brass · same mortice as front door · returned · the keeper
the lock is the front door's. the key was cut from the same blank in 1973 and given, with ceremony, to the keeper's mother-in-law, so that she could come and go without making the household get up. she came and went, more or less weekly, for forty-one years. her hand on the front door was lighter than anyone else's. she never used the bolt.
the key was returned in march of last year, in a small envelope addressed in her daughter's hand, after the funeral. nothing was written on it but returned. the daughter would not come in for tea, and afterward the keeper kept the envelope and the key together, in the third drawer, on top of the papers.
the key is the most-pristine brass key in the house. the bow does not have the thumb-polish of the other; the bit is unworn. it was used, all those years, with a different pressure. the keeper cannot bring himself to put it on the hook in the kitchen, where another key would belong; nor to take it down to the locksmith to be melted, which the locksmith would refuse. so it stays where it is.
field-note — the key still smells, very faintly, of cardamom and good soap. it is the only object in the house that does.
key museum · front door · letter · tomb key · memory