The Sixth Door

Gabby returns to this memory often. She is sitting in her bedroom, a copy of Macbeth triangled over her knee. Gabby puts the book down to daydream about being rich enough to be someone whose entire life is travel. A plunge pool at sunset. The water and sky and glass of the pool so pastel she feels like candy. Being able to say which ramen stand in Tokyo has the best noodles, being able to say what noodles are the best. Going to Dar es Salaam and picking out octopus and fish to grill, cloth to buy. Even the exact daydreams are birthmarked on her brain. Her door swings open, and it’s her older sister, Simone.

“Sometimes, when I think about our names, Simone and Gabrielle,” Simone liked to say, “I think our parents wanted French poodles, not daughters.” At the time, it never made Gabrielle laugh because some of the mean white kids at school would call her Poodle. The one time she told her mom that it hurt her feelings, her mom only shook her head and said they could be calling you so much worse. Poodle is cute. No one dies while being called Poodle. When she told Simone and her husband James, they started calling her Poodle, elongating the word so it had a long, gushy ooo in the middle.

“Mom says you want to quit volleyball.”

Gabby waits for her sister to say volleyball was the best thing she ever did in high school. That when she’s an adult, she’s going to long for the days when all she had to care about was jumping in the air and slapping a ball at the ground. To ask her why. Or to get mad and assert her I-amyour-big-sister-you-must-listen-to-me authority; the short shorts are not so bad. Instead, she gets into the bed next to Gabby. Reaches into her purse and pulls out a large candy bar. She opens it slowly, as if the wrapper was beautiful paper that she wanted to smooth out to admire the design, and then breaks the bar in half. They eat the chocolate in silence.

This is the last time Gabrielle will ever see Simone. She spends some of it thinking her sister is an unusually loud chewer.

Eight years later, Gabby is drinking, alone, at Ginormous, when someone touches her shoulder. Her first thought is, Fuck it, I’m going to buy a gun, and the thought is repulsive and hilarious, so there’s a half-smile on her face when she turns and sees James.

“What are you doing here?” Gabby hopes it sounds nice.

“It’s near the anniversary. I just got in my car, and next thing I know, I’m here.”

He has grown a beard. She has forgotten how his hair was midnight: black, blue-black, some whites near the temple. Gabby sips her Scotch, likes how it tastes like she is drinking lightly scorched Earth. “You’re so old now, Poodle.”

“That’s a rude thing to say.”

He is leaning toward her, the tip of his shoe almost touching hers. There’s a look in James’s eyes, as if he’s trying to emulate how models look in perfume commercials: I smell incredible, and I want to fuck you, and isn’t that worth $150? She thought about how her dad has never liked him. Her father has a theory: never trust a man named Michael who is too good to be a Mike for his friends; never trust a man named James who is too pretentious to be Jimmy for his grandma. Gabby’s mom calls things like that his sea-captain talk—weird aphorisms that seem like only a man stuck alone at sea could make up. Gabby’s parents are in London. They are complaining about how expensive the food is. They say the city smells and is so damp. She wants to tell them the reason they’re having no fun is that Simone is gone, and they were dumb enough to think a trip would make them forget. Instead, Gabby asks for them to buy her some tea. It’s the only London thing she can think of.

James buys her a drink. Another. They are telling stories about the past eight years. He remarried, but she died. A snorkeling accident. Gabby can’t tell exactly how he feels. His voice is appropriately sad, but he drinks for a long time after saying it, as if he’s trying to make sure there are no facial reactions for her to examine.

Gabby is drunk, so she’s comfortable saying, “That’s sketchy as fuck. First wife, missing. Second wife, died snorkeling. They’re going to Lifetime you.”

“What?”

“They are going to make a movie about you on Lifetime.” She rolls her eyes. Another drink in her hands. And they are walking, the grass is somehow simultaneously blue and green. Gabby is telling a story even she can’t follow. Another drink in a paper bag. It’s hard to hold onto. Beer dribbles from the side of her lips to her chin. Down the street, someone is whistling, high and clear and loud, as if they are trying to will the entire world to feel cheerful. They are sharing a cigarette. The moon is silver light behind clouds. James is holding her hand, but it doesn’t feel like anything. She thinks she can see every bat in the world, they are hunting down moths, they are feeling so alive in the night. His

hands brush her neck, and his lips are thin, his eyes are distant, and her brain says he wants to hurt you. But his hotel room bed is soft. There are luxury soaps in the shower. She brushes her teeth, drinks water. Poodle, he said at some point, maybe in the elevator, you seem so lost. And if it hadn’t been the right thing to say, she would’ve laughed at how dumb the sentence sounded.

Simone’s memorial service is more of a begging than a service. Every time someone speaks into a microphone, they can’t help but say something like, Simone, if you’re out there, please come home. She is everywhere, in the wood pews the attendees sit in, standing in a dark coat among the trees behind the church, lingering in a bathroom stall because she doesn’t want to have to small talk in front of the mirror, have someone notice how long it takes for her to wash her hands. James is patting Gabby’s shoulder. Her mother and father have a hard time not touching her, too. Even if she wasn’t worrying about Simone, she still wouldn’t be sleeping well. Multiple times a night, her parents open her bedroom door and stand in the doorway, watching her. And if not that, she hears them crying in the kitchen, walking around the house as if each cupboard and closet needs to be searched.

Some feel sorry for James. They bring him casseroles, can’t imagine how this would happen.

Some are whispering that he is already dating. They point to a blonde woman overdressed for the event. She is wearing platform heels and a tight black dress. Gabby sees her smile every time she sees James, but his only response is to once nod, and every other time, look wary.

James’s house is beautiful. The outside is brick, red and brown. Gabby has always liked brick houses. The living room, dining room, downstairs bathroom, library, game room, and guest room—all the places where company would feel comfortable going were lovely. Framed photographs of all the places James has visited. Art that probably made people stop and consider it, and how wealthy its owner was. Large couches that hug asses and massage shoulders. Flattering lighting. The upstairs is different. “There is the,” James pauses, “our bedroom.” A study, another two bathrooms. And many tiny rooms, he doesn’t point out, but that Gabby notices are locked. Each probably three feet wide. Their doors painted different shades of red.

“What are these?”

“Storage.”

Gabby realizes she’s told no one where she was.

She reminds herself when Simone had colds, he would rub her feet, make her homemade chicken soup. She remembers how patient he was when she was learning how to drive.

The next morning, James hands her a key ring with several keys. “I have to go away on business,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I think it would be better if you didn’t explore too much.” Gabby sips her coffee. She is wearing a white nightgown that makes her feel like a ghost determined to be sexy.

“Is this reverse psychology? You tell me not to do it because you know then I won’t be able to resist?”

The woman James is marrying is named Melanie. Gabby thinks it’s a terrible name. Melanie, a name for someone’s mom who wore Looney Tunes sweatshirts and thought lol meant lots of love. It’s only been three years since Simone disappeared. Gabby expects her mother to take the water glass she has in her hands and throw it on the floor. Her father to tear up the wedding invitation, set the RSVP card ablaze. Call James on the phone, set up a recorder, and say, This is proof you killed my daughter. Get him to confess to the whole thing. The card is covered in roses and written in embossed gold ink. She forgot James’s middle name was Harlem. What an asshole, Gabby thinks.

“We’ll get them a waffle maker,” her mom says.

“Isn’t it super weird he invited us?”

“It’s nice. He loved your sister. He loves us.”

The first day in the brick home Gabby spends watching TV and reading books. She orders a pizza and eats it for lunch and dinner. James calls her at night but doesn’t ask about the house, the doors. The second morning, Gabby eats the last slice of pizza, takes the set of keys and heads upstairs.

She expects to find a dead woman in each room. Each dressed in a different-colored, flattering silk dress. Diamond rings and silver bands glinting from their left ring fingers. Their bodies limp. Throats bruised with the pressure of James’s hands crushing their lives out. Or maybe the walls painted with their blood, a dark shimmer. The expensive art of blood spray.

The first room has wedding portraits hanging on the walls. Simone and James embracing beneath a flowering cherry tree. James and Melanie seeing each other for the first time. Her dress long and lacy. A woman and James toasting one another, their eyes exactly the same.

James and a different woman sitting in a rowboat together, holding up a sign for a wedding date six months ago.

In the second room, there is a mannequin that looks like the same-eyed woman. She is dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. The next is the rowboat woman wearing a winter coat, a pom-pom hat on her plastic head. Her black hair in cutesy pigtails. Taped on the walls are printed out emails. I had a dream I was walking on your penis, began one, and Gabby can’t stop reading. The rowboat woman, if she was the email writer, loved thinking of herself as miniature. Giant penises, humongous hands. The fourth room has a mannequin of Melanie dressed in a bikini and wearing neon yellow flippers. The next, Simone. The mannequin’s hair is her exact texture. It seems to Gabby as if it was Simone’s hair, that somehow James had gotten it and made it into a wig. It is all so weird that Gabby laughs. She wonders if these are new additions. Put there to teach her some weird lesson about trust. Simone is wearing a version of her favorite black dress. Long sleeves, billowing out at the waist. The real version is hanging in Gabby’s closet at her parents’ home.

She opens the sixth door, and inside is her. The mannequin is naked. Its breasts, Gabby thinks, and she is not being self-deprecating, are nicer than her own. Symmetrical, perky, no stray acne around the bra line. The mannequin Gabby has her left hand stretched out toward real Gabby. Resting in its palm is a half-smoked cigarette. She realizes it was probably from the other night.

Is this a murder thing? Is it a sex thing? It’s so confusing. Gabby locks all the doors and runs a bath. There is a container full of fancy bath things—salts, bombs, bubbles—and she pours in a cup of pink liquid without thinking. It becomes an over the top bubble bath. Gabby soaks and tries to think of what it could all mean. There are more doors to try. Gabby pulls her clothes back on, forgets to dry off.

The seventh has nothing in it, but the eighth has a mannequin of James. Even the mannequin’s hair and beard are black-blue. It’s wearing a suit as if it were about to go out dancing. Its eyes, strange. Gabby leans closer. They’re made of sapphires. Real ones. Blue, but also transparent. All the women mannequins have dull plastic eyes.

There are footsteps downstairs.

Gabby notices the water she’s dripped onto the floor, figures it will be evaporated by morning. She locks the door. Goes back to the bathroom and takes off her clothes. Wraps herself in a white silk robe and walks downstairs. James is in the kitchen, opening a bottle of wine. “So,” he says and looks up.

“That was the best bath of my entire life.” Gabby is impressed by how good her lie sounds.

He tugs and the cork comes loose. James sniffs, and then holds it out, still attached to the corkscrew, to Gabby.

“Why do people smell those? I can only always smell liquor.” James sets the cork down.

“I know you went into the rooms.”

“There was nothing that interesting in them.”

He drums his left hand on the counter.

“I’m going to poison this glass of wine, and you’re going to drink it all.”

“Sure. And maybe if that doesn’t work, you’ll convince me to take up a dangerous hobby. I’ll start wanting to run with bulls or go bungee jumping.”

“I’ll hire a man to start following you. People will tell you you’re just being paranoid. And when I’m bored, Poodle, I’ll have him kill you in the park.” He points south, so Gabby would know exactly which park he was talking about.

“Very funny.” She crosses her arms. Gabby feels as if she is growing. The words he says don’t scare or titillate her. There is nothing he can do to make her small. Gabby sees him clearly. Even if he tries to hurt her, his fists would feel like someone tapping for her attention. She feels completely, wonderfully swallowed by the feeling.

James pulls out bleach from beneath the kitchen sink. He pours some of it in a wine glass with a golden rim. Splashes some wine in. The red wine slowly seeps into the bleach and it looks pink.

“We’re not even married,” Gabby says.

“This is practice.”

She takes his face in her hands and kisses him. Touches her tongue to his lower lips. Runs her fingers through his hair. When Gabby pulls away, James looks as if she slapped him on the nose.

“I thought you would be more exciting,” Gabby says. She puts on her shoes and coat. Opens the front door. Doesn’t care that she’s leaving behind her clothes, some books. Gathers her purse.

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

The night is warmer than Gabby expects. She walks to the park where he threatened to have her killed. The leaves are falling. Two teenagers are making out on a bench. A woman is walking a collie and saying, “You’re so good,” to it in a low voice. She knows she will never see him again.

When Gabby tells people this story, they ask her how long James went to jail for, were they able to find her sister’s remains, what did her parents think. She never answers those questions. Instead, she tells them what she did next.

Gabby maxes out her credit card on a trip to Chile. She eats seafood and drinks wine and speaks enough Spanish to be cute-friendly, not tourist-friendly. On her last day, she pays a man one hundred dollars to take her on a tour of a glacier park, gives him an extra two hundred dollars to take her inside a glacier.

It surprises her, still, how little people value their lives.

Inside the glacier, it’s colder than Gabby has ever experienced. The sound of water hitting the sides is almost music. Like when someone rubs water on a crystal glass and plays a note. When Gabby looks up, she can see herself reflected from different angles. Her nose runs because of the cold. She knows if the glacier suddenly splits, the ice will crush her flat. Or if she falls into the water, there is no way to survive. Her heart beats faster. The man sneezes, and he jerks back. The boat sways and wobbles with his movements. Gabby grips the sides, forces the boat steady.