If These Walls Could Talk

by Bettye Griffin

  “All right. Tell me where you want me to meet you.”

  Half an hour later she rang the doorbell of her mother-in-law’s apartment. At the age of sixty-seven, Ginny still worked as a medical records clerk at Montefiore Medical Center. She often said she couldn’t afford to retire.

  Reuben promptly opened the door. He smiled at her and took her hands in his as she entered the neat apartment. Reuben slept on the length of the sofa. Propped up against a walnut-toned étagère was the twin-sized air mattress Mitchell slept on, slightly floppy due to loss of air. No bed linens were apparent, and Camille presumed they had been folded and stashed in the linen closet.

  “Baby, our troubles are over,” he said.

  Suddenly, she felt exhausted. “Reuben, will you please stop being so evasive and let me know what’s going on?”

  He paused dramatically before announcing, “We got five numbers in yesterday’s Mega Millions drawing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true. Now you know why I needed to see you right away, and without anyone else being around. I mean, I love my family, but if they found out we came into a large sum of money they’ll throw out their collective hands so fast it’ll set off enough wind to make a tornado.”

  The air around her suddenly grew thin, like she’d reached the pinnacle of a mountain. “Reuben, we actually won the Mega Millions?” This game, played in about eight states, didn’t have jackpots as large as the state Lotto, but paid jackpots in the millions.

  “Well, no, not exactly. You win when you have five numbers plus the Mega number. We just had the five numbers.”

  Camille’s euphoria deflated. “Reuben, second prize in Lotto only pays a couple of thousand dollars. You said our troubles are over.” She wanted to cry. She’d used precious personal time that she was trying to preserve for when they moved just to hear news of, what—a measly five or ten thousand dollars? The money would help, but it would hardly pay all their debts.

  “Mega Millions works differently than Lotto, Camille. I already confirmed the amount we won: $250,000.”

  She gasped. “Two hundred and fifty . . . Reuben, that’s a quarter of a million dollars. Are you sure?” No wonder he didn’t want his family to know.

  “Yes. They’ll probably take out a quarter of it in taxes, and it’s not like we can retire or anything, but think of what we can do. We can pay off our tax bill. We can pay off everyone we owe and still have plenty to reestablish our savings. It’s too late to do anything about the foreclosure, but now we can buy another house.”

  She looked at him incredulously. “You want to go back to Tobyhanna?”

  “No, not there. It’s too far from our jobs, now that I’m working in Westchester. Maybe we can find something right here in the Bronx, or even in northern Westchester. It doesn’t have to be new construction, as long as it’s in good structural condition. The important thing is, we won’t make the same mistakes we made the first time.”

  “Amen,” she whispered. “This is wonderful, Reuben, but I have to wonder why this couldn’t have happened while we still had our house. I know it wouldn’t have been practical to keep living there with your new job in Westchester, but at least we could have sold it instead of being foreclosed on.”

  He shrugged. “Everything happens for a reason, Camille. But we weren’t destined to win until we came back. They don’t have Mega Millions in Pennsylvania. We could easily have broken up, you know, like Milo and Dawn. You made no secret of the fact that you were unhappy.”

  Remorseful, she momentarily averted her eyes.

  “I’d even like to see if we can find a house that works for us. Maybe a two- or three-family, with a couple of rental units.”

  “Sure. Just don’t rent to any family members if you expect to receive any rent money,” she said with a smile.

  “You’ve got that right. But I would like to do something for Mom. She’s just a few years away from being seventy, and she still gets up every day to go to work. She’s worried about how she’ll get by on her pension and her Social Security. If we’re her landlords we can give her a low rent, plus she’ll be close by and we can check on her every day.” His eyes held a question, and she knew he wanted her consent.

  “Yes, I agree,” she assured him. “Your mother deserves to be able to enjoy the time she has left without worrying about how she’ll eat. And the kids will enjoy having her live with us.”

  “She can take care of the kids while you and I are on our trip.”

  “What trip?”

  “The trip we have coming to us after all we’ve been through. You name it. We’ll go anywhere in the world you want to go.”

  “That sounds tempting, but we’ll have to be careful not to spend all we have on the frivolous. We still have to rent an apartment while we house hunt, move part of our furniture to it . . . Reuben!”

  “What?”

  “I just realized the silver lining. We haven’t sold our extra furniture yet.”

  “That’s because it’s in the back of the storage unit. The guys and I packed it so that we can easily get the things we’d need for an apartment. I wasn’t planning on selling it until we had the stuff we’re keeping out of there.”

  “You’re not getting what I’m saying, Reuben. Because we haven’t sold our dining room and our living room furniture yet, that means we won’t have to sell it at all.”

  “Oh! Yes, that’s right. Sure, we’ll be able to use patio furniture and a grill and a formal dining room set in our new house.”

  “And Mitchell and Shayla can keep their bedroom furniture, because they’ll each have their own room,” Camille said happily. “We can even keep the old living room furniture. If the house we buy doesn’t have a family room we’ll just put it in the basement.”

  “Yeah, sure. But back to what you were saying before the furniture fairy bit you on the ass. You’re right; we’ll have to be careful. I know a quarter mil seems like a lot of money, but after taxes it’ll be more like $185,000. That number is gonna start going down pretty damn fast once we take care of Uncle Sam and the rest of our bills, replenish our savings and our retirement accounts, take our vacation, and get an apartment. We’d better plan to make a huge down payment on our new house so we can tell the loan officers to shut up about the foreclosure that’s on our record.”

  “Nothing says ‘I mean business’ like a hundred grand,” she remarked.

  “That’s right. So while you and I can probably stand to replace our car, if your father and brother come to you and ask if you plan to bring them along to the car dealership to pick out new vehicles, the answer is no. The same for my relatives, of course,” he added quickly. “Once we get settled life will go on as usual.”

  “Not as usual, Reuben. The way we always dreamed of.”

  And this time it wouldn’t be merely the edge of a dream, but the real thing.

  Chapter 52

  The Currys and the Lees

  April 2007

  “It’ll be good to see Norman and Veronica again,” Camille said as she poured Splenda-sweetened lemonade over ice. She’d dropped thirty pounds during the most stressful time of her life, but she worked hard to keep it off. The Lees were coming in to the city to visit their family’s newest member. The daughter of Norman’s brother Eddie had just given birth to a baby boy.

  “Yes, it will be.” He shook his head. “But if Shayla has a baby before she’s married I’ll kill her.”

  “That part isn’t our business, Reuben. Veronica said Norman’s niece is twenty years old. Even her father can’t tell her what to do.” Nevertheless, Camille superstitiously knocked on the wood of the kitchen drawer.

  An hour later, Camille squealed as she opened the front door. “Norman, Veronica, it’s so good to see you!” She drew in her breath. “Lorinda, Simone, look at you two. I know you probably hate it when people tell you how much you’ve grown, but you really have! And you’re both beautiful.”

  The girls, now both teenagers, grinned self-consc
iously.

  Reuben came downstairs and greeted the Lee family with genuine gusto, patting Norman’s newly shaved head. “Yeah, my hairline had receded as far back as my ears, so I decided to shave it all off,” Norman said good-naturedly.

  “Camille, I’ve never seen you look better,” Veronica marveled.

  “Thanks. It’s my newfound security combined with my weight loss,” she said frankly. “In the days before we lost the house I was so worried I could barely keep anything down. When Shayla and I moved in with Reuben’s sister I still couldn’t eat. The pounds just melted off. By the time Reuben’s Mega Millions numbers hit, I’d learned to eat less fatty foods. Plus I walked a lot. It helped with the stress.”

  “My wife’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Reuben asked proudly. “She looks better now than she did when I met her fifteen years ago.”

  “She looks great,” Norman agreed before saying, “Tell me, how’d your families react to your win?”

  “Everybody wanted something, and none of them got a cent from us,” Reuben stated matter-of-factly.

  “We couldn’t afford it,” Camille said. “By the time we took care of all our obligations, we barely had enough to put down on the house. We had to make a huge down payment because of what happened in Tobyhanna.”

  Veronica nodded. “I can understand that.”

  “But my brother and sisters were happy that we invited my mother to live with us,” Reuben said. “I think we all had concerns about her continuing to work at her age, but none of us were in a position to help her. But it all worked out well. Since we bought right here in the Bronx, Mom’s not too far from her friends.”

  They’d seen a house they liked in Northern Westchester County, but decided against it. The quiet tree-lined street had great appeal and reminded them of Tobyhanna, but the house, a typical suburban ranch style, had only three bedrooms and two baths, making it suitable for just the four of them and no one else. The house they ended up buying—just eight blocks north of their old apartment—had four bedrooms and two baths on the three upper floors, plus an efficiency apartment in the basement. Mitchell and Ginny had rooms on the second floor, with Shayla’s room on the third floor, next to Camille and Reuben.

  Camille felt they’d made the right decision. Sure, she worried about Mitchell and Shayla whenever they left the house. She’d warned Shayla not to take her eyes off her bicycle for a minute. This was, after all, Morrisania, not Tobyhanna. But she could get to work with one swipe of her MetroCard, not an expensive Metro-North pass. Ginny surely would have balked if they moved forty miles up the Hudson, and Camille couldn’t blame her. All her friends were in the city. She wouldn’t want to leave the familiar to move to a town she’d never heard of at that stage of her life either.

  Ginny paid them five hundred dollars a month, and they rented the efficiency for nine hundred dollars. That income helped them meet their mortgage and helped them build a financial cushion that could make the difference between success and failure if times ever got hard again.

  “I’m real glad to hear that. And this house is real nice, guys,” Veronica said, looking around at the spacious room, which was furnished with the pastel-colored furniture that had decorated their living room in Tobyhanna.

  Reuben shrugged. “It’s a lot older than the house we had in Tobyhanna, but it’s comfortable.”

  Veronica chuckled. “Well, as you know, I’m partial to older houses.”

  “This one’s over a hundred years old,” Camille said.

  Norman whistled. “It’s obviously been remodeled. It looks real modern to me.”

  Their conversation was briefly interrupted by the appearance of Mitchell and Shayla, who greeted Norman and Veronica before inviting Lorinda and Simone to see their rooms.

  “I’m real glad you two landed on your feet,” Norman remarked after the teens noisily ascended the stairs.

  Reuben nodded. “Yeah, we were lucky, all right. And that’s all it was. Pure luck.”

  “This time everything will work out,” Camille stated confidently.

  “How’s it going with your tenant?” Veronica asked.

  “Oh, it’s working out beautifully. No loud music, no rowdy guests, just nice, quiet people.”

  “Is it a couple?”

  “Well, it’s two people, but they’re not a couple.” Camille stood up. “Come on, I want to give you a tour of the house. We’ll start with the apartment downstairs.”

  Veronica’s eyebrows dipped. “The rental apartment? You can’t just bring company down there to look at your tenant’s apartment, can you? Isn’t that an invasion of privacy?”

  “Oh, our tenant is very understanding,” Camille said as she headed for the kitchen, gesturing with her head for them to follow.

  With an uncertain shrug, Veronica followed Camille through the kitchen and down the basement stairs. Norman and Reuben brought up the rear.

  One corner of the basement was walled off as a laundry room. A few pieces of extra furniture, accent tables, and other odds and ends that Camille couldn’t bring herself to part with, despite not having room for them, were stacked in another corner. The bulk of the basement was taken up by a walled-off area with a door in one corner. Camille knocked on the door. “Open up, it’s your landlord,” she barked. She turned to the Lees in time to see them exchange incredulous looks.

  The door opened, and the tenant stepped out.

  Veronica gasped.

  Norman chuckled. “Well, I’ll be.”

  Dawn held out a hand toward the inside of the apartment. “Hi, guys. Welcome to my cozy abode.”

  “Y’all rented to Dawn!” Veronica exclaimed.

  “Why not? They had to rent to somebody,” Dawn said good-naturedly. “Come on in and sit down. I’ve got some Miller Genuine Draft on ice.”

  Chapter 53

  The Youngs

  May 2007

  Dawn entered the bank, eager to deposit the check Milo had sent her for Zach’s care.

  It still hurt to think that her marriage had come to an end, like a cross-country highway. She’d held on to the hope that she and Milo would reconcile once she, too, admitted defeat and left Tobyhanna. Instead he’d merely asked where she and Zach planned to stay. He hadn’t been too thrilled to learn that her plan called for Zach to stay with him. “Why don’t you go to your folks?” he’d asked.

  “For the same reason you didn’t go to yours,” had been her salty reply.

  Milo could do nothing but agree to take Zach in. As Dawn expected, Zach had been brokenhearted to learn that he had to give up Stormy, but they’d found a good home for him with Lorinda and Simone Lee. Norman and Veronica’s daughters had always enjoyed playing with the dog.

  Zach seemed happy living with his father in the studio Milo claimed had a higher rent than their old two-bedroom, but Dawn had a feeling it had been a happy day for Milo when she took Zach to live with her.

  She’d been thrilled when Mr. Crawford consented to rent the former renting office to her, with the caveat that if the housing board found out that the commercial space was being used for residential purposes, she would have to vacate. When she told Milo about the arrangements she’d made, she’d asked if she and Zach would be able to come by his place on the weekends to take showers. Milo consented, but whenever they went over to Fort Greene, she got the uneasy feeling that he didn’t want them to linger.

  Finally, one day while Zach was showering she came out and asked him. “So, Milo, what do you see happening with us?”

  “I’ve asked myself that same question, Dawn. I do care about you, and because of that I want to be honest. I don’t see us getting back together. These past couple of years have worn me out. We had some good times after we bought that house, but they were mostly bad. Even seeing you now, I’m reminded of all the bad stuff.”

  She absorbed this and slowly nodded, hoping he couldn’t see her pain. “Just tell me one thing, Milo. Did you meet her before or after you moved out?”

  He opened his mout
h, then closed it. “How did you know?”

  She guessed he’d been about to deny the existence of another woman in his life, but thought better of it.

  “I met her before. But I swear to you, Dawn, all I did was take her to lunch. I didn’t begin dating her until after I moved in with Donald and Carmen.”

  She stared at him wordlessly. Yeah, and I’ve got a bridge for sale. “And she gave you something you weren’t getting from me?” She fought back tears.

  He hung his head, like he was talking to the floor. “I met her at work. I wasn’t looking for someone else, Dawn. It’s just that I felt trapped and miserable. She represented a different side of life. She’s unencumbered, fun . . .”

  “And I’m sure she’s got a good credit rating that you can’t wait to share.”

  “That’s not it, Dawn,” he said sharply. “Nobody carries me. Nobody ever has. I’m my own man.”

  “Milo, you know that this is going to follow us around for years. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get a decent apartment. I know you say you’re giving me as much as you can to help with Zach—”

  “I say that because it’s true. Don’t start insinuating there’s something else going on, Dawn. We both agreed that we have to pay off our credit card bills before we can really move on.”

  She had to agree, but she still wondered how much money he’d spent pursuing his girlfriend.

  “I don’t even have a car anymore,” he pointed out. “I left it with you, remember?”

  “All right, all right. But you have to admit, it might get a little awkward, me coming to your place to shower after you move in with your new girlfriend.”

  Milo’s reply died in his throat when Zach emerged from the bathroom. “We’ll talk later,” he said crisply.

  They had, when they were alone, but there’d been surprisingly little to say. Their marriage was, at least in Milo’s opinion, irreparably broken, and knowing he felt that way made it a little easier for her. She had no wish to hold on to someone who didn’t want her.