Fifty-four Holly Lane

By Christine C. Heuner

Ashleigh and Tommy Gallagher are fully fledged members of the "Sandwich Generation" who move in with Tommy's aging parents, John and Peggy, to rescue them from bankruptcy. At the same time, they're also raising their two teenagers, Emily and Troy. Ashleigh's cr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blydyn Square Books
• Release date: Feb 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781732256798

Christine C. Heuner

Christine Heuner has been teaching high school English for over twenty years. She lives with her family in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in Narrative, Flash Fiction Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, The Write Launch, and others. Her work can be found at christineheuner.com

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FIFTY-FOUR HOLLY LANE

Christine C. Heuner

BLYDYN SQUARE BOOKS

KENILWORTH , NJ

© 2022 by Christine C. Heuner

ISBN 978-1-7322567-6-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-7322567-7-4 (ebook)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

CIP information available upon request.

All rights reserved. The scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [e-mail]

Cover and Interior design by Gram Telen

www.fiverr .com/gramtelen

DEDICATION

For my family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fifty-Four Holly Lane functions as a character in this novel. I want to express my gratitude for the homes my husband, Bob, and I have renovated in New Jersey: 13 Putnam Street in Somerville, 529 Church Street in Bound Brook, and 36 Shady Lane in Bridgewater. We have put much money and labor into these homes and have built our lives in them. Thank you, Bob, for taking on the lion’s share of that work.

Tara Tomczyk at Blydyn Square Books, thank you for taking a chance on this novel. I am so fortunate to have met you at Push to Publish. You are kind, generous, and patient.

Many thanks to Philadelphia Stories for publishing my short story, Roommates, upon which this novel is based.

The Heuners and Cerratos, your love inspired me to write this novel.

Bob, Katherine, and Nicholas Heuner, you give me the courage to put my work into the world.

To my mom, Karen Cerrato, who bought me my first typewriter and believed I’d put it to good use.

A shout-out to Marty Cerrato and Deb Rosenfeld, my biggest fans who have read all my work.

Christine Yanoso, your guidance and love have helped me to become a better mother and wife.

Thank you, Kate Zimmerbaum, for challenging me to develop Emily’s character by pushing at her deepest insecurities.

As always, thank you, Erin Sollner, for reading my work and being a dedicated teacher who helps me up my game. You are truly talented and a blessing in my life. I can always go to you for advice, and I’m honored to be your friend.

I respect all my colleagues, particularly in the English Department, at Hunterdon Central Regional High School. Your intellect, sense of humor, and compassion have made these past twenty-plus years at Central a wonderful place to work. Thank you.

PART I

PEGGY

John used to say we were millionaires, but now we might lose the house. Tommy, our oldest, and his wife, Ashleigh, plan to buy us out. We told Tommy that he, Ashleigh, Emily, and Troy could just sell their house, pay off our balloon loan (whatever that is), and live with us while we pay him back, but Tommy wants to own our house free and clear and have his say-so. He said, Dad, you haven’t fixed a f—ing thing in this house in over forty years. Well, that’s true. John denied it up and down, but it is true. Raccoons and squirrels ate into the house through the roof and missing shingles. We had to call West Pest.

Our first plan was to move into Tommy and Ashleigh’s house, but we’re eighty, and there’s no way John and I could climb all those stairs. Truthfully, Tommy and Ashleigh have something to gain from the move, too. Their taxes are almost twelve thousand. (John says ours are only eight.) And if we moved in with them, they’d have to renovate and that meant even higher taxes. That’s how they explained it to me. It made sense, sort of. I don’t understand why making your house better costs more in taxes.

Also, we live in a good school district. Ashleigh told Tommy that if they buy our house, they can take Emily and Troy out of private school. More money for vacations, she said.

Sometimes, I get upset. All my friends have a nest egg with eggs still in the nest. Well, soon our nest will belong to Tommy and Ashleigh. I thought we could sell the house before we lost it and move to an apartment or one of those elder places, but John would have none of it. He said, I’ve lived here almost all my life; I might as well die here.

Before Tommy decided to sell, John would call him every night after The Wheel, pushing him about the house, asking Tommy what to do next like Tommy was God Almighty. It got so bad, John said, I took care of you. It’s your turn to take care of me.

I wanted to say, It’s not right. Tommy has been there for us, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, having us over for dinner. It’s more than Maryann and Paul have ever done for us.

Tommy owes us nothing.

ASHLEIGH

Everyone I’ve told about the move from 426 Church Street to 54 Holly Lane—our mission, our purpose—says I’m a giving person for taking on this task, but they don’t see that, by doing it, I’ve broken something in myself. Something ugly rises up, resentful, afraid, frustrated, so what I give with an open hand, I take back in a closed fist. I don’t want anyone to pretend I have a halo, never mind make a comment about shining it up.

I won’t admit that I hate the idea of living with Tommy’s parents because I don’t. Buying their house has its advantages for us. We’ll pull the kids out of private school now that we’re in a better school district, saving us thousands. I always wanted to public-school the kids, but Tommy thought it would be better if they were in a place where they weren’t a minority. They’ll get bullied, he said. Guided by fear, I agreed with him. I had heard about fights at the school. The school report card online shows that seventy-eight percent of the school is Hispanic. We’re not racist. No one wants to be a minority.

I had a friend in law school who said she was one of the only white people at her high school. Someone asked her if she liked the diversity; she replied, Hell, no. I got my hair pulled every day in the bathroom. I fear this for my children.

Another reason for the move: Tommy is the only one capable of caring for his parents. His siblings, Maryann and Paul, won’t help out. They say they can’t, but nothing is impossible. Mom and Dad are struggling to get up the six stairs to the upper floor of their bi-level. Mom can’t even get to the lower level because of her hip. Tommy says there will come a day when Paul, who has a first-floor apartment with only three steps to his front door, will have to take Mom and Dad, but I know it will never happen. Maryann lives in Pennsylvania, three hours away, with her husband, Bill, and three kids (Dean, Lauren, Kyle); he’s a doctor so he makes enough money, but he’s a tightwad and controls every penny Maryann spends.

So, it’s up to us, I guess, I say. I’m always ready for a challenge. Besides, my in-laws have been good to me. They never complain when my house is dirty. They accommodate me, trying to help when they can. For years and years, Mom watched the kids and helped me clean up after dinner when I invited them over.

Once we decide on the plan to sell our house, Tommy and I are united in purpose. We stop fighting as much. I see how, in spite of all Dad did to Tommy—hit him, kept a list of every cent Tommy owed him, forced him to take business classes in college, all of which Tommy failed—Tommy is still willing to be generous with his father. Some of Tommy’s decision to buy the house is probably because of Mom—ever-loyal, ever-good—but she annoys Tommy, too, with her constant questions and worry.

PEGGY

While Tommy and Ashleigh try to sell their house, we have to clean out ours. I find pocketbooks and clothes with the tags still on them—my pal Rosemary and I used to go shopping every day—and I offer them to Ashleigh and Emily, but they don’t want them. The clothes wouldn’t fit them anyway. I am not a small woman.

So John has to get rid of his stuff, too. He saved and saved and saved things, thinking they’d be worth something someday. We find an antique dealer who wants to penny-pinch. John moves stuff to the keep pile when he doesn’t get the price he expects. Ashleigh says to him, We’ve all made sacrifices, and what can we do? What’s hardest for John, I think, is just knowing that no one wants his stuff. And some of that stuff, like the records and cameras, got damaged when the basement flooded; time yellowed his classic comics and all those National Geographic and Playboy magazines. I don’t want to know why he keeps the Playboys; he says they’re worth money, especially the Trump issue. The antique dealer says they’re a dime a dozen. He also says that about the Norman Rockwell plates, which Bradford Exchange said would be worth a mint someday, but Ashleigh checks the Internet and says they’re worth forty bucks for a whole set. Well, John, who paid thirty-five a plate, won’t believe it. How is it he always bets on the wrong horse? And here I am, holding the ticket.

John wants to keep games with the pieces missing, the broken bowl he said was his mother’s, and the wreath with the bells. He and Ashleigh have a real fight over that one. I have to call her into Maryann’s old room and tell her that he isn’t acting like normal. He’s not sleeping or eating as much, I say.

She lets him keep the bells.

Ashleigh goes through the place like we aren’t still living here. About the hutch, she says, There’s too much sh-t in here and asks if we need the salt-and-pepper shakers Rosemary gave me from her trip to Alaska.

She holds the big glass of sand from our trip to Hawaii for our twentieth, makes a face, and asks, What’s this for?

I let her get rid of the china they gave us at the Trump Taj, but she lets us keep the Lennox from our wedding. She says it’s special and I like that.

She takes down all the fake flowers, saying they’re full of dust; she brushes off a little puff as proof.

I like the flowers, John says in the same voice he uses to praise the ratty green carpet, broken nutcracker, and cracked slushie maker.

Ashleigh moves on to the bathroom and cleans out the drawers. She throws out one of John’s medications that expired almost ten years ago; he tells her to give it back. She asks, Why not just call the doctor for a refill?

He says, The doctor’s dead.

She laughs the kind of laugh that seems like she is crying, and then she goes back to her own house to finish packing.

While cleaning out the basement, Tommy finds a clacker thingy. He brings it upstairs.

Dad used to hit me with this piece of sh-t, he says, whacking it loud.

Well, I really, truly don’t remember that at all. He never hit you or Maryann or Paul.

He didn’t touch Maryann or Paul. He went after me. He never—

Wake up, Ma! You know why he stopped hitting me? We were outside doing yardwork and the mower went over a f—ing tree root and stopped. He came at me with a stick and you know what I said? I said, ‘You can come at me now, but I’m getting bigger than you and one day I’m going to hit you back. I’ll knock your f—ing lights out.’

God’s honest truth: John is a good man and always has been. He was a well-decorated actuarial. I don’t know what all he did each day except that it involved numbers, numbers, and numbers. On the dining-room wall, we have a huge plaque dedicated to his service. I am surprised when Ashleigh, as she takes everything off the walls, says, This is an amazing accomplishment. We’ll put it back up after we paint.

Ashleigh, a lawyer and newspaper editor, is quite accomplished herself.

I get rid of huge garbage bags of stuff, but it’s the small treasures that are the hardest to lose. Ashleigh takes off the magnets and grandkids’ art projects from the fridge. She even removes the St. Jude prayer card. He’s the patron saint of lost causes; we need him now more than ever, I tell her, and she says, But it’s water damaged. I’ll get you a new one.

ASHLEIGH

Dad never hit Maryann because she was his baby girl. Paul escaped Dad’s abuse because he had a speech impediment until his teens; the other kids teased him, sometimes mimicking him. Once, Dad chased a group of kids down the street who’d taunted Paul on the bus. He didn’t catch them. Tommy remembers him returning home, putting his arm around Paul, saying, No one will ever hurt you again.

Paul’s life improved in high school as speech therapy paid off. He got a girlfriend, a car. Although Paul finished college and has a job in real estate, he has to hustle at it to make decent money. The problem: He’s lazy and his tastes are expensive, and he’s constantly in debt.

I wonder how Tommy became so responsible. Maybe it’s because he’s the oldest, but I’m the middle child, like Maryann, and I was always the most responsible of our family’s trio. Dad’s treatment of Tommy must have given Tommy a steeliness to survive, a dogged pact to be a different father than his own. I’ve heard that the abused tend to become abusers, but, when it comes to the kids, Tommy is as soft as the stuffed animals he buys them when they’re sick.

As a kid, I used to get yelled at, mostly by my father, and I yell at our kids. I haven’t come too far. I’ve grabbed their arms hard enough to leave a mark. Once, unmedicated, I smacked Troy in the back of his head when he refused to brush his teeth. I shrieked at Emily for forgetting her ballet shoes when we were only a mile from her dance class.

The kids gravitate toward Tommy, mostly because he’s calmer than I am. He also spends more time with them, transporting them to school, taking them on weekend drives. I’d rather stay home, and often do. I know the kids love me, too, but it hurt to read Troy’s essay on Dad, his hero, who is also his best friend. Emily wrote in last year’s Father’s Day card that he’s her favorite person to spend time with. I try to justify: He buys them just-because gifts, lets them do what they want regardless of cost. Troy takes guitar, karate, and art lessons, which cost us three hundred dollars a month. Emily gets a Dunkin’ bagel and coffee each morning on the way to school even though it costs much less to have them at home.

Tommy says I’m cheap. He’s got it wrong. I’m frugal. There’s a difference. He won’t hear it. I make it worse when I tell Tommy to stop spending money. He follows by spending more to emphasize his power to refuse me. His dad used to worry about every goddamned cent, he said. He’s not going to let me control him, too.

I’m not trying to control you, I’ve said many times. But I am.

Because we’re not in an area with a desirable school system and our taxes are so high, we have some trouble selling the house. One night, as I walk toward the house after taking the trash to the curb, the house looms above me in impressive majesty with only the porch light to illuminate it. The dark has swallowed the upper two floors. I wonder if another bat will find its way downstairs into the early morning while I’m eating breakfast, its wings furiously flapping, like a ceiling fan on high.

In a low whisper, I say to our home, It’s time for you to let us go. We’ve loved being here, but you need to let us leave. This feels right, talking to our home this way, pleading without anger, honoring its service to us. Burying St. Joseph upside down in the front yard by the For Sale sign wasn’t working, nor were prayers.

A week later, an older couple who doesn’t care about the school system or that our huge home has only one full and two half-bathrooms makes an offer: three thousand beneath our original purchase price thirteen years ago.

We take it.

Everything seems to be falling into place, Tommy says. It’s weird, he adds: We’ll move into Fifty-four Holly Lane just after his fifty-fourth birthday.

I find Maryann’s and Paul’s crap in the basement while I’m cleaning it out after work, tossing items into bags in the weak light of one bare bulb.

Dad follows me in, expresses concern that I’m going to donate bland children’s books that may be first editions.

"Babo the Bear? Do You Know Your Colors? I doubt these are hot sellers on eBay."

Well, you never know, he says, coming closer.

I put the books in a bag and add a few stuffed animals, which he also questions. They’re Maryann’s kids’ toys, those she never threw out and stuffed down here before her move to PA. Two of her kids are teenagers; Dean, the eldest, is nearly twenty-one.

Dad, I say. You need to get out of my way.

He shuffles out of the room, but not before taking something with him.

There’s an entire cabinet of VHS tapes Maryann says she wants. Who still has a VCR? I ask Tommy.

He shrugs and waves me off. He’s busier at work than usual and doesn’t want to hear my complaints. Besides, we only have twenty days until the move.

Maryann can’t visit for a week; this pisses me off. She doesn’t work and is capable of operating a car, but she won’t travel anywhere without Bill.

I need to get this stuff out of the basement, I tell Mom and Dad. The movers are coming in two weeks.

She’s doing the best she can, Mom says.

I’ve been up past ten every night this week. I’m done. If Maryann doesn’t make it by next week, I’m throwing her shit in the backyard.

I go back into the basement to tackle the corner section where Dad keeps his water-damaged records.

He follows me downstairs.

Maryann and Paul show up on a Saturday to claim their shit. I’m in the kitchen, peeling off the shelf paper from the cabinets; it’s so old, it crumbles rather than peels in a strip. I’m removing it with a scraper. Then I wipe the wood beneath, let it dry, and put new contact paper on the surface. Tommy says we’ll redo the kitchen, but I won’t put my food in this pantry and dishes in these cabinets without disinfecting them first. It’s one way of making the house mine.

I’m struggling with the contact paper—I never measure it accurately—when Maryann comes into the kitchen. I appreciate all you’re doing for Mom and Dad, she says. It can’t be easy.

It’s not, I say. It’s just what needs to be done.

I’ve never really liked Maryann, not because she isn’t nice. She’s spineless, and I’ve spent much of my life strengthening my spine. It’s hard to abide her passivity. Once—this was before she moved, before her third child—she showed me a credit-card bill she managed to steal from Bill. There’s a one-hundred-fifty-dollar charge from a massage place, she said. How much does a massage cost?

It varies, I said. Look it up online. Do you know the name of the place?

I forgot to write it down, she said. I just looked at it briefly. It didn’t surprise me that Bill, an ER doctor, was messing around with someone else. The thought that the someone else might be a prostitute, however, was almost unthinkable, even if you considered the depth of his cruelty, controlling Maryann to the point where she panicked if she wasn’t home in time for his return from work. She could barely eat a cracker without his consent.

Tommy told me that Maryann used to be a cheerleader and won a hula-hoop contest at a county fair. Now, her body is soft and pale and she hunches her shoulders. I cannot imagine her doing flips or gathering enough energy to keep that hoop in steady motion.

Maryann says they’re going out to eat once Bill loads up the car. Do you want to come?

They’re going to the diner a few blocks away, but I have work to do and my stomach is off. I refuse and she says, Maybe Mom and Dad can bring you something back.

I’m fine, I say, my head inside a cabinet, cursing again that I can’t measure the contact paper just right like my mother did in my home at Church Street which, in two weeks, won’t belong to me, to us, ever again.

I remember bringing newborn Troy up the refurbished stairs. One of the workmen said in broken English, He look like Tom.

Though Maryann and Paul took their belongings, I’m still over at Mom and Dad’s every night after work, going through this mountain of shit, piling it in bags for Big Brothers, Big Sisters; Lupus; the vets; 9/11 victims. I’ve taken carloads to the local Goodwill store, which used to be a pharmacy. You pull up at the former drive-thru, which they’ve replaced with an automatic door, and someone comes to help you unload your junk. I sometimes wait for a receipt, but often I just drive away, telling them I’ll be back soon. Once, I made six trips in one day with a full carload each time.

Unfortunately, Goodwill doesn’t take toys or furniture, so we have to pay to get rid of Mom and Dad’s old couches, so damaged that Dad stacked pillows beneath one of the cushions when the supporting fabric gave way.

I go a few rounds with Dad over throwing out items, some broken—his mother’s bowl, cracked and chipped—and others unusable—the popcorn popper with the broken cord, the ancient blender with the top missing. That top will show up somewhere, he says.

When it’s time to clean out the Christmas decorations, Dad presses me to keep a wreath of bells. I plug them in, showing him the lights don’t work. The bells make no sound.

Let me see it, he insists, holding out his hand, but I won’t give it to him.

It’s useless, I say. Let’s just throw it out.

He raises his voice and Mom calls me into the room where she’s going through all the purses—she calls them pocketbooks—and tells me he hasn’t been himself.

He’s not the only one. I want to tell her about my lack of sleep, my packing up each night at home after work and then coming to their house. That can wear on a person. I haven’t cooked a meal in two weeks and came down with a stomach bug that hasn’t really gone away. I’m still eating Saltines, bananas, and apples, drinking tea and ginger ale. My exercise schedule is off; I have little energy. I just want to be normal again. Even a wisp of normality would do.

A week before the closing, we have movers take some stuff over to Mom and Dad’s, just three