Safe
An unforgiving Oregon storm beats down. With no shelter, the cold black fabric of her jogging pants and matching shirt cling to her tiny frame. Cynthia lets the bold drops mask her tears as she makes her way through the brush. She sees the tombstone in a clearing and shudders.
“Why the hell did he bury this with Lucky? That sick son of a bitch…” She holds her hand out and receives a shovel. Her polished acrylic nails tap an unsteady rhythm on the cold steel. The first few shovelfuls of dirt reveal bones belonging to her long-dead Golden Retriever.
“Cyn, you think this is a good idea?” Brian nervously hops from one foot to the other. His gaze is fixated on the two-story, unlit house looming in the dark. The fear in his eyes is unmistakable. “This isn’t our house anymore.”
Cynthia sighs. She scans the vast grasslands of a backyard where she can’t remember ever playing. It had stopped being their house the day their mother died.
Brian was two and Cynthia was a mature seven. They had grown up in the beautiful, massive log cabin in rural Clark, Oregon thanks to their mother’s wealth. Father was a trucker when he met her. He picked her up hitchhiking in northern California where she was rebelling against a rich, adventure-less lifestyle. They had fallen in love and Mother had demanded he quit trucking and start working for her father in the family’s corporate empire. Father didn’t know the first thing about software or computers and frankly he couldn’t care less. However, for the sake of his bride’s happiness, Father endured many awkward years as the blue collar worker trapped in a white collar world.
He didn’t go easily, however. In just a few years, Father accrued a singular hatred for Mother’s family. Perhaps it was jealousy of a life he never knew. He told her he would continue working with them on the condition that they stop seeing her parents socially. Mother had a strong sense of loyalty to Father. She made him the promise that gnawed away at her heart for the rest of her years.
No one could explain to Cynthia how Mother had died. Later in life she determined the cause of death to be Failed Expectations. Her death certificate claimed heart failure.
Father pulled in huge sums of money from Mother’s death; her trust fund, expensive life insurance policies. He promptly quite his job and took up drinking full-time. From then on the house turned into a living entity; a monster.
“Technically, it is our house,” Cynthia says. The shovel hits a metallic surface. “Jackpot.”
Brian leaves his post to help his sister haul the sizeable safe from the mud. At 18, he is as scrawny as his sister is petite. His enthusiastic pulling leaves the safe exactly as it is. He whimpers from the effort.
“Use your legs, not your back, idiot!” Cynthia pushes him out of the way and plants one leg on each side of the safe. “See if you can break it open where it is. I’ll pull it up as far as I can.”
“But –“
“Stop being such a fucking coward. We deserve whatever’s in here for putting up with that drunken bastard.”
Armed with the crowbar Cynthia has provided, Brian strikes the safe door with gusto.
“Don’t hit it, you moron, pry it!”
“Can’t you do it?”
“For God’s sake, Brian, you have no balls.” Cynthia pushes her soaking black hair out of her face. Piercing her brother with her emerald stare, she sees his brown eyes crinkle at the edges in a sorrowful stubbornness she knows all too well. His pale, wet face is full of worry lines that invade his youth. He unconsciously reaches up with one hand and caresses the deep scar near his right temple. A shudder racks Cynthia and stops her dead.
It was her first day of high school and Cynthia was excited about the new friends she had made. The years since Mother’s death had been spent acting as her replacement, and Cynthia was tired of raising Brian. Father always seemed disappointed in her imitation. When one of the girls invited her over after school, it thrilled her. It seemed like something normal girls did.
So she didn’t think twice when she put nine-year-old Brian on the bus and told him to tell Father she’d be home for dinner.
For one blessed afternoon, Cynthia was like her peers. They talked about the cute boys in the freshmen class and the older boys they knew they could only fantasize about. They painted their nails aquamarine and tried to curl their hair. When the sun began to set, Cynthia asked to be driven home.
The silence that greeted her when she opened the front door petrified her. She called out to Brian, but heard nothing. In the low light of the den she could see Father’s unconscious figure in the Laz-E-Boy. It wasn’t rare for him to drink himself into darkness before dinner.
She climbed the stairs, holding her breath. Each creak and groan brought her closer to what she knew had to be a terrible truth. When she caught the small sound of a whimper, she exhaled, long and thankful. She’d caress Brian’s bruises, find him appropriately modest clothing for tomorrow, and life would go on as it always had.
But she didn’t expect to find the trail of blood, littered with glass and the familiar scent of booze. It led from outside her father’s bedroom to Brian’s room. Cynthia swung open the door to find Brian cowering in a corner, his face all but covered in deep red ooze.
She scooped up the tiny boy and carried him to the bathroom. Brian didn’t seem to have grown from the time he was six. She sat him in the tub and tried to wash away the blood, all the while trying to coo comfort apologetically. The source was a gash near his right temple that housed a host of tiny shards of glass. Cynthia grabbed some tweezers from the first aid kit and went to work.
After that day, Cynthia never left Brian home alone again. She stopped going to friends’ houses and she certainly wasn’t going to have anyone over. And so the sparking of new friendships died out and Cynthia was a lone soldier. The house was a terrible beast. Brian wet the bed until he was thirteen and Cynthia cleaned the sheets in secret. Whenever Father got violently drunk, Cynthia would force herself to take the brunt of it, offering her body if need be.
Brian remains motionless, caressing his scar, as Cynthia snatches the tool and begins prying the door open.
“I saw you at the funeral,” Brian says softly, “You were sad. Don’t act like he didn’t mean anything at all.”
Cynthia says nothing as the door begins to give. She chokes back emotion she is loathed to feel. “I’ve almost got it.”
The rain lightens to a drizzle, the small sound punctuated with Cynthia’s gasps for air. Brian cannot let her struggle alone. He grabs the shovel and digs around the safe freeing the door of the dense mud.
Just then, the steady pitter-patter of rain is disrupted by squealing brakes.
“Someone’s here!” The panic rings loudly in Brian’s voice as he huddles closer to his sister. “We have to go. Now!”
“I have every right to be here! I’m not leaving without the safe.”
A car door slams. The deliberate squish of large shoes in muddy patches grows louder. Someone pushes the brush aside.
“Help me get this open, B. Quickly!”
Brian looks at his sister. Her long black hair is plastered to her face, her green eyes wild with grief and determination. She is pulling desperately at the safe door, her jogging pants coated with brown earth. His chest begins to ache.
Cynthia’s role as Brian’s mother and protector ended when she turned 18. She was finally free, but she knew the weight of her thirteen-year-old brother would anchor her. No matter how desperate she was to be gone, she wouldn’t leave him. Not with him.
Mother was an only child and any social contact with her parents had been cut before Cynthia was born. The only family Cyn had ever known was an uncle who lived in San Francisco. Uncle Jay was Father’s older brother and he used to come and visit at Christmastime and Easter. Jay got a small taste of Father’s true nature, for only two short years after Mother’s death Uncle Jay made the fatal mistake of bringing his boyfriend to Christmas dinner.
Father raged. Uncle Jay was banned from the house, disowned as a brother and an uncle. From then on he was only referred to as “that faggot” and then the topic would be dismissed.
Cynthia did her research late at night by flashlight under the bed covers. She called three men with her uncle’s name that resided in San Francisco. She prayed he hadn’t moved. The third man broke down in tears after she introduced herself and she felt shamed to ask him for such an enormous favor.
After hearing of their plight, Uncle Jay not only agreed to take Brian in, he insisted on it. He begged Cynthia to live with him too, to spend time with family that loved her. She adamantly refused and promised to drop off Brian when his school let out for the summer.
By then, Father was bored with his punching bags and playthings. When Cynthia bravely announced that she and Brian were going away, he simply slurred a “Good riddance.” When he sobered up he wasn’t quite so accepting, but with a mind destroyed and cirrhosis poisoning him in a slow, venomous way, Father never worked himself up to finding them.
Brian grabs a strong-looking branch and plants himself next to Cynthia. He begins a futile effort to assist the crowbar in wedging open the door, sensing the fugitive approaching.
“I thought so.”
Brian looks up and backs away from the safe, his voice a little more steady. “Uncle Jay? How did you --?”
“I thought you two might come to the house. I looked all over and was ready to leave when I saw Cyn’s car on the dirt road.”
Cynthia stops pulling and eyes Uncle Jay like an unwanted stranger. She returns to the task at hand.
Jay is dressed more appropriately for the weather in a pine colored raincoat that matches his eyes. An elderly version of Father, Jay takes Brian’s worry lines to a whole new level. The skin on his cheeks hangs in wobbling chestnut sacks, pulling his eyes into a tired, sunken look.
“A safe, huh?” Jay looks over Cynthia’s shoulder, “Can I help you?”
Cynthia eyes him again, trying to soften her rage at his intrusion. “This has nothing to do with you, Jay. Whatever is in here belongs to me and my brother.”
Jay respectfully backs off. Brian joins him in a sort of parody of the funeral they had just attended, watching Cynthia, staring into a hole in the ground. Jay places one big paternal hand on Brian’s shoulder as they hear the lock break.
After leaving Brian with Jay, Cynthia continued south into Nevada. She stopped in a dusty nowhere called Anderville, where the landscape proclaimed the anonymity she desired. With nothing but crusted desert as far as the eye could see, Cynthia settled in a place that was little more than a truck stop. She found work as a waitress at Howard Johnson’s and she sent part of her earnings to Brian. She called every other Friday to check on him and to remind him not to take Jay’s charity. Trying to reinforce his manhood, she insisted he move out as soon as he turned eighteen and that he pay Jay back for every cent spent on him.
She volunteered for the graveyard shift. Sleep was never something she craved; it only brought nightmares. At night, in the relative silence of her tiny room, monsters appeared to steal her childhood. It wasn’t just Father. It was Brian, too - his incessant neediness, his inability to grow up. Resentment stewed and when she woke it remained, mildly diluted with guilt.
Cynthia stares into the safe. Brian and Jay cannot see from their angle, but do not wish to intrude upon her. Her labored breath has a terrifying quality, arrhythmic and harsh.
“Of course,” she spits, “of course his precious treasure would be this.” She raises a bottle of whiskey. Dusting it off, she holds it up to the moonlight to read the label. “The Macallan Fine and Rare Collection, 1926.”
At first there is silence. Brian takes a timid step forward, offering his desperate form of comfort. “I bet it’s worth a lot of money.”
Cynthia stares at him, aghast. Without breaking from his gaze, she raises the bottle high above her head and brings it crashing down on the edge of the safe. Brian jumps, the violent tinkling of breaking glass shooting an arrow of fear through his subconscious.
She removes the next bottle. “Chivas Regal Royal Salute, 50 years.” Brian is already beginning to back away as she hurls the blended scotch to its shattering demise.
“Cyn, please.” Brian begs, his voice a whimper.
“Montrachet 1978.” Brian scrambles backward toward Jay as the wine bottle goes the way of the others.
Cynthia is flushed, her breathing near hyperventilation. The violence is a rush; a thrill she never knew lay dormant inside her.
“Cyn…” Jay makes a move toward her and she whips on him like a dog protecting prey. He can almost hear her growl. “Cyn, why don’t we talk?”
“Talk?” Cynthia squeals, widening her eyes into a mad stare, “What is there to say? A safe full of fucking liquor is the only thing that bastard left behind!”
She bends over the safe again and removes bottles fervently.
“Chateau Mouton-Rothschild, 1945.”
Crash.
“Diaka Vodka.”
Crash.
“Romanee, Romaney – fuck it.”
Crash.
With each bottle, Cynthia becomes more ravenous, more animal. The names of the priceless liquors start to sound like snarls and grunts. Her primal violence exhausts her and she’s winded. But the bottles keep dropping.
“Cynthia.” She can no longer hear him. Brian is cowering by a tree stump like a frightened child. Jay tries again, terrified.
“Cynthia!”
Jay lays his hand on her back and she whirls on him, meeting his face with a forceful slap. Brian cries out, but Jay ignores the stinging. He grabs his niece around the waist and drags her away from the safe. She grunts and kicks and tries to make her way back to it.
“Leave me alone,” she screams, clawing at Jay’s arms and face. A warm trickle of blood winding its way down his cheek is smeared by the drizzling rain still seeping through the leaves. Brian gawks at the scratches and begins to cry.
Cynthia continues to struggle. “Let me go! Leave me alone! You bastard!”
Brian shrinks away from the violence, his crying reaching back to the fearful sobs of his childhood. Cynthia recognizes the sound and eases a little in her resistance.
Jay holds her with two strong arms and brings her close to his chest. She turns on him and tries with waning effort to scratch him through his thick raincoat. Her energy is spent, her fight drawn out of her by her brother’s childish cries. She collapses in his arms.
“Leave me alone,” she sobs into his chest, “just leave me alone.”
Jay tightens his grip. “I think you’ve been alone long enough.”