Episode Report Card Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT If These Walls Could Talk 2
By Owen | Season 3 | Episode 18 | Aired on 03.27.2000
Next morning. Vanessa wakes up in the waiting room and asks about Abby at the nurses' station. She's told that Abby passed away around 3:45 that morning. Vanessa breaks down in tears -- why wasn't she informed when it happened? My heart is breaking for Vanessa. Wah. The nurses inform Vanessa that the body is already in the morgue, and she should contact Abby's "next of kin" for funeral arrangements. Vanessa, in grief, sleeps next to Abby's pajamas on their bed. Then she calls Abby's great-nephew to break the news of her death and to plan the funeral. Cut to a sob-inducing montage of Vanessa removing her clothes from the master bedroom and putting them in the spare bedroom to pretend that she was just a tenant in the house. She also packs away all of the photos and mementos of their decades-long relationship. Sniffle. Day of the funeral. Abby's great-nephew and his wife (played by Elizabeth Perkins, she of the unwise career choices since Big) and their small daughter accompany Vanessa into the house. Vanessa has already laid out a tea tray and made sandwiches for them, because she's a living saint. She shows the nephew an old photo she found of a visit he made when he was a boy and Abby taught him how to fish. This is wasted on the nephew, who barely registers any emotion. He gives Abby's binoculars to his daughter. Elizabeth asks Vanessa if the collection of bird figurines was Abby's. Vanessa says they were. The nephew looks through some papers and sees that the deed of the house is only in his great-aunt's name. Vanessa explains that she helped pay off the mortgage. The nephew agrees to compensate Vanessa after the house is sold. Vanessa explains that she and Abby had agreed that she would stay on there. Unfortunately, Abby never stated this in a will. The nephew considers letting Vanessa stay there and "pay rent." Vanessa explains again that she already paid off the mortgage. The nephew complains about the inheritance tax he'll have to pay if the house isn't sold right away. Vanessa calmly registers her eviction from her home of thirty years by this odious geek, because she's a living saint. Elizabeth, who'd left the room to boil water for tea, joins them. She covets the teapot and wonders aloud if it was Abby's. Then she blathers about doing an inventory of the entire house. Her husband looks uncomfortable and tells her that they should just leave the furniture for now, because Vanessa wants to "stay on." Elizabeth makes a beeline for those symbolic bird figurines. She patronizes Vanessa about the loss of her "good friend," and out of the kindness of her antique-grubbing heart, she offers to let Vanessa pick a figurine as a keepsake. Vanessa, refusing to lose her composure, excuses herself to go into the kitchen. Elizabeth notices the white spaces on the walls where photos used to be. When Vanessa re-enters the room, the nephew has found some savings bonds of Abby's; he'll cash them, and that will help Vanessa with the rent. Vanessa changes the subject by asking the nephew to help her out by putting away the ladder that's still lying on the ground in the backyard.