Our flight landed early in Boston, but K and I both knew we’d be waiting a while. It’s not like Row 31 was Constantinople or Timbuktu, but we had watched these folks board, and holy cow, you could not even make up all the ways in which they were alternately helpless and clueless. The cleaning crew even boarded while we still had not moved an inch. Airline travelers after COVID remind me of my grandmother recovering from her stroke – she slowly relearned to walk and talk but in the meantime she didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Eventually, we picked up our rental car and set on our way, north on US 1A toward Cape Ann, our vacation destination. Logan Airport’s chaos gave way to the soot of Revere and then the sprawl of Lynn, and when we finally had water to our right and colonial houses to the left, we exhaled for the first time since leaving home.

K’s name is really Karen, by the way, but that name has been usurped by “the social movement.” As a politically liberal middle-aged white woman, she could not bear introducing herself as Karen. So Karen no more, K.M. was born, K to her friends. In solidarity, I’ve started going by the name J, and now we leave notes for our friends signed JK and no one knows what to think.

K and I decided Salem was a safe distance from the chaos to stop for lunch. It is appropriately the last town before entering Beverly, which bills itself as the “Gateway to Cape Ann.” We parked downtown and secured a table at a sidewalk cafe. Of course Salem is not known for being the Gateway to the Gateway to Cape Ann. This 400 year-old town is best known for the awful history of its first century, during which women were accused, tried and executed for witchcraft. Naturally, I acted as the expert on this history for K, since I had played Thomas Putnam in a high school production of The Crucible in 1981.

From our lunch table we could see signs for the Witch History Museum, the Witch Dungeon Museum, and the Salem Witch Museum. Across the street was a string of shops inspired by Harry Potter, and at the end of the block was a statue of actress Elizabeth Montgomery, star of classic television’s Bewitched. A middle aged couple and their two children – perhaps aged 10 and 14 – emerged from a “wand shop,” and walked toward our cafe. We tensed a bit in hopeful anticipation.

The parents were dressed like parents – the father in cargo pants with a cell phone belt holster, the mother in white capris and a nautical striped blouse. The kids were witches, of course – not Halloween witches, but rather the trope that seemed everywhere in Salem. The teenager wore black clothes with crystal jewelry, and even blacker hair set off her blindingly pale complexion. Like Wednesday Adams dressed for a heavy metal concert, I thought. And surely the pentagram tattoo was just henna, right? The younger daughter wore similar clothes, but her fair, curly hair was more Hermione than Broomhilda. Each girl carried a shopping bag from some olde wytche shoppe or another. And both girls stayed as far from the parents as they possibly could.

“That is a notorious sign of witchcraft afoot, Goody Nurse, a prodigious sign,” I warned in what I felt was a seventeenth century British accent.

“Why couldn’t you have done Our Town like a normal high school?” replied K, somehow embedding an eye roll into her voice.

To our delight, the family was seated at a table near us. I took a quarter from my pocket and set it next to my water glass. K knew the game was afoot. I slid our traditional wager to the center of the table and predicted, “The witches will order vegan.” K nodded in acceptance of the bet. When the older one ordered the cauliflower tacos, I drew the quarter slowly toward myself, preparing for triumph. When the younger one ordered the sirloin tips, I slid the coin to K, defeated.

The family was immediately lost in their phones. The father, speaking to no one: “It says here the Koreans have changed the way they measure birthdays and people are getting one or two years younger. I guess they do it some cockeyed way instead of just taking the day you were born and adding years to it…”

“That’s racist,” Hermione said without looking up.

“Korean is not a race,” defended Dad, looking for support from Mom who just kept scrolling.

“You called Korean culture a cockeyed thing,” said Wednesday, and she abruptly put her phone facedown on the table, crossing her arms in punctuation. After a beat she realized the error of this move. Without her phone and trapped at the table, she was now interacting with her father more, not less. She picked up her phone again and held it close, blocking her face. “And then you actually mansplained age.”

The subsequent conversation was a thing to behold. No thought was too mundane or simple for the parents to share without eliciting a sharp critique. Incalculable injustices beset the daughters, usually compounded by the parents’ inability to use their 1980s words to express appropriate thoughts in the 2020s. Like in the climactic trial of a Perry Mason episode, we were being led by incontrovertible evidence toward an inevitable conclusion, in this case that Mom and Dad are the dumbest two people who ever lived. And then a stay of execution. Their meals arrived.

K and I had already lingered long past our cappuccinos and dessert, so we used the moment to take our leave. As we moved past we could see two things: first, the vegan tacos looked amazing; and second, the sirloin tips were served on a cast iron platter that was still slightly sizzling. The waiter cautioned pro forma, “Careful, this is hot,” but the girl was too deep into TikTok to hear. After he left, she immediately touched the plate with a bare hand and yelped. Dad quickly offered his ice water glass, and Hermione held it against her tender skin, eyes still watering.

K’s eyes narrowed as she saw mine light up, the way they do when I have something inappropriate to say. With two fingers, K slid the quarter from her back pocket and held it in her open hand – this was also the going rate for a good joke, if I could earn it. As we walked out of earshot, she said, “Well?”

I smiled. “Looks like she was burned at the steak.”

– JK from Salem, June 2023