From the Improvement Era, January 1963 –

The Golden Key

By Bernard Sabath

For eight weeks during the severest of the midwestern winter, Ray Burke lay in the hospital with an illness the doctors failed to diagnose. For over fifty years he had been in fine health, with nothing more serious than a winter cold. Until this illness he’d been a large, active man, booming with life and enthusiasm and ambition. Then, suddenly, the unexplainable weakness and fatigue; hospitalization and tests; and a persisting mystery.

Afternoons, Ray’s pretty wife Eleanor came to the hospital by bus or taxicab — she didn’t drive a car — bringing cheerfulness and charm and whatever letters came from their four adult children.

Ray would sit up in his hospital bed, pale and handsome, but suddenly gray-haired, and he would remark humorously that many people turned prematurely gray, but that he had been perverse and turned gray belatedly. Eleanor, smiling as though fear and worry had not touched her, would remark, “You are the mystery patient, just as Dr. Jonah said.”

After they had consoled each other with a display of laughter and good spirits, they would discuss the future. Dr. Jonah had ordered retirement, and Ray said he rather liked the idea. “I’ll paint and fix things around the house. I’ll take care of screens and storm windows. And I’ll putter.” He grinned. “I’ve never known the meaning of the word.”

“Something else,” Eleanor said lightly. “I’m going to teach you to cook a few things— those you like best.” He studied her quizzically, and she shifted a little awkwardly. “I got the idea last year, when I had that day in the hospital, that silly little false alarm. I want to teach you to cook.”

Ray nodded. “And I’ve been thinking, I want to teach you to drive the car, Eleanor.”

Alarm leaped into her eyes, but she immediately masked it beneath her smile. “The bus is so convenient,” she reminded him, “practically at our back door. And when we go anywhere in the evening, you do the driving.”

“I understand,” he said, with a level gaze. “And so do you, darling.”

When he came home from the hospital in early April, his strength was returning slowly, as mysteriously as it had gone. He lost no time in arranging for his business partner to take over most of the responsibility; and with a good part of his resources, he purchased a small, four-apartment building which would be a good income property after the mortgage was paid.

Then he had a gift made for Eleanor.

He presented her with the small box over dessert one evening. She undid the wrapping slowly. “What on earth?” Then she drew out a set of gold car keys. “Just what I’ve always wanted,” she murmured humorously. But her smile was too deliberate.

“And I’ll start giving you driving lessons tomorrow morning,” Ray declared.

“You’re full of little surprises,” she said brightly. “But, darling, isn’t it too soon for you to start instructing? We don’t need to rush this.”

“I feel fine— fine enough,” Ray replied. “We’ll take it slowly. If I’m tired after half an hour, we’ll quit.”

“All right,” she agreed. But during the evening she saw a newspaper ad and decided she must go downtown first thing in the morning to the special sale Walcott’s was having on spring print dresses. The driving lesson would have to wait.

Before going to bed, she slipped the gold keys into the bottom of a dresser drawer, beneath her lingerie.

A few mornings later, when Ray suggested they tackle the first lesson.

Eleanor smiled apologetically and said she had promised to meet Helen Walsh at the library to plan a study group program.

A week later, at breakfast, Ray announced, “I’m giving you a driving lesson today.” Eleanor said, “Fine, but first we absolutely have to take down the storm windows and put up screens.” That turned out to be a full morning’s chore, for Ray had to work slowly, with Eleanor’s assistance; and afterward he had to rest.

On the morning in early May when he mentioned a driving lesson, Eleanor had begun to write letters. “Now that you’re all right, we’ve got to tell the children about your illness. It’s only fair.” She wrote four letters, and Ray added a postscript
to each.

Replies came within a week. Frank and Helen, each married and with a family on the West Coast, suggested Eleanor and Ray move West. Maxine, a commercial artist in New York, asked if they would like her to take a leave of absence and come home for awhile. And Ray, junior, who taught in Denver and was unmarried, offered to do whatever Ray and Eleanor thought he could do to be useful.

Answering their letters one night, Eleanor paused. She glanced across the living room at Ray, who was reading a novel he had intended to read twenty years ago, but hadn’t. “I’m reassuring the children,” she said. “I’m telling them we’re well and happy and busy; that everything is in good shape.”

Ray nodded. “Yes, reassure them,” he said, and looked back to his book.

Eleanor studied his face. There had seemed an odd note in his voice. Perhaps it was just her imagination.

One afternoon she explained to him the multitude of controls on their kitchen range, then showed him how she went about making the herb-seasoned hamburgers that were his favorite. Another day she showed him the secrets of preparing lima beans in a sauce of tomatoes, brown sugar, and vinegar. And another time she asked him to watch while she mixed a salad dressing that he had often complimented.

But each time he mentioned driving lessons, she grew suddenly too busy. He tried to tempt her with the offer of a car of her own; but she said he knew very well she wouldn’t put on fifty miles a year, and it would be money extravagantly spent. He asked if she would prefer a professional driving instructor to give her lessons, and she replied guilelessly, “Heavens no, Ray. I want to learn from you.”

But she continued to make excuses, and he had the feeling she didn’t want to learn at all.

In June they spent half of each day in the large yard surrounding the house. Eleanor would weed the roses on the east side of the house and the pansies along the back porch, and the cannas beside the garage. Ray would cut the grass and pull weeds, enjoying the summer sun.

The letters from California, from Helen, began coming oftener. Each one implored Ray and Eleanor to come West to live, and in each reply Eleanor would insist, “We are well and happy and want to keep living here in our home. We may visit you in the fall, but home is here.”

After writing a letter one July night, Eleanor smiled at Ray, perplexed. “I don’t seem to convince Helen that we’re all right, that the scare is over.”

He put aside his newspaper. “Is the scare over— completely over?” he asked.

Eleanor studied his face. “I’m not sure what you mean, darling.”

“Are you scared?— that’s what I mean.”

She forced a laugh. “What an absurd thought. I’m not afraid of anything. We’re together, and I love you. That’s all that counts.”

He resumed his paper, but Eleanor had the feeling she hadn’t convinced him. In fact, in her own ears, her “I love you” had sounded a little flat.

She couldn’t imagine why.

In all our years together, she thought, we’ve said “I love you” thousands of times in thousands of ways. Sometimes with words, sometimes with gifts, sometimes with the tiniest gestures or glances. In the hospital, her joking and reassurance had been a way of saying “I love you.” Now what was he asking? What more did he want?

Inside, in a little compartment of guilt, she knew. And she knew that she could not withhold this particular gesture of love.

She went to the bedroom and opened the dresser drawer where she kept her lingerie. She reached into the bottom and touched the gold keys, cold against her hand. She took them out and held them in her hand, hating them. They were the keys to a kind of courage she did not want to learn. The courage to become self-sufficient, the courage to survive alone, if the time came.

She despised these keys and all they meant. She wanted to hide them somewhere so secret that she would never, never be able to find them. Her fist clenched around the metal.

Why can’t I be like Ray? she wondered. In the kitchen, standing beside her while she taught him cooking, he was so attentive and nonchalant, such a good student, as though the mystery of cooking was nothing to one who had survived the mysteries of illness and recovery. The mystery patient, they’d called him.

But who was the mystery patient now? All right. She admitted to herself that she had lived with fear for too many months. And still did. But what good was admitting it?

She took a deep breath. Love had been so easy twenty-five years ago.

Now it was so complex, so demanding, so cruel. She forced herself to smile.

She returned to the living room and swung the keys in her hand, lamplight catching the gold and causing reflections to skitter about the walls. “Ray,” she said, “how about a lesson tomorrow morning? I think I’m ready.”

His eyes narrowed, studying her with love and— what else did she see? was it compassion? “Right after breakfast,” he said gently.

She nodded. So this was the test, was it? To take the gold keys firmly in her hand and use them as she just had.

I love you enough to prepare to live without you, she said silently. That was what he wanted her to say; but she would never put it into words.

And now, perhaps, there was no need to. The door of fear was locked; the door of courage open; and the mystery patient recovered.

“Right after breakfast,” she echoed.