Too Close to Home

“Sure looks like it,” I said. I opened the panel door and looked at the two columns of black switches. The light was so poor in the room, I could barely make out the masking-tape labels by the switches that told what parts of the house they controlled.

I turned and said, “Have you got a flashlight or anything, Donna?” She was standing close enough that I could feel the warmth of her body.

We had socialized occasionally with the Langleys. A couple of barbecues. When they had a party that wasn’t strictly for the folks from his law firm, they’d invite us over, a neighborly thing. If you’re going to make some noise, invite the neighbors so they’re not pissed off. If we were the type to hold parties, we’d have returned the favor. They seemed like your typical professional couple. Reasonably happy, upwardly mobile, one kid.

She found a flashlight tucked in behind a toolbox on the worktable, and when she handed it to me she held on to it for half a second, and my hand overlapped with hers.

I clicked on the light. “There you go,” I said, finding the one switch that had flipped out of alignment with the others, labeled “Kitchen.” I forced it over. “I’ll bet things are back on now.”

“That didn’t take any time at all,” she said, a hint of disappointment in her voice.

She was standing so close that when I turned to hand her the flashlight, my thigh brushed up against hers. She didn’t move back at all, and as I continued to turn she put a hand on my side, just above my waist.

“Donna,” I said.

“I’ve noticed something about you,” she said. “The last few weeks. When I see you. Driving in and out, walking. Something’s different about you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“It’s like you’ve lost your spirit,” she said, slipping her thumb inside my belt. “I know what that’s like.”

I swallowed. It was like that moment when I found the note in Ellen’s purse, how everything could change at once. One minute you’re up on a ladder, painting windows, wondering about the most efficient way to kill yourself, and the next you’re in a basement with a woman holding on to your belt.

I found myself putting a hand on her shoulder and she turned her head toward it, as though inviting it to touch her face. Softly, I caressed her cheek.

“Donna,” I said again. “I’m. . I. .”

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I just wanted you to know that if you’re sad, you’re not alone.”

“Look,” I said. “I’m married.” It seemed a dumb, obvious thing to say.

“So am I.” She paused. “If your marriage is perfect, then I apologize for my forwardness, and you can leave right now.”

That was when I should have walked, but that would have been akin to speaking a lie, because things between Ellen and me, at that time, were far from perfect.

“What about you?” I asked. “And Albert?”

“Why don’t you just kiss me?”

So I did. Her arms slipped around me, and there seemed to be only one way this was going to end. And not there, in the basement, next to the breaker panel, but upstairs in her and Albert’s bed.

She led me upstairs to the bedroom she shared with her husband. We were sitting on the edge of the bed. I was about to do something I felt entitled to do. I’d been wronged. Wasn’t I allowed to get even?

But I pulled back and said to Donna, “I can’t do this.”

“Yes you can,” she said, reaching up to touch my face. I gently took hold of her wrist and brought it down.

“No,” I said. “I can’t.” Her eyes were moist with tears about to spill onto her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”

As I got up she said, “This never happened.”

I nodded. “That’s because nothing did happen,” I said.

It’s even possible that things actually got better between me and Ellen from that day forward. I didn’t get even, but I’d had my opportunity. And I knew just how close I’d come. Maybe when Ellen had come that close to the edge, she had tried to stop, but teetered in the wrong direction.

And even though nothing happened, I guessed Donna felt we’d come close enough that it was worth telling someone about. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know who.

NINETEEN

"Her sister,” Barry said as we drove into Promise Falls, past car dealerships, the town’s Wal-Mart, a KFC, a doughnut joint.

“Heather,” I said. “From Iowa.”

“Sisters tell each other everything,” Barry said. “Had a chance to talk to her before the funeral. She and her husband came in last night.”

“We saw them at the service,” I said. “And she’s wrong.”

Barry ignored that. “We talked for a bit, and she couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to do harm to her sister, or her brother-in-law for that matter, or their son. But she did mention to me that her sister had told her that she’d slept with the neighbor, that it had been the wrong thing to do, but it happened.”

“If Donna really told her sister that, she was exaggerating.”

“Why would her sister lie about something like that?”