Lock and Key(3)
Author: Sarah Dessen

“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.

I knew that my mother’s sudden reaching out for me was just an act, making nice for the landlords, in order to buy some bargaining time or leverage later. Still, though, I noticed how easy it was for me to fold into her hip, resting my head against her. Like some part of me I couldn’t even control had been waiting for this chance all along and hadn’t even known it.

“It’s our standard practice to just drop by and check in on folks,” Ronnie was saying now, as my mother idly twisted a piece of my hair through her fingers. “I know the rental agency handles the paperwork, but we like to say hello face-to -face.”

“Well, that’s awfully nice of you,” my mom said. She dropped my hair, letting her hand fall onto the doorknob so casually you almost would think she wasn’t aware of it, or the inch or so she shut it just after, narrowing even farther the space between us and them. “But as Ruby was saying, I’m actually going to work right now. So . . .”

“Oh, of course!” Alice said. “Well, you all just let us know if there’s anything you need. Ronnie, give Ruby our number.”

We all watched as he pulled a scrap of paper and a pen out of his shirt pocket, writing down the digits slowly. “Here you go,” he said, handing it over. “Don’t hesitate to call.”

“Oh, I won’t,” my mom said. “Thanks so much.”

After a few more pleasantries, the Honeycutts finally left the porch, Ronnie’s arm locked around his wife’s shoulders. He deposited her in the truck first, shutting the door securely behind her, before going around to get behind the wheel. Then he backed out of the driveway with the utmost caution, doing what I counted to be at least an eight-point turn to avoid driving on the grass.

By then, though, my mother had long left the door and returned to her room, discarding their number in an ashtray along the way. “‘Hello face-to-face’ my ass,” she said as a drawer banged. “Checking up is more like it. Busybodies.”

She was right, of course. The Honeycutts were always dropping by unexpectedly with some small, seemingly unnecessary domestic project: replacing the garden hose we never used, cutting back the crepe myrtles in the fall, or installing a birdbath in the front yard. They were over so much, I grew to recognize the distinct rattle of their truck muffler as it came up the driveway. As for my mom, her niceties had clearly ended with that first day. Thereafter, if they came to the door, she ignored their knocks, not even flinching when Alice’s face appeared in the tiny crack the living-room window shade didn’t cover, white and ghostly with the bright light behind it, peering in.

It was because the Honeycutts saw my mother so rarely that it took almost two months for them to realize she was gone. In fact, if the dryer hadn’t busted, I believed they might have never found out, and I could have stayed in the yellow house all the way until the end. Sure, I was behind on the rent and the power was close to getting cut off. But I would have handled all that one way or another, just like I had everything else. The fact was, I was doing just fine on my own, or at least as well as I’d ever done with my mom. Which wasn’t saying much, I know. Still, in a weird way, I was proud of myself. Like I’d finally proven that I didn’t need her, either.