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, snuggled 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
