If These Walls Could Talk

by Bettye Griffin

  “I’m worried about her, Valerie.”

  “It’s nothing, Veronica. Essence is trying to manipulate you into feeling sorry for her. She told me she wishes we lived in the country. It’s all those teen shows she’s been watching, where all the kids in the suburbs hang out at the mall and the drive-in hamburger place.”

  Veronica didn’t believe it. Essence was just looking for the love her own mother should supply. God only knew what path her search would lead her down. “I told her that if it was okay with you, she could come spend summer vacation with us.”

  Valerie shrugged. “It’s all right with me.”

  Her instant approval confirmed for Veronica that her suspicions were correct. You didn’t even have to think about it, did you?

  It was nearly six when Veronica returned home. An anxious-looking Norman and the girls greeted her and sat her down to a dinner of spaghetti, salad, and breadsticks they’d prepared themselves in their messy but still operational kitchen. She’d had to send the workmen home this morning when she received a frantic call from Valerie.

  “How’s Grandpa, Mommy?” Lorinda asked.

  “He’s resting comfortably. We’ll see how he does the next few days.”

  “Can we go see him?” Simone asked.

  “I’ll bring you girls into the city on Sunday, when I’m off,” Norman told them. “Of course, hopefully he will have been discharged from the hospital by then.”

  “They don’t need to go to a hospital, anyway,” Veronica said. “When I was your age, girls, children weren’t allowed to visit patients. You had to be at least twelve, I think.”

  “I’m almost twelve,” Lorinda stated proudly.

  Simone made a face. “Oh, you won’t be twelve til August. My birthday’s next month.”

  “Yeah, but you’ll only be nine, so shut up.”

  Veronica and Norman exchanged smiles. Their once-close daughters had reached a point where they had become competitive, which would probably go on through their early teenage years until they became close once more. It wouldn’t be easy, but at least her daughters knew they were loved. Poor Essence felt like she’d been pushed to the background in favor of a parade of men.

  Veronica had forgotten to tell Norman about that. But it wasn’t a suitable discussion for the dinner table, so she’d have to talk to him about it later.

  Chapter 35

  The Youngs

  April 2004

  Dawn stood observing the multiple cracks in the backyard with slumping shoulders and a hopeless feeling. That expense she and Milo took on just last year, all for naught. The dirt, when they’d finished packing the hole and spreading the rest of it, didn’t add the height they’d hoped it would. On top of that, the grass seed they planted didn’t seem to have any roots to it; it didn’t hold the dirt together. A hole had formed in the same spot and begun to spread in spidery lines, and now their yard had more cracks in it than the top of a molasses cookie. The recent rains only made it worse. Once again, the breaks in the soil ran toward the house and were perilously close to the wood columns that held up the deck.

  She dreaded having to show this to Milo, but of course she could hardly keep it from him.

  “Goddamn it!”

  Dawn stood mute, allowing Milo to rant, the way she knew he would.

  “Fuck!” he shouted again, clearly not caring if the neighbors heard him. Then he spoke normally. “What did we spend to fix this, two, two hundred and fifty dollars? We might as well have taken that money and thrown it in the damn lake. Look at this shit.” His face contorted into a scowl.

  “What do we do now? More dirt?”

  “I’m not sure. But we’ll have to do something quick. It’s moving fast, and if we get more rain it’ll be at the house in no time. Hell, it’s already reached the back of the deck.”

  “Milo, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know squat about yard work, Dawn; I’m a city boy. But I do know when it’s time to call in a professional, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “What kind of professional?”

  “A landscaper. They’ll come out and take a look and recommend what we should do to take care of this once and for all. And once we agree on a price, I’ll let him do it.”

  She thought of the bills that would be coming in any day now. The tally of their shipboard expenditures alone came to over five hundred dollars. It seemed impossible they could have spent that much in five days, at least until she thought about it. Her time in the spa alone accounted for twenty percent of the total. The rest of it added up easily. All that soda Zach consumed, her and Milo each ordering two or three five-dollar mixed drinks a day, the e-mails Zach sent to his friends at two bucks a pop, and her purchases in the ship’s boutiques. And then there were those endless photographs they had taken at dinner and when disembarking the ship in port—every one of them remarkably flattering, like the photographer had a magic lens or something. She hadn’t been able to resist. She had to have them for their family collection.

  Dawn estimated that their port shopping came to even more than that. In addition, Milo confessed that he’d taken a three-hundred-dollar cash advance to fund his gaming at the slot machines and poker tables. They’d managed to turn what had started as a reasonably priced cruise into a major financial outpour.

  Plus they still had payments to make on the furniture. It had been almost two years. Would it ever be paid off?

  “That sounds expensive,” she said haltingly.

  “It will be, but it’s got to be done. Our do-it-yourself attempt didn’t amount to much more than a Band-Aid.”

  She had to agree.

  Chapter 36

  The Currys

  April 2004

  Reuben got out of the car. “See you later,” he said.

  He left the driver’s side door open but didn’t wait for Camille to get out of the passenger side to take the wheel. In the old days he would have leaned over and kissed her, waited for her to come around and closed the driver’s door for her. Now they barely spoke to each other unless they had to. It took almost fifteen minutes to get to the supermarket, and they’d said maybe the same number of words during the trip.

  As far as he was concerned, he just followed her lead. She was the one who’d started the whole mess, getting into the car when he picked her up at the train station and not even saying hello. He knew she blamed him for their predicament, and he didn’t feel that was right. He’d had nothing to do with the company’s decision to close the store. And even if he had, Camille was his wife. She was supposed to support him, be on his side, no matter what happened. Instead she went around sulking and slamming doors like a little kid.

  “Bye,” she said flatly and with more than a little touch of sarcasm. He was already six feet away. No wonder the kids chose not to take a ride to get out of the house this dreary Sunday. The tension between her and Reuben was as impenetrable as an inch of steel. The endless clouds and periodic rain did little to help.

  On the way home Camille pulled over when she saw Denise King tending to the large plant containers that flanked the entrance to her house. Camille would have indulged in some gardening herself, if she had the time. But that part of her dream, working perhaps a half hour from her house, had failed to materialize.

  She stopped because she’d seen a new FOR SALE sign prominently displayed in their neighbor’s yard, and Denise was sure to know why they’d decided to sell, even possibly their asking price. This seemed as good a time as any to find out.

  She looked up at the sky as she approached Denise. It looked like rain would start at any moment. She hadn’t seen the sun since Tuesday, five days ago.

  “Hi,” she said to Denise, then got right to the point. “I see your neighbors are selling their house.”

  “Yeah, they went right into action when they saw that article in last Sunday’s Record.”

  Camille shook her head, not knowing what Denise meant. “What article?”

  “The one abou
t a brewing scandal involving the builder. How he made some of these houses out of material not much sturdier than Popsicle sticks, overvalued them, indulged in shady lending practices, the whole nine yards. Personally, I don’t blame the folks next door for trying to unload their place. I think they got one of the lemons. Their basement has flooded twice. But I say, lots of luck trying to sell the sucker. Water stains are hard to conceal.”

  “I didn’t see the article,” Camille confessed. “We usually pick up the Times every Sunday and look at the local paper just to read the want ads and to see what’s playing at the movies.” Denise’s talk about the builder’s dishonesty made her think of how cold their house got in the winter. She already knew about the problems Dawn and Milo Young had had with their bedroom closet and their backyard last year, but at least those problems had been fixed. Her family would always have to bundle up for five months out of every year.

  Did the Kings have similar problems, she wondered. “Have you and Lemuel noticed anything, well, not quite right about your house?”

  “No, not at all. I think we had a good, thorough construction crew.”

  “Lucky you. Our house tends to be cold in the winter. One of our friends who works construction said it wasn’t properly insulated. But Reuben says that every major step in the building process has to pass inspection, or else they can’t continue.”

  “Not in Pennsylvania they don’t.”

  “They don’t?” Camille asked increduously.

  “No. They just proposed legislation to start doing that because a lot of people have been complaining that their houses don’t seem to be built all that well. It’ll probably become law around July or so, they said.”

  It embarrassed Camille to know so little about what went on in local affairs. Denise had just given her two important pieces of information that she, as a property owner, should have known. “By the time I get home the news is over, and I’m usually asleep before the late news comes on.”

  From the look on Denise’s face, Camille knew what she was thinking. What does Reuben do all day?

  She had the same thought herself as she told Denise good-bye and got back in the car. Her first impulse, admittedly a bad one, was to drive back to the supermarket and berate him for not watching the local news. Their relationship had been deteriorating along with their fortunes, but so far they’d managed to keep their troubles private. But going to his place of business and creating a scene would just embarrass them both and make them the topic of gossip.

  But he had no excuse to be so uninformed. Hell, he finished at the supermarket at 11:00 AM and then worked at FedEx from noon until five. He could easily catch the evening news.

  According to Denise, her neighbors planned to stay in the area after they sold their house, just in a different house. They’d told Denise and Lemuel they’d probably get one of the older houses around town, not in a subdivision.

  Hearing that made Camille think of Veronica and Norman. The Lees seemed to be doing just fine. They might have only a one-car garage, but they now had two cars. Veronica tooled around town in a little red Neon. Not that she did much tooling these days, unless it was to go to New York. Her father had had a heart attack there a couple of weeks ago.

  Much as Camille loved her house, she wished that she and Reuben had taken the same route as the Lees had. Their life would have been so much easier if they’d bought a less expensive house. Even if they didn’t want a house as old as they were, they could have resisted Eric Nylund’s sales techniques and purchased the basic model with a principal and interest payment of $740 a month. How much easier that would have been to maintain now with Reuben’s income sliced in half. By the time they paid the monthly note for the larger house and lakefront lot they’d bought, it cost considerably more than their rent back in the Bronx.

  Even as Camille had the thought, she knew the blame for their predicament didn’t lie entirely with their salesman. Their own desires for something grand had gotten the best of them. The sad truth was that they lived in a house they simply couldn’t afford. Before she had gotten her promotion they barely had fifty dollars leftover each month. In the past two years she’d bought maybe four new suits, charging them to her Visa.

  It troubled her that they seemed to be trailing behind their contemporaries, struggling while their friends were thriving. She didn’t include Denise and Lemuel King in her assessment, only the Lees and the Youngs. The Kings were a little older than the rest of them, plus they had lived here longer. She’d expect for them to do well.

  Part of the reason could be income, she considered. She suspected that both Veronica and Norman and Dawn and Milo made more money than she and Reuben even when he still worked at the Bronx supermarket. And, of course, the Lees didn’t commute to the city, a savings of nearly five hundred dollars a month. That would explain why they flourished like those May flowers that would pop up everywhere after this month’s rain.

  In a rare moment of cohesion she’d asked Reuben for his thoughts on how Veronica and Norman could afford to have their kitchen redone plus buy a second car. Reuben guessed that they had refinanced their house and gotten cash from it. “They haven’t been in it very long, but those improvements they made to their bathrooms probably went a long way toward increasing its value,” he explained. Sensing she was about to ask if they could do the same thing, he said, “We, on the other hand, haven’t done anything to our house, not that we needed to anyway, since it’s new. And we probably haven’t been in it long enough for the value to increase a whole lot on its own. Not that we’d qualify for a loan now, anyway.”

  Just like him to bust her bubble, something he’d developed a real talent for lately, she thought bitterly. But the Lees had been smart. They’d bought a house for less money that would appreciate faster. One that was no doubt constructed much better than their own.

  As for Dawn and Milo, she could easily understand how money might be a little tight. They had only one child and a house smaller than hers and Reuben’s, but they had awfully expensive taste. Their furnishings were exquisite, and all new. Camille estimated they’d cost as much as a used car. She already knew how much they paid for all those upgrades in their house—the forty-two-inch kitchen cabinets, the titanium kitchen appliances, the tile flooring in their kitchen and bathrooms, the fireplace in their bedroom, the ceiling fans. She and Reuben had considered and then quickly decided against purchasing at least a few of those same upgrades for their house. But even with all that, Dawn and Milo still managed to go off on a Caribbean cruise, and bring Zach along at that.

  In the two minutes it took her to drive from the Kings’ house to her own the skies had opened up. Camille activated the garage door opener—one of the few upgrades she and Reuben had purchased—and drove inside. She cut the engine and took a deep breath as the door came down behind her. This morning she caught herself being short with the kids. Just because Reuben was getting on her nerves didn’t give her an excuse to yell at Mitchell and Shayla.

  “I’m home,” she called out as she entered the house.

  “Hi, Mom!”

  The kids were watching a movie in the family room. Now that Mitchell had just turned thirteen she didn’t mind leaving them alone for brief periods during the day.

  “Miz Young called while you were out, Mom,” Mitchell said.

  Camille slapped her thigh. “Oh, that’s right. I’m supposed to drop off her book.”

  Dawn had been nice enough to offer to let Camille read her copy of the next book their reading group was to discuss. She’d been grateful not to have to put out fifteen dollars, and had managed to read a lot of it last week during the ride back to Tobyhanna and during her lunch hours. By Friday she still hadn’t quite finished, but she’d promised to return it this weekend to Dawn, who hadn’t read it yet. Surely that had been the reason for Dawn’s call. Good thing, too. In her annoyance at Reuben she’d completely forgotten.

  “Kids, I’m going to drop something off at Miss Dawn’s. I’ll be back in
a few minutes. Will you be okay?”

  “Yes, sure,” Mitchell replied absently, his eyes glued to the TV.

  “Mommy, will it rain all day?” Shayla asked.

  “They say it’s supposed to clear up this afternoon. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “I wish it would stop so I can go skating,” Shayla said with a pout. “I’ve been stuck in the house all weekend. Can’t we rent a video?”

  “No, Shayla, we can’t. Instead of complaining all the time maybe you should be grateful that you have so many TV channels to watch.” Sometimes she wondered about her children. Had Shayla been such a little brat when they lived in the Bronx, or had suburbia affected her badly?

  Shayla’s shoulders slumped, and she sulked on the couch.

  Camille left without another word. She heard Mitchell say, “You should have kept your big fat mouth shut, Shayla. Don’t you know we don’t have much money since Daddy lost his job?”

  She paused in the kitchen, hidden from their view, to continue listening.

  “But Daddy has two jobs now. Doesn’t that mean we have more money?”

  “No, nitwit. He doesn’t make as much with two jobs as he did when he had just one. I asked him, and he told me. So stop whining. All it does is make Mama mad. At least we won’t be like my friend Alex. His parents couldn’t pay for their house, and they had no place to live. But Mama and Daddy told me that won’t happen to us.”

  Camille lowered her head, tears filling her eyes. Mitchell had never forgotten the fate of his friend. And she and Reuben had a promise to fulfill.

  Her head jerked as she suddenly looked up, blinking furiously. She just wanted to get this book back to Dawn and get home as soon as she could. Maybe she could actually do a little relaxing until it was time to go get Reuben. She hadn’t needed to keep the car today, but if she hadn’t she never would have seen Denise King and found out about that newspaper article, nor would she have been able to drive over to Dawn’s to return her book. Dawn would rightly be annoyed if she had to come and get the book from her, especially in this weather.