The Waiting Place
The Waiting Place
I don’t think I’ve stopped staring at it since I found it. I’ve counted seven text messages and three phone calls since. Likely most of them are from my girlfriend. I wish some were from my friends, but I doubt it. Not that it matters; I didn’t pick up the phone, so transfixed was I.
I just never knew it was there. The door in the closet is made of light wood and has a simple knob without any locking system on this side. It is also unlocked, I checked. The knob turned with a rusty, unaccustomed squeal, but it opened. I shut it right back thinking, “what if there are mice on the other side?” Then I wasn’t sure that was a good reason not to open it. Unsure of what to do, I took every precaution in case opening it brought forth something unpleasant. I moved away the boxes of my high school and first year university notebooks that hid the door in the first place. I also moved the wrinkly, old clothes that hung from rusted coat hangers thinking there might be mould or insects behind it that could get on the clothes. Under a thick layer of dust, I also found the guitar I used to play back in grade 10 before I started dating Amy. I thought we had gotten rid of it in a yard sale, so its presence was almost as surprising as the mysterious door.
Finally all the junk inside that cluttered closet came out and now it litters the stained carpet of the guest room. Amy won’t like this I know. “I asked you to paint all the walls and you made a mess,” she will say. She was right. During my clearing the guest room I got distracted by the closet. “If I don’t paint inside the closet Amy will have a fit!” That was the exact reasoning of my looking into the closet in the first place. But as I shifted things around and began moving the junk, I encountered things that lay hidden for some time and I couldn’t help but take a peek at them. For example, I found a high school graduation gift from a friend, Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. “Everyone gets one of these,” said Amy when I told her about how meaningful the book was.
It took a lot of effort to move all that. The sun had risen only a few hours before I began preparing the room to paint it. I got the north wall and the wall by the window done before four o’clock. I went downstairs to the basement to have a cold one, after which I came back to paint the south wall, the one interrupted by the gliding closet doors. By the time I had finished emptying the closet it was five thirty, the sun still far away from setting in this long summer day. I was sweating; all 200 pounds of me were wet. I sat back to take a breather, but to be honest, I wasn’t tired. I could tell Amy that all this effort didn’t make me tired. “Uh huh,” I can hear her say, “good for you!” Then she would put up her thumbs and smile sarcastically. I don’t think I sat back to rest. Maybe I just wanted to look at it long enough to prove it wasn’t some kind of hallucination.
The change of lights did what the texts and phone calls couldn’t: it brought me out of my stupor. I get up and decide it is safe enough to open the door. In the golden rays of sunset the dirty junk yard that has become our guest room, never really used as one except when first we bought the house after I dropped out, looks like a labyrinth I have found the exit for. I take one, two steps, tentatively as Dedalus must have done after narrowly escaping the Minotaur, stiff with disbelieve and exhausted from being afraid. My phone vibrates once more and out of habit I pick it up. “Probably best,” I think, “to put Amy at ease.” “Where the f*** have you been,” I read the text, “I’m coming home. Hope room is done.” The sun has fallen under the horizon and the room, cluttered, dusty and only half painted, has lost its lustre. The door is barely visible in the grey of nightfall.
I don’t think I’ve stopped staring at it since I found it. I’ve counted seven text messages and three phone calls since. Likely most of them are from my girlfriend. I wish some were from my friends, but I doubt it. Not that it matters; I didn’t pick up the phone, so transfixed was I.
I just never knew it was there. The door in the closet is made of light wood and has a simple knob without any locking system on this side. It is also unlocked, I checked. The knob turned with a rusty, unaccustomed squeal, but it opened. I shut it right back thinking, “what if there are mice on the other side?” Then I wasn’t sure that was a good reason not to open it. Unsure of what to do, I took every precaution in case opening it brought forth something unpleasant. I moved away the boxes of my high school and first year university notebooks that hid the door in the first place. I also moved the wrinkly, old clothes that hung from rusted coat hangers thinking there might be mould or insects behind it that could get on the clothes. Under a thick layer of dust, I also found the guitar I used to play back in grade 10 before I started dating Amy. I thought we had gotten rid of it in a yard sale, so its presence was almost as surprising as the mysterious door.
Finally all the junk inside that cluttered closet came out and now it litters the stained carpet of the guest room. Amy won’t like this I know. “I asked you to paint all the walls and you made a mess,” she will say. She was right. During my clearing the guest room I got distracted by the closet. “If I don’t paint inside the closet Amy will have a fit!” That was the exact reasoning of my looking into the closet in the first place. But as I shifted things around and began moving the junk, I encountered things that lay hidden for some time and I couldn’t help but take a peek at them. For example, I found a high school graduation gift from a friend, Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. “Everyone gets one of these,” said Amy when I told her about how meaningful the book was.
It took a lot of effort to move all that. The sun had risen only a few hours before I began preparing the room to paint it. I got the north wall and the wall by the window done before four o’clock. I went downstairs to the basement to have a cold one, after which I came back to paint the south wall, the one interrupted by the gliding closet doors. By the time I had finished emptying the closet it was five thirty, the sun still far away from setting in this long summer day. I was sweating; all 200 pounds of me were wet. I sat back to take a breather, but to be honest, I wasn’t tired. I could tell Amy that all this effort didn’t make me tired. “Uh huh,” I can hear her say, “good for you!” Then she would put up her thumbs and smile sarcastically. I don’t think I sat back to rest. Maybe I just wanted to look at it long enough to prove it wasn’t some kind of hallucination.
The change of lights did what the texts and phone calls couldn’t: it brought me out of my stupor. I get up and decide it is safe enough to open the door. In the golden rays of sunset the dirty junk yard that has become our guest room, never really used as one except when first we bought the house after I dropped out, looks like a labyrinth I have found the exit for. I take one, two steps, tentatively as Dedalus must have done after narrowly escaping the Minotaur, stiff with disbelieve and exhausted from being afraid. My phone vibrates once more and out of habit I pick it up. “Probably best,” I think, “to put Amy at ease.” “Where the f*** have you been,” I read the text, “I’m coming home. Hope room is done.” The sun has fallen under the horizon and the room, cluttered, dusty and only half painted, has lost its lustre. The door is barely visible in the grey of nightfall.