I’d passed through cities and towns with bucolic names and rashes of strip malls yet had no clear idea where I was other than the enticing signage on the Long Island Railroad platforms indicating I was headed “to Points East.” I was in a rush at Penn Station and had no map, so I trusted the prerecorded voice of the conductor would tell me when to transfer at Huntington and when to depart at Smithtown.
It did, and later on the strip of beach where I found a smooth white rock that would have made Brâncusi smile, Tina crouched in a clearing among the pebbles and shells.
“Long Island is sort of shaped like a fish,” she explained, drawing it with her finger in the wet sand, the peninsulas of North and South Fork forming the tail fin, the arcs of North and South Shore its body. She indicated our position in Nissequogue, near the dorsal fin, and I realized that given the once-upon-a-time shipbuilding communities and whaling ports nearby, the fish is an apt simile for the country’s most populous island. Now, though, the ghost of Gatsby haunts the shores and forests of old-money packrats and nouveau riche commuters.
I’m neither and was there because I needed some R&R from the bustle and dirty-bomb paranoia of Manhattan and because Tina’s parents are in Italy for their first vacation in 10 years, so we had run of their sumptuous, spacious home, acquired for a steal-worthy sum in the ’60s and upkept by the shiny rewards of shrewd investments and a lucrative family-run scrap-metal business.
In the back yard, just past a pair of scraggly pines, the lawn drops off into a cliff, beyond which lies Long Island Sound.
Inside is tastefully weathered furniture, hardwood floors, a beautiful but unruly macaw and most immediately, a rowdy quintet of Brussels griffon, which sounds like the name of an investment bank but is in fact a toy breed dog with a face that appears to have been struck with a dictionary. Their eyes bug out, their noses are squashed and their tiny teeth are revealed in an underbite. Their breathing sounds labored and congested, like a fat man snoring, though they make a purring sound when they’re content. They did that protective thing where they barked at me and snapped at the back of my pant legs before ascertaining I wasn’t a threat, but after I’d left and returned to a room, the cycle began anew. I found that when I sat, they were more calm because I wasn’t 10-times taller than they were and they could easily investigate me, often by walking over, pawing and licking my ticklish self all at once, like a bum rush by a gang of slobbery Tribbles.
The recent looming of the Check Engine light in her Volkswagen convinced Tina to rent a car for the weekend until she had more time to take it to a garage, and Enterprise offered us the Pride of DiCaprio, a Toyota Prius, in Environmentally Concerned Gray. The gasoline-electric hybrid doesn’t appear much different than other midsize automatics, excepting its push-button starter and park buttons, with a tiny joystick-like gearshift mounted below. There’s an impressive-looking video display on the center of the dash that indicates the fuel consumption of the car in motion via advancing numbers and bar graphs. Tina didn’t like it. The acceleration was slow and throaty, with dodgy visibility out the bisected rear window.
We drove out to the furthest point of interest, Port Jefferson, where we toured the village center and encompassing park, then had cones of mint chocolate chip and Moose Tracks at Port Jefferson Frigate, billed as the largest ice cream/candy shop on Long Island. On our way back to Smithtown, we stopped by some more parks and nature preserves, via various Scenic Routes. In a spicy mood for dinner, we had enchiladas at a Spanish restaurant, Casa Luis. Back at the house, we watched the not incredibly thrilling Rear Window remake for teens, Disturbia, then half of the languidly paced Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I had a touch of trouble getting to sleep with the constant whir of crickets and cicadas outside the guest bedroom window. The next morning, after pointing out to Tina a dry shell left on a walnut tree by a molting cicada, I learned she’d never before noticed these exoskeleton-like curiosities. When I was a kid, we used to collect these; they were easy to stick in people’s hair without them noticing.
