Two Cents Worth

Now it had curlicues painted on it. He couldn’t just keep his eyes on the road when he drove by. Now it commanded his attention. Its new coat of paint couldn’t obscure anything that had happened there, though. Time is thinner than a coat of paint. You can feel what’s underneath. A pang of longing and regret rang like a bell every time he drove by.

Why didn’t you move after what happened? his friends asked him. They were the answer to their own question. He needed friends more than ever. He needed familiarity more than ever. He didn’t associate the Island of Alameda with the tragedy, just the house. The way it spoke to him, he knew the house remembered too. Underneath the new paint. In its bones.

He had worked on those bones. Nesting, her mother had called it. They had bought the house for a reasonable price because of the unreasonable amount of work required to bring it up to code. He had worked his way through college doing contracting work. Roofing? Carpentry? Drywall? He had done it all. Even a little plumbing. The only thing beyond him was rewiring the place. But, after all, if he held himself back from what was beyond him, he never would have been with her to begin with.

He traced the electricity from the meter to where it entered the house. Inside the house, he removed the wallpaper and the shiplap and peered in the gap. It was old style knob and tube wiring. There were two wires, so that meant that one was live and one was neutral, but they were both covered in cracked and frayed cloth that appeared brown. He followed the two wires to an old two-prong outlet. He plugged a lamp in and turned it on. Nothing.

His wife was upstairs inspecting all of the lighting fixtures. She got excited when she saw the ceiling fan in the living room. It looked like an original Hunter Tuerk, probably as old as the house. She got up on a ladder to clean the dust and grime off the identifying metal plate so she could make a positive identification. Meanwhile, he was looking in the fusebox. It was just like the one that had been in his grandfather’s house. It had weird fuses that were flat and round. He remembered his grandfather used to insert a penny in the slot instead of a fuse to keep the power on until he could get a new one. He fished in his pocket and it was his lucky day. Two pennies. Enough for the two blown fuses. He stuck them in, flipped the switch, and the lamp came on. 

He heard a strange sound, like a stuttered scream and the lamp blinked. He cut off the power and then heard a loud thud in the living room. His wife survived, but the fetus she was carrying did not. Neither did her trust in him, nor their relationship. It died.