The woman who couldn't walk through doors

The day of the wedding I dressed in white; after all, I wanted to
look like a bride. A long dress would have been obvious. Instead I wore
a sharp little suit, beautifully cut, with a straight skirt just
skimming my knees and a two-button jacket over a lace camisole. The
outfit had cost me two weeks' wages, but this was going to be the most
important day of my life. It had to be perfect, and when I saw myself
in the mirror I knew it was worth it. In this suit I avoided all the
clich?s. I was innocent, classic, modern, sexy: whatever you were
looking for you could find.

My mirror self was wide-eyed though, gulping gin and tonic for courage
and almost as pale as her clothes. I was prepared for this, had read
all about the last-minute doubts in Bride and Your Wedding, hundreds of
slippery pages stacked beside my bed. For eight months those magazines
had been my motivators, tirelessly advising, suggesting and
recommending, repeating their glossy litany of how to and when to,
preparing me, in their way, for what I had to do. It was what I wanted
to do, too, of course. And now that it was time, they wouldn't let me
down. I breathed in two, three, like I'd practiced; hold two, three;
out, two three. Remember to keep breathing, and you'll find you feel so
much better! Yes, it was helping. In two, three...in two, three...
Purse, keys, okay. I checked the mirror, chin raised, and saw myself
beautiful, brave and determined. Perfect.

The handle turned too easily, unexpectedly fast. The catch that should
have slid with a click back inside the lock remained silently sunk into
the jamb, and the door stayed closed. Stupid with surprise I yanked it
again, and again, meeting no resistance. My head began to fizz with
sudden panic and I pumped the handle up and down, the metal slipping
uselessly beneath my sweating hand. Nothing shifted. I leaned for a
minute, one hand grasping the handle and the other pressed against the
wall, laying my forehead on the smooth surface, and breathing in two
three. Something was broken, had stopped connecting inside. If I could
reach the workings of the lock I could move the catch, and then who
knows how I'd get in again but at the moment I didn't believe I'd be
coming back, for surely my world would be altered beyond all
recognition in the next two hours. Before long, cars would be crunching
the gravel outside the church, spilling out women in wobbly new shoes
and men with vigorous handshakes. And shortly after that, she would
arrive, and it would be time to make an entrance.

He had always been open about the other women. The most important
thing, he told me, was that we were honest with each other. That was
one of the things I admired about him, his honesty. You're not jealous?
he would ask, his brow creasing with what might have been either
concern or irritation. Was I jealous? No, of course not. Not when
admitting to it would have meant losing the little of him I had. I
smiled when he talked about the others, and sometimes I made up stories
of my own so he wouldn't suspect the truth: that on those nights when I
wasn't with him, so far from entertaining scores of made-up men, I was
imagining him entwined with his siren women, and shoving my hands into
my mouth to stop myself howling like an animal with pain and shame. I
wished, wished to be detached like he was. Sometimes when I lay naked,
listening to him speak about other girls, I bit the inside of my cheeks
behind my casual face till I had to swallow blood. And then it was only
one woman that he talked about, and I knew that here was danger; that
somehow she had got inside him like none of the rest of us could.

In the kitchen drawer I found matchboxes, shoe polish, paper bags,
Sellotape and, finally, a screwdriver, but the wrong kind, one with a
cross on the head. But a knife would do. Kneeling by the door I
attacked the screws one by one. The first one came out easily. But the
others were so old that the grooves had been worn almost away, and the
knife kept skating over the metal, slicing into wood and into my
shaking fingers. Blood and black grease smeared across my hands and
mixed with flakes of rust on the cuffs of my jacket. The breathing
wasn't helping any more. I was panting, slipping over the edge of
furious tears, flicking them away before they could wreck my carefully
painted eyes and streaking my face with dirt instead. Twenty crucial
minutes had run out before I flung the butter knife with a clatter
against the door and raced to grab the sharpest knife I owned. I
started to hack at the wood around the lock, peeling away strips of
curling varnish to make great pale scars in the dark surface, but the
oak was solid and as I stabbed into it the knife's point spun off into
the air, and shot toward my face. I closed my eyes and jerked away just
as it caught my cheek, and I knelt motionless, shocked at the pain,
with my head in my hands.

Once he had asked her to marry him, the nights he spent with me became
less frequent. I began to wear my casual face all the time, and behind
it she was there with me. He had talked about her so often, I was sure
I knew what she looked like. Now she would be growing her dark hair
long enough to pile it up in soft curls beneath her floating veil.
Already slender, she'd be pushing away plates and sweating each day at
the gym so she could drop a dress size. Closer to the wedding, she'd
visit a solarium to give her dark, slightly sallow skin a radiant glow.
I bought the magazines and imagined her following every step of their
advice; searching for that beautiful dress, booking florists and
caterers, consulting her future husband on table plans and wedding
lists, trying to involve him in her preparations. I know she tried to
involve him, because the occasions when he turned up on my doorstep
were always when she'd tried a bit too hard, and then he would drink
too much of my gin and gaze at me mournfully, and confide between
kisses how he wished he'd never started this. Here were my moments of
hope. This man I loved so much would not stop himself from doing the
things he wanted to, and nor would he make himself do what he did not
want. All he needed not to go through with this was a tempting
alternative, someone to make it easy for him. And if anyone here has
any reason why these two should not be wed - such as infidelity, and,
doubtless, adultery - speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Such a reliable, friendly object, the door handle. Who invented it, and
when? Were they around in Elizabethan times? Did the Romans have
handles on their doors? How many times in a day does it obligingly
perform the function for which it was designed, so smoothly that you
don't notice it? It's like a wheel or a watch in the simple ingenuity
of its mechanism. And then, without warning, it fails, and you're left
on the wrong side of a two inch slab of oak with no way through.

Rubbing my hands across my face, unfolding myself from the floor, I
knew with a sick certainty that I'd missed my chance, that by the time
I got there she'd have slid her finger into the ring, he'd have kissed
his bride, and that would be it until death do us part. In the
bathroom, I hoisted the lid of the toilet cistern, the heaviest thing I
could find, and slammed it against the window over and over until the
glass shattered. With a towel round my hands I broke off shards of
windowpane from around the frame, then I laid the towel on the sill and
hauled myself through, landing on my hands and knees in the square of
dirt at the front of the house. Slowly I pulled myself to my feet. My
shoes were back inside; barefoot, I started to walk down the street. I
meant to keep walking till I reached the church, and on toward the
beaming groups of family and friends composing themselves into perfect
eight by tens. I meant to see the smiles slide from their faces as I
paced slowly up the path, an apparition in white, torn and bloodied:
and his face when there was nothing left for me to be but honest.

People approaching me, their mouths making questions, faces folded with
concern and, behind that, curiosity. Well they can ask all they like,
and think what they like too, since an apparition is a ghost and a
ghost can't answer their questions. It's too late now to speak up
anyway. There's nothing for me to say.