The Sixty-Eight Rooms

by Marianne Malone

  “Would you hang the coats up, Jack?” Lydia added as she started serving plates of lasagna. Jack looked like he didn’t really see the point of hanging coats up when there were plenty of chairs to plop them on, but he grudgingly took the three coats over to the closet.

  When Jack came back to the table, he had an altogether different attitude.

  “Let’s eat!” he said, plunking down into his chair.

  The conversation over dinner gave no clues regarding Ruthie and Jack’s list of questions. The two grown-ups talked about the local art scene, future exhibitions, the cost of art materials, et cetera. Ruthie felt frustrated by the conversation, but Jack seemed inexplicably cheery.

  “Lydia, we’ve talked all about my work—I’d love to see some of yours,” Mr. Bell said as they were finishing dinner.

  “I’d love to show you. Why don’t you two clear the table while I give Edmund a quick tour of my studio?” Lydia suggested.

  “No problem,” Jack said, jumping off his chair, plate in hand. This wasn’t normal behavior for Jack; Ruthie discovered the reason for it as soon as Lydia and Mr. Bell had moved out of the dining area and into Lydia’s studio around the corner.

  They set their plates in the sink. “When I went to hang up the coats, I felt Mr. Bell’s museum keys in his pocket!” Jack said in a low voice.

  Jack looked over his shoulder and ran to the closet. Ruthie followed him. She was about to ask what he was doing, but there was no need to as soon as she saw him pull the keys out of Mr. Bell’s coat pocket. Jack didn’t explain; he simply looked at the half dozen keys on the ring and swiveled off the one labeled AIC-G11, the one Mr. Bell had used to open the door to the corridor. He slipped it into his pants pocket.

  “Jack!” Ruthie said in a whisper.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make a copy tomorrow and get the original back to him before he goes to work on Monday. He won’t even miss it.”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday—where are you going to get a key copied?” Ruthie asked.

  “That market on Wabash. They have a neon key sign in the window and they’re always open. I’ll do it first thing in the morning and then return his key.”

  “Come pick me up—I’ll go with you,” Ruthie said.

  Ruthie and Jack finished clearing the table and even got started loading the dishwasher. By the time dessert was served—and the triple-layer chocolate cake was worth waiting for—it was late. Soon the door buzzer sounded: Ruthie’s dad was waiting downstairs to pick her up for the short walk home.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” Jack said as he manned the elevator controls on the four-story ride down.

  “All right. And don’t forget about the math homework, Jack,” she said out of habit. The top of her dad’s head came into view through the window of the door as the elevator slowed to a stop. Jack slid the metal gate open like a pro and they all said their good nights.

  Ruthie’s dad always wanted to hear all about her day. Oh, she so badly wanted to tell him everything! He would love the adventure she’d had—almost going back into history, knowing what it felt like to lie down in a sixteenth-century bed. She knew she couldn’t, though; if she did, they’d probably send her to a psychiatrist or something. So she told him about going to the museum with Jack, about helping Lydia cook dinner and about talking to the wonderful Mr. Bell.

  “That’s a name I haven’t heard in years. He was quite a well-known photographer in those days. Leave it to Lydia to rediscover him! She’ll be getting him an exhibition in no time!” Her father had a lot of admiration for Jack’s mom. He had often commented that artists like her create their lives rather than letting other people set the rules. Ruthie was beginning to understand what he meant by that: if you want something badly enough, you have to make it happen.

  A SECOND ATTEMPT

  JACK PICKED UP RUTHIE AT her apartment a little after ten the next morning. They had told her parents that they needed to go buy new notebooks for a unit Ms. Biddle was starting in social studies on Monday. They’d only be gone an hour or so.

  “I got the key copied already—I didn’t know how long it would take and I knew your parents wouldn’t want you to be gone long,” Jack said. “So we’ll just bring Mr. Bell’s key back to him. I got the notebooks too. In my backpack.”

  “I hope he’s not suspicious,” Ruthie worried out loud.

  They wanted to take the fastest route possible to Mr. Bell’s building. Jack knew the neighborhood like the back of his hand and had explored all the alleyways, learning which ones were cut-throughs and which ones were dead ends. They passed Dumpsters, garages, storage sheds and driveways with cars parked in impossibly tight spaces. It was often much more interesting than walking along the sidewalk.

  “This is the building,” Jack said as they approached it. They walked around to the front door, which was recessed beneath a massive arch chiseled out of large whitish stones. Some of the windows had old stained glass in them. They looked at the names on the metal intercom plate.

  “E. Bell, 10B,” Ruthie read from the list. She pushed the buzzer and in just a moment they heard the voice of Edmund Bell.

  “What a surprise,” Mr. Bell said through the intercom as he buzzed them in, with directions to turn right after the elevator brought them up to the tenth floor.

  They had planned to take not even one step inside the apartment; Jack would hand him the key at the threshold. But then Mr. Bell opened the door and the two of them got a quick glimpse past the tall man and into the space spread out behind him.

  “Twice in twenty-four hours,” Mr. Bell said. “Won’t you come in?”

  “Wow, this is a nice place!” Jack exclaimed. “Please, have a look around.”

  “Maybe just for a second. We have to get back soon—we have homework,” Ruthie answered, trying to sound casual. But she was truly impressed with Mr. Bell’s apartment and wanted to look around. He lived on the top floor of the building. It wasn’t a big apartment but it wasn’t small either; the furniture looked comfortable and lived-in. The apartment had huge arched windows through which you could see almost the entire skyline of the city, and Lake Michigan beyond. Besides the wonderful view, his home was filled floor to ceiling with art of every shape, size and style. “You’ve got a lot of art!” Ruthie said.

  “Yes, I guess I do,” Mr. Bell agreed modestly. “All made by friends of mine from way back. We all traded each other’s work.”

  “My mom does that too.” Suddenly Jack realized that he hadn’t explained the reason for their visit. “Oh, here,” he said, fishing through his backpack. He pulled out the key and handed it to Mr. Bell. “I found this on the floor of our closet. I think it might be yours.”

  Mr. Bell immediately recognized the key. He frowned.

  “Gracious!” he said, shaking his head. He went to his front hall closet and reached into his coat pocket. “Sure enough! Now, how did that happen?”

  “Happens to me all the time. I’m always losing stuff. But I’m always finding stuff too,” Jack added, trying to sound helpful. “Is it an important key?”

  “All keys are important, aren’t they—especially when you’ve lost them,” Mr. Bell answered.

  “I figured it was yours because it had AIC on it,” Jack added.

  “You figured right. But I just can’t imagine how I … Oh well. No harm done, I suppose.” Mr. Bell didn’t sound convinced.

  Ruthie worried that he might not buy Jack’s story. Maybe “borrowing” the key was closer to stealing than Jack had been willing to admit. Ruthie decided to change the subject.

  “Do you have a favorite—of all this artwork, I mean?” Ruthie asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been around them for so long they’re like old friends. I’m not sure I could single one out.”

  “What about the Thorne Rooms—do you have a favorite one of those?” she continued.

  “Not really, but if I had to choose, it would be the California room, from the 1940s. It has paintings made by famous ar
tists. Mrs. Thorne asked them to paint in miniature for her. But mostly I like watching people’s reactions when they look into the rooms. What about you—do you have a favorite?”

  “I really like the castle rooms,” Jack said. “They’re pretty cool. But Ruthie’s crazy about all of them! Especially the ones with canopy beds, for some reason.”

  “My daughter always liked those the best too,” Mr. Bell said to Ruthie with a smile.

  “We’d better go,” Ruthie suggested.

  As they turned to go to the door, Ruthie saw something hanging in the entrance hall that caught her eye. She thought it must be one of Mr. Bell’s photos, and Mr. Bell confirmed her guess. “It’s one from the series that disappeared. That’s my wife holding Caroline when she was a baby. Luckily, I had traded it to a friend before the others vanished. I had to get it back. It’s one of my most prized possessions.”

  “It’s really a nice photograph. Thanks for showing us all of this, Mr. Bell,” she said. “Yeah, thanks,” Jack echoed.

  “Thank you, Jack, for returning my key. And say hello to your mother and thank her again for dinner last night,” Mr. Bell said as they stepped into the hall.

  “Okay, I will. Bye.” Jack pushed the button for the elevator. They rode down in silence.

  Back outside, Ruthie asked, “Do you think he believed us?”

  “I’m not sure,” Jack answered. They continued down the alley.

  “Look.” Jack pointed to a little mouse scurrying in front of them into one of the sheds. Thinking how small and scared the little creature must feel in the world, Ruthie looked up at the buildings around them. The mouse was so insignificant in the big world, yet Ruthie felt that shrinking made her feel important. This took her mind off how uneasy she was about their visit to Mr. Bell.

  As they reached the door to her apartment, Ruthie remembered something.

  “Guess what this Tuesday is?” she asked Jack.

  “Some president’s birthday?”

  “Half day. Teachers’ Institute!” At Oakton, the first Tuesday of the month was always a half day. It was the sort of thing Jack never remembered. They immediately planned to spend it at the museum. But now a new sensation came over Ruthie: an overwhelming feeling of impatience. Sure, she had had to wait for exciting things to happen before in her life. But the weeks before birthdays, vacations, even Christmas or the last day of school never seemed to make her feel quite like this. All she could think about was getting back into the rooms.

  By Tuesday Ms. Biddle noticed their distracted attitudes.

  “Ruthie, is anything wrong? You haven’t been concentrating at all the last couple of days.”

  Ruthie told Ms. Biddle that maybe she was just a little tired; her sister was staying up late with the light on, studying for the college entrance test this weekend. In fact, that was true—Claire was keeping the light on late—but it didn’t really matter; Ruthie would have had trouble falling asleep anyway. She lay in her small, plain bed in her shared, cramped room, paging through the catalogue Lydia had lent her, imagining herself in one of those fantastic rooms. She read and reread each entry, absorbing every detail about the rooms. All she could think about was her chance to sleep in one of the luxurious beds from another century.

  School was out at noon, and Ruthie and Jack ate their lunch on a city bus heading down Michigan Avenue. It wasn’t a long trip from their school to the Art Institute, but today it was snowing hard, so the bus driver drove unbearably slowly. Also, more people than usual, bundled in big puffs of down coats, got on and off at each stop. Jack dropped a glove three times in dirty pools of melted snow on the floor of the bus.

  Finally at the museum, they trudged up the stairs against the icy wind that blew the snow horizontally into their faces. It felt wonderful to enter the warmth and protection of the museum and leave winter outside. Since neither of them had turned twelve yet, admission was free. But they still had to pay a dollar each to check their backpacks. Jack paid his in nickels, dimes and pennies.

  Because of the bad weather, the museum was relatively empty, which would be a benefit to them, they assumed as they bounded down the stairs. Usually the children’s galleries were pretty full of school groups, but this was the kind of Chicago blizzard that cancelled field trips.

  “This’ll make it easier to sneak into the corridor,” Jack said in a low voice to Ruthie as they rounded the corner.

  But no sooner had they entered the exhibit space than they realized how wrong they were. It was true that there were hardly any visitors in Gallery 11, but they had overlooked the obvious: Mr. Bell! How could they have forgotten that he would be here? This was Tuesday—he was off only on the weekends. And he was in his proper place, very close to the alcove. It didn’t matter how many keys they had, magic or otherwise—as long as he stood there, they couldn’t use them.

  “Well, hello again, my friends!” Mr. Bell said cheerily to them both. “I’m surprised to see you here today! Still snowing hard out there?”

  “It’s pretty much a blizzard,” Jack said.

  “That’s why we’re in here,” Ruthie added. “We had a half day today and you can’t do anything outside. The snow’s coming down sideways!”

  “Most people stay home on days like this. I’m glad to have some company down here, though. You two have become regulars.”

  “This is my new favorite place in the city,” Ruthie told him.

  “Well, today’s a good day to enjoy yourself in here.”

  Although she felt disappointed that she and Jack wouldn’t be able to get into the corridor this afternoon, at least she could browse the rooms to her heart’s content. Ruthie wandered down the length of the first wall and came across the room with the green silk canopy bed and the room with the tiny musical instruments.

  “Hey, Ruthie, I have an idea,” Jack said to her quietly, after looking around. “Ask Mr. Bell to show you his favorite.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Remember what he said? It’s that California room around the corner. You can’t see the door from there. So I can check to make sure the key works.”

  Ruthie casually walked back over to Mr. Bell while Jack went the other way.

  “Can you tell which rooms are most popular?” she asked.

  “Hard to say, but most people seem to like the early American rooms, I suppose,” Mr. Bell answered.

  “Can you show me your favorite?”

  He smiled at her. “Just over here,” he said. With Ruthie following him, Mr. Bell walked around the corner to the last room of the exhibit: a room from California in the 1940s. It was filled with small paintings that looked like some she had seen upstairs in the museum. She could understand why an artist would choose this room. She smiled at Mr. Bell approvingly.

  “I like it too!”

  He pointed to a miniature painting hanging over the sofa. “See that one? It’s painted by Fernand Léger—one of my favorite artists. You can see his paintings upstairs.” Ruthie was impressed.

  Jack, in the meantime, had rushed back to the alcove, placed the copied key in the lock and slipped into the corridor, like a spy or a secret agent. He pulled the door closed, and without his library card in the jamb it locked automatically. Now that he knew the key worked, though, there wasn’t much for him to do back there. He quietly unlocked the door from the inside and opened it a crack. He saw Ruthie and Mr. Bell heading straight toward him. Ruthie saw the slit in the door and reacted just in time.

  “Mr. Bell, let me show you my favorite.” She turned immediately in the other direction. Fortunately, Mr. Bell followed. Ruthie had no idea, really, which room to show him; she just knew it had to be one around the corner. She walked him to a New England bedroom. She stood in front of it, explaining to him what she liked about it, stalling for time and hoping that Jack would take the opportunity she was giving him.

  Jack put his ear to the door. He couldn’t hear a thing; either the coast was clear or it was a soundproof door. Since he couldn’t stay bac
k there much longer without Mr. Bell getting suspicious, he opened the door again, just a half inch at first, and then slipped out. He shut the door, heard the lock catch and then walked around the corner to Ruthie.

  “There you are,” he said, faking impatience. “Where’ve you been?”

  They stayed a little longer in the exhibit, but Jack wanted to move on to something more productive than just looking.

  “While we’re here, Ruthie, we need to get more info—you know, about what happens around here at night.”

  “You mean like about the security system?”

  “Yeah. If we’re gonna try to stay in the building after it’s closed we need to know as much as we can.”

  Ruthie had an idea. She proposed that they interview a guard—but not Mr. Bell—as if they were doing a school project. They could say they had an assignment to find out about different jobs; that would give them an excuse to ask all kinds of questions. They went back to the coat check, retrieved a notebook from Ruthie’s backpack and began interviewing.

  They talked to six different guards all over the museum. One of them wouldn’t talk much, but the others seemed happy to have the day broken up with conversation. They sandwiched their questions about the security system between other questions about the works of art. By not asking too much of any one guard, they were able to piece together quite a bit of information. Ruthie wrote down answers as they went. After an hour or so they had loads of valuable details; they sat on a bench near the main stairway, going over Ruthie’s notes.

  “Okay. So we learned that the museum is guarded at night but by fewer guards than during the day and that those guards are only near the really valuable stuff,” she started.

  “Yeah, and the cool thing about the camera system—did you get that?” Jack asked.

  “Yep. There are cameras throughout the museum and there’s a room with security guards watching on monitors. But some parts of the museum are covered by motion detectors that turn the lights on automatically if they’re triggered,” she read from her notes.