Chapter 1: (1982) – Gabe and Kath

Mom and dad got home later than they had planned. Parking the big over the road tractor with its sleeper next to the garage just before dinner time. My brother, George, and I would clean it out tomorrow after school. He was a junior and I ... I’m Lisa by the way... 1982 was my freshman year. We couldn’t do it first thing, because we were both on the cross country team and had morning practice.

It’s pretty neat that they got to work together, driving as a team to and from Saint Louis every week. Now that George was 17 and I was 15 we pretty much ran the house so they could enjoy their two or three days off in the middle of each week. I made the chicken enchiladas in green chile mole that the six of us enjoyed for dinner. Six including our younger brother, Ethan, and our cousin Claire– Ethan’s “she’s not my girlfriend”-- who seemed to be surgically attached to his hip.

Our bedrooms were on the second floor, while mom and dad’s room was off the great room on the first floor. After an enjoyable meal together, they went to their room through “the back,” the walk-through laundry room adjacent to the dining area that connected to the master bathroom. I heard water being turned on in the shower.

I went out to the tractor to grab our parent’s laundry bag while Claire and Ethan cleared the table. George loaded the dishwasher while the two youngsters found something incredibly noisy to watch on the television– they had been racing dirt bikes around all day ... so naturally they found a nice loud dirt bike race on fake moguls in a stadium to watch.

After starting the dishwasher, George said something about studying for a chemistry test. I finished loading the clothes from the bag into the washing machine, and heard the water in mom and dad’s shower shut off. A couple minutes later, wearing robes, they joined Ethan and Claire in the great room. The kids found something a little quieter that we could all watch together.

George returned from his room, then Ethan walked Claire home. She lives across the street and down a house or two next door to mom’s parents. The clothes had to be put in the dryer, and eventually everyone went to bed. George offered to fold the clothes when they came out of the dryer. But I said that I would do it, I really didn’t mind, and George does all the heavy work. But I had an ulterior motive.

I had become a secret voyeur.

The three pocket doors that in turn separated the laundry room from the dining area, the bathroom from the laundry area, and the bedroom from the bathroom were real pains in the ass. Mom latched the door into the bedroom from the great room but that “back” door didn’t really latch, it only looked like it did.

I had discovered that after folding their laundry I could carefully ... stealthily ... quietly slide open the middle door. The bathroom is an “L” shape ... entering the room beside the jacuzzi tub I could not be seen from the bedroom.

I tiptoed into the darkness of the master bathroom ... only the filtered moonlight coming through the tree outside the window lit my way. The pocket door to the bedroom was never completely closed nor completely open ... the lamps were never on in the bedroom ... sometimes there was a night light ... sometimes ... like on that night, it was moonlight through the windows. There I stood just inside the bathroom ... and watched my parents have sex.

Before my brother and I took over running the house, it was mom’s domain. And on the road mom and dad were equal partners– at least in the front part of the tractor. But, in the bedroom mom is dad’s sexual submissive ... I had to look that up ... it was one of many things that I had to look up after I accidentally discovered their dynamic a year earlier– while doing their laundry.