If These Walls Had Ears Read online

  It’s possible that Charlie knew this was coming—though the idea that your own mother would sue you, especially when you were already on the ropes financially, is hard to comprehend. The suit claimed that Charlie owed her $2,154.28, that she had demanded payment, and that Charlie had refused. An affadavit, signed in a shaky hand by Elizabeth, charged that she had lent Charlie one thousand dollars on May 1, 1926 (which was just before she came to live with him). That loan was to be repaid in full, plus 6 percent interest. Then in late 1929 and 1930, Charlie had received four thousand dollars, three thousand dollars, and five hundred dollars, which was to be his share of Elizabeth’s estate after her death. The stipulation, however, was that he would pay interest on that money during her lifetime. Finally, he had drawn $112.71 from an account she maintained in Little Rock. Between January and September 1930—about the time Charlie was scaling back his business—he had made six payments, totaling $215; after that, nothing. Now she wanted her money.

  I can imagine Charlie and Jessie sitting on the front porch late on that July night in 1932. We give up in stages. We draw invisible lines, across which we won’t allow the world to encroach. Then when that line is violated, we draw another—tighter, closer in. It’s a helpless feeling, waiting for the end to come. Charlie must’ve felt that way about the business. It was a losing battle. The Depression was bigger than he was. The summons, like Elizabeth herself, was only symbolic— what’s another couple thousand dollars in the face of total ruin? For Charlie and Jessie, the tighter line now had to encircle the family, the house: the home. Others were losing that battle, too, but they, the Armours, had to find a way to hold the center.

  At the end of August, Charlie settled with his mother for the sum of $1,994.82, plus 6 percent interest from June 10. That fall, he set about dismantling the Little Rock Nu Grape plant. He still had the one in Pine Bluff, but that wasn’t enough to keep the family going. The spring of 1933 brought the worst of the Depression to Little Rock. On March 4, to avoid a run on the banks, the Arkansas banking commissioner ordered all banks closed. They didn’t reopen until March 13, after they had been pronounced sound and new procedures had been adopted. But that was a long week in Arkansas. That was a week in which many people were paid in produce, or in anything else that still had value.

  By that time, the frivolous little Nu Grape car seemed as alien as the memories of the decade just past. Charlie replaced it with a two-door Chevy in sober black.

  Seemingly overnight, 501 Holly was transformed from a place of gaiety and well-being into a retreat. No more would there be elaborate dinners or festive dances with the rugs rolled back. Instead of a place into which the world was invited, this house had become a refuge from it.

  Charlie’s presence at home on weekdays was unsettling for the rest of the family. Charles, back in high school, was now in the same grade as Jane. In the mornings, they would catch the streetcar a couple of blocks away on Prospect, then ride it back home again after school. Upon their return, they would often find their father sitting in the living room by the radio, wearing casual clothes instead of his customary suits, his pipe cradled in his mouth as he listened to the state of the world. His sitting there told Charles and Jane all they needed to know about the state of the world.

  Not that Charles and Jane spent a lot of time worrying about their father’s situation. They were, after all, teenagers. Both would be seniors during the 1933-1934 year, and both had their own friends, their own schedules, and their own concerns. Even though he made better grades than Jane, Charles fretted that he wasn’t going to do well. And he was compulsive—he wanted things done justright. Jane seemed to be more comfortable in her skin than Charles was in his. She was dating a nice young man named John Pemberton McRae, called Pem. Like people all over the country, Jane and Pem escaped to the movies as often as they could afford it during the 1930s. On hot summer evenings, there was nothing better than a cool, dark theater to take you away from your troubles. There was a new Disney cartoon that seemed—if your mind worked in such a way—to be a commentary on the times. It was about a trio of pigs, and after the show you could hear people singing or whistling the catchy theme song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” as they left the comfort of the theater and walked off in pairs into the night.

  Meanwhile, Charlie and Jessie worked at keeping his spirits high. Behind that noncommittal exterior, Charlie Armour had a temper, though he usually managed to contain it. Jane remembers witnessing his anger through the window one day when she was a child. Charlie was in the front yard with a Negro man, who was there doing some work. Suddenly; Charlie grabbed the man by his shirt and practically lifted him off his feet. Charlie was saying something, but Jane couldn’t hear what. The man was obviously petrified. Then Charlie put him down and the Negro went back to his work, cowering like a dog that had been disciplined. From Jane’s point of view, the entire vignette was acted out in silence, which gave it a power—the power of imagination—beyond what it might’ve had otherwise.

  Jessie kept busy, of course, and. Charlie really did, too—as much as possible. He worked on the grape arbor he’d built in the backyard, and he tended his tomato plants, as he had every year. He had a knack for growing tomatoes, and at harvest time he made the rounds of the neighborhood, sharing the bounty with the folks on Holly and Lee. He phoned friends, visited with people he’d known in business, church, and civic affairs. Sooner or later, some job prospect would turn up. At least he and Jessie weren’t having to go out and humiliate themselves by dancing for dollars in dance marathons, the way so many other couples were.

  In mid-October, there was an item in the Arkansas Gazette about one of President Roosevelt’s new programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, generally referred to as the CCC. Hundreds of boys would soon be shipped to Arkansas from places like California and Oregon. These young men were going to be put to work building all sorts of public facilities, bridges, and dams. The plan, according to Guy Amsler, head of the State Parks Commission, was to house some of the boys in barracks to be built at Fair Park, just a few blocks from Holly Street.

  Charlie Armour had a degree in civil engineering. Maybe, he thought, these untrained crews needed just such a person to supervise their work. It seemed to be a sign—especially since Guy Amsler, the Parks Commissioner, happened to be Charlie Armour’s neighbor to the side, right across Lee Street.

  He and Amsler talked, and yes, there were definite possibilities. One of the CCC projects was to be the construction of Boyle Park, a 231-acre parcel of land southwest of the city. The Parks Commission was going to need a superintendent for Boyle. Charlie Armour, Amsler said, had just the right qualifications.

  So at age sixty-three, Charlie became a civil engineer again. His self reinventions had come full circle.

  If there’s peace in your heart, your house will reflect it. If there’s rage, your house will reveal it. If there’s indecision or indolence, your house will bear the brunt of it. In Jessie’s case, her new concern about her home showed itself in a feverish rearrangement of the downstairs rooms. She moved the player piano from the living room to the front bedroom, which she was now calling “the music room.” The middle bedroom was now “the sitting room.” Jessie had furnished it with a couple of easy chairs, good lamps, and a lighted fish tank designed to provide a much-needed touch of serenity.

  Of course, she probably attributed these moves to practical concerns. Radio had taken over the living room—by late 1933, Charles and his father could sit by the fireplace and listen to “The Lone Ranger,” or Jessie and Jane could fill the wicker popper and listen to “The Romance of Helen. Trent.” Now, suddenly, you needed a different place for reading and playing music. The other factor was that the house was just so much larger with three fewer people in it. Grandma Jackson was dead, Grandmother Armor had moved in with her other son in California, and Carolee had gotten married and was living in Boston. It seemed a shame to let all that space go to waste.

  Jessie’s brilliant idea n
o doubt resulted from just this sort of antsy preoccupation with the house. Not content to sit and wait for events to overtake her family, she began to take stock of their strengths, their abilities, their holdings. The only thing they had in excess, she decided, was space—the house itself. With so many people losing homes—or not able to afford them in the first place—she suggested to Charlie that they start taking in boarders.

  It was perfect: Jessie was, after all, schooled in the efficient running of a household. The going rate for room and board was thirty dollars a month. Besides using the center to hold the center, they would be helping others who needed a place in these tough times. And one other thing in their favor: Arkansas had passed a lenient divorce law, and people from all over the country were coming to the state to live during the three-month residency requirement. This house, a family house, would be ideal for a young woman all alone and miles from home.

  Jessie began advertising, and before long she had plenty of business. There was a lot of coming and going, but word of mouth kept the house full most of the time. She and Charlie moved back downstairs, back to the middle bedroom. Charles moved to the back bedroom, the one he had once shared with Grandma Jackson. Jane insisted on keeping her small bedroom at the top of the stairs, but that still gave Jessie three rooms to rent. Mabel was back living in the room above the garage, so she could help Jessie. And if she left again, they could rent out her room.

  The first boarder was an old-maid schoolteacher named Miss Hairston. She taught first grade at Pulaski Heights Elementary, just down the street, so she was delighted to find a homey place so close. She took the big upstairs room with the cedar closet, the room separated from Jane’s by the pongee-covered French doors. Every night when Miss Hairston saw Jane’s light go out, she would say the very same thing, never a variation. It drove Jane crazy.

  “Good night, Janie dear,” she called out in her chirpy, schoolteachery voice.

  “Good night, Miss Hairston,” Jane dutifully replied.

  “Sleep tight, Janie dear.” With that, Jane pulled the covers over her head and burrowed in as deeply as she could.

  It must’ve been strange at first, having other people in the house. I can’t imagine it myself—I feel a vague unease even when our cleaning lady is here, no matter if she’s downstairs and I’m up in my office. But Jessie liked having new people to talk with. She told them all about the neighbors, how they lived and what they did and who their people were. She talked about her Sunday school class and tried to line up new members. She provided her boarders two meals a day, breakfast and supper. At night, the boarders were welcome to come downstairs and sit by the fire or out on the porch. Charlie would tell them stories about growing up on the farm in Kansas, or about the panthers in Louisiana.

  Having boarders was almost like having parties again. A young lady from New York named Olive Hoeffleic came for a divorce, bringing her mother with her. They waited out the three months eating Jessie’s good cooking, which had become more quintessentially Southern than that of her Southern-born neighbors. Jessie didn’t cook Cajun-style, though, and one of the boarders was a young woman from Louisiana, Jeanne Breaux, who missed her own mother’s cooking. Jeanne’s husband was a salesman whose territory was Arkansas, and he wanted her in a family-type boardinghouse. The Armours could see why. Jeanne was as coquettish as they come, and she immediately took over the social life of the house. In her Cajun accent, she led giggling conversations at the dinner table. Her people were both French and Italian, and she would write to Tier mother, asking her to send recipes—red beans and rice, and all her other favorites—which Jessie would then try. Jeanne would stand in the kitchen, translating while Jessie cooked, and everybody would be laughing the whole time.

  In 1935, Annabelle Ritter came. A Mississippian, she had moved to Little Rock in the late twenties to work in a branch office of the General Motors Acceptance Corporation. She would become one of the Armours’ longest-running boarders, staying eight years—longer than some of the future owners of this house.

  It was as though the Armours and their boarders were an extended family. People came to Jessie looking for a home, and she took them in. If they stayed long enough, they all got to know one another’s moods, quirks, nuances. Most of the boarders could tell the Armours were having financial trouble, though the words were never actually spoken. Maybe it was just an occasional look in Jessie’s or Charlie’s eye that gave it away. But it was no surprise, really, nor was it a stigma—everybody was having financial trouble to some degree.

  One day in what must’ve been the fall of 1936, the Armours’ situation took a noticeable turn. Jessie announced to the boarders that she was taking a job outside the house—she was going to be a dietician at the state mental hospital a few blocks away. It was understandable. Charles and Jane were now in college, and two children in college at the same time would be hard for any family. Of course, the boarders wondered what this meant for them. No, Jessie said, she wasn’t closing the boardinghouse; she was just taking on additional work.

  She still cooked breakfast for everyone in the morning before going off to her other job. In the afternoons, she would come home with jars of food left over from the meals she had prepared for the patients. These leftovers would often be the evening meal for the residents of 501 Holly.

  Then, in early 1937, Jessie called Annabelle Ritter aside and told her she had some bad news. The Armours were going to have to move. The present arrangement just wasn’t working. They were keeping the house, however, and Jessie had arranged for a family called the Kemps to rent it and to allow the boarders to stay. Unfortunately, they would no longer be boarders; they would just be renters—but they would be welcome to keep their own food in the refrigerator and prepare it themselves.

  Annabelle was astounded, but Jessie waved aside any show of pity. They would be fine. They had taken an apartment farther into the Heights, she said, over on North Tyler Street. It was a nice apartment—a duplex, actually. Charles and Jane were going to drop out of college and get jobs until the family got back on its feet.

  What Jessie didn’t tell Annabelle that day was that Charlie had already declared bankruptcy. They had held on for a long time, but the odds were stacked too high against them. Charlie had gone to court the previous summer, in August of 1936. He had been sixty-six years old at the time. The paperwork on the bankruptcy was surprisingly brief. “In the matter of C. W. L. Armour, Bkcy. No. 4499,” it began. “At Little Rock, on the 31st day of August, A.D. 1936, before the Honorable John E. Martineau . . .” Though it was written in legalese, certain phrases stood out as brutally to the point: “. . . having been heard and duly considered, the said C. W. L. Armour is hereby declared and adjudged a bankrupt. . .”

  When moving day came, Jessie had packed their clothes and a few pieces of furniture. After checking the house one last time, she closed the door and got into the car, where Charlie was waiting. In my mind’s eye, I see them driving off, bravely, without looking back.

  The writer Mark Twain lived for many years in a flamboyant Stick Style house in Hartford, Connecticut. It was there that he wrote some of his most famous books—The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. For Twain and his wife, Livy, the years in that house were the best of their lives. “To us,” Twain wrote, “our house was not unsentient matter—it had a heart, and a soul, and eyes to see us with; and approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies; it was of us, and we were in its confidence, and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome—and we could not enter it unmoved.”

  Those lines inevitably come to me when I think of the Armours driving away from their house on Holly Street. They had lost its approvals, its confidence, the peace of its benediction. Without those things, they were unsheltered in a way that’s ultimately more damaging than simply not having th
at roof over their heads. Especially Charlie. His heart and soul were now open to the elements.

  The Armours tried to hold the center, but finally they had to 501 Holly

  Chapter Four

  Armour

  1937 1947

  Every weekday morning, I drive my stepdaughter Bret to school. Though Bret would tell you there are some days when I’m the grumpiest of chauffeurs, I nevertheless enjoy these moments—they’re a comforting ritual, and no doubt part of the reason I feel at home at 501 Holly. My own two sons have lived in a different state from me since David was seven—they moved on his seventh birthday, actually—and Matthew was seven months. Herding eleven-year-old Bret and our miniature schnauzer, Snapp, into the car every morning, I feel, when I think about it, that I’ve managed to double back and recapture a piece of something I had lost.

  The subject of loss often crosses my mind on the way to school. That’s because, following Kavanaugh Street (called Prospect until the mid-thirties) farther into the Heights, I pass right by North Tyler Street, where Charlie and Jessie and Charles and Jane moved when they had to leave the house on Holly. The duplex they lived in is the second one from the corner, and I give it a respectful glance every day as I drive by.

  But it’s not the duplex that rivets me. It’s a utility pole on the north side of Kavanaugh, just west of Tyler. I look at it both going and coming, but it’s after I’ve dropped Bret off arid am on my way home that I begin to really focus on it. I start eyeing it several blocks away, passing Fillmore Street, then Taylor Street, then Polk. Then, in the block between Polk and Tyler, I grip the steering wheel tighter and begin to imagine that I’m Charlie Armour on that August day in 1937.