Dark Doorways

Dark
Doorways

by
Kristin Dillman Jones

Text copyright
© 2014 Kristin D.
Jones

All
rights reserved

For
all our departed loved ones

Never enter a dark doorway
.

Mom’s superstitions rang
through me, her voice still as clear as the last time I had hugged her. I had
stood under many door frames in my life, and this one should have been no
different. I should have walked right through, like a normal person.

But what did she mean by
doorway? The door itself? The frame?

If I breathed
in deeply enough, I could smell cinnamon coming from somewhere, the cinnamon
she always added to our cardamom tea. Cinnamon with a touch of bitter arguing.
Even the arguing I missed.

So there I stood for a solid
five minutes, staring blankly at Eliza’s door, unable to distinguish dark from
light.

“Sarah?” came Eliza’s voice
from inside.

“Uh, Eli?”

“I didn’t hear the doorbell!”
Eliza responded with a confusing glance at both me and the doorway.

I neglected to tell her that
I never rang it, that I had been standing and staring at her door for far too
long. That I had no idea why I was there in the first place.

“Oh, where are my manners?
Come in!” Eliza popped the screen door open, her left arm waving me into her
home.

Just do it
, I told myself.
Right foot forward,
then left
.

As my eyes uncomfortably
scanned the door frame just inside the screen door, I reminded myself that
doors are adiaphorous, neither good nor evil. Plenty of people have dark doors,
right? Didn’t my freshman year dorm room have a dark carmine door? Okay, the color
of dried blood wasn’t such a great example. Would Mom have considered Eliza’s a
dark doorway?

It wasn’t until after Eliza
waved her too-skinny arm in a few more times that I finally put my right foot
forward, and it was then that I noticed the dark shadows dancing along the open
door.
Where could those shadows be coming from? What was their light source?
Crap. I never should have come here.

But as I hesitated in pulling
my left foot in behind the right, Eliza grabbed my arm, pulling me into the
dark doorway. The same shadows flashed subtly across her eyes.

“Come on, Sarah. You’ll let
the cold in.”

It was only once I was pulled
inside that I could see Eli’s house for what it was, that dark cave where one
might expect to find a curmudgeonly old woman in her wedding dress, calling for
Pip while plotting Estella’s treachery. Fully expecting to find decaying
wedding cake on Eli’s dust-filled tablecloth, I scanned the room for any other
hazardous materials, perhaps a dead cat or a jar of chemicals that might eat
away at my flesh.

But my imagination was
getting the best of me. Of course none of that was there. It was simply Eli’s
living room, a room filled with dusty, antique furniture, a hint of mildew in
place of potpourri. She offered me tea and biscuits, which I found were
actually biscuits. Perhaps she had never heard the British use of that term.

What an odd feeling as an
adult, to be disappointed by biscuits when you were expecting cookies. I was a
child again, hoping for a sugary treat.

Her hands shook slightly as
she handed the saucer to me. “Sugar or milk?”

“Uh, no. I’m good.”

It occurred to me that the
room shouldn’t have been as dark as it was, that for a room with four windows,
there should be more light. What kind of tea was this anyway? It smelled vaguely
familiar, but not like any tea I’d ever tasted. Of course I couldn’t rely on
sight, since the liquid just looked like a dark puddle in the room’s lighting.

It was the smell that
bothered me. Mom always made the perfect tea, never giving away her secret,
though I knew it was cardamom. But this, this mysterious beverage that sat in
my lap, I could not place. It might have been a more traditional Chinese tea,
maybe an oolong. But this was different, not quite the dirty gym sock scent of
an oolong. Something, maybe a rare herb, made me hesitate.

“Eli?”

“Yeah?” she called from the
kitchen.

I pondered shouting back or
waiting for her return, just as she appeared in the doorway, more biscuits in
hand.

“So what’s in this tea? Is it
your own mix?” As I looked up to meet Eli’s eyes, the sinister hint of a glare
was just disappearing. But it had to be just my imagination. I knew Eli. She
was that sweet girl from the cupcake shop. She was… she was
what
? Did I
really know much more about her? Did she even invite me over at the cupcake
shop?

As Eli took a couple steps
toward me, with a strange glow in her eyes that contrasted eerily with the
darkness of the room, I couldn’t help feeling trapped.

The door. Get to the door.

“Eli, I–” I was
sprinting through her front yard and across the street. Glancing back once I
felt a safe distance away, I noticed a chill of terror ran through me.

Where was her house?

Not only was Eliza’s house
not there, but in its place was a playground. Three soccer moms laughed, one
tossing her hair back as another thumbed through a text message. Each child ran
through the play equipment as if nothing was different, as if they had been
there playing the entire time. The little redhead boy tugged on his mommy’s
shirt, pleading for a snack, and in getting no response as she laughed with her
friend, he turned to me.

Two brown eyes met mine. Our
glances locked on each other for what could only have been a second. His small,
innocent finger rose toward me in slow motion, or perhaps it is my memory of
the day that occurs in slow motion. Standing and pointing at me, he simply
mouthed to me:
I know it’s you.

***

Maple Avenue never changed;
like Uncle Mel’s ear hair, it was the same year after year. No amount of
trimming or landscaping changed the general appearance.

So my walk home from Eli’s
house– or what I thought was her house– involved careful attention
to each detail. Yes, O’Toole’s was still there, still pumping out the Guinness
like there was no tomorrow. Each child holding a parent’s hand still pulled
harder when they neared the ice cream shop. The old oak where I first fell off
my bike still stood behind it. Yes, this was still my Maple Avenue where odd
little houses don’t just disappear.

Then there was Mom’s old
house, Mr. What’s-his-name’s new house. Something Parker. Receding Hair Line
Parker. That was it. Why didn’t his mom think of that name? Perhaps I lingered
too long, stared too hard, as Mom’s memory flooded over me. The smell of her
cardamom tea. The lace curtains that hung for years in the front windows. The
gentle kiss goodnight.
Oh Mom
.

Then there he was, Receding
Hair Line Parker, glaring out of my mother’s windows as if he never knew me,
glaring at me for caring about Mom’s old house.

Oh Mom
.

My feet found their rhythm
again, carrying me back to my tiny apartment. It was the same rhythm of every
other person in every other town, always getting somewhere, never just being,
but going.

The funny thing about
apartments is that you never really care about anything outside your own door.
The paint on the building’s exterior peeled terribly. The front doorbell only
sporadically worked. The stairs would probably collapse one of these times. But
none of it mattered as long as my roommate had her dishes washed.

The first thought I had as I
turned my key was Eli’s dark doorway. As I surveyed my own, looking for
shadows, I wondered, again, what I was doing. What a cryptic thing to remember
Mom saying,
Never enter a dark doorway
.

“This one’s safe, Mom.”

Grace must have been out,
since her techno music was silent for the moment. Grace the slob. Grace that
had no grace. I shouldn’t say that. Grace found her civilized moments whenever
her parents visited from South Korea. She mustered the strength to clean the
entire apartment and wash her dishes for an entire week. I made a mental note
to ask when they would be visiting again. Maybe that could be my
passive-aggressive way of asking her to clean. Such were the games we played.

Digging through Grace’s trash
to find my phone was maybe the low part of my day. Every day. I could be
looking up Eli’s number. I could be choking and needing to call 911, I thought
bitterly as I tossed aside her pizza box. Resolved not to go downstairs and ask
Frat Boy to call my number so I could at least hear it ring, I decided to try
the kitchen one more time. Sure enough, under a pop tart wrapper sat my poor
phone, protected only by its cheap hard case.
Grace
.
Sweet, lazy
Grace.

Eli. Eliza. What was her last
name? Hamm. Hammond. Yes, Hammond.

I scrolled quickly through
the H section, but no Hammond. No Eliza’s in the E section. No new numbers
under Recents.
Oh my stars!
Another thing Mom used to say.

So maybe it was true. Maybe I
had invented the whole thing in my mind. Maple Avenue had always had a
playground in the 500 block, a playground that I thought was a house belonging
to Eliza Hammond. Sure. The weird little house with the dark doorway couldn’t
possibly be there, right?

Michael
. He would know.

He was listed in my
favorites, for easy dialing. He was an emergency contact. There had to be
something, I told myself, some reason to justify his presence in five different
lists. I certainly couldn’t admit to myself that I wanted him to stop dating
the stick-thin undergrads I normally saw him with. So he would notice
me
.
Frumpy
me
.

“Michael! It’s Sarah.”

“Sarah! What’s up?”

“Uh, you were at the cupcake
shop yesterday right? Right before Swanson’s class?”

“Yeah. Yeah, why?”

“Do you remember seeing me
talking to someone, a lady, my age, kind of short?”

“Oh, Rebecca?”

“Eliza?”

“Oh yeah, that’s her name. Eliza.
What was it you called her… Eli? Why are you asking?” Sounds of someone else
talking in the background crushed me. Another date.

“I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Well, we already knew that.”

“I won’t keep you. You sound busy.
I just wanted to see if you remembered her being there.” I paused to consider
my next step. “Oh, and Michael–”

“Yeah?”  

“Do you remember Eli inviting
me over for tea?”

“Oh, yeah. That was weird,
right? I mean, kind of like a little old lady that sits around drinking tea.”
His laugh made me weak in the knees, that strong voice of his being vulnerable
for just a few seconds.

Then came the girl in the
background again. I could imagine it, her tiny fingers clutching his arm
possessively.
He’s mine
, her thick layer of makeup would scream at me. I
would be acerbic and she would just be sexy. Sexy always wins.

“Yeah, it was weird. Anyway,
I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

I couldn’t take these
interactions, these chaste exchanges where I was just another friend. It was
always
Sarah, you’re too funny
or
Sarah, we need to find you a nice
guy
. He could even make a bottle of Malbec platonic.

But he had a point. It hadn’t
occurred to me that Eli’s invitation was odd from the beginning. What young
adult invites people over for tea? On doilies, nonetheless.

If Michael remembered Eliza
inviting me over, then it happened. It really happened. I entered her dark
doorway and stared into her disgusting tea. So why then did I see a playground?
Why did that little gremlin– okay he was a little cute– point at me
and mouth that
he knows it’s me
?

***

You always dream differently
after Rioja
.
It’s a
strange combination of a Stephanie Meyer story and a Chagall painting, and you
wake up like you’re in a cloud
.

That would have been a
helpful piece of advice for Mom to have shared. Instead, I’m left with the
fleeting memories I have, the ones I grasp onto tightly even as I watch them
disintegrating.

That night, beating myself up
after talking with Michael, pummeling my liver with glasses of Rioja, I fell
asleep thinking about Eliza’s doorway. I dreamt of the cherished house that
Receding Hair Line Parker kept under surveillance. Mom’s house. I was relaxing
in the living room, as I usually did, but there he sat, curled up in a corner
like a stray mongrel. Or was he
actually
a dog? Dream logic has such a
tenuous connection to reality, like when you’re not sure if you were talking to
a dog or a man.

Parker couldn’t quite jump up
on my lap, though whether it was due to illness or age was unclear. The cheek
whiskers and pointed snout were perfectly normal features to stare at in a
conversation.

“I miss you. Let me touch
you.”

“You have claws now. Don’t
you remember?” The words did little to deter Parker, even as I slid farther
away from him on Mom’s old beige couch.