The Secret Window

Would you like to see the fanciest thing in our entire house?

It’s a window. We have about 20 windows in our house and only one of them looks like this. It’s the Marilyn Monroe in a house full of Norma Jean Bakers.

Would you like to know a mildly interesting fact about this window? I promise to follow it up with a mildly titillating fact.

Mildly Interesting Fact: You can find that exact same window in most of the older homes in our neighborhood, although most of those homes have several of them instead of just one. Perhaps this style of window was the fashion of the times or maybe it caught on because it was a nice, yet affordable way to dress up a home. Either way, I love going for walks and spotting our window in so many other people’s homes. It makes me feel the tiniest bit connected them, because I haven’t even met them and we already have something in common.

Okay. I promised titillation and just as I pledged that we would finish tiling our shower on the eve of May 2, I will honor this commitment as well. Take a close look at this window.

There’s one thing that separates it from its many twins in town. Do you see it?

Maybe you need to get closer.

It’s a bullet hole. A real live bullet hole from a real live gun. In my window. In my house. Here’s where that window sits in my house.

Ack! I had forgotten how tacky our foyer was.

There, that’s better. Kinda.

That window with the bullet hole looks out over our front entryway. I’ve spent a lot of time imagining how that bullet hole got there and recently, a neighbor filled me in. So…here’s the story of the bullet hole.

On February 12, 1953, Mary was home making dinner for her 3 sons and 1 daughter. Her husband, Jim, was across the street helping a neighbor tinker with his car. Mary was mid-way through setting the table when she realized something was amiss. It was not the crash of the front door flying open that caught her attention. Rather, it was the chill of cold winter air intruding upon her bright and cozy kitchen that caused her to set down the silverware and walk towards the foyer. Expecting to see her husband slipping off his boots, Mary casually poked her head around the corner to welcome him home. And although she did find a man standing in her doorway, it was not a man that Mary recognized. This man, with his well-groomed hair and tailored suite, suggested his importance without saying a word.

His dark eyes greeted Mary. The friendly smile fell from her face, the lines of her lips growing thin and pinched over her clenched teeth. The intensity of his stare startled her, but it was his calmness that filled her with fear. Mary’s ear captured the sound of her children playing upstairs, her brain created five different ways to save them and yet her feet remained perfectly still. Mary heard the words “What do you want” exit from her mouth with such force, it was as if the tightening of her throat forced them from her vocal chords.

The man stared not at her, but into her, boring past the fear in her mind to a place where she could comprehend what he was about to say. “Whoever comes to this door next – you tell them you have seen no one,” he whispered. Mary nodded. “Where can I go in this house to be invisible?” he asked, his steady gaze locked on Mary’s eyes.

She lifted her hand to point towards the basement, but its slow and shaky progress through the air stopped as red and blue flashing lights illuminated the doorway behind the man. He reached for his gun in such an easy, practiced way, it was as if he was withdrawing a lighter to spark a lady’s extended cigarette.

Before the man could turn towards the uniformed offers thundering up the porch steps, they were upon him. As they lunged for his weapon, a single bullet escaped its barrel, creating a perfectly round hole in Mary’s leaded glass window. Through the chaos and confusion, the arms and legs flying through the air, each reach from the officers came back empty as the dapper man slipped through their grip and ran off into the night.

He was never found. The local paper and police speculated he was connected to a Chicago-based gang that was doing “business” in Milwaukee. Things had gone wrong, sending one handsomely dressed man in search of a hide out in rural Wisconsin. His identity was never discovered. Several days after the incident, a local newspaper published an article that read, “Liz is totally full of shit and just made up that story. The bullet hole is probably from one of Mary’s sons who opted to shoot out the window with his BB gun instead of his eye. Either way, Liz thinks it’s pretty cool that her window has a bullet hole and she hopes you’ll forgive her for creating such a fictitious and dramatic explanation for it.”

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