The Red Door

The gift paper around the potted tulips crinkled in Eva’s trembling hands. The door looked just as it had the day she’d left for good, though the glossy red paint looked aged, somehow, even though she’d been gone just four years. An austere door knocker – a relic from a German grandfather she’d never met – stared back at her through leonine eyes.

The imposing gray brick townhouse loomed above the wet Seattle streets. The windows stared blankly out over the city park, where several families with young children braved the rain to spend time together.

“Mommy, can you push me on the swings?”

“And get your nice dress all dirty? Do you have any idea how much I pay for your clothes?”

“Mommy, I want to play on the slide! Just one time, pleeeeease?”

“We don’t have time for this, Eva! I have a meeting in ten minutes, now hurry up and get in the car!”

A lump formed in Eva’s throat. She fingered the pastel satin bow around the pot, a reminder that Easter would soon be here. Just another day for Frieda Kleinschmidt – religion was for the unintelligent masses, she’d often said. How many times was it drilled in Eva’s head as a child?

Yet now, as a prodigal daughter wishing for grace, Eva wondered if the idea of there being a loving savior for all mankind was really such an awful thing.

Her single suitcase rolling up the steps behind her, Eva approached the door and knocked. Better to get it over with now. She was only prolonging the inevitable by standing outside in the rain.

With each second that passed, Eva’s blood pounded louder in her ears. She gripped the handle of her umbrella so hard she just knew it would snap in her hand. Any second the door would open, and she’d be faced with the indomitable Frieda Mae Kleinschmidt – CEO of Kleinschmidt Pharmaceutical Enterprises and self-made woman, born into the land of opportunity by poor German immigrant parents.

Eva could still remember every word the press would associate with her mother. She was always in the living room watching the news with Rosa. After a while, she stopped asking why her mother was never home to tuck her in at night.

The latch slid on the other side of the door. Eva’s heart jumped to her throat.

But the woman at the door wasn’t Frieda. Instead, it was a thirty-something woman with dark skin and blue medical scrubs.

“Frieda said you might come. You’re Eva, right?”

Lost for words, Eva gave a numb nod.  

“Come inside. She’s been expecting you.”

Who are you? But Eva couldn’t form the words. All the moisture left her mouth, her tongue sticking to her teeth as though her cheeks were coated in sand.

Following the woman through Eva’s childhood home was no less surreal. Everything looked as it had four years earlier, when Eva left at the crack of dawn – hastily shoving her bags into a taxi before her mother could wake up.

She ran one trembling hand across the small end table in the foyer, the mahogany wood polished to a shine. Underfoot, the black and white herringbone parlor floor gleamed as it always had beneath the ornate Parisian chandelier. Even the cornices above the doorframes looked exactly as they had, without a speck of dust.

Down the hall, the soft sounds of the TV sounded like a distant dream. Goosebumps prickled on Eva’s skin. Had it really been four years since she’d been here? Or had she somehow gone back in time, where nothing had ever changed?

The tissue paper around the potted tulips grounded her, reminding her of the florist near the airport. She took a deep breath and turned to the woman.

“Who – who are you?”

The woman offered a small smile. “Amy. I’m your mother’s nurse.”

“Nurse?”

Amy’s smile vanished and she averted her eyes to the floor. “I’ll let her explain. Hang up your coat and umbrella in the closet. Frieda doesn’t like water on her flooring.”

An unexpected hostility rose in Eva, and she bit back her words, heat rising to her face. Who was this stranger telling her not to get water on the floor, when Eva had heard the same words every rainy day for her entire childhood and adolescence?

Do you have any idea how expensive that flooring was? Dry it up, you stupid girl!

While her mother’s voice echoed in her head, Eva instinctively took off her boots and placed them by the door over the rug.

A voice called from down the hallway, the firm, demanding notes sending shock waves through Eva’s memories. “Amy! Is it her?”

“We’re coming, Frieda!” Amy led Eva down the hall.

The bare walls crowded Eva as she followed the young nurse into the living room. Blank canvases of satin gray wallpaper, their subtle shimmer a testament to how Eva was never allowed to touch the walls.

The morning she’d left, she’d trailed her fingers along the walls in defiance. But now, about to face the woman from whom she’d run and hid, her courage withered. 

She stopped in the hallway and reached out a hand, touching Amy’s shoulder.

“This was a mistake.” Eva shook her head and took a step back. “I shouldn’t be here. I made my choice years ago – I need to go back home.”

But just as Amy opened her mouth, a figure emerged at the end of the hallway. “Eva. You got my message.”

Eva froze. Frieda Kleinschmidt stood at the end of the hall. But instead of the stern woman of iron and bone that Eva remembered from her childhood, a frail whisper remained.

Frieda’s legs, once well-formed and athletic, stuck out like twigs out the bottom of her loose nightgown. Frieda’s hair – which she’d always taken such care to keep dyed to hide the gray – showed no trace of her natural blond, tangled in wild gray brambles. Bruises lined the woman’s frail arms, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, a thin oxygen tube hooked up to her stern German nose.

Eva’s breath froze in her throat.

Amy rushed forward and took Frieda’s arms. “Frieda, you shouldn’t be up without your walker. You could fall.”

A sour expression – the first reminder of the woman Eva remembered – twisted Frieda’s face, her pale blue eyes fixing the nurse in her molten gaze. “That thing’s an insult, Amy. I’ll walk until they wheel me out of here in a body bag. Are we clear?”

Eva almost smiled. She knew her mother couldn’t have changed that much.

“Well, you’re here, so get inside. I hope you didn’t get my floors wet.”

Eva dutifully followed her mother into the living room, her concern growing with each shaky step. But no matter how many times Amy offered help, Frieda swatted her away, her curse words growing more intense with each time Amy tried to help.

Unlike the foyer, the living room was almost unrecognizable. Medical equipment, including a full-size oxygen tank, heart monitor, and hospital bed crowded the plush ivory carpet, with no traces of the priceless oriental rugs Eva remembered from her childhood.

The flat-screen TV hung in its usual place on the mantel, flanked by tall bookshelves boasting leather-bound volumes of classics alongside various medical texts. A few objects – a carved banyan elephant from Cambodia and an ornate Chinese vase – testified of Frieda Kleinschmidt’s discipline, all collected during trips abroad while Eva had never so much as left the country.

The tasteful furniture that had graced the living room since Eva could remember was still present, but crowded into one half of the living room to make way for the large, unwieldy hospital fixtures.

The sterile machines encroached upon the tasteful townhouse like alien invaders, their tubes and wires utterly foreign to the cultured living room and its carefully curated décor. While gilded vases from East China winked in the lamplight, monitor screens stared blankly ahead, vomiting tangles of multi-colored wires that spewed chaos all over the once-pristine carpet.

It was all wrong.

Frieda settled into a high-backed parlor chair and groaned, struggling to lift her feet onto the matching ottoman. Amy rushed forward to help, lifting her legs, but this time Frieda seemed too exhausted to fight back.

Eva stood frozen in the entryway to the living room, the potted tulips still in her hand.

Frieda’s gaze finally fell on her daughter. “Well?” she said, irritation serrating her words. “Are you going to stand there all day? You could’ve done that outside. Sit.”

The sharp tones worked like a dog whistle, and Eva once again felt the old instincts of the dutiful daughter kicking in.

No. You’re not her daughter anymore.

Eva fought against the instincts and didn’t move from her spot. “Why am I here?”

Frieda frowned. “How am I supposed to know? You ignored my texts for four years. You tell me why you finally listened.”

Eva set her jaw. “What do you want from me? Clearly, something’s happened to you.” She motioned to the complicated medical equipment crowding the living room. “So, what is it? Dementia? Cancer?”

Frieda laughed – the same harsh, mean-natured laugh that had made Eva’s skin crawl for as long as she could remember.

“Amy, make a note for me that my daughter still has some brain cells left. And here I was, thinking she’d lost all of them the moment she dropped out of med school.”

Amy flashed Eva a sympathetic wince.

Eva’s blood ran cold. “What do you mean?”

Frieda sighed and glanced at Amy. Outside the large windows, the clouds had cleared for a brief moment, letting in the feeble spring sun. Time had carved harsh wrinkles in Frieda’s face, bags under her eyes indicating years of pain and sleeplessness, her mother suddenly looking far older than her sixty-six years.

“About a year and a half ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite the initial optimism from my oncologists, it’s continued to progress until I’m at the end of the road. Chemo has all but destroyed my body, as you can probably tell.” Frieda winced as she adjusted her seat. Amy brought a pillow and straightened it behind her back.

“I had a double mastectomy. Not that you can tell in this bedsheet.” Frieda flapped the hem of her nightgown. “But, alas, even such drastic measures couldn’t slow the cancer’s progression. Amy here is my hospice nurse. It’s because of her that I contacted you.”

Frieda scowled as she appraised her daughter, taking in her secondhand boots and clothes. “Though, to be honest, I never believed you’d respond. I know you’re busy with whatever loser job you’ve got now.”

Her words were a knife in the gut. Eva gasped.

“How dare you.”

Frieda chuckled drily. “How quaint. I tell you I’ve got months to live, and you start out with that? And to think I’d expected more from you.” She shrugged her narrow shoulders and switched the TV back on.

Eva’s grip tightened around the flowerpot. In a sudden burst of rage, she imagined hurling at her mother, saving the cancer the trouble.

But she wouldn’t allow Frieda to get the best of her. She turned to Amy and bowed her head. “Amy, it was nice to meet you. My condolences for any more time you have to spend with this viper.”

Frieda’s head snapped around, eyes wide, mouth pursed.

But Eva wouldn’t back down. Not this time. “I meant what I said. Goodbye, Frieda. I wish I had the honor of calling you Mother, but that ship sailed a long time ago.”

Eva strode down the hall towards the coat closet, practically ripping her coat and umbrella off the hook. The remaining water splattered on the floor.

Eva thought for a moment, arms trembling, then took the umbrella and violently shook it over the floors, the insidious water droplets splattering the expensive Parisian wood.

It had never felt so good.

As she was cursing under her breath and pulling on her raincoat, a figure appeared behind Eva. She almost jumped in surprise.

Amy rested a hand on Eva’s arm. “I am so sorry.”

Eva shook her head. “It’s okay. This isn’t new. I’ve been dealing with her bullshit my whole life. The only difference is now I have a job I love and a place to call my own, where she’s not invited.”

“I’m sure she loves you.”

Eva laughed. “She loves the idea of me. Of having a little clone of her she could mold to her will. I’m only here because she turned forty-two and panicked that she didn’t have a ‘legacy.’” Eva zipped her coat. “I’m a sperm bank baby. The bitch couldn’t even give me the dignity of having a real father.”

Amy nodded as Eva spoke, though Eva was sure the nurse thought she was crazy. All the words Eva hadn’t dared to say before now echoed off the pristine walls, hammering like raindrops on the hardwood parlor floor.

It wasn’t until Eva had slammed the red door behind her that she allowed the tears to fall, disappearing into the falling rain.