“I’m tired of being me,” I say. “I’d like to be someone else for a while.”

My husband says, “Who do you want to be?”

“I don’t know. Someone different.”

“Aren’t you happy?” he asks.

“Yes… basically. It’s just that I’m not doing anything worthwhile. I’d like to leave something important behind when I die.”

“What about the kids? Aren’t they important?”

“Sure, of course they are, but you know – something super important – like a cure for cancer or a piece of music that’ll be enjoyed forever. Maybe a book that’ll be required reading in schools for generations to come.”

“Well, you don’t have to be somebody else to do something super important. You can do that being you,” hubby says.

“No I can’t!” I whine.

“What makes you think you can’t?” says he.

“What makes you think I can?” I say, hands on hips. Lips pursed.

“I’ve lived with you for a lot of years and I know you can do anything you want when you set your mind to it.”

“It’s nice of you to say that, but I’m not so sure. I still might like to trade lives with someone else.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says. “You can’t trade lives with someone else!”

“You just contradicted yourself,” I tell him. “You said I can do anything I set my mind to do. Did you mean it or not?”

He looks toward the ceiling, mutters something inaudible and leaves the room.

Men… poor things! They get so confused sometimes.

“It’s here; it’s going to hurt me,” Mary whispers. Then Dad turns up the television and laughs loudly at whatever he’s watching, even if it’s just the weather.

“No it’s not,” I say, trying to convince myself as much as her. “Would you like me to bake you some cookies?”

After that, she usually shrugs and looks away. Sometimes she becomes upset and accuses me of invalidating her. And sometimes she just stares straight ahead, while her rocking chair moves back and forth, back and forth.

Life for Mary since the incident has been like that, though less rhythmic and predictable. Sometimes she moves forward. She laughs for years, barely distracted except for an occasional lost breath or hiccup. She soaks in the sun for hours and says she feels cleansed by the rain. She skips through the fields, then rushes to me, grabs my hands, and says how happy the three of us will be—me, Mary, and Dad. I envy her during these times. I don’t understand her joy.

But I don’t understand her pain, either, and it always returns. It builds all around her, gaining more power the longer she goes without it. When it appears, it seems worse than before. Mary complains that the rain feels like ice and that the sun burns her skin. She cries, sometimes for days, until it stops torturing her, and happiness doesn’t visit during these times, not even as a hiccup.

When Dad can’t ignore the crying anymore, he turns off the TV and yells at Mary, his face red with rage. “You brought this on yourself! You’re just like your mother.”

I try to mediate between them. When Dad mentions our mother, I feel protective of Mary, though I kind of agree with Dad. Life would be less complicated for Mary if she’d simply refused to answer the door that day years ago because that’s when it all started. But no, that’s not Mary. Even as a child, she couldn’t just tune out like the rest of us. She looked under every rock, even if she knew there were spiders there, and she read books she knew ended tragically.

I wonder if Mary would feel less pain during these times if Mom were still alive. According to Dad, Mom allowed the incident to happen to her just as Mary had. I have only one memory of Mom. She was eating a pineapple, and I asked if I could have a few bites. Mom smiled, then cut off a piece for me. “Eat it slowly and enjoy it, dear. Try not to think about how it came from this,” she said, indicating the thorny pineapple skin. “Don’t let that ruin the experience for you.”

I nodded and ate the piece of pineapple, unable to disassociate it from the ugly thorns. I remember thinking it was silly of her to tell me not to think about the thorny skin. I wouldn’t have if she hadn’t mentioned it. Now I can’t eat pineapple without thinking of Mom and the thorns. Sometimes I eat it just for the experience of running my hands along the skin because that makes me feel close to her. The times when I eat pineapple are my happiest—but also my saddest. I miss her.

I tell Mary the story of me, Mom, and the pineapple one day while eating the sweet acidic fruit. As I tell the story, her eyes light up.

“So you understand!” she exclaims. “You get why I had to let the incident happen.”

“No,” I say.

Mary’s eyes go flat. “Oh. Never mind.”

I take a bite of pineapple. “Please tell me. I’ll try to understand.”

Mary doesn’t answer right away. She runs her hand along the pineapple skin while I watch her. “I feel all alone,” she says. “Sometimes I think I shouldn’t have answered the door if for no other reason than I have no one to talk to about it.”

I nod. The incident had never happened to me. I couldn’t relate. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“You see, I couldn’t ha—”

A knock at the door interrupts Mary. I freeze in the middle of bringing a piece of pineapple to my mouth, and I stare at her, my mouth open. Mary smiles.

“It looks like it has finally come to meet you,” she says. “You have to decide right now if you want to open the door. It will only visit you once.”

“I’m scared,” I say.

Mary picks up the pineapple and examines it. “You see the yellow light of this pineapple? It’s so bright and yellow because the thorns protected it from being destroyed by animals before it ripened. The thorns allowed it to grow into sweetness. Without the thorns, it would have been dead before it was fully alive.”

I look at her, wondering if she has finally gone crazy.

“If you don’t answer the door,” she continues, “you will throw this pineapple away. You will eat rice while sitting on a large, overstuffed chair, and you’ll watch TV all day with Dad. You will never be too hot or too cold. And you will never see color—just black, white, and grey.”

A long silence ensues. Finally I whisper, “I will open the door.” I am as curious as I am terrified.

Mary smiles and walks with me to the door. She squeezes one of my hands as I turn the cold knob with the other. When I open the door, I see a woman in a white dress that glows against the dark sky. She doesn’t have a face, but I can tell she’s smiling at me. She then shoves something wet and slippery into my hands and disappears. I look down and scream. In my hands is a human heart, and it is alive. It is beating and, with every pulse, blood gushes out. Blood gets in my hair and on my face.

“How could you let me?” I say, choking with revulsion and shaking with fear. I look at Mary. She is translucent. I see her heart through her skin, and it is pushing blood throughout her body. I can see every vein and artery in her legs and arms. She is glowing.

Then I hear her voice, which is kind yet urgent. “What are you waiting for? Put your heart in.”

I look down and realize what I am supposed to do. I press the beating heart against my chest and push with all my might, crying and grunting from the effort. When the heart is in my body, I collapse. I sit huddled on the ground, and my sister sits next to me.

“It hurts,” I say.

“I know.”

“When will it stop hurting?”

“The pain will come and go.”

When I can stand, I stretch out my arms. The air descends on my skin, and the unfamiliar caress causes me to pause for a few moments. My eyes feel so open. I can’t close them, so I look around. The tile on the floor is white with gold engraving. It’s beautiful, but I don’t like how cold it feels under my bare feet.

I stay up all night, walking from room to room, while Mary trails behind me, reassuring me that everything I’m seeing and feeling is normal for us—the people who have experienced the incident. Have I really lived in this house for 32 years? Why hadn’t I noticed the betta fish’s stunning colors before or smelled its tank’s repulsive ammonia? When the sun comes up in the morning, I venture outside, but only for a few moments. The sun’s heat drives me back into the house, where I slowly run my hand along the wood of Mary’s rocking chair. It feels smooth and cool, until I get a splinter from moving my hand against the wood’s grain.

“I feel everything,” I say while trying to work out the splinter.

“Yes,” Mary replies. “You always will now.”

I walk to a piece of pineapple still on the table. I pick it up, split it in two, and hand a piece to Mary. We put the pieces into our mouths at the same time and smile at each other. I have never tasted anything so sweet.

He wasn’t the least bit interested in me. I didn’t know it then, but he liked a girl with white blond hair who lived, like him, in the upscale part of town. My family lived on the working class hill, a mile away. I had a boyfriend. He played center on the football team and could throw me over his shoulder. We went to the prom together, met for pizza and Cokes after the game, and did all the corny things you’d expect of us in a small town in the nineteen-sixties. He was funny, affectionate and kind. But still, there was this other boy, the one I couldn’t stop trying for.

In June of our senior year, I invited him to a graduation party and he accepted. The girl who invited me was thrilled to see me with him, because she had a crush on my football player boyfriend. This meant he was now fair game. The party turned out to be a crashing bore and I was painfully embarrassed. None of my friends, the average kids, and none of his, the most popular ones were there. He and I were trapped in a formal living room with the guest of honor’s elderly Italian relatives and dorky cousins.

Conversations stuttered to a halt as we stood at the edge of the room, clutching our paper plates and Dixie cups half-filled with Hawaiian Punch. Someone offered us a couple of chairs and someone else said how nice of us it was to come to our classmate’s party. I looked around. We were the only seniors there. I was the only one who had accepted this awkward girl’s invitation, not to be with her, but for my own romantic plan. What would he think of me now? As if frozen in a spotlight, I could not come up with a thing to say or do.

He took me aside and spoke quietly into my ear. “Let’s stay for an hour then tell her we have another party to go to. And then we’ll go to a movie.” I nodded and when the time came, gave my regrets to the equally gleeful girl who no doubt planned to call my real boyfriend that very night. I don’t remember the movie we saw, but I still recall my gratitude for my date’s quick thinking thoughtfulness.

I wasn’t used to men like this. My father was a frustrated, verbally abusive man, and by the time I was graduating from high school, I was long accustomed to hearing him call my mother names. I was used to him criticizing just about everything I did, and my mother doing nothing to stop him, preoccupied as she was with saving the remaining scraps of her self-respect.

After graduation, my crush and I went to nearby colleges. His was a private school a half hour away and he lived on campus. Mine was a community college, all my parents could afford. I lived at home the first year. One night he called to invite me to a fraternity weekend. His date was sick, he said, but he had tickets and would I go in her place?
Was he kidding? Of course, I would. My high school boyfriend was at college hundreds of miles away, and there was no one I wanted to date at HVCC. At the first event of the weekend, a rock concert, a frat brother made a snarky comment about me being second choice and not quite up to my date’s usual standard. I don’t remember exactly what my friend said to him, but I do recall the frat brother slinking away, embarrassed. For the first time in my life, someone stood up for me. I have never forgotten.

We did not speak again for forty-five years – a lifetime. He served in Vietnam, got married, became an architect, moved to California, had grandchildren. I got married, moved to the Philadelphia suburbs, became a librarian, had two sons, wrote a book. Last year, I was noodling around on Classmates.com when his name popped up on a list of new members. Before I could think about it too much, I sent him a quick hello. An hour later, his reply arrived in my Inbox.

“Oh, m-a-a-a-n! It’s so good to see your smiling face again!”

Soon we decided to plan a class reunion. As we messaged back and forth, he felt more familiar to me than a forty-five year absence would warrant. He cracked the same joke he’d used in physics class: “I wanted to become a physicist so I could make Fizzies,” the popular powdered drink that worked like Alka Seltzer in the glass but tasted more like soda pop. It was a lame joke then, and just as lame now. But it was just the kind of thing my darling husband would say.

When we met at work, he was courteous and kind. He sent my staff a floral arrangement at Christmas. He left Chunky chocolate candy on my desk while I was out. Soon after we began dating, I offered him a home cooked meal. “You worked hard all week,” he said. “Let me take you out for dinner instead.” When I arrived late at my desk one rainy morning, flustered and anxious, he told me to relax and brought me a cup of coffee. “Everybody comes in late on days like this,” he said.

After we announced our engagement, a coworker told me “You just got the world’s last remaining gentleman.” I wasn’t at all surprised. Her words sounded exactly right. I knew he was the perfect man for me. Even if he did have a way of telling lame jokes, and messing up the punch lines on the good ones.
I know. I am a lucky woman. My husband and my high school crush share the same quality, the basic human kindness of all good men. My husband knows how much I appreciate this. Now it was time to tell the other man. But would I have the courage? Would he understand?

Over the months of reunion planning, he expressed doubts about attending. “I have to be in China the week before,” he wrote. “I might not be able to make it.”

“How can you be president of your own company and not be able to take a few days off?” I joked.

“That’s what being president means,” he replied. “You have to be there.”

So there it was. I might not get the chance to tell him in person how much he had meant to me. We were sixty-three, and the list of departed classmates was rolling in. I had to do it now.

In a short email, straight from the heart, I wrote “at a time when you could have broken my heart with a word, you were kind instead. I wanted you to know how much I appreciated that, and still do.” One of the best things about getting older is being able to find the words to tell him that.

His reply was short as well, and still so much like the sweet guy I remembered. “You were always a kind person, too,” he said. “And I’m not surprised you became a good writer. I could see it in Miss Burnham’s English class.”

He did make it to the reunion, after all, and walked around with a copy of my book in his hand, the cover facing out.

#
I picked Kiera up from school and yelled at her for using markers to paint her finger and toenails and for getting paint all over her new shirt.
“Do you have homework, Kiera?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What did we talk about? You weren’t paying attention in school again, were you?”
Kiera didn’t seem to pay attention to me. “Are you listening, Kiera?”
“Are we going to Grandma’s?”
“In a little bit. We have to stop at the store first. We need a new door.”
“Grandma’s gonna be mad if we’re late.”
I sighed. Unfortunately, working full time, I had hired Mom as Kiera’s babysitter. Mom was retired, but spent even more time tailoring Kiera into a good little girl. She beat herself up about the fact that even though she lectured and warned me, I still became a single mom. Used to the rush, I hurried Kiera who was dilly-dallying along and dragging her feet in la-la land.
“She’ll understand,” I said to Keira as I started the car.
“She has a Post It on the fridge and it says lunch at 12 sharp!”
“She can wait.”
“Grandma says it’s a good to be punctual.”
“Yeah, well, grandma needs to chill out.”
“That’s slang. Grandma says not to use slang.”
She was warping my daughter’s mind. She had already “won” with me. Like a compliant daughter, I did the routine ….gone to school, got a good job. I’d done everything on Mom’s “To-Do” list for me except waiting until I had a husband to have a child.
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel, thinking of what I wanted to tell Mom. The letter sat in my purse for days. I found myself opening it again and again, hoping the right decision would come to me. I’d memorized its contents.
DANIELLE MARIE BASTIAN
ACCEPTED INTO THREE MONTH WRITER RESIDENCY PROGRAM
What would I do with Kiera? My job? I didn’t get more than two weeks vacation and it was used all up. But the question I dreaded the most was… What would my Mom think?
I hadn’t told her about the door. I didn’t feel like being reminded of how I should have been a doctor so I’d have enough of a salary to not live in a ranch house and drag myself to New York each day. I was a financial analyst at a big firm in the city and made what I thought was good money. But I never even liked math or the city.
The letter in my purse burned through my mind. It was what I always wanted. Was I brave enough to do it?
I’d never been back to the door store after my first visit as an eight year old. I mean, how many times a year do you buy a door? As I got older, I wanted to fit in. Talking about magical doors didn’t get you a boyfriend or many friends. After that day at the store, I won many awards with trumpet and school. Gaining my mom’s approval made her pull stronger. Eventually I convinced myself that what I saw wasn’t real.
I parked my car in The Door Store’s lot and looked up. The building was the same plain white, but it was smaller than before. The size of a convenience store. We walked inside. Kiera toted a picture of a magical land she was working on. I asked her what it was and she said it was called “Toga: The Land of Feet.”
“What was your assignment?”
“To make a map of your favorite country.”
“Toga isn’t a country!” I didn’t mean to sound mad, but I did.
“Why not?”
Before I could argue, I was interrupted.
“May I help you?”
Turning around, I faced at a man with dark brown hair, wisps of grey shooting through it. He wore a plain brown business suit and a brown tie.
“Yes. Um, I’m looking for a door.”
“Aren’t we all?” he asked.
As he came closer, I noticed a plain, oval nametag with the name “Archie” on his breast pocket.
“Wait,” I said. “Are you Archie? I came here once as a kid and the salesman’s name was Archie. But…” I stopped. “He looked a lot different from you. Nevermind. It was a long time ago.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Well then you must be mistaken. I’m the only Archie that works here. I own the place. It’s kind of funny that you remember me though. Door stores aren’t exactly Toys R’ Us.” His voice sounded dead, lower in tone, not hyper and happy like the Archie I’d met when I was eight.
I gave a quick look around. “What happened to all the doors?” Where hundreds of doors were, now, there were only about fifteen.
“We carry a smaller inventory. People aren’t that interested in doors, you know. They order everything online.”
I laughed. “Do you still hire door salesmen?”
He looked at me and said, “Looking for a job?”
It wasn’t what I expected him to say. “Actually, yes.”
“That’s good because we’re hiring.”
“Really?”
“Sure, I’ll be right back.”
When he left, I walked around, Kiera following behind.
I nonchalantly walked to the back corner. The walk seemed shorter. I passed the rows of doors, but they didn’t have fancy names. They now had prices and plain names like “Model 1600 Wood Door.”
And they were white.
But when I saw the curtain, I felt like a kid again.
“That door is about $2,000, but if you work here we can get you a 25% discount,” Archie said, now standing behind me.
I laughed. “Isn’t this the special door?”
“All of the doors here are special, made of the sturdiest materials.”
“I’m sorry, never mind.”
“You know, there’s something about you that I think would make a great door salesman. I’ll get an application from the back.” He handed me the application. The plain, standard application.
I looked at the special door before me, remembering my eight year old self. Who had I become? Something compelled me to pull the knob.
“Mommy,” asked Kiera. “Is there a something on the other side?”
There was a door on the other side.
I turned around to see Archie chuckling. “They’re just model doors.”
“Of course there is. There’s always a door on the other side.” I said.
“Ah,” said Archie. “I wouldn’t say that.” He knelt down and looked at Kiera. “Sometimes there is something on the other side. It just depends how you look at it.”
I picked out a plain white door until Kiera suggested I choose a pink one. I was going to protest, but stopped myself. I filled out the paperwork and we left.
#
“How’s my little sweet pea?” my mother said reaching out to hug Kiera. “Ugh, you let her go to school like this?”
I stood there with glazed over eyes, thoughts circling through my head.
Mom snapped her fingers. “Hello, Dani? You still do that? I hope you don’t do that at work. Maybe that’s why they didn’t get that promotion!”
“No,” I said. “That’s not why I didn’t get the promotion.”
“No need to get an attitude, Dani. You know I’m just looking out for you.”
“I think I’m going to quit my job.” “What? Dani, that’s insane. You have a baby. I told you, you shouldn’t have had a kid. All by yourself. You shouldn’t have slept with that deadbeat.” She shook her head.
Like a butterfly breaking out of a chrysalis I said, “Will you stop, Mom? Please! I can make my own choices. I have money saved!”
“Dani,” she seemed surprised. “I just worry about you. You know you have that problem…”
“ What problem? I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore! There’s nothing wrong with me! The only problem I have is always listening to you!”
“Are you crazy?” She got up from playing dollhouse with Kiera. Mom was petite, but she had a towering presence. “It’s horrible out there. There aren’t any jobs. You need to be practical, Dani. What are you going to do? Go back to school?”
“Maybe!” I shot back.
“Maybe? You don’t even know. For the sake of Keira, listen to me. You’re a single mom.”
“Look, I don’t know why I’m telling you, but Keira will be fine. I’ll always take care of her. I will find another job…”
“Is this one of those identity crises I read about on the computer? That you need to find yourself and all that new agey hoo-ha? What are you going to become some type of struggling artist? A writer, really? There’s no money in that unless your someone like James Patterson and I hear he doesn’t even write his own books. That takes years and years anyway.”
“Stop!” I said. Could I really blame her? I had been listening for so long…I couldn’t separate my thoughts from hers. “I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but maybe there’s more than I can see.”
“What are you talking about, Dani? You were always into those crazy books as a child.” She paused. “Are you in a cult?”
I suddenly felt vulnerable and detached, throw out in the cold. But something about it felt new and fresh and open…I could see the special door before me and this time I was going through.

They turned a small circle,
memorized where they were,
figured how best to get to their goal.
Aiming themselves in the general direction
they started to walk.

Nanzen-Ji Temple looked nearby on paper,
sore feet told a different tale.
So many streets not on the map,
signs in Japanese not English,
were they going east or had they slid north?

Approached by a gaggle
of giggling schoolboys
who wanted to practice English
the woman gave in, asked
how to find the place.

Crowing a little, the glee
just wouldn’t stay down,
she high-fived her husband,
marched one block more
straight to the temple gate.

How could you survive
without constant pings
to flash messages
and all that it brings?

When you’re pondering
or wait for the train
there’d be no e-book
to entertain your brain.

No interruptions
to disturb your thoughts.
No-one demanding
the answers they sought.

No instant forecasts
about wind or rain.
No dictionary
To ease spelling pain.

Would you miss all the photos
you’ve been driven to take?
Would you dare to try
a technology break?

I remember how we used to talk
and share our secret dreams
Was it yesterday you held me close and kissed
my tears away?
No, not yesterday…that’s only how it seems

I remember getting married and moving far away
I remember how you cried that day, and
not knowing what to say

I didn’t understand your tears, or why
you were so sad
But now I know it was because I was the
best friend that you had

I remember coming home to you and sitting
on your bed
And when I’d tire you’d pull me close and
rub gently on my head

As I drifted off to sleep I’d hear
you whisper low,
My darling daughter in my arms, how I
love you so

Time went on and we became entangled in
our lives
For we had vowed to both become such
dedicated wives

You moved away each wintertime to
your summer home
But our secret dreams we still could
share on the telephone

I remember flying out to you
across the starry sky
And realizing in my heart that
this would be our last goodbye

I remember standing close to you and leaning
on your bed
And when you’d stir I’d pull you close and
Rub gently on your head

As you slept your final sleep
I whispered very low,
My darling mother in my arms,
how I love you so.

A car backfires, shotgun loud.
Hind legs jerk, and rabbit’s gone.
Black cat sits, back straight, searching
reveals his sinister intent.
Whiskers tweak, he stalks away.

I help her out of my blue Prius. She hands me quarters for the meter. I demur, she insists; it’s the same every week.

I always lose.

She takes hold of my arm. Breathes deeply the dirty air I try to keep out of my lungs. Mimi-my childhood name for Ruth-is fierce and precious as a ruby, still fresh off the boat sixty-four years later.

She walks slowly, blind to scathing looks and muttered curses from people who have Important Places To Be, and no time for her.

With her red bouffant hair, matching lipstick, and heels higher than I dare to put on, she is the Queen of Rego Park.

We enter Kaufman’s Bakery. The newborn loaves are lined up as babies in a nursery, waiting to be chosen. Mimi’s eyes light up at the sight and fragrance of them, and she looks as if she is smelling Olam Ha-Ba.

Her attention is diverted by the girl. Stick thin, wearing a tank-top and low-slung jeans on her bony hips. Mimi’s eyes are on the vibrant tattoos on her arms. The rose, the butterfly, the blood-red heart buried in a bouquet of deep purple flowers.

The girl feels Ruth’s eyes on her. Turning, she frowns. Small silver ring in her eyebrow quivering. What are you looking at, old woman? she probably thinks.

Mimi smiles at her. The girl’s frown fades then she blinks.

Mimi brings up her thin arm, shows the girl her own tattoo.The girl runs long fingers across the numbers on Ruth’s forearm.
I can’t breathe. The girl’s nails are polished black. Or maybe
eggplant?

She brings my great-grandmother’s arm to her cheek and closes her eyes. Mimi runs her hand through the girls baby-fine blonde hair.

Without a word the girl takes her bag of whatever it is she bought, and is out the door. I like her tattoos, Mimi whispers to me. Even thought I shouldn’t. I tell her it’s okay.

Mimi selects five of the loaves carefully; as if she intends on raising them to adulthood. We ride home with Frank still singing; the bread safe on her lap.

I unlock the door of her co-op, marveling that she still lives alone. She doesn’t see the crumbs on the kitchen floor, the dust on the bookshelves and end tables, the cobwebs nesting in the corners of the rooms. Thank G-d! She’d have a fit.

I take a little nap now, she informs me. I kiss the Queen of Rego Park’s cheek, and take her sack of warm bread from her, cradling it in my arms as I walk into her narrow kitchen.

The fifty-year old refrigerators hum away. Like Mimi, they are still full of life.
I put the bread on the table, glad that it will be gone within days and I’ll have to come back. I can’t think of not doing this with her.

I lean over the sack of bread and breathe in.