Suburban Renewal

by Pamela Morsi

  When it came to the venture capital money for EducationEnvironments.com, a good fight is not what we had. It was a down-in-the-mud, no-holds-barred, below-the-belt, emotional slugfest. The kind only married couples can manage, because they know each other’s vulnerabilities so well.

  I had never intended to tell Sam anything about Riv. I had been mentally unfaithful, but I hadn’t been actually so. To my way of thinking, that didn’t matter. Confession might be good for the soul, but I wasn’t all that sure it was good for the marriage. After observing the world of couples, my impression was that the confessor felt much better after getting the truth off his or her chest. But the person confessed to, the injured party, didn’t feel better. He or she felt…well…injured.

  I had injured Sam. And he, in turn, lashed out at me with that ridiculous story about my brother. As if Mike would have had anything to do with Floyd Braydon’s death. It was ludicrous. Mike had been in his grave for almost a year when that horrible man died. If it hadn’t been from natural causes, and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t, then it was Cherry Dale or one of her boys who killed him. Mike had nothing to do with it. Why would he?

  As certain as I was of that, I was also bothered by the hint of a memory that I couldn’t quite shake. On the morning after our fight, I was standing out on the deck with my coffee. My eyes were drawn to the old washhouse that still stood like some rustic relic in our backyard.

  I walked down the brick path to the doorway. It was locked. It was Nate’s workshop now. Filled with his saws and clamps and all the accoutrements of a man who worked with his hands. Sam knew where the key was. I was not about to ask him.

  Standing on the path, I vividly recalled standing in that same spot hearing Mike and Braydon arguing. The Mike I’d heard that day was not the man I knew as my brother. He’d been cold, powerful, threatening on behalf of those he loved. Could he have engineered Braydon’s death? Would he have given those drugs to Cherry Dale for the purpose of getting rid of the man?

  Impossible, I firmly decided. Sam might believe that, but I would not. My brother, Mike, was good, all good, up and down, inside out, every way good. Sure he had his problems, his failings. But I was not going to believe this about him—ever.

  I spent the rest of the year working on my business, stalling Dan Lyle at the venture capital firm and walking on eggshells with my husband whenever we were in a room together.

  I missed the buffer that the children would have provided. We never heard from Nate from the time he left until the time he returned. Lauren e-mailed me regularly to let us know that everything was okay, but in early September I received an unexpected tearful phone call.

  “I just can’t believe it,” Lauren choked out. “I can’t believe he would let this happen.”

  “Who?” I asked anxiously. “Who let what happen?”

  “God,” she answered. “God let this happen. Both of them dead in one week.”

  The “both of them” to whom Lauren referred were her beloved fashion plate, Princess Di, and her spiritual beacon, Mother Teresa. Certainly the deaths were a loss. So many people were saddened. To Lauren, however, it provoked a crisis of faith. She left school and came home at the end of the semester.

  It was hard for me to really empathize very much with her pain and doubt. People died. People we love. People we don’t even know. I couldn’t imagine that losing these total strangers from half a world away should mean so much. I had no idea how to snap her out of it.

  “It’s more than just the terrible loss of these lives,” she said. “It’s…it’s…I don’t know what it is, Mom. I just feel so angry. I don’t like feeling angry.”

  I didn’t know what to say to her or how to help her.

  The answer came from a very unexpected source— Lauren’s little brother came through for her.

  It was a Sunday morning, Sam and I were up and dressed for church. Lauren just refused to go. We thought the only way she could snap out of her grief was to get reenthused about her life. We were pressing her to make the effort when Nate intervened.

  “Leave her alone,” he said. “If she doesn’t want to go, nobody should make her.”

  “Just because you’ve got no faith,” I told him, “doesn’t mean your sister should abandon hers.”

  “If God let her down, that’s exactly what she should do,” Nate said. “I wouldn’t want a God who wouldn’t follow my directions.”

  Lauren’s head shot up. “Nate, you are such a stupid jerk!” she said. “You shouldn’t even try to talk about things you don’t understand. God doesn’t need to take directions from anybody. I wouldn’t want him to take mine. He sees a broader picture, an eternally broad picture. Humans have such a limited vision, we can’t even fathom what his purposes might be.”

  “Hey, don’t carp at me,” Nate answering. “You’re the drama queen who’s pissed off at the Divine.”

  “I’m not pissed off!” Lauren insisted. “You don’t understand anything.”

  Lauren got up and headed out to the family room in a huff.

  “Can’t stand a little sibling conflict?” Nate called out at her. “Can’t deal with a little truth from your baby brother?”

  “Go to hell!” she shot back. “And that is exactly where you are going. I’ll pray for you in the service. Right now, I’ve got to go upstairs and get dressed.”

  Once she was out of earshot, Nate turned and actually winked at us.

  “You guys owe me one,” he said.

  Nate had returned from Maine invigorated and outgoing. Like his runaway episode in L.A., getting out on his own had made Nate more confident, more ready to pursue his goals. What those goals happened to be wasn’t immediately apparent to Sam and myself.

  “Son, you can’t just live here without a job,” his father told him.

  Nate just grinned at him. “Why not?”

  Sam glanced at me for support. I was pretty sure that nothing that I might say would do anything but confuse the issue.

  “Because people work, Nate,” he replied. “Everybody is supposed to work. You’re a young, healthy guy. And personally, I’m not willing to work my butt off to pay the bills while a young, healthy guy lies around my house and does nothing.”

  Nate nodded. “That’s fair enough,” he said. “But, Dad, not everybody can work for somebody else. I’m a lot like Paw-Paw, you know.”

  “You’re not like him at all!” Sam said quickly.

  Nate’s eyebrows shot up. He looked surprised at his father’s words.

  “No, really, Dad,” he said. “I’m just like Paw-Paw, I really don’t work well with other people. I don’t think he would have ever been able to hold that supervisor job in the well-service company if you hadn’t been the owner. I doubt anyone else would have put up with him.”

  Sam didn’t dispute that.

  “Paw-Paw kept the janitor job at the school because everybody there was so busy with their own stuff that they never got in his way.”

  It was the kind of disparaging observation I might have made myself. But the tone of Nate’s phrasing made it seem as if he were speaking of a personality quirk rather than a character failing.

  “I’m that same way,” Nate continued. “Just like Paw-Paw, I hate other people telling me what to do, I hate having to go with somebody else’s plan.”

  “Even if that were true,” Sam said, “you have to live your life. Everybody has to work.”

  “Yeah, but I think I’m going to work for myself,” he said.

  “For yourself?”

  Nate nodded. “I made a couple of pieces up in Maine and I sold them, pretty easy.”

  “You made a piece of furniture that somebody bought?”

  “Don’t sound so shocked, Dad,” Nate told him, laughing. “You’re living in a house I built, or mostly built, anyway.”

  Sam stared at him for a long moment and then he smiled.

  “You’ve done a lot for this house,” he said. “You repaired it, modernized it and doubled it in size
. But don’t forget that my grandfather was the one who built this house. In 1937 he borrowed the plans from Mr. Tatum who had a house on Poplar Street. He put it together with salvaged timbers worked with hand tools. He knew where every nail was, because he’d hammered them all in himself. Maybe you got some of your skill from him.”

  Nate shrugged, but he did look pleased.

  The washhouse/workshop became his place of business. He worked there at his own pace on his own time. No one could fault him for not being productive. He turned out a half dozen pieces that fall. They were beautiful. He was very taken with the mission style, which he constructed out of quarter-sawn oak and darkened by fuming with ammonia. But he also made some handsome pieces in cherry. And some artsy small things in rosewood and ebony. Sam and I were both very impressed with the quality of his work. I honestly wanted to buy them all myself. Sam discouraged me.

  Sales of his work had become a very discouraging obstacle. Nate sat his finished pieces out in the yard with price tags on them. Lots of people stopped to look, lots of people admired his work, but nobody would buy.

  “The people here in Lumkee just don’t want quality furniture,” he complained one night at supper. “They treat my stuff like it’s some kind of garage sale find and they ought to be able to load it up in their pickup for five bucks!”

  “That’s because they’re not used to buying their new furniture out on somebody’s lawn,” Sam told him. “You’re going to have to get a furniture store to carry your stuff.”

  Nate shook his head. “I’ve tried, Dad,” he said. “All the dealers contract with big factory suppliers. They don’t want to use their floor space for handmade stuff. It’s too expensive and the profit margin is too low.”

  Sam nodded.

  “In Maine, we just set the stuff out on the grounds and people came to buy it,” Nate said. “I know there are people somewhere who’ll want this furniture. I just don’t know where to find them and they don’t know where to find me.”

  “What about the Internet?” I asked him.

  He looked at me strangely.

  Sam’s expression I recognized. It was skepticism.

  “People might buy a book over the Internet or contract for a service,” he said. “But for something like this, something like furniture, people will want to look it over, touch it. I can’t imagine that people would buy furniture sight unseen.”

  “I could upload digital photos,” Nate said.

  “More than that,” I said. “You can have reference letters from your teachers in Maine and the people who’ve bought your pieces. You can even talk about your philosophy of woodworking, the designs, how they are put together. You can educate your customers, teach them why they should buy your furniture.”

  Nate was grinning ear to ear. “Rocks!” he said, in a tone that was unmistakably positive.

  With Nate’s computer savvy and my recent business experience on the Web, we brainstormed some great ideas for Nate’s new business, Lumkee Woodcraft Industries.

  “It’s sounds big and stodgy and respectable,” he said.

  I agreed.

  “If they only knew the truth,” he teased, pretending to wax a nonexistent mustache.

  The next few days were some of the best I’d spent with Nate since he was a little boy. I let my own work wait, so that we could get his project up and running. Nate’s computer skills had helped me learn the Internet. He’d made it possible for me to start up my business. Now I was getting the opportunity to return the favor.

  The Web page had to be designed—that was the creative part. Helping him come up with the kind of content he wanted and displaying the photos in a way that was both appealing and informative was a challenge. Especially when we didn’t want any long waits for the page to load. We did the whole inventory in thumbnails with clicks to a set of more comprehensive pictures.

  The purchasing segment had to be secure and flexible. We signed the company up for online payment systems and I loaned him money to pay for the privilege of accepting credit cards.

  We worked together so closely those few weeks that we began to finish each other’s sentences. And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. I couldn’t remember a time when my son and I had ever had so much fun together before. I felt so close to him. This was how it was supposed to be. This was what I felt I’d been cheated out of. I was grateful to have that opportunity back.

  For his part, Nate was excited, happy and carefree. For once he treated me as if I were just another person, not some resident bad news inflicted upon him. Our relationship was different than it ever had been. But the simple fact that we could manage to have a positive relationship seemed like an incredible breakthrough to me.

  And I suppose I treated him differently, too. I was able to quit thinking of him as a younger version of Floyd Braydon and recognize him as the young man that he’d turned out to be.

  I also noticed how much he was like Sam. He had that unflagging enthusiasm and commitment, just like his father.

  Working with Nate started me thinking more about my husband and the anger and resentment I’d held against him for months now. Sam was just a regular hardworking guy, as transparent as glass. I couldn’t believe that I’d accused him of trying to sabotage my business. If he’d wanted me to quit, he’d simply have asked me to. And if he were jealous of my success, he’d confront me to my face, not work against me behind my back.

  One afternoon when I left work, instead of hurrying home, I drove by Okie Tamales. The production room was already cleaned and, in the alley, Chano and his father were washing down the inside of the delivery van.

  I found Sam where I expected, in his little nook of an office on the second floor.

  His surprise when I walked in was evident. “What are you doing here?” he asked me. “What’s happened?”

  “Everything’s fine,” I assured him. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He offered me the worn wooden chair with the cracked vinyl upholstery and carefully shut the door. He walked back around the desk and sat in his own chair, the scarred, paper-strewn desk between us.

  “I’ve decided not to take the venture capital money,” I began.

  He nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  “I’m not convinced that it would be a mistake, but I trust you, and if it worries you, then it should worry me.”

  His brow furrowed.

  “Corrie, I don’t want you to give it up to please me,” he said. “You’re right, I don’t understand anything about this dot.com stuff. I mean, I can see how Nate can make money, he’s got a product to sell and he just needs to connect up with customers. But for the rest of it, the information brokering and providing free services, I’m not sure how money is actually going to be made. Advertising for an industry can’t carry the whole industry.”

  “I’m not sure I understand it all, either,” I admitted. “But these people with the money must know something that we don’t or they wouldn’t be investing the kind of dollars that they are.”

  He nodded. “Corrie, please do whatever you think is best for you to do,” he said. “And we’ll all just go forward and live with the consequences.”

  “I am doing what I think is best to do,” I told him. “I’m following your advice, because it is your advice. And it’s like you said, you are the one person I can trust to always have my best interests at heart.”

  We looked at each other across the desk. He nodded.

  “And this is a part-time business,” I continued. “I don’t need a half million dollars of seed money to do something part-time.”

  “We’re doing well here,” Sam said. “If you need seed money, we can take it out of tamales.”

  “I wonder what you can grow with tamale seeds?” I asked him, teasing. “Little baby tacos?”

  He laughed.

  “I also wanted to tell you how sorry I am about…about the man I met at TU.”

  Sam’s expression immediately sobered.

/>   “You said you didn’t have an affair with him,” he pointed out, looking at me closely as if attempting to discern deceit.

  “I didn’t,” I assured him. “But I spent time with him, I went to the movies with him. I did have a crush on him. I’m sorry. I was never technically unfaithful. But I think that fidelity should be based on more than technicalities. I’m sorry, Sam. I’m sorry that it happened. I’m sorry that you found out about it. I’m sorry that I used it as a weapon to hurt you.”

  “I forgive you,” he said. “I think we should just move on like it never happened.”

  I nodded. Then after a moment, I asked a question.

  “Is that what we’re doing about your father’s death?” I asked. “We’re just pretending that it never happened?”

  Sam thought about that and shrugged.

  “I don’t know what to do about it,” he admitted. “He was my father. And despite everything that I know to be true about him I still…well, I guess I still love him and I’m sorry he’s dead. But I can hardly fault Cherry Dale for trying to defend herself. I know that he killed my mother, but I still believe it was an accident. All the same, it was an accident that would never have happened if he hadn’t been a brutal, vicious abuser. I’m sure Mike must have felt the same way. Otherwise why would he have given her those drugs?”

  “I still don’t believe he did that.”

  “How else would Cherry Dale have had them?”

  “I don’t know, but I really don’t believe that Mike could help murder anybody,” I told him. “Even Floyd Braydon.”

  We agreed to disagree on that subject.

  Two days after Christmas that year, the subject came up unexpectedly.

  Early on the morning of December 30, we received the call. Cherry Dale’s younger son, Rusty, was found dead in Tulsa of a crack overdose.

  Sam

  1998

  Rusty’s funeral was on New Year’s Day. It was a sad and sobering occasion. To lose a twenty year old is always going to be tragic, but somehow being killed by cocaine seemed such a terrible waste of human life.