Keys

Keys

She tells me a story that begins with how she cannot find her keys. She has to go somewhere and can’t find her keys, she says, and they were right there, she knows they were, and now she can’t find them, so she can’t leave the house.

And I am with her and I understand this part of the story because I too have lost my keys, (not now, of course, but in the past I too have lost my keys, and anyway my keys are not the same as hers so it’s no use asking after my keys, which upon patting my pockets, are right where I left them.)

And while she’s looking she imagines she will never again be able to leave the house because there is no deadbolt on the door to protect her from marauders, I suppose, and it has never occurred to her to have a spare made, to have a spare made and to hide it under the welcome mat, which it has also never occurred to her to purchase because that just advertises to the marauding population that anyone who wanders with bad intent onto the porch might feel welcome to just let themselves in. Which they could do if she leaves and hasn’t fastened the deadbolt because she cannot find her keys.

So when I suggest that when she does find her keys she have spares made and then buy a welcome mat or a plastic plant to hide them under, she tells me to shut up, and also that a welcome mat sends mixed signals.

“Or a rock,” I say.

“You want me to buy a rock? Why on earth — “

“I’m not saying, BUY a rock. I’m saying, take a spare key and hide it under a rock, a stray rock, somewhere in the yard.”

She dismisses this idea. “That’s the first place they’d look.”

And I understand that because I too have looked under stray rocks in search of spare keys.

And she says she cannot leave a key hidden because the house is full of precious things she could not bear to lose, like her crystal, her silver, her new shoes, the flats with the pretty buckle, her children asleep upstairs, and, and it would break her heart to leave the door unlocked, even if it’s only for a very few minutes, to go down the street, say, to the pharmacy for her prescription or to the hairdresser or to the police station again, because she might come back to find someone else sitting in her place by the window, ruining her cushions, and her children calling that someone else mommy.

And when the shades rustle next door she knows that behind them someone is watching her house, coveting HER bricks, HER water meter, waiting for the door to open, waiting to see where she decides to secrete a spare key, so they can come in and smear their DNA all over the sink and maybe rub against all the tile and chrome fixtures to mark them. Like an animal.

By now she’s not even looking for her keys any longer. She’s sitting in her chair by the window listing all the things she can’t do if she can’t find her keys, can’t go to the bank, can’t cash her check, can’t apply for the job, can’t go to the store, can’t feed her kids (who are upstairs somewhere although there hasn’t been any noise for a while), and can’t be sure someone won’t come in and find the cash under her mattress or the gun in the top of the closet behind her grandmother’s heavy quilt.

And I understand because those are the first places I too would look for cash or a gun.

But all this worry about locks and consequently keys, I think, doesn’t go far enough. I personally won’t have a door with a slot for mail to be slid through it or a doggy door or a peephole or a crack around any of the sides that lets in light or radiation or fine particulates that might carry disease.

Not nearly far enough, I think, because all this thinking can distract one and distractions get things out of order and all is lost, maybe you leave the key and its fellows dangling from the lock and hop on your bike,  house splayed open to the mercy of unwelcome marauders. Or looking in the mirror, your face close to the glass, breathing through your nose so you don’t create more fog, looking for lines you don’t remember from yesterday – have you never done this? – checking for discolorations, any spots larger than  the day before. And you remember Daytona during dad’s two weeks, holding your breath underwater and later dad rubbing vinegar on your lobstered back, and turning away from the mirror, distracted now, reaching to flip off the lights when first you’re supposed to open the door, and for a desperate moment you’re trapped in a dark bathroom, unable to get your bearings.

I ask if she has looked in the refrigerator. I found my keys in the refrigerator once. Also once in the drum of the drier. 

She tells me to shut up, and I do because I too — 

Then she says she loves me in a voice that I understand is supposed to explain everything or soften the blow of telling me to shut up. She feels like she has been here forever, like a character in a novel who leaps from a tall rooftop but never quite hits the ground because her author, unable to kill his darlings, leaves her dangling (not unlike forgotten keys in a lock) abandoned in amber, before moving on to another story featuring another character with a more defined arc who eschews rooftops and survives to the end, probably, even if nothing especially interesting happens.

Anyway, she’s not fooling me. She knows where her keys are. She can’t leave, we can’t leave, because if we do we won’t be here when they return to take us to their ship.