COM-440 Blog #3: “The House on Eldorado”
Most people don’t know much about Weehawken, New Jersey, a small suburb between the Palisades and the Hudson. The answer to the trivia question is that it was there in 1804 the famous duel occurred between Burr and Hamilton; but I wouldn’t be surprised if that most people who know that only learned it from that pesky musical since I would know better than anyone that most everything is legal in New Jersey, except for dispensing your own gasoline. I have a more personal perspective on this small community of about 13,000 since it is here, just off Kennedy Boulevard and a spectacular view of our Midtown skyline, that personal bonds were forged and constructed rather than defeated with the shot of a pistol.
The left turn from Kennedy onto Eldorado Place is one I have made on countless occasions, each different than the last with the skyline directly off to our right. The typical suburban one-way side-street follows an atypical graduation, following a gradual decline and crashing into Highwood Ave at a grammar school. And right before this juncture on the left side is address 57 with its contemporary façade of two vertical glass windows to the right of its front door. This door leads to a foyer, where the family maintain their storage and a cage for their massive golden retriever. The second door leads to the house interior, a quiet two-floor property with 1½ bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, four bedrooms on the second floor, and a garage connecting the property with its backyard. Right at the entrance, it splits off with the living room to the right, a hallway to the kitchen at centre, and a staircase for the second floor to the left. They have a back office behind the dining room, on the other side is a china closet against the kitchen wall before leading to the living-room carpet and dog bed. But before the piano against the wall is a modern television, horizontally aligned with a couch…the couch of a million dreams and six years of an amazing friendship.
And who exactly lives here, you may ask? Allow me an anecdote from September 2010, for I remember vividly the first time I had met my beloved Anabelle. It was a pair of school field trips a month apart to begin our eighth-grade year, first to a campground in Sussex County for some teambuilding events, then to a farm in Morris County and a corn-maze with a pumpkin patch. I fondly remember first helping Anabelle over an obstacle at the campground, then the two of us teaming up with a school clinician and our English teacher to navigate the maze. But before long we had each selected the perfect fall pumpkin, and we exhaustedly returned to our bus and assumed seats on the left side, me next to the window. Both of our pumpkins were off to our respective lefts, allowing hers to nestle neatly in between our positions. “Let’s hug the pumpkin!” she said as she placed her left hand on its stem. I then put my right hand on the other side, where we remained for about the next fifteen minutes. It was then that I took that stem out of our equation, our hands awkwardly interlocked but simulating where they were in-relation to the stem. We remained interlocked for the remainder of the trip home, and I knew this would be the foundation of something special.
Eight months later, we participated in our commencement, and it was after this ceremony that she invited me and our other close friend to her property for a graduation party. I was forced to come to terms with the dog and her younger sister, but it was on that couch that the three of us spent most of the event. It doesn’t seem important on first glance but, with Anabelle possessing similar intellectual disabilities to mine, it was likely the first time a boy outside of her extended family had ever assumed a place on that sofa, except for the rare possibility of the crush of her little sister.
It would be some time before I returned to the property, at least 19½ months to be exact, since she prefers not to hang out with her school friends outside of campus. Despite this, I was still invited to her Sweet 16 in Midtown — where I received a dedication to her twelfth candle — after a field trip in Philadelphia where we were interlocked for the entire bus rides But at the end of January 2013, she invited me to a bowling party in Midtown hosted by her youth group, an excursion that began on Eldorado and interlocked hands in the back of her mother’s car. We had another “friend-date” three weeks later, where we picked her up there and went skating in Hackensack, one of my several attempts to get het engaged and involved outside of school. Then came the summer with similar results to the previous since Anabelle was unsure of my feelings toward her, so perhaps she didn’t want to chance anything, but we survived that season and entered junior year on even terms. I remember another invitation from my best friend, by now whom I was calling “Baltimore” after her rousing performance of “Good Morning Baltimore” at our Winter Arts Festival in February 2012, on 8 November 2013 that was originally supposed to be a quick coffee trip before she was to head to Midtown for another youth group event. But when we arrived at the ice-cream parlor at Port Imperial, she extended the invitation to her event, thus we walked the RiverWalk to a staircase that allowed us to vertically traverse the Palisades; we returned to her property on Eldorado, and after we settled down, we sat on her couch to pass the time, but eventually my right hand is interlocked in her left, a half-hour later switched and back again. I also snapped a few photos of our hands connected, which she didn’t mind. “Which one do you like more?” I asked her at one point.
Here, I began spending more time at the property, specifically longer stints there but slightly less frequently, but surprisingly we never had a sleepover there. Beginning the following March, we came the closest we had ever come to a relationship when I asked her to our junior prom on the East River; and two weeks later, after I scored the game-winning goal at the Ice House in front of Baltimore, we returned her to Eldorado. Two months later, we took our prom photos in front of the property before our limousine picked us up, again with our hands interlocked, and again it turned into a starting and ending point for our many adventures together. But the real fun was yet to occur, for 24 October 2014 marked her eighteenth birthday; we had made plans to hang out on Eldorado, so we arrived there after a quick Japanese lunch and shopping trip, where I was the first to embrace her at the moment she completed another year, at 2:50 that afternoon. A couple hours later, I returned to her couch and treated myself to a Connecticut Public Television program before the six of us — me and Baltimore, her parents, and her younger sister Ellie — dove into a couple cheese pies and a small ice-cream cake.
Eight months to the day later, our high school commencement was a massive success, and she invited me to her graduation party for later that day. We were able to spend some personal moments together especially after I invited her to the podium during my commencement speech, and we finished our high-school careers on a high. I have barely returned to the property since, Baltimore and I have spent our undergrad careers on opposite sides of Pennsylvania. But I will always have fond memories of that simple house, the most lasting symbol of Anabelle and everything about high school.
