The Well-Used Key Shines Brightly

            I knocked on the door, no answer. A little worried, I pushed it open. It took more effort than I expected, as if it had not been opened for a very long time. I paused on the doorstep, as a smell hit me. It was a jumble of rancid meat, molding food, mildew, and the distinct sour smell of urine. I pulled my kerchief out of my breast pocket and wearily continued forward.

            There were no lights in the small entry-room, so I could not see a single thing in front of me. However, unless things had been moved into totally new positions, I would be able to make my way through the house blindfolded. I heard movement in front of me and slightly to the left. Wearily, I made my way down the hallway that divided the house in half, stepping over the myriad objects spread all over the floor, which removed any hope for safe passage. I slowly entered the room at the end of the hallway--the kitchen--and blinked in the sudden brightness of sunlight, a light I could not see from the hallway, where the darkness still loomed behind me. In front of me sat a small man, clearly ruined by time. He was short, almost four heads shorter than me, with a sad look on his face and hands that had never seen a day of work, and yet were possibly more tired than he.

            “What do you want?” The question seemed to take forever to  cross the small room, and it was said quietly with a degree of sadness and little to no hostility. I almost cried with the lack of feeling in the question. It was said as if the man had nothing left in him, but to sit in the old house with his hands in front of him, which he was now making a study of.

            “Are you well?” My own question slipped from my lips before I could even register that I had blatantly ignored the one he had asked me. I blushed and stood there awkwardly. He slowly raised his head, looking at me as if I had just killed his favorite pet, and then asked how he was feeling. I bowed in apology and waited for his response.

            “Who are you?” The way he asked had no emotion, except confusion as to why I would even enter into his house or talk to him. I supposed it made sense, me standing there in a suit and overcoat, finely made and well pressed, in stark contrast to him, clothes well worn and never seen an iron, covered in dirt.

            “My name is Michael.” I answered. There was little I could do but give him the truth. His facial expression changed then, as if a switch had been flipped.

            He looked closely at me, as if trying to see a boy’s face, where mine had become a man’s. “You are Michael?” I nodded solemnly and stared back into his face with all the strength I could manage. “How...?” His voice trailed off slowly as he tried to make sense of the situation.

            I grabbed the chair next to me and pulled it behind me, where I could sit down on it and look at him face-to-face without any awkward or uncomfortable feelings. I sat for a moment, trying to read his face, and understand what he was thinking. All I could do was sit there, at a loss for what I could say to a person I had not seen for almost twenty years. “You were eight, weren’t you?” his questions surprised me, as I had assumed that I would be the one talking. “How long has it been?”

            “Eighteen years.” My response came out with less confidence than I had hoped it would. “It was eighteen years ago when you sent me to London.” He looked at his hands again, dropping his eyes from where he had been starting--right above my right shoulder.

            “I’m sorry...” the apology made me disconcerted. It seemed like all he did was to make me feel uncomfortable. “I had thought it was for the best.”

            “It was.” I said it frankly. I understood where he came from, a single father with no chance at a decent life, who sent his son to a family friend to be educated and taught all the ways of proper London society. It was understandable; I just wished it had not happened.

            “What did you study? I had asked for regular updates, but it is hard for an illiterate man to read a letter.” He sounded sad, and I told him that I had studied government and was starting an internship with a one of the members of Parliament this coming month. He seemed interested, and yet sad.

After a while of discussing my life in London and what I had made of a life there, I asked what he had been doing for the eighteen years since I had left. He looked uncomfortable. Then he gave a simple answer: “Nothing.” I felt a sudden change in atmosphere and wanted desperately to be able to walk out of that room and run as far away as possible. “When you left, I was struggling at the factory I was working at. The leadership wanted to have only young, cheap labor there and apparently I didn’t fit the bill. They kicked me out. I tried to get a job, but you know no one hires the likes of me. I was jobless. So, I went to the local courthouse and applied for a stipend. Said I was disabled and old and needed money enough to get by. And that’s what it did. It paid the boy who brought my food and made it for me, it paid for the house, and an occasional new pair of shoes. It was all I needed.”

I felt sick. I just wanted to leave and forget that I had ever come, forget the hours I spent looking up where my father lived, figuring out when it would be right to stop by. Forget asking those who had raised me where my real family was, and seeing the hurt in their faces. Eighteen years, I had wanted to go home to find a man who had worked hard to wait for me, so we could live happily together. I raised my hand and swiped away the tear that dared to start to fall. Angry now at myself, for ever coming.

“I have to go.” The sentence scrambled awkwardly out of my mouth. My father looked sad for a moment and then seemed to understand.

“Go,” he looked back down at his hands, soft now from not having worked for almost twenty years. I reached over and grabbed them. He shrunk back at first, as if afraid of what I might do, but then placed one hand on each side of mine. I smiled at him.

“I will come back.” I wasn’t sure if it was true, but I had to at least make him feel better in some way or another.

As I walked out of the house, the sunlight and smell of air filling my senses, I sighed. I would be better than that, I had to be...I had to be the kind of person who would not have to leave their family for what might be best for them, or survive on a lie. I would work; become a wealthy man, with a wife at my side. I had to, for my father, for myself. I looked out to where the harbor met the sea, where the sun was setting, the final bit of light sinking behind a group of gray clouds, going out with ranges of color that impress even the most critical eye. Out with color and feeling, and then a flash of green.

 

                                                *            *            *

“You know,” my father said, pulling me onto his lap, “there is no better way to view the soul of the world through a sunset.” I sat there, a mere boy of seven, feeling like I had the world at my feet and knew everything it the world.