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, elm-lined 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 only 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 navy-blue 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.
Nikki added more hot water to her bath and closed her eyes. She remembered her first Halloween in Palmer Woods. How she’d gone and bought three bags of candy, even though she’d seen very few children in the neighborhood.
That Halloween had been particularly cold, and she’d wondered how the children were going to show off their angel wings and Superman capes if they were bundled up like Eskimos. She’d just come home from work and barely had a bowl of soup before the doorbell rang.
She’d put on her witch’s hat and run to the door, expecting to see tiny tots hollering, “Trick or Treat!” Instead, there were adults and teenagers, most with only a half-cocked attempt at a costume — the stark white face paint of the “Dead Presidents,” or a terrifying Freddy Krueger mask — holding out a pillowcase for candy. They came in droves all night, kids tumbling out of buses and church vans, and the hungry adults vying with them for the best candy.
The enormity of it had shocked and depressed her. As she opened the door, some of them peeked inside. “You have a nice house,” they’d said and she’d blushed, Marie Antoinette doling out her little pieces of cake.
Within an hour after sunset, she’d given away all of her candy and had started combing the kitchen for bags of chips, apples, anything. She’d finally closed the door and turned off all of the lights, trembling. And still, the footsteps came.
This was Detroit. A city where there was no place to hide.
“Nikki? Nikki!”
Suddenly came her husband’s voice on the stairs — the front stairs — his keys jangling in his hand. Nikki felt a wash of relief. “I’m in the tub getting ready. Where were you?”
“On an international conference call, couldn’t get away to call you. Sorry.”
Just like that, there he was grinning in the doorway, his teal silk tie setting off his russet complexion.