The Door That Only Closes             

2,249 wds        

   The woman washing dishes rinses a butcher knife and with a stroke dries the blade. Draping the towel over her shoulder, she gazes into her reflected eyes in the blade gleaming like a fresh idea. New also is the morning sun.                         

Gary, her lover, left for work an hour ago. Lately their love nest has been less cozy. Gary is dependable, slow but steady and frankly, too often bland. Gary so much like gray, she thinks.                       This devotion is constant, solid, but economically he is an easy target. One bad week and they could be sitting on their stuff out on the sidewalk.                   He also used to bathe more often. 

    Gary saves no money, thinks no farther ahead than to the next "Clash of Titans" in the World Series or Superbowl. The way he trumpers “clash of titans,” makes her shiver.

   “I make money to spend it,” he says and he spends every cent on parties, trashy art work for their trashy apartment, beer by the case and marijuana by the pound. At first it was liberating; she loves the good times, but where is the permanent value, the sound investment, as in jewelry?                     With extreme tact she has suggested he set aside some money, ten percent, and he’ll get used to not having it, won’t miss it and will be there for the future. No action, must she raise her voice?

     “I make money to spend it.”

       Aside from his electrician’s tools he owns odd old furniture and cutlery, pots, plates and clothing all second hand. And his car! An incantation keeps the engine running and no glue on metal on this planet could hold that rusting body together. It rattles and clunks; a symphony of mechanized chaos.

Reflected in the steel blade of the butcher knife is a young woman with gentle eyes and gifts of wit, grace and spirit. Nowhere in these, her drab surroundings are these qualities reflected. 

At that moment a car door slams. Behind the apartment building in the alley one floor below, a car arrived on crunching gravel (engine too quiet to be Gary’s) and now in the door slam echoing she braces herself.            Its bad, it must be bad news. Rippling the pool of her instincts is certain to be bad news; someone she knows has come, no stranger ever parks there and who would come to see her unless. . . Her stomach clinches in dread.            The door at the bottom of the stairs opens to the gravel parking space in the alley and that door is unlocked. At the top of the stairs the door to their living room is open. Beside the living room through a high, arch is the kitchen where she stands with the knife. 

Is Gary home, or hurt? It wasn’t his car that arrived. Where is he?

Footsteps sound on the gravel, feet fall on the three hollow stair steps of the outside landing. A hand scrapes open the storm door and it might be him with a day off, or more likely he was fired. But Gary doesn’t move that fast. He slowly brings in his tools and leaves them behind the door to pick up the next morning, then walks around to the corner newspaper box. She suggested he could save ten dollars a month by subscribing to the paper and it would be delivered, but no he says he likes walking to the box, getting rid of spare change, looking around to see if anything is happening in the intersection where nothing ever happens.

“It’s about freedom,” he says. “If i subscribe to the paper or go o n line i’ll feel like i have to read it.” He has spent many an empty morning studying the sports page, is that freedom? 

The footsteps and the hand are too light for Gary, could it be someone with news of him?

He is injured at work, electrocuted, or worse, horribly disfigured. She remembers an electrician injured at the family home in Georgia; she was a girl, one cable crossed another and exploded in the electrician's face, blinding him, burning off his nose. The man had a hole in his face and yet he lived. He lived for the rest of his life with a big black hole in his face. Has it happened to Gary and now a co-worker has come to fetch her to the hospital?

Weak, dizzy, she sees herself caring for a faceless lump. Now better off dead she wouldn’t, couldn’t think of leaving him, deserting him. Pity swells with pride thinking she will restore him. Love heals all!

And where will they get the money, would she have to ask her father?

They have no money, only love. If he lost his health, casting them into poverty, would they still have love? That's the question and she has asked it, but never loud enough for Gary to hear it. It is unwise to imagine trouble, to borrow trouble as they say, making it more likely to happen. Likewise imprudent is living only for the present.

Gary has the brains to get a safe job, but won’t use his head. She knew all this and everything about him immediately, he’s the same front to back, what you see on the surface goes all the way through. They have been together less than a year and she wonders if, as it says in that book of love stories “within a year she couldn’t stand to see him walk across the room.” If he needed her less she could have left him long ago, but he won her and keeps her with total devotion. By always being available, always eager to share he provides. All in love, he is never aloof, so she hesitates to reveal her deeper thoughts and feelings. Once when their love had reached a dizzying height and she was ready to leap into yes forever, he asked her to snuggle up and watch a football game.

If something has happened to Gary certainly she can ask father and he would help as he did when her sister’s husband went bankrupt and killed himself. Joan lost everything, but the family survived because the old man, who was often drunk but steady, was there with the determination and money. She sees her father’s shy smile hiding the heart of a wolf. 

Now as the screen door rattles open at the foot of the stairs the hinges screech. Whoever it is didn’t knock or shout up the stairs. They must think they can just walk in. She waits for the door to slam. It doesn’t slam. Most people let that door close hard and it echoes up the stairs.                  Someone is careful, knows the place, she thinks, listening to the feet light on the stairs. 

The footsteps are light and halfway up she thinks with a hot rush of blood, “It’s Jack!”

Jack was her’s before she met Gary. More handsome and fit, more adventurous, Jack nevertheless exuded, as many thought, a strange air. His beautiful eyes were shifty; he drank too much and worked too hard and he slumped and had a silly grin more of a boy than a man. He wore mismatched clothes. Even so, his physique, good looks and a mysterious quality, some called in an inviting aura, made him appealing. He was interesting and men as well as women looked upon him fondly. 

She wanted to go back to him after they split, but she knew he would mock her. Humbling herself would make him cruel, driving him so high he would not descend until he had ground her heart to dust. 

Unlike Gary, Jack’s thoughts ranged far afield, often too far; he was fluid all the way through. Stable, consistent? Not Jack. A sprite or pixie must have whispered to him and carried his thoughts to an airy place. Earth to Jack, how can you talk about one thing and think about another? But when he focused, what a talker, what surprises. Once he said, “Sure i’m good looking and smart, but my personality is toxic!” Why so happy and proud of that? She was so confused and embarrassed but the crowd loved it. That crowd was a bunch of cynical professionals on cocaine. 

Another time he missed the mark doing a similar routine and after lashing and berating himself to their delight he criticized the very people listening to him burn himself, as if to say, “I’m bad but you’re worse.” That night he did this at the worst possible time and they were lucky to get out of there alive. He acted like he didn’t know his words could hurt people, but he knew, he was too smart to be so stupid.

During their family crisis, in a time of bankruptcy and suicide, she didn’t know what to expect from Jack. It was what she loved and what she hated and feared about him. At first he was helpful and supportive and it looked like he and her father were an ideal team. Then something happened and Jack mocked her father right to his face. The general conclusion, as her sister suggested, was that Jack was trying to get some interesting emotional reaction, to entertain himself at the expense of others. Her sister, Joan, defined Jack as an ‘emotional vampire.’                     She cried, Jack a vampire sucking emotional blood, the definition seemed so apt.            And her father surprised them all, had no visible reaction to Jack and brushed aside the tomfoolery, briefly, yes, for a short time.

Thwe was another incident on a chilly when  night her father caught them making love on a blanket in front of the fireplace. He did not strike at that moment, he backed out of the room and quietly closed the door. Raising a ruckus just then would cause chaos in a time of crisis. The next time Jack was a smart ass the conditions were ideal and the old man cut the young man down to size. Jack learned respect; he changed, at least with father.                 Respect is what she needs and listening and understanding is what respect is all about.

On the sunny day ahe dumped him, she taught him a lesson all her own. She froze him off and after desperate weeks of struggle to charm her out of it (and a delicious feeling it was knowing the ax would chop, the blade slide in) he reached a point  most desperate and she gave him the boot. It was more than beautiful, it was bootiful. Ha!

The cut was swift and sharp and planned so well; it happened this way. She called, asked a favor. He complied instantly, completed the task and then said she had to wash the dog. As she scrubbed the pooch, her hands deep in the suds she said, "I don't want to be your lover any more. it's over." The scene was so domestic, like she was filing her nails, or sprucing up around the place as she delivered her well-practiced severing stroke, hands in the foaming soap suds, "It doesn't work for me," her cheeks rosy and eyes of ice.                He looked like a mountaineer losing his grip. She towered over the remnant, the shreds of his crushed and twitching heart. She was a Princess of Ice. Bootiful.

For months after this if she saw him, always by chance, an involuntary smile came to her lips remembering his  face that sunny afternoon. It was raw love power and she used it to teach him, make him stronger, more respectful, so now he might be good enough for her needs.                        After living without him a few weeks The Cut, as she came to see it, grew an unpleasant shade. Cruelty might be necessary but one shouldn’t feel good about it.  

Is it possible now Jack has changed, Jack is back, has come for her. still loves her, that was always certain. Maybe now he has dignity, holds himself upright like he has something to offer the world, keeps a steady eye and talks about one thing at a time. Maybe his clothes match. It is possible he has made himself worthy of her love and will accept a man’s responsibility. 

Jack could have learned all he needed if he listened to her father. Her father demonstrates to the world what it means to be an adult, father, man, human being of quality in the fullest sense of the word. He did this superbly when he took care of Joan and her family and kept them together after Joan’s husband, who smuggled dope, got caught and escaped shame by swallowing drain cleaner. He lived soft and died hard, the old man said. Her father came up from Georgia through the crisis even though his business suffered in his absence and basically saved the family. Joan had no skills, no job, no one was looking for an experienced housewife and mother of four, so the old man found work for her, got her back in school and back on track and paid for everything. He complained, he was devious and rough, yes, but he had to be. Joan’s kids deserve the best and he was hard only when truly necessary. 

Could she trust Jack again? She would know immediately, by his hands and his eyes. Hands and eyes never lie. Gary’s are clumsy and sincere, Jack’s were skilled but false; she would know.                       Juggling love is confusing, uncertain, yet in her heart she needs someone who can laugh like Jack and still be strong and solid like Gary; does such a one exist?

The footsteps arrive at the top of the stairs, at the door that stands open.                          “Come in,” she speaks boldly, her voice echoes through the shabby domain. The visitor enters.

It isn’t Gary or Jack, it’s her sister, Joan. Joan has only visited once before. They have rarely spoken since the end of the family crisis (the damage Joan's husband did to the family reputation an unspoken sore spot), but the look in Joan’s eyes draws them together. The woman at the sink knows why. 

“They called from Georgia," Joan says, "Daddy died last night.”

      Turning away to the drain board of the sink, she carefully puts down the knife.                     Before she can speak or pull up a mask of ice her heart returns to a t day he is young and she no longer fears the horses in the park.  It was the second time she rode and his strong hands set her in the saddle. He smiled and steadied her there; strong, young, proud of her, the park sunny, clean and safe.                          The image passes; father is old, far away, lost. 

“No. No, he can’t be.” The sisters embrace.

      Many days will pass before she again dreams of her lovers; past, present, or yet unknown. 

end of “The Door That Only Closes”                                 

A mother's love is given, a father's love is earned.              Afghan proverb