The Sixty-Eight Rooms

by Marianne Malone

  “Jack, are you out of your mind?” she demanded.

  “Just act normal,” he ordered, ignoring her question and pulling her along.

  “Well, then you’re gonna have to let go of my sleeve,” she pointed out.

  “Okay. C’mon, though,” he said, letting go. They were near the alcove. A young family had entered the gallery. They couldn’t open the door now.

  “Jack, let’s just look at the rooms, okay?” Ruthie suggested in exasperation.

  “But Ruthie …,” he started. Then he stopped, looked at her and pulled the key out of his pocket.

  Even with no sunlight shining on it, the key sparkled as though it were reflecting the intense sunshine of the brightest summer day. She felt as though she couldn’t look away from it. The carved C and M caught the light and bounced it into her face. Then Jack swiftly wrapped his fingers around the key again, hiding it from view. That little glimpse was all it took; Ruthie, defying her own reluctance, agreed to try to get back in the corridor with him.

  They would have to act fast. The first thing Jack did was to take his library card out of his wallet. “What’s that for?” she asked him, perplexed.

  “You’ll see,” he answered cryptically.

  The lone guard was standing at the entrance to the gallery talking to the lady at the information booth. The guard’s back was toward them. Ruthie and Jack tried to look casual as a few people passed by. Fortunately, in the Thorne Rooms people peered directly and intently into the rooms, so as soon as Ruthie and Jack had the opportunity they made their move. Ruthie stood looking out while Jack placed the fingers of his right hand on the edge of the door. With his left he grabbed the rim of the lock piece, which stuck out about half an inch. Jack pulled firmly. The door budged slightly. He glanced around the room: still no one watching. He continued to pull the door until he had it open, and quickly slipped in. But Ruthie froze.

  “Ruthie!” he said in a loud whisper from inside the corridor. Then someone came near her. Ruthie’s heart started thumping as he closed the door. He was inside, but she was left out. The guard turned around and reentered the gallery.

  There was no knob on the inside of the door, but Jack had found a coat hook there, with which he had pulled the door shut. He placed his library card between the latch and the frame to keep the door from locking. However, he couldn’t do a thing to help Ruthie. She had to get herself in there now. The museum was filling up with every passing minute. It would only get more difficult the longer she waited. With her heart pounding in her ears, she took the next chance. The guard had turned away to give directions to a visitor and there was no one close to her. She knocked once; Jack pushed the door open for her. She was in!

  “Do you think anyone saw you?” Jack said after he had placed his library card back in the jamb.

  “No. No one was looking, I’m sure of it,” she answered, breathless. Gesturing at the card, she asked, “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “Movies.” He grinned.

  The two of them tiptoed far into the corridor.

  “Eww, ugh!” Ruthie stifled a scream; in the dim light she had put her arm against the wall and felt the unmistakable sticky threads of a spiderweb. She imagined there must be many more that she couldn’t see. She hated spiders! Trying to keep her voice soft, she said, “I don’t think this was such a good idea after all, Jack. We could get in so much trouble.”

  He whispered, “Remember what Mr. Bell said? This stuff isn’t really valuable, so no one’s watching. Besides, we’re just kids—what’ll they do to us?”

  “I don’t want to find out!”

  “We’re only gonna be in here a few minutes—to get a good look and see if the key fits anything.” Saying that, he pulled it out of his pocket. As before, it sparkled impossibly in the low light.

  They walked a little farther into the corridor, past the backs of about ten or eleven rooms. Now Ruthie and Jack could see what they hadn’t been able to see when Mr. Bell had let them take their first quick look.

  The rooms were installed in a wooden framework and set inside bigger boxes that formed the backdrops Ruthie had seen through the little doors and windows on the other side. They were like mini dioramas. Some of these boxes weren’t closed completely on the corridor side, and through the openings she was able to see the edges of the painted landscapes and city scenes. Someone could reach in if anything needed fixing. Other rooms had access from side openings in the framework, just big enough for a hand to fit in. The glow coming from the rooms seeped though these openings and other small cracks in the framework. But she couldn’t see inside any of the rooms from the back, just as from the front no one could see the corridor. A ledge at the base of the rooms ran along the entire installation, and all the rooms were numbered like on the front.

  Neither Ruthie nor Jack saw anything obvious that the key might open. They kept going, following the corridor as it made a few turns.

  “We’re behind the back wall now. This corridor must go all the way around,” Jack said. He ran ahead and looked around the next corner. “It does. It’s a dead end back here.”

  “I’m really scared, Jack. How come you’re not even nervous?” Ruthie asked.

  “I guess I don’t feel like I’m doing something bad. It’s not stealing; we’re not hurting anyone or breaking anything.”

  “It might be trespassing,” Ruthie suggested sarcastically. “I guess it might be.” Jack didn’t seem bothered at all. “Do you see anywhere the key might fit?”

  “Let me see it again.”

  Jack handed her the key. It was the first time she had actually touched it. She was surprised by how heavy it felt. Then something very strange happened: her hand began to feel warm under the key and the warmth spread to her fingertips.

  “Ruthie?” Jack looked at her oddly.

  Then something even stranger happened: as she stood there in the corridor with no windows, her hair started to be blown around as if by a gentle breeze. Ruthie couldn’t take her eyes off the key. She had the sensation that her shoes were beginning to get too big for her feet, and her collar started pushing up into her ears.

  “Ruthie!” Jack sounded scared. She broke her gaze from the key and glanced at Jack. Normally, being the same height, they saw eye to eye; but now, looking straight ahead, her eyes were at the level of his neck!

  “Ruthie! Drop it … drop it now!” he said, a touch of panic in his voice.

  She dropped the key to the ground. It made the oddest sort of clinking sound and then all the strange sensations stopped; her toes touched the ends of her shoes again, her collar sat at her neck, her hair rested calmly on her shoulders and she could look Jack straight in the eyes.

  “What happened?” she asked, a bit dazed. Her muscles felt funny, like the day after you’ve done too many sit-ups in gym class.

  “I don’t know.” He reached down to pick up the key. He hesitated for a second—but only for a second—and then completed the motion.

  “Don’t, Jack….”

  But he picked it up anyway—and absolutely nothing happened.

  “That’s weird. Here, you hold it again.”

  “What, are you crazy? No way.” She tried to think the whole thing through to understand what was going on.

  “Look, Ruthie, I’m holding it and nothing is happening. Either we both imagined that something just happened to you when you held the key or it happened for sure. If you don’t touch the key we’ll never know.” He waited a moment before adding, “Don’t you want to know?”

  She stared at the key in his open palm. And then something came over her, something she thought and wondered about for many years afterward. In that moment she decided to take Jack’s challenge. Perhaps it was the odd brilliance of the old metal key that caused Ruthie to behave completely out of character; she made a decision to not think. “Okay, okay!” she said, grabbing the key from him. As soon as she touched it she felt all the things she had felt before. She dropped the key again. The two of them l
ooked at each other. Jack’s mouth hung open and his eyes widened. This was the first time Ruthie had ever seen him speechless.

  Ruthie spoke first. “I’m gonna pick it up again, Jack.”

  “You don’t have to, Ruthie.” Now Jack sounded more scared than Ruthie.

  “I know, but you were right before: something happened to me but not to you. Not knowing what this is all about will drive me crazy! Just promise you won’t let anything bad happen to me, okay?” She bent down. “Here goes!”

  This time she closed her fingers around the key and held on to it tightly. First she felt the strange breeze again. Then she could see Jack getting taller and the room around her growing. She couldn’t exactly feel herself shrinking, but she noticed that her clothes kept readjusting themselves to her body; for an instant they would feel too large, then they would catch up to her smaller size. This happened about a dozen times over the course of a few seconds. Not knowing how small she would become—or if she would disappear altogether—she was about to drop the key when the process came to a halt. She stood about five inches tall. Oddly enough, she felt fine.

  Jack was down on all fours immediately, with his huge face looming over her. It was an unbelievable sight. His hairs and eyelashes were the size of ropes and she could see all the color variations in his giant eyes, which normally just looked greenish. “Oh my God, Ruthie! Are you okay?”

  “I think I’m all right, Jack. Really.” She kept calm. “Maybe you should stand back while I drop the key again.”

  “All right. Hurry!”

  She dropped the key—which had also shrunk—and again the process reversed itself, her clothes switching between too tight and just right a dozen times or so. They even heard that odd sort of tinkling or crinkling sound again as the key expanded on the floor in front of them.

  “Whew!” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes.

  “Don’t ever touch that thing again!” Jack was almost shaking.

  “You know what, Jack? I think it’s really okay. I mean, look at me … I feel fine. What I don’t understand is why this is happening to me and not you.”

  “Well, I don’t understand any of it and I don’t like it!”

  They were quiet for a minute. They both thought they knew what the other was thinking and they were both right. Ruthie was thinking that she was going to shrink down again and get into the Thorne Rooms and that Jack would try to stop her. Jack knew that was what she was thinking and he was, in fact, trying to figure out how to talk her out of it.

  Ruthie couldn’t be sure where this new bravery came from. Her heart had never pounded so hard and she felt almost as shaky as Jack looked, but she had the strongest instinct not to let fear stop her. Maybe it was simply overwhelming curiosity. Whatever it was, she knew that something exciting was happening to her—finally!

  Ruthie took a deep breath. “Listen, Jack, I’ve got to try it one last time … and then I want you to lift me into one of the rooms.”

  “It’s not a good idea. It could be dangerous.”

  “I know, Jack. But I just have a feeling that nothing bad will happen. And who knows—whatever is making this happen right now might never happen again. I don’t want to pass up this chance to find out if I can walk right into one of those rooms!”

  “But what about the people looking in on the other side?”

  “I’ll be really careful. If someone sees me I’ll freeze like a statue. Besides, I bet most people wouldn’t believe their eyes if they saw a miniature human.”

  “Okay … but only like five minutes. Remember, the guards might come and catch me, and then you’d be stuck back here by yourself. They could lock you in,” he cautioned.

  “They’ll never come this far down the corridor and around that corner,” she reasoned, picking up the key. The process started, and as before, she was seeing the world from five inches off the floor! Ruthie could barely see the backs of the rooms, they were so high! The first thing she wondered was whether she could put the key in her pocket and still stay small. She tried it and discovered that her clothes, which of course were touching her, were included in the magic.

  “Okay, I’m gonna pick you up,” Jack said. He put his hand flat on the floor. She had to actually climb up onto it, the key safely in her pocket. His fingerprints were like corduroy and the creases in his hand were as big as the creases in a sofa cushion. He cupped his palm slightly so she wouldn’t fall out, and she had to rebalance herself as though she were on a trampoline.

  “Sorry. I’m trying to move steady,” Jack said. “I can’t believe this; you’re like the size of a gerbil!”

  “Just put me on the ledge behind the closest room. I’ll peek in to see if the coast is clear,” Ruthie directed. Jack walked over to a spot behind room E17, which was a sixteenth-century French bedroom.

  “Easy now,” Jack said, lowering his hand to the ledge. She climbed out of his giant palm. From this position the distance to the floor looked like the Grand Canyon and the ceiling still looked as far away as the sky. The screws holding the rooms in place were as large as the seats of kitchen stools. The hardest thing about being so small was adjusting to the scale. If she thought about it or looked around too much, she got dizzy.

  Room E17 was entered through a small back hallway. “Okay … I’m just gonna walk around the corner and look in,” she said, projecting her tiny voice so he could hear her.

  Once she was in this hallway, Jack couldn’t see her and neither could people looking in from the front. (They couldn’t see the lightbulb that loomed over Ruthie’s head, illuminating the space either.) Viewers on the museum side could see only a small portion of this hallway through a doorway at the back of the room. The carved wooden door was left ajar. She leaned forward to have a look into the bedroom and immediately pulled back. She returned to Jack in the corridor. “Whoops. Someone was in the gallery!”

  “Did they see you?”

  “No, I’m sure they didn’t. I’ll count to ten and look again.” She did and this time it was clear.

  As soon as she was all the way into the room Ruthie knew she had made the right decision. She would remember this moment for her whole life, she was certain. The illusion felt complete and perfect; it seemed as though she had left Chicago, the Art Institute and possibly even the twenty-first century.

  When Ruthie was little, she had always loved fairy tales. Now that she no longer believed in those stories, she wondered what living in the time of knights and kings and queens might have been like. And here she was standing in a room that looked exactly as she had imagined that world to look. For the first time in her life, Ruthie felt extraordinary.

  It was a relief to be inside a space that was her scale again, and her dizziness lifted. There was a big stained-glass window to her right and a carved stone fireplace to her left. The floor was made of different kinds of wood in squares that formed an elaborate geometric pattern. A beautifully carved stand held a half-finished needlepoint project in front of the window. A three-tiered candelabra with real candles hung from the nineteen-foot (or nineteen-inch) ceiling. The walls were covered with brown and gold wallpaper that had vines and birds all over it.

  But the most impressive thing to Ruthie was the giant (to a five-inch-tall girl) canopy bed covered in silvery green silk. This was the same bed she had been enchanted by yesterday. She wanted more than anything to run and jump right into it but she stopped herself. Someone was coming—she could see them just before they saw her. She dashed back into the little hall and waited. Fortunately, she could hear the muffled voices of the people through the glass. “Ooh! Look at this one!” “This is my favorite!” the voices exclaimed.

  Finally there was a break in the crowd. Ruthie entered the room again. She walked over to the bed and ran her hand over the silk bedspread, pushing her fingers into it a bit. It was as soft as a real feather bed. She had to remind herself that it was real, only miniature.

  She couldn’t resist. First she sat on the edge of the bed. It was b
lissfully soft. Then she picked her feet up, not letting the dirty soles of her shoes touch the beautiful silk. Then she put her head down on the pillow. Her gaze caught the tall canopy over her head and the beamed and painted ceiling beyond. Why don’t people still live like this? she wondered.

  She turned her head toward the window. The town beyond was painted so beautifully, it looked as though she could wander through its streets. She closed her eyes to imagine what that would be like. Just yesterday she had been wishing something special, something exciting, would happen in her life. Now here she was, a miniature girl in a miniature room from another century. She opened her eyes to see if she was dreaming. No, it’s real, she thought, and closed her eyes again.

  Suddenly she heard a voice on the other side of the glass. “Mommy, Mommy, c’mere! Look! This one has a little person!”

  It was the voice of a little girl, around six years old. Ruthie lay still. She opened one eye. The girl, who was jumping up and down, turned her head away from the room, calling, “Mommy! C’mon!” While the child’s head was turned, Ruthie jumped out of the bed and flew to the door. She ducked into the back hall.

  From where she stood, Ruthie could hear the little girl, whose mother had joined her in front of this room. “But I saw a little doll in this one and now it’s gone!” the girl insisted.

  “Sweetheart, there are no dolls in these rooms,” Ruthie heard the mother answer. Finally, after much discussion, they moved on.

  Ruthie poked her head back around to Jack’s side of the display. “What happened? Did someone see you?” he asked.

  “Just a little girl. But she was really young and I’m sure her mother didn’t believe her,” she answered casually. “Jack, I wish you could have been in there with me. It’s fantastic! I actually got to lie down on the bed! It’s exactly like being in a real room—only much, much better!”

  “We should stop and get out of here,” he insisted.

  “No, not yet, Jack. I want to see just one more room!”

  “Ruthie, it’s way too risky!”