Park Lane South, Queens

For Tommy

CHAPTER 1

There were no stars as thick as bedbugs over Richmond Hill. There was only a moon. All you could hear were the faraway clunks of the avenue el, the spurt of the radio squad car parked halfway up Bessemer, and the dark, runny lull of the woods still alive with raccoon.

Eleven miles and ten thousand light years from Manhattan, elderly front porches throned inbred and bigboned cats who looked up nervously, then yawned with affectation when an ugly black runt-legged dog made his rounds industriously through the backyards and the tilted streets.

Dubbed by all as the Mayor, the dog patrolled the trestle tracks for female scent, investigated any unlocked garbage pails along his way, enjoyed a clandestine and cooling drink from Mrs. Dixon's controversial Roman birdbath, and then headed north along old Park Lane South, going no farther in than the rim of the woods (there were things going on in there even he didn't want to know about). Finally, back he waddled to his own front porch, job done, neighborhood checked, home just in time for the blue-bellied dawn climbing over the pin oak.

Claire Breslinsky, slender and still beautiful at thirty, slept soundly in the hammock on the porch. The Mayor padded over, cocked his head, and watched, deliberating whether or not to jump right up and nestle in. Claire's hair, loosened in sleep, was dark as chestnut and the briney bitches of his youth. He sighed. That was years ago. He'd put on quite a bit of weight since then and doubtless he would wake up Claire. That wouldn't do. Although she'd just returned to Queens from ten years overseas and he had only known her briefly as a pup, he felt a fond attachment to her. Claire's accent didn't bother him. He was English bulldog-blooded himself. At least a good part of him was. He liked her foreign ways. And at meals she fed him every bit of her meat beneath the table. Mother and Pop Breslinsky (or Mary and Stan, as he chose to think of them, with all due respect) said she had spent some years in India to boot. That would explain it.

Claire stirred. The first shaft of light had hit her on the face. She looked right at him with those eyes queerly bright and blue as the Lanergan's Siberian husky.

“Ah,” her deep voice cracked, “good morning, your honor.”

The Mayor joggled his tail to and fro. He bolted directly onto her breast and slurped her broad mouth with his tongue. Claire pushed him firmly off her face but let him stay right there, her soft hand buried in the bristly fur of his fighter's broad back. She put her leg out onto the porch railing and rocked the two of them back and forth, back and forth. There was no wind today. It would be hot.

They looked up and watched the garbage truck come lumbering up the block. Mrs. Dixon next door stretched her terry bathrobe around herself one extra time, slammed down the can lid, and waddled briskly back inside her house. No garbagemen were going to see
her
front without a sturdy brassiere. Of that they could be sure. Some things, Claire smiled, never changed. Then a decrepit Plymouth rattled down the broken street from Park Lane South and turned left onto Myrtle. And back they fell to sleep.

The old house was still for just a little while. Mary Breslinsky, up with the birds, was quick in and out of the shower and down to squeeze oranges, poach eggs, pop the toast in. News radio accompanied her as she went about with her transistor in one apron pocket, rosary in the other, eyes wide for any international catastrophe (Claire was finally safe at home, thank God, but still she liked to be the first to hear of any tragedy). The white braids curled around her neat head would quiver with excitement at just any break in a major criminal event. She'd clear her throat and store this or that away for announcement at the table. She was Irish, was Mary.

Before you knew it, she had the marmalades lined up like soldiers: blueberry for her husband Stan, apricot for raven-haired Carmela (her eldest and her fashion columnist), orange for Claire (her long-lost wandering photographer come home at last), grape for Zinnie (her good humoured, blond policewoman) and mint (again) for Michaelaen (Zinnie's son and his grandma's own miracle, just four years old and russet-haired like Claire used to be). Her husband Stan referred to them as his Clairol Group, and so they did look when you got them all together around the table.

Stan Breslinsky, hardware store proprietor (semi-retired), weapons enthusiast, and passionate lover of opera, shaved to the strains of
Rigoletto
. He hummed along. He took his time. He warbled and lingered until the last pretty notes of “La Donna E Mobile” came to a halt. Reverently, he put away his Sony tape recorder and descended the stairs for the kitchen. A spider as big as your thumb scooted down the bannister behind him.

Mary was at the
Daily News
, checking off her Wingo numbers. She played all the Zingos, Wingos, and Lottos. Each morning brought another chance to win a million. Her corner of the table by the stove was cluttered with all kinds of tickets, bingo circulars, crossword puzzles, coupons, and contests for prizes like a fun-filled trip to Atlantic City. Stan waited for her to be finished with the
News
and move on to the
Post
. Then he could have all his favorite funnies. The
Times
was lying there unopened (nobody read that thing but Carmela) and so was
Newsday
, the one they all read while waiting for the
News
or the
Post
to be free.

“Good morning, dear.” He kissed her on the cheek.

“They caught that fellow who was robbing all the 7-Elevens,” Mary said. “About time, too. He's been busy as a widow at the fair.”

Stan reached into Mary's apron pocket and switched the news channel of the radio over to WQXR, the classical station, then took his seat.

“Is today league day?” They bowled together on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, then again with the league every Friday.

“Sure.” She looked at him over the tops of her reading glasses. “You might want to put your bermudas on. News says it's going to be a scorcher.”

“Claire's bed is empty. She sleep out on the porch again all night?”

“Mmm.”

Stan shook his head. He sipped his juice and Mary handed him the
News
.

“You give it back before Carmela gets it. She'll do the crossword out from under me.”

In marched Michaelaen, stark naked and transporting a truck in one downy arm.

“Back in your room and don't come out without your shorts.” Mary reached for the scissors and began her coupon clipping. Michaelaen returned in a moment wearing nice plaid bathing trunks. He went out the screen door and into the yard to go check on his rabbits. Zinnie came in, her short blond curls spilling this way and that, and kissed her parents good morning, all the while busily at work with a nail file.

Mary put a glass of juice down in front of her. “No guns at the table, officer.”

Zinnie removed her pistol and stuck it on top of the refrigerator. She yawned and eyed the
News
in her father's hands.

Michaelaen, satisfied that his rabbits had lived through the night (no small feat with all the raccoon about), returned and climbed onto Zinnie's lap. She spread his green mint jelly onto a piece of white bread, folded it over, and pushed it into his little mouth. He cradled his truck and chewed.

Carmela entered crisply, her usual forboding self without her coffee, so no one greeted her yet. Neat as a pin, her black hair coiled in a knot at the nape of her neck, Carmela buried herself behind the
Times
. She swallowed a series of pills: lecithin, rose hips, brewer's yeast, and silica, a round of B's, a multi, an E, and an unscented garlic. (In the winter she included cod liver oil.) She sloshed this parade down with one long gulp of black coffee.

A sirening cop car raced down Eighty-fourth Avenue and up to the woods.

“Gee, that's close,” said Mary. “I hate sirens.” She loved them, really, but she didn't think she should.

“Anybody got ‘Dear Abby'?” asked Zinnie.

A resounding belch from the
Times
alerted them that Carmela was now awake, aware, and prepared for verbal exchange. “Jesus,” she swore at a picture of a rather mannish-looking female politician. “Who the hell does this friggin upstart think she is.”

“She needs a good slam bam in the thank you, ma'am,” Zinnie agreed. “Is Claire out on the porch? What does she think, she's still in the Himalayas? You'd better tell her, Mom. She can't sleep out there.”

“Why not?” Carmela arched one well-plucked brow. “I'm sure she's only levitating.”

“Better,” Stan said, “she sleeps on the porch than over there in God knows where with God knows whom.”

“Hear that?” said Zinnie. “Another siren.”

“They both seem to have stopped by the monument,” Stan lifted an ear and strained to look outside.

“It's probably crack smokers, again,” Mary decided.

“Too early in the morning for crack smokers,” Zinnie said knowingly. “And anyway, no one wastes sirens on crack smokers.” She took a bottle of clear nail polish out of her trousers pocket and repaired a chip. “What's Claire doing wandering around the woods by herself? Mrs. Dixon says she's always in the woods.”

“Taking pictures,” Mary sighed. “What else?”

“Well, tell her she can't just sashay through the woods around here anymore. This neighborhood isn't what it used to be.”

“You tell her,” Stan said. “She listens to you.”

“I already told her not to sleep in the hammock. So where is she? Sleeping in the hammock.”

“She does have the dog out there,” Mary pointed out.

“Hah,” Carmela snorted. “A lot of good he'll do her. He's off half the night looking for girls.”

“He sure is,” reflected Stan with a touch of pride.

“You wouldn't think he could still get it up at his age,” Carmela mused out loud.

“Carmela!” Mary waggled her head. “Such thoughts!”

Zinnie looked up from her manicure. “Aw, c'mon ma. We're grown-up, divorced women.”

“Well, I'm not divorced. Neither is your father and neither is Michaelaen. Majority rules.”

“I am too divorced,” insisted Michaelean.

“Oh, yeah?” Zinnie shook him around on her lap. “Where's ya papers, huh?”

“Claire's not divorced, either,” Carmela added, somewhat viciously, for they all knew that Claire had been “involved” with two different men, neither of whom she'd told them much about.

“The last one was a duke, you know,” Zinnie, still impressed, reminded them.

“That and a token will get you on the subway,” Carmela said.

Zinnie helped herself to another poached egg. “A hell of a lot more interesting than that dip shit accountant you were married to.”

“At least Arnold didn't live off my money, like hers did.”

“Right. He left you so well off. That's why he's got a house in Bayside and you're back in Richmond Hill with us.”

“Arnold might be tight,” Carmela smiled, “but he never took it in the kicker.”

“Now, girls.”

“That's ok, Mom,” Zinnie shrugged. “It wasn't Freddy's fault he turned out gay. And it wasn't mine, either.”

Mary frowned. “Well, then, at least not in front of Michaelaen.”

“I don't know why the hell not,” Zinnie buttered her English muffin. “At least when he grows up he'll know enough to marry someone who knows what they're there for.”

“It says here,” Stan interjected, “that they're thinking of making the old Valencia Theatre into a landmark.”

Mary's coffee pot suspended in midair. “I remember going there with my cousin Nancy as a girl. She took the trolley in from Brooklyn and we packed a lunch and went to the Valencia. This was the country to her, can you imagine?”