DOORKNOBS
By John Vanderslice
 

“So all of it was just a lie?”

“Not the part you’re thinking of.” 

I looked at him.

“I’m thinking of all of it.”

No answer.

We were in my kitchen.  My hand was on the counter.  He was three yards away, retreating. 

“So,” I said.

“What?”

“Which then.”

“Which part?”

“Yes.”

No answer.

“Which part.”

He backed up one more step, his arm extended toward the door.  It was night outside, February, the stars as clear as pewter doorknobs through the window above my sink.  Even in that moment, in that conversation, I wanted to flip off the light switch so I could see them better.  At least something would be clear: radiating, pouring down, speaking out loud.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I don’t think there’s a point to this discussion.”

He turned the knob.  The door cracked.  A line of cold air.  A sliver of pewter starshine at the top of the frame.  He was still in my house.

“I want the truth,” I said.  “That’s all.”

He smiled.  A horrible expression.

“The truth,” he said.  “That’s pretty funny.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the last thing I’d want.”

“Bastard.”

“I don’t mean just you.  I don’t mean just us.  I mean everybody.  The world doesn’t work on truth.  You’re old enough to know that.  The world turns on the repetition of accepted lies.”

More of his bullshit.

“It’s not the what we hold but that we hold at all which keeps it together.  And a lie for that purpose is better than the truth.  Because it sounds so much sweeter.  You never drop a sweet lie.  No one should.  No one does.”

He leaned toward the door.

“Until--” he added.

“What?”

“Until someone forces you to.”

My lungs sank into my ankles.  My brain to my neck.  The stars clattered down on me like pewter doorknobs.  My air was gone.  It was winter.  It was cold.

“Stop crying,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“What are you crying for?  You got what you wanted.”

“Shut up.”

“How does it feel.  Any better?”

I closed my eyes and waited for my lungs to come back.  More wind rushed through the door.  Tears blurred my cheek, sawed my lip, scratched my neck--like sand against rock, doing what sand does over time: year after year, eon after eon: disintegrating, disfiguring, wearing down the best features.  Destroying your identity.  Because it can’t help it.  It can’t help it.

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JOHN VANDERSLICE teaches writing at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.  His fiction has appeared widely in literary reviews, including Crazyhorse, Southern Humanities Review, South Carolina Review, and Quarter After Eight.  He also published a story in the offbeat anthology Chick for a Day (Simon & Schuster, 2000).