by Nydam, Anne
“You should ask your mom about it.”
Polly shrugged. “She’s too busy to answer questions.”
“She is busy, that’s for sure, babe. But I bet she’d love looking at it with you. You should ask her about it later.”
Polly waited until Raphael had left the office before muttering, “Yeah, only she’ll be too busy later, too.”
She looked back at the book in her lap and noticed that the embossed design on the leather cover represented the panels of a stately door carved with the design of a wreath. The key printed on the spine glinted in the fluorescent lights of the office and Polly found herself thinking of secret compartments again. She pressed the key. No drawer slid out and no panel popped open, but something strange did happen. It seemed for a moment that she’d felt an actual key beneath her finger.
“Well,” thought Polly, “I suppose if there’s a secret compartment, then why not a secret key to open it? That seems plausible.” And without hesitating to question further, she plucked the key off the spine.
Opening the cover again with the key in her hand, Polly saw at once that something had changed. A keyhole now appeared, piercing through all the pages, and Polly knew already which page she would use the key in: the picture of the screen door. She flipped through the book until she found the page she wanted, stuck the key into the hole, and turned. She felt it click just as if there were a real lock within the pages, and at the same time she felt a sort of click behind her eyes and the tingling sensation grew so strong that she found herself shivering – shivering in her mother’s back office, with her hands on the chipped white paint of a full-sized door that had never been there before. Polly pulled the door open, hands quivering, and stepped through the doorway.
She was standing in a narrow front hallway with faded flowered wallpaper and faded rag rugs. But she had only an instant to take that in when behind her rang out the loud, distinctive bang of an old-fashioned screen door on a spring.
A creaky voice called, “Coming!” and a moment later an old woman entered the hallway from a side door. “Did you knock, dear?” the woman asked, “I’m afraid I don’t hear so well any more. Well, come in, come in. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t know,” Polly answered, but dutifully followed the woman the three paces down the hallway and into a small kitchen. While Polly sat down at the table, the old woman poured a glass of lemonade and set it on the red-checked vinyl tablecloth in front of her guest, before sitting down herself. She wore a faded cotton house dress and bifocals with big, square-ish lenses. She poured another glass of lemonade for herself.
“Now, let me see,” she said in her creaky old voice, “Selling Girl Scout cookies? Collecting for Unicef? Looking for a lost dog? What will it be today, my dear?”
“I don’t really know,” Polly answered honestly. She took a sip of her lemonade. It was the fake kind made with instant powder. “Actually I didn’t mean to come into your house at all.”
The old woman raised her thin eyebrows quizzically. “Well,” she remarked dryly, “At least I trust that means you weren’t planning to hold me up at gunpoint and steal all my priceless treasures.” The woman gestured around the kitchen at the Formica countertops and outdated appliances.
Polly grinned. “No, ma’am. I accidentally came through this Book.”
“I’m afraid my hearing’s not what it was, dear. You came to dispute? Are you representing a political candidate?”
“No, not ‘dispute;’ this book. See, it’s all full of doors, and here’s yours.” Polly pushed the Book across the table and held it open to the woodcut of the screen door.
“Will you look at that,” exclaimed the woman mildly, pushing her big glasses farther up her nose and peering at the image. “But of course it isn’t so very extraordinary. Everyone used to have doors like this. I imagine they sold them in Sears Roebuck, you know.”
“Well, yes, but I came here right through the page of the Book. That seems pretty extraordinary, doesn’t it? Where are we, anyway? I mean, what city are we in?”
“Drink up your lemonade, dear. This is Altoona.”
“So, not Boston then?”
The old woman raised an eyebrow again. “Oh dear, no. Are you visiting from out of town and lost yourself?”
Polly took another sip. “Sort of. I live in a town near Boston, but I don’t think I’m lost. I’m assuming I can just get back through this magical Book again any time, although I guess you can never be sure.” She reached across the table and took the Book. “See, I think if I just go out through the picture of your door I’ll be back home again.”
The old woman looked thoughtfully at Polly with sharp grey eyes. “Magic Book of Doors?”
“Magic Book of Doors. Well, thank you for a lovely visit, but I guess I shouldn’t bother you any longer. I think my mom might be wondering where I’ve gone.” Polly emptied her glass and added under her breath, “Or Raphael, more likely.”
But the woman didn’t appear to have heard. She was gazing at the Book in Polly’s hands. “You know, I haven’t thought of this in years, but we used to have an old family story about a Magic Book of Doors. My grandmother used to tell us that her father, my great-grandfather, bought it. Of course, my great-grandfather bought a lot of things, especially books. And libraries, you know.”
“Your great-grandfather bought libraries? As in lots of books or as in whole buildings to put books in?”
“Oh, both, dear. He was Rutherford J. Hinkelman, and practically bought whole cities, you know. My grandmother told us these wonderful bedtime stories about his adventures with the magic Book. She passed on when I was about your age, my dear, but I remember asking her shortly before the end whether her stories about the magic Book were really true. And she gave such a funny answer. She just smiled at me and said, ‘Pearl, I’m afraid I made all those stories up. The truth is that my father mostly only used the Book for business. I just told you what I would have done with it if I’d had it.’” The old woman looked up sharply and smiled at Polly. “You know, all these years I thought she meant there was no such Book at all. But perhaps she meant exactly what she said.”
Polly opened the Book once again to the picture of the screen door and flipped to the back of the page. She held it out to the old woman, pointing silently at the penciled word.
“Frances,” the woman read aloud, and put her hand to her thin chest. “That was Grandmother’s name: Frances. And this was her house. So that picture really is my door, isn’t it?”
Polly shrugged. “Looks like it. But if Rutherford J. Hinkelman was your great grandfather, does that means you’re a millionaire, too?”
“Oh no, dear. Grandmother ran away with the coachman when she was seventeen. It caused quite a scandal, I understand. People always said her father never stepped foot in this house, but Grandmother told us he used to visit her through the magic Book. And you really are going to walk right through that page?”
“Well, I think I’d better. I’ve been gone about fifteen minutes already and they’re bound to notice if I wait any longer.”
The old woman nodded. “Of course, dear. But may I just… may I just watch you go? You know, I never believed I’d really see that magic Book!”
Polly nodded. She took the key from her hip pouch, fitted it into the keyhole in the page, and turned.
Her mother’s office was dimly visible through the screening in the door, but just before Polly went through, she turned back to look at the old woman. She stood at the red-checked kitchen table, her hand on her heart and her curled white hair making a wispy halo around her smiling face. Her grey eyes shone with delight through her glasses.
“I never thought I’d really see it,” she murmured again.
“Cool, isn’t it! Thanks for the lemonade,” said Polly, and stepped through.
She was standing in the back office of Goggin Antiques, Appraisals, and Auctioneers, and behind her rang out the loud, distinctive bang of an old-fashioned screen door on a
spring.
Ms Goggin’s voice came from the unloading room, “Polly, did you just knock something over? Where have you been? I sure hope nothing’s broken in there!”
“Everything’s okay, Mom. It was just the door slamming,” Polly called back, and perched herself on the long white table. She opened the Book, humming tunelessly under her breath. It was time to take a very careful look at some doors.
IV The Cat in the Museum
Dr Connelly and Dr Burr were in another meeting, and Chen had been sitting outdoors reading again. But now he was hungry and heading back to the Department of Prints and Rare Books to find something for a snack. He was still thinking about the story he’d been reading when he opened his parents’ office door, and let out a startled yelp as something small bolted out, crashed against his ankle, and shot down the hallway. Chen hadn’t even had a chance to register what he’d seen when the door flew the rest of the way open and a girl popped out, crashing into him so that he yelped again.
“Oi, you startled me,” she said, in a voice that seemed much calmer than Chen felt, and much more accusatory than he thought was fair, considering that she was the one who had run into him.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, “And who are you, anyway?”
“I’m catching my cat, of course,” the girl replied, “You could help, you know, instead of just standing there staring.”
She pushed past him, running down the corridor toward the center of the museum. Chen continued to stare after her for an instant, heart still thumping, and mind still blank with surprise and confusion. She had reached the corner where the hallway opened into the atrium when he slammed the office door shut and ran after her, calling, “Wait! Hang on, what?”
The girl paused at the corner and looked back. She was two or three inches taller than Chen with straight brown hair to her chin like a Flapper from the Roaring Twenties. Her knobby knees showed beneath the short skirt of a dress that looked like it was really an oversized man’s Hawaiian shirt belted at the waist with a bright blue hip pouch. Her sneakers appeared to have been hand-painted with multicolored polka dots and were made even more outrageous by the bright, mismatched socks that showed above them. Dressed like that, and appearing so suddenly out of nowhere, Chen thought she might as well have appeared from another planet.
The girl unzipped her hip pouch and pulled something out before replying to Chen. “Well, hurry up, then,” she said. “Oh, and by the way, where are we?”
Chen frowned as he caught up with her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean where are we? City, country, building, institution, any other relevant info?”
“The Cleveland Museum of Art. How can you not know where you are?”
“Well, I didn’t come through the front door,” she replied, as though this were a wholly rational and satisfactory explanation. And then she whistled, two high notes followed by three short notes going up the scale. It resonated loudly in the atrium.
She had paused and then repeated the pattern by the time Chen exclaimed, “Hush! You’re in the art museum, didn’t you hear me? You can’t just go around whistling like that in a museum!”
“Well, you can’t have a cat in a museum, either, and yet mine’s here, right? So I’m trying to get her back.”
Chen was beginning to wonder if the girl was a little bit insane or something. Maybe she was here with a field trip from some kind of special school and had gotten away from her class group. He tried to identify the weird look the girl was giving him. It wasn’t scornful. It wasn’t scared. It wasn’t really anything, he thought. Just a look. And then it occurred to him how weird that was. Nobody ever just simply looked at someone. It was embarrassing. Just to break the awkward silence, he cleared his throat and said, “So, what’s your name?”
To Chen’s astonishment, the girl darted forward, seized his hand, and shook it heartily. “I’m Polly Goggin and my cat is Uber Goggin. Pleased to meet you. What’s your name?”
“I’m Chen. Chen Connelly.”
“Oh. Is Chen an Irish name?” the girl asked.
Chen frowned, but the girl didn’t seem to be trying to make a joke. In which case she must be mental, as he had suspected. “No,” he said, “It’s Chinese.”
The girl didn’t seem perturbed by his scornful tone. “Oh. Is Connelly a Chinese name then?” she persisted.
“Of course not. It’s Irish.”
“Oh. Just checking; you can never be sure. What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? My parents work here. In the office you were trespassing in, as a matter of fact. In the private office that was locked before you broke into it somehow. With your cat!”
Polly shrugged. “Yeah, well, sorry about that. I didn’t know where I was going to come out. And I didn’t know Uber would get through the door. She’s really bad about dashing through doors. She’s always trying to sneak out the door at home, but I didn’t expect her to make a rush out a magic door, too.”
Chen pounced on the words. “Magic door?”
For the first time Polly looked a little doubtful, but she quickly resumed her matter-of-fact tone. “I may have said too much. But don’t worry about it. The important point is that my cat is somewhere in your museum, and the longer we stand here talking about it, the harder she’ll be to find, right?” She whistled again, even louder.
“Stop whistling!” Chen cried again, “Everyone in the entire museum can probably hear you from here. Do you want the security guards to come? Do you want people to know you’re looking for a cat? You’ve got to get that cat out of the museum before anyone sees it, or you’ll be in big trouble.”
“Uber’s not an it,” Polly replied, “She’s a she. But you’re probably right.” She held up the thing she’d taken from her hip pouch, and Chen saw that it was a kitty treat shaped vaguely like a small fish. “I was hoping to call her. At home she usually comes for a treat when I whistle, but not when there’s something she’d rather be doing. Like exploring a museum, I guess. So what do you think - would she have gone across this atrium, up that escalator, or down that hall?”
Irritated by the girl’s calm, as if this was all perfectly fine and normal, Chen snapped, “Well I guess that depends whether she prefers Islamic art or Impressionism.”
Somewhat to his surprise, Polly laughed. “Ha, very funny,” she said, “Fun art fact brought to you by Goggin Antiques: some artistic elephants have been known to paint pictures that actually sell for a lot of money - but no cats. I’m guessing what Uber really prefers is no noisy people.”
She poked the treat back into her hip pouch, turned, and jogged around the escalators and into the bright corridor beyond.
“Wait!” Chen called, as loudly as he dared, “You can’t run. People will notice! And is that seriously a picture of a rubber ducky on your hip pouch?” He scampered after her, trying to keep up without breaking into a run himself.
Polly disappeared around the corner and Chen scuttled after. A group of older teenagers were standing at the gallery doors, holding them open as they finished some conversation. Chen darted past them and then came to an abrupt stop, slamming straight into Polly’s tropical-patterned back. She stood stock still as if mesmerized by the sight of the glorious art. The gallery was somewhat dim and featured a number of small marble sculptures in glass cases on pedestals, but Chen suspected that what had really arrested Polly was the fact that a museum guard stood in the doorway between this room and the next. He wore a navy blue blazer and a laminated plastic badge, and looked sharply at Chen as he barreled into Polly.
“Hello, Josef,” Chen said quickly, “Er, sorry.”
The security guard raised a thick black eyebrow at Chen, but smiled indulgently. “Don’t make me use this walkie talkie,” he said.
Chen grinned back. “No, sir. I’m just showing this girl around.”
The guard nodded. Chen said, “Come on, Polly. Um, shall we look at Roman stuff or medieval stuff?” He pointed to the doors on the
two sides of the gallery.
“Well, where would we be more likely to find a cat?” Polly spoke quietly, but the museum guard heard.
He said, “If you’re looking for a cat, it’s right ahead. In there.”
Chen and Polly glanced at each other, aghast. After a moment Polly said cautiously, “There’s a cat in the museum? Is that allowed?”
Josef laughed. “Everything’s allowed in art, right, Chen? Cat coffin, Ptolemaic Dynasty, fourth century BC, straight ahead in the Egyptian gallery. Kids always love the cat coffin.”
Chen let out a sigh of relief, while Polly smiled
brightly and replied, “Thank you, sir. That sounds magnificent. Let’s go, Chen.” She led the way past the guard and into the next gallery. A quick glance around the African art showed no sign of a cat and they hurried on into the Egyptian gallery beyond.
“What does your cat look like, anyway?” Chen asked quietly when they’d gone around a corner to the cat coffin, out of the guard’s line of sight.
“She’s calico. You know, white with blotches of black and orange.”
“So not likely to be mistaken for an Egyptian sculpture?”
“Not so much, no. Oh – there!”
Ahead of them a slender calico cat was trotting out of the Egyptian gallery into the lobby that led to a flight of stairs and more galleries beyond. There would be another guard posted in the lobby, Chen knew, and he yelped, “Don’t let her get out that way!”
Polly broke into a run. Uber glanced over her shoulder and saw the children coming after her. She tried to sprint away, but her paws got no traction on the marble floor as she crossed into the lobby. She scrabbled for a moment, legs spinning like a cartoon character before she dashed away, skidding sideways as she rounded a pillar. As Chen and Polly chased after, another security guard appeared in the doorway, a frown on her motherly face.
Without pausing to think as he barreled into Polly’s back once again, Chen blurted, “Polly’s baby sister is running away! Did you see her?”
