What He's Poised to Do

In that same letter, Jill told me another piece of information, which was that my father had stopped writing her. This surprised me because I hadn’t received any letters from him since I started college, and I had assumed that he wasn’t writing to anyone. “I got them at a regular clip until last month,” Jill wrote, “and then they stopped suddenly. I had come to depend on them, even though they were growing steadily more boring. A few months ago, he and Catherine took Rebecca to the zoo and then let her nap in the back office at the Hungry Cat while Catherine chalked the specials on the board. I know this because it’s exactly what his letter said. It was so boring that even writing about it is boring. But it was a piece of him. I would like it if you would investigate and find out why he stopped writing. If you don’t want to do it for me, do it for Mom. I’m pretty sure she has noticed that the letters have stopped, and I’m pretty sure that it bothers her. She grew accustomed to seeing them piling up in our rooms. It comforted her, if you can believe it.” I folded up Jill’s letter and slid it to the side of my desk.

Anton came by a minute later, saw the handwriting, and pulled up a chair. “If there’s any way you’d give me another chance,” he said. “I’ll do anything.”

“She can’t hear you,” I said. “It’s a letter.”

12.

I made some calls and read some articles and was able to find out more news about my father. He had gone on a business trip to the Pacific Rim, during which time he had contracted a bacterial infection from shellfish. He recovered from the infection, but it left him weak, and when he returned to the States, he was unable to climb the stairs to his office, even though it was only on the second floor. He took the elevator, and as he was impatient, he pressed the CLOSE DOOR button repeatedly. I mention the CLOSE DOOR button because it was the last button he ever pushed; the elevator panel had been removed and replaced, and the tongue end of a live wire had somehow been connected to the metal plate. The numbered buttons, the ones that instructed the elevator to travel to specific floors, were rimmed in rubber and consequently grounded. The OPEN DOOR and CLOSE DOOR buttons were not. Electricity pierced the tip of my father’s finger. A blue flame traced the outline of his hand. Current ran around his heart, which chased the current until it was exhausted and collapsed. The newspaper account I read mentioned a possible lawsuit. It also mentioned that he was survived by his wife Catherine and his daughter Rebecca. I omitted this bit of information when I wrote to Jill with the news. She called me immediately when she received the letter. She was crying. “I need to go talk to Jack,” she said, and her crying tapered off a bit.

13.