I should have suspected when he insisted on putting a pool in for the girls. I knew Alice and Addy would be much happier going with the other kids to the community pool, only three sound buffeting blocks away. Which, of course, they did half the time any way, when it finally opened for the summer.
And then there were the neighbor lady’s complaints about the noise. She was our mother’s age, but eccentric. She worked at home, in her backyard, doing what I didn’t know, couldn’t guess, because she never made a sound. I would hear her and her husband out gardening on the weekends though. I think he worked at home sometimes too. Any way she’d complain about the noise. I knew she would, or I knew some neighbor like her would. Our house shared a back fence with five other houses, the lots were jigsaw puzzled into the block. The realtor even mentioned, the day Gray surprised me with the house, that there were some older couples around.
But no, he insisted. He wanted to put in a pool for the girls. I though maybe he was over compensating. Being a new step dad, he felt he had to make up for lost time or something. I should have known.
Although I don’t see how I could have had a clue that my marriage, my whole life, was about to be blown apart by that crazy old lady working away so damned quietly in her back yard.
I put it down to my work, as usual, consuming all my time. And the trips that I though would give me some quality time to be with my girls, before they all too soon would leave the nest. They though Gray was a god for putting in the pool just for them, the girls, my girls, nobody else’s girls.
I’m not sure when it all started to go awry. There was the couple next door, renters with two huge vicious barking dogs. Maybe the dogs were too much. Or that time she came over to complain. The kids, the whole neighborhood began to hang out at our house, were yelping and wailing like sirens in the pool, Gray insisted we go out front and socialize with the biker couple from next door. Their daughter, Renie, whose age neatly sandwiched her between my two, had become fast friends with my girls.
The crazy lady came round to complain, I thought she was trying not to sound too bitchy, but Gray stonewalled her. Then he suggested maybe she should move to a retirement community. That night the biker dogs had an all night barking binge, with a repeat performance the next night.
Then there was the Latino adolescent, straight from a San Jose low riders club, hair net and all. He was walking around with an armful of security signs: This house guarded by Generic Security Service.’ He claimed to have just moved in to the next street and heard there had been three robberies in the last week and he wanted his neighbors to be protected, he was giving the security signs away for free. The old lady didn’t bite, we did.
And then came Labor Day weekend. After apparent years of chaos in the home owners association, they had voted to hire a professional management company. Things had seemed to work out. But who had asked for and got permission to have a Heavy Metal Band with Heavy Metal Speaker Power play at the community pool for the Labor Day Party. The old lady happened to bring her grandchildren to the pool that day and noticed the neighborhood had quite a contingent of bikers besides the two in her block.
The evidence all added up to her after a while. I mean they should have seen she was no dummy. She worked without making any noise.
Then there was the remodel on the corner, a second story was added. And she saw what that would mean to her, surrounded by prying eye, wouldn’t she sell then. She saw it coming. Why didn’t I?
Of course she was smart, and I was in love.
Alice was so shy, self conscious of her height, she stooped. I didn’t get it, I was short. No one noticed me, but Gray. It was so like a dream. There we were, Alice, Addy and I, struggling alone in a one bedroom apartment. No privacy allowed, a real torture for a shy adolescent girl, and me, and even Addy. Along came Gray and sweeps me off my feet like the proverbial knight in shining armor. I could hardly believe my good luck to meet someone like him. He was so tall, handsome--and the same might be said for me, if I was taller. We met, we meshed, in six weeks we were married and moving into a new house, well not a new house, but a relative palace with four bedrooms. A 50’s era ranch house in a working class neighborhood, mostly white but not without people of color, and conveniently located next to a transportation hub. There were a few drawbacks. It was smack dab against a Naval Air Weapons Station. You know Naval Air Weapons as in Submarine Launched Atomic Missiles. We were living next to ground zero for an atomic accident, like ground water contamination, if not actual explosion, accidental or otherwise. I started to get paranoid when the press went on about W not coming to California. I thought maybe he didn’t want to get exposed, or knew about some other danger. And who would be left to say any explosion wasn’t the result of a terrorist attack rather than the result of some cost cutting scam.
Then there was those none too discreet yellow and black posts at every corner marking the route of the industrial gas line snaking through the neighborhood.
But Gray bought the house to surprise me as a wedding present, and immediately put in the pool for the girls. I should have suspected, in that neighborhood.
Before marrying, I had been working two shifts and three jobs to keep three body and souls together. I was hoping for at least a summer stint as full time mom to catch up with my girls. Of course, putting in the pool meant I had to continue working. I had always wanted to start my own business and Gray put me in contact with a franchiser I could really get enthusiastic about. It meant a lot of travel, but Gray talked the franchiser into letting me take the girls along, if they stayed in my room. The meetings and shows were in the hotels we stayed in, so even during the day I was close at hand. We decided to home school for a year so I could take the girls along when ever I wanted, which was most of the time. Gray understood completely that this was my chance to be with the girls, so he didn’t complain about the separations. He was perfect, it was perfect.
What did they do, that crafty old couple? They started to fix up their front yard after 15 years of benign neglect. They, like everyone else, kept receiving the local real estate newsletters about fixing up your front yard if you wanted to sell. This lulled everyone into a false sense of security. The Biker couple got control of their dogs and I found myself scheduled for even more trips away with the girls.
I found out later that they always told every real estate agent that they wanted to sell, in a year, in five years, at the husband’s retirement, an ever receding time line.
Then came the Letters to the Times. Was it the retirement home remark that gave the game away? Because she went home and thought about it. Thought about a response. She thought of one: “Are you offering to buy my house now that you’ve made it unsalable?”
That was it of course. The oldest land scheme in The Old West. They made dusty movies about it in the thirties. Railroad is coming through, going to buy up the right of way, unscrupulous government official conspires with some business thugs to buy up the land cheap and make a killing in the resale.
That crazy old lady was in her garden ever so quietly composing the letters to the Times. There was only one letter, but copies of it went to four Times: Contra Costa, Los Angeles, New York and London. Each with a clear cc to the other papers. And a P.S. “If you print this on the front page then you own 20% of the copyright rights to this letter.”
The Contra Costa Times printed it as first page local news the next day. Los Angeles reported it as first page news the day after, but analyzed the whole issue of accepting “money” for printing news. They noted the whole gambit may be a publicity stunt, but thought they couldn’t avoid that fact that maybe there was a real injustice being perpetrated that was news worthy. So they printed the letter on the front page as a letter to the editor, with a selection of the best letters to the editor for the previous month. Of course, after that it had to become a monthly front page feature. And people who made a habit of writing such letters really began to try to show off. The ensuing literary stardom not only raised the level of discourse in the whole area but led inevitably to ghost-written letters among the “I’m not just a pretty face or tight ass crowd”. Whereupon followed the inevitable revelations and ensuing scandal about who wrote what with whom where, and why’d they even bother if they were having such a good time anyway.
Which of course reminds me of my husband wanting the pool for “the girls”. I just didn’t realize which “girls” he was talking about. Or see in what way exactly he wanted to help them.
As I said, her letter writing went according to plan. On day one, the Contra Costa Times printed the letter. On day two, the Los Angels Times printed the front page letters to the editor with extensive commentary and some quick investigative backup. The New York Times, with typical East Coast caution, waited to see what Los Angeles would do. On the third day, they printed the letter front page in a box marked “Advertisement”. Besides it was a Publisher’s Editorial on the possible repercussion in Washington. And they dug up the attempt in a previous administration to build heavy duty industrial facilities at the Naval Weapons Station, literally across the street from our neighborhood. That would have had people selling out cheap. Finally the London Times weighed in. I suppose to them it was just another American scandal in a long line of dirty tricks.
Washington is, or was, a million miles away, now it’s right on my front doorstep, in front of my girls, or rather my girls are in front of it. And I was in another western ranch house being besieged. But this was a suburban ranch on one sixteenth of an acre lot. I was being besieged not by cowboy thugs dressed up like fake Indians, I was cast as the fake Indian. Now I was being besieged by reporters, microphones, flash bulbs, TV cameras and white mini vans bristling with satellite dishes and various electronic antenna. Microwave? I thought, and started distracting myself by worrying about the girls exposure to too much microwave radiation. It was their sanity that was more endangered than their bodies.
She just had to tell the story about the dog toy. It was weighing on her soul. I saw them that day, Alice and Renie leaving the house. Alice stooped and head hanging, but I didn’t know her errand was anymore than retrieving Scamp’s dog toy. Did I mention Gray insisted the girls needed a dog. They had thrown the toy by accident into old crazy lady territory. I just thought she’s getting so painfully shy at dealing with strangers. But not Renie, the daughter of the biker couple. I couldn’t help thinking, there she is shoulder’s back, chin out to the world, eyes wide open, already plausible--and hard as nails, casing the joint. Alice said Gray had sent them because he was just curious about what the old crab’s house was like. Her heart could already see through it.
After the Letters, retirement for old crazy lady was no longer in the future, it became possible for her yesterday, as the true value of the land became known. After the Letters, divorce and Witness Protection became possible for me and my girls.
Gray and the Biker husband next store, the foot soldiers, naturally were the only ones who ended up doing any time. The middle guys went either Federal Witness Protection or Federal Country Club Prison. The really big guys? Well, nothing much disturbing ever happens to them, now does it, with their money and the friends to deflect any blows. Why do you think they wanted W in office? So in four years they can pardon everyone.
Me. I got my own ranch house on one sixteenth of an acre out near another transportation hub. It’s my nest egg. I figure I could have a good 30 years here before the land grabbers come. I’ll know them when I see them coming. For now, I have a job in an office. Can’t say where of course. But my Uncle Sam is looking after me. Oh, and there’s Al, at work. At least I hope that’s his real name.
Oh, and another good thing did come out it all, a movement to turn the Naval Air Weapons Station into an International Peace Park.. Maybe I’ll see that in thirty years too.
Swim time. Didn’t I mention, my house has a pool.
