When the Lights Go Out(27)

The last tenant had been recently evicted, her belongings never reclaimed. Because of this, I’ve been endowed with a foul-smelling sofa, a banged-up table, a mattress with worrisome stains. That and a carton of eggs that expired last week. I don’t think we’ll eat them.

I open the newspaper and again turn to the classified ads. But this time, instead of searching the apartment listing, I go to the wanted ads, searching for a job as a house cleaner because really, that’s the extent of my qualifications, and after the stunt I pulled at the hospital, references are out of the question. Must be courteous, conscientious, previous experience preferred, I read. Must speak English. Have good communication skills, a great work ethic. The wages are noted; I tally the number of hours I will need to work to pay another month’s worth of rent in this shoddy complex. Sixty hours—that’s what I’d need to work. Though we also need to eat.

This is no longer just about me.

I try to relax but she’s kicking and upset now, thrashing about, and I find that I can’t relax. I tell her it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to worry, that she’s safe here with me, though even I don’t know if that’s true because I have yet to decipher if we’re safe here, if I’m safe. I stroke her, running my hand along the flushed skin, and for a moment—only a moment—she stops fighting. She gives in.

I try on a name for size.

“Jessie,” I say, taking her stillness as consent.

I’ll call her Jessie.

I’m not a bad person, I remind myself, though in that moment as I sit—watching a roach as it scurries across the worn carpeting, reaching a wall, shimmying along the baseboards to where the rest of its family no doubt lies waiting—reflecting on the last twenty-four hours of my life, the last twenty-four days and weeks, I’m not entirely certain that’s true. All sorts of emotions get churned up inside me, everything from sadness to regret and shame, and I think of him standing unsuspectingly at the cottage, knocking on the door in vain.

“You’re not a bad person,” I incant, believing that if I think on it long enough, if I say it enough times, a thousand times over, it might somehow turn true.

I didn’t set out to do the things I did. There was never any willful intent, any malice, only a pining for something I didn’t have, something I so desperately needed. You wouldn’t condemn a famished child for stealing a loaf of bread, now would you? A homeowner for shooting an armed intruder to protect his family?

I’m not a bad person, I decide, far more resolute this time.

I only did what I had to do.





jessie

When I finally make my way back to Cornelia Avenue, it’s evening. The colors of the sky have begun to change. Shadows fall across the street. The sun is thinking about going down.

I walk along Cornelia beside Old Faithful, staring at the million-dollar homes that fringe the street. They’re mostly newly gutted homes with small tracts of grass. For each home lies a single tree on the road verge, fully grown. Its leaves form a canopy over the street where it joins with the tree on the other side. Conjoined twins.

The temperatures have fallen. It’s no more than fifty-some degrees outside, a cold that creeps under my clothing, chilling me to the bone. The heat in the carriage home is stingy at best, when it runs. Though I toyed with the thermostat this morning, setting the temperature to seventy-two degrees, the furnace never kicked on before I left. When I arrive, it will be cold inside.

As I make my way along the street, the dread of nighttime creeps in. The fear of eight long hours of darkness with nothing to do and only morbid thoughts to keep me company.

The front door of the greystone is open as I approach, though Ms. Geissler is nowhere to be seen. I stop on the sidewalk, wondering if I should let her know or if I should keep going. What I want to do is keep going, but my conscience says otherwise.

There’s a garden on the front lawn of the greystone, one I didn’t notice before, but now I do. It’s not huge because city living doesn’t allow for things to be huge. But it’s magical. A blanket of yellows and oranges and reds that warms the earth. Tiny white butterflies hover above the blooms, levitating midair.

I blink once and they’re gone because most likely they were never really there.

I make my way down the walkway, climbing the steps toward the front door. The home is large; three stories tall with a garden apartment to boot, one that peeks at me from beneath street level, hidden behind a black metal fence.

As I knock on the door, it pushes open more than it was before. My eyes take in the foyer, a carpeted runner, an unlit chandelier that dangles from the ceiling. “Hello?” I call out into the empty space, but if my landlord is here, she doesn’t hear me.

My fingers press the doorbell and I hear the chime of it from inside, but still, there’s no reply. “Hello?” I call again, laying a hand flat against the door and pressing it the rest of the way open. My feet cross the threshold as I step into the home.

I reach for a light switch and toggle it up and down, but nothing happens. The chandelier above me remains dark. It’s not black in the home because the sun has yet to go all the way down. There’s still some light outside, but it’s fading fast. Soon it will be gone.

“Ms. Geissler?” I call out, explaining who I am and why I’m here. “It’s Jessie,” I say. “Jessie Sloane. Your new tenant. I just moved in to the carriage home,” I call out, and at first I think the worst, that she’s here somewhere, but that she’s hurt. That she’s had a nasty fall. That she can’t answer me because she’s lying on the ground just waiting to be found. That she’s dead.