Chapter One
The Neighborhood
Later when we would drive in from our country house along Bruckner Boulevard in
the Bronx or out to visit a friend on Long Island and we'd drive through Queens,
after tunnels or bridges, after streets of warehouses and factories smelling of
glues and yeast, we'd pass the small two-family attached houses that lined the
road before the city would slide into suburb. We'd see the striped awnings on
each little brick house, the chairs on the porches where flowerpots vied for
space with barbeque grills, the small iron gates, behind which blue and white
painted statues of the Virgin watched as the cars going or coming from Manhattan
flowed by. From rooftops Santa Claus sometimes waved and near the garage door
ceramic spotted deer grazed on closet-sized lawns. My mother would be smoking,
ashes falling in her lap, she would be sitting on a cushion so she could see
over the driving wheel. She would be wearing her dark glasses to hide the
puffiness of her eyes, the circles beneath them. She would drive slowly so she
could look at the houses carefully. Cars would honk and pass and some would open
their windows and yell at her. "Get a horse," "Woman drivers." Then my mother
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