Her drawings littered the floor. Her letters too. How they reached their destination was a mystery, though she knew they did. Implicitly. She made something. She was. She would, she decided, remain so. Charles did not pick up the papers she scattered on the floor. He avoided the music room as much as he could. He averted his gaze when she wandered into his quarters at night. He shut his eyes at the seaweed float of her waterlogged hair. He clapped his hands over his ears when she opened her pink slash mouth.
Open the door when the light pours through, she sang. Openthedoorwhenthelightpoursthrough
Openthedoorwhenthelightpoursthroughopenthedoorwhenthe lightpoursthrough
openthedooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedooropenthedoor, she sang, and sang, and sang. After two days of her ceaseless song, he opened the door. She poured herself into the light, and she was light, and line, and space, and negative space, and thought, and the lack of thought, and being, and nonbeing. She was. She knew it.
What he wrote:
My darling,
Have you noticed any strange doors of late? Doors that, I don’t know, darling. That, er, appear out of nowhere, perhaps. Doors that you might have a strong desire to open.
Or have you noticed, on the edges of your vision, well, a sort of veil or shimmering substance? A light, as it were.
I do not ask to cause you to feel alarm or to rush you into anything for which you may or may not be prepared. I only write this (my dear, my precious, my heart’s sweet angel) on the chance that you may be—I mean to say—putting anything off, as it were. Lingering, you know? For my sake.
What I am trying to tell you, my love, is that if you should happen to, in some sense, run into (assuming, of course, that one does run in this, er, condition) anyone—a beloved person, for example—who has been, well, gone for some time, and you feel yourself wanting to, I mean to say, go—you know—along . . . please my darling, do not tarry on my account. Please do not. I cannot bear the thought that you may have found yourself stuck, and that it is my fault. I am fine. I will be fine, my love.
Your most Affectionate Husband,
John
What he did not:
He wondered who would be the one to meet his wife in her nebulous state, and who would be given the great privilege to grasp that delicate hand, and lead her . . . there.
Wherever there was.
Specifically, he wondered if it would be her brother, James—beautiful, sickly James. James of the downy hair. James of the willowy limbs. James of the seafoam skin. James of the irritable lungs. James of the bloody cough. James, red lipped, pale to the point of translucency, and dead in John’s arms. James who loved him, but not like that. And who broke John’s heart. John knew that if James came for him, he’d follow him through any door in the universe, and would not hesitate. Not for a moment.
Though he had guessed well enough on his own, someone at the office had thought to slip a copied report—classified, of course—detailing the known facts of the train crash. The number of souls aboard. Lost, all of them. All, all lost. And Angela—angel, angel Angela—who wasn’t supposed to be there, but was, and now she wasn’t.
And yet.
The letters massed in the corners. They smothered the fire in the grate and mounded over the sink. They poured across the floor, particularly near the windows. They seemed to prefer light. Before he sat down to breakfast, John swept the letters into great heaps at odd intervals throughout the house, intending to burn them in the fireplace, but found he didn’t have the heart for it. Instead, the heaps grew, and the letters multiplied. They kept John up all night. At ten o’clock the next morning the American opened the front door. He did not knock.
“What’s with the letters?” he said.
“It’s complicated,” John replied. He tugged at the folds of his dressing gown. It could be cleaner, of course. Angela always saw to such things. His American was pressed, shaved, and clean. He shone brightly in the doorway. John squinted and gasped.
“I’m leaving,” the American said, keeping his eyes slanted to the floor.
“When?” John asked. He also did not look up. Light poured in from all directions. It swirled across the floorboards. The letters rustled in their heaps, paper murmuring against paper.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and before John could speak, he added, “and don’t ask me where. I can’t say.”
“Of course.” The light intensified. John shaded his eyes. He sweated and squinted.
“Are you—” The American cleared his throat. “I mean, have they found out—told you for sure. About your wife.” He said the word wife as though pronouncing a word in a foreign tongue. “Is she—”
“Yes,” John said while clearing his throat. “Which is to say. We assume. In all likelihood.”
“Terrible thing,” the American said, unstraightening, then straightening, his tie.
“Yes.”
“If I don’t—you know. If I don’t see you again. I—”
“Of course, of course,” John said, running his fingers through his hair, watching with growing panic how the letters spread like mold across the surface of the ottoman, stacked themselves higher on the desk, spilled down the edge of the table. The American didn’t seem to notice. John wondered briefly if they should embrace, declare their love, plot an escape. He wondered if they should begin making plans to settle in the Lake District, raise lambs, live on milk and bread and young meat, live on wine and sex and song.
“Well then,” the American said, and opened the door. The light poured in. John fell to his knees, raised his hands to the light, “Oh! God!” he said, but the American turned and departed without a word. He left the door
