Too Close to Home

And then I got ready and went to work. What else do you do? Phone in, tell the boss you’re feeling too betrayed to come in today?

That night, Ellen had some lasagna ready when I came in the door.

“Hey,” she said. “How was your-”

I handed her Conrad’s note. Didn’t even take off my jacket. Ellen looked at it and burst into tears.

It was over, she told me between sobs. It was over before it really even started. They’d been working so closely together, she got carried away, she did a stupid thing, but she’d ended it herself. I had to believe her, she said. And I’d been so distant, she said, I-

So it was my fault.

No, she said. She slipped, she said. It was a slip. I had to know, she said, that she was telling the truth.

I had no idea what to believe, but I had some idea what might have drawn her to Conrad. I recalled the times she’d come home from work and talk about how creative he was, how inspiring it was to see someone so committed to harnessing the talents he’d been blessed with. He was everything I was not. He’d thrown himself into his art and I’d given up on mine, despite Ellen’s repeated encouragement.

I thought I’d be furious. But I felt too crushed to generate any anger. I left that night and didn’t come back for a couple of days. Stayed in a motel, still went in to my security job. One day, Derek phoned me at work and said, “I cleaned up my room, Daddy. Now will you come home?”

I did come back to pick up some more clothes, and Ellen was there, like she’d been waiting for me since the moment I’d left.

“I’ll do anything,” she said, but her words were slightly slurred. I could smell the booze on her breath. “Whatever it takes, just tell me.”

I decided to come back. Not so much because I was ready to move forward with this, to find a way through our problems, but if Ellen was starting to drink heavily, there needed to be someone else there to look after Derek.

I went through the next few weeks on autopilot. Went to work, came home, got Derek ready for bed, slept in the spare room, got up the next day and did it all over again, trying to keep my conversations with Ellen to an absolute minimum.

“Talk to me,” she said.

I felt myself falling into depression. That was my mood the day I chose to paint some windows. When Donna Langley walked over to ask if our power was out, too.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Let me go in and check.”

I went inside, flicked a light switch in the kitchen, came back out. “We’re okay,” I said. “We’re on the same line, so it must just be your house.”

“Okay, well, I guess I’ll call an electrician,” she said. Then, “Sorry for interrupting you there. That’s a lot of windows you’ve got to do.”

“Before you call an electrician,” I said, “you might want to check the breakers.”

She was a good-looking woman. Not stunning, but attractive. Tall, with a generous bosom and rounded hips. Brown hair down to her shoulders. Every once in a while, I’d see her, in shorts and a top, jogging along the highway into Promise Falls. She’d do the odd fund-raising marathon, hit us up for a pledge.

“There’s a box on the wall in the basement,” she said. “I never even thought to look there. It’s probably just one of those switches. All you have to do is flip them back, right?”

“Unless it’s the main one, for the whole house,” I said. “But it’s more likely just a single switch.”

“I’ll try to figure it out,” she said, and laughed.

I was starting to come down the ladder. I’d put aside, for now, any thoughts of coming down headfirst. “I can check it out if you’d like,” I said.

She nodded. We walked back to her house. It was empty, of course. Albert was at work, Adam at school. He and Derek had the same teacher that year, Mrs. Fare, who, according to the kids, looked like a rabbit. “You should see the way she eats a sandwich,” Adam said one time when he was over.

Donna and I entered her house through the back door. “Are the lights out all over the house?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I was in the kitchen, making something, when the Cuisinart died and the light went out. I thought I’d actually try to make something for dinner tonight. Most nights, we’re so busy, we end up ordering in or going out, you know?”

I didn’t. Ellen and I didn’t have enough in our budget to eat out every night. Subs once in a while, maybe a pizza. But I said, “Oh yeah.” I went to the kitchen and tried a light switch. Nothing. Then I went to the living room and tried a lamp on one of the sofa tables. It came on.

“Well, you’ve got power to the house,” I said. “Looks like it’s just the kitchen, so like I said, it’s probably just a breaker. Show me where the box is.”

She led me downstairs to the furnace room, pulled a chain to turn on a bare bulb. “Over there, I think,” she said, pointing to a gray metal box above a worktable. She followed me across the room. “That’s it, right?”