Lights On!

I wander around, looking for the light switch. I must find it. I must turn on the light so I can see everything that is around me. If I don't, I am not sure where I will be. What will I do if I can't find it? What will happen if I turn it on and it doesn't work? If I don't find the light switch, I will trip and fall on the floor. The power tools and buckets of paint that are jumbled on the floor will rise up and consume me. I will be in the dark forever.

I am not sure what to do. The next door neighbors are yelling. Their lights are out, too.

I am lost. I can't even get up to get the light switch on! What is wrong with me? Can't I just will myself to do this one simple task? Just turn the light on. See what is all around me.

Life is supposed to make sense. You wake up, go on with your day, and then everything will be okay. Things are predictable. Things will work out. These are mantras I tell myself all the time, but then there are moments like these when the mantras don't work.

I try to calm myself down. I sit on my bed, in the dark, and try to convince myself I don't need to the light on. I can sit here and be alright. I can be alone, afraid and alone, and nothing much-I tell myself--matters.

But what happens when I finally get the light on? Will everything still be in the same place? I can sort of see the outline of things, of my dresser, of my bed, of my closet, now that my eyes are adjusting to the darkness.

I can do this. I can stay calm.

BOOM!

I hear the violent slam of the door and my body tenses up. I am not sure who is home. I am not sure who is here. I can't see anything-I still don't know where the light switch is.

How can someone lose a light switch? How can someone lose a fixture on the wall? The wall is still there. I reach over and feel it with my hand. The rough texture of plaster is against my skin. I can almost imagine the whiteness of the freshly painted wall-three days dried-with my hand.

The sound of footsteps interrupts my thoughts. I hear someone pounding out distance towards the room. I am scared, but also hopeful. Perhaps, whoever it is, can find the light switch.

My husband hired a bunch of Mexican workers and somehow one of them moved the light switch to somewhere. Where? I don't know, but it certainly isn't where it is supposed to be. There's nothing logical about this renovation. They came in and stripped the walls to the bare bone dry wall, pulled out reams of loose wires that look like the face of Medusa, and charged my husband forty dollars an hour for this.

The steps get closer. They stop at the doorway. The door was taken off by one of the workers and the crew now claims that there was never a door there in the first place. They lost the light switch and the door. How ridiculous can this get? We are too far into it to stop. We have to have faith that the workers will get things done, even if it is in the most illogical manner possible.

I want to just leave the house. Just leave and never see it again. I told this to my husband and he stared at me. Sometimes I still say things that are unpredictable to him even though we have been married for twenty years. Sometimes, the shock of my words slaps him in the face like a paint brush heaping white paint on the wall beside me.

"Leave," he said. "Leave the house and run away?" He lectured me for ten minutes on responsibility. On investments and opportunities. He's got everything under control. He's sure of things. Neither of us has either renovated a house before, but he is sure that with a little prodding, with a little more dinero, the workers can get it right.

I had wanted to get a contractor. I had wanted to call the person who had worked on the neighbor's house. I realize that they have stopped yelling, and the night is a silent as it is dark.

I have the robe around me that my husband gave me for my birthday five years ago. No-it is the robe I got when I exchanged the robe my husband gave me, because the one he gave me didn't fit. What strange things people think before they are going to die?-because now I am sure that the footsteps coming towards me are from the feet of death.

Just run away, I tell myself. I whisper this out loud. Just run and run and never look back. Just go as far away from the half-finished kitchen and carpet swatches that serve as manacles to my husband's and my life. He refuses to escape with me. Then, fine, perhaps I can go it alone.

My fantasies of escape are cut short by my realization that I don't know anyway out. I can, of course, walk out the door. I can walk as far away as to the car and drive away to the four corners of the earth. I can go and go and yet I know that I don't know where. I have no direction, no compass, and no knowledge of anything more.

I have felt this way before. I felt this way when my husband asked me to marry him. I wasn't sure what to do. I could have said no, of course, but that would mean more dating, more carrying on with people I had no real interest in. Of course, there was the feeling of love and passion and recognition and all that, but in truth, I didn't know how much that mattered. Feelings would strengthen, come and go, or dance on the horizon of our lives like drapery on a window. Nice, but I wasn't sure how necessary.

I could have said no, I suppose, when my husband said he wanted to make "certain improvements" to the house. I could have said we didn't have the money, or we didn't have the time, or I could have objected in some way, whether or not it was true. Ethan has always been the type to only initiate a plan that everyone around him was enthusiastic about. And, the truth is, I once was enthusiastic--especially, when, a few months ago, he showed me his plans to make our house greater than the Taj Mahal.

The footsteps have not made a sound in awhile. I squint my eyes and try to look through the doorless doorway. I could call out, I suppose, but who calls out to death?

The white construction paper had covered the dining room table and my husband had divided the renovation project into stages.

Stage One: The Kitchen. New counter tops and a new built in island. A wall eliminated and a dining nook created. Tiling that would make us the envy of home owner's everywhere.

Stage Two: The Bathroom. A whirlpool tub. Built in oak cabinets and the vanity replaced. Plush carpeting that would massage our bare feet.

Stage Three: The Bedroom. New light fixtures. French doors and a walk in closet to replace the tiny broom closet we have forced our clothes into for years.

Just a few renovations--my husband said--which would be done in an orderly manner. I don't think the workers fully understood my husband because, now, everything is going on at the same time-Kitchen, Bathroom and Bedroom.

During the day, when losing the light switch hadn't been an issue, in the glare of the sunlight streaming into the whole in the ceiling of the bedroom which is supposed to eventually be a skylight, I had watched this chaos.

Workers, to and fro, carried lumber and tile from one room to another. The built-in closet is now a pit of dust and bricks. The koi pond for the new entrance way, which was not on the white construction paper my husband had first showed me, is in a giant plastic bag in the same closet. The workers emerge from the closet like clowns out of a small car. They chatter among themselves like hamsters in a cage and then proceed to distribute more lumber and tile to another room.

It has gotten to the point that not only do I not have any idea what the "stage" is, I do not know how the plan has changed. And the plan has changed. I see it in my husband's eyes when he says, "Investment! Opportunity! Resale Value!"

The footsteps begin again. I see a form of a man coming toward me.

"Why is the light off?" It is my husband's voice. Death wears many disguises.

"I can't find the light switch."

He says, "Lights on!" and the room is suddenly bright. "It's voice activated now," he explains.

"That wasn't in the original plan, was it?" I try to ask, innocently.

He gives me a look. I know that look. It is the look he reserves for moments like these, when I discover one more small delight the renovation is offering us.

"Lights out," he says. I am ready to sleep and ready to dream. Perhaps in the dream I will discover some place to run away to.