Hidden Doorways

photo by frogmuseum2

After he bought a 1920’s Cape Code style home, he felt impelled to install hidden doors, miniature windows looking onto bonsai gardens, figurines of elves and gnomes perched in the many nooks and crannies particular to older homes. Things fantastical, mythical, or just a little kooky. He remembered a visit to his aunt’s house once as a child, with overgrown apple trees crowding the windows with their limbs. Looking out the kitchen window, he could see a wiry bird’s nest on the crook of a branch, with a half eggshell and a rubbery looking chick popping its head out. He stared and stared, but the chick never moved. “It’s fake, isn’t it?” he asked doubtfully. “Oh no,” his aunt said. “It’s real. See, he just blinked.” His older cousins backed up her story. “Oh, it’s real alright,” they snickered. He checked on the baby chick every morning to see if it had moved yet, until finally his brother said “Don’t be a dumbass, its rubber. Can’t you see that?” But his aunt immediately came to his defense, “Oh no. It’s real. See, it moved its wing,” and she winked at him, as though the fact that it was real was their little secret.

On the last day of their visit, he was watching the chick from the window and said to his aunt, “The momma bird never shows up to feed it. It’s going to die.” She sat him on her lap and said, “I’m sorry, honey, but it’s not real. It’s a tree ornament that I put up there in the Spring.” It wasn’t until after she fessed up that he finally saw it move. Everybody laughed at him.

He wanted to put something at the base of the giant elm tree by his driveway. Maybe a tiny wooden door in the trunk, and a white picket fence. He wanted to plant ivy at the side of the house so that it would crawl up the chimney brick, and he could lodge elves in the brambles, peeking their heads out of the leaves. Maybe in the guestroom, in that little cupboard door cut into the outer wall to get at the insulation, he could place a hand-bound journal written by a made-up child that lived in the room twenty years ago, documenting all of the weird creatures that come out of hiding during the night. Now, all he needed was a nephew or niece to make it real.