Audrey’s Door (16 page)

T
hey closed the door upon seeing Jayne safely enter 14E, then walked back down the long hall and sat in the folding chairs at the turret. She moved her ballet flat so that it brushed against the sole of his leather loafer. The hair above his ear hadn’t been trimmed in a while, and loose strands descended from the razor line in a jagged arc that she wanted to touch. His skin was damp and jaundiced. Probably, he was hungover. “You look bad,” she said. “You’re not taking care of yourself.”

He didn’t move his eyes from the window. “It’s a draw. You, too.”

She sighed. “Still want your piano?”

“No. Are you in shock?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. I think so. But I’m also just dry. I don’t have a lot of feelings left when it comes to Betty.”

“Did she take that much work?”

The television was still playing, and the light in the den flickered. She was reminded again of something from her dream. “Yeah. She was a good person in a lot of ways, but it was too much for me.” She touched her throat. “I think it broke me a little, you know?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know why you always see yourself as a weakling. You’re one of the bravest people I know.”

“If you saw what I used to be, you wouldn’t say that,” she said. “Dirty. Lice. I could have put on a better show, but I was so depressed I didn’t bother.”

He was looking out the window while he talked. The city lights were cold and pretty. “That’s hard for me to imagine.”

“Yeah. I try not to think about it.”

He nodded. “I need to tell you something.”

She didn’t like the expression on his face: apprehensive. “Okay…” she said.

He continued, still looking out the window. “The timing is bad, but I don’t know if you’re going to shut me out again—maybe this is the last time we’ll talk.”

She shook her head: no, she’d never do that again. Things had changed since she’d left him, or maybe she’d changed. From now on, she planned to let him in anytime he came knocking.

“I’m glad it happened, that you left,” he said. “It never could have worked between us.”

She looked down. Blinked once. Twice. Three times.

“Not the way things stand, at least. I know I’m not perfect, or even close. But you’ve got a problem, Audrey. The cleaning. The rearranging. When you’ve got a deadline, you get so nervous you can’t sleep, and then you stop eating, too. The more comfortable you were living with me, the worse it got. You need a doctor. I love you, and I hate watching you hurt yourself,” he said, calmly and without histrionics. It made her feel, for a moment, that the problem was not hers alone, but theirs.

He sighed with relief, and she knew that saying this hadn’t been easy for him. She was reminded of Betty. Probably, she’d confronted her mother with a speech nearly identical to this, once upon a time:
I love you. For me. For yourself. Get help.
But Betty had always ignored her. Or worse, thrown something.

She thought about all that for a while, then answered, “You’re a turkey. My mom’s in a coma; this is totally the wrong time. And I didn’t take your stupid comics.”

He looked down at his feet. “Oh, yeah. I found them under the futon.”

“Also, not that it’s your business, but I made appointments with three shrinks this week. Three!” She held up three fingers and pointed them at him, as proof.

“Really?” He blinked in surprise.

“Yeah, really. I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, and I need to work on it.”

“That’s great, Audrey.”

“And you’re a real jerk for bringing it up,” she said.

He raised his eyes up to the ceiling, and didn’t answer. “Do you have anything to eat?”

“No. This place scares me. In another month I’m going to start peeing in milk bottles like Howard Hughes, just so I don’t have to go into the bathroom. The lady who lived here before me drowned all four of her kids. We’ll have to go to a restaurant.”

Saraub’s eyes wide as aggie marbles. “Not the Mommy Killer Murders?” That was what the
New York Post
had called them.

“Yeah. Them. There are temperature variations in every room, and they’ve got nothing to do with drafts and vents. Sound and light carry differently, too. I can’t figure it out, but it’s not a structural problem,” she said. “I think it’s an effect of the architecture. You’ve probably never heard of it, but this is Chaotic Naturalism. The last of its kind. Also, and this does not at all prove your
stupid point, but I’ve started hallucinating. I’ve been dreaming about this guy in a three-piece suit who wants me to build a door. It’s not good.”

He stood, obliterating her view of the Parkside Plaza, and looked around the den. Took it in for a long time, then asked, “Why would you live in a place like this?”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who said I need a doctor.”

He touched a plaster wall, then put his ear to it. “You shouldn’t stay here. There’s something wrong. I felt it last night, too. Sorry about that, by the way.”

She nodded. “That was mean, what you said.”

He leaned on the turret seat, next to Wolverine. Gave the little guy a pet, prick side down. “Yes. It was. But you can be mean, too.”

She noticed the neatly tailored suit he’d worn to call on her tonight. Almost three years later, the gesture still charmed. She got up and leaned next to him. “I don’t want to fight.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here. Let’s eat.”

“Amir’s Falafel. Open all night. Or Tom’s Diner.”

“I’ll treat.”

“Thanks, ’cause I’m broke…Would you come to Nebraska with me?”

He took a labored breath, like he hadn’t exercised, or even left his apartment, in six weeks. She realized that she really was worried about him. In her absence, who was cleaning the sheets?

“I know I shouldn’t ask,” she said.

“No. You shouldn’t.”

She waited. The seconds passed.

“I’ll come. There’s an American Airlines red-eye. Tomorrow morning at six,” he said.

She was so relieved that she burst into tears, then averted her eyes and flapped her hands in front of her face, so he didn’t feel obligated to comfort her.
“Thanks,” she said. “Also, I’m glad you told me that stuff. You never tell me when you’re mad, so it’s good. I’ll fix it if I can. I want to fix it.”

“Audrey,” he answered, his voice gruff. Then he took her in his arms, and she let loose, and cried harder.

“I don’t want to make any promises. But I hope you know I love you. You’re the most important person in the world to me.”

“I know. Start making some promises,” he whispered as he held her, and she squeezed tighter.

She packed in less than ten minutes. As they left 14B, they found a L’Oréal business card taped to the door, over which Jayne had written, “So sorry, Addie. Call me if you need anything: (917) 274–6639. She’d drawn a blue daisy in the corner, shaded in with a light-handed Bic. The flower was open, its layered petals sharp points like gardening spades.

At Tom’s Diner, they ate American cheese and broccoli omelets while on the overhead speakers, soft rock Beatles “Penny Lane” played. When she tried to filch a fry from his plate, he forked her wrist. “I’ve killed men for less,” he grunted.

“Fair enough, heart attack,” she answered.

Before they caught the bus, she worried that she’d left something plugged in or turned on at 14B. A toaster, maybe. Or the hair dryer. Or worse, the alarm clock, whose frayed wire might cause an electrical fire. “I’m going to go back up for a sec,” she told him.

He was unfazed. When they’d lived together, she’d had to run home for no good reason at least twice a week. Never once had anything caught fire. “Need me to come?”

“No. I’ll leave my bags with you. I’ll just be a second.”

The lobby was empty, and the Haitian doorman was sleeping at his post with an open issue of
Playboy
draped over his face. She took the elevator up and opened 14B. She unplugged the severed alarm clock
wire, then searched all the other outlets and lights, not once, but twice, and in her mind made a note, so that she’d be able to visualize it while she was gone, and not worry:
The toaster is unplugged. The oven is off. You checked,
she would tell herself.

As she was leaving, she took one last look at the den, then turned out the overhead light. In the dark, her mind played a trick on her. A heavyset woman sat at the piano bench while tiny red ants crept across her fingers. She was so still she could have been a doll, but softly she sang that tune from
Annie:

“Send a flood
Send the flu
Anything that You can do
To little girls.”

The tune was lovely. The woman’s voice smooth and deep as a river. Something wet dripped to the rotted wooden floor. The woman looked up. She wore black glasses and a blue sweatsuit. It was Clara DeLea. Only, her skin hung slack from her face like a mask, and her eyes were black.
“Build the door, Audrey Lucas. Your mother’s waiting.”

Audrey ran down the fifty-foot hall, and out the door, and down the emergency stairs, all the way to Tom’s Diner, without stopping.

December 31, 1926

It has come to my attention that in small factions of the civilized world, Chaotic Naturalism continues to flourish. I would argue that said religion is worse than Satanism. At least Satanism is laughable. It’s possible that Chaotic Naturalism is real. Where, after all, did our base instincts go when we rose from the slime and became thinking, social creatures? As a physicist, I’m inclined to believe that all energy is preserved. These instincts persist. Chaotic Naturalism seeks their reunion with the human body, and the consequential demise of the human soul. I’m obliged to your article; it opened this old man’s peepers. The Breviary’s architecture is stunning, but these idiot flappers conducting séances in its old church play with fire. Sometimes I think I should have been born fifty years ago, when people weren’t so stupid.

Sincerely,
M. M. DeVoe, Arthur Avenue, Bronx

From the
Christian Science Monitor

December 29, 1937

This city has been raining socialites for eight years. The most recent fall took place at the once-regal Breviary apartment building last night at 5 P.M., soon after the stock market closed. Martin Hearst IV discharged his hunting rifle from the roof, then followed the path of its bullets down the westward side of the building. His body struck and killed a young man, Eta Murphy, who was selling apples from a cart. Hearst is survived by his wife Sarah and son, Martin V. This marks the 211
^th
high-profile banker suicide in the city, and the 28
^th
that took place in The Breviary Out of deference to his mourners, The Breviary’s annual New Year’s Eve Gala is canceled.

From the
New York Tribune

A
s she slept, the thing in her stomach unfurled. Behind her was the dilapidated Victorian in Yonkers. Faded picket fence with missing planks like broken teeth. Ahead of her, a yard plush with wild sea grass that slipped between her toes. For once, she didn’t mind the mess. Little voices shouted: “Higher!” “More!” “You guys, wait for me!”

Under the big oak, Saraub pushed a tire swing. Maybe too high, but the dark-haired boy hooted happily, so she let them have their fun. And then a small hand reached up and clasped her fingers. A little girl in green corduroy overalls with a bowl haircut. She had Saraub’s brown eyes and Betty’s high cheekbones.

The driveway was marked with chalk. Numbered single upon double boxes. Hopscotch! She’d only ever seen this on television, but the rules looked simple enough. Audrey leaped inside a box, and coaxed the
girl to do the same. One foot! Two foot! Three foot! Four! They hopped back and forth, laughing, while in the distance the boy shouted, “Higher, Daddy, higher. I want to fly!”

Her family unborn. How she loved them.

But dark storm clouds swallowed the puffy white cumulus. The sky opened, and black rain poured. The sticky little fingers holding her hand disappeared. The chalk washed away, and the empty tire swing creaked. Sadness carved a whole in her stomach: Saraub was gone, too.

A gaunt woman with wiry white hair and pink plastic barrettes watched her from the window. Betty. Audrey’s blood went cold as it pumped.

It’s a bad place where you live, Lamb,
she’d said, and now Audrey thought:
But I live with you, Mom. I’ve always lived with you.

The woman receded from the window, and into darkness. Black rain fell. Something pricked her bare toes. Sharp pins and needles. The ground swelled with black water. Red ants seeking higher ground thrashed. They crawled up her legs in uneven clumps that looked like weeping scabs. She swiped, but not fast enough. Tiny mouths pinched. They chewed her insides until she was hollow and bleeding like a full-term miscarriage.

Once inside, they met with the thing in her stomach and expanded. They took her over, mind and body. Her eyes went black. Against her will, she walked through the Victorian’s cardboard-box front door. At the end of a long, dark hall was a den: 14B. They were waiting for her there. Clara and her rosy-cheeked children, the man in the three-piece suit, Mrs. Parker and her tight dress, Marty Hearst and his shaking dukes, Evvie Waugh and his stolen cane, masked Mr. Galton. The rest of the tenants, too. All except Jayne. They parted like a splitting sea to reveal another door. It was built on a slant, and instead of cardboard, its frame was made of satinwood.
She walked toward it like a bride meeting her groom, while on all sides, the tenants clapped.

Her family, unborn. How she hated them.

The door opened. Shining black eyes peered back at her, just as 14B’s ceiling buckled, and everything came crashing down.

Bam!

She jolted in her seat as the plane touched down into Eppley Airfield Tuesday evening. Rubbed her eyes. The dream fled from her, and she remembered only black rain, and a door.

One row over, Saraub peeked out at her, and waved. “We’re here!” he said.

She patted her thighs with corresponding hands at exactly the same time. Once, twice, three times, four. That wasn’t enough, so she went for five times, six times, lucky seven. “Yup,” she said. “We’re here.”