Dark Doorways (4 page)

Swanson answered with that
unclear expression, the one where you never know if you’re disappointing him or
if he’s just distracted. The scent of spiced tea warmed my numb muscles. Yes,
numb is what I felt. Even in Mom’s dream house.

“Come in! Gabriella will be
so glad to see you.”

“Thanks for inviting me.”

He awkwardly took my coat,
the way you would expect a divorcé-cum-bachelor to do. I stood in his entryway,
staring like a tourist. The hardwood floors. The little table where Mom would
have put a small vase with lilacs. The bay window.
Oh Mom
.

I followed Swanson into a
living room, the exact image I expected to find: aging academics discussing
their research, a couple graduate students trying to promote themselves, and
enough alcohol to make it all endurable.

“So Gabriella is here?”

“Oh yes, she wanted you to
see her room. Up the stairs, first one on the left.”

The spiral staircase was just
what Mom had always imagined. “I bet the staircase bends or curls around in
there. You can tell with the big bay window that they wanted to leave extra
space for that living room. That’s where I’d put the tree.” Sure enough, it was
where Swanson had his Christmas tree.

“Gabriella?” I tapped lightly
on the door, only to find her fast asleep on her little toddler bed. Just when
I thought she couldn’t look more angelic, her sweet expression lost in a dream
caught my breath. Could beds even be made that small? It was Goldilocks,
sleeping in Baby Bear’s bed.

I tiptoed away and headed
back down the stairs. No one ever thinks to arrive early to New Year’s parties
to see the kids. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed, to have missed
Gabriella, but even more dejected realizing that I would have to make drab
conversation with these other guests.

Swanson looked up at me from
his glass of dark red wine. Dark like blood.

“Gabriella was already
asleep. I guess I should have come sooner.”

“Oh she’ll be so
disappointed. Say, what will you have to drink?”

“The tea would be great.”

I followed Swanson into his
kitchen and realized the tea was
her
tea. “My mom made this same tea.
Cardamom and cinnamon, right?”

“Yes! Good nose! You’d be
good at a wine tasting!” His words dissipated into the air, evaporated as my
tears formed.

It was too much. Mom’s dream
house. Mom’s tea. Michael’s weird exit.

“You miss her. What was her
name?”

“My mom?” I wiped a tear
away, glad I didn’t wear any mascara that night. “Katherine.” My teeth sunk
into my lips, as if that would prevent more tears. Saying her name shouldn’t be
so hard, not after all these months. “She lived just on the other side of
campus.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. She loved this
neighborhood.”
She lusted after your house.

“I almost forgot. Gabi wanted
to tell you that she and I just installed a new front light. She was very
concerned that you wouldn’t come in if the doorway was dark.”

***

It was not the buzz of a new
text that woke me that New Year’s morning, but the ubiquitous sunlight, that
warmth that permeated every corner of Swanson’s house. Apparently, drinking for
three straight hours entitled me to sleep on their plush sofa. In fact, it was
the new text that ruined the moment, the sweetness as I stirred.

Where are you? I’m at the
cupcake shop drinking coffee alone.

Michael and I had never made
plans to meet for coffee. I had never invited him to follow me to Swanson’s
house. I had never asked him to run off into the night, deserting me.

And so I ignored the text and
allowed the New Year’s sunshine to wrap itself around me. I wondered if Mom
knew about the light inside this place, if perhaps that is why she was so
convinced that it was a perfect house.

“Será!” Gabriella’s voice
reminded me that I was in someone else’s home, intruding on their routine. But
her hug, oh that consoling feeling of a child’s embrace, could have saved me
from anything. Two angel’s arms reaching down from their mysterious celestial
home to remind the mortals that there is hope. How did parents ever part from
their children? How did Swanson bear this custody arrangement?

“Happy New Year, Gabriella!”

“You can just call me Gabi.
That’s what everyone in my family calls me because my grandma’s name is
Gabriella.”

“Okay then, Happy New Year,
Gabi.”

Swanson’s feet padded down
his gorgeous staircase, and I hadn’t seen a mirror in half a day. Straightening
my hair along with my spine, I wondered who put the blue throw over me during
the night.

“Good morning Sarah!”

“Oh good morning, Dr.
Swan– Vadim. I’m so sorry that I slept on your couch. I normally don’t
drink much. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I
offered to pay cab fare, but you fell asleep before I could call one.” His
thick brown curls fell in his face, disheveled and unbound by the rules of
social norms. I wondered if his ex had ever tried to control his hair.

“Well, you are too kind. I
should never have been in such a condition.”

“It’s New Year’s! Don’t worry
about it! Will you drink tea or coffee?”

“Coffee sounds really great.”

Swanson gave me a neutral nod
as he walked into the kitchen, the gesture he gave in every conversation. I
imagined he and his ex in their engagement.

Vadim, I think we should
get married.

Nod.

The head bob was comforting,
though. There was nothing hurtful in it, no unkind words that could never be
taken back. I slithered off to their bathroom, still ashamed of my
overindulgence. Maybe I should have nodded more, those times when Mom and I
fought over my studies, my boyfriends, my attitude. Regret had replaced the
warmth of morning light as I emerged from the bathroom.

“Será, will you play treasure
with me?”

“How do you play?”

“Well, one person makes a
treasure map, and you have to show how to get to the treasure, and the other
person has to go find the treasure.” Gabi was already pulling on my hand,
leading me to the kitchen’s breakfast nook, where paper and crayons awaited us.

I was in Swanson’s house,
where he was making me coffee, where his daughter was drawing me a treasure
map. This, this oddity, was not how I thought I would start the new year.

“Cream and sugar?”

“Yes, both please.”

I allowed Swanson to serve me
coffee while my skin eagerly absorbed the sunshine. It would be months before I
would be able to sit on the beach again, and so the moment had to last.

“Será,” Gabi began, pulling
my attention back to the table with her tug. “See? This is the treasure map,
and you have to find the treasure.”

“Oh, wow. I might have to
walk kind of far. Is this campus? Where your dad works?”

“Yep!”

Swanson remained stoic,
completely unmoved by Gabi’s pulsating light. Perhaps when you live your daily
life, with your grocery shopping and your doctor’s visits, in Elysium, it
ceases to be amazing after a while.

“Is this the fountain?”
Deciphering her map proved harder than I thought.

“Uh-huh.”

“And is this your
neighborhood here?”

“Uh-huh.”

Gabi’s message hit me; a dose
of morphine swept through me, tingling every muscle. The map led me all through
Evanston, then right back to this house. To Mom’s dream house. To Swanson’s
house. This enigma shrouded in light.

***

Snow shouldn’t shift; it
shouldn’t move below you as you walk. But as I walked to campus, knowing it was
my last day to prepare for prelims, my feet hesitated like spooked horses. The
snow was indeed shifting.

It wasn’t the normal shift
you’d expect, the mudslides or earthquakes that typically emerge in the natural
world. It was the snow itself, as if something was pulling it from under my
feet, a great practical joke meant only for me.

Sure, people commuted to work
as they normally did and drank their grande-non-fat-lattes like there was no
tomorrow. I seemed to be the only victim of this vertigo.

The closer I got to the
library, the more it seemed that I was being pulled in by shifting snow blocks
as much as walking by my own efforts. There could have been any number of
things luring me in, but I let it happen. It was time I let someone else make
the decisions while I sit back and have fun. Fun, like riding the moving
walkways at O’Hare. Or was it just unnerving? It was a fine line.

I never saw Michael that day,
or the next day. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t there, just that I never saw him. He
was in my thoughts as I slid into the library, as I found a table.

The tome came out of my bag
too easily, too happy to be dictating how I spent my time. Swanson encouraged
me to review his text– yes,
his
text, the text
he
wrote– to prepare for prelims. Gabi’s treasure map marked where I had
left off, the sole bit of innocence in the 800-page volume, perhaps anywhere.

The lights rarely flickered
in the library. Electricity knew better than to cross Northwestern’s rich old
donors. That made it all the more peculiar when the industrial sized
fluorescent lights tapped out their odd rhythm. It distracted me, yes, but what
shook me was the dark shadow, the flickering shapes cast over each desk.

My gaze fell on the large
floor to ceiling windows, so eager to collect a few rays of sunshine, so
disappointed by the winter darkness. They drooped a bit with each spasm from
the lights. They were eyelids, closing further with each new shadow, eyelids
trying to close out the nightmare.

Get out.

The voice either pushed me or
someone pulled me. No muscle moved; no part of me put any effort into the
escape.

Get out.

Gabi’s map fluttered, a
little butterfly escaping to warmer climates.

“Come on, little map.”

The treasure map butterfly
and I, along with Swanson’s text, followed the windows to the exit. They don’t
make escape plans for when eerie lights twitch. They don’t show you where the
best exit is for escaping shadows. So I stayed where I saw light, the fading
light of a winter afternoon.

“We have a few minutes before
sunset,” I whispered as my butterfly and I found a door, only to hesitate.

The snow. The blasted
shifting snow.

“Okay, I might be crazy, but
I think I’m better off in the daylight than the library.” I took my steps and
took my chances, chatting with a map. Off into the sinister snow, I was ignorant
of what would swallow me alive or jerk me back into the building.

“Sarah, SARAH!”

Were the library windows
winking or was I waking up?

“Sarah?” Grace’s voice was my
answer. “Sarah, you fell asleep studying. The phone is for you. It’s Swanson.”

Shoving the phone at me, she
frowned down at my shoes. My poor, tattered Goodwill shoes. I hadn’t bought a
good pair for myself since the funeral.

“Sarah, what’s that on your
shoe?”

My two-dollar flats had more
than wear and tear lining the soles. The library’s holiday break hours were
stuck to the bottom of my right foot.

“So I
was
there.”

“Where?” Grace had already
moved on to dumping some cheese puffs on the floor.

“The library. I had the
strangest dream. I
thought
it was a dream.”

***

“I miss you.”

There were no three words
in the English language I wanted to hear less.

“I love you.”

I was wrong.

Michael and I had unyoked
during prelims, whether intentionally or not we were unsure. Prelims consumed
me.

My professors watched,
unmoved, as my eyes slid further into my skull, as I became more animal than
human, as they tortured me through a six-hour written exam and a two-hour oral
exam. This was my initiation, the hazing that normally was only tolerated at
frat parties.

It was another week later
that I finally recovered, hauling myself out of the shell I had made in my
bedroom. The mysteries that had become my life, normally diverging, finally
barreled into each other during my week of hibernation. Michael’s bizarre
behavior flowed into Swanson’s living room, right through the bay window.
Eliza’s dark tea and dark doorway were seen through Gabriella’s eyes. The
children pointed at me as I held on to Vadim, yes, I could call him Vadim that
time.

Upon emerging from my cocoon,
it was Michael who first found me. I wanted to hear Swanson telling me I had
passed my prelims, but instead it was Michael.