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Someone had turned the heat on. Caught in that place where one is not fully asleep, nor are they fully alert, Teresa made out the noise and sudden shift in temperature. That distinct noise and the comfort of the blankets she was ensconced in reminded her of a time when her life was vastly different.
In this place, she could almost imagine the faint smell that carried with the house’s old radiator while making out the heavy footsteps from below.
“Anne, c’mon what’re you doing? You know we can’t afford to have that on right now,” Her father’s voice from down the hall. He’d be leaning against the doorpost of her parents’ room, hands in his pockets, working through a scowl that looked all too much like the scowls she threw Jane’s way. Before things changed, it was nothing more than stress over finances that got him worked up. In the sanctuary of her room, Lisbon couldn’t make out her mother’s response, but knew this argument well enough to fill in the blanks.
Her mother despised working on her feet for hours on end and coming back to an icebox of a house. In the middle of winter, dammit, couldn’t they afford at least to run the heat for a few hours? The blame shifted back and forth between the two of who was the bigger spender.
The worst of this was having to layer every night before going to bed. Lisbon remembered the ritual that followed coming home from school to a freezing house, finding the windows and screen door covered by blankets or tarps and knowing her parents were behind on a paycheck.
“It’s just for a little while, Reese.” Her father would say, dropping his large, weathered hand to her shoulder. Four kids never seemed a lot to her until then. Faces from their church showed up at their front door with cardboard boxes full of clothes her mom would turn away.
“We get by,” said Anne stiffly, a toddler on her hip.
Sometimes on Saturday mornings Lisbon would be awakened by a blast of frigid air, straight from the artic, she thought. At first, it’d drive her crazy. Cold bare feet and a shock of dark hair in her bed when there was a perfectly comfortable bed in his own room.
“Tommy,” Lisbon would growl, pulling the blankets back over her head, and consequently her brother’s. “Can’t you stay in your own bed, or at least put some socks on?”
“No,” Came a muffled response before he’d wrap his skinny arms around her midsection. Lisbon’s mother always just said he needed a little more attention, being caught between Stan and Jimmy, who somehow were closer to each other than they were to Tommy. He liked doing things his own way, and did not wait, nor had a want for direction from others. Little rebel that he was.
Before things changed, Anne would often joke that Teresa was a fill-in for when she wasn’t available to care for the boys. It felt too much then, even as she loved her brothers deeply, but she would soldier on anyway, knowing both her parents were working hard to provide for her family. And she knew without a shadow of a doubt her mother’s love for her.
After the accident, Lisbon’s old room felt more of a sanctuary than ever. Even if her father could break down the door if he wanted to, in a drunken rage, he seemed content to stay downstairs, sleeping on the couch most nights. Whether it was because he physically struggled to make it up the stairs, or his subconscious was avoiding the room he once shared with his wife, Teresa didn’t know. What she did know was that she had to do everything in her power to keep her brothers safe. It wasn’t an uncommon thing to be startled awake at the sound of little feet coming into her room, trying in vain to be quiet as they closed the door behind them. Jimmy liked to hide in her closet when it got bad, sitting against the wall cradling a stuffed animal while Stan would pace back and forth, desperately wanting to do something with his hands.
She knew you could ask any one of her siblings, and they’d tell you how to tell if dad was drinking – even if you were still in bed, you could hear the uneven steps below, the way doors slammed in his wake, and you’d be on edge in an instant. No matter that as adults they skirted the topic altogether as if it were the plague.
It was all too familiar, though foreign enough now. These days the cabin that Jane had built was their sanctuary. Lisbon turned back over, pulling the blanket with her, wanting to sleep for just a little while longer.
“Mean old blanket hog,” Jane said good-naturedly, sliding back into bed. His bare feet rubbed against his wife’s leg, eliciting a shriek in the process.
“Jane, where are your socks?"
"In the wash,” He stretched languidly, setting both hands behind his head and giving a sigh of contentment. "Sorry if I woke you," Knowing damn well that he had.
"S'okay," Even with her eyes closed, Lisbon knew that she was being watched closely.
“Bad dream?”
“It wasn’t…necessarily bad. I’ve been having weird dreams lately, but this was the first about my father.” she said softly. It wasn’t the first time she had woken to fragments of her childhood leftover.
“Tell me about it.” Jane said imploringly.
“It was more memories than anything – I just…when I was a girl, my parents would argue over whether to run the radiator or not. Some winters we could barely afford to get by. Their stress rubbed off me, I guess you could say. It got worse after mom died because there wasn’t anyone else on our side when it came to things like running the heat when it was below freezing out. When he wasn’t drunk, he sometimes remembered, but, well,” She said helplessly, trusting that Jane would pick up where she had left off. As much as she wanted to leave all of this in the past, she anticipated those old fears would resurface in the same way as Jane’s.
“I will make it my goal that you never have to feel that way again,”
“I trust you, Jane.” And she meant it.