When a Door Closes
written by: Michael Graeme
I dreamed of Sarah last night, and now she’s sitting over there. That’s not a coincidence. If you think it is, you’re only living the one layer of your life, the surface layer. You’re missing out on the meaning of things poking clean through from another dimension. I’m not saying it makes sense. Even after all these years of thinking this way, I still don’t get it – at least I can’t explain it to you in words. It’s more of a feeling.
It’s not often I come to this part of the world anymore. When I was working, I was here all the time, but that was a long time ago, and since retirement, I’ve no reason to come out this way. It’s just that today, I am trying to hunt down some shopping from the retail park. I’ve been trying to ease myself away from doing it online, and I’d kind of forgotten places like this still existed. I often used to hang out here at lunchtime. It got me away from the office, away from everyone, all that noise. Stressful times.
Wandering around the place, earlier, I could feel those old anxieties returning, something seeping back into the pit of my stomach – memories, traces of things unresolved – all those interminable meetings, the deadlines, the unwholesome crush of it. I hear most of the senior grades who used to pile me up with work and chase me for it are dead now. I got out early, while they hung on. It’s a pity that the world was all they had.
But there was something else I would carry with me when I came out here, and I was feeling that too, earlier, maybe on account of the dream. It was a different kind of memory. Bitter-sweet, a touch of melancholy, and all to do with this thing I had for Sarah. We started as trainees at the company, same day, nearly half a century ago. I fell for her right away, wasted no time asking her out – more than once – but she was firm in her put-downs. I’d give it a while, then have another go, and always the same.
I say she was firm, but that’s not quite right. It was more like a persistent emptiness, a void one could fall into forever. I could go on asking, and there would be this same inscrutable rebuff, nothing to hold onto. There was a compassion in her, though, and just the right amount of sweetness in her evasions. I guess she saw something I could not – that it could never be that way between us.
Oh, I worked it out in the end, and kind of let it go, or at least set it on the back burner while hoping she’d change her mind, but she never did. And the other strange thing? Well, it was the fact of her presence throughout my working life. Sure, we both stuck it out, me for forty-five years, both married other people, worked in adjacent labs, yet never spoke to one another, not properly, and least of all of the times I’d asked her out. We might have made a joke of it, broken some ice,…
We never moved on from the asking, and the rebuffs. That was my fault, holding on that way.
Just sometimes,… sometimes there’d be fire drills, and then the office would spill out onto the car park. People would huddle into their familiar groups, and chat. Me and Sarah, we were both loners, kind of painfully exposed in crowds – I think she sensed that in me at least – and she’d come over and we’d just stand together. It was like most of the time we were nothing to one another, but on these occasions, something was acknowledged, a past, a connection, and it was precious to me – maybe to us both, I don’t know. But all the while there’d be this electricity coursing through me. Whatever this thing was, it was still alive in me.
Oh, look, neither of us was going to do anything about it. Not her for sure, but not me either. For one thing, I’m certain she never realised the way I felt, and she definitely showed no signs of ever feeling the same way. And neither of us was the type to stray. By now, we had kids, we were getting older, content in our marriages. It just wasn’t in our natures. The most I got on these occasions was an enquiring smile, as if to say: “Mind if I join you?” And I’d respond with a flick of the eyebrow and a tilt of the head, as if to say “Of course not”, and then we’d settle in beneath this intimate umbrella of silence.
What I mean to say is it made no sense. It served no purpose, at least not that I could see, our both persisting within one another’s orbits that way, and for all that time. There were many girls who rebuffed me, and I’ve never seen them since. Surely in situations like that, the fates would have drawn us apart, one of us would have moved to another job, or she would have stayed at home to be with her kids. But no, we remained within a heartbeat of one another, yet largely unacknowledged. Meanwhile, the years passed, and though these occasions were few, what I felt whenever I was drawn into her presence seemed only to grow stronger.
I know I was projecting. I know her silence, her apparent emptiness, made her a malleable host for whatever fantasies I came up with. But right from the start, there was something numinous about it, something Other. What do you do with a love like that? Forever unconsummated, un-consummatable.
There’s a photograph of us together, a candid shot, one of those tiresome corporate nights out. We’re each with our partners, me sharing small talk with her guy – who I always liked by the way – but the picture captures a moment, a look from her in my direction, those silent eyes, the pair of us together in the middle, and this eternal mystery like a shimmer in the air between us. I could have cropped our partners out, either side, kept the picture as a token – her and me, together – but it never felt right. It was a secret, better left unsaid for fear of breaking something precious. So yes, I dream of her still, though not as often now – I guess since it’s so long since I last saw her.
Anyway, I’ve struck out with the shopping. It’s just turning to rain, and the car’s way across the other side of the park, so I’ve pushed my way into this coffee shop to wait it out. I don’t like these places, ordinarily, tired of all that corporate stuff. It’s what you get in a single-layer world – no magic, no meaning, no real feeling.
Here we are, then, got my coffee, and I’m turning to find a seat. The place is heaving, and there she is, looking at me. And yes, all at once there’s the same yawning chasm of her presence. She’s alone, the chair opposite her is drawn out a little, as if waiting for me. There’s that same enquiring smile, though she adds to it my twitch of the brow, both invitation and acceptance all in one. I’m drawn in as if by her gravity, and I sit down, braced a little for the fall. How long has it been? Five years? Five years since I saw her! But already we’re half a century ago, and each of those rare occasions in between, each of us the same, and timeless. Surely only old lovers can be this way.
It’s hard to say exactly when I gave up on her – I mean, the idea of being with her in the conventional way. It was long after I was married, though I was perfectly happy in my marriage. But we persist with these fantasies, as if we can live a double life and keep them separate in the same layer of reality, but you can’t. Letting go came gradually, and as I did so, the mystery deepened. I mean, how can it be I feel such rapture, just being in the presence of this woman? I say I gave up on her, let her go, but really, that’s impossible. She has always been a part of me, always close in some ineffable sense. Always will be.
How many fire drills, I wonder, down the years? Was it more than a handful? And so little said, yet they were perhaps among the most intensely lived moments of my life. I swear, it was as if we danced. We’re doing it again, now. Dancing in this stillness. We are weightless, free-falling.
Quick catch-up, small talk. Her guy’s fine. She’s a grandparent now. Me too. Hell, time flies. I still think of us as teenagers. She was always somehow a little boyish in her looks, but something of the soft lace about her too, something straight-backed, dignified, and regal. Of course, it’s easy to see the years we’re both carrying now. I look in the mirror and see my grandfather looking back at me. But her presence thrills as it always did, and as I relax into her, the electricity flows once more. How beautiful it all is!
Beautiful, yes, this coincidence, this opening in time. I try to imagine the odds – they’re astronomical. It’s an opening, yes, but also a closing, I think. When I get up from this table, I know it’ll be the last time I ever see her. The day I retired, we were in the middle of Covid. There were no big send-offs for anyone in those days – not even a handshake – what with social distancing and all that. Still, I’d wondered about saying goodbye to her, maybe even just an email, but it didn’t feel right. We didn’t exist in that world. In the end, I just walked out. Is that what this is then? Closure? If so, the universe has taken its time getting round to it.
Shall I just tell her I love her? Where’s the harm after all these years? We’re both old enough not to take it seriously. Except that would be to dishonour it. So here we sit, drinking coffee like an old married couple – just not married to one another, a life not shared. And now I’m out of words, out of all the small things, and once more there’s just the void between us, and my wife’s waiting back home, and the coffee is down to the dregs.
So, it was nice seeing you, and give my regards to your guy, and I’m easing away now. But then, without breaking waves, she reaches forward just a little, enough to touch her fingertips to the back of my hand. I freeze in shock, as the feeling ripples through me, a long, slow wave of cool loveliness, and she leaves it there for a moment, lets it settle. And in that moment, we look into one another’s eyes, and I know she knows my heart, that she has always known. I also know, or sense at least, the deep tenderness in her, a tenderness for me. It was just never quite enough to alter the way things turned out, or maybe it was just enough that they should turn out the way they had to be.
And she says: “Thank you.”
I give a nod and a smile, a little slow with my understanding, but it comes to me on the drive home. Not in words. It’s more a shift, something moving quietly beneath the surface, like a dream you don’t need to interpret. You know exactly what it means by the feel of it. Sure, people call these things coincidences, but it’s more like a moment folding in on itself, where all the unresolved threads come together, and the meaning comes rushing in from another layer of reality. You can’t put words to it. Just like me and Sarah, whatever magic we shared was lived between what few words we ever said, and in that quiet secret of both our hearts. Some encounters open doors, others they remain closed. I get that. But just because a door remains closed your whole life, it doesn’t mean it’s not wide open in another.
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