The Sixty-Eight Rooms (26 page)

At the top of the stairs they stopped and listened before turning the corner into the main hallway. At first it looked like they might have a clear shot to the front exit. But of course several guards were standing near the door, locking up. Clearly surprised to see these two still in the building after closing time, one of them looked up and asked, “Where on earth did you two come from?”

Jack gave a big smile and said, as he and Ruthie kept walking to the exit, “We were in the Thorne Rooms!”

They took the Michigan Avenue bus. The colors of the street scenes outside the window changed to the cold blue shades of a winter evening as the sun set. Ruthie slouched
down into her coat. She looked at Jack, who was silent and looking out the window.

“What about the key, Jack?”

“I was thinking the same thing.” He paused for a minute and added, “I kinda thought we were gonna leave it in there today. You know, put it back where we found it. But then we needed it one more time to get out. We
had
to take it.”

“I feel like it belongs to us now,” Ruthie said. As the bus rumbled along Lake Shore Drive, frozen Lake Michigan looked forbidding, with jagged shards of ice unevenly coating the beach. The almost full moon peering up over the horizon seemed to stare at her like a large, accusing eye. Ruthie knew what she had said was wrong; sometimes finders keepers is an okay thing to believe, but she knew better about the key.

Jack slouched down too.

“What should we do with it?” Ruthie asked.

“You know we’re gonna have to put it back,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Yeah,” she answered with a sigh.

“I don’t think we should leave it
exactly
where we found it, on the floor in there. It’s amazing it hadn’t been swept or vacuumed up before we found it. We need to put it somewhere in the corridor that’s safe.”

The bus made a turn, heading to their neighborhood. Soon they’d be at their stop.

“It’s like Sophie’s journal,” Ruthie added. “It belongs with the rooms.”

“We’ll put it back just as soon as we can,” Jack said with unconvincing resolve.

But they had the same thought: neither one of them wanted to put the key back right away. They needed to know that this adventure was over before they did that, and they couldn’t accept that yet. It didn’t feel over.

Ruthie had never experienced so much happiness that involved so many people for so many different reasons. Her best friend would not be moving and she had helped two people—Mrs. McVittie and Edmund Bell—come to terms with unanswered questions in their pasts. She hoped she would meet Caroline Bell someday soon and maybe do the same for her. Ruthie’s parents’ happiness had to do with how proud they were of her for finding the backpack and getting it to its proper owner. Even Claire was pleased with her little sister for showing “serious focus.”

Surprisingly, Ruthie also felt differently about Claire. Somehow she wasn’t so bothered anymore about sharing their tiny, cramped room in their smallish apartment. After having slept overnight in one of the most beautiful rooms imaginable, Ruthie understood something in a way that Ms. Biddle might call an insight. She had come to realize that no matter how fantastic and luxurious a place might be, it’s people who make it special. Without meeting Sophie and Monsieur Lesueur, without hearing the voice of Christina of Milan, without the encounter with Thomas Wilcox and without having Jack to enter the
rooms with her, she would have just been visiting really beautiful interiors filled with pretty objects. Ruthie was glad she understood this.

Jack was happy about a lot of things but mostly he was relieved that he would not have to move. His mom went to work immediately on the Oakton mural, which helped to bring more jobs her way. Edmund Bell got his camera out again and rekindled his career, to great critical success. And now that his early work had been found, Lydia persuaded the owner of the gallery to schedule a much bigger exhibition, a complete retrospective of his work.

In less than two months, the exhibition opened, drawing a huge crowd and great reviews. They were all invited to the opening, a very fancy Saturday-night event at which Ruthie and Jack had their pictures taken with all kinds of people they didn’t know. The two of them had become celebrities in the art world for having found the lost photos and gotten them back to their rightful owner. And the news of such an important art world find generated great publicity for Mrs. McVittie’s shop. New customers showed up every day hoping to find undiscovered treasures.

Mrs. McVittie had been invited to the opening and accompanied Ruthie’s family to the art gallery. She had rummaged through her extensive closet—imagine how many years’ worth of clothes this born collector could sift through—and decided to wear a beautifully embroidered vintage silk dress. She also carried a small vintage handbag, embroidered with gold beads and rhinestones.

“It’s such a thrill to put this on again,” she said, enjoying all of the lavish compliments she received. “This handbag belonged to my sister. I don’t know where she found it but it’s exquisite, don’t you think?” she said to everyone who commented on it.

Caroline Bell attended the event with her father, meeting Ruthie, Jack and Mrs. McVittie for the first time. Mr. Bell introduced her to everyone as Dr. Bell.

“I’m so pleased to meet you all,” she said graciously. Caroline Bell was tall like her father, very elegant and pretty. Ruthie observed that she also looked extremely happy. “And I’m also very grateful to you for finding my father’s photos.”

“Ruthie and Jack found them. They deserve the thanks,” Mrs. McVittie said.

“To think, all those years ago I lost my backpack! I can’t remember how I lost it. I guess we’ll never know how it ended up where it did—unless you two have any ideas.” She said this directly to Ruthie and Jack. Ruthie felt a slight nudge from Jack’s elbow.

Mrs. McVittie smiled at Caroline Bell. “Memories come in and out of focus; sometimes you have to wait many years for clarity.”

Caroline looked down into the wise face. Then she turned back to Ruthie and Jack, saying, “I suspect the three of us have more to talk about!”

“Anytime,” Ruthie answered; she couldn’t wait to have that conversation.

The sparkle in Mrs. McVittie’s eyes shone even brighter than usual, and she basked in her newfound fame. But there was really something different about her that evening that could not be explained simply by the shimmer of her gown or the excitement of the event. Was it the secrets she was keeping? Or was it that Ruthie and Jack had suggested the possibility of bringing Mrs. McVittie to the corridor to have a visit inside the rooms again? She didn’t say no to the idea, but she also didn’t say yes. She thought she might be too old for that kind of adventure. However, tonight Mrs. McVittie kept looking at Ruthie in a way that Ruthie had never seen before.

At the end of the evening the Stewart family walked Mrs. McVittie back to her apartment building. Standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator, Mrs. McVittie thanked them all again and then said, “Just a minute, Ruthie. I want to give you this.” She extended the beautiful handbag to Ruthie.

“Mrs. McVittie! You can’t … I can’t accept this. It was your sister’s,” Ruthie protested.

“Yes. And it was someone else’s before it belonged to her. And now I want you to have it. You have given me—all of us—such a gift by reuniting Edmund with his photographs. Please accept this as my gift to you.”

“Are you sure?” Ruthie had to admit she would love to have such a beautiful treasure.

“Positive. Funny thing about all these objects I own—somehow I’m only just taking care of them for the next
person. We have to keep reconnecting the right people to the right things. You’ll take care of this now. Besides, how many more evenings like this will I attend where I’ll need this sort of bauble?”

“Well, let’s hope many more, Minerva!” Ruthie’s dad chimed in.

She shrugged and smiled. “Maybe, maybe not,” she said, handing the bag to Ruthie more insistently now. “Please, you must take it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. McVittie. I promise I’ll take good care of it,” Ruthie said solemnly. The jewels glistened especially bright. Then Mrs. McVittie stepped into the elevator.

“Good night, all,” she said with the marvelous twinkle in her eye.

On the walk home, Ruthie’s family talked over the events of the evening, enjoying a mild midspring night in the city. It was late—close to midnight—and Ruthie felt pretty tired, but she also felt something else: the beautiful jeweled handbag that she clutched close to her, the gift that Mrs. McVittie had insisted on giving her, seemed to be warming up in her hand. Just a bit at first, and then it became so warm that she couldn’t ignore it. She looked at the handbag as her family walked; was it glowing more intensely?

But as they rounded the corner to their block, the sensation faded. Ruthie looked at the jewels—they did seem to be glowing, but only from the streetlights reflecting on the facets of the rhinestones. Surely she had imagined all
of this. It had been such an exciting evening, and all day she had been thinking so much about their adventure in the Thorne Rooms. She was tired and perhaps her hands were simply clammy from nerves.

At home, sitting on her bed with the beaded bag in her hand, Ruthie thought about how it hadn’t been so long ago that she believed that nothing exciting ever happened to her. How quickly things had changed! Was it because she was open to magic? Or was it what her father always said, that you have to make things happen for yourself? She held the bag quietly, waiting to see if it would warm up in her hand. But the bag felt unchanged. She would have to be guided by reality; she couldn’t wish the handbag into being something magical. She remembered what Mrs. McVittie had said to her about books—that they can tell you everything you need to know about them. She hoped that was true for other things, like this handbag. What would it tell her, if anything? Ruthie sighed, then yawned and gently placed it in her top dresser drawer, to keep it safe, as she’d promised. She would look at it again in the morning.

AT A VERY YOUNG AGE
I started going to the Art Institute of Chicago with my mother. She was a painter who loved the museum and I was her youngest child. Often she would take me on the train into the city for the day. It always felt like an adventure. She loved the Impressionist landscapes. I loved the Thorne Rooms. I think my mother imagined herself in those faraway landscapes. I imagined myself in the perfect miniature rooms. Like Ruthie, I still get a feeling in my stomach whenever I enter them; the magic has not gone away.

In writing this story, I have included characters both real and imaginary. Of course, Mrs. Thorne was a real person who traveled all over the world and bought miniatures wherever she found them. When her collection became large enough she began to create period rooms that she wanted to be used for educating the public about historic
interiors. She made most of the rooms in the 1920s and 1930s. The Art Institute holds an archive of materials having to do with the rooms, but I learned most of the documentary facts from the beautiful catalogue of the rooms. This is where I read that Mrs. Thorne bought many miniature pieces from a “little shop in Paris.” This fact—which you can read about in the catalogue—set my imagination in motion.

The French Revolution and the Salem witch trials are, of course, real events in history, but Sophie Lacombe and Thomas Wilcox are creations of my imagination. I took the name of Sophie’s tutor, Monsieur Lesueur, from the tutor of an important historical figure, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, who after the French Revolution traveled in America and wrote about the country and democracy. Christina of Milan is also a real figure from history, and a copy of a famous portrait of her (by Hans Holbein) hangs in room E1. She had a long life, and some contemporary members of Europe’s royal families are her descendants.

When Ruthie and Jack are doing their research in the archive, they learn about the antique dollhouse from Denmark, as well as the estate of Thomas Wilcox’s heir. These are my inventions. But the descriptions of the rooms and all the wonderful objects in them match what you see in the real-life rooms. There is a book on a desk in room E1; I imagined that book to be Christina’s. The book I call Sophie’s journal sits on a beautiful desk in room E24.
And you will find a tiny model of the
Mayflower
on the fireplace mantel of room A1.

The access doors that Ruthie and Jack use to enter the corridor behind the rooms are visible in Gallery 11. I have taken the liberty of assuming that a corridor runs behind all the rooms. I imagined the ledge my two characters run along, as well as the boxes of catalogues, buckets, duct tape and air vents that they find and use.

So as you can see I have imagined a lot: characters, magic objects, time travel. But so did Mrs. Thorne. She first imagined and then created these sixty-eight rooms, from start to finish. When asked why she never included human figures in the rooms, she answered that she could not make them as realistic as the objects, that it would ruin the illusion. Instead, she relied on her imagination and expected everyone who viewed the rooms to do the same. I think Mrs. Thorne knew that imagination can be magic.