“Shit,” Willard muttered as his knuckles scraped abruptly against the plaster.
“What’s wrong?”
“Look.”
He sliced downward with the screwdriver—the blade slit through the plaster as neatly as if it were warm butter. He gestured to the dark opening.
“I’ll bet this whole damn back wall’s separated from the house. The gap’s been plastered over and painted.”
“Willard,” Catherine said sharply. “The children might not be asleep. I don’t want them to hear that kind of....”
But he wasn’t listening. He was already in the kitchen, rummaging through the utility drawer until he came up with a small hand flashlight. He carried it through the living room, knelt in the entry hall, and began examining the shiny Solarium tiles.
“Look,” he said after a few moments. He held the light at a sharp angle to the floor. Small as it was, the bulb was sufficient to cast hairline shadows that zigzagged faintly but definitely from wall to wall across the entryway. “See that.” He pointed with his free hand to the shadows.
“What is it?”
“Another crack. In the foundation slab.” He rose to his feet with a grunt and disappeared into the hallway, the flashlight throwing a faintly orange glow in front of him.
It took less than half an hour to discover that the house—walls and slab alike—seemed laced with cracks, major and minor, each of them carefully retouched with plaster and then artfully repainted to disguise the flaws. The worst of them seemed to be in the northwest corner of the master bedroom, where the plaster split the entire length of the juncture of the two outside walls—another hairline crack, so fine as to be virtually invisible unless one searched for it. In addition, the line separating wall from white popcorn-textured ceiling was ragged and rough.
Obviously the entire side wall of the house was shifting
The more he discovered, the angrier Willard became.
Curiously, he was not so much distressed at the fact of the structural flaws as at the equally obvious fact that the previous owners had clearly known about them and had done everything in their power to hide them. Fresh paint, new coats of texturing, re-plastering in strategic corners, new tiles on the entryway floor—all with the express purpose of hiding the serious problems in the house. Without a word, he stalked back through the house to the wall phone in the kitchen and began ruffling angrily through the phone
“Ma…Mar…Mat…Max—here it is,” he said, more to himself than to Catherine. “Maxwell, William. Realtor.” He punched the numbers, allowing his growing fury to communicate itself through his fingers. He tapped on the receiver as the phone rang once, twice, three times.
“Maxwell.” The voice on the other end sounded confident, sure of itself. Willard recognized it immediately, remembering the ease with which Maxwell had worked the deal for the house. I wonder how much he got from the scam, Willard thought, even as he was speaking.
“Mr. Maxwell, this is Willard Huntley.”
“Sure, Will. How’s the new homeowner?”
Faced with the easy assurance in the voice, Willard suddenly found himself stalled for words. He was still angry—furious and upset—but he wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “Well,” he said after a long pause, “actually that’s what I’m calling about.”
There was another long pause. He was half waiting for Maxwell to ask for particulars, but the silence on the other end of the line remained deafening.
“I, uh...I’ve found some problems.”
“Yes?”
Apparently Maxwell wasn’t going to make things any easier.
“Well,” Willard took a deep breath. “The walls and foundation seem to be cracked to hell and gone, and I want to know what you’re going to do about it.”
There, it was out. He felt better already. After all, there were such things as local ordinances, required inspections, things like that.
“Me?” Maxwell sounded honestly surprised. “What makes you think that I can do anything?”
“Well, you helped us with the house. You must know how to begin....”
“Begin what?”
”For starters, I want the previous owners....”
“The Merricks,” Maxwell added, as if he were trying to be as helpful as possible.
“The Merricks,” Willard repeated, nodding as if Maxwell could see him. “Anyway, I want to know how we can get the Merricks to make good on the problems. We haven’t even been in here a year yet—hell, we haven’t been in here more than a couple of months, and already the place is falling apart.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Catherine whispered.
“And besides,” Willard added, her presence reminding him of the immediate cause of their problems. “Besides, the place is overrun with roaches.”
“Sorry to hear that, Willard,” Maxwell said, “but there’s really nothing I can do about the problems. There was a clearly stated ‘as is’ clause in the contract, remember?”
Willard was stunned. He searched his mind but could dredge up no mention of any such thing.
“Just a minute,” Maxwell said, his voice ebbing gradually, replaced by the sound of shuffling papers. “I’ve got a copy here somewhere,” he continued, again speaking more to himself than to Willard. “Yeah, here it is.” He fell silent, except for a murmur as he scanned the contract sheets. “Right, here it is. Page seven of the original contract. ‘Summary of county inspection, specifying items anomalous to original construction, accepted and countersigned by purchaser(s).’ A couple of other items, but the gist is that any such problems become the responsibility of the new owners.
“That’s you.”
Willard opened his mouth to speak, but the words stuck in his throat. “But...but,” he finally sputtered. “But I didn’t know, I mean, it’s our first house and everything. I thought, I figured that you would let us know if there was anything wrong.”
Maxwell laughed. “Huntley, do you know that your house was the least expensive one in the entire Tamarind Valley? By a factor of several tens of thousands of dollars?”
“No, I didn’t. But what....”
“My commission on any other house listed with this agency would be almost double yours. And over the past six months, I’ve had seven houses in escrow.”
Willard was beginning to understand.
“So maybe I might have let a few details slip. But you got the house, didn’t you? And the property values will probably go up two, three thousand a month when real estate gets hot again. So you’re not really out anything. And it’s not as if you were planning on selling tomorrow or anything, is it?” Maxwell laughed.
Through the phone lines, the laughter sounded tinny and hollow.
Willard sputtered a few sounds, then fell silent. Everything Maxwell said was true.
“And anyway, the house isn’t going to fall in any time soon. Maybe in forty or fifty years, but not tomorrow.” He paused, then said, “Good to hear from you, Mr. Huntley. Have a good day.”`
And then the line clicked and Maxwell was gone.
“Damn,” Willard swore softly as he hung up the phone and looked quizzically at Catherine.
“Damn.”
From the Tamarind Valley Times, 29 June 1991:
STRONG QUAKE FELT, LITTLE DAMAGE IN VALLEY
One person died in Arcadia and one person died of a heart attack in Glendale as a result of yesterday’s 5.6 earthquake, centered near the San Gabriel Mountains. Although extensive damage was reported in Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and other near-by communities, Tamarind Valley escaped with minor damage.
Several local stores reported overturned shelves but....
Chapter Six
The Warrens, April 1992-November 1997
Living the Dream
1.
At age thirty-two, Daniel Warren could surely be counted a success, in his own eyes if not in the eyes of his mother. He owned his own Ford dealership—one of the most lucrative in the entire San Fernando Valley. His apartment, snu
ggled in the dense greenery of the Santa Monica Mountains just off Sepulveda, was well furnished with antiques that even his mother recognized cost more than she had ever had to spend on furniture, Heaven knew, and more than she would ever feel comfortable spending on furniture. His clothes were always immaculately tailored, his shoes always expensive continental brands.
All in all, he was a success.
But success is as success does, as they say. And no amount of money could atone for what Amanda Warren considered her only son’s greatest failure.
“You should be thinking about getting married,” she would repeat every Sunday afternoon as Daniel Warren sat at the family table, surrounded by innumerable bits of bric-a-brac from his mother’s sixty-seven years of life. The faded black-and-white pictures of Alfred Warren—none showing a man beyond his late thirties, and several of the later images eerily reminiscent of Daniel Warren as he sat at the side of the table—served as silent reminders that thirty of those years had been spent in patient widowhood and selfless, focused motherhood, days and months and years devoted to seeing that her Daniel had only the best she could offer. Now it was her turn, she had thought more than once. Now it was her turn to have what she wanted.
And what she wanted was simple.
She wanted grandchildren.
“You’re not getting any younger,” she would argue as she ladled gravy onto the flawlessly creamy mashed potatoes mounded at precisely eleven o’clock on her son’s plate. It didn’t matter that she knew he was watching his cholesterol count and that he had warned her that the gravy would probably send the numbers skyrocketing. She’d served gravy for Sunday dinner every day since she married Daniel’s father thirty-eight years ago this September, and it certainly hadn’t killed anyone yet.
“What about that nice young thing who lives on your floor, what’s her name again, oh yes, Rita. Have you asked her out?” she would say as she set his huge wedge of cherry pie in front of him at the end of the Sunday meal, in spite of the fact that he had just announced that he was full, thanks Mom, but no dessert for me. And while she listened to him explaining how Rita was engaged to a construction foreman that weighed three hundred pounds and would probably snap Daniel’s spine in two at the first sign that Daniel even knew Rita walked the face of the earth, Amanda watched each heaping forkful of pie disappear into Daniel’s mouth, watched, almost not breathing until the entire wedge was gone.
Daniel was used to her obsession. For the past seven years, the litany had altered only fractionally. Sometimes it was “that nice young thing Rita,” then it would be “that nice young thing Ellen.” Always one “nice young thing” or another. Always after him to marry.
Daniel Warren was not particularly interested in marriage. He worked hard and he lived well. He could get what sexual companionship he wanted whenever he wanted it, and if that particular companionship was not precisely what his mother might have imagined—or approved—well, that was her problem not his, wasn’t it.
After thirty-two years of Amanda Warren, thirty of those without even the questionable buffer of the father who had so inconsiderately keeled over from a heart attack on Daniel’s birthday, just after Daniel had puffed out the candles on the cake and held out his plate for the first, special, birthday-boy slice, Daniel knew when to nod and smile, and when to answer Amanda’s questions with just the right touch of ambiguity to assuage her for a while longer at least.
And he knew when to keep his mouth shut.
In April of 1992, however, on the Sunday following his thirty-second birthday, Daniel Warren broke his cardinal rule about keeping his mouth shut. He spoke out, and in doing so came as close as he ever would to killing his mother.
He didn’t do it intentionally, of course (although he might perhaps have considered such an action more than once), but even without meaning to, he almost killed her.
On this particular Sunday afternoon, he sat for a long time, staring at his nearly empty plate as if the single smudge of pie filling (peach this time, not cherry—he had grown to hate both) along the floral edging concealed the intricate answers to an infinite universe, he removed the carefully ironed napkin from his lap, folded it just the way Amanda expected him to when he was finished with his meal, laid it precisely across the top edge of the empty plate, sat back in his chair, and looked at his mother for another long time.
When she began to shift uncomfortably under the weight of his gaze, he grinned at her, a foolish, little-boy grin, as if he already knew that he had done something wrong and was trying to figure out the best way to break the bad news.
And finally said simply, “I’m getting married tomorrow, Mom.”
2.
Like all service organizations, the Helping-Hands Club was always on the lookout for volunteers. It had to be. Cash for paying a professional staff was scarce, especially here in the San Fernando Valley where even the most reasonable-seeming rent rates were punishingly high. Even though the Helping-Hands Club inhabited part of an antiquated school closed the year before when the new high school opened a couple of miles away, the marginal break on rent offered by the Sepulveda Basin School District did little to counter the fact that electric costs were high, heating costs were high, maintenance costs were high, everything was high…except the interest of most of the people in the area.
So when the well-dressed man appeared out of a cold, grey drizzle and walked into the office at Helping-Hands late one January afternoon and asked if the club needed volunteers, Marty Franco literally jumped at the chance.
“Sure thing, Mr...?” he said, out of his seat and hurrying around the cluttered desk before the man had stopped speaking.
“Warren, Daniel Warren,” the man answered curtly.
“Hello, Mr. Warren. Marty Franco.” Marty held out his hand. The other man’s grasp was firm and warm in spite of the chill outside. Marty could feel a comfortable strength in Warren’s wrist and fingers.
“Sit down,” Marty said, pointing to the other chair in the small room. The chair was almost hidden beneath a flurry of manila folders. Warren carefully stacked the folders on the floor and sat down.
“So,” Marty said after a short silence, “what do you know about the Helping Hands?”
“Not much,” Warren admitted. “I saw an ad in the GreenSheet at a grocery store the other day. It didn’t say much, just that you’re a service club and that you work with young people. Kind of like Big Brothers, I guess.”
Marty grinned. He’d written that ad himself. Nice to see that it was pulling in some responses. “That’s pretty close. We handle maybe forty kids at a time here, mostly kids with no fathers who need to be around a man some of the time. You know. Bonding. Role model. Like that.”
Warren nodded.
“We’re not a day-care center or anything. We run limited hours, but we do post a pretty good schedule of activities. Basketball, swimming, baseball. Some weekend hikes and camping trips. That sort of thing.”
Again Warren nodded.
“And of course we appreciate any help we can get. Most of our funding is through private donations. We know that our volunteers are doing a lot just by being here, but sometimes it helps if....”
“I understand. I have no family myself and I make a pretty good living. I’m willing to cover some costs where necessary.”
Marty broke out into an even wider grin, relieved that that hurdle had been successfully negotiated. “Well, Mr. Warren, then if you’ll fill out these forms, we can get started.”
He handed a sheaf of papers to Daniel, who skimmed through them before removing his pen from an inside jacket pocket. The form looked like fairly standard stuff. Name, address, age, marital status. Occupation. References. General backgrounds.
He began writing.
Three weeks later, Daniel Warren met Miles Stanton for the first time.
During an impromptu basketball game pitting four adult volunteers against half a dozen pre-teenagers (who severely and definitively trounced the old-timers), Daniel f
irst noticed the skinny kid sitting alone on the sidelines, elbows propped on bony knees. Once or twice, he had even waved for the kid to come over and play, but the boy had just stared ahead as if the game, the other kids, Daniel himself simply didn’t exist. As if the wall opposite didn’t exist and he could see clear through it to the Santa Monica mountains and beyond.
After the game, while the others were heading sweating and laughing into the shower room to clean up and change, Marty entered the gym and, standing by the boy, motioned Daniel over.
“Daniel, I’d like you to meet a new fellow here at Helping Hands. Miles, this is Mr. Warren. Daniel, meet Miles Stanton.”
At a nudge from Marty, the boy stood. He seemed even skinnier standing up. His basketball jersey was at least two sizes too large for his shoulders and chest and threatened to engulf him. His baggy shorts hung well past his knees, as full as if the boy were wearing a skirt.
Daniel stifled a smile, leaned down stiffly, and solemnly shook hands with the boy. At least now the boy—Miles, Daniel reminded himself—was looking up at Daniel, but he still seemed no more interested in the man towering over him than he had been in the basketball game.
“This is Miles’ first evening here, Daniel,” Marty said by means of explanation.
Daniel noted that the man spoke about the boy as if the kid were not present. The fact grated on him. He squatted down until his eyes were level with the kid’s. He heard his knees cracking; as always, he hated such physical reminders that his body was growing older.
“Hey, Miles,” he said, smiling and watching for any flicker of interest in the kid’s grey eyes. “You like basketball?”
Nothing.
“How about baseball?”
Still nothing.
Daniel glanced up at Marty. The other man shrugged, as if to say sometimes it takes a while, don’t give up, just keep trying and something will break.
Daniel pulled away a bit and examined the boy. He looked to be about ten, perhaps an inch or two taller than average, thin but certainly not malnourished. His light brown hair was unruly but had been recently trimmed. His eyes still seemed empty, though.
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