The Key to Everything

by Alex Kimmell

  Dedra quickly slid the two strange items from the table and shoved them into a drawer next to the pantry. Making breakfast helped calm her. Reciting the recipe in her head, measuring the correct amount of milk, counting the eggs, stirring briskly for forty-five seconds in a clockwise direction, then forty-five seconds counter-clockwise. Order. It put everything in its right place.

  By the time she finished making her biscuits, both girls were in their seats, fussing with each other’s hair and talking about what they were going to do at school that day. She tensed when Abram wrapped his arms around her from behind and kissed the side of her neck warmly. He hesitated for a moment and then let go. She hoped he didn’t notice.

  Meal finished, dishes in the sink, and kids out the door for school in fifteen minutes. This just might have been a record, even for the Swindon family. Abram stood at the end of the driveway until the girls entered the gate of the little school down at the end of the street. He closed his eyes and stretched up to the brisk morning sky. He picked at a few weeds from the edge of the lawn, continuing his morning ritual, and came back in the front door.

  Dedra was already sitting at the table and motioned for him to join her when he came into the kitchen. As she walked him through the frightening happenings of her morning, Abram sat still and held his eyes steady with hers. When she finished her story, Abram remained quiet for a long time. When he eventually spoke, he suggested it might have been residual emotions from her nightmare earlier in the evening spilling over into her half-awake subconscious.

  That might have even been something she would suggest, if it weren’t for the key. She lifted the rust-covered piece of bronze from the apron in her lap and set it on the center of the table. Abram’s eyes stretched wider than she had seen in their twenty years of marriage. He looked back up into Dedra’s face and then quickly back down to the key, his expression shifting in miniscule degrees from world-weary terror to the Christmas morning surprise of a small child that only a parent could recognize.

  His hand slid over the well-worn wood of the old table and stopped just next to the fantastical object. At his curious glance, Dedra gave the hint of a nod and closed her eyes. She didn’t know why she kept the book hidden away. It just felt wrong to show it to him. But the key… she knew of no one else who could decipher what the key meant, and what it might open.

  All of the equipment down in the basement, the hammers, the gloves, punches and chisels…each of them were there because he loved working with metal. Blacksmithing, casting, welding, any way he could beguile new shapes out of the unrefined alloys. He could make anything he wanted. Mostly he just made keys. Not the machine-made kind you find in a shopping mall or auto parts store. He forged his exquisite displays of workmanship by hand. They were hung on the walls of every house in the neighborhood. When politicians from all over New England found a hero who saved a cat from a burning building or an athlete who pitched a no-hitter to win the playoffs, Abram handcrafted their key to the city for them.

  They were radiant. Some ornate and complex designs twisting the metal in and out like Celtic knots. Others gorgeous in their simplicity with fine lines and pure curves. Often people from nearby asked him to copy their house or car keys. They were all one of a kind and fit the user’s personality perfectly. He never charged them. He made them out of love, with love, for love.

  Abram didn’t like to think he made keys that locked things. Rather that he made keys that opened things. He thought keys could open anything and everything. When you unlocked your home to let someone in, they were welcomed into your life. They were entering your small part of the world and that was a beautiful thing. Abram’s keys opened more than just buildings and cars. Abram’s keys opened doorways to the unreachable places.

  -22-

  Dedra: At the Bottom of the Stairs

  Giant white Xs falling from the sky. That’s what they looked like anyway. The snow floating next to the window was protected from the winds so it fell straight down. The neighboring house just beyond the bushes was not as insulated from nature’s heavy breathing, causing the flakes to descend much faster and at an angle. Watching them all come down together created the illusion of thousands of three-dimensional white Xs punched across the sky in a gentle form of Braille.

  A light dusting of soft white coated the grass. Heavy snows melted a few days ago when warmer, more comfortable days arrived. The kids didn’t have to put on coats when they were out playing yesterday. But the whiteness returned for today, at least. At this point in the weather, it wasn’t enough to fully cover the short rock wall running along the property line. Branches weren’t creaking and snapping under the weight of accumulation anymore.

  Everyone in the village grew excited for spring’s arrival. They acted as if a blue sky was something out of a fairy tale. That water flowing in the reservoir without a sheet of ice covering its surface was nothing but a rumor in the back rooms of hair salons and barber shops. Winter in this part of the country wasn’t that bad. It only snowed for two months. But locals seemed to exaggerate everything around here. No matter where folks lived, they loved to complain about the weather.

  Abram wouldn’t see any of it. He put himself away like an old unused tool behind the basement door. Dedra thought about knocking but didn’t. Calling to the girls, she told them to be safe while she went inside for a little while. Two small, absentminded hands waved quickly over their unturned heads and returned to whatever dirt-covered game they were playing in the pretty little thicket of bushes.

  It was time for a break. Maybe they would eat egg salad sandwiches on the sofa together, watching TV. She wouldn’t complain about the crumbs this time. She didn’t even know why it bothered her so much. It’s not like they any company ever came to the house. No family was nearby to pay a surprise visit, and the neighbors all kept a safe distance. Always polite, but never friendly. That’s just the way things were around here. She made attempts to start some friendships. Nothing ever amounted to more than tentative plans that nobody ever followed up on.

  Dedra’s life was Abram and the girls. She tried not to be overbearing and press him for too much attention, but the loneliness overwhelmed her mind sometimes. There was no defense against it. Abram was a good husband. But like most men he needed his time to do whatever it was men did when they were alone. Dedra recognized how important that was to him and let him have his space. They never argued about it. Not a syllable was uttered in frustration. But hiding away in the basement for two nights and three days? It was time to bring him back out into the world.

  Her knuckles struck the yellow door five times in rapid succession. She didn’t notice the hollow resonance of the sound. A large basement made mostly from concrete should have more of an echo. Putting her ear to the door she knocked again. No response. Dedra reluctantly turned the doorknob. Unlocked, the door opened without the squeak of hinges or creaking of old wood.

  Light was visible at the bottom of the stairs. A hint of cinnamon swam in the air, mixed with the familiar odors of smoke and damp mahogany. Her slippers slid softly across the tops of each stair, providing the only soundtrack to her descent. She reached the floor and turned her head both ways, looking for Abram. Maybe he was taking a nap in the shadows behind the boxes to her left? His desk sat empty, and some of his tools lay discarded on the floor.

  Racking her brain, Dedra tried to remember when she last saw him come upstairs. The red-orange glow emanating from the boiler was too dark for any real heat to be coming from there. Abram obviously wasn’t working on anything down here today. But the door was open, and his tools uncharacteristically splayed around the basement, not neatly put away.

  There were piles of papers scattered everywhere. She resisted the urge to organize the confusion. This was her husband’s space. She could do whatever she liked in the rest of the house, but Abram kept his own non-filing system. Though her spine stiffened at each page on the floor and every broken pencil, she respected him enough to not move anything.

&
nbsp; A light crinkling sound came from under her foot, walking closer to the desk. Picking up one piece of paper wouldn’t disrupt things too much, would it? Scratches of dark gray pencil lead coalesced into a more recognizable shape as wrinkles were smoothed away. Straight edges here, a beautiful curve there. Sharp teeth extended fiercely outward from a perfect circular shape. Abram’s drawing became a perfect facsimile of the mysterious key from the other night. More than simply lead lines laid out on the page, the image hovered above the paper in all three dimensions.

  Her eyes glazed over. In that moment she forgot herself. There was a brief glimpse into the universe existing without her self. No color. No light. Empty. Hollow. Unfeeling. An uninhabited void of white.

  Dedra snapped back into awareness. Her hands tore at the paper, shredding it into small pieces. She let them go. She let the images of that terrible whiteness fall away from her. The image of the key remained burned in her mind, floating, spinning slowly in the air above her hands. She was sure that she was not at all interested in finding out what it opened.

  Defiantly, she took the last few steps over to the desk. Among all the dust and clutter, soot stains and malformed metal mistakes, the top of Abram’s desk was quite clean. Other than his dirty pair of gloves, there wasn’t much Dedra could complain about. It was sitting there right on the center of the workbench. He found it. She should throw it out. The old and fraying red thread opened, welcoming all to enter the world opened on the pages. Untied now, it gently draped over the edges of the pages.

  When she looked at it the book, it moved. She knew it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. All the same, the old pages rose and fell in slow rhythm. Breathing. No. Not real. Could not be real.

  Climbing the stairs to leave, she gradually became aware of something pushing against her lower back. She scrambled up the steps two by two to get out of that dark space faster. The pressure gained strength. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end when she closed the door. Where was he? Her heart was racing, and she leaned on the door to keep from falling. She stood there and caught her breath, straightening the front of her blouse with sweaty palms.

  Someone needed Abram for a job. That must be it. He went out while she and the girls were asleep is all. Yes. He would be back any time now.

  Dedra snapped her head in a stiff nod to reassure herself of the truth. She called out to the girls to come inside and get cleaned up. Then she placed a pot of water on the stove to boil. If she was going to make those sandwiches, she needed some hardboiled eggs.

  -23-

  The Tattooist

  Tied together in a tightly knit group, the small needles moved up and down in a blur. Each time the sharpened bundle went down, it pushed its way through the first layer of skin, leaving a dot of black ink that would remain etched into the dermis forever. The artist moved his hand deftly around the outline of the design. In several decades of marking people’s flesh, this was a first for him. It wasn’t the usual tribal pattern or Celtic knot. He was relieved he didn’t have to spend an hour working on some drunken sorority chick that wanted an arrow pointing down below her belly button. It wasn’t his concern if she considered it a mistake in the cruel light of morning.

  This man didn’t look like a typical customer. More people were getting tattoos than ever before, which was good for business, of course. He inked doctors and lawyers right alongside athletes and musicians. He even did a life-sized gavel on a circuit court judge’s inner thigh. Not his most pleasant evening, but the old guy tipped well. Still, this particular man was unexpected. Most middle-aged men came in for their mid-life crisis tattoos trying to impress their new twenty-years-too-young, post-divorce squeezes. They always wanted lightning bolts on their loose-skinned biceps or maybe a cherry red Stratocaster with the words, “Rockin’ On.” They’d always put it somewhere that could be hidden beneath their shirt or even covered by a sport sock when they played racquetball with their boss.

  This particular man came in alone, thick, dark bags under his eyes and covered from head to toe in a strange white-tannish dust. Puffs and clouds of the stuff flew off his body every time he moved, glimmering in the shafts of sun coming down from the skylight. He removed the crumpled piece of brown paper from his shirt pocket and hesitantly slid it across the counter, his head down, making no attempt at eye contact.

  Without words, the dusty man touched the black drawing with his right index finger, rolled up the sleeve on his left arm, flipped his hand over, closing his hand into a loose fist, and pressed his fingertip into the flesh directly below the second wrinkle underneath the hand. He held it there for a long time. None of the other guys were in the shop this early, so the place was empty. Silence hummed in spirals on the verge of becoming uncomfortable.

  Looking at the size of the drawing and where the man wanted it done, the artist did some quick calculations in his head. The complex drawing filled with minute details would be difficult. It would take more than a few hours to do this thing right. The artist said it would be about four hundred bucks. The dusty man looked him in the eye for the first time and nodded. He pulled a battered leather wallet from his front pants pocket, opened it and placed six crisp, brand-new hundred-dollar bills in the artist’s hand.

  * * *

  Five hours later, the artist walked outside the front door and stretched his aching muscles. Silently he lit his cigarette and stared out past the arrhythmic pattern of cars driving by on Route 6. There was no story behind the design. None was needed. There were no names exchanged, nor any other conversation for that matter. The artist could tell the man was kind-spirited by his mannerisms. He sat in the chair, calm and quiet. When the needle pierced his skin for the first time, he showed no telltale flinch of a newbie getting his first tattoo. The man’s breathing was slow and steady, never faltering.

  The artist was proud of his work. Always proud to some degree, but this piece was different. It moved him. After his cigarette burned down to the filter, the artist realized he had forgotten to take a picture of the tattoo for his book. He would have framed and placed this one in a sacred spot on his wall in the shop. Thinking about the tattoo, the artist felt moistness on his cheeks. He never cried. He flicked the brown-stained nub of the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with the heel of his All-Star high top.

  The artist couldn’t remember the last time he cried like this. He laughed when his dad died, the son of a bitch. Walking inside, he closed the shop door and locked it behind him. His talented fingers gently traced across the glass countertop, over the piercing studs and stickers emblazoned with the shop logo. Sobbing broke through like a tidal wave, and the artist allowed himself to drown in it. This was a good sadness, a cleansing sorrow.

  The artist smeared the snot from his nose onto his color-infused forearm and sat down in his work chair. When the seas finally calmed, he smiled with an unfamiliar sense of relief. He liked it. Cleaning up his supplies, he placed the used needles into the sharps disposal safe and collected the unused ink. He peeled the tape off the table and gathered up all the papers that protected from spilled ink or blood and threw them away. After setting up the workspace for his next appointment, he noticed something sitting in the center of the chair. The old man didn’t leave this here by accident. It was a gift. He left the sculpture to be found long after the man left the shop.

  The artist hung the beautiful brass key on a nail directly above his mirror. Its fine teeth came down over the frame by an inch or two, but that didn’t bother him at all. He went into the back room and, after shuffling through the boxes and crates of unused crap for a few minutes, found what he was looking for. The shabby-chic white frame stood out from other artwork on the walls. Unlike the other objects that were intended to shock and offend people, this particular item was clean. Pure.

  The artist stood back and smiled. He read the words, and a lightness entered into his heart that he didn’t think existed before. He read the words over and over again. Lost in a pleasant moment of clarity and happiness tha
t might have lasted all day if he were left to his own devices, he was awoken from his dreaming by a knock on the door. The artist read the words one last time and then turned to unlock the door and get started on his next tattoo.

  Over the years, the artist never saw anyone else pay attention to it hanging there. But he looked at the note and the key at least once a day. He read the words, and they never failed in helping him to feel at peace: “For your dreams.”

  -24-

  Dedra: Labyrinth

  Dedra heard the girls squeal when Daddy came through the front door. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to throw the plates in her hands at his head. Instead, with delicate precision, she put both plates exactly in the center of each setting. The placemats rested parallel with the edges of the square table. The sandwiches rested already sliced in quarters on the serving tray in the middle of the table.

  She stood behind her chair in front of the sink, with her hands loosely draped over the back. Abram walked in from the hallway. Looking like an ashamed little boy, he bowed his head and stared down at the floor for a moment, then moved toward the sink followed by a puff of strange powder. She coughed. It left a thick, musty smell of old paper in the air. Dedra pulled out her chair and sat down, listening to the water clean her husband’s hands.

  His lips were gentle when they pressed against the top of her head. She reached up, and they interlaced fingers just above her shoulders. His breath rustled the hair behind her ears in an old, familiar way that she had missed for a very long time. Abram squeezed her hands, removed his lips from her head, and took his seat beside her at the table.

  Dedra didn’t mention the bandage on his forearm at first. In the time it took her to take just three bites of her sandwich, Abram ate one entire sandwich and started in on the next. He smiled at her and thanked her for making lunch. He apologized for being gone so long and asked that she not make any further inquiries into his whereabouts.