Walls within Walls (3 page)

Just as the Smithforks were about to leave for the library, a loud buzz sounded from the front of the apartment.

“What's that?” asked Patrick.

“I think it's the front door,” said Brid.

“Front door? How can there be a front doorbell ringing when nobody can even get to our front door?” said CJ, suddenly furious. “When anyone wants to visit this apartment, they have to go through a doorman, who then calls upstairs, who then waits for someone to say it's okay to have that person visit. Then that person has to get in the elevator with the elevator man, who takes them to our front door. Nobody just walks in and rings the front doorbell like they did in our old life. Nobody.”

Patrick and Brid stared at CJ as the doorbell sounded again.

“I'm going to answer the front door,” Brid said simply. She crossed the mahogany-paneled hallway, unlatched the heavy brass dead bolt, turned the elaborate brass handle, and let the enormous, heavy door groan open to reveal…

Children.

They weren't ordinary children, the sort who might have come by to watch television or throw a ball around. They were a boy and a girl—about CJ's and Brid's exact ages. They were wearing church clothes, even though it was Wednesday. On their feet they had blue surgical booties, the kind a doctor wears in the operating room. Brid felt rather underdressed in her T-shirt and leggings.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hullo. We're so pleased that you have moved in,” said the boy. “I'm Lukas Williamson. We're from the other elevator bank in the building, the south side. We live in the apartment on the other side of your living room wall, so we thought we'd come and introduce ourselves.”

CJ came up behind Brid, not saying a word, as the girl said, “Hullo. I'm Lily Williamson. So pleased that people our own age finally live in this building. Once we heard you had moved in, we just had to meet you. This has been home for us since we were born, but we aren't around much.”

These children had an unusual accent and seemed to
talk a lot, thought CJ. He wondered if they were from England. “Come in,” he said. Their guests padded into the apartment, the
swish-swish
of the surgical booties marking their every step.

“Why the footwear?” Brid asked.

“Excuse me?” said Lily.

“Why do you wear those booties on your feet?”

“Well, we don't wear shoes in the home,” said Lily, “as Sonia, our housekeeper, likes things extra sanitary. We weren't sure what your house rules were, so we brought our own booties.”

“Do you go to Saint James's School?” CJ asked Lukas.

“The local private school?” asked Lukas with a hint of snobbery.

“Yes,” CJ said.

“Oh, no, we both go to boarding school in England. Our parents mostly travel, so they think it preferable that we should go to the best schools in the world, no matter where they are.” Lukas said this with great enthusiasm.

CJ, Pat, and Brid exchanged knowing glances as they led the way into CJ's room. They all thought the same thing: do not tell these kids about the eye behind the wall.

“Do you know the history of this apartment?” asked Lukas, brushing back his blond hair and hiking up his pants a bit before he sat down on a moving box. Brid thought he acted like a thirty-year-old man instead of a boy of about twelve.

“Not really,” said Brid. “Our mom liked it because it was built at an interesting time in New York City—when things were really thriving and changing.”

“That's right,” said Lily. “Grand buildings were going up everywhere.” She ran her hand along the intricate woodwork of CJ's bookcase. “Our parents say it's hard to find places like this anymore.”

For a girl of about ten, Lily had an uncanny ability to speak like an adult. She had red-framed glasses and dark red hair held in place by a neat headband. Brid felt squirmy and uncomfortable.

“Our apartments used to be connected, you know,” said Lukas. “They were owned by a family, the Posts, of the packaged food empire. They merged with the Huttons, a family that had a banking empire.”

“What do you mean, they merged?” Pat interrupted. He had said nothing the entire time the Williamsons were present, which Brid thought was admirable and unlike him.

“A young man from a rich banking family married a lady from the food industry, a family that pretty much invented packaged food for supermarkets,” Lily said. “Before that, you had to go to the bakery to buy bread, the butcher to buy meat, and so on.”

“Anyway,” Lukas continued, “they were married, and at first they lived in a fantastic town house around the corner from here. When the Posts constructed this building, they demolished their old house and rebuilt the entire
town house on the top two floors here. They could enjoy views of the skyline and Central Park, while living in one of the grandest apartments in New York City. They were fabulous entertainers and had many grand fêtes here.”

Even CJ felt like he needed a dictionary to talk to this boy. “So then years later, when they wanted to sell it, they split their big apartment in two?”

“Four,” interjected Lily. “Two apartments on both the twelfth and thirteenth floors. Our living rooms used to be one giant ballroom. When they created our separate apartments, they split it down the middle. That's why your living room is so enormous.”

“But we're on the fourteenth floor, not the thirteenth,” Patrick piped in.

“Well, they call our apartments fourteen north and fourteen south, but really we're on the thirteenth floor. Nobody would live on a thirteenth floor; people thought it unlucky, so this building goes from twelve to fourteen,” Lukas said with a strange gleam in his eyes.

“What do these poems on the moldings mean?” Brid asked as she pointed to the intricate writing far above their heads.

“The Posts adored collecting art and literature,” said Lukas. “It was a culturally rich apartment. I'd imagine the poems were just decoration, though we don't have the same sort of detail on our side. You know, a lot of their fortune went missing soon after Mr. Post died in
1937. Because Mr. Post insisted that walls be built in front of the original walls, the search was always focused on them. But everything was searched after his death and before the apartment was split up, and nothing's ever been found.”

“Yes,” said Lily. “Obviously the fortune was hidden somewhere else.”

“Kind of strange it was never found,” CJ said.

“Well, the rumor was that someone did find it and kept it,” Lily said. “Though much of it would have been difficult to hide: enormous jewels, famous paintings, things like that.”

“Oh,” said CJ. “Too bad.”

“It's really quite a mess in here,” said Lily, looking around the room. “Can we help you fix it up?”

CJ hadn't picked anything up after yesterday's wrestling match. Boxes were everywhere, and the room appeared ransacked. Still, Brid thought, what sort of kid was bothered by a mess?

“No, that's all right,” said CJ.

“Well,” said Lily, “our nanny is taking us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art later this morning. We'd love for you to join us in an hour if you're available. It doesn't open until nine thirty
AM
.”

“That's okay.” Brid came to the rescue. “As you can see, we have a lot of unpacking to do.”

CJ looked at his sister with relief. Who goes for an
outing with friends to the museum? he wondered. Who dresses up to go to a museum, unless they always dress like that? And why does every kid around here seem to have a nanny? The thought made him shudder.

“One more thing,” said Lukas. “Our two apartments share a storage room in the basement. It used to be servants' quarters, but we don't need the space. You can use it as you wish. Our servants have bedrooms in our apartment.”

“The what?” asked CJ and Brid together. They remembered their mom saying something about a storage area, but they hadn't paid attention at the time.

“The servants' quarters,” Lukas said, obviously having no clue that the Smithfork family didn't have live-in servants. “Most buildings from the twenties had them.”

“So what exactly happened in servants' quarters?” Brid asked, pulling out a pink spiral notebook. Brid liked to write things down, and this habit often helped keep the Smithfork family organized.

“Servants' quarters were small bedrooms for staff to live in,” said Lukas. “Now people use them to store things. They're in the basement level—no view, or anything. Hard to believe people would let their staff live in such dismal conditions.”

“So you say we can use that space?” Patrick asked.

“What I meant is that should you need space to store things, you can use it. You would need to clean it up a
bit, as the previous owners, the Post family, left some belongings there.”

“Maybe you can show it to us sometime?” CJ asked.

“Yes, with pleasure. Well, good-bye, then,” Lukas said abruptly, stretching out his arm to shake hands, while simultaneously swinging his blue blazer over his shoulder. “Until next time.”

The kids all shook hands, the Smithforks feeling uncomfortable and formal, the Williamsons looking smooth and used to this.

 

Two hours later, CJ and Brid were riding the M1 bus down Fifth Avenue to the library. They had told Maricel they had an orientation afternoon at their schools, and their mother had left earlier to meet with a decorator. Without their parents around, Maricel had nobody to check their story with. They felt badly about leaving Patrick behind, but they knew that Maricel could never be convinced to leave Pat in CJ's care.

On the bus, CJ read a book, covered up with a magazine. He was always reading—manuals, mysteries, technology magazines, sports guides, anything. He got embarrassed when other people commented on what he read, so he had learned to never let people see such titles as
How Does Aspirin Find a Headache?
Brid understood why he read in secret, but she still hated that he did it. She liked to know everything that was going on with her
family, including what book CJ was reading. She peeked over his
Mad
magazine and thought she saw a poetry book inside. Hmm.

New York City's main library was a huge marble structure that stretched for two whole city blocks and had enormous lion statues out front. “It opened in 1911 and has fifteen miles of shelves,” CJ said as the kids stood in front of the massive building, feeling small. “During the Great Depression, the mayor named those lions Patience and Fortitude.”

“Why the fancy names?” Brid asked.

“Those were the traits he thought people needed in order to get through that difficult time,” CJ said.

As they swept through the revolving doors into the grandest lobby they had ever seen, they had to open their bags to be checked by a security guard. It was then that Brid saw the real title of CJ's book:
Poetry for Dummies.

“Whatcha reading?” she said innocently.

“Just trying to understand something in my room,” CJ said. “You know those poems on my moldings? I'm wondering why they are there.”

“You mean, like, what's their story?”

“Like what story the poem is trying to tell the reader,” he said simply.

“You don't even like poetry.”

“I know, but the guy who used to live in our apartment did.”

“That's weird that you care.”

“A little weird,” CJ admitted. “I mean, he probably just did it for decoration, but still, I like when people can say a lot with the least amount of words. That's one good thing about a poem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like maybe you could say more by talking less,” CJ snapped.

Brid just rolled her eyes at CJ as they waited in line to be checked in. People with backpacks, tourists, a lady in a wheelchair—all seemed to move with purpose, knowing exactly where to go. When the security guard took Brid's backpack, she asked him, “Where are the returns?” The guard was tall and big-bellied; his shirt buttons looked as if they might pop.

“Return of what?” he said.

“An overdue book.”

“Overdue? Honey, that book must be from somewhere else, because this library is a research collection. It's not a lending library.”

“It has to be,” Brid said.

“It's not,” he said sternly.

Brid stamped her foot, which is not something anyone should do in a library. “It says right here, it's overdue.” She flipped open the book cover to show the guard the handwritten card listing the borrower's name, the date it was taken out, and the due date. The name was written in a
clear cursive with little flourishes. It read,
Mr. Lyon F. Post
.

The guard pulled reading glasses from the lapel of his blazer and held the book away from him in the way grown-ups do when they read small print.

“Well, I'll be.” He pulled a walkie-talkie from his coat. “Shimmy, come in,” he said into the radio.

“Shimmy here,” a voice answered almost immediately.

“Some kids here with an overdue book from this library.”

“Can't be.”

“Was due in 1937.”

“You've got one slow reader there.” Shimmy cracked up loudly at his own joke, while the people in line behind CJ and Brid tsked with annoyance.

“What year did we stop lending?” asked the guard, looking irritated.

“1970.”

“Where've you kids been since 1970?” the guard asked, not even smiling.

“Not born?” said CJ.

The guard finally grinned, and spoke into his radio again. “They were not members of the planet Earth at that time, Mr. Shimmy. What should they do?”

A long pause followed, then Shimmy said, “Take it to the head librarian's office, third floor.”

CJ and Brid soon found themselves on the third floor, face-to-face with an efficient-looking woman sitting
behind a large, clean desk. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun, and she had droopy jowls that jiggled when she spoke. Her name tag read
MISS CASSIDY
.