SAM’S MOTHER DID NOT get back until it was dark, and when she came into the hotel room, she had a funny look on her face.
“So?” his father said. He walked toward his wife with his arms wide. “Do we celebrate now or later? Do we order the Bombe Alaska? Do we put on our dancing shoes, or what?”
“Excuse me,” Vanessa said, and she ducked sideways into the bathroom, where Sam could hear her blowing her nose. When she finally came out, she still had a funny look on her face.
Sam got a bad feeling in his stomach. He lay on the big king-size bed with the carved gold headboard and pretended to watch the television.
His mother sat down on the sofa beside his father.
“So?” Earl Kellow asked quietly.
“De Vere wasn’t there,” his mother said.
Sam saw his father’s shoulders shrug. He’ll come back.”
“It wasn’t there,” his mother whispered. “Nothing was there. The entrance to the mansion wasn’t there anymore.”
Sam saw his father take his mother’s hand and begin to stroke it. He said something Sam could not hear.
“Earl” Vanessa said. “I’ve been there five times before. I know the station. I know the entrance.”
“It’s the door that says ‘Cleaning 201.’” He turned to Sam. “Crazy old de Vere,” he said. “Richest man in Toronto and he writes ‘Cleaning 201’ on his front door.”
“Earl,” Vanessa said, “I know what it says. The sign wasn’t there. The door wasn’t there. What I’m trying to tell you is—the whole station has been rebuilt.”
“Maybe you got out at Wellesley instead. Or Dundas.”
Vanessa whispered something short and sharp in her husband’s ear.
“Okay,” Earl said, “maybe I will.”
“Suit yourself,” Vanessa said.
“Sam,” his father said, “will you go down and wait for me in the lobby? I just want to talk to Mummy for two minutes.”
“Sure,” Sam said, but he could see his father was worried, and that made him feel really bad.
So Sam went down in the elevator to the lobby and sat in a deep upholstered chair beside a fountain. The lobby was tall and grand with sparkling chandeliers and Oriental rugs. Grown-ups in big fur coats came in the front door laughing and talking excitedly while the snow melted on their soft black hats. A porter in a uniform walked past holding a huge blue-and-yellow parrot in a gold cage. A girl of six with very white skin and a long silver ball gown was speaking seriously to an older boy, a sixth grader at least, dressed in a black tuxedo.
As they walked past Sam, he heard the boy say excitedly, “He’s sick? He’s really sick?”
And the girl giggled behind her hand and said, “Ten thousand dollars says he is.”
Sam wished he had ten thousand dollars.
Then his father arrived and silently he held out his hand. Sam did not ask what his mother and father had talked about. He stood and walked hand in hand with his father across the lobby. They passed six cashiers, all standing in a line behind a shining mahogany desk. The cashiers wore black suit jackets and had black slicked-back hair. Sam felt that they could tell that Sam and his dad did not have the money to pay the bill.
Just beyond the cashiers there was another elevator, which went to the parking lots and the King Street subway station.
When they stepped out of the elevator, there was a token booth.
“I don’t have to pay,” Sam whispered. “I can duck under.”
“You can do no such thing,” his father said.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cheating.”
When they pushed through the turnstile, they had forty-one dollars and seventy cents left.
Two minutes later the train arrived. Sam, who had spent the week before in New York City, was surprised by how clean and quiet it was. Five minutes later they arrived at Bloor Street.
Sam’s father led the way along the northbound platform.
“You said there was a whole house in there? In the subway?”
“You wait till we find him. He looks kind of like a mole.”
“He has tunnels?”
“He has a mansion under here. There’s a marble fountain just inside the door. There is a ballroom, and galleries with paintings worth millions of dollars.”
“But why does Mr. de Vere live here?”
“When you’re very rich,” his father said, “you can live any way or anywhere you like. Eddie de Vere is a funny little mole of a guy, not much taller than you are. He is a very big gambler, but he’s also very shy, and he doesn’t want people to know he is rich. He walks around the street in old overalls carrying a plastic bucket and then comes down to the subway and opens the door marked CLEANING 201. He likes secrets. That’s why he loves your Mum’s paintings. There’s so much more in them than you think when you first glance at them.”
“Like him?”
“I guess,” his father said. “But who knows what he thinks.” He was standing in front of an advertisement for M&M’s, running his hands over the picture. “This is very strange …” he said. His voice trailed off. He was frowning.
“So?” Sam asked. He had never seen his father look so worried before.
“I’m darned if I know,” his father said. He put the tips of his fingers behind the sign and pulled at it. “The door used to be here, but it’s not here now.” He paused and rubbed his ear. “They’ve been rebuilding….”
“It can’t be just gone,” said Sam, looking at the big bright M&M’s in front of him.
“Sam, I’m telling you, they’ve rebuilt the station. They’ve blocked up the doorway.”
“They’ve put the doorway someplace else.”
“Yes, I guess they have.” Sam’s father looked up and down the bright shining white-tiled wall. There was not another door in sight.
“Maybe he’s in there still,” Sam said. “Maybe he’s on the other side of the wall. Maybe he would hear us if we knocked the right way. Maybe there’s a code. Maybe we should push on one of these M&M’s.”
His father shrugged.
Sam smacked the picture of the M&M’s with his hands.
“So what will happen to us?” Sam said. He began to cry. It was all too much. “What will happen to us now? Where will we get our money? How will we pay for the hotel?”
“Well,” his father said, “I’ll tell you what …”
And he picked Sam up and held him in the air, and Sam looked at his father’s face and saw how he smiled and how calm he was.
“I’ll tell you what,” his father said, hugging him.
“What?” Sam was smiling, too. He could see his father knew just what to do.
“One thing I’ve found out in life is one door shuts, another door opens.”
He put Sam down.
“Which door opens?” Sam said. “Where?”
But his father shrugged and held out his hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back and see your mum.”
But Sam didn’t move. He looked into his father’s eyes and saw Earl Kellow did not know what to do.
“You’re lying!” he yelled. “You don’t know anything. You’re lying. You don’t know what to do.”
His father tried to hug him, but Sam was angry and would not let him.
Finally he took his father’s hand and walked with him up and down the platforms, looking for the door marked CLEANING 201. As they walked the busy corridors of the Queen Street station, Sam was still angry and upset and it never occurred to him that what his father had said might actually come true.
Before midnight another door would open. And Sam would walk right through it.