PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Eighty-Three
Friday, August 18, 2006
Jack and Rose walked along the street
together, Lizzy snuggled asleep against Jack’s shoulder. It was early morning
of their last day in Masline.
Almost everything was packed and ready to go,
except for the few items they needed for that morning. The house looked huge
and empty, stripped of its furnishings. Everything had been packed up to take
away, sold, or given away. In another week, a new family would be moving into
the old house.
Tommy had left a week earlier, taking the job
in Redlands and moving into an apartment not far from where Sophie lived. The
house had seemed bigger and emptier with him gone, though Lizzy, with her
babyish antics, soon filled much of the void.
Today, the Dawsons would be moving to
Riverside. All of their belongings were packed up, stuffed into the two cars or
packed into a U-Haul trailer. They weren’t sure that there would be space for
everything, but they had already gotten rid of as much as they thought they
could part with.
Jack and Rose had awakened early that
morning, finishing the packing and deciding to take one last walk up to the
hills. Lizzy had whined miserably when they had awakened and dressed her—she
couldn’t be left alone—but soon had fallen asleep again on her father’s
shoulder.
The familiar landscape had changed over the
years there. Late that spring, the owners of the vast, rolling section of hills
had sold off a large portion to Titan Construction, which was even now
constructing small, tightly packed houses on the land. The sound of the
bulldozers had been audible all the way into the old neighborhood, much to the
dismay of the people living there.
Jack and Rose had watched sadly as the once
rolling land was bulldozed flat, destroying the once-beautiful landscape. Even
the place where they had been married would soon be covered by small, identical
houses. A wall was already being built around the new housing development,
separating it from the neighborhood beyond.
Rose eyed the unfinished buildings as they
slipped past, wondering if these houses would be as shoddily constructed as
those that had fallen in during the earthquake. Titan Construction had been the
subject of a thorough investigation following the earthquake, but in the end
had gotten off with just a small fine, hardly enough to even be noticed by the
company. Those in charge had insisted that the fine had cost them dearly, and
proved it by laying off fifty employees, but in truth, the twenty-five thousand
dollar fine had been little more than a drop in the bucket for them.
"It’s sad, looking at all these
buildings," she commented. "It used to be so beautiful here. But
now—it’s just a mass of buildings and concrete. All of those houses are going
to look exactly alike, just like where I used to live in Masline. People will
pay outrageous prices for them, all the while closing themselves off from
what’s around them—and even from their own neighbors. They’re like a bubble
society, each person floating around in their own little bubble, not seeing
what’s around them, until one day something happens to burst that bubble. Then
they’ll cry and scream, and wonder what happened, when the whole problem was
right in front of them all the time—but they never even tried to see it."
Jack nodded, agreeing. "And even the
name of this development shows that. Masline Hills—have you ever noticed that
these places are usually named after what they’re destroying? People want what
those names promise—but they’ll never get it. It doesn’t exist anymore."
"Some of it does," Rose told him,
looking past the buildings. "At least for now. And someday, this place
will be more like where we live—a mix of people, each living in their own way.
No matter how exclusive people try to keep these places, eventually they become
what they should have been in the first place. It’s just the natural order of
things—and I think it’s better that way."
Jack nodded thoughtfully. "Of course,
people do need housing, whatever kind it is."
"But I don’t think that this kind is
really needed. The people who will be able to afford these houses aren’t
the ones who desperately need a place to live." She gestured to a sign
advertising the upcoming development. "Houses starting at five hundred
thousand dollars? For these shoddy little things? Surely these aren’t really
needed. Besides, wouldn’t it have been easier just to rebuild on the open land
left by the earthquake? It would have been so much easier, too—the land already
flat and clear, with just the remains of the old buildings to clean up."
She shook her head, answering her own question. "But then, people wouldn’t
pay such high prices for homes built in old neighborhoods. They might have to
live near people who are different from them, people who aren’t as affluent.
What a tragedy." She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion, making
Jack laugh.
"Cramdominiums, as Mari calls
them."
"Exactly." Rose looked at the
construction site, seeing how the workers were hurrying to get as much as
possible done before the day grew hot, not that it would make much of a
difference. They would be working until late, no matter what the weather. Titan
Construction had demanded more and more work of its employees over the past few
years, while offering them less and less pay and benefits. But people needed
jobs, and they took what they could get, in spite of the unfavorable working
conditions.
As they walked past the building site, giving
it a wide berth, Rose noticed one of the supervisors eyeing her balefully. He
had been working for Titan Construction when she had been an intern for Cal,
and had been one of those with whom she had locked horns. He had been a
favorite of Cal’s, but Rose couldn’t stand him.
Glancing back at him, Rose smiled impishly.
Knowing that it was guaranteed to annoy him, she softly began to sing one of
the songs she had learned in the past few years, one that summed up the
situation perfectly.
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes, little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There’s a green one
And a pink one
And a blue one
And a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
The song had been written in the early
1960’s, but it was just as accurate in the twenty-first century as it had been
more than forty years earlier. Rose smirked as the supervisor gave her a dirty
look. A construction worker laughed, but quickly stopped as the supervisor
turned to look at him.
Jack laughed softly at the supervisor’s
reaction to Rose’s impertinence, and then, joining arms with her, joined her in
singing.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
And they all got put in boxes
Little boxes just the same
And there’s doctors
And there’s lawyers
And business executives
And they all get put in boxes
Little boxes just the same.
Giving the glowering supervisors an innocent
look, they hurried past the construction site and into the hills beyond.
*****
Later that morning, Jack took one last walk
through the house, making sure that nothing had been left behind, while Rose
put the last couple of boxes in his car and fed Lizzy.
"Do we have everything?" she asked,
tossing the empty applesauce container and plastic spoon into the recycling
bin. Lizzy sucked her fingers contentedly.
"That’s everything." He took Lizzy
from her, walking over to the outside faucet and washing her face. The little
girl giggled, splashing in the mud.
"Come on, Busy-Lizzy." Rose scooped
her daughter up, calling her by the nickname she had earned when she began to
crawl and immediately showed an interest in everything she encountered.
"It’s time to go." She swung the child up on her shoulders, then
turned, looking at the now-empty house. "I’m going to miss this
place."
Jack came to stand beside her, putting an arm
around her. "Me, too, but it’s time to move on and do new things. Besides,
Riverside is a nice place, too."
"Yes, it is—it’s one of the most
beautiful cities I’ve seen. But it’ll take a while to feel like home. I’ve
lived in Masline since I was nine—and I’m twenty-two now. Thirteen years is a
long time in one place. I wonder if we’ll ever find a place to really settle
down."
"I don’t know, Rose. Maybe. Who can
tell?"
"Hot," Lizzy complained suddenly,
tugging on one of her mother’s ears.
"I guess that’s our cue." Rose
looked once more at the house. "We’d better go." Picking up her
purse, she started down the driveway toward the cars.
"Wait." Jack hurried after her and
gave her a kiss. "I’ll see you there, okay?"
"Okay." Rose kissed him back, then
hurried to her car and strapped Lizzy into her car seat. Waving, she watched
Jack start carefully down the street, the U-Haul trailer attached to his car.
He waved back, then headed down the street.
Rose climbed into the driver’s seat of her car and started the engine, turning
the air conditioner on high. Tickling one of Lizzy’s bare feet, she popped a CD
of children’s music into the player and started down the driveway.
"Ready to go, Busy-Lizzy?"
"Yeah!" the child replied, kicking
her feet merrily, excited at the adventure. "Go!"
Rose looked at the house one last time as she
pulled into the street, then drove away, Lizzy babbling excitedly in the back
seat. Jack was right; it was time to move on. The old house in Masline had been
a good home, but life went on, and things changed.
She was ready for that change. Glancing
toward the hills as she turned the corner, Rose went on her way, leaving their
old home behind.