The old man in my house - Light (1.)

Monica

 

The first thing that went out after we moved in was the light.

 

Well, not to be dramatic - actually the first thing that came was the joyful change in Derek. His decision to finally open himself up to the possibility of starting a family. As long as we lived in the capital and were swamped with lots of work and high rent, he didn't want to hear about it. But then, it was like something broke inside him... In a nice way, where you as a woman know you have a clear conscience and you didn't push the envelope one bit (even though it was hard.) You know that the decision really came from him and that makes you happy.

 

I guess everyone knows those beautiful warm humid summer evenings. It was one of those when Derek told me he was ready to be a father. We were drinking on the deck overlooking the sunset over the woods. I could feel my husband's general invigoration after moving closer to nature, and I enjoyed it. Plus, with the renovation and move, despite the energy and financial challenges, his position in the job market was strengthened. This - as you can imagine - is not always easy for a foreigner, especially one working in culture. So starting a family seemed like the next logical step in our lives.

 

But - after this decision, it was as if everything suddenly went against us. Well, not everything. Just the house.

The first thing to go was the light.

Summer gave way to fall, the days grew shorter, and Derek's theater season began again. I spent more and more evenings at home alone while he left for lengthy rehearsals and performances...

 

You asked me, Andrew, if I was frustrated at not having a job myself. Whether I missed the theatre.

Of course, I did. But I don't agree with your theory that it was my frustration that made the circumstances a bit "beautiful". Believe me, I'm not making this up. Although I admit that I felt disappointment, perhaps envy, and most importantly an incredible longing for the theater that Derek currently had and I didn't, I still wished for his opportunities with all my heart. It's just that these things were happening independently of what I wanted or didn't want for my husband.

 

The strange thing was that the light problems occurred whenever Derek wasn't home. On the free nights that we spent together, the lights in the house worked fine. It was when he left for work that the problems began. The fuses blew that night just as I was preparing the dinner we were to enjoy together when he returned. That's when the bathroom went completely dark. Another time, as I silently repeated to myself what I still needed to do before he returned home, the living room light responded with a few blinks... before going out.

 

The result was that when Derek finally arrived home from work, tired, he was met by a distraught and frightened woman whose state of mind he didn't understand. You can imagine that it was this apparent banality that put the first small cracks in our relationship...

 

More and more, I felt like the house was somehow haunting me. That it was threatening me. Even though I'm not superstitious or paranoid... the fact that all this was only happening while my husband was away... it didn't seem entirely normal or random. Plus, I was getting more and more annoyed with the constant fuse-throwing.

 

Until one day, it happened when I wasn't really alone...

"Not again! It's driving me crazy!" I lamented to my friend who came to visit and was forced to finish her tea by candlelight because this time we didn't throw the fuses even with the best will.

"We'll need an electrician."

 

"Or an exorcist, " she uttered into the void somewhere, and I had no idea if she was making my day or if I really should start looking for the causes of our light problems somewhere in the supernatural...

"But this episode had a logical explanation, didn't it?" Andrew asked the young woman sternly.

"Andrew, " his brother pleaded gently.

 

Yes, it did.

When the repairmen arrived the next day, it was discovered that the brand-new wires that brought electricity to the house had short-circuited for unknown reasons. If we hadn't called them, it wouldn't have taken long and we would probably have burned out... The electricians themselves shook their heads in incomprehension. However, they replaced everything that was damaged free of charge, and from then on - at least as far as the lighting in the house was concerned - it was quiet.