Springfield Place

By S. A. McCormick

Behind manicured lawns and bourgeoning gardens, the apartment building is much like any other in the community. The contrast of its aging structure and decorative foyer reflect the charm of Springfield Place – its elegant lobby prominent; its deteriorating corners hidden from view.
Home to an intriguing array of residents who pass in elevators and along pathways, its tenants – secrets intact – exchange vague greetings before continuing on their journeys. Some find the casual acknowledgement enough. For others, chance encounters and their pleasantries offer salvation.
Stop for a moment at Springfield Place. Share a glimpse within its walls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. A. McCormick
• Release date: Jan 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370821297

S. A. McCormick

S. A. McCormick I hope you enjoy my books, that they lift your spirits, stimulate your thoughts, and excite your imagination. My novels are loosely connected, yet different in the stories and characters that populate their pages. All are thought provoking and emotionally stimulating, and possess a certain amount of humour. To date, two of the three books are in E-book form here for you. Happy reading; and let me know what you think.

Book preview

Springfield Place

Copyright 2011 S.A. McCormick

E-Published by S.A. McCormick at Smashwords, January 2017

Cover design by S. A. McCormick

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No portion of this ebook may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means without permission in writing from the author, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Dedication

For the curious

If she closed her eyes, with the sun on her face she could almost feel the canoe beneath her, rocking in the small ripples of Cedar Lake. School would soon be finished for another year. The sun was setting later each day, with summer almost at her fingertips. Beth felt the bus sway as it rounded the corner. She sensed the eyes of a stranger cast upon her legs, and shifted in her seat. It wasn’t a problem at school, where she was one of a number of girls wearing a short, pleated skirt in the first warm days of the year. But people she didn’t know, boys and men on the bus or in the street, seemed to spend a great deal of time examining her developing body, legs and young breasts, even her mouth. Her impending maturity aroused poor manners in strangers.

Beth took a deep breath, and stared at the gaping man sitting across from her. At first he didn’t notice, but when he detected the teenager’s contemptuous glare his body twitched. He shook his gaze away, flushed. Beth sighed. She minded her own business. Why didn’t everyone else do the same? The bus turned onto Springfield Road. All she wanted was to get to her grandfather’s apartment for a while, to relish in some rare and valuable private time. Soon the bus rolled to a stop in front of the long sidewalk that led to Springfield Place. Beth was deep in reflection as several people descended the steps in front of her.

She realized she had arrived at her destination, and scrambled to her feet. Wait, please! This is my stop. She grabbed her backpack and hurried off. Thanks, she called back to the driver as he pulled the doors closed. She slid her arms through the straps and hoisted the heavy pack onto her back. The rude man on the bus peered out at her, and she shook her head at him, irked that he had distracted her daydream. If she had missed the stop, the next would have been a very long walk back, especially with all the books in tow. Her musing did cause an occasional mishap, but today she placed the fault on the stranger without a life of his own.

Her parents, though, would blame it on the imagination that had been an important part of Beth Palmindale since she was a small child. They had grown to accept the trait, and all that came with it – mornings she was late for school, missed dinners, chores half done. Only when the family was at the lake did they observe their daughter’s keen interest in her surroundings. In the woods by the water’s edge she transformed into an energetic young woman with a fascination for nature, happiest in mucky boots and a sweat shirt. It delighted her grandfather that she revealed a passion for science. He often said it was a sign of her creative potential. She did not realize that his encouragement had greatly impacted her confidence, rare in so young a person, and with as unassuming a personality. She knew only that grandfather was one of her favourite people on the planet.

Beth followed the walkway through the gardens lined with shrubs and headed toward Springfield Place, the apartment building where her grandfather had lived for several years. It still seemed foreign to her, so unlike the home he shared with her grandmother, and where Beth formed many fond, childhood memories. Once inside the main doors, she pulled out the keys that were safely zipped in the front compartment of her pack. She stood in a glass room with solid glass doors and a wall to the right with numerous buttons that could buzz into each apartment. She unlocked the huge door and it easily swung open, into the foyer. She always thought the lobby of Springfield Place looked like a grand palace with its faux marble floors, smoke-coloured wall of mirrors, and dark, chocolate furniture.

It seemed an odd building, with a hodgepodge of tenants from any sort of life you could imagine. Her grandfather had told her the upper levels and penthouse housed many wealthy people, as the grand lobby suggested, while the rest of the apartments throughout the building were ordinary, like her grandfather’s place. But in the middle, he said, there were a few floors where the occupants lived Far Less Than Affluent lives. She recognized her grandfather’s diplomacy. He had told her not to get off the elevator at any floor but his; made her promise. She agreed, although consumed by curiosity about what it could be that so greatly concerned him. He knew his granddaughter well. He added, Even if you’re curious. Beth vowed that she would go directly to his apartment each day, then home. There was no way she could go and explore the other floors now, even if she wanted. He knew her words were sincere. Another similarity between them.

Beth retrieved the mail from the postal box. It looked like bills mostly. There was one pink envelope with a handwritten address. She stuffed the mail into her bag and stepped into the elevator. It seemed odd, going up to his apartment without him there to meet her. But she had promised to go after school to feed the fish, water the plants, bring his mail up, and collect any newspapers and flyers that were left outside his door. She would make sure that the refrigerator and the aquarium pump were both working properly, or else she would call her parents to look after it. In a few weeks grandfather would be back from Europe and by then, school would be over. They would all be heading north to the cottage for the rest of the summer, heaven on earth by day, and nights by kerosene lamps, where the family would listen to his stories about magnificent castles he had visited, throngs of people in cobbled streets, delicious foods he sampled, while musicians played melancholy music for the patrons in candle lit cafés. She longed for those days to arrive.

In the elevator, she resisted the urge to press the button for the fourth floor. She wondered if its walls would be scuffed and dirty, and contemplated pressing the button for a quick peek some time in the next couple of weeks. Surely that would be alright. She didn’t have to get off the elevator; she could pretend it was one of those accidental pushes that delayed your arrival at your intended destination. Grandfather had explained that the apartments on those levels were in extreme need of repair, but the current landlord would only perform the most basic maintenance, just enough to pass obvious building code requirements. In a conspiratorial low voice, grandfather trusted her with his suspicions. The goal, it seemed to him, was to let the apartments deteriorate into an almost unliveable condition. It would make it easier to evict an entire floor of tenants at one time to perform the extensive and necessary renovations, and in the process, convert the units into luxury condominiums that could be sold or rented at a higher cost.

Her parents discussed it with her grandfather not long after he had moved in. Some kind of incident happened in the building that had shaken them, and they were concerned about his decision to move into Springfield Place. He told them not to worry; he was safe, and there were good people in the building. He did, however, share some details. The problems apparently began with a change in ownership of the building, before the final renovations on a few of the floors were complete. The original owners were in the process of converting the building into an upscale rental condominium, with only the penthouse apartments for sale. The top levels were sold as expected. But before the project was completed the owners ran out of funds, and filed for bankruptcy. The building was sold to a housing developer from out of the province, who added it to a multitude of structures within his corporation.

Since the transition, the new corporation maintained just the recently refurbished sections, keeping the higher priced tenants contented. The remaining few floors were left in a depreciating state, with apartments in need of upgrading, and rents lower than throughout the rest of the building. At a housing meeting her grandfather, Doug Palmindale, attended before he left on holiday, the corporation told residents that the work would be completed when enough profits were realized to renovate the last two floors in their entirety. They anticipated it would occur within the next two to three years, and would take as long to complete. Even if tenants on those floors moved out, no upgrades would be funded. The units would be rented as they were, to anyone willing to pay for substandard accommodations, driving the rents even lower. Once renovations actually commenced, the tenants on those floors would be forced to find somewhere else to live for several years, and likely unable to afford the rents after renovations. Despite the protests of residents from all floors, representatives of the corporation said their hands were tied, red faced as they were, and meekly said they were encouraged by the recent sales of some of the condos in the building and the upswing in the housing market.

Beth did not understand it fully, nor why her grandfather found it so disturbing. She thought that, however temporary, it would be an ideal situation for people with low incomes. She appreciated that when she spoke to her grandfather he treated her as an equal, always acknowledging her intelligence. Other adults outside of their immediate family often treated her like a child. Beth remembered the conversation about Springfield Place in considerable detail. It was perhaps the first time she realized the complexity of adulthood, with its world of no simple answers. When the last, older floors would eventually be renovated, grandfather could not give her an answer on where the evicted people would live. She was grateful that she would not have to think about these issues for many more years. But responsible Beth recognized a growing compassion for people less fortunate than her family.

Today, however, was not for serious topics. All she wanted was to get into the apartment and enjoy a little privacy, some quiet time away from her sister and her parents, a rare treat. After the chores she would run a luxurious bath, with aquamarine sea foam bubbles, and put on her Nature Sounds CD. She would lay back in the warm water and dream of Cedar Lake, see the minnows and tadpoles in the shallows, and look for turtles on fallen logs in the reeds along the shore. Later, she would pop some popcorn in the microwave, and make a cup of coffee. Her mother did not condone coffee drinking but grandfather didn’t mind if she had the odd cup. She might watch the end of a soap opera on television for a while before heading home. Her freedom seemed to increase tenfold with the lengthening daylight hours.

The elevators doors opened and Beth got off