The Safe Room

by B. A. Shapiro

  But Rachel is far too ill to travel and the safe room is not yet complete!

  October 27, 1858 (afternoon)

  As if there were not troubles enough in our little household, another fugitive has arrived at our door. He comes to us with tales of near capture and is dragging a broken leg. Until Dr. Miller can tend to his leg, which is very nasty indeed, this man is no more prepared to travel than Rachel. It is a wonder he was able to elude the slavers and make it here. Papa says it is a sign that God is with us. Despite her claims of deep piousness, Mrs. Harrington is extremely vexed.

  Wendell and Caleb found the man in the barn. Papa says he’s really just a boy, barely twenty, but he looks twenty-five to me. His name is Silas Person, and he hails all the way from Louisiana. It is easy to see from the manner in which he handles his pain, that he is a strong and brave man. He is also very handsome, but his smile is so sad. He too had a white father.

  Wendell and Caleb work on the safe room as much as they dare, and often Wendell takes tea with me in the late afternoon. He is a nice enough boy, but I cannot in all truth say I am much taken with him. I wish Mama were here to advise me. Is it necessary to be taken with a man to become his wife? I feel in my heart that it is, but think that it may not be. Nancy reminds me of the goodness of Wendell’s soul and the fine house he shall build for his bride. I wonder what Mama would counsel.

  Every day, Papa takes a stroll about town to show that he is not occupied with anything more than acquiring a good cigar. I do my featherstitching and tend to our patients as best as I am able. I play with little Chloe, who is the delight of my day. I also keep watch. For unless we find a place to hide our three guests, they will not be guests for long. And we shall be in jail.

  October 27, 1858 (evening)

  Mr. Silas Person (Papa says I should refer to him as such) is a most remarkable man. Although it is evident to any who might see that the condition of his leg causes him great pain, he never utters a word of complaint. He plays with Chloe and makes her laugh so that I am free to nurse Rachel. I pray that Dr. Miller will arrive soon, as I fear infection will set in.

  Mr. Person can also read! I came upon him with his head in one of Caleb’s books, and he confessed that Master William, the eldest son of his master, had taught him when he was just a child. His master knew of it, but never spoke of it, as it is illegal in the South for a Negro to read. The master turned a blind eye to all of this and gave Silas free roam of his library. Mr. Person has read many of our great authors: Hawthorne and Franklin and Thoreau. Even Mrs. Stowe! I dare say he is far better read than I. Perhaps better read even than Caleb or Wendell Parker.

  Mr. Person’s job on the plantation was to be a companion to Master William. In the morning, Mr. Person would work alongside the other house slaves, but in the afternoon, when Master William had finished with his tutor, Mr. Person and Master William would go fishing and hunting and sometimes even drink corn liquor together. Every afternoon, Master William would teach Mr. Person what he learned from his tutor that morning, and now Mr. Person is as educated as any fine gentleman. It is jarring to hear him talk though, for he speaks with the long vowels that bring to mind the speech of the Southern anti-abolitionists.

  October 28, 1858 (morning)

  News has just arrived that Mr. Alexander Lyman, the constable of Concord, has organized a party of men to patrol the forests of Lexington and Concord in search of runaway slaves. Mr. Lyman claims the Fugitive Slave Act decrees it to be every man’s patriotic duty to support slavery, and that those who do not are criminals as common as any thief. He told Mr. Weston Chace that he is coming this way, that he knows all too well what Papa is “up to,” and that he will put Stanton Harden down “by fair means if I can, by foul if I must.” He has dogs with him.

  Papa says he does not care about Mr. Lyman’s blustering, that he is not afraid because he is in the right. When I asked Wendell what he thought of Mr. Lyman’s threats, he told me not to worry my pretty head over such things, assuring me that many strong and wise men were on their side and that neither Papa nor I had anything to fear. But I was not comforted by his words and admitted as much to Mr. Silas Person. To my surprise, Mr. Person said Mr. Lyman and his like are to be feared, but that they can also be beaten.

  After Dr. Miller set his leg, Mr. Person hobbled down the stairs to help Wendell and Caleb finish the safe room. I do not know how he has the strength, but Wendell says he has been of great assistance. And Lord knows Wendell and Caleb need all the assistance they can muster, for Mr. Lyman and his men are certain to be here any moment, and neither Rachel nor Silas is near able to travel.

  October 28, 1858 (afternoon)

  Mrs. Lucretia Child has just arrived at our back door with the news we have been most dreading: Mr. Lyman is at Charles Phillips’ farm, just a short ride from us, and he is headed our way! He told Mrs. Phillips he knows for certain that Rachel and Chloe are here, and that he would be willing to stake his life that the slave from Louisiana, the one they have been tracking since Providence, Rhode Island, is also being harbored under our roof, in defiance of the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America. He claims he shall return “the property to its rightful owners” and “punish all those who believe they are above the law.”

  I imagine I hear the barking of dogs as we hurry our guests into the safe room. The hidden panel still needs another coat of paint, and I cannot imagine how anyone will be fooled. When everyone is concealed, Papa and Caleb settle in the west parlor, and Mrs. Harrington takes the seat across from me in the east parlor, her face as cold as a January night.

  Our darning needles click in the heavy silence, although I mend nothing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Grandma Clara liked to describe herself as a “knee-jerk liberal whose knees don’t jerk as well as they used to,” but her razor-sharp tennis game belied her words—at least the part about her physical condition. And although she also liked to think she wasn’t the grandmother type—she was a terrible cook, wouldn’t be caught dead knitting and was captain of the senior women’s team at her tennis club—there were certain emotions that even the least grandmotherly of grandmothers couldn’t escape. And worrying about my love life was one of Gram’s. I was guessing thoughts of that nature were mingling with her annoyance at my tardiness as she waited with Beth and Michael for Trina and me to get home.

  “So what’s the problem with Michael Ennen?” Gram had asked just that morning, raising a single eyebrow. (As kids, Beth and I used to spend hours in front of my mirror trying to imitate that gesture; Beth finally got it, but I was never able to isolate one eyebrow from the other.) I tried to explain about women not needing a man to define them anymore, about it being the twenty-first century and all, but Gram would have none of it. “Some things don’t change,” she declared. “And a man who is nice to his sick mother will be nice to his wife.” I had rolled my eyes.

  The squeal of my tires interrupted my thoughts. I was taking the exit off Route 2 a bit too fast, and I hadn’t put air in the tires since I had bought the car from Richie over a year ago.

  “Hey,” Trina shouted as we fish-tailed slightly in the curve. “Just ’cause I said the dead are still hanging out doesn’t mean I’m ready to be one of them.”

  “You really believe all that stuff?” I asked as I drove more slowly toward Lexington Center.

  “Stuff?” Trina’s smile was amused. She was clearly baiting me.

  But I wanted to hear her answer, so I said, “You know, heaven and hell and life after death—that stuff.”

  “I’m not all that sure about the heaven and hell piece, but yeah, shit, there’s got to be an afterlife.”

  “Why?”

  “Look around you, girl—at you, me, the trees. Wouldn’t you say the fact that we’re alive at all, that all this shit is here, is much weirder than thinkin’ we’ll stay that way?”

  I knew her argument didn’t really make sense, but still, I couldn’t immediately come up with
a repudiation. I shrugged.

  “Plus,” Trina said. “There’s got to be more to it than this.”

  That argument made more sense—especially from her point of view. I drove through Lexington Center as fast as I dared. There were these damn crosswalks every half-block, and the law in Massachusetts—which was ignored in Boston, but upheld in Lexington—was that a vehicle must stop for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. Another difference between Boston and Lexington was that the cops in Lexington were far less busy than their big city compatriots—and I had a fistful of crosswalk violations to prove it.

  It was almost four when Trina and I pulled up to Harden House. “Harden House” may sound stuffy and pompous, but that was what we’d called it since I was a kid—and the things learned in childhood are not easily undone. Gram was my mother’s mother, and that side of the family had been blue-blood since the beginning of time. My father’s family, on the other hand, was New York Jewish, coming up the hard way through the garment district and City College. As there hadn’t been a glimmer of dissent among my mother’s relatives when she brought a Jew into the clan, the use of a proper name for a house seems a forgivable transgression.

  In defiance of the pretension of its name, Harden House was rather small and sat close to the road. But it was also beautifully proportioned and classic in design: the consummate black-shuttered, white colonial farmhouse, complete with attached barn and red front door—although crying out for a new coat of paint. At one time, there were acres of land, cows and corn and even a small apple orchard, but over the years the land had been sold off bit by bit, and now the property was similar in size to the quarter-acre lots that abutted it.

  The Hardens were big on lineage and principle, but short on business savvy, and it was sheer inertia that had kept the house in the family for so long. Local prosperity and the quality of Lexington’s school system had increased its value. Michael estimated that, after the renovations and including the furniture—mostly quality pieces the Colonel had imported from France before the Civil War, and no one had bothered to sell or give away—the whole shebang was worth well into seven figures. Although Gram thought Michael could do no wrong, on this point she was sure he was in error. “That’s ridiculous,” she told him. “Bad plumbing, a rotting barn and eight crumbling rooms can’t be worth a million dollars.” “It’s authentic,” Michael had assured her. “Authenticity and walking distance to Lexington Center are worth a lot.”

  When Trina and I came through the back door, Beth and Michael were sitting at the kitchen table drinking iced tea. Gram was leaning against the counter, a carton of milk at her elbow, still in her tennis clothes. She looked pointedly at the clock over my head.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Gram hugged Trina. “I’m in the middle of Having Our Say. Great recommendation. Those Delany sisters are amazing—feisty and smart and so embracing of life despite everything. Bessie and Sadie—vinegar and molasses—I love it. What a perspective they’ve got, 101 and 103, like living through multiple lifetimes. It makes even me feel young.”

  Trina smiled happily. “Figured you’d like it. Jackie By Josie’s cool.”

  I was surprised to hear that Trina and Gram were swapping books: the few times I’d offered Trina a book, she’d refused politely. I had figured she didn’t like to read. “Jackie By Josie?” I asked Gram. “Isn’t that about some woman infatuated with Jackie Kennedy?”

  “I also gave her Le Divorce and a new novella I just read called The Underachiever’s Diary.”

  “Aren’t those a bit frivolous?”

  Gram frowned at me.

  I reached into the refrigerator for the pitcher of iced tea, poured a glass for myself and one for Trina. “Sorry we’re late,” I said to Gram again. “I got stuck at work.”

  “Held captive by WaifHaven?” Beth grinned at Trina. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  Although Beth had a huge heart when it came to her friends and family—she was always making surprise parties, finding the perfect gift, and was the first to drop everything and get to the hospital in any emergency—she was basically a snob. It wasn’t that she was especially prejudiced, or had an aversion to any particular minority, it was just that Beth was very Beth-centered, and poor, black, drug addicts were not part of Beth’s world—despite her own past struggles with prescription diet pills.

  Trina and Gram ignored Beth, continuing their conversation, but I said, “If only there was a haven for the intolerant.”

  Beth turned to Michael. “Lee was always the smart one in the family. Maybe one of these days she’ll get herself a real job.”

  Gram raised an eyebrow. “Interesting comment from a woman whose ‘real’ job is golf and decorating.”

  “You forgot shopping,” I said.

  Beth laughed merrily and waved her manicured fingernails at me. She was unabashedly into things: expensive cars, jewelry, furniture, even her golf clubs were embossed with some fancy-schmancy designer’s logo. “My obsession with image over content,” she called it, adding that it was a damn good thing her husband Russ had taken her advice and sold his software company to Microsoft for stock instead of cash—and then, against all logic, gone back to school to become a dentist. This observation was inevitably followed by a boisterous, bubbling and contagious peal of laughter. Beth was an astounding mass of contradictions: pretentious and a bit ostentatious, but better with a drill and a wire-stripper than any man I knew; overweight and bullying as a child, but svelte and strong and a true friend now; nosy and opinionated, but charming and funny and unfailingly self-aware. She was the older sister my mother had never given me—for both good and ill.

  “You’re just jealous of my impeccable taste,” Beth said.

  I had no response. Beth’s words were true, and we both knew it. I’d always envied her unique style, her flair, and especially the way she carried it off, looking so put together without appearing to have tried. Being around Beth always made me wish I had made that hair appointment or bought those great shoes or noticed the stain on the collar of my blouse before I left the house.

  Michael carefully inspected the clipboard in his hand, all lanky and loose-limbed as he flipped the pages, clearly uncomfortable with our affectionate-antagonistic banter.

  I felt sorry for him. “You don’t have any sisters, do you?”

  “Good guess.” His smile was boyish and appealing, and I noticed one of his front teeth was chipped. “Two brothers.”

  I felt a flush climbing my cheeks and made a rather clumsy, puffed-up production of taking a sip of iced tea. I didn’t look at Trina.

  “I have to show Beth and Trina something upstairs,” Gram said to Michael. “Why don’t you and Lee get started, and we’ll catch up with you later?” She smiled sweetly at me.

  “What do you have to show them?” I asked suspiciously.

  Michael jumped from his chair before Gram could answer. “Sounds good,” he said to Gram. “The inspection’s next Monday, and we’ve got to make a decision about filling the hole in the foundation—fast.” He turned to me and his dimples flashed. “Want to start with the cellar? I’ll show you what I’ve done to shore up the safe room.”

  “The cellar?” I hated the cellar. It was small and mean and dark, and the clammy smell of long-dead animals rose from the dirt floor like cold fog off a swamp. The ceiling was low and lit by bare bulbs spaced so far apart that the walls were draped in shadow. Knee-high mounds of dirt pimpled the hard-packed ground, and despite a few halfhearted attempts, no one seemed to be able to figure out where they had come from. “How about we start somewhere else?”

  “Beware of the woman with the iron teeth!” Beth taunted in the same sing-song voice she had used to torment me when we were kids. She raised her hands in front of her face and transformed her long, blood-red fingernails into menacing claws. Her eyes gleamed with the gloating pleasure I remembered all too well.

  I stuck out my tongue at her. The woman with the iron teeth was the mistress of the cellar
, the evil witch of my youth, the antagonist of my dreams. According to Beth and her brother Tommy, the woman with the iron teeth lived in the tunnel behind the small root cellar, and she loved to eat little girls whose first names began with “L.”

  My mother maintained it was Beth and Tommy—and the woman with the iron teeth—who were responsible for my childhood nightmares and sleepwalking, but I’d always been afraid I’d inherited the crazy Harden gene. This gene had caused at least one Harden woman in every generation to experience a “breakdown” in which she heard voices, saw people who weren’t there and spent a lot of time wandering around the house talking to the walls. “Dotty” Aunt Hortense, as she was affectionately known in the family, had walked off the roof after a particularly spirited encounter with no one. As of yet, none of my female cousins had been committed, and as far as I knew, none were even on Prozac.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Gram said, shaking her head. “I swear, Beth, sometimes you act just like that mean little girl you used to be.” Then she turned her exasperated gaze to me. “And you can’t possibly still think there’s anything down there that will harm you.”

  Once, when I was about eight, I had seen a huge rat in the cellar, and now the hairs on the back of my neck rose at the memory of that disgusting tail disappearing into the fieldstone foundation. I rubbed my arms and avoided Gram’s eyes.

  Beth grinned wickedly. “Michael will protect you,” she said. Then she grabbed Gram and Trina by the hands and pulled them from the kitchen.

  Trina was annoyed, but she let Beth drag her into the dining room anyway. She knew the cousin didn’t do well with contradiction, and it didn’t seem worth it to start up all that squawking. But as soon as she could, she yanked her arm from the spiky grasp, though she had to admit the cousin’s fingernails were awesome: long and square and painted a dark, sparkly red. Trina pulled herself to a stop in front of the fireplace and stared at the carved mantelpiece, not wanting Clara to see how pissed off she was.