ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: Searching
Book Two, Chapter 56: The Skeleton Key
Joshua takes me to the Charles Street house to show me lighting fixtures he’s bought for it.
In the living room, he mounts a stepladder and holds up to the ceiling a frosted half-moon with bronze rim. “I chose this simpler style for the living room and bedroom. I chose a slightly fancier one, the globe filigreed in bronze, for the dining room.”
“You don’t have to look any further, Joshua. Those are good choices. The bronze trim suits this house, with its natural wood doors.”
He moves the stepladder to the kitchen and holds up a frosted, etched-glass shade with a chrome rim. “What do you think?”
“It looks good, too. It suits.”
I feel good that Joshua chose these fixtures himself. He’s learning to make decisions by making decisions.
He heads to the bedroom to finish prying up carpet tacking.
I didn’t come here to work — I’m not wearing work clothes — but Joshua’s example motivates me. I get down on my knees, tool in hand, and begin to scrape paint from the peeling baseboard in the dining room. I soon realize I’m scraping the tips of my shoes against the floor — I’m wearing Ernie’s saddle oxfords — so I take them off. Ernie’s shoes now rest on the floor of a house he never stepped into.
I feel his absence acutely. I want him to be here. I want him to reassure Joshua and me that we’re headed in the right direction.
I keep on scraping. Paint chips land on my face, sticking to the skin under my eyes. I don’t feel the chips, but Joshua remarks on them when he comes into the room to show me something. “Look what I found.” He holds up a darkened skeleton key. “The key to my castle. It was in the keyhole of the bedroom’s door.”
“The key to your castle,” I say. “How wonderful.”
“I’ve tried it out. It locks and unlocks all the interior doors.”
He seems pleased. He seems at peace with his decision to keep this house and to work on it. Perhaps I will find the heart to work on it, too. I remember Ernie’s words to me: “We can’t let Joshua down.”
I go back to my scraping, remembering another key — big and brass and shaped like a skeleton key — that Ernie gave me the night he took me to the Secret Garden, the night we kissed for the first time.
Did Ernie and I ever tell Joshua about that night? Doubtful. We never even reminisced about that night with each other . . . the night he and I began.
