Cape Cod Love Story

The Apartment, the facial hair and the wedding

Epicure Girl Goes Native
Catching a "keeper" on Cape Cod


   The Epicure on Main StreetI met my husband in the Impudent Oyster in Chatham in late June 1985 at about 10 pm. He was a friend of a friend (Rob) of a friend (Marge) of a friend (Debbie) and wound up sitting next to me. We talked about violins and Minoan art and he said he would show me Chatham from his boat and from his four wheel drive vehicle on Nauset Beach.

I thought he was ultra nice but was ambivalent about his moustache. (He got rid of it 8 months later in a pensione in Vienna.)

At the time, I was a college student living with 27 other coeds in dormitory-style digs which occupied the two floors above the Epicure Liquor Store on Main Street in Chatham. It cost me $55/week. Like every other place I have lived, this has since gone condo. I had no car and walked to my jobs around town.

When it was time to leave the Oyster, he asked me to write down my phone number... but I  transposed the last two numbers by mistakeThe only beach I could get to was Lighthouse Beach in Chatham. Of course, I still had a great time living at the Epicure even though officially there were no guys allowed upstairs ever. But the store closed at 11 and then watch out. When we met I was barely 20 and he was 22. He had always thought he would get married when he was 30 but it ended up being 24.

When it was time to leave the Oyster, he asked me to write down my phone number so he could call me to take me out on Nauset Beach in his truck. But I inadvertently transposed two of the numbers--I did not give out this number very much--it was the sole phone for all 28 girls. No cell phones back then!

A week later, I quit my job and came back to the Epicure. The phone rang and it was himA week later, I quit my job and came back to the Epicure. The phone rang and it was him. I was in a what-the-hell mood and said, sure come pick me up, let's go to the beach. He showed up and I got in his truck. He later told me he had sort of forgotten what I looked like and breathed a sigh of relief when he picked me up.

He told me that he had been calling the number I gave him and that it was for the employee dorms at the Chatham Bars Inn. So whoever answered would say that I was not there (even though they didn't know me.) Finally he got the number for the Epicure and called me. Before going to the beach we liberated a bottle of champagne from his parent's house (yuck--hated it then and hate it now but pretended I liked it) and then picked up his friend Rob, whose had the exact same first and last name of the boss I had just quit working for.

My husband and Rob had been without girlfriends all summer and went fishing or boating together every day after work. They didn't go Brokeback or anything, but Rob kept trying to come along on many of our subsequent outings. Every day for two weeks, my husband would pick me up after work (I found two other jobs the next day) and we would go on some outdoor adventure.

  He had everything - a motor boat for fishing and water skiing, a sailboat for evening sails, a truck for going out on Nauset, plus a surfboardHe had everything--a motor boat for fishing and water skiing, a sailboat for evening sails, a truck for going out on Nauset, plus a surfboard. We caught bluefish and grilled them. We dug for steamers and grilled them.

I was usually a good sport and didn't mind walking through beach grass from the boat to the beach ("the beach grass test" he called it). When we went to Monomoy Beach, which is difficult to anchor at, I often jumped off the side of his motor boat wearing a red bikini with a cooler on top of my head into 5 feet of surf, because he said it was safe and I did not know any better. But it was safe. He found a white stone on Monomoy that perfectly fit in my navel which I still have.

Five months after we met, I went away to Grenoble in the South of France for a semester abroad I had been planningWe had dinner in a fancy Italian restaurant in Hyannis and afterward he showed me all the constellations while we were lying down on a blanket on Jackknife Beach in Chatham. No hanky panky and I was beginning to wonder of he had really gone Brokeback or was just a perfect gentlemen. (It is definitely the latter.) We were just friends for two weeks and then once Rob left us alone, we fell madly in love and have been together ever since. We saw "Back to the Future" together and now 21 years later, we have made our destined two kids (remember that part of the movie.)

   He still takes me to the Outer Beach, but we bring our two kids along nowFive months after we met, I went away to Grenoble in the South of France for a semester abroad I had been planning. He missed me so much and worried that I might run off with some Euro guy (no way--they are too skinny and indoorsy for me) that when he came to visit in March, he proposed to me in Amsterdam at the Hotel Toren, when he had really wanted to propose later on in our trip on a gondola in Venice. I played a part in the premature Dutch proposal because I kept nagging him at Melkweg (look it up) about the future of our relationship.

After getting engaged, I was the envy of my sorority sisters and quit going to frat parties. I spent another semester in London, graduated, we got married at 7:30 p.m. in a southern June wedding with eight bridesmaids, honeymooned in Greece, worked in Boston, and moved to the Cape in 1993. We still go boating to the same beaches we did in 1985, which are the beaches my husband went to as a kid. But now, he doesn't take me fishing, he takes our son. And even though, after two kids, the navel stone doesn't fit anymore, I still jump into the surf from our boat at Monomoy.

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