Park Lane South, Queens
Mary Anne Kelly
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.