A KEY IN THE DUST
Eric Tallberg |
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FLIGHT 11, BOSTON TO LOS ANGELES, HURTLED DOWN THE RUNWAY
and into the air. Hand cradling his chin, Peter watched as the harbor islands passed below and chuckled to himself while pondering where and for what he was bound. He brushed up on some fond memories as he loosened his seat belt and dropped his magazine into the seat pocket.
Thirty years of marriage to his high school sweetheart --- the only woman he had ever, would ever, love --- and raising three children had been everything that Peter knew it could be, and he treasured Terri and his children more today than ever. For damned sure, things had been tough over the years. Sacrifices had been made, compromises reached, problems, sometimes, near-catastrophes dealt with, frustrations overcome. Peter had graduated college with a degree in journalism and then found the paltry salary and endless hours of his first, and only, journalistic employment insufficient to provide for his pregnant wife in the style that he thought appropriate. He'd promptly found work with a local plastics manufacturer and had spent all but that first year since graduation in the plastics and coatings industry, beginning as a compounder and, lately, as the foreman of the latex compounding and mixing department with Boston Coatings and Chemicals. He had, he thought as the plane banked toward the West Coast, provided. He'd done what it took to see that his children were well reared, his wife was more than well loved, and that their immediate future was at least somewhat secure.
He had, as well, over the course of eight years - nights when he wasn't fixing up the house and weekends when he wasn't playing ball or relaxing with Terri and the kids - written a novel.
After trying for over a year to publish and having been told that his work was either downright terrible or "something to build on," and with the unqualified support of his wife working part-time as a bank teller, he'd used some of the money that he'd inherited at his mother's death and had done what he finally realized that he should have done on the day his novel was completed. He hired an agent.
Karl Hillbourn didn't come cheap. Nor was he, at first, overly impressed with Peter's work. For a hefty initial fee, however, plus a guarantee of 10 percent of any royalties, Karl turned Peter's novel over to Larry Fournier, one of the better literary editors in the business. Larry, for an additional fee, had produced, with Peter's enthusiastic input and Karl's endless hectoring of publishers, a modestly successful book. Thus Peter, though far from wealthy, was finally able to see his wife quit her petty job at the bank; was, at long last, able to begin traveling beyond Cape Cod and for longer than a week at a time. He and Terri were actually able to begin planning for their all-but- ignored retirement years. This was something neither would have thought possible when Peter's company bought out their pension plan, cut the company-paid health insurance, and laughed off attempts by employees to initiate first an employer contributory IRA, and then a 401k retirement savings plan.
Peter smiled once more as he recalled the previous Friday. Karl had called him at the plant to say that a producer from Miramax Films had read Peter's novel and thought that it might make a good movie. Karl then mentioned a stunning amount of money that Peter would be offered - less Karl's ten percent - for merely selling the rights for his novel to the studio, this amount to nearly triple if a movie were actually made based on his book. Peter had, immediately upon the termination of his conversation with Karl, walked into the plant manager's office and quit the job he'd loathed for so many years.
He'd driven from the plant to Karl's office, where he and his agent confirmed a meeting with the film company in L.A. and then, with the assistance of a real estate attorney of Karl's acquaintance, concluded a transaction that Peter had been contemplating for some time. On his way home he congratulated himself that he'd finally be able to fulfill one of Terri's fondest dreams. Telling her that he'd at long last decided to take that quick trip to visit his brother in Anaheim, who he knew was not one of Terri's favorite people --- but this was his only sibling, after all, and he'd been promising a visit for god knew how long, now --- he planned to call her after his meeting with the studio people to spring his surprise. He visualized how puzzled Terri would be after he'd instructed her to open the envelope and take out the key, and, how happy she'd be when he told her what the key would unlock.
He looked up then, distracted by a swarthy man, wearing a green and white bandanna over his face, who began shouting as he grabbed a flight attendant in a vicious chokehold.
. . .
Terri had been delighted, of course, with Peter's unassuming, but quite tangible literary success, not only because the royalty checks allowed them a bit more financial freedom, but also because she adored her husband, had always considered his a rare literary talent and felt that his devotion to his family and, over the past several years, to his writing, had finally earned its just reward. Though not much interested in the mechanics of what her husband had spent so many evenings and otherwise free weekends producing, Terri would, very occasionally and solely at Peter's behest, read a chapter or two and would pronounce the writing the equivalent of John Grisham, Stephen King, and Robert B. Parker, the only male authors with whom she was more than vaguely familiar. She'd been immensely proud of him when his novel had been published, had dared to believe that perhaps their lives might become comfortable and meaningful after all.
She sat this warm and lonely morning at her kitchen table stroking Kilroy, one of her two cats, and talking on the phone with her daughter, Kati. "Yeah, we're going back down to Barnstable next weekend. If the weather's anything like today, we might stay an extra day or so," she said as she twirled the small, sealed envelope around the tabletop. "God, I wish we had the money to buy that place we've always loved on the harbor. But some rich bastard from New York who'll only use it for one night a year will snap it up just to keep people like us who really appreciate it from getting it. Meantime, it sits on that gorgeous little point that overlooks the bay ... well, you've seen it down there ... you know how much I love that little house. We just couldn't believe it's actually for sale. Then your father, God bless him, hoped that with the money from the book and maybe the last couple thousand dollars from Grammy's inheritance, we might be able to afford enough of a down payment to keep the mortgage reasonable. Huh! Do you have any idea what they want for that place? My God, it's obscene ..."
She stopped twirling the envelope as a picture of the World Trade Center in New York City appeared on the small television she'd bought several months ago just to put on the kitchen counter so she could watch The Today Show as she drank her morning coffee. She stared now at the screen where smoke and catastrophic flames billowed and leaped from one of the towers. "God," she said to her daughter. "It looks like an airplane hit one of those big buildings in New York City. You know, the ones the gorilla climbed in the movie King Kong?"
As she watched, horrified, the top of the other building suddenly erupted in smoke and fire. "Kati," she said slowly. "I'm getting off now. Go turn your TV on. Something awful's happening down in New York. Love you, honey. Talk to you later."
As she jumped up from the table to turn up the sound, the small envelope, "Darlin', please don't open this till I call you from Cal. Love ya, Pete," written in Peter's nearly illegible scrawl on the front, slipped unnoticed to the floor next to the mopboard.
. . .
It was nearly a month after the trauma of the World Trade Center disaster and her mother's subsequent suicide that, while going through her parent's possessions, Kati found the small, sealed envelope sitting among the dust and the fur balls on the kitchen floor. She had read the now-poignant note, torn open the envelope and found inside just a key. Sobbing angrily, she'd thrown the envelope into one of the large trash bags squatting amid the boxes, pots, pans, and dishes defiling the kitchen and tossed the key, which would have fit perfectly the front door lock of a certain little house on a spit of land that overlooked Barnstable Bay, into a large box of assorted kitchen utensils labeled "storage."
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