Excerpt: Behind Locked Doors (working title)

All fears aside, the trip to my parents’ house took under a half hour, and long before I was ready for it, I was pulling into their driveway. I let my car idle for a few moments as I looked at the house.

It was big. That’s the first thing visitors notice, and with good reason. Technically, it’s a four-story house, but the stories are a little staggered, so it looks like a three-story house. The siding was dark brown with white trim. I was of the opinion that my mom had tried to make it look like a citified house, and only managed to make it look pretentious. A house with honest-to-God trim in the middle of the woods? Please. That just screamed ‘I was born and raised in the Lower Forty-Eight and didn’t want to live in backwoods Alaska but do anyway because I love the guy I came with’. I wasn’t sure she did love my dad, but they were kinda stuck by virtue of having five children together and the fact that they were comfortable around each other.

Sighing, I turned off my car and got out, locking the door behind me. I wouldn’t put it past someone in my family to take the distributer cap out while I was inside; the least I could do was make it more difficult for any would-be saboteurs. I looked up at the house and saw a figure at the kitchen window, peering out. One thing about Alaskan winters: by six o’clock (the time I arrived at my parents’), it’s nearly pitch-black. And my family being the considerate individuals that they are, none of the outside lights were on. Of course, I did have to take into consideration that I would be the only person arriving from the outside world (unless Danny had sprouted a pair of balls and gotten a girlfriend), so they may not have remembered about the outside lights, but I was in the kind of mood to consider it a personal attack on me for daring to move out.

I guess I should explain. I’m the youngest of five, with four older brothers. But I’m the only one who’s moved out to date. My oldest brother is in his late thirties, has a job and a wife (they live in the basement apartment), and has never moved out of our parents’ house. I wasn’t sure if that was sweet or creepy, I just knew I had to get out as soon as I could, so I did. My mom never quite forgave me for moving out, quoting ‘And a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ as proof that God wanted children to stay with their parents until they got married (and beyond, if Samuel was any proof). But I knew I was going to lose whatever sanity I was born with if I didn’t move out, so I did as soon as I could win emancipation from my parents at age seventeen.

Sticking my hands in my pockets, I walked up to the stairs leading up to the kitchen. As I got closer, I identified the person at the window: Samuel’s wife, Rachel. She seemed sweet enough, as little as I knew her. She was very quiet, I knew that for sure, and apt to jump if you said ‘boo!’, but overall sweet enough. Sweeter than Samuel deserved, that’s for damn sure. I still have memories of Samuel leaving me out in the woods at age three. There’s a reason I know every square inch of woods within a ten-mile radius of my parents’ house.

I didn’t bother knocking; they knew I was there from the dog barking and Rachel had undoubtedly reported my arrival. Instead, I walked inside the arctic entryway, shed my boots, hat, gloves and coat, hung up my coat, and walked into the kitchen. “I’m here!” I called out for the benefit of making it look like I didn’t know Rachel had announced my arrival.

Danny came bouncing out of the living room, excitement making him look younger than me. I had to smile as he engulfed me in a big brother hug. Like I said, Danny was less a stinker than the others. He never actually stood up for me against Samuel and the others, but he never instigated his own little tortures, and that was enough to endear him to me. And I think I even understood why he never stood up for me. It had a lot to do with being male and having to maintain a certain image around other guys. I returned the hug just as warmly.

“You came!” Danny said when he pulled away. He gripped my shoulders and looked me up and down. “Dang, you’re looking good these days, little sister. Working out more?”

“Something like that,” I replied, smiling up at him. “And of course I came, I told you I would.”

“Yeah, but you said that last year and never showed up.” Danny rolled his eyes at me.

“It was almost Halloween, and I was active on the ambulances then, remember?” I returned, smacking his shoulder lightly. “There was a really bad accident, and I was on duty. I told you I would try then, not that I would show up for sure.”

“Well… whatever. I’m just glad you came now.” We both heard footsteps coming through the living room, and Danny arched an eyebrow at me, looking like a conspiratorial teenager. “Run!” he whispered theatrically. “The Wicked Witch of the West approaches!”

“Not funny,” I muttered back, then plastered a smile on my face as my mom came around the corner.

Whatever else I can and do say about my mom, she was beautiful. I’d stolen my Mental Health identity from her; she was born Cassandra Rain Emerson and kept that full name proudly until she married my father, Ralph Cooper. None of that ‘my mother was a hippy so I just live with my middle name’ for my mom, no ma’am. She was actually proud of her absurd middle name. But she wore it well, with long black hair, fair skin and green eyes. I’d inherited everything but the black hair from her; the blonde my hair was naturally came from my dad’s side of the family. Her beauty wasn’t just a physical thing, though. She carried herself like a queen who expected absolute obedience from everyone around her, and knew her beauty well.

“So you came, Elizabeth,” my mother said. She was born and raised on the East Coast, and had maintained that accent throughout her life. I hated that she always called me by my full first name; it seemed like an insult to the fact that I was far more casual (and dumpy, in my opinion) than she could ever imagine being. No jeans and tee-shirts for her, no sir! Even at home, she wore pants and nice blouses.

“Hello, Mother,” I greeted coolly. “Daniel asked so nicely that I couldn’t turn him down.”

She smiled, those red, red lips turning up just a little at the corners. It wasn’t a nice smile. Smiles like that usually come with a fin and a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth. “You are not inclined to visit us unless you want something, this is true,” she said.

See? She can’t go two sentences without insulting me for leaving and not asking for anything since moving out. Yeah, I had tough months where I didn’t know where the rent was coming from. But I always found a way to pinch pennies and never asked for help from any of my family. I’m pretty sure my mom resented that I was actually succeeding out there on my own. “Believe me, there is nothing here I want,” I replied, returning her shark smile with a tight wolfish one of my own.

Danny stepped between us. “You both promised,” he said, his voice taking on a slight whine. In many ways, Danny is so much younger than me, it’s frightening. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s never gone to bed hungry because rent came before food, or if I just am naturally older, but either way, my brother who was chronologically three years older than me is about five years younger than me in maturity. “Come on, let’s get dinner and hang out, ok?”

My mother and I exchanged a long look. “Truce?” I asked quietly. “For Daniel’s sake?” I knew she would never agree for my sake, or even for the sake of peace. But Daniel was her baby, the last child she had actually wanted. She would do almost anything for him.

“For Daniel’s sake,” she agreed, smiling just a little.

Truce declared, we went into the dining room. Apparently, they had just been waiting for me; my seat and my mother’s seat were the only ones still empty. Daniel sat at the head of the table, as was his right as the birthday boy, and looked at us expectantly as we sat down. I favored him with a little nod and smile as I sat next to Rachel.

As previously mentioned, I have four brothers, and all of them were sitting there that night. Samuel was the oldest, and the only one married. After him was Joshua, then Paul, and finally Daniel. And then there was me, little Elizabeth, the surprise child who wasn’t actually wanted most of the time. Think I’m being too melodramatic? I once quoted that scripture at Mother that says, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?” when she was getting on my case, and she promptly replied, “If the child is you, certainly!”

My dad was there too, quietly tucked into his corner and smoking his pipe. Mother hated that thing, but he refused to give it up; one of the few areas he defied her in and actually won. He caught my eye and smiled. My dad and I were practically connected at the hip from the time I started talking and Mother figured out I wasn’t ever going to be like her. No, I never started smoking a pipe with him, but Dad and I would frequently retreat to the woodshed in the back yard to talk about books I was reading, or the recent news, or anything but the religious mania happening in the house. Dad usually just stood aside and let Mother do as she wanted with the others, but I was his special child. He was the only one who disciplined me (after a midnight argument where I heard my dad raise his voice for the first time in my life), the one who rewarded my good behavior, even the one who took me on the occasional camping trip to get away for a weekend. Believe me, it was nice to be special to someone. The main reason I didn’t go completely insane as soon as I moved out, I think, was my dad’s quiet love.

As soon as Mother and I were seated, Samuel stood up and clasped his hands together. I sighed inwardly as I folded my hands and looked down at them. My family tended to make a production out of prayer, a production that I always felt was false and worrying. After all, praying before food was fine and well, but not if the prayer took so long that the food was cold by the time the prayer was done. I’m not exaggerating; that’s happened a couple times. As I got older and worked out of the house, I started making excuses to eat before coming home, as I was sick of eating cold pasta or meat.

Luckily for us, Samuel only prayed for two minutes, blessing Danny’s day of birth and thanking God for another year granted, thanking God that the whole family was gathered (he seemed to have become the peacemaker as he got older), praying for the nation’s leaders, so on and so forth. He finished by blessing the food, then said, “Amen,” and sat down. Rachel patted him on the thigh, and the look exchanged between them told me everything I never wanted to know about their sex life. Making a face, I turned to the food.

Mother always sits across from me. I’ve never quite figured out why she sits so she can see her least favorite child all the time, though I guessed it had something to do with keeping an eye on me. Just in case I go crazy and start attacking the ‘legitimate’ children, maybe. Actually, that might be too far off. As Samuel began serving the food on our side of the table, Mother asked, “So how is your work going these days, Elizabeth?”

I took my time answering, getting a large portion of mashed potatoes (one of my favorite foods) and mounding the butter high before answering. I knew Mother wanted me to go back to school to be a nurse and work at the hospital, if I had to work outside the home at all. Ideally, I would marry a nice Christian doctor and never have to work again. The very idea made me shudder; I like working. I’d go insane otherwise. “Work is going well,” I replied at last, taking a portion of ham. “I’ll be starting some of my core classes in the spring, and will hopefully be in the paramedic program by the fall or next spring.”

Mother made a little face at the idea, but continued as if she hadn’t shown her disgust. “That’s nice. Any dating prospects?”

Some evil spirit got a hold of my tongue and made me reply, “None at the moment, though I’m keeping my eye on the coffee cart girl at work.”

Danny thunked his knife down on his plate and glared at me, and I knew why. My bisexuality was known among my family, but rejected by my mother so thoroughly that no one wanted to even mention it, for fear of setting her off.

Mother stared at me for a second, then looked at Danny and made a visible decision to not say anything else about my sexuality. She obviously had remembered her promise to her darling little boy. But when she looked at me again, I saw a certain smugness in her eyes. It said, ‘See? I can maintain the peace. Why can’t you?’