If These Walls Could Talk Read online

  Passersby, as well as neighbors she recognized rushed to her aid as she got to her feet. Someone handed her the grocery bag. The plastic milk container had split, and white liquid dripped out of the bag. She quickly pulled out the bread, which, except for some milk on the outside of the cellophane seemed intact, and cradled the milk jug in an attempt to keep it from leaking any more. When she got upstairs she’d pour it into a pitcher.

  “It’s a damn shame,” somebody said. “You can’t even go about your business anymore without somebody trying to rob you.”

  Veronica knew that anyone who tried to rob her would be sorely disappointed, for she carried her license, credit cards, and cash in a secure waist pouch under her scrubs. Her shoulder bag contained little more than a scratch pad, comb and brush, and her keys. She thanked those who had offered help, assured them she was fine, and quickly went inside her building around the corner on 160th Street. Lorinda, her oldest, was only nine. Veronica didn’t like the idea of her and her six-year-old sister, Simone, being latchkey kids. She and Norman set their schedules at the hospital so that he could see them off to school before beginning his shift and she could be there when they got home. She worked from six A.M. to two-thirty, managing to get home just before they did.

  She tried to rush up the stairs, but the three flights seemed endless, as they usually did whenever she carried anything extra. Maybe at thirty-six, she was getting too old to live in a fourth-floor walkup. She kept thinking how upset Norman would be when she told him what had happened. This wasn’t quite as scary as that incident with him last year, but disturbing just the same.

  Three hours later, the girls sat at the kitchen table, Lorinda doing her math homework and Simone practicing her printing in a workbook while Veronica made dinner. Norman came rushing in like a high tide, with no visible signs of exhaustion from climbing the three flights. “Vee! Where are you?”

  “I’m in the kitchen, where else?” She kept her voice even, but she suspected the reason why her husband sounded so agitated. Someone had told him about her mishap.

  His bulky frame filled the doorway. “Baby! You all right?” He took her arms one at a time, checking for bruises.

  “I’m fine, Norman.” She’d washed her face, combed her side-parted chin-length hair, which had fallen into her face, and inspected herself carefully. A jagged strip of skin had torn off her left forearm when she hit the pavement, and her left wrist, which she’d used to brace herself, ached a little. She’d carefully washed and bandaged the bruised area and applied a splint to control any swelling that might arise on her opposite wrist. When it healed she’d start applying cocoa butter to it to help darken the scar to match her dark complexion.

  “You’re not fine. Look at this. My God, it must be two inches long!” He lightly fingered her bandage, the edges of which were held down with adhesive tape.

  “Norman, please don’t lift up my bandage. I took care of it.”

  His attention moved to her other arm. “And what about your wrist? Do you think we should bring you in for X-rays?”

  “No. I’m not having that kind of pain. I’m sure it’s just a sprain.”

  “It could be a hairline fracture.” He applied gentle pressure to different parts of the wrist, studying her face carefully for grimacing. Her expression didn’t change.

  “Duane told me you got attacked in broad daylight,” he said.

  She nodded. She didn’t remember seeing their friend Duane London at the time of the incident; someone must have told him about it. Like her, he worked an early shift at the hospital and probably had come in a few minutes after she did. News spread quickly on this block where they lived, largely due to the elderly residents, who passed the time sitting on the front steps or gazing at the street scene out of their windows and knew everything that happened. “The kid knocked me down, but he didn’t get my purse. I guess it pays to have thick straps.”

  “Don’t make jokes, Veronica. This isn’t funny.”

  The girls, sensing tension, watched the exchange with worried looks on their faces. “Mommy, did somebody try to rob you?” Simone asked.

  “Yes, but I’m okay. There’s no need to worry.”

  “The hell there’s not,” Norman said, softly enough so only she could hear. “Have you forgotten about what happened last year?”

  She’d never forget that. Norman, home with a stomachache, had walked to the store to get a bottle of Pepto Bismol when someone held him up at gunpoint. He’d had only a twenty on him, but he could have been killed, depending on the mood of the thief. Like the attack on her this afternoon, it had happened on Amsterdam Avenue in broad daylight.

  “This neighborhood has gone to hell in a handbasket,” Norman declared.

  “You didn’t say hello to us, Daddy,” Lorinda pointed out.

  “I didn’t, did I? I’m sorry, girls. You know I didn’t ignore you on purpose. It’s just that I was worried about Mommy and wanted to make sure she was all right.” With a wink at Veronica, he said, “She means as much to me as she does to you guys.” He crossed over to the white laminate-topped table in the corner of the kitchen and hugged Lorinda and Simone hello. “So tell me, how are my other two favorite girls doing today?”

  Veronica poured dried mashed potato mix into the boiling water and margarine mixture on the stove, added a little milk, and began fluffing it with a fork. “Dinner is just about ready,” she said. “Lorinda and Simone, let’s put those books away and get the table set.”

  The girls promptly went into action, and Veronica moved the pan away from the heat, covered it, and followed Norman to their bedroom. “I’m all right, Norman,” she repeated. “I don’t want you to worry about me.”

  “I do worry about you, and I worry about Lorinda and Simone as well. This neighborhood sucks. Besides, this apartment is feeling smaller and smaller as the girls get bigger. I’m sorry now that we didn’t buy that house up in Westchester we looked at.”

  “Come on, Norman, what would we have done in Peekskill?”

  “Lived decently, for one thing. Plus, we would have built up some equity. The real estate market has really taken off in the last couple of years. The kids would be in a better school, we wouldn’t have to worry about how much the rent is going up every year, and we’d have a place of our own with a little peace and quiet.”

  She had to admit he had valid points. Their neighborhood had gotten pretty noisy in recent years. The New York City public schools sucked. They’d just transferred Lorinda to a different fourth-grade class once they realized she was barely being taught. Simone, who was only in the first grade, brought home more homework than Lorinda did. When Veronica went to the school to meet with the teacher and ask why he so rarely gave homework assignments, she instantly recognized the perennially red face and swollen midsection of a serious alcoholic. How could the school so blatantly ignore the signs? The man looked just like W. C. Fields, between his bulbous nose and face covered with gin blossoms. Lorinda admitted that most of the time Mr. Whalen only instructed them to read silently. Veronica felt he shouldn’t be allowed to continue teaching unless he dried out, but if more parents didn’t complain he’d stay on another ten years and collect a pension.

  And, as Norman said, their rent did go up every year....

  But that made her think of the main reason they’d decided against moving to Peekskill, an industrial town on the Hudson River some thirty miles north of the city. “But would you really want to move somewhere where we don’t know anyone?”

  “We’ll meet people. I’m sorry, Veronica, but not knowing anyone in outlying areas just isn’t a good enough reason to keep living in the city and being robbed on the street. If we could afford to live on Central Park West it would be different, but we’re just a couple of working stiffs, and we have to go where we can afford.”

  “It’ll cost more to get to work from Westchester,” she said quietly. “We’ll have to pay that toll on the Henry Hudson every day, going and coming.”

  “So
what?”

  “Day care will probably cost us more, too.” Now they used the services of Louise Qualls, a housewife who lived with her husband on the second floor, during summer vacations and school holidays. Mrs. Qualls also cared for her own grandchildren, who lived around the corner. Veronica would see Mrs. Qualls downstairs each school day as she waited for them to arrive in the afternoons.

  Norman had an answer for that concern as well. “I’ll work the night shift if I have to, so one of us will always be home with them. If we’re not in the city I won’t worry about you guys being safe at night. And even with that, living in the suburbs usually has more options. Day camp in the summertime, with field trips, rather than hanging out in someone’s cramped apartment all day, watching all that sex on daytime TV. We can afford a house, Veronica. We make good money. The only thing I’m worried about is that maybe we’ve waited too long. We’re probably priced out of even Peekskill by now.”

  She tried not to let her relief show. The house they looked at in the northern Westchester town, while on a nice street, was just a few blocks away from a section that looked dismal and dingy, not all that much of an improvement from Washington Heights. Maybe if it had been in a nicer part of town she would have been more enthusiastic about living there.

  “Who knows how far we’ll have to go to get something we can afford. But we have one good thing on our side,” Norman said.

  “And that is . . . ?”

  “Our jobs. If we have to relocate too far, we can change jobs. Hospitals are everywhere, and they all need nurses. Who says we have to keep working at Presbyterian?”

  At that moment Veronica realized her husband was serious. He really wanted them to leave the city.

  As wonderful as it sounded, she wasn’t sure it would be a good idea to leave the city where they’d both lived all their lives, and where their families were, to go live in some strange place, miles away, where they knew no one.

  Chapter 4

  The Youngs

  October 2001

  Dawn set the ironing board to a comfortable height so she could iron while seated without straining her back. Milo and Zach were out playing basketball at the courts on the property, and she partook in her usual Sunday afternoon activity, ironing in front of the TV with it set to the Lifetime Channel. Today she watched a movie with Jaclyn Smith. Her stack of clothes to be pressed grew higher every week, and it consisted mostly of Zach’s wardrobe, since most of her things and Milo’s went to the dry cleaners. She’d be glad when Zach got to high school and could iron his own clothes. He’d be old enough to do it before then, of course, but Milo feared that starting him too early would make a sissy out of him. As soon as he turned fourteen she’d buy him his own iron, since teenage boys tended to saturate their jeans with spray starch, which would turn the surface of her good iron black and sticky, and end up ruining her silk blouses.

  She’d preferred to iron here in the comfort of her living room than doing the wash in the basement laundry room. Not that she could do one without having to do the other, but she hated having to go up and down the elevator to wash her family’s clothes. And heaven forbid if she got tied up with a phone call or something and didn’t get back down there before her clothes were done. The people in this building wouldn’t hesitate to remove clothes from a washer or dryer that had stopped. She’d seen people do it many a time, not caring if in the process they dropped part of it on the filthy floor. Wouldn’t it be nice if she and Milo could afford to live in one of those luxury mid-rise buildings that had a laundry room on every floor? she thought wistfully.

  Their apartment would not accommodate both a washer and dryer, unless they paid a premium for one of those stackable units, which couldn’t be hidden any more than could a baby elephant. That would cause a headache when management did their annual inspections of each apartment, looking for outlawed appliances.

  But Milo was right when he said that many tenants had washing machines. They had them brought in inside large TV boxes so as not to arouse suspicion. They could do the same, and when it came time to dry a load all they’d have had to do would be to get a couple of drying racks and some clothespins and let the wash air-dry on the terrace in the twelfth-floor breeze.

  None of their neighbors would tell on them. It was the maintenance men they had to watch out for. There’d be hell to pay if they got caught. Anyone caught with a disallowed appliance was ordered to get rid of it, and management came back to make sure it was gone. The guilty tenants also had to pay a fine.

  Dawn continued to iron through the commercial break, but she allowed her thoughts to wander to what she would wear to the concert next weekend. Milo had tickets to Luther Vandross’s concert at Radio City. They would be sitting front and center; none of those nosebleed seats in the second balcony for them. The evening also included plans to have dinner in midtown.

  She enjoyed these occasional nights out, putting on a nice outfit—preferably a new one—and strolling around the streets of Manhattan, before it got too cold.

  She felt it was important for them to go into Manhattan and spend money to help stimulate the economy, which had stalled in the wake of the terrorist attacks. In the days immediately following, all flights were grounded, and even since flying had been resumed tourism had dropped off sharply, with thousands of employees of hotels and restaurants laid off. Less popular Broadway shows closed, while the hits played to sparse audiences. Some of the old folks said the theater world hadn’t been hurt this much since the Great Depression.

  Everyday life was slowly returning to normal. Stocks were once again being traded on the floor of the Stock Exchange; the late-night comics had returned to the TV airwaves, albeit subdued, the fall TV season had started; and gas prices, after a brief spike, were back down to where they’d been before September eleventh.

  Dawn turned her thoughts away from the terrorist attacks, determined to think of something more pleasant. She hummed a few bars of “Autumn in New York” and thought of her upcoming date with Milo. Nights like those were what made living in the city such an exciting experience. Thrilling, glittering, shimmering . . . She and Milo would look like a million bucks and would manage to stand out in the crowd of other welldressed folks who typically attended these events.

  She heard the clicking sound of a key in the lock, and the door to the apartment swung open. “Mom! Mom!” Zach called out, his voice ringing with excitement.

  Milo sounded equally urgent. “Hey, Dawn!”

  “I’m right here,” she called out. “What happened, Zach, did you beat Daddy?” Every time they played Zach always predicted that he would be victorious, a forecast Milo promptly shot down.

  “No, that’s not it,” Milo said. He picked up his glasses from the end table and put them on. “Dawn, I’ve got bad news. They just brought out Hazel Alston’s body.”

  She rapidly lowered the iron, her wrist suddenly gone weak. “Hazel’s body? She’s dead? My God, what happened?” She’d always been fond of the divorcée in her late fifties who lived next door, on whose door she would often knock if she found herself short of eggs or milk. “Did she have a heart attack?” Hazel’s immaculate apartment had always smelled of the cigarettes she constantly smoked.

  “Somebody killed her,” Zach said with a dramatic flourish.

  Dawn gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. “No!”

  “She was strangled,” Milo said quietly. “The rumor going around is that it was a break-in. You know how nice she dressed, with that full-length mink coat, plus that reddish brown fur jacket. Those, together with the car she drove . . . Sooner or later the word is going to get to the wrong element. Zach and I already heard rumors that she kept large sums of cash in her apartment.”

  Dawn’s upper body began to shake with a power she couldn’t control. To think she’d been sitting here daydreaming about her upcoming night on the town with Milo while poor Hazel lay dead in her apartment. “But she kept her furs in cold storage over on Hall Street, at least until wint
er. And I don’t think she’s the type to stash her cash under the mattress. She was an educated woman who knew better.” Hazel, a college graduate, had worked in management of a social services agency. When Hazel confided that her promotion put her above the maximum income allowed for single residents, Dawn offered to create a fake W2 for her to show the landlord—just as she did each year for herself and Milo, which kept their rent lower than it would normally be . . . one of the advantages of Dawn’s position as payroll supervisor. A grateful Hazel accepted and gave Dawn a hundred dollars for her trouble.

  Dawn also knew that Hazel’s ex-husband had died suddenly without having removed her name as beneficiary on his life insurance. With just one grown son and no grandchildren, she had no one to spend her money on except for herself. Her apartment was exquisitely furnished, with her living room done in powder blue with antique white French Provincial accent tables. She weekended on Martha’s Vineyard in the summer, usually flew to the Caribbean for a week during the winter, and she drove a Lexus sedan.

  “Mom, maybe you ought to lie down,” Zachary suggested. “You don’t look so good.”

  “Yes, Dawn, at least come and sit down on the couch,” Milo urged, taking her arm. “I know this news comes as a shock.” He turned his head over his shoulder and said, “Zach, go get your mother a glass of water.”

  Dawn allowed him to lead her to the olive green sofa. Fear gripped her like a wrestler’s arm. In all the years she and Milo had lived here, there’d never been a murder in the building. And when one did happen, it was way too close, both emotionally as well as geographically. “We have to get out of here, Milo,” she said quietly. “The elevators conking out all the time, and now this. Who’s to say that person couldn’t have broken into this apartment and killed all of us?”