Behind the Cupboard Door

Emily knew little about her uncle but having him nearby was like the carefully wrapped crystal in her pocket, providing her with an invisible layer of protection. Though she had only been there a few times, his cottage was close and offered an escape from the threats of detention and regimented hours. She tried to forget about the chequered linoleum floor and the firm grey bed in which she had slept the last two hundred and thirty-seven nights. The air in her dormitory room smelt of balling, unhemmed blankets, and when she thought of her room-mates, Sarah and Megan, that same scent came back to her. They became her friends more by proximity than anything else. During the week, the three girls wore the same dark green dresses, with white collars, and with thin, jagged, blue and yellow stitching. Emily was glad that her white socks concealed the bracelet tattoo around her ankle. On the weekends most of the girls gathered in small groups to leap around strings of elastic in the park, discuss boys, both real and imaginary, and paint intricate designs on each others’ finger-nails, until they wiped them clean on Sunday evenings. Emily often felt the urge to take a scissors to the elastics or to fill the niggling bottles of nail-polish with the permanent black ink she had found in a forgotten storeroom. Megan proved to be useful as she knew a girl in one of the other buildings whose brother used to visit and bring her wine and cigarettes hidden amongst clothes. Sometimes they would creep out to a small, rocky clearing behind the school and lure the prohibited goods to their curious lips.

Often in the evenings, Sarah and Megan would discuss their hometowns and tell stories of their exagerated pasts, aware that Emily was in the room but content to leave her listening on her bed. The lights vanished each night on the strike of nine and Emily always pictured the boarding mistress, stiffening her neck to line her glasses up with the ornamental clock perched on the wall behind her desk, with her stubby finger lingering on the light-switch. After this time, all that could be heard in each of the many rooms, were light whistling breaths and ruffling sheets.

As Emily walked towards the cottage, snapshots of her previous visits to her uncle were flickering in her mind like the flash cards she saw one time in a psychological examination. The test was administered by the school and made her feel, at times, like she was in amongst the cover of her Beatles album that lay silent in her room at her parents’ house. Her bedroom used to be her sanctuary where some familiar faces, pinned on her walls, were her support, showing signs of a life greater than her own. She would ask them for guidance and sit, cross-legged in the middle of her room, waiting for a smirk she hadn’t previously noticed or a beaming gaze of assurance and sometimes some she was sure she heard a few words. There were candles, and an oil burner, carefully placed around her room and lit in a particular order. First she would light the candle next to her bed and then move around her room in a clockwise direction lighting all the other candles. The glow was comforting and the tranquility took her body out of the room and away from her parents’ house to a place where she was with her dreams. She was sure, that by her first day at Pettington Girls’ School, her mother had taken pleasure in entering her bedroom with big, black garbage bags and doing what she had always reprimanded her for not doing.

Emily walked away from the edge of the unmarked bitumen and continued along the road that made most vehicles slow down. She kicked a dandelion and watched the spawns travel along the wind’s current. Her mother’s voice was echoing in her head, like the bat that was recently trapped in the roof above the dormitory. The middle of her throat had sunk down and tingles had pulsated along her skin, as her mother stumbled and paused on the phone.

“Emily, something terrible happened to your uncle Toby yesterday”.

His eyes never squinted when he lit a match and he would always finish a sentence with a wide, relaxed smile. There was a purpose in all of his actions. He grew many herbs and spices in a fenced patch behind his cottage. The minty, green aromas would seep into the air as the plants hung to dry, pegged to a freyed twine between beams on the verandah. His hardened fingers would carefully break off small quantities of the dried plants and place them in his yellowed teapot.

She followed the path her uncle had driven her on her first Sunday at the school, then every few Sundays after that. He would arrive at ten to pick her up and they would spend the day at his cottage. She remembered the first time he drove up the driveway to the school, in his brown utility, followed by an orange cloud that rolled out from under his tyres. She was glad that the boarding mistress had never met him.

Emily’s mother had told her that she would be arriving at the school at nine to pick her up and take her to sort through the cottage. Her mother had also said that she had phoned the boarding mistress to tell her of the loss and that she would be returning to the school later that evening. Emily’s father was unable to come as he was away again at a business meeting interstate.

The first time Emily’s mother had been late to pick her up was after a tennis lesson when she was seven. Emily remembered sitting on the grass beneath the thick branches, poking red berries onto twigs and constantly thinking that each car approaching must be her mother’s. On that evening the sun eventually fell behind a fence and she walked home alone from the tennis courts. Emily could almost feel the monsters returning as she continued towards the cottage. She had this feeling most times when her mother was late and it was often accompanied by the tangy smell of those berries and the feeling of stickiness on her fingers.

Emily watched a cow behind a fence tearing at the grass. With mild interest, her calf watched and tried to mimic its mother’s movements, raising it’s head awkwardly from the ground with a few green strings falling from it’s mouth. Emily watched the grass fall to the ground and thought of her mother’s phone call. He was found, lying on the floor of the cottage, by the owner of the property who lived in a nearby house.

Toby had no children and was never even married, but his image seemed to fit one of a man with a family. He had travelled to many countries and often said that he spent time living in the cities that had a message for him. He seemed content with being alone but Emily knew that she hadn’t ever seen him in his truly ‘alone’ state as she was always there when she saw him.

Emily spied the cottage over the bend. It was a wood-panelled, one bedroom cottage sitting next to a narrow stream. Emily walked through the gate at the boundary fence and followed the parallel lines that were etched by her uncle’s utility vehicle. The brown vehicle sat in the distance, waiting by the stream. Emily noticed that her mother’s car still wasn’t there so she walked across to the stones that lined the bank of the creek. The stones ground against each other under her careless footsteps. The hypnotic rhythymn entranced her and it wasn’t long before she saw the imported pebbles that covered the area around her uncle’s vehicle. Emily peered into the car and saw his street directory on the dashboard and his mirror-ball lying still under the rear-view mirror.

Emily saw herself in the window of the utility. The muscles under her cheekbones had fallen and were weighing down the corners of her mouth. She sat down in a thin chair next to a rustique table. The chair-legs penetrated the grass and sank into the earth before finally resting unevenly. Sitting between the river and the house, Emily began to recall Mr Willard’s lesson from a few weeks earlier.

“Death is what happens at the end of life. The vital functions in a biological organism completely cease, stop, finish. It is generally considered permanent and all living things are believed to eventually die somehow. In mammals, including humans, rigor mortis initially takes hold and muscles gradually stiffen. The body then begins to self digest, driven by its own enzymes. Bacteria and fungi continue to digest the remains and eventually small organisms, microorganisms, begin to decay hard tissues like bone and teeth”.

Small clouds rolled away behind the top of the hill in the distance and a string of birds flew under the clouds towards Emily. She felt like a blade of grass, calmly absorbing the sunlight, the river and the soil. She started to wonder where all the items in the cottage would eventually rest. She lifted herself out of the chair and walked over towards the cottage. There were flakes of rust and wood-chips of on the ground where the garden tools lay and the smell of moist soil rose from half-empty plant boxes.

The four windows were all closed. It was so quiet that Emily could almost hear her uncle’s final groans echoing inside the cottage. She pulled at a window and one of the panels of glass in the frame fell out and shattered next to her foot.

Emily heard a slow shuffle of feet on the pebbles around the corner at the front of the cottage. She kept her feet still and turned her ear towards the sound. The shuffling stopped but she could hear a slight crunching of pebbles. It couldn’t have been her mother as she didn’t hear a car. Emily stiffened and eased out past the corner. She jumped and a lady with white hair and a walking stick almost fell over.
“Ooh, deary me, I didn’t think anyone was here”, the lady said as she held her free hand on her chest. “Can I help you with something dear?”

Emily looked at the lady, confused, “I’m waiting for my mother”.

“Are you a relative of Toby?”, the lady asked, gradually regaining her breath.

“Yes, he is, was, my uncle”, she replied.

“I’m so sorry for your loss dear. He really was a lovely man”. She paused and looked more closely at Emily, “Oh, are you Amanda?”

“No, Emily”.

“Ah, yes, Emily. I’m Mrs Edson. Your uncle told me about you. He told me you are going to Pettington. It’s a wonderful school you know”.

Emily looked up, “How do you know my uncle?”

Mrs Edson smiled, “I live in that house up on the hill over there. This cottage used to be my husband’s workshed. He built them both you know, with his own hands. He passed away many years ago and I’ve been letting out the cottage ever since. Your uncle was here for almost a year. I can wait with you for your mother to arrive if you like. There’s no need for you to wait here alone, especially…”.

“That’s okay”, Emily said as she looked around for an excuse. It came, “Here comes my mother now”. An older model, white, BMW came towards them slowly, swerving from side to side as Emily’s mother clenched the steering wheel, and her jaw, trying to keep the car straight. Emily noticed that her mother had recently had her hair done. Any occasion seemed appropriate for her to have her hair styled and to have those brown roots stripped back to a copper shade of blonde. Emily could see her mother shaking her head as she pulled the keys from the ignition. She tossed the door closed and walked towards Emily, thrusting the heels of her new shoes into the ground with each step.

“Emily, how could you just run off like that without telling anyone? The whole school has been looking for you. I better let them know I found you”, her mother snapped.
Emily’s mother held her gaze to reaffirm her annoyance with the situation. When she looked across at Mrs Edson, Emily’s mother exhaled.

“Hello, I’m Jacqueline Maddison, Emily’s mother”.

“Sylvia Edson”, she replied and tilted her head, “my sincere condolences”.
“Thank you, and thanks for all you did for Toby”, Emily’s mother said as she stepped towards Emily and embraced her with wide arms and a tight squeeze. Emily wasn’t sure if it was a show for her or for Mrs Edson or for both of them.

Mrs Edson leaned on her stick for support and opened her mouth a few times as if to say something but she just looked at Emily’s mother and gave her a hint of the smile she had given Emily earlier.

“I won’t keep you, I’m sure you both have quite a bit to do. If you need anything please don’t hesitate to come over and see me at the house”. Mrs Edson slowly circled around her stick to face back towards her house. “Once again, my sincere condolences”, she said with a rattle and she began her walk back up the hill.

Emily’s mother stepped back but kept her hands on Emily’s shoulders and inspected her from the top of her head down to her shoes and back up again.

“They seem to be taking good care of you at Pettington. Look at how your cheeks are losing their puffiness and I think you’ve grown”, her mother said as she looked her up and down again. “We were all very worried about you. You knew I was picking you up didn’t you?”

“When you didn’t show up I thought you must have meant to meet me here”, Emily replied.

Her mother sighed and hugged Emily again as she looked at the cottage from side to side.

Emily eventually pulled away and gawked at her mother. “Do you have the key?”, she asked.

“No, I don’t”, her mother replied with a stammer. “Mrs Edson would have one. Be a darling and ask her won’t you? She couldn’t have gone far”.

“It’s okay, I can get in”, Emily said as she walked back towards the open window.

“What do you mean? How?”, her mother asked as she watched Emily walk away. “No. Emily! Wait”. Her voice trailed as Emily stepped up and through the partly broken window into the cottage. Emily unlocked the front door and pulled it from its cramped frame. Her mother came to the door shaking her head and holding back a smile.

The cottage was much smaller inside than Emily had remembered. She stood with her mother and they peered around the room almost as if they expected to have someone come out and greet them. Emily’s mother went to open all the windows, complaining that the room smelled. She stood and stared at the couch. She turned to Emily and snapped herself back into the task that lay waiting. There wasn’t much furniture in the house. In the main room was the couch, two chairs, a leaning bookcase, an old trunk and a thin coffee table. The bedroom had a single bed, a clothes rack and a small cupboard.
“I think the furniture came with the cottage so it can stay for now. All this other stuff has to be sorted through. Most of it looks like it can go straight in the bin. Emily, you start in the kitchen. There are some flattened boxes in the boot”. She dangled her car-keys out towards Emily.
The box took up most of the room in kitchen and Emily walked around, opening and closing cupboards and draws, not knowing where to begin.

“Emily, just do it one cupboard at a time. Keep it or toss it, you decide”, her mother called from the other room.

Most of the items in the kitchen Emily had seen before but everything seemed to radiate as if each item had a story to tell. She found herself fiddling with all the metal and wooden implements and stared at them waiting for some kind of answer.

“Emily? How are you going in there?” her mother called out from only metres away.

“Yeah, okay”, Emily mumbled back.

“It sounds very quiet in there. I don’t want to spend all day in here you know”, her mother responded.

Emily soon heard that her mother, too, had become quiet and Emily stepped towards the door to see what she was doing. Her mother was sitting against the wall next to the open trunk, leaning heavily against it with a piece of paper in her hand.

“What are you doing?”, Emily asked, peeking her head around the door-frame.

Her mother sat up startled, crunched the paper into a tight ball and threw it into a black garbage bag.

“It’s nothing Emily, just an old letter to your uncle. I probably shouldn’t be reading it anyway”.

“Let me see”, Emily said as she walked quickly towards the black bag.

Her mother grabbed the bag before Emily could reach it and glared up at her, “Emily, we don’t have time for all this. Let’s just get finished already”.

“Ooh, touchy”, Emily pronounced.

Her mother’s head fell into her hands and Emily walked back into the kitchen with an envelope that she had spotted. She sat on the scratched bench-top next to an array of dried herbs and spices in hand-labelled glass containers.

Emily looked at the hand-written envelope. The writing was swirly but consistently large, ‘Emily’. It wasn’t sealed and she pulled out the letter inside.


To my dearest Emily,

It is only part of me that hopes this letter finds you. If your mother or father read this letter before you do, there is a good chance it will never reach you. If so, to you, Will and Jacquie, I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Emily, it troubles me greatly to write this letter but I feel there are some things that you have to know. Even if this letter doesn’t reach you, then at least I will know that I tried but as much as I want you to know, I don’t want you to know.

It has been amazing, spending time with you over the last few months. Missing your life up until this point was hard but only became harder once we met again. I am left to imagine what I was never able to see. It leaves me with a heavy chest when I think back to those times I missed.

I’m not sure how much you know about my past, perhaps even your past, but from what you have told me over the last few months it doesn’t seem like much. Some say beauty is in the eye of the beholder but I think that truth, too, lies in the eye of the beholder.

During the times we spent together I told you about some of my travels around the world but there is still a lot about me that you don’t know. I doubt your parents ever talk about me in front of you. They may have told you I was in jail and it is true that for most of your life I have been living overseas.

Many years ago, I had an affair with a married woman. She had been trying for a baby for years. We weren’t trying, but it worked. I didn’t know what to do. After a few days she came to me with an aeroplane ticket to South America and told me to go and that she would follow. We were going to start a new life. It didn’t sit well with me, but at the same time, it seemed like the best option. I packed my life into a suitcase and left.

Her mother’s voice sprang from the other room, “Emily, what are you doing in there?”

“I’m packing”, Emily replied, folding up the letter. She held it tightly in her hand and looked out at her mother who was concentrating, deep in thought and looking through old papers and photographs.

“I’m just going to get some more boxes”, Emily called out. Her feet crunched across the pebbles and she looked for a good spot, eventually sitting at the table and chair near the creek. She put the envelope on her lap, unfolded the letter and continued to read.

I had a ten hour stop-over in Los Angeles and that is where I experienced one of the worst moments of my life. Airport customs officials were waiting for me and I was quickly escorted to an interogation room and shown a bag of illicit subtances they found in my luggage. I assure you Emily, as I told them, that it wasn’t mine. She planted it in my luggage hoping to get rid of me, she was at my apartment when I was packing. In one instant I lost everything. I thought a lot about my daughter while I was serving time Emily, I thought about you.

After years of being away I felt that I had to see you. It took some months for your mother to agree for me to see you and when she said you were going to be attending Pettington School, she suggested that I look for accomodation nearby. If this reaches you then the promise has been broken and you know what your mother has been hiding from you.

Emily, from the time I first met you, I saw how similar you were to me, strong-minded, quick-thinking and truly an individual. I want to tell you about the man who has been your father and my brother. I always hated how he treated your mother. Even to this day he flies around the world attending his business meetings. It was probably his cocaine that your mother put in my luggage. He had a nasty habit. Perhaps it was all part of her grand solution to get rid of me as well as his addiction all at once. Maybe it would be better if you never knew any of this.

Emily turned the page over but saw nothing. She looked in the envelope for more but there was nothing there. The skin on her head tightened and tingled. The pages felt stiff and dry in her hands and her eyes shot between the paragraphs, searching for something she had missed. Emily had waves racing up and down her body as she ran into the house.

“I can’t believe you! How could you? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”, Emily yelled at her mother.

“What? What are you talking about Emily?”, her mother asked.

“You and uncle Toby. How could you? Does dad know?”, Emily screamed.

“What? I don’t know what you are talking about Emily”, her mother replied.

“I read a letter from uncle Toby. He told me everything. You and him, his time in jail, meeting me. How could you?”, Emily exclaimed.

“I don’t know what he told you but I hardly ever saw him and his jail time was unfortunate but he took a risk and got caught”, her mother said and settled back into her chair.

“He said he’s my father and that you set him up to get him away from us”, Emily snapped.
“What? I don’t know where you got that from! Show me the letter”, her mother said and faced her palm upwards at Emily.

Her mother read the letter and giggled, “Your uncle sure had an imagination. It looks to me like one of his scribbles. There’s lots of them here, you can look. Toby liked to mix his teas and potions and sometimes they took his mind to some wild places, and ten years in jail couldn’t have helped either”.

“Why don’t I have any brothers and sisters”, Emily asked.

“Your father and I never felt that it was necessary to have more than one child. Would you have wanted a brother or sister?”, her mother asked.

Emily looked at her mother’s brown eyes closely, trying to glimpse the thoughts behind them but at the same time Emily knew that she had never seen much in those eyes.

Her mother stood up and walked towards her with a tilted chin. By the time Emily’s mother had called out to her, Emily had slammed the front door and run down the path. Emily ran back up the driveway, along the road, through the school gates and up to her room. For the first time in two hundred and thirty seven days her blanket felt warm and she couldn’t wait for Sarah and Megan to return.