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
Upstairs. Elizabeth, that harridan, is measuring Vanessa and Abby's conjugal bed. The daughter finds an old photo in a drawer of Abby and Vanessa in male drag. They're perplexed. Vanessa appears. She takes the photo and tersely replies that it was taken at "a costume party." Elizabeth and daughter decide to go downstairs. Elizabeth argues with her husband about letting Vanessa stay on in the house. The little girl finds an anvil, er, a broken eggshell that's been dropped outside the birdhouse. Elizabeth sends the girl inside to go get one of the symbolic bird figurines. The daughter hesitates, because they're the "old lady's." Elizabeth tells her to go inside and loot the place anyway. Upstairs. The girl, still carrying the eggshell, hears Vanessa sobbing and wailing loudly in the master bedroom, while clutching Abby's pajamas. The girl walks into the room as if she owns the place. Like mother, like daughter. The girl shows Vanessa the eggshell. Vanessa surmises that the eggs are hatching in the birdhouse. The girl hands Vanessa a handkerchief from the dresser, and says it was "Aunt Abby's, but you can have it." Vanessa finally starts getting cross and explains, "Little girl, it is not for you to say what I can and cannot have. And it's not for your parents to tell you what you can take." The girl is sorry. Vanessa tells her that it's all right for her to keep the binoculars -- she never got to know her great-aunt. Downstairs. Elizabeth is packing up all of the symbolic bird figurines. We cut between her pillaging and Vanessa's singing of Abby's praises to the little girl. As Elizabeth swipes Abby's stuff and a rain of anvils falls from the sky, Vanessa explains how "kind" Abby was and how "she hated to see anything suffer. She kept a hospital for the birds and mice she rescued from her cat. They all survived, those fragile little creatures." The nephew wants to have "a word" with Vanessa. She fixes her hair and composes herself before joining him in the living room. She notices the empty bird figurine table but bites her tongue, because she's a saint. The nephew explains that due to "taxes and upkeep" she'll have to relocate. Just then the daughter comes back in from outside; she's found a birdling that's fallen out of the nest. Her father explains that she should just discard it, because it's "not supposed to make it." Ah, anvilicious! He sends Elizabeth and the girl out of the room while he continues his discussion with Vanessa. He'll wait to put the house on the market until he knows that Vanessa is settled elsewhere. Vanessa FINALLY gets her dander up and delivers this fine monologue which had me weeping all over again: "If you knew your aunt at all, you knew about all the marvelous things she did and how good she was . . . and funny . . . and tender . . . and brave, and smart. If you knew how hard she worked just to find a little peace in this life . . . if you knew her at all, then you'd know what she wanted. This wasn't it. No, my dear -- this certainly wasn't it."