The Last Refuge

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Shaved it off.’ Michael nodded knowingly. ‘Tragic. A casualty of learning how to use a straight razor.’

  I smothered a laugh with my napkin.

  ‘So, that’s how it’s going to work,’ Jack muttered from the opposite end of the table.

  Melody looked up from her plate where she’d been rearranging her fried potatoes, constructing little mounds. ‘How’s what going to work, Father?’

  ‘Attention, everyone!’ Jack waited until all eyes were turned in his direction, then addressed me directly. ‘Mrs Ives, this message is signed by “Founding Father,” who informs me that the new styles from France are in at the dressmaker’s in Cornhill Street. You and Melody are to be measured for a gown at eleven o’clock this morning. You’re to take your maid with you.’

  Melody’s fork clattered to her plate. ‘I’m going to have a gown made? Awesome!’

  By ‘maid’ I presumed he meant Amy. I also presumed this meant the whole expedition would be recorded by Derek and/or Chad, one of whom had just sidled around to Jack’s end of the table, all the better to zoom in on my smiling face as I said, ‘I’d be delighted, sir.’

  ‘How about Melody’s schooling, sir?’ Michael asked. ‘She’s to be starting Greek at ten.’

  Melody frowned. ‘Greek? Oh. My. Boring. God!’

  Donovan scowled at his daughter, then waved a languid, lace-trimmed sleeve. ‘Get her started on her Greek then, Rainey, but missing an hour or so of lessons isn’t going to hurt her.’

  Melody pressed her pudgy hands together and beamed.

  And so, on the instructions of Founding Father, our first outing began. I wore my green, Amy her blue, and Melody turned up wearing a gown of softest gray. We’d tied broad-brimmed straw hats over our mob caps, of course, and pulled gloves over our hands so no neighborhood gossips could titter over their teacups that we were ‘no better than they should be.’ We strolled down the narrow sidewalk, single-file (how else?) with Chad, the cameraman trotting along behind.

  The twenty-first-century people we passed were curious, but didn’t seem surprised. Tour guides in colonial garb often wandered the streets of Annapolis; we were three among many. Tourist cameras captured our cheerful little parade up East Street to State Circle – there’d be images of us all over Facebook in half an hour.

  Halfway down Cornhill Street, I pulled Amy aside. ‘I probably missed this email, Amy, but what are we doing about these people, exactly? Do we pretend like it’s 1774 and they haven’t been born yet?’

  ‘What people?’ Amy quipped.

  ‘I get it,’ I said, as we continued on our way. ‘Invisible.’

  Our destination was a little house near Hyde Alley. A sign hung on an iron bar by the door: Mrs Hamilton. Dressmaker. By Appointment Only. We knocked and went inside, setting a bell attached to the door frame jangling.

  ‘Oh!’ Melody’s gloved hands flew to her mouth.

  LynxE had gone to a lot of trouble to turn someone’s narrow, colonial-era home into a proper dressmaker’s shop. A long table stood to our right, with bolts of cloth stacked up on the end nearest the fireplace. Shelves built along the opposite wall held fabric, too, and hat boxes were stacked in a colorful jumble on top. Bins on a smaller table held buttons and beads, and spools of ribbon – grosgrain and silk – were stored in a corner on upright pegs. In the opposite corner, a beautiful coromandel screen shielded the dressing area from the prying eyes of other customers.

  ‘Welcome, ladies!’ A woman I took to be Mrs Hamilton smiled broadly, trying to concentrate on greeting us, but her eyes kept darting nervously toward the camera. ‘The moppets are here,’ she said. ‘Just wait until you see the latest styles from Paris!’

  Melody’s brow furrowed. ‘Muppets? No way. Kermit? Miss Piggy?’

  ‘Moppets, sweetheart. They’re fashion dolls, dressed in the most beautiful dresses you’ve ever seen.’ Mrs Hamilton unlocked the door of a glass-fronted cabinet and removed two bisque-faced dolls, one wearing a forest-green gown trimmed in gold braid, the other in a creamy vanilla silk confection with hundreds of miniature rosebuds decorating the bodice, hem and sleeves. Two other dolls, one dressed in red the other in a peach and green stripe, remained standing at attention inside the cabinet.

  ‘I want this one,’ Melody said, choosing the doll in the creamy gown, picking it up by the waist and dancing it gently along the tabletop. Her eyes sparkled like a ten-year-old on Christmas morning. ‘I collect dolls, Mrs Hamilton. I started out with Barbies and American Girls. I’ve got a whole lot of Madame Alexanders, too.’ She flipped up the doll’s skirt, examining its underclothing. ‘My specialty is Snow White. I’ve got her by Madame Alexander, Effanbee, Applause and Disney,’ she said, smiling, ticking them off on her fingers.

  Mrs Hamilton chuckled. ‘Oh, the dolls aren’t for sale, sweetheart. They’re just models for the dresses. Samples, if you will.’ She removed the delicate figure gently from Melody’s hands. ‘But you can have a gown made exactly like this one if you like.’

  Wide-eyed, Melody simply nodded.

  ‘Why don’t you measure Melody first,’ I suggested. ‘Is there someplace my maid and I can sit while I wait for you to finish measuring Melody?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mrs Hamilton said, rubbing her hands together briskly, clearly flustered by my request. ‘It’s a lovely day. Would you like to sit out in the garden?’

  ‘That would be splendid,’ I said.

  Mrs Hamilton plucked a silver hand bell off the table and gave it a jingle. A young girl appeared from the back of the house – her daughter, I guessed – her head bowed, smiling shyly. ‘Amanda, will you show Mrs Ives and her maid to the garden, please? And see if they want some tea.’

  ‘That’s very kind, but we’ve only just eaten breakfast,’ I said, as Amanda led us into the (twenty-first century!) kitchen and out through a back door.

  I looked nervously behind me, expecting Chad to be trotting along in our wake, but he’d made an executive decision: viewers would be much more interested in watching a sixteen-year-old strip behind a screen and get measured for a dress than a shop-worn old specimen like me. Besides, LynxE had probably dropped a bundle on decorating the shop, so not one thimble, button or pin could be wasted.

  Mrs Hamilton’s backyard was enclosed by a high fence. From the back door, a winding path led to a miniature rose garden. Amy and I found a green Chippendale bench between a pink hybrid tea and an orangey floribunda and sat down on it. I removed my hat, closed my eyes and lifted my face to the sun. ‘Ah, bliss. Why do I feel as if I’ve been cooped up for ages?’

  Amy laughed. ‘Because you have, if you count Williamsburg.’

  ‘But, look on the bright side, Amy. I now know how to milk a cow.’

  ‘French’s job, or Karen’s, but I guess you’ll do in a pinch. Gabe asked for chocolate milk this morning, by the way, but I had to disappoint him.’

  I opened one eye and looked at her. ‘Don’t we have chocolate?’

  ‘Karen didn’t think so.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’ll put that on the list for when I go to market. Anything else we need?’

  ‘Diet Coke.’

  ‘Ha!’ I said. We sat quietly for a while, enjoying the sun. I think I may even have dozed off, when the familiar tri-tone chime of an iPhone brought me out of my coma. ‘What was that?’

  Next to me, Amy’s skirts rustled. She thrust a hand through the slit in her skirt and into her pocket. It came out holding an iPhone. Amy stared at the phone for a few seconds, then, to my astonishment, started to sob. Deep, shuddering, tearless sobs.

  ‘Amy! What is it?’ I asked stupidly, forgetting for the moment that we weren’t even supposed to have cell phones.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she gasped, her eyes still glued to the tiny screen. ‘It’s not possible! Oh, Hannah, somebody’s fucking with my mind!’

  ‘What?’

  Amy seemed frozen. I pried the iPhone out of her hand. Written in a green text balloon was this message: Alive. Coming
4 U soon. F U tell anyone, they’ll kill me.

  I wrapped my arm around the shivering girl. ‘Your husband?’

  ‘It can’t be. Drew’s dead. The Navy said so.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Hannah, the helo was brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade. It was incinerated. I haven’t seen anything so horrible in my whole life, and CNN ran the footage over and over and over again, interviewed every top military advisor, active duty and retired, as they tried to sort out exactly what happened.’ She drew a jittery breath. ‘Drew’s dead. I’m just waiting for the official paperwork.’

  ‘Screw CNN, Amy. Did the Navy tell you what happened?’

  She nodded miserably. ‘Nazari was supposed to be extracted, but he got shot instead. His people weren’t very happy.’

  ‘Oh, God. I remember.’ I stared at her screensaver for a few moments, a stock photo of the Earth taken from outer space. Swosa was on the other side of that globe, yet we were still feeling the impact of events that happened there months and months ago.

  Amy nudged my arm. ‘Maybe it’s the same goddamn creeps who were harassing me in Virginia Beach.’

  ‘Look, here’s an idea. Why don’t you reply to the text?’ I slipped the phone back into her hand, but she hardly seemed to notice. ‘Ask whoever sent that text message a question that only Drew would know the answer to.’

  Amy considered my suggestion for a moment, her lower lip caught between her teeth. ‘Like what?’

  I thought about the breakin at Amy’s condo and wondered if it and the message she’d just received were related. A few seconds later, I said, ‘Nicknames, pet names, place of birth, mother’s maiden name … security questions like that aren’t any good because anybody who’s really motivated can find out that information by simply walking around your living room.’ As I leaned closer our arms touched and I felt her shiver. ‘Ask him this: where was the first place the two of you had sex?’

  Amy sniggered. ‘OK.’ With a nervous glance over my shoulder in the direction of the dress shop, Amy bent her head over her iPhone and swiped it back on. I watched as she typed: OK. F U Drew, where did we first have sex? She tapped Send. Together we watched the status bar creep along the bottom of the screen as the message went on its way.

  But it didn’t. According to a red exclamation point in a circle on the screen, the send had failed. ‘Shit, it didn’t go.’

  ‘Try it again.’

  Amy tapped the screen, but once again, the send was aborted. This time, a message popped up in a gray balloon: Error Invalid Number. Please re-send using a valid ten-digit mobile number or a valid short code.

  ‘See, I told you. Somebody hates me and is doing this to make me crazy.’

  ‘If Drew is alive and on the run,’ I suggested, grasping at straws, ‘maybe he’s using a satellite phone or a throwaway cell.’

  ‘Ten months ago, I might have believed you, Hannah, but now? If Drew were alive, he would have contacted me long before this. Trust me, this is just some bastard’s idea of a cruel joke.’

  ‘Yoo-hoo! Hannah!’ It was Melody, fully dressed, bouncing on her toes, calling to us from the back door. Chad had backed out of the house and down the steps ahead of her and was filming the whole episode. ‘Wait till you see what I’ve picked out!’

  Amy hastily slipped her iPhone back into her pocket.

  ‘Why did you keep your phone?’ I whispered as we both rose to our feet. I scooped up my hat from the lawn, then linked my arm through hers. ‘You know phones aren’t allowed.’

  ‘Security?’ she said as we hurried to join Melody inside. ‘A lifeline to the outside world?’

  ‘You can walk out of Patriot House any time you want, Amy. We’re not prisoners.’

  I felt her shrug. ‘I’m one of those A-type, adult child of an alcoholic who doesn’t like to admit failure. I’m a workaholic – when I have a job, that is. When we married, Drew and I agreed I’d be a stay-at-home mom.’ She paused, tugged on my arm, holding me back. ‘We were planning on starting a family.’

  Chad executed an about-face and aimed the camera in our direction. Thinking about Amy’s shattered dreams, I wanted to bawl, but I beamed at the camera instead.

  ‘Wanna know how I got the phone past the barbarians at the gate?’ Amy kept her voice low.

  Since I’d considered trying to hold on to my iPhone myself, I felt a bit guilty giving Amy a hard time about it. ‘How?’

  ‘In my shoe.’

  ‘Clever girl.’

  She leaned closer, whispered into my ear. ‘Made me limp a bit, but nobody noticed. Don’t know why I bothered, actually, because of the jamming.

  ‘I wish I were having a gown made, madam,’ she chirped a few seconds later, purely for the benefit of Chad and his camera.

  ‘When my gown is finished, Amy, you may wear my old one to the ball.’

  ‘Oh!’ she gushed. ‘That peachy one with the flowers on it?’

  ‘The very one.’

  Amy flung out her arms and wrapped me in an impetuous hug. ‘Oh, madam, thank you! That will be wonderful!’

  Chad zoomed in for a close-up, but I didn’t pull away. Even in 1774, hugging one’s maid couldn’t have been a sin. And if anyone needed a hug at that moment, it was Miss Amy Cornell.

  That evening after supper – as was the colonial custom – the women, Amy, Melody and I, prepared to retire to the parlor leaving the men, Jack, Michael and Alex, to linger over their port in the dining room, smoking their pipes and hand-rolled cigars. Gabe had fallen asleep in his chair, clutching a pack of cards, having exhausted himself (and his audience) with fledgling feats of legerdemain.

  Using a little silver bell, I summoned French to begin clearing away the dishes. Jeffrey slouched in behind her, carrying a wooden box which he opened and offered to Jack. ‘Cigar, sir?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Jack replied, leaning forward to peer into the box. He selected one of several long, cylindrical-shaped objects that looked more like mummified ape fingers than cigars. ‘Rolled ’em myself,’ he said, sliding a candlestick across the tablecloth and using the flame to light the loathsome object.

  ‘French, would you please take young Houdini up to bed?’ I asked.

  As French left the dining room with a drowsy Gabe, Alex made a face at the acrid cloud of burning tobacco smoke wafting in his direction. ‘I didn’t think cigars were invented until sometime in the eighteenth century,’ he commented, reaching for a European-style pipe with orange and brown geometric designs incised around its belly-shaped bowl.

  ‘Nope.’ Jack drew smoke into his mouth, held it there for a moment, then let it escape in a thin stream from between pursed lips. ‘Cigars arrived here in 1762 with a fellow named Israel Putnam who’d been serving with the British army in Cuba when they captured Havana.’ He gazed at the glowing tip of his cigar like a proud father. ‘My tobacconist on Maryland Avenue was able to acquire some for me.’

  Michael began stuffing the bowl of a plain white clay pipe with tobacco, tamping the leaves down with his thumb. ‘Thank God I don’t have to inhale,’ he said as Jeffrey touched a burning taper to the bowl and Michael fired it up.

  I rose, fanning the smoke away from my face with my hand, suppressing a cough as I said, ‘Well, if you gentlemen will excuse us.’

  A few minutes later, I settled down in the parlor with a book, leaning as closely as I dared to the candles without setting my hair on fire, and Melody flounced in and plopped down on the loveseat to have another go at her embroidery. After lighting all the candles in the room, Amy began to browse through the sheet music that was arranged in piles on top of the harpsichord. Slowly, dreamily, she dusted her fingers lightly along the whole length of the keyboard and said, ‘I think we should have a little music, don’t you? Would you like me to play something?’

  My head jerked around so quickly I was in danger of whiplash. ‘You play?’

  ‘A well-kept secret, but yes, I do. What would you like? Scarlatti? Mozart? Bach? Beethoven?’
r />   ‘Beethoven wasn’t born yet,’ I said.

  Amy grinned. ‘Was too. He would have been four, but I don’t think he was composing yet. He wasn’t as precocious as Mozart.’

  ‘Mozart would be lovely.’

  Amy scooted the bench out, sat down and settled her skirts around her. She rested her fingers lightly on the keys, cocked her head, and began to play from memory. I recognized the tune: Mozart’s march from the Marriage of Figaro. When she finished the short piece we clapped madly and I said, ‘The only thing I miss is the hysterical laugh at the end.’

  Melody shot me a what-are-you-crazy kind of look, so I asked her, ‘Did you see the movie, Amadeus?’

  Melody shook her head.

  Why was I not surprised? Amadeus came out in 1984, years before Melody was born. I felt old as Methuselah. ‘When you get home, Melody, rent it from Netflix, and you’ll get the joke about the laugh,’ I said, before turning back to Amy and urging her to play another piece.

  In the middle of Bach’s little ‘Minuet in G,’ the gentlemen joined us, Alex in the lead. He laid a finger against his lips and quietly selected one of the straight-backed chairs that had been lined up in the shadows against the wall and dragged it out into the candlelight. Michael followed suit, while Jack sat down with a grunt on the loveseat next to his daughter.

  When the last note died away, Alex Mueller – who was clapping louder than everyone else put together, or so it seemed to me – leapt to his feet and shouted, ‘Brava! Brava! Encore! Encore!’

  Amy twisted round to face him, bowed her head slightly, smiled and apologized. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I know by heart. Why don’t you play something for us, Alex?’

  In three long strides, Alex crossed the oriental rug to the harpsichord and began pawing through the sheet music. ‘Here’s something,’ he announced, waving the music in the air like a victory flag. ‘Mozart’s sonata for piano and violin in C major. I think we need a duet, don’t you?’

  Piano and violin? Apparently Alex had hidden talents. I led an encouraging round of applause.

  Alex handed the music to Amy, and in the time it took her to spread it open on the music rack in front of her, he’d retrieved his violin from the floor under the harpsichord and removed it from its case. ‘An A, please, Miss Cornell?’ After a bit of fussing with the tuning pegs and fiddling with the bow, he waved the bow in a dramatic arc and said, ‘Ready.’