The Slammed Door The crash of the slammed door beat on Mr. and Mrs. Stockman's ears. Mrs. Stockman was standing in the center of their living room, slumped as though her yoke was lined with lead. Her wrinkled eyes glanced at the newspaper her husband had thrown to the floor. She bent to pick it up. While stooped, she looked up into her husband's eyes. They mirrored her own thoughts of terror. She forgot the paper and slumped at the foot of the brown velvet chair he sat in. Their hands met. She laid her head on his knee. Then the tears gave way. She sobbed for several minutes. He sat, his eyes fixed on the graying head, and recorded the heavings of the aging shoulders at his feet. Finally she spoke. "They will be married. Her ivory skin will be darkened by that trash of a human. Our only grandchildren will have a Mexican father." "Damned spic!" Her husband found words that described his constant thought. She went on. "What did we do wrong? The piano lessons, the hours of study we spent with her, all the love we poured onto her soul is wasted on garbage." A sigh escaped her, and her sobbing gave way to occasional resigned whimpers. "Damned, filthy spic." The words were venom. "I'm glad I kicked her out. What else could I have done?" Mrs. Stockman began sobbing again. Her tears stained the beige rug and darkened it. "Of course we had to turn her out. You were right, though it hurts us so. Yes, it is best. Perhaps her stain will not have gone too deep when she realizes what she left behind. Perhaps she'll come back. We had to turn her out as a discouragement. If we'd let her stay, it would have been an endorsement of an act we've despised all our lives, one that is contrary to our existence." Her words dropped to the floor with little recognition by either her husband or herself. Their only purpose was to fill the pounding, silent void that gripped them. They sat speechless, together, yet apart. Finally he lifted her limp form and laid her between the smooth, white sheets of their bed. She slept motionlessly, as though part of her had left before the door had slammed. She was sleeping still as Mr. Stockman drove through the tangle-ment of suburban traffic the next morning. When she awoke, the emptiness pervaded her being. It cut through the sunlight that danced through the lace curtains; it sliced through the yellow cover and pierced her. 5