A blog on Peace after violence

Our path toward Love isn’t always so obvious. In this story, I explore love with a twist. Happy Valentine’s Day 💞🤗

The Door

By Jane Powell

First published in Women & Art (GWRC), 2019.

I turned off the potholed road and into my past shortly before midday. Feeling jittery but with firm resolve, I drove down the long driveway and parked under the big old maple. My knuckles were white. Mindfully, I loosened my grip on the steering wheel. I’d arrived back in town on Monday, and it had taken me four days to summon my grit and make this trip into the Blaeberry. My visit was unexpected … mainly because I couldn’t decide how best to make it “expected”, so I’d settled for the default plan: random shock on a Thursday. I reminded myself to breathe. I felt like a student again, about to present my thesis to a panel of scrutiny and judgement.

Sitting in the car, motionless and utterly alone, I impulsively bit my lip, thinking. Memories somersaulted through time and landed on the step of the quaint log house with the red door, that I was now staring at with hope and dread. The house was Ray in a nutshell. It was poetry come to life, perched like a barn owl on a rustically landscaped island, surrounded by a congregation of proud aspen in their seasonal golden splendour. I drew my eyes away from the house and watched the wind blow leaves through the woods. A quilt of colourful debris embraced the forest floor, protecting it from frost’s bite. Nostalgia fluttered in me, deep. I’d missed fall in Golden. I’d missed Ray.

How long had it been — 20, 25 years? I fumbled with dates in my head. Art was my thing, not math. We’d been 22 … 1991 … 28 years. Wow. Long.  Maybe this wasn’t the right thing to do. 

Grappling with my nerves, I turned the key in the ignition allowing the engine to quit, then opened the door and committed myself. As I exited the car, I glanced back at the trailer I’d pulled along behind it. Back home, I’d have strapped the parcel to the roof. But this was a rental, and rentals come with clauses. I’d knock and deal with the load later.

I hurried up the flagstone path towards the looming red door with the owl-eye window. Purposefully, I climbed the wooden steps onto the veranda and stood before the door. I was an effigy made of stone, momentarily trapped in long-lost time. My emotions ping-ponged between fear and longing. Was this really a good idea? Would Ray be happy to see me? There was so much history. But nothing after 1991. No shared stories. No secrets. Just blank pages full of virtual question marks.

I knocked. One short, three together, then one more. The Who Framed Roger Rabbit knock. Ray’s knock.

I waited. A wasp buzzed by and looped back, investigating possibility. I knocked again. Waited. Swatted the wasp. Then exhaled with relief. No answer. Ray was out. A ginger cat looked up at me inquisitively from behind the window next to the door and meowed. I let the tension fall from my shoulders and decided to unload the parcel. I hadn’t flown halfway around the world to spend my time battling demons in a Highway 1 motel room. It was a crisp new day, full of hope, right? I’d wait.

~

The trailer unlatched, I pulled the long parcel out. It was still wrapped in the bubbly stuff with cardboard on top, with which I’d so carefully protected it for the flight. When I had the parcel out and on the ground, I put both my hands around its duct-tape handle, and heaved it back up the path towards the house. I needed three breaks before I finally reached the steps. With care, I leaned it against the wooden post next to the bottom step and sat down a couple of steps up.

The air smelled like love and reminiscence. The smell of a forest as it shed its summer dress — earthy, faintly sweet, like freshly baked pumpkin pie with a frosty topping, and the sweet scent of a lover’s neck. Mother Earth’s quintessence.  That’s how Ray had once described fall in the backcountry. I touched the parcel thoughtfully with my fingers. I was reminded of a poem Ray had painted on our door once upon a time. I began to pick at the wrapping. Then, more assertively, I unravelled the tape from the parcel, pulling it off piece by piece, until the cardboard and bubble wrap fell free.

Smiling inwardly, I studied the old painted door that I’d secreted away in my protective layer. A few days earlier it had been an integral part of my beach house, the one I shared with Jim. Rimu heartwood, that’s what Jim had said it was made of. The secrets this door could tell … Jim thought he knew, but he didn’t. Resentment festered in me. Jim had changed. I suppose we both had … maybe. He’d changed more. I’d finally given up on the beach house, but I’d unscrewed the door and taken it with me.

~

I placed my hand on the door and comfort filled me up. It was beautifully crafted, with poetry thoughtfully wound around all the right places. I traced Ray’s poem with my fingers and eyes. I’d seen it every day for years, but had only read it again recently. “Through children’s dreams the mermaid swims / the water witch beckons fears so grim / while the siren’s song awakens passions within.”  It was the first poem Ray had written on our door, after Jim had restored it and I’d painted it. The poem followed the tail of the siren I’d painted on the front. 

Long Beach flickered into my ruminations. The cathedral cave at the end of this beach is where we found it. There’d been a charged storm the night before, and we’d gone down to the beach in search of washed-up treasures for Jim to tinker with. The artist, the poet, and the carpenter. Ray had nicknamed us “the two lost souls and their fixer.”

The memory made me chuckle. I ran my fingers up over the siren’s hip and along her back, towards her messy, silver locks. I’d painted maple leaves entangled in her hair. Ray and I had just graduated and home had been on our minds. Ray’s flight was already booked, but I wouldn’t be joining Ray back. The memory became painful and my hand fell away from the mermaid.  I’d made a choice that I’d been happy with, the safe choice. As I wandered down memory lane, I felt my cheeks flush. My path had turned annoyingly potholed … nonetheless, it was a great ride for a while. Sacrifices. If I’d been warned about the potholes, would I have chosen differently? Probably not. Then again, here I was.

~

Reaching for my phone in my pocket, as I habitually did when the desire to fidget pricked me, I remembered I’d left it in the car as I’d had no reception. It was a strange, oddly alleviating feeling not to be connected. I moved up to the top step and lay back on the veranda. Closing my eyes, I relaxed my back, shoulders, and arms. The sun’s rays caressed the front of the house, making me feel cradled in warmth. My breathing slowed, as it does just before falling asleep. Robins sang in the trees … and I could hear the tick-tick-tick hammering of a woodpecker. In the distance, a rumbling freight train snaked its way along to somewhere. This was home. And I’d be staying this time.

My mind meandered through dreams forgotten. 

Jim had been a real Han Solo in his younger years. Stubborn, witty, great with his hands, and gorgeous in a roughed-up sense. I’d spilled pāua fritters all over him the first time we’d met. It was at that seafood place, where I’d worked during uni. Jim had only been there for the hokey pokey ice cream. He hated seafood, but he kept coming back, until we’d fallen stupidly in love.  “Flo + Jim 4ever” was still visible on a nearby tree we’d etched it into. But love is complicated … and it became exceptionally so a few days before the wedding.

I reached back to that day, to the shack on the beach. To the door. To Ray.

Drifting off with my memories, sleep took over. I floated like a ghost in the rafters of that old hut on the beach and watched that exceptional day with Ray unfold in the third person.

~

The door lay on the floor of the abandoned beach house, ready for attention. The tiny house was really just a wooden shack, used randomly by visiting surfers. One room, a sink, no running water, a derelict wood stove, a torn sofa that stank of mildew, and a couple of plastic lawn chairs.  A burnt table leg rested on the wall beside the stove. Ray had opened the shutters and tied back the shower curtain that passed as a front door. They needed light. It was drizzling outside, as it did on most spring days in Dunedin. This rickety shack would be perfect for their project.

Ray watched as the artist within Flo reanimated. With delicate, focused passion, Flo touched up the last entangled leaf in the siren’s hair then looked up at Ray, “’Kay, done. Her soul is yours, Sappho.” She mused, smiling, and handed over her paintbrush. Wistful thoughts crossed Ray’s mind. Watching Flo paint was like watching her energy flow from her heart through her veins to her fingers, then down and out through the tip of her paintbrush, to finally materialize as a masterpiece imbued with elemental Flo. Ray had always been mesmerized with the magic Flo could create with a few strokes of a brush. Her work was a reflection of the warm light that shone from deep within her. On that day, in that moment, in that old weather-beaten shack on the beach, as Ray applied poetry to Flo’s beautiful maid of the sea, Ray was enlightened in the true essence of love. It had always been Flo. Only Flo.

The pitter-patter of rain on the hut’s tin roof became louder and they decided to stay a while. The mermaid was now laden with enough poetry to support her through many storms that may lurk behind forbidden doors. Ray observed the door, smiled slowly, then quipped, “What d’ya say we throw it into the eye of the storm – maybe the clouds’ll dissipate, y’ know, when they’re hit with poetic justice.” Ray thought of poetry as love and as love as a virtue. Life could be filled with hurricanes and tidal waves, but love would always prevail in the end. Ray spoke from a place so deep and honest that the concept of hate was made to seem irrational. Flo had never read a poem by Ray that didn’t stir her in places that both questioned and supported truths within her heart. Ray’s poetic justice.

Flo and Ray stood side-by-side in the doorway, watching the clouds play with electricity over a raging sea. To Flo, storms were passionate and exhilarating, especially the ones that blew in from places unknown. Storms made Flo feel light and free and happy. She inhaled the weather and smiled. The fresh, salty air invigorated her. Standing close to Ray invigorated her. 

As Flo stood there, watching the waves tumble and roll up the beach towards the hut, she thought about how different she’d felt around Ray lately. Their friendship had always been strong. But now she felt something more. Something like … a yearning. She’d had dreams that made her burn. Those dreams should have been about Jim. She’d pushed the dreams away, deep inside herself, burying them in her “stop it” box.  You know, that box in the depths of your mind where you lock up stuff that is forbidden. We all have one. Flo’s was filled with those dreams.

Flo glanced at Ray. Ray had turned towards her. Flo leaned back on the doorframe. Ray had that look she’d seen before, the one she kept seeing in her dreams. Flo almost looked away, as she usually did when she’d seen that look.  But instead she leaned forward, reached up and gently swept Ray’s curls to the side, entangling her fingers in them. And that’s when they both let go of preconceptions. 

Their first kiss was like getting lost in an unmapped universe where anything is possible, where nothing is forbidden, where only love matters. 

The storm blew over and they stayed the night.

~

I woke suddenly, tumbling from the rafters and back to reality, feeling tingly and slightly feverish. The memory of that night on the beach … it was our last shared story. Sitting up abruptly, I wiped the sides of my mouth. No drool. And no Ray, yet. I relaxed and stared at our door, still propped up against the post, its mermaid flaunting buried secrets. 

A dent in the siren’s flipper, where Jim had kicked the door out of anger, obscured the last line in one of Ray’s poems.  He’d kicked it during our last fight … just before I’d freed it from its hinges and rescued it, leaving the house exposed mid-winter. I’d also been angry.

Jim hadn’t always been such a dick. In fact, it’s inaccurate to call him a dick. Self-centered-ego-with-a-dick would be more accurate. What the hell had happened to us? I remembered our wedding night. My heart was in two, but I’d chosen. Marrying Jim was the right thing to do. I’d loved them both. I’d lusted for them both. But Jim was solid. Really? I shook my head. One thing Jim had turned out not to be was solid.

Ray had left the door at our wedding, leaning against that towering tī kōuka tree outside the church. It had been Ray’s way of saying goodbye, without having to say it.

~

An old Ford pick-up turned into the long driveway and hummed along towards the house. I stood up, but my mind refused to initiate another command and I froze, my eyes fixed anxiously on the approaching truck. The moment felt surreal.

Ray stopped behind my rental and paused, without doubt astonished, peering at me from behind a cracked windshield.

I watched as Ray got out of the truck. My heart thumped hard and logic left me.

Ray’s hair was pinned back, curls escaping everywhere, just as wild and natural as always. I forced myself forward and met Ray midway. We stood before each other for a few moments, motionless, speaking without words.

“You’re back.” She smiled and my heart filled with peace.

Ray was just as perfect as she’d always been.