Locked Doors

Sometimes you have to pass through windows.

Photo by Robert Gramner on Unsplash

Locked Doors

Snow falls. The wrap-around porch on our Queen Anne keeps the dog and me dry. Butters, a Bernese mountain dog, sits on my foot. No keys in my pocket. We’re locked out—again—for the third time in about a week.

The first time it happened we went inside through the french doors I’d forgotten to lock around back. The stale tobacco odor of burnt coffee filled the kitchen.

The second time I climbed through the living room window.

As soon as we were inside I secured all the windows and doors.

An automatically locking front door seemed like a good idea when we installed it. A dive bar on the corner empties out all manner of characters at two in the morning. I’ve been spending the nights alone in the house with Butters, listening to drunks slouch toward Kingston Road. The locks and alarm system provide an illusion of security.

My husband says he’s at a hotel but I’m pretty sure he’s sleeping at his girlfriend’s.

Locked out again. Unbelievable. How could this be happening? The damsel in distress thing isn’t who I am.

The only other person with a key is the cheating bastard. I make the call.

Because he cares about the dog he shows up a half hour later.

He arrives in the SUV I paid for, pounds his way up the porch steps and opens the door. Gives the dog a scratch behind the ears.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” He says this not knowing this is lockout number three.

I shut the door in his face without speaking.

“Bitch.”

What, indeed, is wrong? Let me count the wrongs.

I unlock a living room window each morning before going out from then on.

The risk is worth it.

Laila listens as I tell her about the lockouts. She isn’t like TV therapists. She takes no notes, for starters. She works out of her house, within walking distance of my own, which is important because the cheating bastard has taken our only car.

“It’s a signal, isn’t it?” I ask.

She seems to agree but doesn’t say so. “I want you to draw a scene from when you lived at home with your parents. A happy time. You have ten minutes. Go.”

My drawing skills are limited to stick figures, but Laila isn’t a critic and no one else will ever see what comes from this. And I like doing it, making broad strokes with pastels, choosing colors.

My picture is of my mom and me playing Crazy Eights when I was around ten years old in a motel room in Nova Scotia. Our favorite soap on TV in the background.

Laila asks where my father is. I tell her he’s at work.

“Why are you in a motel room in the middle of the afternoon?” she asks. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

I explain that we’ve just moved and need to buy a house. I can’t register for school until we know which school is in our neighborhood. We’re staying in the same room my dad lived in for a year. Our house in Ontario took a long time to sell. Mom and I lived without him until it sold.

“Why is this a happy time worth noting?” Laila asks.

I have no answer. Grown up me can’t explain. She asked for a feeling. I drew a feeling.

Butters and I are in the park for our morning walk. I’m trying to get him to drop a burrito wrapper. An incisor punctures the fleshy part of my hand. There is blood. I yell at him. He sulks all the way home.

I bandage my hand. It doesn’t look like a big deal.

That night Butters and I watch Mr. Deeds, again.

Deeds eulogizes his dead uncle:

“You climbed mountains and built skyscrapers.

You made TV shows and put out newspapers.

You were wicked good at doing stocks.

You liked it when Emilio would change your socks.

We never hung out and that makes me sad.

All the good times we could've had.

But when I die, Uncle Preston, you better say ‘Cheers’.

'Cause when me and you are hanging at the pearly gates, I'll bring the beers. I'll bring the beers.”

At about this point in the movie I notice a red line tracking up my arm from under the bandage.

I call Audra, the friend who told me about how the ex propositioned her. She kept the evidence. He did it over instant messaging. She’s one of a few people I know these days who’ll bring the beers.

“Could you take me to the ER?” I ask.

While an IV dumps antibiotics into me as fast as my veins can accept them, I listen through the curtain.

A cop berates a teenager for stealing his dad’s car and crashing into a tree.

The dad says he doesn’t care if the insurance company won’t pay if there aren’t any charges.

Now that’s true love.

A couple of days later, on my thirty-eighth birthday—portable IV meter strapped to my waist dripping broad spectrum antibiotics into a vein in my hand—I’m at Pier 1 looking for throw pillows to fluff the sunroom’s window seats. The real estate agent insists the ones my mother made don’t cut it.

My cell phone rings. It’s Mary Kate, founder of a software company. Her biggest customer happens to be the same one I had a strong relationship with in my old job; the job I exited with the nice package that paid off the SUV cheating bastard is now driving.

I work as a contractor for Mary Kate, have done so since the summer, when a desperate me rented a car, packed up the dog and visited her at her cottage. The first thing she asked was what the hell happened to my BMW. I’d returned it to the leasing company.

The money she pays me covers my lawyer, yoga classes and Laila.

“This isn’t working,” she says, assuming I know what she’s talking about, which in fact I do. She means our working relationship.

She shit-cans me on my birthday, tells me I can pick up my final check from reception and hangs up without saying goodbye.

The IV meter ticks away, marking time.

I continue the hunt for the perfect pillows that don’t scream made by hand at Pier 1 Imports, a place all about hand made stuff from other countries.

The IV falls out that night. Five more days of this shit.

Back to the ER I go. This time May takes me. We used to work together at the big corporation I left. She lives a half mile away.

I tell her about the end of my consulting gig on the way to the hospital.

She says it’s just as well.

Maybe it is.

The light changes from red to green.

Laila says, “Draw me a picture of your mom at age thirty-eight.”

That’s easy. My mind travels to a snapshot of her from 1967. She’s stretched out on a deckchair in the sunshine, those mid-century cat’s eye sunglasses perched on her face. My brother sits next to her.

They’re on a ship heading for Europe with my dad, who cooked up the whole plan and convinced my mother it was a good idea.

Their final destination is Hungary, the village where my dad was born, and where I would be born.

“When do you leave for Australia?” Laila asks me.

“February 1st.”

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” she says.

I want to stab her with a True Blue colored pencil for reducing me to a cliché.

May and I meet at the Austrian café in our neighborhood. Red walls, fragrant cinnamon, and a hearty smile from the woman who runs the place smooth away my moodiness.

“Are you packed?” May asks.

“Mostly. I wish I could take the dog.”

“You trust him?” She means the ex.

“He’ll take good care of Butters.”

“What’s it feel like to have a one-way ticket to the other side of the world?”

“Liberating.”

“It’s about time you let yourself go your own way.”

Pastry flakes dotting our plates, bone china cups emptied of coffee, we slide our arms into coat sleeves and venture outside. Where snow flurries enliven a once bleak sky we hug goodbye.

Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed to the point in which you doubted your own competence? What did you learn about yourself then? How did you move through hard times? Share your thoughts in the comments. Let’s learn from each other.