Beyond the Aching Door
a sneak peek
please note this is an unedited preview of “beyond the aching door” intended only for readers’ enjoyment. do not share, quote or otherwise distribute this text is any way. the final publication may differ from the work included here.
October awaited Raegan just outside, grief and memory and shadow hanging in the eaves. When the newsroom quieted and her longform was in her editor’s inbox, she slipped out the back entrance and headed for the train station. But instead of the subway, Raegan boarded the commuter rail. Her destination was at the end of the line, far into the suburban reaches. Over the years, her ritual had become refined, exact, and it was important to get as far away from her real life as possible. The few people she allowed close to her were tired of hearing it, and her therapist had to be exhausted by the tale, and what no one realized was that Raegan was sick of it herself.
But grief is a story, and it is one that demands to be told.
Which is how Raegan found herself in a cozy, if run-down, bar somewhere in New Jersey, signed up for an open mic night. The story was best presented to the unsuspecting as fiction. It seemed safer that way—like maybe it wouldn’t worm itself into the listener’s marrow if they thought it only an exercise of imagination.
At least, Raegan could hope. She settled onto a stool at the bar and nursed a too-sweet cider, pretending to listen to the performer on stage. Despite the cool weather outside, the bar was unpleasantly warm, and everything was sticky. After what felt like two years of spoken word poetry, Raegan had no choice but to peel off her overcoat and lay it across her lap. Condensation beaded on her bottle of cider. The story rattled inside of her like a caged thing, feathered wings beating against her ribs. Raegan reminded herself to sit like a regular person, to look normal and well adjusted. In a place like this, only a few seconds of holding herself as if she were protecting an old wound could bring men sniffing —for daddy issues, for insecurities, for painful places they could poke and prod to get what they wanted.
But then the host called the pseudonym Raegan had signed up under, and she breathed a sigh of relief, quickly followed by a inhale sharpened with anticipation. She left her coat draped over the stool and pulled her mane of auburn curls off her damp neck as she approached the microphone. No one looked like they cared at all about the open mic, so Raegan didn’t bother with the little introduction she sometimes had to give. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and looked out at the small bar: the mismatched chairs, the wobbly tables, the low ceilings and orange-hued light. Then she took a deep breath and began.
When my father was young, he met a man on the train platform. The man wore an old fashioned three-piece suit. The sun was just beginning to set, the sky leaking spilled molasses onto the platform.
The man asked my father for a cigarette. He pronounced it “cig-ah-rette,” stressing the last syllable instead of the first two. My father obliged, but when he offered a light, the man only stared down at the cigarette. He rolled it between the fingers of his left hand once, twice, three times, before tucking it into his pocket.
“Not even going to smoke it?” My father asked.
“No,” the man answered.
My father fell silent, moving a step or two away from the man. He stamped his feet against the ground to ward off the winter chill. The platform remained empty. He couldn’t see any trains in the distance. His gaze eventually drifted back toward the man.
“Aren’t you cold?” My father wanted to know. My father was like that.
“No,” the man answered, his eyes roving down the tracks. He took an old pocket watch from the folds of his tweed blazer. He rolled it between the fingers of his left hand once, twice, three times, before tucking it into his pocket.
As my father watched, the train station began to change. The bricks became new, raw red in the low light. The benches morphed into old-fashioned rod iron, crisp and black. The colors of the sunset turned sepia.
With a start, my father realized there was a train pulling into the platform, though he never heard the engine. The man in tweed approached the door.
“Do not follow,” the man warned. My father noticed that despite the winter air, there was no puff of frosted breath when the man spoke.
“Who are you?” My father remembers asking, though perhaps he already knew the answer.
The man stood in the doorway, pulling the cigarette back out of his pocket, rolling it between his fingers. He lingered for a moment, but did not answer, and then disappeared into the darkness of the rickety train, its sides heaving like an exhausted animal.
For so many years, my father remembered the man, the train platform, the sepia-colored sunset. All my life, he paused when we said the Apostle’s Creed in church, right before the “I believe” lines. It was just a small pause—
One,
two,
three.
Raegan’s mouth felt dry as paper, her heart a war drum. The story was true. Her father was gone and the story was the only thing she had. And so Raegan would keep telling it, again and again and again. It was her way of looking for a door, a curtain to walk behind, a secret place she could go and maybe her father would be there, waiting. If that kind of door existed, she told herself, she was the kind of person it would appear for. And she would walk through it without looking back.
Of course, no door appeared in the wall of the rundown tavern as she paid her tab and gathered up her coat. Nothing in the parking lot either, nor the train station, not even with its flickering lights and empty platform. No matter how many times Raegan begged for a door, no matter how hard she looked, nothing swung its maw open with a creak that sounded like a lullaby. So she kept telling the story because it was closer to a door than anything else she had ever known.
What she didn’t know—couldn’t know—was that the story was an invocation of sorts, a calling of the quarters, a setting of beacons, and when she told it, Fate herself swooped low from the never-places and listened to the story fall from Raegan’s mouth like wine.