Seen It All and Done the Rest (9 page)

FOURTEEN

Z
ora’s office was part of a dingy little suite of storefronts a few blocks from West End. When we pulled up at the curb, there were already several people inside. One young woman on the phone and two young men waiting patiently in folding chairs that had seen better days. I wondered why so many organizations committed to doing good are equally committed to looking so bad while they do it.

Boasting pricey, renovated lofts on one side of the street, a homeless shelter and a U-Haul on the other, the area reflected an uneasy mixture of earnest gentrification and implacable despair. Looking in the front window past the sign that said: V
ET
S
ERVE
—W
HERE YOUR NEEDS ALWAYS COME FIRST
, I made her promise to call me if she couldn’t get a ride home and assured her that I could find my way without any help from Mapquest.

The new management company had their offices on the third floor in one of those prefab buildings that come complete with a few pitiful little trees and no style whatsoever. Southwest Atlanta was full of them. Even the artwork in the entrance lobby was generic. Bad generic. I got on the elevator with a weary-looking young mother and a small boy whose hand she was holding tightly, as if he might bolt at any second. She pushed the button for two, which seemed to be a floor inhabited strictly by doctors.

The doors closed with a soft hiss and the kid looked at me with large, unblinking eyes. When I smiled, he whispered miserably, “I have to get a shot.”

His mother glared down at him, but he didn’t look at her.

“It won’t be so bad,” I lied.

“Yes, it will,” he said, still whispering. “I had one before.”

“Hush, boy,” his mother said as the doors opened for them and she pulled him out to face the terror of the doctor’s needle. “She don’t care nothin’ about all that.”

“It’s okay,” I said, to him as much as to her, wishing I could spare him the routine horrors of childhood, knowing I couldn’t. Everybody’s got to kill their own snakes.

The management company was the first glass door on the right. Small black letters identified the offices of G. Woodruff and Associates. The smiling receptionist included the name as part of her greeting in case you missed it.

“Welcome to G. Woodruff and Associates,” she said. “How can I help you?”

“I’m Josephine Evans,” I said. “I’m here to pick up a key.”

The young woman had a lovely face, a stylish haircut, and a dark blue dress that was office appropriate but still managed to be sexy. This was a perfect job for her and her twinkle indicated that she enjoyed it, too, but now she just looked confused.

“A key?”

“You manage a property I own at 1839 Martin Luther King. I want to take a look at it.”

“Take a look at it?”

Her echo was becoming annoying. She wasn’t pretty enough to be this incompetent. Nobody was. Where was the person I spoke to on the telephone yesterday to tell them I was coming? Why hadn’t I written down her name?

“I spoke to someone about this yesterday,” I said. “She told me I could come in this morning and pick it up.”

“Do you remember who it was that told you that?”

I wanted to say,
If I remembered her name, would I have said “someone”?
but I restrained myself.

“I believe she was Ms. Woodruff’s secretary,” I said, figuring I’d take a shot. If she wasn’t the one, she could find the one. The receptionist’s expression conveyed more doubt than relief, but at least she didn’t say
Ms. Woodruff’s secretary?

“Have a seat, please,” she said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll see if I can locate her.”

She said it like behind the closed door to the Woodruff and Associate’s inner sanctum, there was a labyrinthine maze so intricate that one could get lost for hours, completely unable to contact the front desk. I sat down on the small gray couch and looked at the magazines and newspapers neatly arranged on the glass coffee table:
Fortune, Atlanta
magazine,
U.S. News & World Report, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,
and
The Atlanta Business Chronicle.
There were also copies of the company brochure. Ms. Woodruff had sent me a form letter and a copy of that brochure when the former managers closed up shop. There was a picture of the company’s owner and her team of what the copy called “real estate professionals.” I remember being pleased that I was now in the hands of an experienced black woman who had assembled an impressive-looking multiracial team.

The artwork on the walls featured panoramic views of the Atlanta skyline at various times of the day. Some were the traditional nighttime view with red ribbons of light flashing by in a blur on the freeways. Some were the same angle in bright sunshine, downtown now superimposed against a cloudless, impossibly blue sky. But there were several others in black and white that were geared more toward art than advertising. In these, downtown Atlanta achieved a kind of mysterious grandeur almost in spite of itself. They made me think of those magical photographs of New York City that Alfred Stieglitz took before he met Georgia O’Keeffe and started doing those scandalous nudes. The room was pleasant enough, but it struck me as a little cold. Even the bouquet of calla lilies was too perfectly calculated to bring much spontaneous pleasure.

“Ms. Booker will be right out,” the receptionist said, relieved to have located the person who could answer the question I had posed. “Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” I said, nodding at the pictures I’d been admiring. “Who’s the photographer?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think he’s local.”

I wondered what it was like to go through life oblivious to your surroundings and devoid of curiosity about them. That ought to be a reality show:
Oblivious and Devoid.

Ms. Booker was neither. She was totally focused in the way of those people who manage the lives and, more important, the schedules of busy people who sign their checks.

“Ms. Evans,” she said, entering the lobby and immediately extending her hand. She was very tall and compensated by wearing flat shoes with her well-cut pantsuit, which was exactly the same color as the couch. I wondered if she would disappear if she sat down on it. “I’m Clarissa Booker, Ms. Woodruff’s assistant.”

“Josephine Evans,” I said.

She sat down beside me, and while she didn’t disappear, the effect was still strange, as if at any moment the sofa might swallow her up whole.

“Ms. Woodruff was hoping to be here when you came by,” she said, looking concerned. She was holding a small brown envelope with both hands like I might try to snatch it and make a run for the elevator. The address of the duplex was clearly written on the outside.

“No problem,” I said. “I just need the key.”

“Well, she was hoping that you might talk with her before you go over there.”

The way she said “over there” made it sound like I was planning an ill-advised trip to a war zone.

“Is it occupied?”

“No, it’s still empty,” she said.

“Is there a problem?”

Over Ms. Booker’s well-tailored shoulder, the receptionist was watching us without even bothering to pretend she had other tasks to occupy her time. What the hell was going on?

“No problem,” Ms. Booker said. “It’s just that the place has been unoccupied for a while and there’s been some vandalism.”

Now she was starting to worry me. “What kind of vandalism?”

She looked pained. “I’m not sure of the specific damage. It’s just that when these buildings stand empty, they attract transients.”

“How long has it been empty?”

“Seven or eight months. Maybe a year.”

That’s when they stopped sending checks to Jasmine. This was not looking good, but I was confused. “Why hasn’t it been rented?”

“It’s hard to keep tenants over there.”

Over there.
Again with the war zone.

“It was already empty when we agreed to take it on as part of the settlement.”

“The settlement?” Maybe this echoing thing was contagious. Now I was doing it. “What settlement?”

“I’m really not comfortable having this conversation with you,” Ms. Booker said, clutching the small envelope even tighter. “Why don’t we do this? I’ll get Ms. Woodruff’s book and we’ll find a time for the two of us to have lunch and she can—”

“Is that the key?” I said, interrupting her.

She couldn’t deny it. “Yes, but—”

“Then why don’t we do this,” I said, “you give me my key, I’ll go take a look at my house, and then I’ll be better prepared to talk with Ms. Woodruff.”

If she could have figured out a way to swallow that key, envelope and all, I think she would have.

I held out my hand. “Over lunch.”

She handed the envelope to me and I stood up. She did too, reluctantly unfolding her long gray self off the couch.

“Thank you,” I said. “Shall I call you this afternoon to make the appointment?”

“I’m not sure when she’ll be in,” Ms. Booker said, wishing, I’m sure, that I’d just go away.

I smiled. “But you’ll be here, right?”

She nodded reluctantly. “Right.”

“Good.”

She waited until I reached for the silver handle on that big glass door. “Ms. Evans?”

“Yes?”

“You should make some noise before you go inside,” she said. “If there are transients, it’s not a good idea to surprise them.”

FIFTEEN

A
s I got closer to my house, nothing looked or felt like it did in West End. From the litter-strewn parking lot outside the grocery store, to the overflowing trash can in front of the gas station, on past the hard-eyed young men in their oversize pants who seemed to be gathered on every corner, this was clearly a neighborhood in distress. A boarded-up house on one corner had been spray painted by desperate neighbors.
Crackhouse,
the big red letters proclaimed.
They sell dope in here!
While I waited at the light, I saw a young man with an unkempt Afro and wearing droopy jeans head around to the back of the place. Obviously, he saw the sign as an advertisement instead of a warning.

I had just passed the Lincoln Cemetery on my left, which meant the house was coming up on my right. The grass and weeds were so high in the front yard that I almost missed the entrance to the long, crooked driveway. One of the unique features of the house had always been the fact that it sat up on the only hill for miles. That’s what provided the slope of its expansive green lawn in the front yard and made up for the constant roar of the freeway, whose construction had eaten up most of the back. The house faced Martin Luther King and took up the entire corner lot. A stand of scraggly-looking dogwood trees lined up on one side of the property, separating it from its closest neighbor, an unsavory-looking soul food restaurant at the bottom of the hill, but in no way obstructing the view of the small residential street that ran behind the lot and down toward the freeway.

I pulled up in the yard and looked around. An overgrown lawn was the least of it. There was trash everywhere. All the windows were cracked or broken or covered by plywood and what looked like cardboard. The porch screens were ripped and torn. There was lots of graffiti and what looked to me like it could have been a splatter of dried blood on one of the outside walls. It didn’t even look like the same place. All the loving care my mother had put into this house all the years we lived there had been wiped out by the force of sustained neglect, and a despair greater than her optimism could ever have anticipated.

I couldn’t begin to imagine what I’d find inside, but I had to know. I clicked the locks and got ready to step out of the car when I remembered Ms. Booker’s warning about not surprising uninvited guests. Sound advice, I was sure, but what were my options? Ring the bell? Call ahead? Neither one of those made any sense, of course, but what the hell was I supposed to do now? Sneak up to the window and peek in to see what I could see? Walk in unannounced and assert my rights as the landlord to whoever I might find camped out in my mother’s living room? Call the police and ask for an escort? I could only imagine how that conversation would go:
Excuse me, is this 911? I’m scared to go inside my house because there might be some bad guys in there. Can you come over and check it out?

I felt helpless and angry. Angry at Ms. Woodruff for not handling her business and at myself for not handling mine. The longer I sat, the madder I got. This place was a problem, not a solution. Down below on the freeway, or maybe from the traffic speeding by on Martin Luther King, I heard a horn and then one in response and then another. Now
that
made sense. A loud, indignant noise to announce to anybody within earshot that you were mad as hell and you weren’t going to take it anymore. I joined the angry chorus, laying on Zora’s horn to protest the mess I saw in front of me.
I don’t deserve this and why did I come here anyway and what kind of grandmother would promise this as a legacy and who was bleeding on the walls of my house and where are they now and where am I now, and where is home anyway and how far is too far and what good is a safe house if it’s scarier than whatever it is you’re running from?

When the back door opened, I jumped about a foot in the air and jerked my hand off the horn. The man who stepped out didn’t look too scary, but I was shaking anyway. Who was he and what was he doing there? I popped down the power-door locks with an audible click and watched him through the windshield. He looked to be about forty, but it was hard to tell. He had on a pair of jeans and a brown jacket, both of which had seen better days. His hair was longer than it needed to be and his beard was patchy and turning gray. His ancient high-top tennis shoes looked like he had plucked them from a throwaway pile to get whatever wear he could pretend was left in them. His eyes looked weary but not desperate.

We just looked at each other, neither one of us knowing what to do next.

Finally, I opened the door and stepped out of the car without turning off the ignition. I kept the door between us.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just keeping an eye on the place.”

“Keeping an eye on the place for who?”

He looked at me and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Nobody.”

“Who else is in there?”

“Nobody.”

“Who are you?”

“Who are
you
?”

“I own this place.”

He looked surprised. “You do?”

“Yes, I do.” My voice sounded a lot more confident than I felt.

“Well, where have you been?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. Of all the things I had expected, righteous indignation was not one of them. “What?”

“Look at it! How could you just let it go like this?”

This was becoming more surreal by the second. Now the homeless squatter was going to reprimand me for being an absentee landlord? What next? A citizen’s arrest?

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” I said. “How long have you been here?”

“Couple months,” he said. “Give or take.”

“Anybody from the management company ever come by to check on the place?”

He frowned again. “What do you think?”

His tone ticked me off a little. “Well, if you were going to camp out here, why didn’t you at least clean it up a little?”

“Why didn’t
you
?”

It was clear this conversation was over. The person I needed to talk to was sitting behind a big glass door over on Cascade Road. Ms. Greer Woodruff and Associates had some big-time explaining to do.