by Mark Morris
“What did this woman look like?”
“I couldn’t see her face, but she was petite, like me. Long, black hair.”
“Like you.”
“Yes.”
Edgar nodded. “Don’t you think it’s possible you caught a reflection of yourself in the window?”
“She was facing away from me!”
“Maybe the angle or something? I don’t know how to explain it, but darling, what you’re describing isn’t possible. I think you woke up disoriented. The storm scared you, and your brain got carried away.” He reached his hand across the desk to his wife. She had no choice but to accept it, and his explanation.
“It felt very real,” she said.
“I’m sure it did.”
The storm died down, and Edgar drove them home. The power was back on when they arrived. Stephanie followed timidly as her husband braved the pantry. “No door,” he said. She had to agree. There was no door.
* * *
The following morning, with soggy grass and downed twigs and leaves being all that remained of the storm, it felt obvious to Stephanie that the whole episode had been a hallucination. Perhaps she’d been sleepwalking. Or maybe it was all some fever dream and she’d never gone to the pantry at all. The storm, the cold, the dark, and the sleep-inducing medication had been a potent cocktail, overwhelming her senses, giving flesh to her nightmares.
Still, it had been very convincing. When she came down to the kitchen for breakfast, Stephanie decided against yogurt. She would have cereal. This meant forcing herself to enter the dreaded pantry. She would not allow herself to be controlled by irrational fears.
The pantry was as it should be. Shelves of food and home goods. The bare bulb screwed into the ceiling, its chain dangling. Absolutely no portals to dream houses.
A sharp ringing made Stephanie jump before she realised it was the phone. Closing the pantry behind her, she went to grab the kitchen extension, but the noise stopped mid-ring. Edgar had answered on the portable.
“You old bastard!” she heard him say from the living room. “How long has it been?”
She gathered from the side of the conversation she could hear that an old friend of Edgar’s was in town. Because she and Edgar had eloped only a handful of years ago, they’d not gotten through the introduction part of their marriage. Edgar had no family to speak of, but there’d been colleagues, old fraternity brothers and childhood friends. They were all portly, balding, white men. Stephanie’s memories of them bled together like boring watercolour reproductions, the sort that might be passed off as art in office building lobbies.
“Wait until you meet her. Don’t go planning to steal her from me!” Edgar laughed. “Sure! Bring the wife. The girls can gossip, and you and I will kick back and talk about old times.”
Edgar got carryout from Durstville’s one decent restaurant, and the scotch flowed over dinner. Short and round, with scrawny legs, Dave was an orange on toothpicks. The front strands of his thinning hair stuck to his sweaty forehead. His wife, Beth, had a body firm from the gym, but her swollen face betrayed her alcoholism. Everyone but Stephanie was blotto before dessert.
Edgar’s laugh was louder than she’d ever heard it. He was forty-nine to her thirty-six, but she only ever thought of her husband as older when he brought men his own age around. On these occasions, she could recognise that Edgar too was growing flabby. His dashing salt-and-pepper hair was spiralling into baldness in the back. In ten years’ time, he’d be as unappealing as Dave.
“I think I’ll make a big pot of coffee to go with the tiramisu,” Stephanie said.
Beth rose on wobbly legs, but not a strand of her newscaster hairdo strayed out of place. “I’m coming with you. I want a splash more of that fabulous wine before I call it quits.” The boys retired to the living room, and Beth followed Stephanie to the kitchen. “This house is ginormous! No wonder you and Edgar left Baltimore.”
Stephanie dumped four hefty scoops of grounds into the coffee filter and closed the lid. She hoped the life-reviving sludge would sober up her guests so they could leave. “Did you and Dave ever live there?”
“No. We’re in Philly.”
“Is that where Dave met Edgar?”
“I’m not sure. They were friends before we ever married.” While the coffee maker gurgled and spat out its bitter molasses, Beth took possession of one of the kitchen chairs. “You’re just what I expected, though.”
“Oh?”
“Just Edgar’s type.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oriental.” Beth’s hand fluttered nervously to her mouth. “Or are we not supposed to say that?”
“Edgar doesn’t have a thing about Asians.” Stephanie was so sure this was true. Edgar had never treated her like some of the men she’d dated, expecting her to wait and dote on him like a Chinese bastardisation of a geisha. One of her college boyfriends had actually bought her a cheongsam for her birthday. She’d learned to avoid men who asked, pride gleaming in their eyes, if they were the first white guy she’d ever been with.
Beth snorted and kicked off her high heels under the table. “Sure he does! For a while, there was some Vietnamese girl who came here with her Christian parents. Witnesses. Lord, she was a drip! And then there was Katsuko. And Wendy. She was a student, I think? Really young. But then again, you all look young, don’t you?” Beth had laid her head on the table, her eyes closing without her consent.
The sputtering of the coffee came to a stop. Loud, manly laughter was heard from the living room. Stephanie had a quick vision of herself going in there and dumping a boiling mug of coffee on her husband’s khaki crotch. Instead, she turned off the coffee maker. The boys, wrapped up in their reminiscing, didn’t notice her go up the stairs to bed.
* * *
Edgar had found his way upstairs. Stephanie awoke to find him beside her. His pants were gone, but he hadn’t bothered with the shirt. She had not felt drunk at dinner, but now her mouth was dry as the dead. She slipped from under the sheets and went downstairs.
It occurred to her that Beth and Dave might have been too drunk to drive, but checking the driveway, she saw that their car was gone. The neighbour boy was out though. She could just see the white of his T-shirt. Could he see her in the window, parting the curtain to stare at him? Stephanie doubted it, but something told her he sensed her, the same way she’d sensed that he would be there tonight and had known to look for him. He was not brain-dead, she was certain. Only locked up inside himself. She closed the curtain.
In the kitchen, a luminous moon bathed everything in a halogen glow. The swamp coffee was still in the pot. Stephanie emptied it into the sink.
Why had what Beth said upset her so much? She’d stopped revering Edgar long ago. He’d cut an impressive figure when Stephanie, as a new professor, had first met him. He’d been fond of quoting Robert Browning and looked very handsome in his Dr. Indiana Jones tweeds. She had projected all sorts of romantic qualities on him. Marriage, though, had been like the house lights coming up after a film, turning the silver magic of cinema back into a ripped and tattered screen.
It was the jolt, she decided, of learning that her husband had pursued her because she fell into a certain type. What else had she failed to notice? This was the same gut-sinking dawn of knowledge that she’d felt when she found the door in the pantry.
But of course, that wasn’t real.
She filled a glass with water from the sink and emptied it down her parched throat. Now she could return to bed.
Yet, having thought about the pantry, she felt drawn to look. It was silly, but she needed to assure herself that nothing was there.
The moonlight failed to penetrate the darkness of that closet, so she had to step inside to reach for the light. She pulled the chain, and her breath stopped. Not three feet in front of her was the door.
She thought of r
unning for Edgar, but suppose the door was gone again when she returned? Oddly, she wasn’t afraid. She’d known somehow that it would be here this time, perhaps because it was night and she was alone. What lay beyond the door would reveal itself to her, but to no one else. She grasped the knob and let herself in.
Like her kitchen, this one was awash with moonlight. The place had taken on form, becoming less of a shadow and more of a mirror. Though grime remained at the edges, most of the filth had disappeared from the floor. The cobwebs that had clung like Spanish moss were gone.
The woman was there. “Hello?” Stephanie asked, but the figure did not move. Stephanie circled, keeping a good distance between her and the other. Coming around, she saw the face: it was her own. Even their nightgowns were the same. The eyes, though, were absent, like blown bulbs.
Stephanie had a hand outstretched, ready to touch her doppelganger, but sound came from further in the house. She followed a soft shuffling to the living room. Edgar was pacing there in his shirt and underwear. She said his name, but he did not stop, only kept tracing and doubling back over the same five-foot length of floor. Like the woman, his eyes were extinguished, and Stephanie realised where she’d seen a pair just like them.
“There you are.” It was not Edgar who had spoken, but someone behind her who had just entered. Was it Stephanie’s imagination, or had the voice made the bowl on the coffee table tremble? She froze, and a pair of arms encircled her. They were brown and taut with youth. A man held her tight against his chest, his nose inhaling the scent of her neck. He thinks I’m her, she realised and knew that she must be absolutely still.
He stepped in front of her. Beneath his wavy hair, Rafael’s face was vivid with animation. The lights were on in his expression, and as she had expected, he was handsome this way. Stephanie willed herself not to show any sign of recognition, locking her eyes on a point behind him.
Cupping her face in his hands, Rafael said, “You feel cold. Would you like a sweater?” Would the other Stephanie have answered his question? Did she speak? “I’ll get you one,” he said.
Only as he turned to go, Edgar’s path grew wide, and Rafael collided with her catatonic husband. Both men fell, but Rafael got quickly to his feet. His trim body was so alert, so responsive, while Edgar seemed unable to contemplate righting himself.
“You fucking retard!” Rafael thundered, and the whole house shook. Stephanie clamped her lips shut to keep her breath from coming out in frightened gulps. Rafael stepped towards Edgar, and Stephanie was sure he was going to kick him. Instead, he stared for a long moment. A tear slid down his cheek as he said, “You should be in a home.”
They were dolls, Stephanie realised. In this world, she and Edgar were Rafael’s toys. Here, it was he who had the power to be kind or cruel. She watched as he brought Edgar to his feet and led him to the couch. “Sit here and rest,” he said, pressing Edgar down by his shoulders.
He returned to Stephanie, but he seemed deflated, no longer any happier to see her than if she’d been a television. Swallowing, he made an effort to be cheerful. “Are you still cold? Stay there and I’ll—”
He broke off, staring behind her. Stephanie didn’t dare look, but she could guess by his clouded expression that her other self had come into the room. Which of them was the mirror Stephanie, he would be wondering, and which of them was the real one.
Before he could decide, Stephanie dropped her false stupor like a cloak from around her shoulders and tore off through the kitchen.
“Please!” he called after her, his voice making the dishes in the cabinets rattle. “Please, don’t leave me!” But she was in the pantry now, shoving the door securely closed.
* * *
“The showing went great,” the realtor said over the phone. “Nice couple. Seemed like it was a little bit out of their price range, but they had that look. I think they’ll make an offer.” Stephanie thanked her and snapped the phone shut.
“Well?” Edgar asked.
“She thinks they’ll bite.”
They’d gone to dinner to be out of the way during the showing. Stephanie’s short ribs were smothered in a sickeningly sweet sauce that made them inedible, but Edgar was stuffing the last of his burger into his mouth and had ordered dessert.
In another month, construction would be finished on their new home. Stephanie had decided against telling Edgar why she desperately wanted to move. Instead, she complained to him about the drive to the college and the musty smell of old houses. She wanted a new house, somewhere where the depths of closets and pantries were facts she could check against blueprints before they were ever built. A house without any past or parallels.
On their way home, Edgar orated about how he didn’t intend to take any less than the asking price. “Not with the improvements we made. And the appraiser said neighbourhood values have increased by over ten per cent.”
Stephanie leaned her head against the window. He’d given this speech before. Ever since her talk with Beth, she saw her marriage more clearly. On the surface, they had a marriage of equals. Edgar didn’t expect her to do the laundry or clean the house (after all, they could afford dry cleaning and a weekly housekeeper for those things). But scratch away at the laminate, and you’d hit the particleboard core of their union. Stephanie had fallen in love with Edgar without knowing that the emotion wasn’t necessary for her to land the part of his wife. She had the qualifications. She was intelligent, accomplished, attractive, Asian, and willing to put his needs above her own. Had she deviated in any way from the kind of woman Edgar saw for himself, had she been black, or somebody’s secretary, or just savvy instead of book-smart, she wouldn’t be in this car now. There was so much more to her, but all that Edgar required was that she tick the boxes.
He had not noticed the change in her. She’d stopped engaging in their conversations, but he filled the silence with his own voice, repeating things he’d already told her, talking endlessly about himself. “No less than asking,” he said. “And even then, I think we should wait until the last minute to accept. Maybe there’ll be another offer. I want to net at least—”
There was a heavy thud, then a metallic thunder as something tumbled over the roof of the car. Edgar slammed on the brakes, and Stephanie jerked hard against the seatbelt before slamming back against the seat. A dark lump lay in the road behind them. It wasn’t moving.
Lights appeared like fireflies, and bathrobe-clad neighbours stepped onto their porches or stared from parted curtains. Stephanie was out of the car, walking towards the fallen shadow. Her stomach churned, threatening to spill vomit down her front, and her knees felt fragile and weak as blown sugar. Still, she lurched forward, needing to know what they’d hit. Person or animal?
“Rafael!” Yolanda rushed past Stephanie, reaching the boy’s body first. She threw herself on top of him, her hands pawing at the bloody wreck of her son. “Mijo!” she sobbed. The wail of sirens sounded from streets away, red lights flashing against the night sky, speeding towards a tragic scene after the last line had already been spoken.
* * *
Stephanie did not arrive home until quarter-to-three. Because she was hysterical, Yolanda had not been allowed in the ambulance. Stephanie had driven her to the hospital. “Stay with me. Please,” the older woman had asked, taking a fierce grip on Stephanie’s hand.
They sat together in the waiting room. No nurse came by with a word of intermittent courage, and Yolanda and Stephanie knew better than to ask. It was not a shock when the doctor finally came, tail between his legs, and told Yolanda that Rafael was dead. She nodded and thanked him, but when another man came around with a clipboard and questions about final arrangements, she allowed herself to be overcome, sobbing until he handed Stephanie a form and went away.
“He was such a good boy,” Yolanda said in the car. “Nothing behind the eyes, but so much going on upstairs. I could tell. He was my baby. I know.”
“No. Thank you.” Yolanda closed her eyes, and Stephanie returned home.
In their living room, Edgar was asleep on the couch. The television was on, and a half-empty bottle of bourbon sat on the coffee table, its wax-sealed cork beside it. He was curled up into the foetal position, a pillow clutched to his chest. He looked like a pitiful child, but Stephanie remembered his words after the accident. “He was in the street!” he told anyone who would listen. “He came out of nowhere! What was he doing in the street?” No one was accusing him, but he kept asserting aloud that it wasn’t his fault.
Stephanie would let him sleep here. She could not stomach having him in her bed. Some remnant of this disgust for him would remain forever, she was sure. Would she be able to continue on with him? Did couples get past evenings like this?
The questions were too great to be answered now with a cloudy brain. Her clothes were still redolent of the hospital. She grabbed the scotch off the table. This would be her dinner and her toothbrush. She would lock the door to the bedroom, take a shower, and drink to oblivion. In the morning she would consider what must come next.
She was mounting the stairs when she saw light from the kitchen. Automatically, she went to turn it off. Expecting to find the stove light on, she was taken aback by the open door of the pantry. But of course, this was where the scotch was kept.
For a long time, she debated whether to turn around and go up the stairs. She had not entered the pantry at night since the last encounter. Instead, she’d resorted to putting food away in the cabinets, cramming tea and cereal boxes next to the plates and glasses, not caring that it annoyed Edgar. Even in the day, she would swoop in, grab what she needed and rush out, never daring to look at the back wall for fear of seeing the door again.
