Keys
by Niles Reddick
Sara was like a Learjet, fast and focused with a smooth and graceful landing after a daily journey, and she’d loved Mike since kindergarten at the Episcopal day school. He’d given her a cut-out red heart Valentine and a small box of candies stamped with messages back then that read “Be Mine Forever,” “Everlasting Love,” “Your Valentine.” On the back were chubby Cupids shooting arrows. Neither of them even knew what the messages meant.
After high school, both went to Virginia, and he majored in pre-med and stayed for medical school. She majored in Education and taught grade school. They married right after graduation at Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson had lived, though their ancestors would not have approved the location since they had connections back to Adams. His place had been rented for two months in advance. She was pregnant with the first of three girls, and Mike worked long hours, partly to meet the rising patient demand, partly to support them, and partly to stay away from all the hormones and drama, though his body language and comments never revealed which.
When Sara’s life got busy with the girls, teaching, and the PTO liaison and Mike got busy with the practice, experiences of holding hands and skating to Sinatra’s “Moon River” under the strobe light or early Sunday mornings listening to a Sinatra album and her dancing in a gown and Mike in pj’s to “All of Me” in the kitchen became distant memories.
One Monday, Sara came to school, shuffled papers in the lounge by the mailboxes, paced the halls scanning the tile floors and baseboards, and grabbed random students by lockers to see if they’d seen her keys. She went into the office and asked the school administrative assistant and told another teacher to watch her homeroom while she searched outside. Finally, the principal walked out and asked her if she’d left them in her station wagon. She smirked at him, told him she hadn’t lost it but was close, and they walked closer to check. Sara was mortified her station wagon was still running, keys in the ignition.
“Is everything all right, Sara?”
“It will be fine,” she smiled.
That night, she reminded Mike of their shared past, their family, and the life they’d built together, and she told them if he wanted to give it all up for his nurse, he could, but he’d better think long and hard about how he’d start over with nothing, how he’d have to explain his mistakes to the medical board that she’d helped him cover, how he pushed drugs that didn’t work for vacations in the islands, and how he’d put real estate in his underaged daughters’ names with elderly parents as co-signers to avoid the capital gains taxes.
On Tuesday evening, Mike brought home a heart shaped box of chocolates, a card, some fresh flowers, and put in a CD of Sinatra in the player on the counter, and they slow danced and he told Sara he was sorry. She patted his back like she was burping a baby and told him it would be all right, that they would work it out.
Niles Reddick is author of a novel, two collections, and a novella Lead Me Home. His work has been featured in nineteen anthologies, twenty-one countries, and in over three hundred publications including The Saturday Evening Post, PIF, New Reader Magazine, Forth Magazine, Citron Review, and The Boston Literary Magazine.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Keys”? The idea behind “Keys” originated from a faculty member I worked with who “lost her keys” and discovered them in her car’s ignition with the car still running. I had no idea why she’d done this, but I know she didn’t appreciate my laughing about it.
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