"safe house"

“Oh, we couldn't impose — ”

“Of course you could. Come in, come in. Sit down.”

Lawrence Avery's house looked like it had seen a lifetime. Everything in the afternoon sunlight filtering through the windows took on a golden-brown haze, warm and soft battered furniture blending together wood tones and leather. Books lined the walls. Somewhere, peering from a doorway beyond the entrance hall, you could just see the blind staring eyes of an old merry-go-round horse, rescued from a fire, burnished blackened edges and chipped paint hide, just stepped out of somewhere magical.

Upstairs, Doris thought, leading her husband over the threshold, there has to be a wardrobe that would lead to Narnia. And she smiled to herself from the thought.

Doris and Howard followed Mr. Avery into his kitchen, all murmuring politeness and thanks and oh-you-really-don't-have-tos, and perched themselves on stools at his dining nook and gratefully accepted two steaming mugs of black coffee.

“What brings you two by to visit an old man like me on a nice sunny day like this?” His voice was as warm as the sunlight, and any self-deprecation or accusation that might have accompanied those words was vanished by his smile.

“Go on, Howard,” Doris said. “Ask him.”

“Well, there's something that we wanted to ask you. A favor, really. On behalf of the whole neighborhood.”

“The whole neighborhood?” Lawrence's eyebrows raised as he raised his mug to his lips. “Really, now.”

Howard looked uncomfortably at Doris, but she wouldn't rescue him. She let him continue. “Well, I really hope it wouldn't be an imposition.”

“Nonsense. What is it?”

“Well — have you seen the papers recently?”

“No. No, I can't say as I have. I don't pay nearly as much attention to newspapers as I used to.”

Doris finally spoke. “There have been a couple of little girls gone missing recently.”

For a moment, no one spoke. There was no movement in the kitchen aside from the lazy spirals of dust motes in sunbeams.

“I can't say as I've seen that,” Lawrence said. He took another slow sip of coffee. “I don't pay nearly as much attention to newspapers as I used to. You folks are worried about your little Claudia, I imagine.”

“Yes,” Howard said flatly. “We've talked to her a little, of course. All the parents have talked to their children — but Claudia's only five. We can tell her not to talk to strangers, but . . . . ”

“Of course, of course. Can't be too careful with strangers these days.”

“No. But how much of that is going to sink in? How much is she really going to understand? She's only five.”

“I see. You've got a good point.” He finished his coffee, rinsed out the mug at the sink, and put it in the dishwasher. “So what is it you want me to do?”

“Well — ” This time Howard looked helplessly at Doris.

“It's something we saw on television,” she said. “We haven't talked to the police yet, but we've talked to the other parents, and we're all agreed it's a good idea. Your name kept coming up — a lot of people know you.”

Lawrence smiled. “You're not the only couple who'll let me talk their ear off at the Sunday brunch at Becky's Cafe.”

They all shared a laugh.

“You've made a lot of friends here, Mr. Avery,” Howard said. “People trust you more than some folks who were born here. And we need someone centrally located, someone who's home most of the time . . . . ”

“That would be me,” Lawrence admitted. “If I'm out anywhere, it's usually just out back in my garden. 'Cept Sunday mornings, of course.” He gathered their empty mugs and asked, “More coffee?”

They both shook their heads, murmured no-thank-yous.

“But come on now — I hope we're not going to talk all morning and not say anything. What is it exactly you're asking?”

Doris took a deep breath. “We'd like to designate this a safe house.”

“A safe house.”

“Yes. Somewhere that, when children were in trouble, they could go for help. If they're approached by some stranger and their parents aren't around.”

Another moment of silence.

“I see.”

“I realize we're asking a lot,” she said quickly. “It's a lot of responsibility, and we don't know all the details of how this would work, yet, we haven't talked to the police, I just saw it on television the other night, but we wanted to ask you — “

“No, no, it's all right. I'm glad you did. It's just a lot to think about, that's all.”

“Sure. I'm sure it is.” Howard stood up. “If you want time to think about it, I'm sure we can — ”

“No. No, that's all right.” Lawrence motioned for him to sit back down. “Of course I will,” he said. The smile was back. “How can I say no?”

Doris and Howard looked at each other, echoing his smile, relieved, relaxing, shoulders slumping forward like cut-string puppets. His hand reached for hers, affection and support.

“How is your little Claudia these days, anyway?” Lawrence said. “You sure you won't have more coffee?”

+   +   +  

When they were gone . . . .

It took all afternoon for them to leave. They did have More Coffee and Howard even shared a cigarette on the old man out on the back porch as Doris went to day care to pick up Claudia.

Claudia was happy to see Lawrence as always and she let Lawrence bounce her on his knee and make up silly rhymes for her with nonsense words that looped back on themselves.

Doris and Howard talked to him about all kinds of things, from the construction they were doing up on the highway to how the service at Becky's just wasn't as good as it used to be.

“How come you've never had children of your own, Mr. Avery?” Doris asked him at one point. She'd asked him this before — she never seemed to remember that she'd asked him on more than one occasion. Probably because he never gave her a good answer.

“Oh, never saw much call for it,” he said, and gave her another sunlit golden-brown smile.

“You just seem so good with kids,” she said back.

“Other people's kids,” he laughed. “There's always people having babies. There's always enough children around. And I can send them home with their parents when they get cranky, isn't that right, Claudia?” And he bounced her on his knee some more.

That must have been enough of an answer for Doris, since she stopped asking. They talked about the President instead, and the weather.

Nice kids. They really were. Nice young couple. Sweet young daughter.

But when they were gone —

Lawrence watched them leave. Hand kept carefully steady just barely lifting the curtain aside, peering out, watching them — Claudia skipping and bouncing her way down the driveway, Howard and Doris sedate and confident behind her, and he watched them all get into their Saturn and drive off.

The smile left Lawrence's face. Drained away as quickly as the blood would drain from his face if he cut his own throat.

He let the curtain fall, grabbed a screwdriver from the kitchen drawer where he kept his tools, and headed upstairs.

He stood in front of the huge mirror, the one on the back of his dressing table, the table he'd built himself. He looked at himself critically for a moment. When the hell had he gotten that old? When did that happen, exactly?

He looked at his own reflection for a minute, pale and shaken and lined and aged, his face flat and dead and expressionless. Then he let the smile come back, the same smile that had gotten him through his whole life, the smile that had opened doors and hearts and lovers' legs. He had a smile, he knew, that told you that everything was fine. That the whole world was going to be all right and that you didn't have a damn thing to worry about. And it even worked on him, some times, because seeing his own reflection smiling at him like that was absurdly comforting.

He found the screws, deep-set and a little rusted, that held the mirror in place, and began to worry at them with the screwdriver.

The scrapbook was many years gone. It didn't seem safe to have it any more. But he couldn't bear to throw away all the clippings and they were here, they were safe here behind his own reflection —

The mirror was too heavy. He couldn't steady it and ease it out of its moorings; couldn't lower it as smoothly as younger and stronger arms had once lifted it into place. And it quite got away from him and tumbled forward and shattered on the floor.

Seven years. First stupid thought. Seven years bad luck.

He looked up. Had anyone heard? Was anyone going to come and offer help and find all of this and look at the pictures and the words and ask “What's all this, Lawrence — ?”

He headed downstairs — quickly, he could still do this like a young man, he thought, he could barely feel the old pain in his hip at all, he could still move and run and feel the adrenaline rise like no time had passed at all, like he had nailed the hands to the clock years ago and refused to let the earth keep turning —

And he made it to his front door and looked outside.

Nothing. No one. Not a door opened, not a window raised like a questioning eyebrow. His neighbors hadn't heard anything.

It was why he liked the neighborhood — houses a respectful distance apart. It was why he liked the house — a warm and safe and quiet nest with an attic full of trunks and blankets and old things and walls stuffed thick with fat old insulation and lined on the inside with leatherbound books. He could go back upstairs and scream his damn fool head off if he wanted to and no one would hear it.

He let the door slip shut behind him, leaned against it, breathing heavily. A boyish giggle bubbling up inside him.

He went back upstairs. Back up to his collection.

Neglected terribly all these years. Faded yellow and crackling dry, picked out from among mirror shards, all these scraps of newsprint like so many memories, bearing headlines from a city a long way away from here. He laid them out carefully on his bed and cried over each one.

Oh, my children. My beautiful children. I haven't seen you in so long.

The photos were like ghosts. They didn't do any justice at all. But he remembered. He could see each one, and he could look at the black and white pictures and see with perfect clarity how blue little Allan's eyes had been, how red the velvet ribbon in little Molly's hair.

He didn't pay nearly as much attention to newspapers as he used to.

He could remember how that red velvet ribbon had felt in his hands as he slipped it down over Molly's giggling face, a perfect simple blindfold, we're going to play a little game, a little hide and seek.

Enough. Enough of this.

He scooped up the newspaper scraps in one hand, looked down at the mirror scraps on the floor, only just now noticed that he'd cut himself in his haste.

He had to clean all this up. Put in a new mirror. Make the place presentable. This was going to be a safe house, now. A safe house for all the little children to come to him.

A little shiver ran through him at the thought. Children, alone, maybe in pairs, maybe a whole train of them, a stream, led right to his door, as if by some unseen Pied Piper. Children on his doorstep, in his entrance hall, already deliciously afraid, and here was Grandfather Lawrence to soothe it all away, his wise old face for them to look up at adoringly, his everything's-right-with-the-world smile luring them farther and farther into his nice safe quiet house, just like his smile had made Allan and Molly and Bobby and Janice and all the others into his car, into the woods.

He felt the smile snap into place, as sudden as the cocking of a pistol. He shook his head. Crazy. All of it was crazy. That was another city, another decade, another life. To start it all again was suicide. He'd be caught this time.

But just the thought of it.

Of all those helpless lost little lambs coming right to him.

How could he say no?

He had to clean all this up. He was going to go out, buy a new mirror.

And maybe, he thought, still smiling, a newspaper.