Angels and Outcasts : An Anthology of Deaf Characters in Literature

The Key

The Key by 6udo~Ct Welfy EDITORS' PREFACE The deaf couple in "The Key" are deaf so as to emphasize their separation from the world, their separation brought on by romantic and wishful thinking about a future that will never come. In this story, they miss their train to Niagara Falls, where they expect that after years of marriage they will finally find what it means to hear (or what it means to be alive?). But Albert and Ellie "missed their train" long ago, and always will, for what they are both seeking is something they can never find: a miracle that will change their lives and bring them love and happiness. Their desperation, their aloneness in the world (two against the world), is emphasized by their deafness but not caused by it. The young man who drops the key understands their hopeless desperation, knows the strange symbolic hope that Albert finds in the key, and knows as well how meaningless his gesture of also giving Ellie a key is, and he therefore walks away from the couple with a feeling of self-loathing for reinforcing their absurd dream of a miraculous escape from their lives. "The Key," then, is about deafness, and it is not-it is, to the extent that deaf people may often be cut off as were Albert and Ellie, may often place unrealistic hope in something happening someday to rescue them and change their lives, may often feel intense suspicion ofthe world. But the story is about all people who live such lives of "quiet desperation "-one need not be deaf to fall into such a life. 158 • The Key· Albert and Ellie are a truly pathetic couple, but not because of the way they see life and themselves and other people. Their lives are wasted because of fantasy and dreams that replace life itself. They will be, symbolically, always waiting for their train to come and it will never come. THE KEY It was quiet in the waiting room ofthe remote little station, except for the night sounds of insects. You could hear their embroidering movements in the weeds outside, which somehow gave the effect ofsome tenuous voice in the night, telling a story. Or you could listen to the fat thudding of the light bugs and the hoarse rushing of their big wings against the wooden ceiling. Some of the bugs were clinging heavily to the yellow globe, like idiot bees to a senseless smell. Under this prickly light two rows ofpeople sat in silence, their faces stung, their bodies twisted and quietly uncomfortable , expectantly so, in ones and twos, not quite asleep. No one seemed impatient, although the train was late. A little girl lay flung back in her mother's lap as though sleep had struck her with a blow. Ellie and Albert Morgan were sitting on a bench like the others waiting for the train and had nothing to say to each other. Their names were ever so neatly and rather largely printed on a big reddish-tan suitcase strapped crookedly shut, because of a missing buckle, so that it hung apart finally like a stupid pair oflips. "Albert Morgan, Ellie Morgan , Yellow Leaf, Mississippi." They must have been driven into town in a wagon, for they and the suitcase were all touched here and there with a fine yellow dust, like finger marks. 159 • The Twentieth Century • Ellie Morgan was a large woman with a face as pink and crowded as an old-fashioned rose. She must have been about forty years old. One of those black satchel purses hung over her straight, strong wrist. It must have been her savings which were making possible this trip. And to what place? you wondered, for she sat there as tense and solid as a cube, as ifto endure some nameless apprehension rising and overflowing within her at the thought of travel. Her face worked and broke into strained, hardening lines, as if there had been a death-that too-explicit evidence ofagony in the desire to communicate. Albert made a slower and softer impression. He sat motionless beside Ellie, holding his hat in his lap with both hands-a hat you were sure he had never worn. He looked home-made, as though his wife had self-consciously knitted or somehow contrived a husband when she sat alone at night. He had a shock of very fine sunburned...