text: I lay on my back on my bed, my quilt pulled up to my chin, and closed my eyes. I visualized a door in the dark, just like Dr. Green had told me to do. Mentally, I took a step towards it. Two steps. My bare feet landing on cold, flat stone. Beneath the nearing door, I could see the bar of light, faintly yellow and bright in the dark. A breath of warm air emanated from the crack, stirring the cuffs of my pajama bottoms around my ankles. I placed my hand on the door handle. It felt sun warm. I opened it. I was blinded a bit at first, as I always was. The westward sun entered the door unshaded. But my eyes adjusted as I stepped out into the long grass and onto the green hill that sloped down to the white beach. I was looking down on the cove. A sheer rise of rock towered on either side. I turned to look at the door, as I did every time. It was an uncanny frame standing in the grass. The sun cast a long rectangle of light on the gray stone in the darkness. Beyond the door, the hill rose to a dense forest of tropical trees. The warm wind brushed past me, carrying the scent of the sea and flowers and tobacco smoke. I turned back and started to descend the hill, very conscious of how the sun and the wind felt on my thin pajamas. They felt good. On the white stretch of beach was a shack. It was a wooden fixture that fit the quiet, untamed terrain, made of knotted limbs and shady palms. That is where I knew Jack would be. This is where he lived. Down the hill I stepped, heedless of stone or thorn or stinger. Tall flowers with heads that shimmered like purple carnival glass bobbed as I passed. I crossed the beach, the sand just as soft as the grass. As I approached the shack, I saw his burly figure sitting on a sun bleached piece of driftwood, his back to me and a long bamboo fishing rod between his legs. His red hair was hidden by a straw hat, and puffs of smoke rose above his head as he tugged absently at the fishing pole. I came up beside him and sat in the sand next to the driftwood. “Hey there, boyo,” said Jack, his black pipe shifted to the side of his mouth. He kept his eyes on water. The water was the almost unnaturally clear blue I had seen pictures of in brochures for Caribbean vacations. Schools of silver fish were visible as they swirled and spiraled as one beneath the surface of the shallow water. “Anything biting?” I asked, but I knew that there was. The fish would always bite. “You bet.” He glanced down and gave a wink. “We’ll be having calico fish tonight.” I don’t know if calico fish are a real creature, but here they were brilliant, fat things that Jack hauled out of the water every evening in the cove. They were enormous, gold and black, and whiskered like a catfish. Their underbellies reminded me of pearl, and their meat was tender and rich. Jack leaned forward as the end of his bamboo rod dipped in his hands. “Think I got one now,” he said. Later, when the sun was a dark red suggestion on the horizon, Jack handed me a thick green leaf with a cut of calico steaming up from it on a bed of rice. The smell of spices and sweet fish rose with the heat of it. I held it in my lap and took the wooden fork that he offered as well. Jack sat in the sand across the fire from me. He didn’t bother with his fork, preferring instead to tear thick chunks off his cut and pop the white meat into his mouth. His great beard worked up and down as he chewed. I began to cut mine and chew as well. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said with his mouth full. “I know.” My mouth was also full. “Thought maybe I wouldn’t see you again.” “I know.” He was looking at me over the fire, bushy eyebrows arched. But I said nothing more. The first time I had eaten that fish, I was maybe eight. I might have been ten. I had been here before. I had been here lots of times. The therapist had said that I should close my eyes and picture a door. Picture a door that opens up to the happiest place you can think of. When I had laid in bed that night and pictured that door, this cove was what I found on the other side. I had rolled down the hill. I had ran and tumbled through the waves. I had wandered through the tropical trees and sunbeams, looking for strange fruit and watching the unlikely pair of a bear and a tiger chasing each other in play. It was a happy, safe place, if a bit lonely. Jack had not been there in the early days. One day Terry threw Jack away. He cinched him up in a garbage bag with several other toys of mine along with the kitchen trash. He said later that he was sorry, that he didn’t think that I still played with dolls. That night I had opened the door to the cove with swollen eyes, a salty mouth, and sobs still hitching in my chest. That was the first time I saw the shack on the beach. It was the day Jack arrived. I found him sitting on a piece of driftwood, his fishing line cast impossibly far out into the deep blue. It’s how I would usually find him. He had turned to me and winked. “Alright, boyo?” he’d said. “Alright, boyo?” he said to me now. Our fish was gone, eaten in silence. Only now the stillness was broken by the soft calls of birds I couldn’t name from back in the trees. Jack knew the names of all the birds. The rouge backlight on the horizon was gone, and in its absence, every one of the billion stars stood clear in the sky, and every one of the billion stars were reflected in the wavering mirror of the ocean. “No,” I said. He nodded thoughtfully, then spit in the sand. “Why don’t we go inside? I’ll get us some tea.” He raised himself with a grunt and brushed at the sand on his overalls. He grabbed the cool end of one of the sticks in the flames and carried the fire into the shack. I stood, also dusting myself, but kept my eyes on the ocean. I turned and followed him inside. “You have that look you get,” he said as he lit the wood beneath an enormous black cauldron that hung in the corner of the shack. It was three quarters filled with water. I seated myself at the rough wooden table, the wooden fork still in my fist. The flames were making the room flicker a warm orange. I looked out the open window to watch the stars undulate on the small waves. “I’m sorry,” I said. He laughed. “Ain’t nothing to be sorry for. It’s what I expect.” He was taking items off the nearby shelf and dropping them with a splash into the cauldron. “This place isn’t very useful if you’re happy, is it?” “That’s not entirely true,” I said. “I’ve come here happy. Lots of times.” Jack gave the cauldron a perfunctory stir then turned back to the table. He pulled back a chair and settled into it, his arm resting on the table. “That’s right. Because that’s when you’ve got questions.” I had sought Jack’s advice more than once. More than many times. It was over a meal of fruit and calico fish that he counseled me through my first real childhood crush. He had nodded and sliced a pear and something he called a camaberry while I confessed endlessly the strange new feelings and emotions that I was experiencing. It might have been the first time I had admitted that I even liked girls. The teasing from my friends had, up to that point, caused me to refuse even acknowledging their existence. Jack had listened and gently prodded until I had said everything I had to say about the subject. Then he had handed me my fruit and fish and said, “And how d’ya feel?” “Good and weird,” I had said. In high school, Jack and I had once spent an afternoon building the stone lighthouse that topped the south bluff of the cove. It was a lighthouse that stood only three feet, and served only as something for us to look at in the dark from the beach. While we worked, I had talked about the future. I talked about college and careers and friends. He had puffed on his pipe between grunts as he placed massive stones in a small, rising circle. I really only talked. Every now and then he’d pause and sit on his handiwork and ask questions. “Is that really what you think? Are you sure that is what you want? Is she the only reason? Does that make you happy?” Each of his questions grinded at my certainty like a whetstone until it was sharp edged and useful. I looked up at the south bluff and noticed for the first time that the lighthouse was lit. It shone bright yellow over the waters. Jack had not left me to light it. It must have never gone out since the first day Jack and struck flint and steel to the pool of oil he had poured into its bronze basin. Jack dipped a mug into the bubbling cauldron, then set it steaming in front of me. There were three tiny leaves floating on the surface of the murky water. “So which is it?” he asked as he took his seat again. “Are ya sad, or do ya have questions?” “Both. Neither.” “Is it about Mel-” “You know what it’s about.” Jack, who had been raising his own mug to his lips, paused. “Yes. I do.” He took a long gulp, which should have burned his throat. I watched the leaves in my cup float around each other. “Are you going to?” he asked. “I think so.” Jack had urged me to propose to Melly. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life with her?” he’d asked. We had been wandering through the trees, looking for fruit. Jack had told me the name of each one I did not recognize. Camaberries. Golden Nestberries. Poppoes. He would laugh loud and rough every time the tiger and the bear tore past us, one chasing the other. I had answered yes. “Then try to spend the rest of your life with her.” Jack had held me the next year when she broke off the engagement. My head on his chest and fingers in his wool sweater. His heavy hand had patted my head while I sobbed through my account of what it was like the first time she did not say “I love you” back. “I’m always a child here,” I said after I finally took a sip of tea. “I just realized that.” “What do you mean?” “That night Melly left.” I put my hands around the mug, feeling the warmth. “I sat on your lap. I’ve known you since I was ten. I’ve never grown to your height. You’ve always been so much bigger.” Jack had always been big enough to carry me. Once we had constructed an impossible flying contraption out of sticks and palm leaves. It worked like a hang-glider. Jack had strapped it to his back and leapt off the north bluff, pulling me with him by my arms. We had soared over the crystal blue ocean, past sea gulls and blue jays and bright pink watermoths. His enormous fists were closed around my wrists, and I had dangled in the sea salty air, the wind whipping my pajamas around my body. “You’ll always be a little one to me,” Jack grinned. “What do you think is wrong with me, Jack?” Jack leaned forward, his forearm resting on the table. “Boy, there ain’t nothing wrong with you. Even Dr. Green said there ain’t nothing wrong with you.” “I haven’t seen Dr. Green since I was a child,” I said, pulling my mug closer. “Don’t make it any less true.” “Jack.” I stood up and began to pace. “That was said to an irrational child with irrational fears. I’m a man. And I still always fail.” Jack grumbled, deep in his chest. “Then this is about Melly.” “No. No it isn’t.” I first saw Dr. Green when I was seven. I do not remember all of my childhood, and I do not remember understanding why I had to see her. I only remember my school drawing of me and mommy smiling outside our house and Terry frowning inside the dog kennel. My teacher was concerned by it. I had drawn it after mom had died. “I mean, sort of it is.” I was really pacing now. I paced right out the door. Jack followed me. “It was hard. The breakup was hard, but Jack.” I turned and looked at him now. He was standing in the doorway. His body took up the entire frame. A black silhouette in orange. “It was what the breakup meant.” “What do you think it meant?” I was standing on the edge of the grass now. One foot on the soft green blades and the other half buried in sand. I was looking up at the sky, my hands on top of my head. “My mom loved me,” I began. My memories of her were a handful of brilliant moments that stand out of the hazy memory of childhood. I could remember her smiling face and curly brown hair as she showed me how to roll socks together. I could remember her asking me what Santa got me that Christmas. I could remember her concerned face as she turned up the radio in the car to listen to some upsetting news story. I remember her telling me to eat at least three more bites of the green beans before I could go play. I could just remember a few things, but I could remember that she loved me. “And Terry loved my mom,” I continued. “He loved her and because he loved her, he was more than willing to take care of me. We were...” I paused and looked back at Jack, searching for the words. “A package deal.” Jack stepped out of the doorway and took a couple steps toward the water. He took a deep breath of the sea air and waited, listening. “Anyway.” I dropped my hands and walked toward him. I stood beside him on the sand. “When Mom died, he was stuck with me.” I could remember the first time he drove me to school after Mom had died. When he picked me up later, he had asked me how my day was. I didn’t answer, and he didn’t say anything else on the drive back. “He wasn’t bad, I guess. He just didn’t want me. He wished that he didn’t have to take care of me.” Terry had taken me to Disney World twice. He had attended all of my school plays and spelling bees. He had been there in the hospital when my appendix ruptured. But he had never asked how my day had been again after that first day. He had never read the short story that I got published in the school paper. He had never called after I had moved out. “I didn’t like that feeling. I felt unwanted.” “I know,” Jack said. Out in the water, a blue whale leaped out above the surface, rising to full height and above, glistening with the starlight. He arced over the water and fell back in with a splash that reverberated like thunder. After a few moments, the lapping waves at our feet pulsed stronger and louder as the whale’s impact reached the shore. “Are you saying Melly brought those feelings back?” he said. “She loved me.” I shifted in the sand, digging my toes into the dense, wet grains as the newly energized waves splashed at my feet. “I know that she did. I know that she loved me as much as I know Mom loved me.” I could remember waking up from a nap with her. Our noses almost touching and her eyes already open and smiling and out of focus just inches from my own. “And then she stopped.” Jack placed his large, rough hand on my shoulder. “You know that that happens, son. You’ve seen it happen to so many people you know.” “I know. I know that. But,” I looked up at him. “You know that her parents never liked me either, right?” Jack nodded. Of course he knew. “I know that her breaking off the engagement was a relief for them. People were relieved that someone was not going to have to be stuck with me. That she was someone who deserved better.” I was surprised to feel a lump starting to grow in my throat again. “I can understand that people change. But knowing that I was simply not good enough to be wanted hurts more than...” I trailed off. Abruptly, I let myself fall backward onto the sand. My fall was slow, and the landing was not jarring. The sand conformed to my body, and I could feel the warm ocean begin to soak the bottoms of my pajama pants. I stared up at the sky as Jack hunkered down to join me. He settled his enormous frame into the sand beside me and placed an already lit pipe in his teeth. At the angle that he held it, the glowing ashes should have tumbled out into his face. But they did not. In that position, I was aware of both the sand and the bed beneath my body. I was aware of the of the starlight on my face and the quilt that was pulled up to my chin. I was aware of the great bearded man beside me, and I was aware of the new bottle of sleeping pills and tall glass of water that waited for me on my nightstand. “There’s nothing good enough in me, Jack.” “I’m in you,” Jack said. Three billowing puffs of smoke rose like signals with each word. “Don’t you think I’m good?” “Of course I do. Of course I do, Jack. That is why I want to be here instead. That’s why I want to live here with you. I want to live in this world and go beyond the cove. I want to ride out on the ocean with you.” As I spoke, my body began to rise off the ground. I felt the sand and grass fall away from me as I drifted upward, toward the billion gleaming stars. “I want to go out there, Jack.” I reached my hand outward toward the endless glittering sky. “I want to explore new worlds and meet new people and eat new fruit and find new animals.” I felt Jack’s hand gently take my bare foot and pull me back to the earth. I landed where I had originally lain. Jack was sitting up now, looking down at me. “Boyo. This place, these worlds,” he swept his arm out, gesturing at the sea and sky, “they will be destroyed with you. When your life ends, so does mine. So does all of this.” For a moment I continued to stare up at the sky before turning to Jack. “It does?” “Yes, of course it does. This world is you. This goodness is you.” I turned my head from the sky and looked at Jack. “I thought that if I weren’t there, I would be here. I thought that I would just be here forever.” “Why would you think that? This is your creation. It dies with you.” My eyes widened as I considered that. “Are you sure?” Jack stood and twisted. The bones in his back cracked loudly. “How could it be any other way? You don’t leave that world and enter this one. You exist in both. You can feel your bed now. You can feel your quilt. I know this because I am you, boyo. This world is you.” I thought of the pills by my bed. I thought of how close I was to swallowing this world whole. “What would you say to a man who thought this world was rubbish?” Jack asked. The question caught me off guard. “I would think he were stupid,” I said honestly. “What would you say to Melly if she saw this world and found it lacking?” “I would say she doesn’t know what she is talking about. This place is wonderful.” Jack took in a deep breath. “It is, isn’t it?” The waves were still lapping at my feet. The birds were still calling in the starlight. The calico fish were still swirling in schools. “Yeah.” “Have you seen my new boat?” I sat up and saw for the first time a small raft rocking gently in cove, a thick rope strung between it and a jutting rock. I shook my head. “Nuh-uh.” “You said you wanted to see new people and new places.” He reached down and grabbed my outstretched hand, hauling me to my feet. “Well, I’m not doing anything at the moment, are you?” As Jack launched us away from the shore, his tree trunk arms rowing with incredible speed and strength, I sat on the bough of the raft and watched the endless stream of waves come toward us. “Jack?” I said as we picked up speed. The nose of the boat raised and I could feel cool water droplets hit my face. “I don’t feel fixed.” “Do you feel better?” Jack said over the sound of the splashing waves, his arms moving rhythmically. “Yeah. I do.” “Good.