That’s something that Uncle Walt used to say. Mom would ask him why he didn’t get a generator, and Uncle Walt would claim that Central Maine Power charges people double for every watt they don’t provide.
She laughs. Nobody around here trusts CMP.
“You mind if we come and check in on you again in the future?” she asks.
I nod.
“Just yell if you don’t see me. I could be out back or down in the cellar.”
She is backing towards the car and waving.
She says something very quietly to her partner when she gets to the car. They’re too far away from me for me to hear them, but I do anyway.
She says, “He’s nuts, but I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
They get in their car and drive away.
I watch until they’re over the hill and then I listen to the engine until they’re past Mr. Engel’s house. I’m curious as to whether they will stop there and check on his empty house.
They don’t.
(I have a visitor.)
I have a visitor.
The knocking wakes me and I sit up fast. There’s a towel at the bottom of the door to block out the light. I move it aside and see that it’s not too bright. The sun must be going down. I would have woken up pretty soon anyway.
I stand up in the pantry, smooth my hair with my hand and wipe my face. When I walk out of here, I want to look presentable, like I haven’t been sleeping in the pantry all day.
It’s probably the cops again.
When I open the door and emerge, I don’t recognize the face on the other side of the kitchen door.
She spots me just as I’m deciding to slink back into the shadows of the pantry.
I wave with my nub and then slip it behind my back in embarrassment. In the hospital, one of the occupational therapists told me about proprioception. Maybe I’m remembering this wrong. He told me that I would likely still feel like I had a hand for quite some time. For a while, I shouldn’t be surprised if I reach for things or try to wave with a hand that isn’t there. It’s still embarrassing.
The woman on the other side of the door doesn’t seem to notice. She squints at me through the glass in the upper half of the door and I open it up, trying to smile.
“Hello?”
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Amber.”
For several seconds, the name doesn’t help me at all. I simply stare at her with a dumb smile plastered on my face.
It comes back to me in a burst.
“Amber! Mr. Engel’s… I guess I never knew your relation to Mr. Engel. You’re too young to be his niece?”
She blushes and looks down. The rush of blood to her face makes her almost glow.
“Yes, grand niece, I guess. My mother was his youngest niece.”
I nod and we stand there awkwardly for a moment.
“Sorry. Come in, I say.”
I’m holding the door with my good hand so I gesture with my nub again.
“Oh, thank you,” she says. She moves through the doorway carefully, like she’s entering a cave and doesn’t want to disturb any of the roosting bats.
When I turn and look at the kitchen through fresh eyes, I understand. The kitchen is dark and still smells of rotted food, despite my efforts to clean it up. There are large pieces of broken glass stacked on the counter. I’m not sure how to dispose of them without the shards poking through the trash bags.
“There was an accident,” I say. I gesture towards a chair and take one for myself. “The truck exploded and broke the windows. It took down the power pole as well.”
She nods. “I saw the power trucks today. Looks like they nearly have your house connected again.”
I lean back to look through the window. She’s right. The line is back up to the pole, and there’s a brand new transformer installed there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the electricity back. I’m not sure I still want it. The house seems just fine without it.
“I didn’t think you were coming to town,” I say.
“I figured I better check on the house,” she says. “I had some time off and I realized that I hadn’t seen the place in so long that I didn’t even really remember what it was like, you know?”
I nod. I never had that problem with Uncle Walt’s house. I knew this house better than any house my mother rented. Sometimes I would wake up in my bed in Virginia and expect to set my feet down on the wide floors of this house. It was always a shock to find out I wasn’t at Uncle Walt’s.
“Plus, I wanted to get a head start on figuring out what was in the house before my cousin gets there. Evan has sticky fingers,” she says. She blushes again. “We’re going to have a kind of lottery for everyone to pick the mementos that we want to keep. Everything else will get sold or donated, I suppose. Personally, I don’t have any real attachment to his things, so I guess I will remove myself.”
“That’s kind,” I say.
She starts to push back from the table.
“I didn’t mean to come steal your time. I want to thank you for checking in on my uncle. I’m so glad that he didn’t die alone, and that’s because you were so thoughtful.”
She looks at her hands and I can tell she’s barely keeping in her emotions.
“It’s okay,” I say.
I reach out with my nub before I remember that there are no fingers there to comfort her with.
She glances and catches sight of it. I see her eyes go wide.
“The accident,” I say. “I lost it in the accident.”
It looks like a question has risen to her lips but she’s too polite to ask it.
A silence grows between us. She opens her mouth to fill it.
“I don’t know how you cope with the quiet out here. I was only in that house a few
