Open Doors

by Gloria Goldreich

  “Of course,” Denis had agreed but the truth was that while he understood it, he had difficulty accepting it. He had always perceived his mother to be a woman of extraordinary strength. He could not remember her ever being ill or displaying any weakness. Both his parents had always seemed to him to be indomitable, energizing each other, invigorated by their enthusiasm for their work.

  Always, Elaine had spent long hours in her studio, sometimes returning to continue her work at night if she was particularly involved in a project. His father maintained both his clinic hours at the hospital and his private practice, taught and wrote for psychoanalytic journals, never complaining of the demands on his time. Fatigue was foreign to both of them. Denis as the youngest child, the only child at home after his sisters and brother left for college, was the beneficiary of their gentle and generous attention, their boundless energy. Elaine cooked his favorite foods, bought tickets for shows he would particularly enjoy, worried over his too-frequent colds, his penchant for solitude. His father hiked trails with him, bought books that he thought Denis would enjoy, taking the trouble to read them himself so that he and Denis could discuss them. It pleased both Elaine and Neil that Denis shared their love for music, that he could spend winter evenings sprawled on the rug between their two chairs listening to the string quartets they favored.

  It was Andrew who had pointed out, years later, that perhaps his parents made these extra efforts because they sensed his vulnerability and they understood that he was not quite like their other children, that his withdrawal from his contemporaries was self-imposed and rooted in a haunting sadness that he could not yet explain.

  Denis had shrugged off his partner’s explanation. It was irrelevant. What mattered was his perception of their strength, his knowledge that he could rely on a mother and father of unique energy and unique power. He had thought them immortal, at a remove from the shadow of death. He recalled how, in grade school, the mother of one of his classmates had died and the class had signed a sympathy card. Denis had gripped the pen tightly as he signed his name and thought, My parents are never going to die, they will live forever.

  Perhaps that was why he had been so shaken by his father’s death, so overwhelmed by its suddenness. He had choked down his feelings of betrayal and disbelief but for weeks after the funeral his nights had been wracked by dreams of loss.

  “It can’t be,” he had said over and over again to Andrew. “I still can’t fathom it. My father was so healthy, so strong. He had so much to live for.”

  “People die,” Andrew had replied. “Strong people, healthy people. Weak people, sick people. Straights and gays. Death is part of life, Denis.”

  He spoke slowly but his voice was edged with impatience. Andrew, after all, had watched a younger brother and an older sister die before he had reached his thirteenth birthday. Their lives had been claimed by the malnutrition and disease that poverty is heir to. Death had haunted his childhood, informed his adolescence. He had watched funeral corteges wind their way through the narrow streets of his Jamaican village and throughout his boyhood he had worn his one white shirt to the funerals of friends and cousins, relatives and neighbors. He had wondered bitterly if his mother kept it always so starched and ironed in anticipation of yet another inexplicable passing, another burial.

  His mother’s lesson had been well learned. Now he and Denis hung their dark suits, newly dry-cleaned after each funeral, in an easily accessible closet, in readiness for loss that followed loss as AIDS claimed the lives of one friend and then another. They had worn those suits to Neil Gordon’s funeral, partners in grief as they were partners in life. Andrew had waited patiently for Denis to assimilate his father’s death, offering him the comfort of words and the solace of silence.

  Slowly Denis had emerged from the miasma of sorrow, had seen to the legal aftermath, the intricacies of his father’s will, the accounting of his mother’s assets. He gathered letters testamentary, filed papers, totaled columns of figures and tried to imagine how she would live the rest of her life, the wife become a widow, the mother of widely scattered adult children who would now live alone in the large house that had once overflowed with love and laughter.

  Sarah attributed their mother’s fatigue, her bout with the flu, to age but he knew that his father’s death had sapped Elaine’s strength, diluted her energy. He worried over the toll her trips to Jerusalem, to Los Angeles, to Russia, had taken and he knew that his worry was tinged with resentment. When would she visit him, when would it be his turn? He wanted his mother to spend time at his home, to understand his life, to consider how it might be merged with her own.

  When he called her in the evening and heard the phone ringing in that large home, he imagined her seated alone opposite his father’s empty chair and sadness suffused him. He felt himself charged with new responsibility. The burden had shifted. The child had become the parent. He now worried over the mother who had, for so many years, worried over him. He sought to banish the loneliness of her widowhood as she had sought to banish the despair that had darkened his boyhood.

  He reread Lisa’s letter and dashed an e-mail off to her, telling her the dates of his visit to New York, then changed into shorts and a T-shirt, set the radio to the University of New Mexico station, which was featuring an Odetta songfest, and began to prepare dinner. Andrew’s favorite, chicken enchiladas with a vegetarian chili. As always, cooking relaxed him. He chopped vegetables vigorously and tossed them into the sizzling olive oil. By the time Andrew came into the kitchen, the room was redolent with the fragrance of garlic and onion and awhirl with the throbbing guitar that accompanied Odetta’s deep and soulful voice.

  “Smells great,” Andrew said, dipping a spoon into the skillet and tasting the chili sauce. “And tastes great also. Are we having an anniversary or something that I’ve forgotten?”

  He draped an arm over Denis’s shoulder and grinned. Denis turned. He was moved, as always, by Andrew’s subtle beauty, startled anew each evening and morning by his parter’s fine features and lithe grace. They had been together for more than a decade, yet he was still overwhelmed by the knowledge that this lean, golden-skinned man, so soft of voice and gentle of gesture, had chosen him as a life companion.

  “No anniversary. Go change. You stink of chemicals. I’ll mix us some margaritas.”

  “We’re not running tonight?” Andrew asked in surprise.

  It had become their habit to run at first dusk along a path that wound its way through the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, looking up now and again as the descending sun painted the sky a gold-tinged vibrant pink that deepened slowly into the majestic purple arcs that preceded the star-studded desert darkness. They ran with swiftness and ease, occasionally increasing their pace for the sheer joy of the effort, the sweat glistening on their bodies an affirmation of the strength they so carefully and determinedly cultivated. As illness had decimated their small community, they defiantly pledged themselves to a regimen of health and exercise, of survival and endurance.

  Andrew looked at his friend but asked no questions. Denis would explain the break in their routine over dinner. He showered quickly, changed into chinos and selected a freshly ironed shirt. Even after all the years of success, he still experienced a thrill of wonderment when he opened his closet and saw the serried rows of slacks and varicolored shirts, the drawers laden with clean underwear and socks, his shoes always polished and neatly aligned.

  He had grown up wearing faded hand-me-downs, ragged pants and tattered shirts scavenged from older cousins or plucked from the barrels of used clothing in his mother’s church, his feet more often than not bare or squeezed into shoes that did not fit. The very first photograph he had of himself, the candid action shot Gordon Cummings had taken in the marketplace of Ochos Rios, so long ago, showed him sprinting away from his mother’s papaya stand. An oversize T-shirt tented his skinny body, his legs were stick-thin, his arms thrust out like delicate wings, his lips parted in a mischievous laugh as he glanced
over his shoulder, never breaking pace.

  Gordon Cummings, the photographer, was a legend in the village. The soft-spoken Brit was said to be a famous man and there were those who thought that he had even been knighted by the Queen. The village doctor, who subscribed to British and American magazines, had found his photo essays on their glossy pages. It thrilled the islanders that this famous man and his wife spent the winter months in Jamaica. It saddened them when he arrived alone one year and told his housekeeper that his wife had died. A wreath of dried flowers and a small bottle of rum had been placed at his door, sympathy offerings in the island tradition.

  “Jamaican Boy Running,” Gordon had titled that action shot of Andrew and he had sought Andrew out when it won a prize in a London exhibit and given him a copy of the gallery catalog and a box of chocolates.

  “See, I’ve made you famous,” the white-bearded photographer told sixteen-year-old Andrew.

  Neither the fame nor the chocolates had interested Andrew. But the catalog intrigued him and he turned its pages, studying the photographs as though he would engrave them upon his memory. It was the art of photography, the magic of the camera’s eye that enticed him, that drew him to Gordon Cummings’s hilltop home day after day.

  He would sidle up to the house in the late afternoon and stare through the windows at the framed photographs on the whitewashed walls, the portraits of famous world leaders and ordinary people, the scenes of battlefields and those of pastoral landscapes. There were pictures of foaming waves taken from the decks of sailing ships and a singular shot of a huge saguaro cactus standing vigil in a vast desert expanse. Andrew wondered how the photographer knew how to aim his camera so that he might capture the softness of shadow as it fell across the golden sand. Then one afternoon, as he stood on an upturned milk crate and strained to see a high-hanging nightscape, the door opened. Startled, Andrew fell off the crate. Gordon Cummings laughed, held out a glass of lemonade and invited the boy inside.

  He explained his work, spoke of his travels. Andrew asked questions, turned the pages of albums. His interest pleased the lonely widower. He invited Andrew back, paid him small sums for doing chores and going on errands and then, step by step, he introduced him to the routines of the darkroom. Gradually, he became Andrew’s mentor. He took the boy with him on field trips, gave him a small box camera of his own and taught him the secrets of lights and angles, of perspective and distance. When he left the island for his annual trip to London, it was Andrew who held the keys to the house and with the keys came permission to use the darkroom, to read the books, to hone his craft because it was clear to both of them that Andrew would one day follow in Gordon Cummings’s footsteps.

  When Andrew graduated from the island high school, there was a scholarship arranged for him at the Royal Academy of Photography in London. Gordon had carried a portfolio of his protégé’s work to the registrar and established a fund for Andrew’s upkeep during his studies. Andrew excelled. Gordon Cummings attended his student exhibit at the Academy, watched him graduate and glowed with approval. Six months later, the famous photographer was dead of a heart attack, his island home willed to Andrew Caruthers.

  Andrew was no longer a ragged Jamaican boy, a barefoot sprinter. He had become a lithe and talented London art photographer who ran fashion shoots even as a student and garnered awards at graduation as well as a fellowship to the Yale School of Fine Arts in New Haven. And it was in the cafeteria at Yale, one wintry evening, that he set his dinner tray down opposite a tall gray-eyed law student, whose tangle of dark curls was badly in need of cutting. They smiled at each other, the tentative smiles of shy and careful young men, and softly said their names. Andrew. Denis. They looked through the large glass windows at the slowly falling snow, left the cafeteria together and stepped without hesitation into their shared future, their lives melded, fear and loneliness forever vanquished.

  Andrew shrugged into a denim jacket against the chill of the desert evening and hurried downstairs. The Odetta selections were over and a program of violin music had taken its place. Denis’s favorite, the Bruch violin concerto, wafted through the room and Denis came toward him balancing a tray of margaritas, salt crystals aglitter on the rim of each glass.

  Andrew took his glass and smiled at his partner.

  “Why do I have the feeling that this drink and your dinner is a way of softening me up for some sort of unpleasantness?” he asked.

  Denis blushed.

  “Probably because it is,” he said. “You’re a mind reader, Andrew.”

  “No. Yours is the only mind I read.”

  Andrew grinned.

  “So what’s the bad news?” he asked.

  “We’re going to have to jettison the trip to Jamaica for a couple of months. A settlement’s been offered in the Stevenson case and I have to be in New York to represent him at the final negotiations. It will take a week at least, which means that all my cases here will be backed up. I’ll need time when I get back. I know you’re disappointed and I’m pretty disappointed myself but I had no choice,” Denis said, disliking the defensive tone that had crept into his voice.

  Andrew swirled his drink.

  “Not to worry, Denis. I can use the time to do some studies of the cliff ruins in Rito de Los Frijoles Canyon. Travel and Leisure Magazine has been after me for a spread and I can use the photos for the opening exhibit at the gallery.” Andrew spoke soothingly, as always setting aside his own feelings to calm Denis. “And another thing,” he continued. “This will be a good time to see your mother. I know you’ve been worried about her. You’ll have some time to talk to her, maybe to convince her to come out to New Mexico, to spend some time with us and see how we live. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Denis agreed. “That’s what I want. I want her to know you better, to understand us both, to appreciate the life that we’ve built here. When she and my father visited, they breezed in and out, said all the right things the way they always said all the right things. I want more than that. I want her to see us as we are. I want her acceptance. I want her to be able to say ‘Andrew and Denis’ with the same ease that she says ‘Sarah and Moshe,’ ‘Peter and Lauren,’ ‘Lisa and David.’”

  “And what if you don’t get that acceptance?” Andrew asked gravely.

  “I’ll deal with it. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. My mother is a pretty spectacular dame.”

  “I know that,” Andrew said.

  He had always liked Elaine Gordon, admired her work as he knew, with the artist’s instinct, that she admired his. They were bonded, too, by their love for Denis, each recognizing his extraordinary tenderness, his extraordinary vulnerability. All this he knew, although he had never spent as much as an hour alone with her.

  “And don’t obsess about Jamaica,” he added. “My island’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Denis smiled.

  “We’ll plan another trip after her visit. If, in fact, she decides to visit us.”

  “She will. She’s making the rounds, toting up her options. You’re next,” Andrew said and wondered how he could be so certain.

  They ate dinner on the patio and watched the glinting stars slowly emerge and sail into place across the sheltering sky. Denis remembered then how his mother and father had often stood in the garden of the Westchester house, their eyes raised to the starlit sky as they murmured the melodic names of the constellations. Cassiopeia. Perseus. Andromeda. Cepheus. He wondered if his mother now stood vigil alone and his heart turned at the thought of her aloneness. Andrew was right. The trip to New York would serve a double purpose. He yearned to comfort her, to persuade her to visit his home, to recognize Andrew’s uniqueness and the tenderness of their bond. He wanted her to think of how she might perhaps share their lives. He looked gratefully at his partner who had, as always, put words to the yearnings that haunted him.

  twenty-two

  He remembered Andrew’s words as he sat opposite his mother in the familiar Westche
ster living room later that week. He had driven north from the city after grueling days of meetings and negotiations but the case had been settled to his client’s satisfaction. He had even managed to squeeze in a meeting with a local Realtor, a kindly woman who clutched her calculator to her ample cashmere-covered bosom as she told him that his mother’s house had appreciated greatly.

  “One week, two weeks on the market and it’ll be snatched up,” she had said and her words had depressed rather than elated him. When the house was sold his childhood, too, would be snatched up. Sadness and fatigue blanched the color from his face and caused his shoulders to sag.

  Elaine looked at him worriedly and lifted a hand to his brow, the almost forgotten maternal gesture of concern.

  “You look exhausted,” she said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I’m always exhausted after shepherding through a deal like this. A lot of i’s to be dotted, a lot of t’s to be crossed. But I’m pretty resilient. When I feel that way in New Mexico after a tough day, Andrew and I go running, I take a shower and I’m fine,” he assured her.

  She sipped her drink, tried to visualize Denis sprinting through the desert, remembered that he and Neil had often run together on weekends—tall, lean father and tall, lean son in graceful pace disappearing down their rural road. Neil. Her husband’s name lilted through her thoughts and came to rest upon her heart.

  “I guess I don’t really have a clear picture of your life there,” she acknowledged.

  “Which is why it would be great if you came out to New Mexico,” Andrew responded quickly. “And I don’t mean for a quick weekend. I mean a real visit, a real span of time. The kind of time you spent in Jerusalem and California, the kind of time you spent with Lisa in Russia. Enough time for you to see how we live, Andrew and myself, to understand us. It would mean a lot to us.”

  He spoke calmly but Elaine recognized a brittle anger in his tone. He was determined to have his turn, to lay claim to the same attention she had given to his brother and his sisters. He wanted to be included in the circle of her concerns, his life to be given equal weight on the scales of her affection.