by Tara Clancy
So it was that, at age six, I single-handedly brought the average age of The Geriatrics of 251st Street down from seventy-three to sixty-four. That was much more of a jump for me than them, and it soon took its toll on all my senses. By the start of first grade, my normal speaking voice was a good ten times louder than anyone else under seventy-five. My music was Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and not much else. I had developed a serious affinity for sugar-free sucking candy, butterscotch, and Chuckles. Truth is, I absolutely hated Chuckles, but I ate them by the fistful anyway, solely to spite Grandma. If moving in had brought me any new insights, it was that the third most important thing to her, beyond Aunt Mary and her linoleum, was proving to the world that we were not starving. Like most people who’d endured the Depression, Grandma was obsessed with food. Unlike sane people, however, she remained so obsessed that even by the mid 1980s she still needed to let our neighbors know that we had enough to eat.
One way this insanity manifested itself was that she was constantly trying to feed us. For example, if I was playing outside but had to come in to use the bathroom, even if it was 11:00 a.m., she refused to let me go back outside until I had downed a plate of macaroni. (I went to great lengths to get around this—once, just once, by shitting in a bucket in her garden.)
And the other way was that she forbade me from eating anyone else’s food. For her, a neighbor’s seemingly innocuous heaping candy dish was, in reality, a booby trap, meant to reveal whether I was malnourished. Or, if I were to take a piece of candy, she thought someone would instantly assume, “Poor kid must be starving. She ate a Chuckle.”
Each week she gave me the same speech. “We’re going for cards tonight at Tina’s. Now, if she says to you, ‘Here, have a candy,’ you say, ‘No, I’m full, thank you.’ You eat! We don’t want them to think you don’t eat over here! Fahngool!” Everyone thought she was nuts, but nobody was going to square off with her. Instead, they found a simpler solution: Tina would give me an extra deck of cards and tell me to crawl under the table to play. Then Tina, Lenny, my grandfather, Anna, and Joe would sneak handfuls of Chuckles down to me. Eventually the candies would be coming in from all angles, more hands than there should have been for that number of people, it seemed. They tasted awful, especially with four or five jammed in my mouth at once. But that never stopped me from finishing every single one.
—
Living on 251st Street full-time also brought the opportunity for me to make friends with the handful of kids on the block. Although, my version of friendship at the time was to show up and anoint myself Mob Boss. I led a crew that included a little Polish girl named Kristin Petekiewicz, whose name Grandma always forgot, so she referred to her instead as “the quiet one with the snot,” and who I truly loved but still bossed around and once convinced to eat a handful of grass. Then there was Dennis, a scrawny German boy who I talked into the “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine” bit behind his garage after school one day. And Peter, a Puerto Rican kid who I made my lackey in one of my more unsavory plots that year, when an Indian boy our age moved onto the block. I got five-year-old Peter to ring his doorbell while I hid behind a nearby bush. When the kid answered, I told Peter to say, “Tara Clancy has unfinished business with you!” Right after which I jumped out, flying-squirrel style, and pounced on him—all because somebody told me he had six toes on his right foot.
I wasn’t half as tough as I thought I was, because when he started to cry, I burst into tears, too. I even blubbered out a whole string of “I’m sorry”s as he ran back into the house, but it was too late. A second later his mother came out, pure rage in a deep red sari, and in no time flat Grandma was there too, staring down at me and rattling the wad of keys in the front pocket of her housedress the same way a cowboy spins his pistol before the shoot-out. She shook her head at me without a word for a long while before finally looking up and saying to the lady, “I’m very sorry, ah…this one is just a little nuts sometimes!” His mother nodded and then, to our surprise, invited us in. It was a lovely gesture, but nobody knew what to do or say next. The four of us stood silently in her kitchen, a whole heap of pots clanking away on the stove and ratcheting up the tension, until Grandma finally said, “So, you cook, ah?” His mother said yes, Grandma said, “Me, too,” they both smiled, and that was enough for a truce on 251st Street.
A few days later I rang the boy’s bell to see if he wanted to come out to play, and he did, but not before we cleared things up. Through his screen door he said, “Just so you know, my mother says that having six toes is good luck.” And I said, believing this to be gospel, “Wow. I had no idea!” The rest of the crew was waiting on the sidewalk, and as we walked out to join them, I said, “So, hey, I got this idea for us all to make some money today. You want in?” He did.
I led everybody to Grandma’s backyard, where I had laid out sheets of construction paper on the ground alongside a little pile of crayons. We all huddled together, and I lifted up a sample sheet, which I had already prepared, a bright pink piece of paper with two blue squiggly lines. “This,” I announced, “is called ‘abstract art,’ and if we all make a few of these, we can go around the neighborhood selling them for a buck apiece! C’mon, take a crayon!”
When my mom got home from work that night, she found me counting out a stack of dollar bills in my room, and she flipped out. “Tara! Honey, people bought those drawings from you because you’re a kid and they thought it was cute. But you can’t do that; it’s not right. What did you say to these people?”
“I said that in the city there’s a place called Sotheby’s where people sell drawings like these for a lot of money, but you can get this one for just a dollar!”
And the reason I knew that to be true? Well, that brings us back to the limo ride.
I’m the lone fish in a forty-foot tank, an ant in an airplane hangar, that last guy sitting in the stands of an emptied arena—I am a seven-year-old girl in a sleeveless Bruce Springsteen concert T-shirt, cutoff jean shorts, and beat-up Nike high-tops, sitting in the back of a stretch limousine, lumbering out of the farthest-flung corner of Queens.
The dark-tinted windows have turned day to night in an instant, a phenomenon that I understand at seven but that scared the ever-living shit out of me the very first time I rode alone in one of these things. I was only five then, and, unfamiliar with the wonders of window tinting, I could not fathom how the summer-morning sky had gone black the very second I stepped into the car. I panicked, figuring that the End of Days I’d been hearing about at CCD (Sunday school) was upon us, until it finally occurred to me to try opening the damn window. And in a flash I went from petrified to ecstatic. Window closed: Apocalypse. Window open: bright summer day! Closed: Doomsday. Open: sunshine!! I must have worn the button down to a nub that day—two years later, I still need to check, but I’m satisfied after just a few rounds.
As a matter of principle I keep staring out the window until my exit from Broad Channel is official, which is when we’ve passed the great wall of Call-A-Head blue plastic Porta Potties. I watch as, one by one, they slide out of view, the long row magically shrinking down to nothing, and only then do I turn back in. I take a breath—the infamous rotten-egg/septic-tank Broad Channel air has been replaced with the newly vacuumed limo air, mixed with Windex and the driver’s aftershave. My nose twitches as I try to figure if I like one better than the other. I don’t.
I take a long look around the inside of the car and let the emotional pendulum swing: I’m such a small kid in this big car, alone, it’s scary…I’m such a small kid in this big car, alone…I can do whatever I want! The pendulum goes back and forth a few more times before I remember how to balance it out.
Popping open the seat belt that only two minutes ago I promised my dad I’d keep on for the whole ride, I unpeel the sweat-glued bare skin on my thighs from the leather upholstery and slide across the bench seat until I’m sitting at the very center with my feet propped on the carpeted hump in the floor. Then,
in a further attempt to spread myself out and make the space feel a bit smaller, I chest-pass my overnight bag all the way across the car to the bench seat opposite me. The bag is a nylon, ’80s-variety gym duffel, and looking at it lying there all small and limp has the opposite effect, but it feels good to be flinging shit around anyway.
Directly above me is the most wonderful one square foot of plastic I know to exist, ten times better than any toy, and I spend a few seconds just staring up, mouth agape, drinking it in. It is the Overhead Control Panel, a hundred thousand (really just ten or so) buttons, switches, and dials, and I must, MUST, press, turn, or flip each and every one, every time I make this trip. (I have only one memory of a driver complaining that I turned the first twenty minutes of the ride into something like the sound-and-light check for a KISS show at the Garden. He yelled, “Eh, kid! I think it’s time to quit it with all that!…Eh! Kid?…Eh, you!?” I snapped out of my obsessive button-pushing eventually but only long enough to say, “Sorry, mister, I just got a few more to go!”)
I hop up onto my knees (I’m too short to reach the panel from my seat) and dive in. Partition all the way up, then all the way down, and repeat. Moonroof open, shut, repeat, repeat, repeat. I hit every preset button on the radio, fiddle with the tuner dial for a good five minutes, blast the volume when “Pour Some Sugar on Me” comes on, then lower it back down, mid fist pump, when I get a glare from the driver in the rearview.
I turn on and off all the interior mood lighting, switch the fan speed from light breeze to gale-force wind, and twist the temperature control knob from Arctic to Boca and back. I eye the intercom buttons last but hesitate for a little bit before finally working up the nerve to press LISTEN. I eavesdrop for five nerve-racking seconds’ worth of static backed by the hum of tires on asphalt, then damn near fall over when the driver clears his throat. In my mind, this is the crime of the century.
With my heart beating at hummingbird rate, I plop back down onto the seat. And if in this moment I wasn’t some kid in a limo, but an actor on TV playing the office underling who just stole a minute in his boss’s desk chair after he’d gone home for the day, this would be when I would lean back, crack my knuckles, and start rubbing my palms together. Now, let’s see what’s in these drawers!
I stand up (I’m so short, I can do that even though I’m inside a car) and beeline it for the black-lacquered shelving unit. On top is a refrigerator-egg-holder-style cutout caddy holding a half dozen highball glasses, and I spin them in place, one by one. Working my way right, I pull the square crystal stopper from the first of the three spirit-filled decanters, then, knowing the shock to my nasal passages that is to come, I ever so slowly extend my nose over the top to take a whiff. Woo! I get that cockeyed-wince face and pull my head away…but when my eyelids stop fluttering and my nose stops burning, I do the exact same thing with the next decanter in line: Damn!! And the next: Aw, man!!!
Below the row of glasses and bottles of booze are several closed compartments. Per usual, I’m as excited to discover what’s inside as I am by their ultra luxurious push-to-open latches. Cabinets without handles: Wow! First I use a slight, two-finger touch. I’m blown away by the slow, grand way the door unhinges. But before I even bother looking inside, I shut it again and try a few other variations: superfast single-finger poke, karate-style palm strike—Hi-ya!, etc.
Inside the first compartment is a tiny television, and as soon as I see it, I start praying to the gods of Hanna-Barbera. I flip the stations in a frenzy for a good five minutes, but I don’t find a single Smurf, Jetson, or Flintstone, so I move along. Another cabinet contains an ice bin stocked with half-pint glass soda bottles, and though experience has taught me that these only ever offer club soda or tonic, I take them all out, hoping I’ll find a Veryfine fruit punch or a quarter water* anyway.
Having had my fill of the shelving unit, I dive onto the back-facing bench seat nearest the partition. I lie there with my hands under my head and my elbows butterflied out and stare at the ceiling for a bit, until inspiration hits: I sit up, run across the floor, and dive onto the bench on the other side. I dart back and forth now, flinging myself sidelong into the seats and springing back up into the air like a WWF wrestler bouncing off the ropes. I somersault off the seat, play pin Hulk Hogan, then start pounding the floor, “Ladies and gentlemen, it looks as if the Hulk is down for the count! One, two, three, fo—no, wait, he’s up! He’s up!!” Now I’m doing elbow drops and clotheslines. I imagine myself in a kilt and a “Hot Rod” T-shirt—I’m “Rowdy” Roddy Piper! I cross my eyes and curl my lip—I’m “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan! I flex my biceps—I’m “Macho Man” Randy Savage! I collapse onto the seat, covered in sweat, out of breath, and damn pleased with myself. “Winner and undisputed champion of the world, “Scooter” “Shrimpy” “Chickenella” Tara Clancy!!” (Mom gave me that last nickname, an English/Italian mash-up that she ascribed to me at birth because I had short, scrawny, “chicken” legs.)
By the time I’m done with all my button-pushing, liquor-sniffing, cabinet-opening, channel-switching, and WrestleMania-making, a good hour has gone by, and we are now a long way from the boat sheds and bungalows of Broad Channel, Queens. I look out the window to find the familiar, never-ending row of evergreens lining the Long Island Expressway and decide to kill a little more time with another one of my favorite games. I pick a tree in the distance to focus on and follow it with my eyes as we approach, my neck turning slowly at first and then snapping to the right just before it disappears from view. Then I zing my head all the way back to the left, like a typewriter jumping to a new line, choose another tree, and start over. I can keep this up for at least ten minutes.
The very last part of my limo-riding routine was to pop my head through the partition and chitchat with the driver. And I always opened with the same line: “So, you got any kids?” On this day, like most others, I get a big smile followed by a finger pointing to a couple of dog-eared, wallet-size school photos tucked into a lip on the dash. That’s all I need; I’m off to the races, motormouthing for the next five minutes, asking question after question but never giving the poor guy enough time to actually answer them. “What school do your kids go to? I go to PS 133. I have Mrs. Stulberg, she’s a’right. I like sports better than school, though. Your kids play sports? I’m the fastest kid in my whole grade, faster than the boys and everything, really! My favorite team is the Mets. You a Mets fan? You ever see a game at Shea? My dad took me once. My favorite players are Gary Carter and Darryl Strawberry, I got their Starting Lineup figures, too. Who’s your favorite player?”
Whether an actual conversation started to happen or I just finally ran out of things to say and we went silent, for the last half hour of the trip I always stayed in this position, kneeling on the seat, head poking through the partition, anxiously scanning left and right, ticking off my mental checklist of landmarks: The Lobster Inn, the windmill, that farm stand with the pies, Main Street! Caldor, IGA, Penny Whistle Toys, Bobby Van’s, J.G. Melon’s, Ocean Road! The golf course, that gigantic house on the left, Jobs Lane! First potato field, cornfield, Colin Powell’s house (whoever that is), second potato field…slow crunch of gravel under the tires, driveway!
And, some two hours after Tommy O’Reilly knocked my lights out in front of the converted boat-shed trailer of a house I lived in with my dad every other weekend or whatever odd holidays and random weeknights when I wasn’t with The Geriatrics of 251st Street, I had arrived in Bridgehampton, one of the handful of seaside towns collectively known as the Hamptons, the summertime getaway of New York City’s rich and famous…and, for the last five years, a sunshiney Brooklyn-Italian social worker–cum–cleaning lady/waitress who was just then hauling ass toward the limo parked in the driveway of her boyfriend’s estate, screaming, “My Chickenellahh!!!”
* * *
* “Quarter waters” are what city kids called a sugary, Kool-Aid–like drink sold in tiny plastic barrels with a foil top. They could be found on the very bottom shelf, or
just the floor, of any deli refrigerator in Queens and were the cheapest drink option. I don’t think they’re around anymore—I guess they just didn’t sell once the price went up. “Fifty-cent waters” doesn’t have the same ring.
My mother was always out of place, even when she wasn’t. As a kid she preferred the Brooklyn Botanic Garden or the library to the ball games and beauty parlors where other girls with names like Carmella Riccobono hung out. And when all her friends were squirreling away their allowances and birthday money for records and roller skates, she was saving hers for a porcelain vase she had spotted at her uncle Jerry’s antiques shop in upstate New York.
Going from Park Slope, Brooklyn, to Uncle Jerry’s home in Pleasant Valley every summer was the only family vacation my mother and her five siblings had ever had, and my grandmother squeezed as much mileage from it as she could: Madonna! If you don’t stop with the noise, nobody is going to Jerry’s! You had better finish that good food I made you, or nobody is going to Jerry’s! You don’t want to listen? Nobody is going to Jerry’s!
My grandmother’s incessant threats, though brilliant at invoking both fear and guilt, were nonetheless empty—they always made it to “Uncle Jelly’s.” My mom and her siblings gave him this nickname not because they couldn’t pronounce Jerry, but because it suited him. His un-Americanized name was Giulio, which, like Jelly, was a lot more appropriate for a man who was forever in an ascot and captain’s hat, collected nineteenth-century birdcages, and whose life partner, John, was an interior decorator.
