Nantucket 2012—11 Breaking and Entering

Nantucket 2012—11 Breaking and Entering

It all started when I learned how to lock the rear sliding door that leads to the beach. Famously, no one on Nantucket claims they lock their doors, but I’m from New York. I finally found the locking mechanism this past weekend.

This morning, Maria decided she’d go to the general store with me for the first time to check it out, so we drove over at 8. When we returned, I did not have the house key, which I clearly had when we departed to lock the front door.

My keys and wallet and phone I carried in my hands, since the bathing suit I chose this morning has no pockets, something I made a note never to purchase again.

After returning to the general store and then searching the parking lot and our car, I decided I had to break into my own house. Normally, Maria would have been home and the rear door unlocked. But no longer.

I went around to the rear of the master bedroom. Those windows were open but the screens were in place, locked from the inside. I opened a beach chair, but couldn’t reach the screens from the seat, so I stood on the arm rests, wobbling a tad. I used my Bentley key to pry the screen off, which fell inside with the key, meaning that unless I got in we couldn’t even drive away for help.

I boosted myself onto the window ledge and in so doing, turned the beach chair over, so that I had the choice of falling to the deck or into the room. However, I was wedged in the window, sitting on the window opening mechanism, in significant pain.

I was facing the ocean with my back to the room, so I decided, rather than risk a fall on my head, to grasp both sides of the widow frame and lower my shoulders to the floor. Picture the trapeze guy hanging on with his legs to the bar while his hands dangle underneath waiting to grab or be grabbled.

After an agonizing minute or so, my shoulders finally hit the floor, I let go—and the rest of me shot out of the window like a cork from a ’98 Veuve Clicquot. I’m bruised all over.

When I went to the front door to let Maria in, she commented in her wonderful, observational, analytic manner: “You’re inside?”

As I was writing this I found the pockets in my bathing suit, sealed by Velcro.

© Alan Weiss 2012. All rights reserved.