by Jon Methven
When he could not find developers to invest in his vision, he began using his personal fortune to fund the island. Finding enough dredged sediment to build the property was the easy part. It was the politics, lawyers, payoffs, permits, city and state and maritime ordinances that had to be filed, the environmental groups protesting every grain of sand he ripped from the harbor or shipped in on a barge. Building the island was killing Slancy, both financially and mentally, right up until it finally killed him, a sinkhole near what is now the fourth fairway of the Slancy Golf Course. One story claims he was sucked into the crevice and workers were unable to reach him. Another that he owed so much money to crooked politicians and the longshoremen, that someone decided to make the island six inches thicker with his body. His remains were never recovered. Golf balls take strange flops on the fourth.
His successors at the dredging company wanted little to do with a pile of sand that held the stigma of Theodore Slancy’s stubbornness. With no one to claim the project, it was left to the city to solve ninety-five acres of what became known in the newspapers as Slancy’s Shambles. Structural engineers determined if something were not done, it would drift into the harbor, blocking the shipping channels. Urban engineers tested the soil, deciding it was too soft to support skyscrapers or casinos, which scared off the larger developers. Years passed while politicians bickered over how to wrestle nickels out of it. What is now Slancy was the brainchild of Duffy O’Neal, a then banker who wanted a place to play golf without wandering too far from his native Manhattan. He put together the plans, along with the lawyers and investors: a gated community of thirty single-family homes would occupy the eastern half of the island, with a seven-hole golf course carving out the western side, a slice of Americana for people like Duffy and his friends who could afford $3 million properties in the priciest real estate market in the country. When newspapers got wind of the Eden being erected to the south, editorials were heavy with accusations of elitism and privilege that nearly killed the project. That was when Duffy got the idea to make half the properties available by lottery to lucky Americans who wished to give island living a shot—under the guise the lottery entrants could afford the mortgages—which allowed people like us, and several of our neighbors, to become homeowners.
Duffy left out of his plans everything he hated about New York City living. There are no apartment buildings or public transportation other than a ferry that leaves every hour for Manhattan and the shuttle bus on weekdays. There are no vehicles, except for the utility crews, a security car, twice-a-week sanitation, the constant delivery trucks because we have no stores, ordering everything online and shipping it to our front doors. Homeowners with cars park them in a lot near the East Bridge that connects the island to Brooklyn, and from there we can be in Manhattan in minutes. We have our own harbor where neighbors dock boats. When prompted as to my lack of maritime aspirations, I claim a dislike of water instead of admitting we exist in a habitual state of near bankruptcy.
Most of the homes are separated from the western side by a few hundred sugar maples and junipers, patches of trees that conceal a hiking path that we proudly and adorably refer to as “the woods.” Intermingled in the timber are cell phone towers disguised as trees, which look exactly like cell phone towers disguised as trees, a feature that I loathe. There are cameras everywhere, which helps our one-man security detail patrol the island. We have little crime, other than the occasional trespasser wanting a look at our world, and the several cameras that have been destroyed, most likely caused by the wind. On the far side of the woods is the local economy, a 7-hole golf course occupying a tight 45 acres that is free to residents and which busy Manhattanites pay $200 per round, reachable only by ferry. The ride out and cost does not deter them, the course packed each morning beginning at six and every afternoon until the island blends ominously into the dark secretions of the Hudson River.
There are weddings every weekend, sometimes three squeezed into a holiday period, which pays for the golf course and clubhouse and assists with the constant upkeep of the shore. We have a tougher immigration policy than most nations. If you are not coming to Slancy to golf or celebrate nuptials then you are not welcome. When there is a house for sale, which happens rarely, the homeowners association has full jurisdiction over who is eligible to purchase the property. It is not limited to solely white bankers, like Duffy and his friends. The association has accepted buyers of all racial and sexual orientation, so long as they agree to upkeep the property, and pay the annual greens fees, and adore exclusivity.
We bike and barbecue and smack golf balls. Those of us who employ them speak highly of our nannies. We take twilight cruises when boating neighbors invite us and sip prosecco and gaze upon New Jersey and Brooklyn and the byzantine skyline. We wink at each other, knowing pretentious Manhattanites still refer to our utopia as Slancy’s Shambles. We built suburbs out of sand, in the periphery of their urban hipness, and for that they despise our existence. We relish how much the view of their overcrowded metropolis inflates our property value, though none of us would ever consider selling. I sit in my backyard paradise listening to the sound of children, the distant hum of plentiful worlds, listening as Allie Sedlock peddles past, her blonde hair waltzing in the musty breeze, her long legs working the peddles, a smile and a wave, and I contemplate—if I cannot obtain a playfulness for life in this environment, and I seem to be unable to do so, then it may never exist for me.
Neighbors Just Other Friendly Tribes
Like any set of residential blocks in Kansas or Idaho or Pennsylvania, we are a community of parents invested in each other’s dramas. I know my neighbors’ concerns. I care about their security systems and the direction their cameras point, capturing the shadows that mine neglect. It pleases me to hear their lawns are not infested with bugs, or that the rodent problem that haunts me is a passing concern to them because they chose not to invest thousands of dollars transforming their backyards into lagoons. I am engrained in their children, as I am my own. Love is not the proper sentiment. Devotion isn’t the best affiliation. I do not want their children to die or suffer cataclysmic diseases, or scrape their knees or fall out of trees, or fear the distant lights that glow over our tranquil dusks. But I also do not wish for them more success than my own children deserve. I refer specifically to Gopa’s ECI program, an opportunity I fear because it will mean my daughter traveling abroad for much of the year and not fighting with me each morning and evening over cell phone use, skirt length, curfew. Instead ECI will expose her to architecture, museums, history, cuisines, opportunities that most high school children can never access, stops in fifty countries, and it lurks over our lives with offers of fortune and intellect and elitism. I want it for Iliza because there are only eighteen spots. What I mean to say is—I want it for all the eligible children in the world, and since they all cannot have it, for all the kids in my neighborhood, so long as my daughter is highest on that list.
I want it for Todd McClutchen whose parents, Ray and Olivia, were once our dearest friends and who have descended into that band of people I must exist beside until our children no longer occupy the same zip code. Olivia is a stay at home mother, an animal lover, and the coldest human being I can name. Ray is a bastard. Everyone calls him Clutch, a far better nickname than Pisser, even though he never participated in sports outside of Ultimate Frisbee. An author of inspirational books for working parents, he is most likely sleeping with my wife. Their youngest, Madison, age two, is allergic to everything from nuts to cotton fabric to actual hand sanitizer, a constant challenge at potluck dinners as to what will bother her first. Todd is in Iliza’s junior class, a member of the Gopa lacrosse team, a somber boy who does his best to live up to the fairytale image his father forecasts for the future in his books, which sell well enough to keep the McClutchens optimistic.
I want it for the twins, Damian and Rhythm. Jackson and Jason Ferris, known to all of us as the Jays, are our main claim to diversity in Slancy,
the homeowners association checking off two multicultural boxes with their mortgage. Jason is a slim poetry teacher at Gopa who wants six children, although adoption rates for interracial gay couples suggest this is unlikely. Jackson makes up the larger component of their surreal alliance, a bulky, Southern man, my friend, and a musician who writes for Broadway shows, the breadwinner of his tribe. They went into the adoption process with open minds and, according to Jason, were placed on a bigoted list for parents who fell into the category Other. In the meantime, they were rewarded with having teenage delinquency in their family, a relative of a relative on Jason’s side with a pregnant sixteen-year-old and no idea who the father was, and who for a price was willing to be called a surrogate.
After costly negotiations with attorneys and the parents of the girl and a crooked social worker, they became proud guardians of Rhythm. It was not until the girl turned four that the adoption agency contacted them with news of a Rwandan boy, also age four. We all politely refer to them as the twins, though their differences do not stop at skin pigmentation. Damian is an honors student, a tutor for fellow Gopa classmates in need of assistance, and a shoe-in for ECI. Rhythm is slightly chubby with a gothic vibe, an average student and an exhibitionist. Jason believes she will be excluded from ECI due to her white skin color, and while there exists no polite way to tell this to a neighbor, it is her white trash DNA that differentiates her from Gopa’s elite students. Still I adore Rhythm for her giant heart, that like me she does not belong on this sterilized island, and I find myself wanting ECI for her the most, relatively speaking.
I want it for Tungsten, Iliza’s savvy best friend. Harry and Allie Sedlock are the understood leaders of our Slancy crew and we unanimously respect them as parents and business associates. Along with the Jays and McClutchens and Russ Haverly, we are seed investors in their remarkably successful tourism company, Moveable Museums. Harry is an excellent golfer and a connoisseur of fine wines. His wife is one of the leaders of the Gopa moms and a genuine piece of ass. Together with a majority of Gopa parents, we voted both Sedlocks onto the PTA Committee, on which they have represented our interests for years. Tungsten is Iliza’s understudy in the school play and a constant fixture in my home. Their son, Rhenium, is a freshman on the lacrosse team. At age fourteen it is clear Rhen will move through life like his father, a mechanical triumph, with a refined confidence that will make it easy to grant him conveniences for which others will be expected to achieve through careers they do not care for, performing tasks that will whittle down their happiness to a brittle sprig.
I never cared about children before fatherhood. Now they consume me—constant paranoia that my scions are doomed, thoroughness to my worry that I am doing something incorrect that will render Iliza and Gus anxious adults and incompetent lovers and irritating citizens who fluctuate between default complaint and victimhood. What are they thinking? Do they hate me? Why do I fail at loving them completely? Are they scared, and what do they fear? Whenever I click across stories of sick kids in hospitals, or dying of malnutrition, or suffering through genocide in remote parts of the world, I spend hours scanning the photographs, making myself look: reverse pornography. I pray to an irrelevant source, thankful that mine are enrolled in private school and only a phone call away on smartphones I reluctantly purchased them.
I pushed them into soccer and piano at early ages, and when that did not take, swimming lessons and karate, T-ball and ballet, violin and basketball and more soccer and gymnastics, and then wrestling for Gus and kickboxing for Iliza. Music classes before they could crawl. Classes to paint their feelings, test their intelligence, kickball, tennis, volleyball, anything with a net; cooking classes, gardening, crocheting, how to build wind turbines, origami, summer camps, pottery. I drink copious amounts of wine at charity events where I eavesdrop on other parenting styles and adjust accordingly. If I read about a study that stresses exercise over listening skills, or overhear a parent talking about a life skills one-day workshop in Greenpoint, the Pistilinis are there.
We are a household that awakens early on Saturdays and has breakfast on the run as we race from activity to activity, molding their minds, building them into better human beings, returning home exhausted from our own evolution, too tired to enjoy one another’s company. I look forward to the workweek in the way voyagers squint toward a sliver of horizon, anything to climb out of the shitshow of parenthood into an existence that does not require chores.
Despite the years of investment and molding, one child is captivated with boys and escaping home, and the other is experiencing an identity crisis that one university offered to pay us to study. Iliza is well rounded in mathematics and theater and hoping to attend Brown or Dartmouth in two years, assuming I can afford either. She has worked hard to earn a starring role as Emily Webb in the spring production of Our Town. A penchant for the spotlight and the fame that comes with it, boys have begun to notice both her and Tungsten. I have preached about the dangers of sex, of social media, how once either has infiltrated their lives it can have drastic effects. My daughter’s eyes exist in a ceaseless, rolling motion in my presence.
Gus is failing mathematics and leadership, an outcast on the wrestling and chess squads. We are told he shows no interest in free play and did not take to a therapy hamster the school suggested. In the past year, he has enrolled in a writing program he seems to enjoy, although he is behind in his complex sentence structure skills. Only thirteen, twice a month we are called in for conferences with the principals and school psychologists and Heather Pace. It has been suggested that perhaps Gopa is not the best environment for a child with his needs. Parents have asked that their sons not be paired with him during wrestling practice. Moms have posted anonymous petitions on the Gopa website calling for his dismissal from the chess club. It all began with the nanny.
The Sedlocks have a nanny. The McClutchens have two nannies, one for Maddie, the other for Todd, though both essentially assist Olivia with her lifestyle upkeep. The Jays have a nanny they fire every few months for some minor infraction. Our nanny perished in a terrible backyard accident. Gus dresses like an elderly woman, Millicent, wandering the school complaining about cold drafts, snuggling beneath an afghan he wears over his shoulders, asking about the bunnies, inquiring of the front door security. He awakens in the middle of the night to do laundry, de-grout the bathtub, and order the glasses into perfect stillness. He has the shakes and the gait down, but every once in a while I see his back straighten, his eyesight pivot to wonders that infatuate teenage boys, and I know my son is in there. Transgeneration. That’s what our therapist, Devin Brenner, calls it, which is different than transgender or non-binary gender. Transgeneration is a term for people whose self-identity does not conform to the generation in which they live. It used to be “old soul,” a term of endearment.
“He never asked about wheelchair ramps,” Laura hollered several months ago in a meeting. “Don’t invent crap that isn’t happening. Let’s concentrate on facts.”
Laura is the one who speaks up during conferences. She purses her lips, often for entire meetings, and then issues a scathing critique that punishes prides with neutering punctuation. I sit beside her and nod complacently, reach over and fraudulently place a supportive hand on hers, occasionally loft magnanimous and spineless verses that mean nothing: “It is what it is” and “We want what’s best for the school even if it doesn’t include Gus.” All lies. Whereas Laura’s demands are terse, full of conviction: Gus is fine, it’s a phase, we will figure it out, and until that time, we spend a fucking fortune for you people to teach him to read and add. Out on the sidewalk, we fight over our plan going in and what ends up spewing out of my mouth, my wife admonishing me for passing security guards and nannies to enjoy.
Now even the fights are fleeting. What I once adored about my wife, the fire and candidness, have coursed into subtle apology. The wit that turned intelligent people to shambles has been corrupted by pop-psychology melody, a fe
el-good falsehood to her methodology. The language crept slowly into the meetings with school officials, an amber rust that sullies a copper ladle, buzzwords like manifestation, emotional scale, vibrational energy, positive reinforcement, with school administrators nodding, understanding, loving her for coming to the middle. Where once my wife scoffed at inefficient pandering, at some point she began talking like them, the Ray McClutchens of the world, sending out positive energy for Gus, visualizing success, demanding her husband find his playful nature. All of which is my fault. I am the one that could not handle the stress of twenty-first century parenting and had to go away to remedy myself, returning to less of us. Where is the fire? Where is the rage? Where is my wife?
Laura is a brilliant mind, a visionary mother and entrepreneur who has assembled a respectable standing pancake business that may turn its first profit this year. I never cheated on Laura, but I failed her in thousands of insignificant ways that no one tells you are crucial to marriage. Showing up. Taking risks. Making decisions. Kissing goodnight. Listening to mundane complaints about household chores and motherhood. I put all my worries into raising adults and neglected to raise a family. Go too long as roommates occupying the same terrain, paying off the mortgage, and one day you wake up to realize you need therapy. You go find yourself, and you can never come home.