Five minutes later Camille rang the Youngs’ doorbell.
“Who is it?” an adolescent male voice asked.
“It’s Mrs. Curry, Zach.”
The door opened to reveal a beaming Zach. “Hi!” He looked past her. “Did Mitchell come with you?”
“No, dear, I’m afraid not. I wasn’t going to stay anyway. I just wanted to see your mom for a minute.”
“Sure. C’mon in.” He closed the door behind her, then turned and bellowed, “Mom! Miz Curry’s here!”
Dawn hurried into the foyer. “Zach, how many times do I have to tell you not to shout like that? Don’t you know your father is taking a nap?”
“Sorry.” Zach promptly headed up the stairs.
“Hi, Camille,” Dawn said. “Don’t mind Zach. All this rain is making him stir crazy. It’s times like these that I think maybe Milo and I should have given him a brother or sister. At least Mitchell has Shayla to play with.”
“You can still have another baby,” Camille said innocently.
“Girl, shut your mouth,” Dawn said with a laugh.
“Mitchell told me you called. I brought your book back. Sorry I forgot to do it yesterday.”
“Thanks, Camille.” Dawn gestured toward the living room. “Why don’t you come in and sit a while? Milo’s asleep. For once I can’t blame him. If there’s nothing on TV and you don’t have anything to read, what else is there to do on a weekend like this?”
“I know what you mean. Sure, I’ll stay for a minute. I don’t want to leave the kids too long.” She followed Dawn into the elegantly furnished living room and sat down. The voice of a female singer came from a Bose Wave radio on a corner table, sounding so clear she could have been performing in the corner. Camille wondered how much Dawn and Milo had paid for it. Talk about high-maintenance black folks. The Youngs had some nice stuff.
“I talked to Denise this morning,” she said chattily. “She mentioned that her next-door neighbors are selling their house because of an article in last Sunday’s paper about a building scandal.”
“Really? I didn’t know that. I’m afraid that I’m a true New Yorker. I’ll pick up the New York Times before I will that local paper. I’ve given up finding a decent-paying job in this area, so why bother?”
“I know what you mean. But I thought of how cold my house gets in the winter and how you and Milo have had problems with your place.”
“You don’t know the half of it, Camille. Our bedroom closet is holding up fine, but our backyard looks just as bad now as it did a year ago. That same problem we had with erosion happened all over again.”
“Oh, no! What’re you going to do?”
“Milo says he’ll get a professional landscaper to look at it and then fix it. It’ll probably cost a fortune, and that on top of what we spent trying to fix it last year.” Dawn rolled her eyes. “All I can say is, I’m glad we already took a vacation this year.”
“Vacation,” Camille said wistfully. “I wonder if I’ll ever get to go on one of those again.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, not with Reuben’s situation.”
Camille suddenly felt an urge to confide in Dawn. Her closest friends had all left New York years ago for greener pastures like Maryland and the Carolinas, and the combination of years and distance had slowed their friendship to a trickle of birthday greetings and Christmas cards, maybe an occasional phone call. She couldn’t simply pick up a phone, call, and start telling them her troubles. Her father and brother wouldn’t understand, and she’d never been particularly close to her stepmother.
Her mother-in-law Ginny would probably be sympathetic, but would also relay anything she said to Brenda, Arnelle, and Saul, all of whom, she suspected, would get a perverse enjoyment from hearing about her and Reuben’s difficulties.
“Things are bad,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?”
“Not unless you can get my husband a job managing the grocery section of a supermarket.” She gave a rueful chuckle.
“Hang in there, Camille. I’m sure he’ll find something.”
“He hopes a department-manager position will open up at the supermarket he’s working at, but it hasn’t happened yet. In the meantime, he’s working twenty hours a week for minimum wage, stocking shelves.” She wrung her hands. “I’m sorry, Dawn. I shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“Everybody needs someone to talk to, Camille. I know it’s hard. Well . . .”—she shrugged with embarrassment—“maybe I don’t know. Milo and I have never had to deal with unemployment or . . . I guess you’d call it underemployment. But we’ve had our hard times, regardless.” She lowered her voice to a tone barely audible. “I’m not sure if moving out here was the best thing for us to do. I mean, Zach loves it, but it’s been a drain on us. Poor Milo has never adjusted to those long hours of commuting. And it costs a lot more than we thought it would.” Once more Dawn glanced at the entry to the living room. “We got the shock of our lives at our closing when they told us how much we had to contribute to our escrow account. If we’d known that we would have stuck to the basic model on an ordinary lot and skipped all the upgrades.”
“Oh, yeah, the escrow account.” Camille nodded. “We were surprised, too, but it came before the closing. Reuben asked the loan officer what P&I meant, and that’s when we found out we’d be paying extra every month for the insurance and taxes. By that point I wished we could downgrade to a smaller house and I think Reuben did, too, even though he kept up a brave front. It was too late to change anything by then; contracts had been signed and they’d already begun building.”
“I find myself thinking more and more that things weren’t all that bad back in Brooklyn,” Dawn admitted. Right about now they’d be entertaining friends by cooking out on the terrace. Milo would be standing over the grill, carefully moistening steaks for the adults and burgers for Zach and whatever kids had come, with soaking-wet corn still in the husks cooking on the other side of the grill. She’d have baked potatoes in the oven, French fries for the kids. If she closed her eyes she could smell the food cooking, hear the sounds of the city twelve stories below....
“I wonder what happened to Tanisha and Douglas,” Camille said suddenly.
Dawn blinked away her daydreaming and looked at her curiously. “Where did that come from? Camille, you don’t think you and Reuben will be foreclosed on, do you?”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “We still have money put away that’ll last us for a good while.” She wasn’t really lying; they did have money. Their retirement funds. They weren’t supposed to dip into it and would probably pay dearly, but at least they had it. That was a lot better than not having it.
“What’s that song?” Dawn asked, anxious to change the subject, then paused a moment to listen. “It’s called ‘The Edge of a Dream.’ Nice song. Minnie Riperton sang it. Remember her?”
“I’ve heard of her, yes. They say she could hit notes that could shatter glass.”
“I think she could hit notes that only dogs could hear,” Dawn said with a laugh. “She died really young, barely thirty. Breast cancer, if I’m not mistaken.”
“That’s too bad.” Camille listened to the song’s lyrics, about a paradise visualized but not quite real, and felt like Ms. Riperton could have been singing about her own situation. For the past two years she and Reuben had lived here in Arlington Acres, pleased with the quality of life it brought to them and their children. Now that lifestyle was threatened, and she wondered if they’d merely been sitting on the edge of this life she’d dreamed of rather than actually living in it.
Chapter 37
The Lees
May 2004
“When are Grandma and Grandpa coming, Mom?” Simone asked.
“They’ll be out the end of June,” Veronica said, beaming. “I’m glad you girls are so excited. They might be with us for a while.”
Her father’s recent health crisis had prompted both he
r parents to retire, something they’d been thinking about doing for some time. In a surprise announcement, Phyllis and Franklin announced they would move to Monroe County. Veronica was thrilled about having them so close. They would stay with Veronica and Norman while they searched for a place to live. Home prices were low enough where they could buy for the first time in their lives. They were leaning toward a condominium, if they could find one with low maintenance fees and no stairs. Franklin’s doctor advised him to avoid the extra strain that climbing steps would put on his heart.
“Just two weeks until the end of school,” Lorinda announced at the dinner table. “I can’t wait.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Veronica said. “This year you’ll have a special surprise. Your cousin Essence is coming to spend the summer. This way instead of waking me up if you need something she’ll be able to take care of the problem. Won’t that be nice?”
“Cool,” Simone said as Lorinda agreed.
“Essence will help me with Grandma and Grandpa, too,” Veronica said happily. Then she noticed Norman’s frown. “Is something wrong?”
“When did all this happen, Vee?”
She didn’t like the look on his face. He looked indignant, like she’d just insulted him or something. “Two months ago, when Daddy had his heart attack. I told you about it, remember?”
“No, you didn’t.”
She tried to remember that day. She’d been so tired when she got home. Norman and the kids had had a spaghetti dinner waiting for her when she’d arrived.
She drew in her breath. Now she recalled that at dinner she had reminded herself to discuss the situation with Norman later, but she was so tired she went straight to bed. Between preparing to return to her night-shift schedule the next evening and continuing concern about her father, she’d forgotten all about it.
“You’re right,” she said. “Now I remember that I fell asleep that night. I’m sorry I forgot to tell you, Norman.”
“I know you didn’t do that on purpose, but we’ve got a problem. I told Charles that Chucky could come for the summer.”
“What?”
“He really liked it out here. Apparently he’s been asking Charles and Germaine to buy a house out here. Charles told him that wouldn’t work, but that he’d ask us if he could spend the summer at least.” Norman’s stricken expression changed to one of embarrassment. “I guess I forgot to mention it to you. I didn’t see any problem.”
“What are we going to do, Norman?”
“I don’t know. I hate to tell Chucky he can’t come. He’s a good kid.”
She thought so, too. A bright boy who liked to read as much as he liked to play softball, the entire family expected great things from Chucky. He was the kind of kid who’d been made to live in the country but had spent his entire life in an urban environment.
Norman’s entire family had moved to the New York area from the South, and Norman and his siblings grew up with no grandparents or other family to spend summers with. Veronica felt they’d missed a lot. She and Valerie used to spend a few weeks with their grandparents in southern Virginia every year before they died. It was such a wonderful change of scenery from the city atmosphere of Washington Heights to run along the quiet rural streets, to scream at the top of their lungs in the fields.
She knew that reneging on Chucky would only antagonize his parents, Charles and Germaine. Norman hadn’t shared with her anything that anyone in his family might have said, but Veronica had a sneaking suspicion that both Norman’s brothers and sisters-in-law felt she’d been behind putting the brakes on their frequent weekend visits. Relations between them had been somewhat strained recently, and she didn’t want an already tense situation to worsen.
“We still have a few weeks to come up with a solution,” she said now. “Our kids will be out of school earlier than they get out in the city. We’ll think of something, Norman.”
The Youngs
Dawn opened her eyes at the sound of a child’s playful yell punctuated by a loud splash. She’d drifted off as she read while stretched out in a lounger by the pool.
She liked to relax here whenever she could. The association dues she and Milo paid each year entitled them and any guests they had to use it as well as the clubhouse. Even Milo enjoyed it. He was in the pool now, at the shallow end, since, like her, he’d never learned to swim.
She put down the book and walked over to him, sitting on the lip of the pool with her legs dangling in the water. A spell of unusually warm weather for late May had hit, sending many of the home owners here to cool off or, in the case of the white folks, to get rid of that fish-belly pallor and get a little pigmentation on their exposed body parts. Sometimes it amazed her at just how white white folks were.
Milo came to join her, hoisting himself out of the water with his hands. He kicked up a not-too-large splash her way. “You can’t get cooled off by just getting wet from the knees down.”
“I know. I thought about going in all the way, but it’s supposed to be hot again tomorrow, so I thought there’s not much sense in ruining my hair today. Hey, where’s Zach?”
“Riding his bike.”
“I thought he’d be here. I see some of his friends, like Mitchell Curry.”
“I don’t think he likes the water.”
She shrugged, wondering, but concerns over Zach were quickly forgotten as she enjoyed a sense of camaraderie with her husband. Moments like these, when they just sat and relaxed together in easy companionship, had become rare. Too often they bickered over their financial burden and his unwillingness to do anything around the house. Afternoons like this were to be savored.
The mercury returned to seasonal readings during the week, but by the following weekend it had returned to the upper eighties. Dawn did her shopping and cleaning early. After she tossed the last of the laundry into the dryer they’d finally bought last year she changed into a swimsuit. Milo had laid down for his usual Saturday afternoon nap. She expected he’d show up at the pool when he awoke. She might take a nap herself, but it would be in a lounger by the pool.
“Hey, Zach, are you planning on hitting the pool? It’s going to go up to ninety today,” she said.
“Nah. I’m gonna ride my bike.”
She wondered if he had reached the self-conscious stage of adolescence where he didn’t want to expose his thin physique to the neighborhood girls. Then she decided it was silly to wonder and asked him outright. “Zach, we’ve lived here for almost two years, and you went in the water maybe twice when we first got here. Don’t you want to go swimming?”
“Mom, you know I can’t swim.”
“It’s a figurative term, Zach. I can’t swim, either, and neither can your father, but we still get in the water. And I see your friends in there all the time.”
“That’s just it, Mom. All the kids around here know how to swim. If I go in and they find out I can’t they’ll mess with me.”
“Son, why didn’t you tell us sooner? Maybe we could get you some swimming lessons.”
“Oh, Mom, I know you and Daddy don’t have much money left after you pay the bills for the house. I’m managing okay.”
Dawn bit her lower lip. Of course Zach knew about the hard time she and Milo had keeping up. They’d had several arguments about it since the bills started coming in for the concerts they’d attended, theater tickets, dinners out, and pricey New York hotel rooms they stayed in when they were too tired to drive back to Tobyhanna afterward. Equally substantial were the purchases they’d made in Grand Cayman and Mexico during their cruise, and the landscaping project to raise their backyard, which, in addition to the landscaper’s fee, involved buying sod to cover the entire area and keep it from buckling again. But that didn’t mean Zach should have to make excuses to his friends for not joining them at the pool when he really wanted to. She wasn’t so old that she didn’t remember how important it was to fit in. Damn it, they would just have to get him lessons, that’s all.
“Zach, I’ll talk to D
addy. Let’s see if we can get you in for lessons at the Y. The summer’s just beginning, so you should be able to get in and do some swimming by next month.”
“Sure, Mom.”
He didn’t brighten like she’d expected him to. Instead, he seemed doubtful. Dawn felt her heart break. How had they gotten to the point where her child thought she would lie to him?
“No, Dawn.”
She and Milo spoke in the privacy of their bedroom, but she was careful to keep her voice down. If she had her way, Zach would never hear another argument between them. “What do you mean, ‘no’? Zach needs to know how to swim. He deserves to know how to swim. Why should he be the only one who can’t?”
“I agree that he shouldn’t, but Dawn, we can’t afford it, and that’s that. Maybe next year, after we get some of this stuff paid off.”
She sighed. She knew they had stretched themselves to the limit, but she hated for Zach to be without anything he needed. “What if I take it out of the vacation club?” she suggested. “That way I can pay cash and we won’t be contributing anything to our debt.”
“All right, go ahead. It’s a cinch we won’t be going on vacation anytime soon.”
Dawn felt like a professional as she applied the relaxer mixture to Camille’s new growth. She worked quickly—Camille had a lot of hair, and she had to make sure she covered the whole head in the allotted time. It should be a snap for Camille to do her short hair right after this was done.
What a great idea Camille had had, suggesting they touch up each other’s relaxers. A six-dollar kit from the drugstore sure beat paying forty bucks for the beautician to do it. The woman Dawn had gone to in Mount Pocono hadn’t done a bad job, but she still preferred her former salon in Brooklyn.
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