Day 167 – Writing exercise – And the door stayed closed

…

That was the thing about people who always said their door was always open.

It was, until it wasn’t.

And sometimes the reason why it closed was a misunderstanding piled on top of pride.

In a way, it cost me everything, but in another, I would not be the person I am now, with the people I know now, and those I had left behind were the poorer for it.

…

As doors went, I didn’t understand the metaphorical meaning until late into my teens.  I don’t think it really mattered, not until I discovered that my father had set goals for each of his children, and if they achieved those goals, they were rewarded.

My oldest brother, Rory, called it the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

My eldest sister, Emma, called it the harbinger of broken dreams.

My next elder brother, Jack, didn’t care.  He had decided early in life that he was not playing the games our father set.  His joy was watching my elder brother try to meet that expectation and failing to quite make it.

I was the youngest, and as my father constantly pointed out, ‘the mistake’.  He said it so frequently that Rory just called me ‘mistake’ and rarely by my real name, William.

I was too young to understand, but my mother constantly warned me that my turn was coming, to get good grades and be a good son.

The reality was that the ‘mistake’ would never amount to anything, and therefore, my father just ignored the fact that I existed.  His only priority was the prodigal son, Rory, and he poured all his attention and resources into him, following in his father’s footsteps.

And up until Christmas, just before Rory was starting his graduation year at the High School, nearly the best quarterback since his father, ready to lead the team into the championships, the Broadhurst family were riding high.

…

Emma casually said morning, while she and I were shovelling snow from the front gate to the front door, “What could possibly go wrong?”

It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

A month earlier, we had woken to the news that our grandparents on my father’s side had been killed in a freak road accident. 

It had shattered my father.  He had idolised his father, perhaps because, as my mother said, very quietly, that he had spoiled her husband rotten.

Or more to the point, she was secretly pleased after suffering the demise of demeaning comments from him.  His son had deserved better.

But it left us with good news: he had left the four grandchildren a college fund, the family farm to our Uncle Roy, my father’s only brother, and the rest to my father.  Reward, he said, for obedience and hard work.

There had been discussion at the dinner table, Emma saying that when she graduated, she wanted to go to college, study law.  It was no coincidence that her best friend had the same plan.

My father had laughed.  “Why on earth would you want to work?  Your role is to be a mother and look after your family.  Your mother never saw the need to go gallivanting off to college.”

I was going to add a few words of my own, like the time I heard her talking to one of her lady friends, that she resented the fact that she had got pregnant almost immediately after the prom, and took any chance of her doing anything with her life.

My father, in one version, had deliberately set out to trap her, leaving her no option but to marry him.

I thought it best to keep that gem to myself.

Emma saw the writing on the wall.  Not for the first time, he had intimated he would not support her if she did.  Now, there was the college fund, to her, that settled the matter.  She had been wise enough not to bring it up.

I answered her almost rhetorical question with, “Rory might actually do something completely stupid.”

He had before, messing around with his stupid friends, much to father’s dismay, because any injury could ruin his trajectory into the big league.  Like the last one, six months before, when he twisted his ankle.

But last night, the other contentious issue was that Rory wanted to go skiing with his friends after Christmas.

That was never going to fly.  Just the slightest error could ruin his career.  Of course, Rory was probably the best skier in the state, but that wouldn’t matter.

She shovelled the last scoop onto the lawn, now completely covered, and leaned on her shovel. It was Jack’s chore, but he simply shirked it, and it fell to Emma.  I always helped.

“What Rory wants, Rory gets,” she muttered, not for the first time. 

She was finally realising that our father’s world revolved around his firstborn son and heir.  Jack understood early and simply ignored his father.

“You have mom wrapped around your little finger, you know.  Perhaps your path lies there.  You saw how she glared at him when he gave his married with children speech.”

“I didn’t, but I’m not surprised.  His obsession with Rory is annoying her.”

I’d noticed that too.

Of course, my comment was not without merit.  Sneaky as I was, I managed to ‘infiltrate’ my eldest brother’s friend group, and overheard their plans for the skiing trip.  It was widely known that Rory’s father would ban him from joining them, but Rory had a plan.

It wasn’t going to end well.

…

Christmas Day was predictable.  As long as I could remember, it was held at the farm, presided over by the patriarch, Grandfather, at one end and our father at the other.

The old man ruled with an iron fist, leaving all the organising, cooking, and serving to the women, namely, grandmother, mother, and Emma.

This year, it all fell to our mother and Emma.  I helped.  My father was the patriarch, not Uncle Roy, whose place it was.  He didn’t get to sit at the other end of the table.  Rory did.  In the hierarchy, it was he insisted, father and son.

Roy wanted to argue the point, but he didn’t.  If he’d been married and with children, he might, but as a bachelor, he was simply relegated.

Christmas morning wasn’t the leisurely lie-in as it was for most people, followed by a leisurely breakfast and opening of presents before the arrangements for lunch began.

Presents took very little time.  We received clothing or something practical.  Everything else was deemed a waste of resources.  We had hoped that with the grandfather gone, the rules would change.  They did not, but for one exception.  Rory got a new pickup truck, and now he has a licence. 

In our family, it started at 6am.  It wasn’t just family attending, there were what mother called ‘the hangers-on’, grandfathers and fathers favoured few, driven by what the guests brought to the table.

The football coach was just one.

We were catering for 20.  Mother and Emma did the hard work, I did the table set-up and in the days before the decorations.  Roy had a farm to run.

Grandmother was finally at peace away from the man I felt she had come to loathe, loud-mouthed, autocratic, opinionated and outspoken.  Her opinion was his.  Publicly.  Privately, it was something else.

She had, in the last few years, been surreptitiously sowing the seeds of revolt in the Broadhurst women.  I heard a lot of cursing during prep.

Through good luck and better management, the food was on the table on time and ready for the patriarch to carve the Turkey.

After grace, the honour falling to the eldest son, the lunch continued along the predictable lines, my father controlled the conversation, about Rory’s coming year, and how Roy was going to need help on the farm, and it was up to the three other children to step up.

After all, we had nothing better to do, especially hanging out with the other good-for-nothings.  Neither Uncle Roy nor our mother had a say in the matter.

At the end of the day, I had that last look of the family united together in a family photo that Emma insisted on taking.

After everyone had scattered, I asked her why she had decided, this year of all years, she had taken the shot.

“To remember us all together in a semblance of unity, before everything changes.”

“You’re expecting trouble?”

“I had a dream last night.  Next year, Rory will be leaving, football and all, and Mother is not happy.  I woke up, and I was alone, in a very different place.”

I shrugged.  “Children get older and leave.  It’s what happens.

She didn’t seem convinced.  But later, wandering back to our house, I remembered that fateful statement Emma had muttered not so long ago, “What could possibly go wrong?”

The answer to that, of course, was quite simple. 

Everything.

…

Three days later, Rory disappeared, or, that is to say, he sneaked out of the house and went with his mates to the ski fields, completely ignoring his father’s strict veto.

Of course he did.

Rory rarely listened to his father’s edicts.

I overheard part of the conversation between father and Rory, and I counted at least ten death threats.  At the very least, given the propensity to injure himself, it was foolish.

His father had outright promised the coach on Christmas day that he would not allow Rory to harm his or the team’s chances of a championship and drafting.

Now he had egg on his face, and we suffered for it.

But as outrage goes, our father let him stay.

Until we got the call on New Year’s Eve.  The call no one wanted to get.

Rory had an accident. 

An accident.

No details, just get there.  Mom and Dad were in the car and gone.  It was like the rest of us never existed.

Emma and I watched the car head off, going faster than it should

“Told you,” she said.

“It’ll be nothing.  You know what his friends are like.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just being the idiots they are.”

“Rory knows better.”

“Rory, full of beer, is just as stupid as they are.  We’ll wait and see.”

She was sceptical, but it alleviated the anxiety that her dream might come true. 

…

Although we didn’t know it yet, Rory’s accident was like a seismic shift in the tectonic plates.  In other words, it was the beginning of the end.

Rory had sprained his ankle badly, the sort of sprain that, if not managed properly, could cost careers.  It’s why, for the next six weeks, we did not see Mom, Dad, or Rory.

They took him straight to a specialist clinic and stayed for the intensive treatment and recovery.  No one asked what it cost.

Emma was told she had to look after us, as well as herself, until they returned.  I took myself off to Uncle Roy’s farm and stayed there.  Emma had enough of her own problems with having worry about me. 

At least Jack finally took an interest in what was going on, and said, in his opinion, our parents had finally shown who the favourite was, and had gone on vacation without us.  He divided his time between home and the farm.

His assessment made sense. Emma wanted to believe otherwise, but I think in the end she finally realised that they were never going to let her follow her dream.

That’s when I noticed the change in her.

Diffident.  Preoccupied.  And not that I know what it was, but more grown-up. She had lost that girlish look and attitude, and had to ‘grow up’.

When our father and mother returned, with a very contrite Rory, our world had completely changed.  It was like three new people had come back, people we didn’t really know.

Our father had completely immersed himself in everything Rory.  Whereas he used to notice us, it was like we never existed.  It was more of Rory this and Rory that.

Rory lapped it up, played the part of the football star who was going to be the pride of the family.  And carry on the mantle of looking after us all.  None of us believed him.

They were empty words.  He’d always been selfish, always got the best of everything, and he would never change.

The biggest change was Mom.  She was perpetually angry, and where once she accepted she was the household slave, she started saying no, and no longer went along with whatever her husband said.

She had a voice, and she used it.  The arguments could be heard in the street.  We left when the skirmishes started to keep out of the firing line.

That continued through that fateful year, where Rory played the game, the team won game after game, and where in private I saw that pain and anguish of a son made to believe he was something her wasn’t.

That simple sprain, as he called it, was career-ending, but our father refused to accept it and, along with the coach, pushed harder and harder.

He needed discipline, our father said, and continually said ‘no pain, no gain’.  I knew he would push himself to win the championship, but after that, he would become a mental and physical wreck.

I said to him once, “You should not let our father live his dreams through you; the cost is going to be more than you can pay.”

He just smirked and said, “What would a mistake like you know about anything?”

That’s all I was to him.  A mistake.  I guess then better to be a mistake than a fool looking for something that was never going to happen.

Although I hated sports and watching them, I went to several of his games and watched him. He was the best, but there was something else, and I didn’t think anyone noticed.  When he forgot, there was a very slight limp, especially when he gave the ankle a workout.

Not so much flash, a yard or two slower, the expression of a boy who knows what he was about to do was going to hurt, and steeling himself.

He was heading for destruction.

After the summer vacation, Emma brought up the subject of going to college.  Never too early to start planning, she said.  This went on until Rory’s prom.

I remembered it for a long time, because we all knew by then Rory mattered, and none of us did.  Perhaps Mom cared, but she had long since surrendered to apathy.

We sent Rory off in his tuxedo and new car to collect his date, a girl were discovered that same night he had been dating since that Christmas skiing debacle.  Apparently, he had been showing off in front of her.

Typical Rory.

We also learned about the deal our father made with the school to keep him on so that he could finish the season in the football team. 

He was going to be Prom king and star quarterback, as his father had been before him.  His father had also been ‘chatting’ to the football scouts about Rory’s prospects.  It all seemed to me the act of a desperate man, and not letting the son prove himself

To me, that was a disaster in the making.

Emma, on the other hand, was moving forward with her plans to attend college and get a good job.  It was where she had started work in a cafe, earning her own money because we’d been told money was tight and there were no more handouts.

An edict that didn’t include Rory.

She had seen our father about the scholarship fund our grandfather had left us for a college education, a meeting that hadn’t gone well.

She had left his study way too quickly and in tears.  She ran out of the house before I could get to see her, so I finished what I had to do and went to find her.  It wouldn’t be hard; lately, she had been keeping the latest foal company

She had named her Maisie.

Her eyes were red and her cheeks flushed.  Angry and upset.

“What happened?”

“Rory happened.  I’m going to kill him one day.”

“You might have to get in line.”

“I just found that our father spent all of our college funds on the medical bills to fix Rory’s ankle.”

“All of it?”

“And mortgaged the house.  From a secure future to the rubbish tip in the blink of an eye.”

“And completely wasted.  Rory will never be able to pay it back.  His ankle may have been fixed, but some forgot to tell him to let it completely heal.  He’s not a hundred per cent, believe me.”

“Not what Dad says.”

“He’s delusional.  They all are.  He keeps going; there will be no future for any of us.”

She shrugged.  “I’ll find work, get enough to start and pay as I go.  It may take longer, but trust me, the moment I can, I’m gone.  Who does that, spending their money without even talking to them?”

“What would I know, I’m just the mistake.”

…

The fissures were there for all to see.  All it needed was a cataclysmic event to break them open.

That came at the big game, the one that was going to give Rory his claim to fame, and the story our father could relate for years to anyone who would listen.

Rory had put in a flawless game, and we were just ahead on the scoreboard with victory assured. There was a minute to go, and the other team were moving the ball.

In one tense moment when Rory launched himself to intercept the ball, we all saw it, and we all collectively groaned.

His ankle finally gave out, and he collapsed. The other side got the ball, and our defence was just a few milliseconds slow to stop them.

Had his ankle held up just one more time, we would have won.  The look on my father’s face was indescribable.  The look on the scout’s face was predictable.

In that single moment, our world as it was came to an end.

What was incredibly painful was how his father just ignored him, lying on the football field in agony, the medical people trying to alleviate the pain.

He simply turned around and walked away.

Disappointment was etched on the faces of everyone who came to see the team win.  Even the coach was so shattered he hadn’t noticed Rory was still on the ground where he landed.

I heard my mother utter four words very savagely in her husband’s direction, “I hope you’re satisfied.”

She then went to see what was happening with Rory. 

Emma gasped when she saw the event, and she glared at him while watching him writhe in pain.  Perhaps the resentment of seeing her college fund spent for nothing hurt even more.

My only thought was that it would never happen to me because I was never going to play sports.

…

I was thirteen, that awkward age transitioning into the teens. I’d seen how it worked for two brothers, and now I was hoping those years would bypass me.

I wasn’t old enough to run away.  Jack was old enough and did, making good his escape while we were all at the football match.  I don’t think anyone noticed for a week.

Emma got as far as the railway depot with her life packed into a small suitcase, with no idea where she was going, just anywhere but there, in a house where no one cared.

Rory was back in the hospital and would never really recover.  Any thought of the dream to become a star quarterback was gone, with no offers from any of the scouts.

The injury was too severe to mend completely, and he would be in pain from time to time, and he would have a permanent limp.  My unspoken question?  Who was going to carry the family now?

Our father retreated to his study and very rarely came out.  Why would he?  Our mother didn’t come home from the game, or that night.  Seeing that world she had created for herself crashing to the ground, there wasn’t anything left.

I was left there on my own until Roy came over to see how we were getting on, having heard what happened, and unable to talk to his brother, told me to collect my stuff and come with him.

His brother could sort himself out.

We went to the railway depot and rescued Emma from making a mistake, went to the sheriff’s to tell them Jack had run away, and then went to the farm.

Roy seemed to know our mother had gone, and as he said, “She should have done it years ago.”

…

Exactly thirty years later, I stood on the bottom step of the farmhouse entry and looked across the unchanged fields and the grey walls of the barn.

The tractor I’d broken was still sitting beside it, rusting away as a monument to my inability to heed simple instructions.

I had just come back from Uncle Roy’s funeral, old age, and perpetually being tired, finally taking him to heaven, where generous souls like his were welcomed with open arms.

Mother and Emma were inside getting ready for the wake.  Jack and my father would have been there, except they had gone fishing a few months back and got caught in a freak storm and drowned.

It was sad, but the hurt wasn’t as bad as that when Roy succumbed.

As for Rory, he never recovered, mentally or physically.  He shut the door on us, and in the end, the disappointment was too much.  Whether it was deliberate or not, he overdosed on morphine.

Emma went to college, got her law degree, met a nice boy, and after graduating, got married and ended up doing the one thing she said she would never do.  Become a wife and mother.

I discovered a talent quite by accident, waiting, and wrote a bystander’s view of a high school football match that I gave to the editor of the daily newspaper, who had been at the very same game, and he hired me.

I married a fellow reporter, Emma, and I had our weddings together.  That was when our mother returned, and we all lived on the farm.

Happily ever after?  Maybe.

…

©  Charles Heath  2026