Karlene Edwards Short Story

Doorways Karlene Edwards The smallest doorway I ever stepped through was less than one inch high, and the gabled cottage surrounding it was only eight inches at the top of its peaked, shingled roof. Carved from a single piece of dark stained mahogany, the cottage was one of a pair of bookends belonging to my mother. If I gazed for a time at the intricate carving, I could view the cottage’s lead-paned windows at eye level, feel the rough leaves of shrubbery against my legs, and glance up at the dormer bedroom upstairs and the gable window far overhead. I could hear the wind shake the ivy against the side of the cottage, catch the tang of petunias blooming in the window box, sense the entry’s stone steps beneath my feet, as I reached out to open the latch and step inside. Rather than spending time inside the cottage, my entire focus was centered on the doorway, as if I were looking through binoculars at a magnified scene where surroundings nearby fall away. In such moments my perception hummed, my reality softened and was transformed. Sometimes I could create that hum of transformation in other ways. Along one wall of my bedroom next to the closet, my father had built drawers chest-high, and inset a mirror above the top drawer. While I lay on my bed, I could partially close my eyes, then carefully pull the bottom drawer
When I read The Secret Garden, my favorite part wasn’t the garden, but Mary’s exploration of the one hundred dusty rooms no one ever entered. After reading Nancy Drew and the Secret Stair, I searched all the built-in cabinets and closets of our house looking for hidden doors and secret passageways, and I refused to believe that my father hadn’t concealed a staircase inside the walls of our two-story house, for in a recurring dream, I had found