The Keyhole by Karin Doucette

Something brushes by and briefly blocks my line of sight as I peer through the keyhole in the dark oak door.

       For just a fraction of a second my view is obscured.

       But that’s long enough to interfere with my understanding of what I was seeing.

       The motion of this figure, or object, or shadow is as subtle as the ripple in a silk robe.

       It covers the empty space of the key slot only for the duration of an eyeblink.

       Then, gone.

       I don’t feel obliged to find the key that opens the door.

       I refocus and peer again, rolling my eyeball.

       There’s a suggestion of lush carpet in shades of pink, black, and white; the grain of old waxed wood, perhaps a mantel; the hint of rich, green papered walls above boiserie panels.

       A woman dressed in silk would suit this luxe place.

       Before crouching at the keyhole I did feel I would see a woman: Mother.

       But she wouldn’t suit this place. Not in any possible way.

       Yet… I have the sense she was that shadow brushing past the thin slot I am peering through. And with her motion came a feeling of revelation.

       Some truth about her.

       The sensation and the movement are both gone. What remains is a visual tease about a space of elegance and class.

       Again, not Mother.

       In fact, before dying she had entered a new space in her life. Small but private, with a window that looked onto the street.

       Mother said to me, If someone drove by and looked in through the window at me, what would they see? 

       She didn’t say who would they see. But her tone said that’s what she meant.

       I believe she was trying to reconcile that her inner space had changed. Who she had become and what she believed herself to be versus the person who had lived long, lived big. At least in her own mind.

       Mother was a woman who never really inhabited a physical space.

       Her inner door was not flung open to me; her rooms were not entered by me. And then her space became smaller and then, one day, there was no door to enter.

       I realize this judgement is the same as if I were someone walking by and staring boldly through her new windowpane.

       Perhaps mother’s actual visibility and accessibility testify to a space I would not recognize at all. A greater space even.

       Greater than what’s on the other side of the door I’m kneeling in front of now. But smaller than the keyhole I’m peering through, the keyhole shaped like a round head atop an armless torso.

       It’s not mother.

       I don’t feel an urge to investigate what I saw beyond this circle-and-triangle aperture.

       Yet I reach for the door knob.

       I reach high.

       There isn’t one.

Karin Doucette is a published writer of short fiction and memoir, and a playwright. She has ranked in international story and stage play competitions and was a Finalist in UK's 2023 Page Turner Awards. Karin also reads for top story competitions, most recently, Scottish Arts Trust. She has travelled and/or worked on every continent and lives in Canada.