Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

“I don’t know what you mean by that. I may date you again, sometime. I may not.”

He nodded. “Tina had told me how she liked her tea, and I made her some; but she only told me that once, and after a while I forgot. When I thought about her lying there, it made sense. She tells the child one time, and as long as the child’s really interested he keeps her going. But if he isn’t he doesn’t do it any more, and she puts herself away so his mother doesn’t have to pick her up. Pretty soon she runs down, or maybe she shuts herself off. That way she doesn’t get broken, and she doesn’t wear out. I wasn’t really that interested in Tina any more; I was interested in the crate and you.”

He sipped his wine. Lora said, “You expect me to believe all this.”

“I know you believe it—you know all about these toys. I think you probably know a lot more than I do. What I expect is for you to admit it, when you see that it’s no use to go on the way you are now.” He put down his wineglass and picked up the saltcellar again. “Anyway, that’s what she’d done. She would always put herself away, more or less, when I wasn’t going to be around. She called whatever place she liked that day her secret fort. This time she crawled into that secret compartment.”

He unscrewed the top of the saltcellar, poured salt into his icewater, and stirred it with a spoon. When most of the salt had dissolved, he dipped his fingers into the cold salt solution and sprinkled Tina. “When they’re already going, they can drink it,” he told Lora. “Tea, or plain water with salt in it, I suppose. Once they’re off, you’ve got to do this. It’s an electrolyte. Don’t bother to act surprised.”

A drop struck Tina in the face, and she sat up. “Hello. I’m Tina.” Her wide hazel eyes blinked slowly before focusing on Lora.

Lora said, “Hello, Tina,” her voice strained.

“I belong to you,” Tina announced. “I’m your doll, and I can talk.”

Lora shook her head. “I’m afraid you don’t, Tina. You’ve got the wrong party. You belong to the man behind you.”

He said, “Hello, Tina. Remember me?”

“A little bit.”

“We used to play in my apartment. You helped me look for lost things, and I read to you. I got you some pretty dresses, and a little tea set.”

Tina nodded. “If you want to have a tea party, I can help you set the table.”

“I do,” he told her, “when we get back home.” To Lora he added, “Sure you don’t want her for Missy?”

Lora shook her head. “I know you mean well, and I have to admit you were right about your doll and I was wrong. You were telling the truth, but it’s a little bit too much like voodoo or something for me. And for Missy.”

“All right, let’s forget about Tina for a minute. When you left you wrote me a note, remember? If you’re nothing more than you say you are, a divorcee with a little girl, why did you tell me about the doors?”

Lora looked puzzled. “What doors?”

He took the note from his wallet, unfolded it, and smoothed it on the table. A drop of salt water dampened one corner like a tear. As he looked up at Lora, Tina giggled.

Lora asked, “What’s so funny, you two?” She had glanced at the note as he opened it; she did not look at it again.

“Your face,” he told her. “You’ve had such great control until now.”

She rose, brushing her lips with her napkin. “If you don’t like my face—”

“Suppose I call Channel Nine,” he said. “Suppose I show them this note, and then I show them Tina. I think the TV news would love Tina. You couldn’t come here again for a long, long time.”

Tina added, “Don’t go away!” A fat diner at the next table glanced toward her and looked quickly aside with the shaken but determined expression of an atheist who has seen a ghost.

“This is crazy,” Lora said. “I should have known it would be, so it’s my fault. Thanks for lunch.”

“I have your picture too,” he told her. When she did not reply, he added, “Sit down.”

Arms extended, begging to be picked up, Tina piped, “You’re so pretty!”

Lora sat. There was no fussing with her chair this time, and her shoulders were squared. “I never allowed you to take my picture.”

“I didn’t.” He paused, trying to frame what he had to say. “Things sort themselves out, don’t they? The things from your world and the things from mine each get together with their own kind. When I was a little boy, my mother used to give me Corn Flakes for breakfast, and I could never figure out why a flake that I put in the middle of the bowl always floated over to one side. I still don’t know, but I don’t think it’s magic, and I don’t think this is, either. It’s probably some sort of law of nature, like gravity. What happens when something belongs to both places?” He waited for her answer.

“Let’s call my world the sea,” Lara said. Her voice was suddenly new; the alteration was minute yet vastly significant —she had given up a hopeless game that no longer entertained her. “And yours the land.”

There were freckles beneath her makeup, and her eyes blazed green.

He sighed, releasing breath he had not been aware of holding. “All right.”

“Heavy things belong to the sea. You may be able to draw them out—” Lara glanced down at Tina, “but if ever they come near the sea again, they will eventually fall in. And when they fall in, they will sink.”

He nodded to show that he understood.

“Lighter things belong to the land. If they happen to fall into the sea, they float. Eventually they are washed to some shore. You wanted to know about things that belong in part to both.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Think of a broken timber from a wreck. It is wood, which floats; but in it are several large nails. The nails are iron, which sinks. If the timber floats at all, it will float nearly submerged. If its wood becomes waterlogged, even a little, the timber will sink; but for a long time it will not lie heavily upon the floor of the sea. The sand will not bury it for years, because for years it will move with the tide enough to shake the sand off. When a storm comes, currents will scour the bottom; then it is possible the timber will be washed ashore.”

There was a sudden silence. At last Tina asked, “Are there really storms like that?”

Lara nodded. “I am the storm.” To him she said, “Now show me my picture, please, and tell me how you got it.”

“All right.” He took a locket of tarnished gold from his left jacket pocket and snapped it open. Lara leaned forward to look; but he did not let her see it for a moment, studying it himself instead. In colors time had softened rather than faded, the old miniature showed him her face in profile, half smiling, a delicate choker of Flemish lace circling her neck, grass-green jade ornaments at her ears.

“If I say I love you,” Lara asked him, “will you give that to me?”

“I love you,” he told her. “Won’t you let me keep it?”

With warm, slender fingers, she turned his hand until she could see the miniature, then nodded.

“Your name’s inside the lid—or one of your names, anyway. Leucothea Fitzhugh Hurst.”

Lara nodded again. “Where did you get it?”

“It was in the secret compartment with Tina. The old sea captain must have had that compartment built so he could hide his valuables in it, and this locket was what he kept in there. I suppose it was in there when he died, and nobody else knew about it.”

“And you want to keep it because you believe it’s a picture of me.”

“I know it’s a picture of you.”

“And Tina.” Lara glanced down at her, a goddess regarding a toy. “Tina’s me as well.”