The Kennebec Journal

August 2

J.P. DEVINE: A portal the color of port

BY J.P. DEVINE, Columnist

It’s been green, this door. It’s been dark green for the 25 years I’ve lived here.

She, who is passionate about symmetry, has always liked the way it matched the green shutters, the way it went with the big front bushes and the lawn and maybe my eyes. It’s hard to tell with her. She says these things, and then I notice that she never really looks at the door.

The thing about Maine, and perhaps Alabama and Nebraska for that matter, is that no one ever actually comes to the front door. Visitors enter the house the same way the residents do. They come in through the door that leads to the garage.

Whenever someone actually knocks at the front door, the entire house goes mad. Jack the Dog barks, not the way he barks at the squirrels or passing women pushing strollers or the plumber, but the way a dog in horror movies barks on stormy nights when a shadow of a man with a big knife appears in the garden, and the folks in the house don’t see it. That kind of bark.

Ms. Kramer, the 20-something-year-old transgendered cockatiel who may never die, but instead wind up in the hands of strangers after we pass, goes berserk at a knock on the front door. She flaps her wings frantically and screeches.

It’s a weird thing, but a knock on that door chills us all, and sometimes it makes the antique clock in the dining room start chiming, even off the hour.

In the house where I was born, back in the burning leaves of yesterday, a knock at the front door was a bad omen. Family always came around the side of the house to the back door. A knock at the front door meant it was someone who didn’t know us, a bill collector, an old girlfriend of my father’s or a cop.

One of my five brothers, who shall be nameless, was always getting into trouble, but not bank robbery or homicide trouble. This was just the kind of trouble that would cause a police officer to come to the door and tell my mother that he would have to stop doing something because the girl's family complained. It's ironic that he grew up to be a cop -- for a while anyway.

Let's get to the point. I had an epiphany one night last week. I took Jack the Dog outside in the rain just after dinner. I stood in the yard with my wineglass in hand and stared at the green front door.

Suddenly, I remembered that my father had told my mother that my grandmother's original house in Ireland had a red door. In Ireland, that meant that the mortgage had been paid. In grandma's case, that wasn't true. It also meant that great fortune would arrive through that door. That wasn't true, either.

Actually, a very close relative was arrested for stealing a pig, and then my grandfather had to become a plumber. So there goes that myth. Also, I read somewhere that in the practice of feng shui, a red door would encourage wealth and success to enter the house. After many years of obscurity and borderline poverty, I felt I needed some wealth and success.

With her blessing, we agreed on a shade. I wanted something bright and happy, something evocative like that shade of lipstick that Maureen O'Hara wore in "The Black Swan" with Tyrone Power. I think it was called "Cherries in the Snow."

The young clerk at the paint store said they didn't have "Cherries In the Snow," and that he hadn't seen "The Black Swan" and didn't even know who Maureen O'Hara was.

Then I saw the most amazing thing in a magazine. Film star Catherine Zeta-Jones is seen sporting a new red lipstick by Elizabeth Arden called -- OMG -- "Red Door Red Lipstick."

They didn't have that at the paint store either, so we settled for something called "Frosted Pomegranate." Close enough.

Now the door is done, and as passers-by look up from the street on winter evenings, they will gasp, "OMG. Look at his door. He must be drinking again."

He is. Still, as they stand there, red-nosed and -cheeked, with their dogs and babies, snow collecting on their caps, they will smile and applaud.

Ms. Kramer will go berserk, Jack the Dog will howl like the dog in the horror movies, the antique clock will chime, and the new red door will beam proudly back at the crowd. Yes, laughter and applause is even better than a knock at the front door.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.