Walls within Walls

by Maureen Sherry

  “What do we do when we find them? Look through gigantic buildings for treasure?” Pat asked. “Won’t that be hard?”

  “Maybe. I have a feeling we won’t know what we’re looking for until we see each structure,” said CJ.

  Brid looked up from her notes. “So, we go to a building that a poem reminds us of, then we get water from above to rupture?” she asked.

  “That’s what I’m not sure about,” said CJ. “But I think I’m getting closer. I don’t know about the first poem, but the second one is ‘Ulysses.’ It’s a famous poem about not giving up, not surrendering.”

  “What building could possibly be about not giving up?” Pat said, rummaging through his Legos. “A fort?”

  “Close,” said CJ. “I think the answer is in the title of this poem.”

  “Duh,” said Brid. “It’s a one-word title, and there are no buildings or forts in New York called Ulysses. Right?”

  “Actually,” said CJ, “there is one enormous structure in the city with that name on it. He was a general.”

  “Like in the army?” Patrick said.

  “Yes, and he became president of the United States: Ulysses S. Grant. Ever heard of Grant’s Tomb? C’mon, it’s one of the corniest jokes of all time. Pat, who is buried in Grant’s Tomb?” asked CJ.

  “Um, Grant?”

  “Bingo. There must be something in Ulysses S. Grant’s tomb. Mr. Post must have left something for his son and daughter there. Maybe we can find it.”

  “Where exactly is Grant’s Tomb?” Brid asked.

  “Not sure, but it’s in Manhattan,” CJ said.

  “Wait,” Pat said. “So we have to get something from that structure, and the structure is a tomb? Maybe we have to get a dead body out?”

  “I’m not taking any bodies anywhere,” Brid said matter-of-factly.

  “Eeeew, it’s too creepy,” Pat replied.

  “Then what do we do with it?” Brid asked. “Assuming Grant’s Tomb is the right answer.”

  “Like I said, I have no idea. But maybe we’ll know when we see it,” said CJ.

  “No idea,” repeated Brid. “But we do need to start somewhere, so let’s start at Grant’s Tomb.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The next afternoon, after CJ and Brid finally did buy their school uniforms, CJ plotted the trip to Grant’s Tomb at 122nd Street and Riverside Drive. He printed out internet photographs of the mausoleum, thinking they could go tomorrow or the next day.

  The kids were hanging out in CJ’s room. Sprawled out on CJ’s bed, Brid was reading Mr. Post’s book of poems, taking methodical notes as she looked for clues.

  “Hey, shoes off my bed!” CJ said with an English accent.

  “What are you, a member of the Williamson family?” Brid joked.

  Patrick was building quietly with his Legos, trying his hardest to be silent. He’d noticed the older kids let him hang around more as long as he didn’t interrupt much. He liked his new life of being included; he felt like a big kid.

  He was trying to build a model of Grant’s Tomb with his Lego pieces. It was hard to get the rounded roof done with the square blocks, and he was getting frustrated. Patrick glanced up at Brid. He had looked at the book of Mr. Post’s poems earlier when he was alone, but the words made no sense to him. They confused him and made him feel like he couldn’t help solve the mystery, that he was still a little kid after all.

  Now his eyes strayed to the back cover, which was brown leather with a strange inky blob smeared across the middle. The more he stared at it, the more he saw something. Finally, he just couldn’t stay quiet. “Is that book about, um…?”

  “What?” Brid said flatly.

  “I think his poem book is about dying, ’cause his book says ‘death’ on the back,” Pat said.

  “Patrick, what are you babbling about?”

  “Pat,” said CJ, “can we stay on topic here? We’re talking about Grant’s Tomb.”

  “Oh,” said Patrick, deflated. He tried again. “That inky blob. It says something about death.”

  Brid lowered the book. “Why are you being so annoying right now?”

  “Look at the back of the book,” Patrick insisted. Brid turned the book over. “This thing?” she asked Pat. “It’s a blob of ink.”

  “No. You’re not holding it the right way now,” Pat said. He climbed onto the bed and adjusted the book, holding it at arm’s length. Brid and CJ saw one long, stretched word, only recognizable to someone looking carefully at exactly the right level.

  “Holy mother of a llama,” CJ said softly.

  “What is that word?” said Brid.

  Patrick ignored them. “It’s talking about death.”

  “No,” said CJ kindly, remembering how his little brother twisted letters sometimes. “Well, almost. It doesn’t say D-E-A-T-H; it says H-E-A-R-T-H.”

  “Hearth,” Patrick said. “What does hearth mean?”

  Brid recorded this new development in her notebook.

  “In a fireplace,” said CJ. “It’s the open spot in a wall at the base of the chimney.”

  “This apartment is full of chimneys!” said Brid, getting excited. “We have three of them. I bet something is hidden in the hearths!” she shrieked.

  CJ snatched the book from Brid, ignoring the little dance she and Patrick were doing. He recited the first two lines of “Ulysses”:

  “It little profits that an idle king,

  By this still hearth, among these barren crags…”

  “I get it!” shouted Brid. “It’s the second time Post is leading us to a hearth! But which one?” She slammed CJ’s door open and took off down the hallway.

  CJ and Patrick followed her into the living room, where Brid ducked inside the enormous limestone fireplace and stood upright. “They all have tile around them, but this one has the most.” Brid’s voice was muffled under the massive fireplace frame.

  “What’s going on here?” came Maricel’s shrill voice, surprising everyone. Their nanny came into the room with Carron toddling after her.

  “We were looking at tiles,” CJ said quickly.

  “Oh, are your parents going to change the tiles?” Maricel asked as she reached down to pick up Carron.

  “No, we’re just interested in, um, the tiling,” CJ said. “I mean, the hearth is really nice, and we’re just admiring it.”

  At that moment, they were mercifully interrupted by the sound of the elevator. In sauntered Bruce Smithfork, much earlier than expected. For Carron and Patrick, all else was forgotten as they attacked their father with ferocious bear hugs. It was still light outside, not a time they were used to seeing him anymore.

  “What are you up to?” Bruce Smithfork asked, glancing around quizzically. “Looking for Santa?”

  None of the children knew how to answer.

  CHAPTER 9

  Back when they lived in Brooklyn, CJ knew he could count on his father to leave his basement office at four PM and come upstairs. Mr. Smithfork would cook, throw a football around, or help the kids with homework, but he would never, ever go back to his office. Now that he worked in a midtown skyscraper, his home office seemed like a second job he had to go to. He often came home late, and then would go right into his office. Sometimes he even ate in there.

  “So, Dad,” said Brid, “how’d you get out of work so early?”

  Their dad pushed his bushy brown hair back from his face and said, “I thought I’d come home early because school starts tomorrow.”

  “Dad,” said Brid, “school doesn’t start till September seventh, and today is just the second.”

  “I knew that,” their dad said a little sheepishly. “Want to throw the football around?”

  This grabbed Patrick’s attention. “In the park?” he asked.

  “Great idea!” said Brid. “But CJ and I have a lot of homework, so why don’t you just take Patrick, and we’ll see you back here for dinner.”

  CJ glared at Brid. Homework? School hadn’t even started, so how could th
ey have homework?

  “Dad,” said Patrick, looking outside onto Fifth Avenue. “Didn’t you notice it’s raining?”

  “I didn’t mean football in the park,” their dad said. “I meant living room football. They don’t call this a ballroom for nothing.” He winked, and CJ thought he hadn’t seen his dad do that in a really long time.

  Three minutes later, they were passing the football around. Maricel had carried off Carron, protesting loudly, for a bath. With its twenty-foot ceilings and rectangular shape, the living room was the perfect miniature football field. CJ moved the two long couches against the walls, making end zones. Brid stuck brooms and mops deep into the cushions so they stood upright, creating goalposts. Luckily, they hadn’t done much in the way of unpacking, so there was nothing breakable in the room. Even though dragging around the furniture scratched the floor, and putting dirty mops on a couch wasn’t a sanitary idea, Bruce Smithfork didn’t say a word.

  As soon as Brid got the final handle to stay upright, Patrick yelled, “Hike!” and the game was on. The teams were Mr. Smithfork and Patrick versus CJ and Brid, and soon both sides were in a sweaty rumble. Collapsing at last onto the floor, CJ thought it was a good time to ask their dad some questions.

  “Dad, do you know who lived here before us?”

  “Nope. They were renters, not owners. We bought the apartment from people we never met.

  “We really liked this apartment because it had so much character. It seemed like the walls had stories to tell us, stories from a different time.”

  Brid and CJ looked at each other as their dad stood up and moved his tie around his forehead like a sweatband. “Go long, Pat!” he yelled as he let the ball sail to his younger son.

  CJ easily two-hand touched his brother to stop the play, and Pat fell hard onto the couch.

  “But the original owner died a long time ago, right?” CJ said.

  “That’s right. He died and left the original apartment to his family, and they divided it up into four different apartments. They all came up for sale after the Great Depression, when it was hard to sell any apartment, never mind one with bizarre rules attached. The fact that not only that owner, but any owner in the future, had to agree to not wreck the walls made it a bit of a white elephant.”

  “A what?” asked Brid.

  “An expensive possession that is a financial burden to maintain,” said CJ. “It’s just an expression.”

  Just then, Maricel came back into the living room with Carron. She looked alarmed at the football game, but Carron was grinning.

  “We pay you?” Carron asked.

  “Of course you can play with us,” said her dad.

  “She just had her bath,” said Maricel. “She shouldn’t get dirty now. Playtime is done for the day.”

  “It’s just football,” said Mr. Smithfork. “Living room football is very clean.”

  Maricel gathered her purse from the front hall. “Good night,” she said with an edge to her voice, and rang the elevator button.

  Boom! Brid dove for a long-shot pass and landed on the back of the couch so hard that it fell over backward. It smacked the uncovered wooden floor with a noise that echoed loudly through the apartment. Carron burst out laughing, while Patrick dove on top of Brid. Thinking this was a game she would like, Carron got on top of him.

  As they lay there, spluttering and giggling, the elevator arrived for Maricel. They were surprised to see that Ray was accompanied by two women. One wore a white blouse, dark skirt, a strand of pearls, and sensible pumps. She looked around eighty years old. The other wore what CJ had started to call “the Fifth Avenue uniform,” a simple gray dress with a white apron across the front. This was the dress of the helpers: the dog walkers, the nannies, the maids, the baby nurses, and the ladies hired to buy groceries. The neighborhood was filled with women wearing these clothes.

  The older woman stood with her mouth open, staring at the overturned couch and Mr. Smithfork with a tie around his head. Aside from the heavy panting of the football players, there was no sound in the room.

  Maricel shrugged and stepped into the elevator, leaving the two strange women with the Smithforks.

  “May I help you?” asked Mr. Smithfork.

  Brid stared at the older lady. She was on the shorter side, light-skinned, twinkly-eyed, and fine-boned. Something about her seemed familiar. Brid watched the woman’s eyes sweep the room, taking note of the living room goalposts and the overturned couch. For a flash, Brid thought she saw a half smile.

  The woman cleared her voice. “Yes, hello. I’m your downstairs neighbor, and this is my housekeeper, Annika. We were just making certain a bomb hadn’t exploded up here,” she said with a smile.

  Annika added, “I think Madam would like to request quieter behavior. Madam’s apartment has very high ceilings, so the noise you make here is amplified downstairs.”

  I’ll bet she has high ceilings, thought CJ. According to the floor plan of the original apartment, that floor had much more height than the Smithfork apartment. Her ceiling had to be thirty-five feet high. But before anyone could answer, a cry came from the kitchen.

  “Dinner!” It was their mom.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Smithfork, who was now awkwardly trying to remove his tie from his forehead. “Please, ladies, we are sorry about the noise. We didn’t want to play outside in the rain.”

  “Yeah,” said Brid, “we kind of take the word ballroom literally.”

  The elderly woman cracked a full smile at Brid’s joke. She seemed apologetic. So, when Mrs. Smithfork yelled, “Dinner,” the second time, Patrick asked, “Want to stay for dinner? My mom makes the best chocolate cake!”

  “Oh, we didn’t mean to interrupt anything. We just haven’t heard so much life up here in a long time. I’m glad everyone is all right,” she said, smoothing her hair.

  “Well, at least come meet my wife,” said Mr. Smithfork, who seemed to want a second chance to make a good impression. Brid hated that he seemed to care what people thought of him these days.

  Annika bent to remove her shoes. Brid said, “You can leave your shoes on, it’s not that kind of house.”

  “Oh, okay,” Annika said with relief in her voice. Without anyone showing them where to go, the two women made the two right turns that took them down the hall to the kitchen. The family padded behind them.

  Brid turned to CJ and whispered, “How did they know how to get to the kitchen?”

  Mrs. Smithfork didn’t cook like the chefs on television: no neat little piles of matching chopped foods arrayed in colorful bits. The Smithfork kitchen had oozy liquid dripping from the stainless steel countertops. Sprinkles of herbs dusted the floor, and bits of vegetables were scattered about. Sizzling chicken parts spat grease onto the industrial-sized gas range. CJ and Brid felt a little embarrassed that their mom looked so messy in front of these prim women.

  “Hi there—welcome!” Mrs. Smithfork practically shouted.

  “Hello, ma’am,” said Annika. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. I work for your downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Munn,” she added, gesturing toward the older woman. “And my name is Annika.”

  “We just came up to say hello and, I guess, welcome you to the building. I’m embarrassed we haven’t brought a housewarming gift,” said Mrs. Munn.

  “Would you like to stay for dinner tonight?” Mrs. Smithfork said brightly.

  “Oh what a lovely invitation,” said the older woman. “Perhaps another time?” She seemed surprised by Anne Smithfork’s spontaneity.

  “Oh, I understand,” said Mrs. Smithfork as the chicken started to smoke. “We’ll see you again.”

  “Yes, good-bye.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Smithfork, looking a little defeated. “And we’ll keep the noise level down.”

  The older lady nodded and grinned and went back to the elevator, with Annika trailing behind her.

  CHAPTER 10

  At one the next morning, CJ’s alarm clock went off. He wasn’t sure why he felt
this way, but he wanted to be alone when he examined the hearth in his dad’s office. In a family like his, the middle of the night was the only time he could do that. He tiptoed to the office, noticing three partially filled coffee cups. It looked like his dad had spent a long night laboring over problems with his LeCube company.

  Since Bruce Smithfork’s screen saver was still glowing, CJ figured his father must have just left the room. CJ sat in the office chair and watched the words DigiSpy, a division of the LeCube Company form a swirling cyclone on the screen. This was the new spy game his dad was inventing. Every time CJ asked if he could test it out, Bruce Smithfork would say, “Wait till it’s through my testing department.” CJ could feel his insides deflate when that happened. His dad seemed to forget that CJ had once been his testing department. Now Bruce Smithfork employed people who had gone to college for that stuff, experts at making people want to buy his gaming system.

  As CJ leaned back in his dad’s chair, he noticed a poem etched into the wall above Mr. Post’s built-in desk. It read:

  The thief left it behind:

  the moon at my window.

  —Ryokan (1758–1831)

  Wonder why he had that there? CJ thought. That Post guy was just crazy for poetry. Weird.

  He glanced out the office window, looking for the moon, but it was black outside, except for the lights of the surrounding buildings. Using just his flashlight and the blue light from the computer screen, he examined the fireplace. Nothing seemed amiss or unusual. He moved his hands up and down and felt nothing. The tiles seemed to be laid evenly, the cement holding them together perfectly aligned. He tried again, this time pushing each tile just in case there was a spring behind one of them. Nothing. CJ lay down and flashed his light up the chimney, seeing only blackness and a tiny dot of night sky.