Dark Doorways (6 page)

Oh Mom. My head nodded. I was
beginning to take on Swanson’s defense mechanism. Yes, I too would nod rather
than deal with emotion.
The student becomes the faculty.

“Today should be fine. I’ll
be there by two.”

Nod.

***

Swanson’s door absorbed any
knocking, forcing me to bloody my knuckles any time I had to pound on his door.
This day was no different, as one hand thumped and the other held the delicate
little photograph. At least Ellen Hall was lit up, illuminated by the spring
sunshine flooding into every available window.

Even the shimmering sunlight
on Swanson’s door seemed to be apotropaic, like nothing harmful could possibly
happen here. Perhaps that explained Gabi’s fixation with the light over her front
door, or Mom’s obsession with never entering dark doorways. Maybe a luminous
door could ward off evil in this little world.

Swanson nodded me in, as he
always did, inarticulately. I watched his nod more closely, wondered if it was
always part of his personality or if he grew into it like a pair of
hand-me-down jeans.

I handed over the
transcriptions while I stared. Were his eyes always that green? Did he remember
Russia, or just his Russian mother? These and a thousand other thoughts swam
through my consciousness as Swanson glanced through my work. A solitary thumb
stroked the picture in my lap, the fragile snapshot that could disintegrate at
any moment.

The framed picture of Gabi
sitting on his desk captivated me as we sat in silence. She had his same green
eyes, his same round cheeks. But what really captured my gaze was the light,
always the light. Other women would have remarked on her sweet smile, her
innocent youth, her gorgeous hair. But all I could think of was the lack of
shadow. Shouldn’t a picture have at least
some
darkness, some contrast?
How was I making out her features but still seeing no shadow?

“You used the new program?”
The nodding genius spoke.

“Yeah.”

“And it transcribed well?”

“Yeah, I checked it
afterward. I think I had to make a couple small corrections, but it was pretty
accurate. I highlighted the corrections.”

Nod.

“Good work, Sarah.” Another
nod.

I knew he wanted to create a
program to transcribe indigenous languages. I knew he received his own Ph.D.
from M.I.T., where I had originally planned to attend. I knew he gave dry
lectures. But what I really wanted to know was how he spent his evenings, what
family vacations he went on, what his favorite movie was.

“You’ve spoken with Michael?”

“What? Michael?” I was caught
off guard, realizing that Michael still existed when I had tried so hard to
pretend he didn’t.

“He took some time off. I
thought you knew. You two were close, no?”

“Uh–” Close. It was a
sad word to contemplate, a sad realization that we were indeed close at one
time. We had suffered through all our coursework together. We had shared coffee
nearly every morning since my mom died. Yes, we had been close. I was in
denial, unwilling to mourn the loss of my friend and my love.

“Well, maybe you’ll see him.
He should be around today.” Swanson’s mouth was smaller than I remembered, when
I stopped to notice.

Any other time, with any
other person, it would have been awkward to sit and stare. But it was Swanson,
Vadim Swanson. He nodded while others absorbed his brilliance. So I sat there
gaping, wondering what foods he preferred and what sports he watched, all while
his small mouth creased into itself.

“Good! We’ll get started on
the next step. Conference proposal. How’s that going?”

He looked up at me for
perhaps the first time since I entered his office. Air gushed out of the room
like a deflating balloon, as if space and time both had to stop for a second
while his eyes focused on me, locked on mine in confusion. Yes, it must have
been confusing to have a female grad student staring at you, speechless.

“What is it Sarah?”

“I brought you something.”
The picture emerged from my lap, landing on his desk. There, on top of
publications, invitations, and grant proposals, sat my little photo.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a picture of me. When I
was little. My mom took me to the beach. She gave me this right before she
died. She said it was her favorite picture of me, that I was so happy playing
in the sand that day.”

Nod.

“I think I was three. About
Gabi’s age.”

Nod.

His tiny mouth attempted a
smile as he reached over to hand it back.

“I thought you could keep
it.”

“Oh?” The confused eyebrows
were not picking up on the hint.

“Dr. Swanson, Vadim, I know
you were a sperm donor twenty-four years ago.”

***

I remembered fog everywhere
that morning, wrapping itself around my legs and feet, trying to pull me down
like shackles. Swanson hadn’t been ready to welcome me as a daughter yet, but
his invitation to coffee was at least a step. So I trudged on through the fog,
knowing the path from my childhood enough to remember each block without seeing
it. At least, I
should have known
each block without seeing it.

My feet halted, not
recognizing the path any longer. A queasiness infiltrated my gut and I knew
where I was without looking up. There was supposed to be a park here, a little
boy here pointing at me. But in its place sat Eliza’s house, jeering at me as I
struggled through the fog’s grasp.

Spring in Evanston could be
amazing some years, if the temperature was in the 60’s and the redbuds and lilacs
were in bloom. Mom always said that fairies lived in the hawthorns, the short
trees with the white flowers. But some days, like that day, the fog billowed
over everything and concealed any beauty. Why then, could the fog not hide
Eliza’s house too?

I couldn’t say how long I
stood there gaping, whether it was three minutes or three hours. I only
remember Michael showing up, joking around as if nothing had changed between
us.

“Sarah! Sarita! What, did you
forget how to walk?”

“Michael? What are you–
What’s–”

“Where are you headed?” His
face was the same one that had haunted my dreams, those lips that had kissed me
so tenderly just months ago.

“I was on my way to meet
Swanson, but why–”

“Swanson? Again?”

“Yeah, we, uh, we apparently
are related. It’s a long story. Anyway... So... what are you–”

“Why am I here?” His fleece
jacket looked comforting, fuzzy, like an old blanket. I wanted him to embrace
me just so I could feel its solace.

“Well yeah. I mean you missed
prelims, right? I thought you moved back home or something.”

“Swanson said I could just
postpone them until the fall. So, I’m back!”

“Well where have you been?
And why were you acting so oddly before?”

The fact that we were
standing outside of Eliza’s house seemed to have slipped my mind in that moment,
in the reunion of two lost souls. The fact that Michael had returned and seemed
to be back to his old self was far more interesting. Or maybe it was just less
frightening than confronting Eliza’s house.

“Something happened to me,
Sarah.”

“Well, yeah. You weren’t even
humanoid; you were unresponsive that last night I saw you. What the heck was
that?”

“
Heck
? We’re using
that
word now?” His laugh was its own comfort, a cheeriness that I hadn’t realized I
missed so much. He glanced up at Eliza’s house, the structure still slightly
veiled by the fog, and his smile disintegrated. “It was this house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I came to check up on it, to
see what was going on here. Call me a protective, macho guy.” His frowning
countenance rose from its fixation on the sidewalk. As our eyes met, I could
see he was changed. He was aurorean, exuding morning light when everything else
absorbed the fog.

“You came here? And you found
the house, not the park?”

“Yeah, the house was here.
Eliza was here too. She invited me in.”

“
What?
You didn’t.”

“I did. I wanted to see what
had spooked you, you know, to try to protect you.”

“Oh Michael. So what
happened?”

“Do you remember that boat
trip?”

“Remember?” I scoffed. “How
could I forget? You totally flaked out on me New Year’s Eve because I wouldn’t
go on that damn boat with you.”

“I know. It was weird,
right?” He scratched his head, the way he always did when he was excited. “I
think that Eliza girl had done something to me.”

“You didn’t drink her tea,
though, did you?”

“Yeah! I thought
tea is
tea,
right?”

“No!”

“Then there was the
boat–”

When he suspended his story,
when he stared down at the sidewalk again, I realized he had really been
through something. He was more than unnerved; he was petrified. The animosity I
had been feeling toward him melted away, leaving me standing there, on Eliza’s
sidewalk, longing to console him.

“What
about
that
boat?” I whispered, clasping his hand.

“I don’t think I can ever go
back there. I–”

“
What happened?”
I was
whispering, grasping for truth where I knew it was hidden.

He stood in silence for
several moments, watching the fog twist in between our legs. “Sarah, that boat
wasn’t meant for anything living.” Michael’s head was shaking back and forth,
as if the movement would change the past.

“I have to ask. When you got
on the boat, did it have a– oh, it sounds ridiculous– a dark
doorway?”

“Yeah. It was weird. It was
one of the first things I noticed. How did you know?”

***

The walk to the pier became
violescent; the fog colored our world lavender. Michael and I got off the train
downtown–purple line to red line, like we always did to get into the
heart of Chicago– and made the trek in silence, not knowing what we would
find. Immersed in the purple fog, we could barely see each other, let alone
this mysterious boat.

Swanson had agreed to meet
with me another time, probably happy to delay our awkward conversation. Neither
of us knew how to continue working together smoothly in our academic context,
and we certainly had no clue how build a familial relationship. So I turned to
Michael.

I turned to him and held him,
concerned that the madness of our local mysteries would engulf him again. It
was easier than dealing with Swanson.

Very little could be seen
though the walls of fog that morning. Lake Michigan, gone. The pier, gone. That
enigmatic boat, also gone. Not that I expected it to appear for us anyway.

“Maybe we should just go get
some coffee.” The fog was wearing me down, taking too much effort to look
through. But my promenade companion stood motionless, looking out to where the
pier should have been, to where the boat should have been.

“I’m thinking of switching to
linguistic anthropology.” His frown as he spoke could have been anywhere.
Cafeteria. Library. Haunted boat.
Men
.

“Oh, nice segue.”

“I know. I’m just
disappointed. I really wanted you to at least see the boat. Not go on it or
anything. Just see it.”

“So why linguistic
anthropology?”

“It sounds more interesting,
you know, more based in people’s lives. Plus I’d only have a couple extra
courses I’d have to take before–”

Like magnets on a fridge, our
heads were pulled around simultaneously. Someone had run across the sidewalk,
rushing toward something. Or was the person darting
away
from something?

“Was that–”

“Yeah, I think it was.”

The fog allowed us to follow
her, our two lurking shadows that she never guessed were there. As our hands
intertwined, I thought only of how nice the skin-on-skin contact felt. Michael,
however, kept his focus on
her
.

Her silhouette slipped into a
coffee shop, only after glancing behind her to check for potential menaces.
Violet fog masked us, allow us to slither closer, unnoticed.

“We were going to get coffee
anyway, right?” I whispered.

Once inside, I inhaled the
intense aromas, wondering if they could make a soy latte. As if reading my
mind, Michael went to the counter to order. Between my latte and his Americano,
she appeared again. Alone. Staring at us.

“You see her?” I murmured
like a ventriloquist.
This could be a career option,
I thought,
in
case things stay awkward with Swanson
.