by E. J. Olsen
The Lincoln fired up on first crank. An anomaly. Barry let it warm while he cleared its layer of covering snow. The car normally didn't start and go straight to its high idle, usually it fluttered and knocked at start-up like the weak heart of an old man being resuscitated. But the car seemed brand new as Barry cleaned it with a whisk broom and scraper. He could remember his father bringing this car home in '73, tickled pink that he finally owned a Lincoln.
There were no cars where Barry was parked. He got in and gassed the Mk V a few times, then he dropped it in drive and kicked it. The snow tires shot a long rooster tail into the rearview. The lot was slick, icy underneath, but utterly desolate except for a skeleton third shift. The only other vehicle in the outskirts was Vernon Reed's Buick Regal, broken and cin-derblocked since summer when he transferred to midnights. Barry got crazy: reckless donuts, power slides, spins induced by oversteer. He considered this a fine end to the shift.
He took the main road out from the foundry, and caught himself smiling in the rearview as he went. The year's first blizzard put a slowness over the city, like a hex had been cast on Detroit. There was an utter lack of urgency in anyone not driving a salt truck. The few other people that had to be out were mostly other shift workers headed home, trudging along purposefully, sliding to stops, spinning at starts.
Perfect, this fraction of time. To Barry it placed him in a free zone, a brief space, a world outside the one of responsibility that seemed born with his daughter like her twin. He wondered if he was just making a big deal out of all of this. He wondered if things were okay with the phone being busy and all. He wondered if he should even be entertaining the thought of stopping by the Shamrock for a beer. Did it make him a bad person? A rotten husband? A drunk? But without much more thought, Barry announced to his father's plastic hula girl—always a freakish sight, but especially against a snowy backdrop—that he was stopping for a quick beer and a shot. He would call home from there.
Just like he promised, Barry order a beer and a Beam back. He showed Hal, the owner and a regular acquaintance, obligatory baby pictures. Barry accepted a second, congratulatory shot from Hal. It was the good stuff—single batch bourbon—stuff he didn't share with the patrons. Barry got a dollar's worth of quarters for the juke box which sat sad and quiet in the corner, like it was serving out a punishment. But as a plow truck scraped by the bar's front window, Barry got a guilty feeling. After a moment, he pocketed the coins and checked his watch. Almost 12:00; too late to ring the phone. He cashed out, said good night, left a nice tip, then cursed himself for stopping on an evening such as this. He felt sure Sera would be freaked as he angled the Lincoln back to the drag.
He thought back to a time right before the two of them got married. They were dating and had stopped at Micky D's after pricing air compressors from Sears.
"You want kids?" she asked as she popped a chicken nugget into her mouth.
"Yeah. Absolutely—kids. But not, like, until I'm finished with school and have a good job. I mean, anything but the foundry, really. But yeah, definitely, kids. Definitely with you." They craned across the bench seat of his truck for a kiss that tasted of hot mustard and fryer oil while driving up the Lodge. Only five years back, but Barry reckoned the past in dog years. It seemed like he'd uttered those words more than thirty years ago.
The salt trucks and plows had hit the main thoroughfares, but the Lincoln was rear wheel and open differential. It made even slightly slippery a chore. Barry now drove carefully on the remnant ice. He cursed himself for losing track of time, for stopping at the bar. It was just after midnight. Why didn't he just call from there? He could see the low, full moon through patchy clouds and breaks in the sky. He turned off the radio and tried to concentrate on the road, but not the moon. It was bigger than him, and it sat just above his hood like a deluxe option his father had ordered for the vehicle when it rolled off the line. Barry sat back in the bucket seat as he got a good, clear view. He was iffy, and prepared to ask the moon for answers, but stopped short as the dead rock looked back stupid, offering nothing but luminescence.
He pulled onto Avalon from Van Born and noticed the streetlamps were out. The block was dark, then the next, and the next. No house lights, just the beams from the Lincoln cutting a path Barry could drive in his sleep. He moved through the old streets and turned into the cleaned and salted drive. Mr. Burns had indeed come by and ran the snowblower over everything. That old man and his snowblower. Sera must have shoveled the steps and porch.
The porch light was off and Barry knew he was in trouble, as the light was always left on. The house was colder than normal. On the kitchen table, a large candle sat on an old stone plate. The three wicks flicked with the drafts from outdoors. A note lay on the clean Formica table top near the candle.
Honey,
Electricity went out about 10
Leftover plate in the oven
Should still be warm
Milk in fridge
Kara is in our room tonite
Love,
S.
Barry ate quietly, by the light of the candle: a plate of cold roast beef, dab of brown gravy, cold redskin potatoes with onions, milk from the carton still cold in the fridge.
He soaked the dishes in water; carried the candle into the downstairs bathroom, where he showered. He checked his watch on the way up to bed: 12:55.
The bedroom seemed warmer to Barry, yet utterly dark without the glow of the digital clock. His calm child slept in her crib, and his wife, soundly in their bed. The two of them breathed soft and patterned in unison as he did everything not to wake them. The quilt his mother-in-law had made by hand had emerged from its seasonal retreat. Barry pulled himself so softly into bed. His wife spoke in half-sleep as she stirred to face away from him.
"I was worried," she mumbled. A long second passed, then another. "Couldn't stay awake though," she said. A moment drifted by and Sera asked with a sleepy concern, "What time is it, baby?"
"It's not too late," Barry whispered as he pulled up next to her. "Eleven-thirty." He repeated, "Not too late," and mimicked her shape while nuzzling in search of what was still good in the world. He listened for some time expecting something, anything, but heard only the tiny signs of patterned life en-gulfing the small, dark room.
NIGHT COMING
BY DESIREE COOPER
Palmer Woods
Why doesn't the key fit?
Nikki hesitated for a second in the early dusk, wondering if she was at the right house—whether the hundred-year-old, rambling Tudor was really where she lived. She put down her briefcase, and looking around nervously, laid her black leather purse down beside it so that she could try the key with both hands.
Nikki had left work early hoping to avoid just this kind of meeting between herself, a locked door, and sundown. The spiral topiaries flanking her front door stood mute. She flinched as a squirrel darted across the damp cedar mulch.
"Damn!" she said out loud, jiggling the key impatiently in the swollen lock. "Damnit all!"
It was stupid, she knew, but suddenly she wanted to cry. Maybe it was the tension that had built up during the desperate rush home to meet Jason, only to see that he hadn't made it there yet, the house disappearing into blackness, the porch cold and unlit.
Maybe it was because she didn't really want to go with him to the Diaspora Ball after all. They went to the benefit for African American art at the museum every year. She was tired, feeling nauseous. Couldn't they skip it, just this once?
Stemming easy tears, she gathered her things and clomped to the back of the house, her sleek pumps crushing the brittle leaves in her wake. The motion-sensitive lights along the side of the house blinked on, holding her startled in their beams.
Entering the backyard, Nikki scanned it quickly: the brick barbeque pit, the teak outdoor furniture, the star-white mums offering a last bloom before frost.
No one was there.
Of course no one's back here, she thought, sniffling courageously. This neig
hborhood is safe.
It was as if the house had been waiting for those magic words, for her hands to turn the key with patience, for her clammy palm to push open the door, for her feet to tread cautiously into the warmth of the kitchen.
"Whew," Nikki blew, immediately flipping on the light and locking the door behind her. Putting the briefcase down, she kicked off her pumps and rolled down her panty hose, which, of late, seemed to be even more confining.
Hungrily, she opened the refrigerator. It was typical of DINKS—couples with double income, no kids. Leftover Chinese, a bottle of Fat Bastard Chardonnay, fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, Diet Coke.
Nikki eyed the wine but thought the better of it, slamming the door. Instead, she took out a box of Cheerios from the pantry and munched to quell her nervous stomach.
Just a few handfuls, she promised herself, glancing at the clock. Jason will be home soon and we'll eat dinner at the party.
She dialed him on his cell, but got his voicemail. Shrugging, she picked up her purse and briefcase and went to the front of the house to turn on the lights.
5:30 p.m. It wasn't like Jason to be late without letting her know where he was—especially these days. Nikki paced before the leaded glass windows of the living room, her mind racing.
Maybe there's been an accident, she thought. Maybe he'll never walk again. Maybe he's …
"He's just running late," she said out loud, her voice echoing around the vaulted ceiling. She tried Jason's cell again. No answer.
Making her way across the marble foyer to the den, she turned on the lights in each room as she passed. The quivers returned to unsettle her stomach. Her muscles drew taut like a cat's. Placing her briefcase on the coffee table, Nikki plopped on the leather sofa. She tried to concentrate on the paperwork she'd brought home, but stopped after only few minutes. It was futile. The words had no meaning. She felt like an actress, improvising busyness for some invisible audience.
Every once in a while, Nikki touched the back of her neck where her short black hair lay in soft curls against her chai tea skin. Had she imagined that swift puff of air—a stranger's warm breath?
She thought about Jason's bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator and was tempted to dash back through the empty house to take a sip. Instead, she picked up the remote, turning on the design channel. But soon she found her attention shifting from the flat-screen TV to the neighborhood security truck outside, its yellow patrol lights splitting the night.
"You'll love it in Detroit," Jason had said about his hometown.
That was five years ago, only weeks after they'd graduated from Emory's business school. Nikki remembered the wide grin on Jason's handsome chestnut face as he'd flapped open his offer letter from General Motors. She'd thrown her arms around him, her heart clutching. Her mediocre grades had left her without similar options.
Nikki's mother had cried when she'd found out her baby girl was moving from Atlanta to Detroit, of all places. Nikki had cried, too, as she'd followed Jason to the Motor City, red-eyed and rudderless.
The newlyweds had sublet a loft in the Cass Corridor next to Wayne State University that first summer. Jason had convinced her that it would be a hip place to live, a place where the hookers coexisted with organic bakeries and socialist bookstores.
For Nikki, Detroit had been her first real adventure. Raised by a black middle-class Atlanta family, she'd walked on the debutante stage at sixteen and graduated from Spelman University at twenty with a marketing degree—the third woman in her family to attend the historically black women's college. She'd applied to Emory to assuage her parents, who'd kept asking, "What are you going to do now?" Her performance at Emory was lackluster, reflecting both her ambivalence to business school and her waning interest in marketing. But when she'd met Jason Sykes, a well-heeled Detroiter who had a way with numbers and women, she decided that her investment in graduate school would pay off in one way that she hadn't predicted. She married him after their first year.
She'd been immediately seduced by the side of Detroit that never made newspaper headlines. There was the large, tight-knit black upper class, with their galas and vacations on Martha's Vineyard. In addition, there were the unbelievably long July days when the sun didn't set until after 9 p.m. During her first summer, the city seemed to be in permanent celebration with endless concerts, happy hours, ethnic foods, and festivals.
Maybe Jason was right, Nikki had thought. Detroit just gets a bad rap.
But being from Atlanta, she had no way of knowing that she was experiencing only a seasonal euphoria. As summer turned to fall, a paralyzing darkness encroached upon the city. By December, it seemed to cut the afternoons in two. Nikki found herself leaving the house in the morning and coming home at night without ever seeing the sun. For months on end, the drag of winter circled from gray to black, then back again.
Thankfully, she'd landed a position as a private banker with a suburban boutique bank that first fall. The high-powered job helped rescue her mood.
Their second year, they'd bought in the exclusive Palmer Woods, the same integrated, ritzy neighborhood where Jason had grown up. Despite her privileged upbringing, Nikki had a hard time comprehending the wealth that the stately homes represented.
"The Archbishop of the Detroit Archdiocese lived there," Jason had said, pointing to a sprawling estate that looked more like a castle than a house. "Then one of the Pistons moved in—can you believe it? And that's the old Fisher mansion."
Fisher, she realized, as in Alfred Fisher, the auto baron. As in one of the many car moguls who blossomed in Detroit in the early twentieth century. Jason was full of stories like that, stories that made her think of the neighborhood of stone mansions, carriage houses, and English gardens as something out of a fairy tale.
"During World War II," he said, "people had to wall off entire sections of their homes to save energy. Neighborhood patrols went around at night and knocked on people's doors if any light was showing through the windows. Some people filled their attics with sand in case the roof caught on fire." When Nikki looked at him quizzically, he added, "Air raids."
Their own house had only three owners, the last of whom had sealed the drafty milk chute and turned the maid's quarters into an exercise room. But it was the back staircase—the one that went from the maid's room to the kitchen—that had given Nikki pause.
"Why would we need that nowadays?" she'd asked as they considered putting down an offer.
Jason had looked at her and shrugged. "I don't know. A secret escape route?"
It had been just a joke, but many nights since, Nikki had been lying awake imagining herself scampering down the back stairs, away from an intruder. Or worse, an intruder creeping up the hidden staircase to where they lay sleeping.
Nikki had quickly filled the den, dining room, and master bedroom with furniture from mail order catalogs—the working couple barely had time for grocery shopping, much less interior decorating. They left the rest of the sprawling Tudor echoing and empty. On weekends, she and Jason spent Sundays trolling for antiques to accent the other rooms in the century-old house.
But deep down, Nikki worried that escape would be harder when weighed down with useless things.
Outside, a car pulled up in the driveway, the headlights forming prison shadows through the blinds.
Jason! Nikki thought. But before she could get up, the car backed out, then headed in the opposite direction down the winding, elmlined street.
She sighed heavily, pushing aside her briefcase, hating herself for being so clingy. She'd rushed out of her suburban office at 5:00 so that she could beat the Friday afternoon traffic and meet Jason at home. She was always tired these days, and had hoped they'd have a couple hours to unwind before getting to the Diaspora Ball by 8:00.
Now it was nearly 6:30, according to the dull green readout on the cable box. I guess I should get ready, she sighed.
Her footfalls made the refinished wood stairs creak. She laughed at herself for wondering—if onl
y for a second— whether the sounds were coming from someone else lurking inside the old house.
She went into the bathroom, with its white pedestal sink and claw-footed tub. Running the hot water, she slowly took off her navyblue knitted suit. She couldn't help but notice the slight bulge of her stomach, which made her self-conscious even though it was easily hidden beneath her straight-cut jackets.
She hated being vulnerable in the bathtub with only the sounds of the settling house to keep her company. She thought about turning on the television in the master bedroom, or putting on some Miles Davis, but what if someone tried to break in and she couldn't hear?
Jason will be home soon, she thought.
The warm water was like a baptism. She breathed in the lavender aroma of the suds, and let her shoulders relax. Sometimes she could be so silly, she knew.
When had she become a woman afraid to stay alone in her own house?
It was the news. The constant stories of car jackings and murders. The endless stream of black men in mug shots, or bent low with their hands cuffed, getting into the back of police cruisers.
No, it wasn't just the news, it was the way the different social classes bumped up against each other in Detroit. In Atlanta, this house—all 5,000 square feet of it—wouldn't come with a neighborhood, but with horses and a long, gravel driveway. And even if it came with neighbors, it wouldn't come with poor ones.