Dad was much too stubborn to spend money on electricians. He did everything himself, refusing to file any work he did with the city, which saved him the trouble of having to bring things up to code. Having spent years laboring under the restrictions of the power company, he took a certain pride in outwitting them in his own home. He was always fishing lines through the walls, splicing and rewiring, creating a dense maze of circuitry behind our walls to the point where even he lost track of where everything went. The house gradually became something of an electrical puzzle, with too many lines on overburdened fuses and patchwork wiring that doesn’t always hold up. Slamming the doors of certain rooms can actually turn off the lights, and there are extra wall switches everywhere, some redundant and some that do nothing, so it always takes a few tries for the uninitiated to turn on or off the light they want. When he had central air installed a few years ago, he was supposed to upgrade the house from two hundred to four hundred amps, but that would have involved filing with the power company, so instead, he rewired the electric panels in the basement to make room for the compressor and air handlers. As a result, the house is more than a little electrically temperamental, and Mom always jokes that one day she’ll flip a switch and the house will explode. Until then, the circuit breakers will bravely go on tripping to protect the overloaded wires.
I rush through my shower, cold and blind and cursing a blue streak, then step shivering into the basement, where I find Alice in a white bathrobe, fiddling with the electric panel in the sparse morning light filtering down from upstairs.
“Hey,” she says when she sees me. “I’m sorry to invade your space like this.”
It’s the invading of my old bedroom upstairs that she should be apologizing for, but I just say it’s fine, suddenly self-conscious. The last time Alice saw me undressed was in this very room, several lifetimes ago. I looked better shirtless then, although I’m sure she did too. Time hasn’t necessarily been unkind to us, but it hasn’t gone out of its way either. And for the last two months, I’ve been living on a diet of delivered pizza and fried Chinese takeout. I suck in my gut and fold my arms strategically below my chest.
“I can’t find the switch,” she says.
I stand dripping beside her, studying the circuit panel. It’s too dark to see the little orange tab that shows on a tripped fuse, so I run my hand down the line of switches until I feel one that has more give than the others. “It’s this one,” I say, flipping the switch. The lights flicker back on at exactly the same instant my towel falls. “Whoops!” I say, doubling over to catch it and pull it back up to my waist. “Sorry about that.”
Alice smiles as I fumble with my towel. “Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she says, heading back upstairs; a rare lighthearted moment for Alice, which, if nothing else, confirms for me that I’m the only Foxman brother who didn’t get any last night.
10:00 a.m.
“IT WAS A Saturday morning,” Wendy says, “and, Mom, you were on a lecture tour. Dad was up on the roof, hammering the rain gutters back on or something. He was making a racket, so I was down in the basement, watching TV. It was a Brady Bunch movie, I still remember. The one where they go to Hawaii.”
“I remember that one,” Phillip says. “Alice hurts her back having a hula lesson, because of Peter’s bad luck charm.”
“Right,” Wendy says. “That’s not really germane to my story.”
“I remember thinking it was nice that Alice got to go on vacation with them,” Phillip says. “I mean, she was the housekeeper. You got the feeling that she hadn’t really gone anywhere before.”
“Phillip remembers every show or movie he’s ever seen,” Tracy says proudly, like we might not know.
“Now if only that were a marketable skill,”
I rush through my shower, cold and blind and cursing a blue streak, then step shivering into the basement, where I find Alice in a white bathrobe, fiddling with the electric panel in the sparse morning light filtering down from upstairs.
“Hey,” she says when she sees me. “I’m sorry to invade your space like this.”
It’s the invading of my old bedroom upstairs that she should be apologizing for, but I just say it’s fine, suddenly self-conscious. The last time Alice saw me undressed was in this very room, several lifetimes ago. I looked better shirtless then, although I’m sure she did too. Time hasn’t necessarily been unkind to us, but it hasn’t gone out of its way either. And for the last two months, I’ve been living on a diet of delivered pizza and fried Chinese takeout. I suck in my gut and fold my arms strategically below my chest.
“I can’t find the switch,” she says.
I stand dripping beside her, studying the circuit panel. It’s too dark to see the little orange tab that shows on a tripped fuse, so I run my hand down the line of switches until I feel one that has more give than the others. “It’s this one,” I say, flipping the switch. The lights flicker back on at exactly the same instant my towel falls. “Whoops!” I say, doubling over to catch it and pull it back up to my waist. “Sorry about that.”
Alice smiles as I fumble with my towel. “Nothing I haven’t seen before,” she says, heading back upstairs; a rare lighthearted moment for Alice, which, if nothing else, confirms for me that I’m the only Foxman brother who didn’t get any last night.
10:00 a.m.
“IT WAS A Saturday morning,” Wendy says, “and, Mom, you were on a lecture tour. Dad was up on the roof, hammering the rain gutters back on or something. He was making a racket, so I was down in the basement, watching TV. It was a Brady Bunch movie, I still remember. The one where they go to Hawaii.”
“I remember that one,” Phillip says. “Alice hurts her back having a hula lesson, because of Peter’s bad luck charm.”
“Right,” Wendy says. “That’s not really germane to my story.”
“I remember thinking it was nice that Alice got to go on vacation with them,” Phillip says. “I mean, she was the housekeeper. You got the feeling that she hadn’t really gone anywhere before.”
“Phillip remembers every show or movie he’s ever seen,” Tracy says proudly, like we might not know.
“Now if only that were a marketable skill,”
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