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There are just a few books I have read three times (Robert Graves’ Good-Bye to All That comes to mind, along with Shakespeare’s tragedies, but not much else), but Couples is one of them. These new and unsettled suburbs, layered over old Puritan towns, provided the setting of Updike’s novel Couples. 128, the nation’s first “beltway,” had six years earlier put in easy commuting distance of Boston. It was my first word.Įssex was part of Boston’s north shore that the new Rte. It was sometime in 1957, about the time that John Updike was moving into a small house a few miles to the north of Essex. I pointed and, for the first time in my life, spoke. I still remember her mashed potatoes, which in retrospect must have had a very large quotient of butter and cream.Īt the restaurant I looked out the big window at the Essex River boatyard across the road and down a slope. I once was told that the restaurant was started by a woman who had sometimes cooked for my politician grandfather’s dinner parties, and partly with money he lent her. It was named “The Village Restaurant,” but by my mother still called it “Wimpy’s,” its previous name. When I was about two years old, I was with my parents and three siblings in an eatery in Essex, Massachusetts. As long as I can remember, I have loved boats and words.