Lock and Key(3)

Inside, the yellow house was sort of odd. The kitchen was the biggest room, and everything was lined up against one wall: cabinets, appliances, shelves. Against another wall was a huge propane heater, which in cold weather worked hard to heat the whole house, whooshing to life with a heavy sigh. The only bathroom was off the kitchen, poking out with no insulated walls—my mom said it must have been added on; there’d probably been an outhouse, initially—which made for some cold mornings until you got the hot water blasting and the steam heated things up. The living room was small, the walls covered with dark fake-wood paneling. Even at high noon, you needed a light on to see your hand in front of your face. My mother, of course, loved the dimness and usually pulled the shades shut, as well. I’d come home to find her on the couch, cigarette dangling from one hand, the glow from the TV flashing across her face in bursts. Outside, the sun might be shining, the entire world bright, but in our house, it could always be late night, my mother’s favorite time of day.

In the old one-bedroom apartment, I was accustomed to sometimes being awoken from a dead sleep, her lips close to my ear as she asked me to move out onto the couch, please, honey. As I went, groggy and discombobulated, I’d do my best not to notice whoever slipped back in the door behind her. At the yellow house, though, I got my own room. It was small, with a tiny closet and only one window, as well as orange carpet and those same dark walls, but I had a door to shut, and it was all mine. It made me feel like we’d stay longer than a couple of months, that things would be better here. In the end, though, only one of these things turned out to be true.

I first met the Honeycutts three days after we moved in. It was early afternoon, and we were getting ready to leave for work when a green pickup truck came up the driveway. A man was driving, a woman in the passenger seat beside him.

“Mom,” I called out to my mother, who was in the bedroom getting dressed. “Someone’s here.”

She sighed, sounding annoyed. My mother was at her worst just before going to work, petulant like a child. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, watching as the couple—he in jeans and a denim work shirt, she wearing slacks and a printed top—started to make their way to the house. “But they’re about to knock on the door.”

“Oh, Ruby.” She sighed again. “Just talk to them, would you? ”

The first thing I noticed about the Honeycutts was that they were instantly friendly, the kind of people my mother couldn’t stand. They were both beaming when I opened the door, and when they saw me, they smiled even wider.

“Well, look at you!” the woman said as if I’d done something precious just by existing. She herself resembled a gnome, with her small features and halo of white curls, like something made to put on a shelf. “Hello there!”

I nodded, my standard response to all door knockers. Unnecessary verbals only encouraged them, or so I’d learned. “Can I help you?”

The man blinked. “Ronnie Honeycutt,” he said, extending his hand. “This is my wife, Alice. And you are?”

I glanced in the direction of my mother’s room. Although usually she banged around a lot while getting ready— drawers slamming, grumbling to herself—now, of course, she was dead silent. Looking back at the couple, I decided they probably weren’t Jehovah’s but were definitely peddling something. “Sorry,” I said, beginning my patented firm shut of the door, “but we’re not—”

“Oh, honey, it’s okay!” Alice said. She looked at her husband. “Stranger danger,” she explained. “They teach it in school.”

“Stranger what?” Ronnie said.

“We’re your landlords,” she told me. “We just dropped by to say hello and make sure you got moved in all right.”

Landlords, I thought. That was even worse than Witnesses. Instinctively, I eased the door shut a bit more, wedging my foot against it. “We’re fine,” I told them.

“Is your mom around?” Ronnie asked as Alice shifted her weight, trying to see into the kitchen behind me.

I adjusted myself accordingly, blocking her view, before saying, “Actually, she’s—”

“Right here,” I heard my mother say, and then she was crossing the living room toward us, pulling her hair back with one hand. She had on jeans, her boots, and a white tank top, and despite the fact that she’d just woken up about twenty minutes earlier, I had to admit she looked pretty good. Once my mother had been a great beauty, and occasionally you could still get a glimpse of the girl she had been—if the light was right, or she’d had a decent night’s sleep, or, like me, you were just wistful enough to look for it.

She smiled at me, then eased a hand over my shoulder as she came to the door and offered them her other one. “Ruby Cooper,” she said. “And this is my daughter. Her name’s Ruby, as well.”

“Well, isn’t that something!” Alice Honeycutt said. “And she looks just like you.”

“That’s what they say,” my mom replied, and I felt her hand move down the back of my head, smoothing my red hair, which we did have in common, although hers was now streaked with an early gray. We also shared our pale skin— the redhead curse or gift, depending on how you looked at it—as well as our tall, wiry frames. I’d been told more than once that from a distance, we could almost be identical, and although I knew this was meant as a compliment, I didn’t always take it that way.