Keys

A few days ago I reached into the right rear pocket of my jeans for a poop bag and realized that the other occupant of that pocket was missing.

My house key.

I immediately ransacked the pockets of every jacket and pair of jeans I’d worn in the previous few days (luckily the number was not large) then searched the house (which also is not large) and the car. Nami and I then retraced the steps of the short walk we take every morning after we wake up. Nada.

The urgency could use some explaining, because (a) I don’t generally lock my front door, and (b) there’s a second house key on the key chain in my car’s ignition. The last place I lived, I’m not 100% sure I even had a working key to either of the two doors.

I then texted the real estate agent for the people I bought my house from because the key chain had the real estate company’s name on it. If someone found it, they might think to turn it in there. Nothing connected the key to me, or to the house whose front door it opens.

The key to my car, however, is attached to a chain that people might connect with me.

A few mornings later, Nami and I were taking a longer morning walk in the neighborhood when I spotted, at the edge of the pavement . . . A KEY. Lying next to it, though no longer attached, was the real estate company’s key chain, looking somewhat the worse for wear.

I tried the key as soon as I got back to the house. It worked.

I’ve stopped carrying it around. Evidently I’m no longer worried about locking myself out, or about locking myself out with Nami inside. After all, there is a duplicate key in the car. I may start locking when summer arrives, or I may not. It depends on how the neighborhood feels, and what my friends in the area advise.

During my first year on Martha’s Vineyard, forty years ago (eek!), I wrote a sestina about keys. After years of a 10-key chain threatening to wear a hole in my right rear jeans pocket, I was amazed to be walking around with no keys at all.

The Key Sestina
 
My city apartment needed four keys,
the mailbox a fifth. Two for each of two
jobs, and a tenth for my bicycle chain.
A fine rattle they made, a heavy weight
in my pocket. There was one key whose lock
I'd forgotten. I would not throw it out.

My island friend spends the whole day out,
leaves her door open, needs only the keys
to her car. My new apartment won't lock
from the inside; I still sleep well. Here too
my ten-speed bike leans against the wall, wait-
ing for me, sheltered from rain, but not chained.

It's strange at first, leaving padlock and chain
behind, stopping by my friend's when she's out
to use her phone. I miss the clanking weight
in my pack, the rattling of all those keys.
Each of them meant commitment, access to
home, store, office, women's center, all locked

against the untrusted. I knew that locks
won't stop everybody. The severed chain
remains; the bike is gone. In less than two
months my house was robbed three times. We were out
at work, we'd locked the doors, we had our keys;
the burglar had none but he didn't wait

for us. Perhaps it's only custom's weight
that makes a barrier of a door that's locked.
When my mother drank, I'd hide her car keys,
not knowing she had a duplicate chain.
Once in a muted rage I put them out
in plain sight. Did I want her dead? or to

end my responsibility? These two
options nag twenty years later, their weight
unsettled. I visit, after years out
of New England, her house, whose door is locked
always. My mother from her extra chain
detaches and gives me a front door key.

Says the keeper's jangling chain, "Just wait,
I can split the world in two: danger
locked out, comfort kept in -- or vice versa."