ragging on him, yelling, 'Hey, Joey, what's in your hair, looks like puke, smells like puke, it is puke, Hey Joey!' Man, that kid was scarred for life," roared Ben laughing at his own story.

Suddenly the doors opened and Alicia pulled Ben off his seat, "Come on, this is Downtown Crossing!" And with that, the two pushed through the crowd getting on, and were gone. But not before a young man boarded the train and sat next to Mrs. Suburbia. She moved over slightly, then looked at him and inquired, "Do you know what time it is?" She tells him that she will be getting off at Charles Street to go shopping at the Galleria near the Museum of Science. He suggests she stay on and cross the bridge to Kendall.

She smiles, blushes and says,"Thank you, that is very helpful." "Not at all," he replies to her in a very British accent. "Are you from Cambridge, Massachusetts or Cambridge, England?"she teases him. "Actually," he answers, "I am from Windemere, in the Lake District, the North of England, studying at Harvard for a year's exchange." "Oh gosh," she adds excitely touching his arm, "My son is going to England after he graduates from college, isn't this a coincidence." "Well, if he comes to the Lake District, here is the address of my parent's restaurant," smiles the stranger while extracting a business card from his wallet for her. "Oh, how wonderful," gushes Mrs. Suburbia,"I understand you people have fabulous fried food."