Dark Doorways (8 page)

“Okay. Should we wander out
into the corridor, look for a door maybe?”

“That map you have, from
Swanson’s kid–”

“Gabi. My sister, Gabi.”

“From
Gabi
. Did you
look at the other locations on it? I mean, before it ends up at her house?”
This was the Michael I remembered from before Eliza’s brainwashing, the Michael
who could be a genius when he focused.

I handed the map over to
Michael while I got up to stretch. A short peek out of the cabin sounded like a
good idea, at least until I hobbled over to the doorway. An inexplicable pain
shot through my right knee, surprising me.
I just had my legs crossed too
long,
I thought.

The hallway was darker than I
expected and the light coming from our own compartment seemed to make the
contrast worse. My phone became a flashlight, illuminating more than it should
have. It was one of those rare moments when I preferred the ignorance of the
darkness.

The gossamer beings that I
saw, once I had more light, seemed transparent, as if their forms couldn’t
quite decide between this world and another. They moved mechanically, following
the shape in front of them injudiciously. Once they got closer to my light,
their silhouette disintegrated, floating to the ground like particles of dust.

It was the pain in my knee
that frightened me more than the phantom figures.
They,
at least, were to be expected on this nightmare journey,
but not this pain.
I had to drag my leg back to the bench to avoid
putting weight on it. Mom had pain in her knee too, just before we knew about
the cancer. Standing there, staring dumbly at my knee, I felt hot tears
dripping.

“Never enter a dark doorway.
Promise me, Sarah.” Her eyes had been so fixated.

I’ve disappointed you,
Mom.

“Sarah, did you see this?”
Michael never noticed the tears; he was in work mode, male protection mode,
find-a-solution-to-this-problem mode.

“What?”

“Here,” he pointed out as I
sat back down. “Gabi drew these squiggly lines. I think this might be the
Chicago River. Except it’s right next to campus.”

“Hmm
,"
I responded, massaging my knee. "
You know, I remember that the
North Branch forks up there. One fork goes north into Evanston and one goes
northwest into Skokie.”

“Oh, so maybe Gabi really was
drawing the same river we’re on now?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t
exactly professional cartography.” I took the map back from Michael, the edges
flapping up at me happily. Its delicate fluttering reminded me that I had been
too quick to disregard the details of Gabi’s treasure map. I had overlooked so
much in my single-mindedness, looking only at the endpoint.

“Look,” Michael said. “The
map shows a path along the river, but at this point, her directions veer off.”
He pointed at what looked like a simple line. “What could this line be?”

We both shook our heads,
trying to imagine what a straight line across squiggly lines could mean to a
three-year-old. The purple and yellow color coding didn’t help much.

“Michael! Look!” Out our
window, we could see the outline of the fourth bridge behind us. With the
rivers’ movements below it, we suddenly understood Gabi’s message, the straight
line over squiggly:
a bridge
. “But which bridge did she mean? And how do
we get off the boat?”

We had let down our guard,
let our voices rise. Eliza could hear us as she stood in the doorway of our
cabin. Michael saw her first, his jaw dropping open. As I turned to see what
had caught his attention, Eliza had already begun to inch closer, expanding
without moving.

Hers was a countenance of
beauty mixed with malice, a beauty that only frightened me more. Those sharp
green eyes pierced out at us from behind her suddenly gorgeous brunette mane.
She apparently took better care of herself on the boat.

“Sarah. Michael. So nice to
have you with us. I trust you’re enjoying yourselves. Sarah, how’s that knee?”

***

Dreams can fool you, trick
you into thinking they actually happened. Swanson once had me read a book by
Daniel Everett, a fellow linguist, on the Pirahã people. Apparently, they
believe that their dreams are an extended reality, that whatever one dreams
actually happens. I was beginning to wonder if they had been on to something.

Watching our bodies drift
along the Chicago River and Eliza expand toward us– that felt like a
dream. Finding Mom in her kitchen, making me my favorite vegetarian tortilla
soup– that felt real.

Mom looked just how I
remembered her, beaming her vibrant smile before the chemo treatments started.
Her arms and legs were so strong, graceful even. Every inch of her glowed, from
her thick, dark hair to her fair skin. The most amazing feature was that she
was simply there. My mom.

“You’re enjoying your
classes?”

“I am. I’m done with my
coursework though. Swanson has me working on this indigenous language program
for my fellowship.”          

She cupped her hands around
my face, adoring me like she always did. “My daughter, in a Ph.D. program
and
on fellowship.
I’m so proud
.”

Pride. She was finally proud
of me.

“Mom, why didn’t you tell me
Swanson was my father?”

She turned back to her slow
cooker, pretending that it needed tending, as if I did not understand how these
things worked.

Still facing away from
me– because who wants to look someone in the eye for a sperm donor
conversation?– she was able to talk while stirring. “I think just a bit
more garlic.”

“Mom.”

“Sarah, I don’t know. I think
I just didn’t want him giving you special treatment or anything.”

“But you knew the whole time?
All those times you drove by his house? Your
dream
house
?
You knew it was my biological father who lived there?”

“I didn’t find out until you
were already away at college. That was just a coincidence.” Mom finally turned
back toward me, reaching for my hand, trying to calm me like mothers do.

“That’s an awfully big
coincidence. Your dream house just happened to be my father’s house?” I was
gesturing widely with my right arm, the arm she wasn’t holding.

“It wasn’t really my dream
house, Sarah.”

“What? You would go on and on
about it! You imagined how they decorated, where they’d put the Christmas
tree–”

“Sarah,” she interrupted. Two
hands massaged my own, but it wasn’t calming. “That house was my safety. I went
there to protect us, to escape.”

“From what?”

Mom’s hands began to slip
away from mine just as her silhouette dissolved in front of me.

“Mom! What were you running
away from?”

She was gone. The tortilla
soup was gone. Her soft jasmine scent was gone. It all drifted away from me
elegantly, as if my heart wasn’t ripping out of my chest.

“Mom!” I found myself
shouting, hoping to transport her back. I found myself talking into thin air,
hoping some small part of her might hear me. “There’s so much more I wanted to
say.”

I drifted in and out of
consciousness, still wondering which was the dream and which was reality. There
was a haze as I blinked my eyes open, a struggle to get everything back into
focus. I still wasn’t sure where I was. It certainly wasn’t our boxcar with a
view of the river.

It was Eliza’s vile face that
greeted me.

“Sarah, you’re joining us
again. And how is your mom’s tortilla soup?”

***

The map hid itself in my back
right pocket, unable to endure Eliza’s presence. So there I sat in a room with
no light, folded up into a corner and staring at a gorgonized Michael. Whether
he had actually been turned to stone or not was difficult to tell in the
darkness; his silence was not a good sign. The ropes tying my wrists to some
pipe behind me were meant to prevent movement, but I was sure I had lost all
strength to move anyway.

“Comfortable?” Her voice shot
across the room, piercing me like a bullet. Without being able to see her, I
could only imagine that she was sitting contentedly with that nefarious smile
directed at me.

“Eliza,” I began. The words
came out with more effort than I thought I would need. The boat was taking
everything, watching me wither away. “Why?”

“So Será wants to know why
she’s here.”

“It’s
Sarah
.”

Her cackle fell on my ears
too harshly, making me wince like a trapped animal. It was odd, really, why it
was that moment that I pictured PETA freeing animals and wondered if their
services extended to human life.

“Or were you asking why I
invited you into that house, why Parker lives in your mom’s house, why your
mother was terrified of dark doorways?”

“Leave my mom out of this.”

The cackle returned, echoing
off the walls as I tried to tuck my head into my body more.

“Schadenfreude.”

“Excuse me?” she responded,
sounding surprised for the first time since I’d met her.

“You’re evil. Vile. You enjoy
seeing others’ misery.”

“Now wait right there, Missy.
I’m doing a service here. This boat doesn’t take anyone anywhere they don’t
want to go.”

“Ha!” The laugh burst out of
me as I felt the map fluttering in my pocket. “So explain why we’ve been forced
onto this boat and why you’re now holding us prisoner.”

“Fine. I’ll let you go.”

With that, the ropes fell off
my hands just as the room opened up to bright sunlight pouring in, both events
happening concurrently as if she could manipulate it all at will. I had no
energy to stand, so I slumped in the corner, squinting into the new light.

A silhouette formed in the
light, a woman’s figure. Eliza had disappeared: lingering, but out of sight.
This woman’s figure mesmerized me, being a possible lifeline out of this place.

“Sarah.”

“Mom?”

“Look at you. What a good
daughter, coming to visit me.”

The droplets falling from my
eyes were easy to wipe away, but the feeling of making Mom proud was not so
easy to discard.

“And you brought your friend,
Michael?”

Michael
. Turning toward him and expecting the
worst, I found a confused, blinking wanderer, lost. You would have thought he
had just woken up from oral surgery, still not seeing the world clearly after the
anesthesia. Eliza had done a number on him.

“Mom, I’m not sure what this
is. I mean, how are you here? And
this
of all places?”

She helped me up, allowed me
to lean on her like she always did.

“Oh Sarah, we have so much
time. Let’s just enjoy this moment.” She extended her arms to embrace me, and I
knew then that it was really her. It was her tight hug that always lasted a few
seconds too long and made me feel slightly suffocated. Her soft jasmine relaxed
me as I collapsed onto her frame.

I let the pain of the last
two years come out, crying for the time I had lost with her.  I let myself
forget about the boat and Eliza, enjoying my mom again. We fell into our old
patterns easily, laughing and nudging as if she had just made her disgusting
spinach pasta again.

“Let’s take Michael to that
boxcar,” I offered. “We can talk more there.” Why I had been tied up, why my
dead mother was walking with me, arms linked, or why I still had no energy
never troubled me. I just wanted my mom.

“Yes. Let’s enjoy this.”

***

It was Mom at her best, her
brightest, how she was before the chemo. Her eyes were vibrant like when I was
little. Her hands were filled out, enough to give her a good grip as she held
my hand. I wanted to soak in every bit of her, inhale her like oxygen.

With my arm laced around her
mid section, as if she could slip away from me at any moment if I didn’t hold
her tight, I sauntered happily to the boxcar seats with my mother.
My
mother!

It didn’t bother me that
Michael was nearly comatose, barely able to walk.
He’ll get better
, I
told myself.
Mom is here, and that’s what matters
.

“Let’s get Michael sitting
down first. He’s in kind of bad shape, huh?” Sweet, dear Mom. Always thinking
of others. Always mothering others.

She began helping him, the
way mothers do. She could have been a nurse, the way she cared so much about
his wellbeing, the way she was a crutch for him. But all I could do was stare,
immobile and dumbstruck.
My mom!

Mom helped Michael lay down
on the seat facing ours, propping his head up with her sweater as a pillow. “He
should be okay if he gets a little sleep.” She looked up to smile at me, as
relieved as I was to finally have a few moments to ourselves.