Closed Doors

I pressed the notes to my chest.

“You’re not going to like them,” I said.

“Just show me,” Patrick said.

I handed Patrick the notebook. “I am dreading this.”

As Patrick reviewed the record of my conversation with my dad, I stared at the picture of the Virgin Mary, framed on the bedside table. I felt the pang of my empty stomach; I hadn’t eaten much that day. Sobbing had been too distracting. I had sat in work meetings off-camera, on mute. I filled an entire trash can of tissues. The salt from the tears cracked on my skin.

When my dad called me after work, I had no option but to go to Grandma Cara’s bedroom. The house closed in on itself, each room occupied, wood buckling under the weight of the people in it. Patrick sat hunched over his work computer in his room. Isadora banged pots and pans in the kitchen. Earl tapped out Morse code in the basement. The living room seemed too naked, too invasive, blaring the most recent COVID-19 news on CNN. I had asked whether I could take the call next to Grandma Cara’s bed, scrawling notes on the table where the full-length mirror sat. Dolls, flanking the mirror, were staring at me.

If I didn’t take notes, Patrick would suck every last anecdote out of me. “Anything else?” he would bark when I thought I finished, and “You owe me the Cliffsnotes version” when I said the call was good, and that there was nothing to report. I pictured the yellow-striped Cliffnotes books my classmates would buy to cram for high school exams, filled cover to cover with private thoughts from my own life. My eyes drifted up to Patrick’s Harvard diploma, and then to his face. His eyes moved back to the top of the page as he reread, his grip tightening on the paper. He frowned. Then he twisted his mouth into a grimace, shaking his head.

“Your dad thinks I should be ‘falling over himself to try to make it right?’ What the hell.”

I felt myself stop breathing, diaphragm waiting, air shelved.

“I’m not going to bow down to anyone.”

“Patrick—" I gasped.

“I won’t sign up for this.”

“Patrick, I’m so sorry,” I said as he shoved his way past me.

At the door’s threshold, he turned to me. “I can’t stand these people. I despise these people.”

I followed him into the kitchen. Patrick stood by the stove, glowering. His mom, Isadora, stood directly next to him, a perplexed look on her face. And his dad, Earl, had his back to me, rubber gloves immersed in dishwater, but he had swiveled his head towards me. Their eyes bore holes into my soul.

“My dad’s going to come pick me up,” I said.

The water stopped running. Dishes stopped clanking. The cats looked up. The dog’s breathing went mute. Grandma Cara put her fork down. The whole room languished in every millisecond that passed. The entire house poised to crumple.

“He what?” Isadora barked.

Shit. Not what I meant to say.

“I mean...I meant to say, he offered to pick me up.”

“You said exactly what you meant.” Isadora took a step forward, her voice a higher pitch than usual. “I can’t believe it. You just fucking broke up with him.”

I looked at Patrick. His face contorted into an expression I had never seen before. Anguish. Raw. Uncloaking the exterior that showed no emotion but anger.

“Fuck you,” he said. He looked as though he wanted to lunge at me, pound his fist on the table, break something. But he stood still. A sense of violence lurked within the stillness, almost as though the stillness itself were violent.

“You didn’t think to even talk to him about this?” Isadora spat.

We had talked, in the days leading up to this moment, about possibly ending the relationship. They had told me to go home, to see how lonely it would be before I came crawling back to Iowa to people who actually loved me. Earlier that day, Isadora had said that Patrick deserved much better than my family. Patrick had asserted that our relationship was “basically ruined, right on the edge.” He had given me an ultimatum: that I had to choose him or my parents.

“I thought we did,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I thought we did. You told me to go home. You said we can either break up, be on a break, or try to make it work.”

“That was different,” cried Patrick.

I imagined the words written in the air, turning on themselves, curling and unfurling into different words entirely, attached to opposite meanings.

“I am so mad at you right now,” said Isadora. “You have no idea how mad I am.” It sounded like a childish response, the surface level of insult containing what lay beneath. I was silent.

“Why? WHY?” she screamed.

I flinched. A dog cowering before its master.

“You know what? Fuck you for just deciding without even asking Patrick,” Isadora said. “And you had the nerve to eat dinner with us.” She turned to Earl. “She fucking had the nerve to have dinner with us!”

Then she turned to Grandma Cara, who was forking what was left of her chicken. I watched as she gummed down a bite, and I had the sudden urge to approach her, wrap my arms around her, give her a hug and say how sorry I was that she had to stay here forever.

“Guess what?” Isadora said, screaming in Grandma Cara’s direction. “She just broke up with him!”

“You’re kidding,” Grandma Cara croaked. She said this with the words drawn out, agonizingly slow, evenly spaced. I watched as her fork fell from her loose grasp, clanging on the plate.

“Yeah, that’s right! She broke up with him,” Isadora continued. “You know why? Because her parents told her to! You know why? Because Patrick told two jokes to her mom! Two fucking jokes!”

In the spring, Patrick had called my mom a dictator and a dog master. And when she called him out on it, he had refused to apologize. He insisted they were jokes, and that she had no right to be offended by them. He insisted that she bend to his every will, his every joke, his every demand. And I let him.

Earl spat into the dishes. “There’s steam coming out of my ears.” I imagined his face reddening, cartoonish, as gusts of steam rushed out. “She is such a piece of shit.”

“Patrick,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”

“Look what you did to her!” Isadora gestured towards Grandma Cara, whose eyes had narrowed. She tipped her head up, eyes turned down slightly, mouth hanging open. There was a painful vulnerability to her posture, a disbelief as she said how good a boy her grandson was, how he didn’t deserve this. But I also sensed she knew about the explosive anger. The intolerability of it all.

“I never meant to hurt you,” I said to Grandma Cara. “I’m so sorry for hurting you.” And then, too quiet for any ears but my own: “I love you, Grandma Cara.”

Then, the verbal bullets came. Earl’s arsenal unleashed itself in my direction: “these fucking people,” “they’re just like Trump,” “what a fucking bitch,” “what a bunch of drama queens. “Her dad thinks he’s this great Christian, this great Sunday school teacher, and he does this.” “What a bunch of low-level sons of bitches.”

“Earl, just stop talking,” Isadora said.

I followed Patrick into his room, taking cover from the words that punctured. His eyes had started welling up. He had never cried in front of me before. He had taken great pride in the fact that he rarely cried as an adult: he had only shed a tear when his grandfather died, and when his childhood dog died. And now this.

“Why would you do this to me, Anne?” Patrick’s legs began to shake. He looked to the door threshold, where his mom stood. His eyes widened in desperation as the shaking became more intense.

“Patrick, you should sit down.” His mom’s voice rang from the doorway. Even in this moment, she made her presence known. Patrick sat on the bed, hands to temples. His mouth was slightly open, eyes darting, head shaking back and forth in disbelief.

Isadora turned to me. “Why would you do this? Why? Look what you did to him! LOOK! You fucking monster.”

“I’m so sorry, I really am,” I said. “I’m a horrible person. I hate myself.”

Isadora glowered at me.

“I promise I’ll hate myself forever for this. I can sleep outside,” I said.

“What do you take us for? No, you’re not sleeping outside!” Patrick rolled his eyes. There was a disconnect between the dismissiveness of his eye-rolling, the bite of his tone, and the hurt in his voice.

“Who are you?” Isadora’s face puckered. “Who ARE you? Answer me!”

“I’m Satan,” I said. “I’m the devil.”

“But really, why?” she barked. “WHY? Just fucking answer me.”

“I just became so afraid of everyone’s anger,” I said. “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

Patrick wiped his cheek. “Why would you do this? I thought you loved me,” He sounded meek. “You said you didn’t want to lose me.”

“I’m doing this because I love you,” I said. “I can’t put you through this. All of this. You’re better off without me.”

I had convinced myself that it was my fault he hated my mother, my fault for bringing him back home where he was forced to sit through family dinners where conversations bounced, where single topics drifted and swirled and dipped in and out of serious topics, pausing for moments on his topics of interest before they launched into the next. And his reluctance to commit himself to a lifetime of it, I believed it was my fault. And there was also this twisted-gut feeling that I couldn’t quite name, an intuition that maybe it wasn’t entirely my fault.

“When we asked you to choose between Patrick and your mom, you said you’d choose Patrick no question!” His mom made a grand gesture with her arms. Earlier that day, she had denied she had ever issued that ultimatum.

“I’m so sorry,” I heard myself say.

“I can’t even look at you right now,” Patrick said, getting up, leaving the room.

“What the fuck, Anne,” his mom said to me. “Why would you do this? Why? What did he do?”

“I just…” I stammered. The words existed somewhere, but so many layers deep into my consciousness that I couldn’t pull them from the depths of my being. They stayed there, blocked by something.

“Spit it out.”

“I just became so afraid of your anger. And his anger.”

“What the fuck, you bitch,” she said. “We took care of you. We took you in. We got you groceries. You lived rent-free. Your family doesn’t give a shit about you, and we loved you! We’re all you have!”

“My parents knew how stressed I was when you and Earl would fight,” I said.

“You were fucking spying on us too?” Isadora cried.

“Lying bitch,” muttered Earl from the kitchen. I didn’t even know he could hear us, but sound had a tendency to travel through these walls.

“What else did you say to them?” Isadora said. “Might as well get it all out.”

I paused. Opened my mouth to speak. Closed it again. Shook my head.

“Well? I’m waiting. Fucking tell me.”

“How you yelled at Grandma Cara for things she couldn’t help, like her bathroom accidents and how she drank water. And Yogi for licking the sore on his paw. And me, whenever I didn’t do something right. I was scared. I can’t handle the anger.”

“Unbelievable,” Isadora said, puckering her mouth, narrowing her eyes. Her complexion twitched. “She’s a little spy!”

I looked at her.

“What else?” She put her hands on her hips.

“There wasn’t anything else.”

“Fucking liar.”

“I promise that was it,” I said. “I barely told them anything.”

“I think you should leave,” Isadora spat.

“I’ll warm up the car,” said Earl. “I’m taking that bitch to a fucking hotel.”

I texted my parents, They’re kicking me out. Please respond. Please.

Isadora narrowed her eyes, as if she knew every letter I had just texted. “Your dad is not stepping foot on my property.”

“I understand,” I said. I edged toward the living room couch. “I’m...I’m sorry. My bag is here. Would it be ok if I got it?”

“Fuck you, Anne,” Patrick hissed, pulling my bag from the back of the couch. “No wonder you only have one friend. You burn bridges.”

I had only spoken to one friend over the past few months, one who, I later learned, was also in an emotionally abusive relationship. The rest had faded further into the distance, the closer I drew myself into Patrick’s web. I began tearing clothes from hangers, unhinging my work monitor, grabbing books from behind the shelf, stacking them in my backpack. Wondering, for an instant, whether I should leave or take Christmas gifts from them: took some, left others, in no particular order.

My parents had texted back that they were looking into hotels, how sorry they were, how they would get me home.

A shadow appeared in the door. It was Patrick. This time, softer. More vulnerable.

“What did I do wrong?” Patrick sounded weak. His voice wavered.

“You didn’t care about my feelings,” I said evenly.

“I was your therapist for two years!” he cried.

“I couldn’t ever disagree with you. I became so afraid of making you angry. I tried to be kind. I tried to do as much for you as I could. And I still upset you no matter how hard I tried.”

“That is fucking bullshit, and you know it.”

“And…” I struggled for the words. “I couldn’t stand the thought of never being able to take communion again.” I immediately regretted saying that. I have nothing against Catholicism or Catholics. But they were the words I heard myself say.

“Ah,” he said. “Some anti-Catholicism. What else?” His tone had hardened, eerily calm at this point. Firmed over by resolve.

“And... you hated my friends. You hated my family.”

“Anything else?”

I just looked at him.

“Let these be your last memories with me.” He turned away.

My suitcase bulged, barely zipping. I still had quite a few things left. I stuffed the clothes further down. Isadora tossed my water bottle and shower gel at my feet. Patrick dropped a stack of piano music at the door.

“Don’t even think about leaving your books here,” said Patrick. “You’re not going to leave a single thing in my house.”

I nodded, even though it was his parents’ house.

“You know what, Anne? You know what criteria I’m going to have for women I date in the future?”

I looked at him.

“Orphans.”

He returned to the living room. Isadora’s voice rang from the hallway as she brought another load of miscellaneous items.

“We were so good to you,” she said, “and this is how you repay us.”

“I was never enough. I tried to prove myself. I tried to do all these extra chores, and—"

“You really are a poor little rich girl.” Venom dripped from Isadora’s lips.

The words stung. But, somehow, I had no urge to cry. An invisible protective wall haloed my body, one that shielded me as I went to the basement to get the box where I could store my work monitor. And then I had no choice but to ask to use a few grocery bags for my remaining things.

“Yep. Just one more thing you’d be taking from us,” said Isadora.

I gathered the rest of my things, listening to their conversation in the next room.

“Her parents are probably going to kick her out after a month. And she’ll go somewhere, and she’ll get COVID,” Patrick said. A few “yep”s punctuated these predictions.

I stuffed my glass jars in grocery bags next to socks. Boots and toiletries in another one. The sounds of hatred drifted over from the next room as I consolidated my things. And yet this invisible layer of calm separated me from their world, encapsulating me.

I hauled grocery bags, bins and the orange suitcase towards the door. The below-zero cold stung my face as I made trips back and forth from the car. Earl began to take a few items to the car.

“I can do it, don’t worry,” I said.

“I want you out,” he said. “And if that means that I help you, then so be it.”

And a few minutes later, the house had been cleared of most evidence of my presence. I looked into the living room for the final time. The dog lay on the floor. The cats curled into their usual positions. Grandma Cara sat in her chair as she always did. Isadora had her arm around Patrick, rubbing his back as they both fumed.

“You may not believe me,” I said, “but I really am grateful.”

“No you’re fucking not,” seethed Isadora. “You are fucking not.”

Patrick threw my gloves at my feet. “You forgot these,” he spat.

“Thank you,” I said to him. His back was turned to me.

The cold from outside beckoned.

I closed the door for the last time.