The Clancys of Queens by Tara Clancy Read Free Book Online Page B

it’s
technically
part of Manhattan,” her friend reassured her.
    After rattling and scraping her way down a dingy side street somewhere in Long Island City, Queens, my mother arrived at the base of an ominous, rusted-metal drawbridge that looked like it belonged in some Pennsylvania steel-mill town, not New York City. At the sight of it she threw the car into park, and, for what felt like the tenth time since she’d left our house twenty minutes earlier, she once again combed over the directions. And, once again, she was shocked to find that she was still on course.
    Go over weird little bridge.
    The bridge crossed a tiny expanse of water nowhere near wide enough to be the East River, and it delivered her not onto a Manhattan street, but directly into a six-story, monolithic parking garage with the word MOTORGATE in Helvetica painted vertically down a concrete beam.
    Mom spiraled her way up the garage ramp until she finally found an empty slot.
Take elevator to street. Take red bus. Get off at 505 Main St.
The “red bus” part grabbed her attention—all other city buses at the time were blue or green. And as soon as the elevator doors opened at street level, idling right outside was a red bus with the words RED BUS printed along its side.
    After watching everyone in front of her board the red bus without paying, when it was her turn to step inside, Mom started to go for her change purse anyway. “It’s okay, miss,” the driver said, “it really is free.” Now she was warier than ever—the only free bus rides in New York City she’d ever heard of were the ones that took you to the psych ward or prison.
    From what she could see, Main Street was the only street on this peculiar little island, and it had just one lane going in each direction, with red buses going to and fro and hardly any other cars on the road. Lining both sides of the street were hulking buildings with all the charm of those prefab concrete jobs favored in Eastern Bloc countries, and on their ground levels, a handful of small dim shops with generic, uniform signage: DRY CLEANER , DELI , RESTAURANT .
Manhattan, my ass,
my mother thought
. This is the strangest and ugliest place I have ever seen.
    Once again she checked her directions—this time to be sure she hadn’t missed the part about a portal transporting her to some dystopian future.
    It wasn’t until she was standing right in front of 505 Main Street that Mom was finally sure she wasn’t in the year 2075, or 1960s Czechoslovakia, and that her friend’s description of her boss as a “well-off businessman” made sense. With the prerequisite backward head tilt she surveyed this brand-new twenty-story beast of a building, then stutter-stepped a few times in front of the revolving doors, like a kid getting ready to jump into a game of double Dutch, before figuring out how and when to hop in. With a rush of air and a glint of light, she was suddenly inside a cavernous lobby that smelled appropriately of floor polish and air freshener but with a puzzling hint of chlorine. To her right, sitting at a chest-high, half-moon reception desk was a doorman in full uniform and cap. To her left was a long row of glass windows behind which was the source of the mysterious chlorinated air: an Olympic-size indoor pool.
Wow,
she couldn’t help thinking,
so this is how people with money live.
    Though my mother didn’t know it at the time—and it’s probably a good thing that she didn’t—only ten years earlier this neighborhood was still officially named Welfare Island. For over a hundred years it was best known for having almshouses for the city’s poor, a smallpox hospital, a place called the New York City Lunatic Asylum, and a penitentiary where Billie Holiday and Mae West (my grandmother’s hero) once served time. In 1971, after nearly all these institutions had shuttered their doors and the island was largely abandoned, a complete redevelopment effort was set into motion. The construction of