Everything and Nothing at All

Her knuckles rap quickly on the rough, wooden door before she loses the nerve. She turns away, chewing the inside of her lip and crunching the fallen leaves underfoot. Seven beats of her heart pass before the latch draws back within the mechanism. She misses a beat, a terrible fluttering in her stomach, but turns back in time to see a piercing, dark eye glowering at her from a crack in the door.

“This is not the door you should be knocking on,” the eye says.

“Please.” She fumbles with her hands. “I need your help.”

“You need to turn round and head back the way you came.”

The woman counts a few quick heartbeats before she answers. The sharp eyes behind the door are familiar from newspaper photos collected in her research notebook. The small, black book sits tucked in her waistband at the small of her back.

“I won’t tell anyone you helped me and you’ll never see me again if you just give me five minutes.”

“No,” the man says, closing the door a fraction.

“I’ll come back every day until you help me.” The desperate surety in the woman’s voice echoes into the forest around them.

“Then you’ll have an issue with the police.”

The door shuts and the woman closes her eyes.

“Fine. But it’s pretty remote up here, it’ll take them a while to arrive.”

Two heartbeats later, the voice with the glowering eyes drifts through the gap at the bottom of the door, “Lady, I don’t give advice anymore.”

“It’s my son,” she starts, the surety fading from her voice. She puts her back against the wall next to the door and slides down, knees crumpling up to her chest.

“He’s amazing. Successful, with a happy marriage, living a glamourous life. The stuff of dreams.” She pulls the small notebook out from her waistband and flips to the creased and spotted center pages. She tries to read the explanation she’d written for this moment, but the words blur as her eyes well up.

“He achieved all that despite having me for a mother. We haven’t spoken in years and I’m not surprised with what I put him through. He’s a kind man, and I’ve failed to deserve the chances he’s already given me. I’ve failed badly.”

Inside the cabin, the phone handset, held aloft, number half dialed, settles back into its cradle.

“I’ve got no right to ask for another chance to be in his life. I know that, but I’ve changed a lot, gotten help, gotten better.” She pauses. “If he gives me another chance, I need to know I won’t ruin it. I can’t let him down again. Can you help me?”

She listens to the soft sounds of movement from inside the cabin. It had taken considerable effort and time to find this hideaway of the last great soothsayer. The pages of her notebook are full of the wrong turns and dead-ends leading here. She'd been ten years too late to make his office hours at the lushly gardened spiritual center now rented out by a half-hearted charlatan. The answer she needs lives here in this deep wood with this man or nowhere at all.

The door squeaks open, wider than before and a pair of dark eyes stare down at her. His gaze doesn’t glower this time, but it still roots her to the spot.

“I give you an answer and I will never see you again.” It’s not a question, his words ringing with the finality of prophecy.

The woman nods, rising quickly while brushing the back of her frayed jeans with her palms.

The man holds out an envelope. “Open this and you’ll discover your answer.”

Her hand trembles as she takes the envelope, thick with secrets and anticipation. She pulls it close to her body, wrapping her arms protectively around it. Her thank you barely makes it through the crack in the closing door.

She clears the kitchen table of everything but the water rings before opening the envelope. The silver wings of the closure fold up, sliding through the small eyelet. Out of the newly opened maw slides green bills. 200 pairs of wise eyes stare out of 200 inscrutable faces as they spill across the table.

$20,000.

She stares at the money. The face on these bills is both an old friend and a dreaded enemy. She didn’t carry cash, as a rule, the thin paper too easily morphing into chips and wagers, the currency of her former self. Only a few times in her life had she held so much at one time, and never for long. A little voice awakens within her, whispering old ways.

This couldn’t be her answer. What possible use would this be to her son? The paparazzi clamored over the engagement ring he’d given his wife. It cost twice the amount now on sprawled over the kitchen table, taunting her.

She forces herself to sit and search each bill carefully. No secrets scrawl across the backs. No pattern hides among the faces. The money is money, which is to say everything and nothing at all. The woman flings her research notebook across the room and breaks down, watched by 200 pairs of green eyes.

The bills, shoved crumpled and misshapen into the envelope again, sit in a shoebox in the locked closet for a week. The woman tries to ignore the little voice that whispers. Instead, she fishes the small notebook out from behind the sofa, flipping back through the newspaper clippings singing the praises of the soothsayer. Hope, like a great many things the woman thought she’d lost forever, crept its way back to her. Perhaps she wasn’t meant to understand, wasn’t meant to know what meaning this money would have to her son. Maybe delivering it to him would speak with the same authority of prophecy she’d heard ring in the words of the man with the glowering eyes.

She pulls from her meager bank account for the cheapest airfare, a red-eye on Saturday, and packs and repacks for days.

The padlocked zippers of her roller bag jangle through the airport. The envelope and research notebook, nestled together inside four pairs of socks, draw no attention as she passes through security.

The woman squeezes the bag between her calves as she sits waiting for her boarding group to be called. A little fire of hope, of faith in prophecy, sits company with her. The waiting area feels nearly empty when the screen finally flashes her boarding numbers. She counts her heartbeats with each pace down the aisle, every overhead bin crammed with coats and bags.

At the back of the plane, she shoves and pushes and wills the roller bag to fit under the seat in front of her.

“We’ll have to place it below,” the flight attendant says, flashing a neon smile.

The woman clutches at the handle for a long moment, staring at the pearly white teeth of the flight attendant. She releases the bag from her grip to take the small slip of paper with the baggage number in minuscule letters at the bottom. The moment the bag leaves her hands the part of her that knows things without any sensible reason to know them whispers a terrible doubt into her soul. Almost in a daze, from outside herself, she watches her roller back move up the aisle until a cluster of legs blots it from sight. She sits back against the headrest, counting heartbeats, fighting doubt.

. . .

“I’m sorry but we don’t have any record of your bag being on that flight.” The man’s eyes flit back and forth across his computer screen.

The woman had stood at the luggage carrousel, with her little slip of paper, until the bags stopped clanging down from above and the mechanized belt fell still and silent. She stood there for a small while after that too, staring down at the little paper that wasn’t at all what the soothsayer had given her.

She chews the inside of her lip, even that little slip of paper gone now, exchanged to this man for nothing but apologies. She pleads. She begs. She tries everything to silence the small voice inside whispering, “I told you so.”

“We’ve got your information,” the man says. “We’ll call if it turns up.”

The dawn is bright and sunny outside the airport. She sits alone on a bench for a long while and cries. The little fire of hope and the ring of prophecy lost at 30,000 feet.

With hastily blotted eyes, she checks at the desk for the first flight home. There isn’t one until the evening. With nothing but the contents of her pockets, she walks away from the airport.

Outside, the garish, neon sign of the Open Door Café shines from down the street. The plastic booths inside sit empty, the few patrons clustering around the counter instead. The woman settles on a pedestal stool and orders a cup of coffee and a single, scrambled egg.

She tries not to listen to the voice, not so quiet anymore. With the money lost anyway, she may as well have just given in, tried her luck at the tables, and saved herself a trip to this neglected diner.

The waitress, with her cheerful headband and sad eyes, pours coffee refills without question.

“I sometimes wish I was like one of those waitresses in the movies,” she says. “The ones who’d have something wise or profound to say.”

“I think I’m done with wise and profound,” the woman replies, small tears slipping down her cheeks again.

“How about this then?” The waitress plucks a napkin from a stack behind the counter and passes it to her.

The woman wipes her face, then smooths the napkin flat in her lap a few times. Printed neatly along the bottom edge she reads “Open Door Café” and below that in a cursive script “Come as you are.”

She reads and rereads the words, the edges of them blurring where the ink runs wet. She hears them not in the normal voice of her thoughts and not in that small voice that whispers doubt, but in the voice that belongs to a pair of glowering eyes. The one who said she would discover answers in an envelope that contained everything and nothing at all. An envelope with no answers and 200 opportunities to fall back into old ways. An envelope that brought her to a neglected diner she never knew existed.

Come as you are.

“Can I ask you for some directions?” the woman asks the waitress, who writes them down on the napkin in neat print.

The world goes about its day as the woman sits at the back of the bus in morning traffic. She smooths the napkin in her lap every few minutes of the long ride across the city.

When she finally pulls the cord, the bus stops at an intersection she’s never seen but imagined a thousand times. A glittering street of bright sunshine stretches before her. She moves slowly along the sidewalk, counting her quickening heartbeats and searching the numbers on the sides of the buildings.

She stops and examines the beautifully ornate door for a long while. Her knuckles rap quickly on the smooth surface before she loses the nerve. She turns away, chewing the inside of her lip and crunching the gravel underfoot. Seven beats of her heart pass before the latch draws back within the mechanism. She misses a beat, a terrible fluttering in her stomach, but turns back in time to see a surprised pair of eyes and familiar face in the open door.