Waking Up
It was weird for Laura looking at her dreams compared to her father’s, but before she left the house, as Laura sat in her room numb to everything, she finally put the pieces together, her father wanted a boy. He wanted to live his childhood dreams through a child, but Laura was an only child. As much as he pushed her, she would never be the tom-boy nor sport’s star that he wanted her to be.
Leaving the safety of her room, she knew the conversation that was coming soon, “What are you doing with your life?” “That’s not a real job.” “Why didn’t you at least try harder so you could be like Jim.”
Jim was her cousin, the one all of the family loved, the one with the good grades, the one who had the perfect wife, the one who had two toddlers with another child on the way. The thing was, and the family didn’t know it, but Jim was about as happy with his life as Laura was with hers, meaning not at all.
Laura was sick of hearing about Jim, but every time there was a family gathering she could tell from the blank look in Jim’s eyes that he was the same as her, only he had more people to hurt by doing something many would consider drastic.
As Laura got to the kitchen her father greeted her with complete disdain, “Oh, there she is, my pride and joy! What are you not going to accomplish today?”
Laura went and made herself a cup of coffee, looked in the refrigerator, and knowing this would be the last time she would say these words replied, “Good morning to you, too, dad.”
She just wanted him to leave for work.
Laura took her coffee back to her room, sat at the desk, and thought of writing a note.
“Why bother?”
Looking at the vanity mirror on her desk, she saw the blank look in her eyes, a look she had become accustomed to, the never-present smile, and listened for her father to leave.
She heard the front door open and then slam shut.
“Finally.”
The smallest of smiles came to her face.
She didn’t know why it seemed important to do, but after her father left she decided to get in the shower. Looking at herself in the bathroom mirror through the steam that made her reflection look out of focus, she did her best to make her hair a little nicer.
As she stepped on the scale after doing her hair, Laura laughed, “Wow, that’s a habit I won’t have to deal with any more,” and proceeded to get dressed.
There would be nothing special for this day. In her mind she saw the course of the rest of the morning, a brief walk through Spring Grove Park, and back to the house.
She checked to make sure she remembered the combination to the gun safe and saw the heavy door swing open, revealing the five, prized possessions of artillery that her father had collected. At times she felt that he loved them more than her, in fact she was pretty sure of his love for his arsenal. Her father never shared the combination with anyone, but one day she found a scrap of paper in the family bible and for whatever reason, instantly came to the conclusion what the scribbled numbers would unlock.
Knowing that she could get to the pistol her father kept, Laura closed the massive door and locked the safe. She made sure the spindle was left exactly at the number 25. She remembered one time, when she was younger, she was playing in the house and accidentally spun the dial when her friends were visiting. Her father yelled at her that she was never to touch the safe again, that he would always know if she did, and grounded her for a month. She didn’t know why she cared, but figured, just in case her father came home for lunch while she was walking at the park, it would stave off any chance he would stay home and not go back to work.
She looked back in the living room as she walked out the door, sighing with a resignation of how the rest of the day would go.