Lesson 19
So Close, and yet So Far
Our part of the neighborhood is down a very long dead end street that’s surrounded by fields that look like the prairies of the old West. All of us have chosen to live here because it’s walled off to the sounds of our city and the highway that runs through it. We enjoy living here, the neighborliness brought about by being sectioned off. We can depend on each other.
I’ve lived here for five years and it doesn’t bother me that I have to travel a few miles more to get to my work as a high school history teacher in the city and back home. Each day I take off for work, there’s always a neighbor or two asking me, “Off to work, Brenda?” or “Give those students hell, Brenda!” And I always get the same when I get home after school. It’s a good neighborhood.
But let me tell you about a night we had a few weeks ago. The high winds our part of the country is blessed with started up again that Friday after school, and my Honda Civic was actually leaning as I made my way down our street. I managed to pull into my driveway with my hair whipping against my face. Plus, it was a real struggle to get my key in the door. Once inside, I breathed a sigh of relief until I tried turning on the news. Another power outage. And it was growing darker outside. My grandmother’s old wood-encased mantel clock I keep next to the TV had stopped at 9:35 this morning. That meant I’d been without electricity for almost 8 hours.
I was thinking about Frank, my neighbor down the street, who is an electrician. I met him at one of the pot lucks they have once in a while here. That was a few years ago. I’d been attracted to him and I felt the attraction was mutual. But later Shelley, my next door neighbor told me Frank was married. Oh, well.
Today, feeling helpless, I thought maybe Frank could tell me when the power would be back on. My cellphone was out of juice so I had to wait a long time for the wind to die down. When it finally did, I opened my door, and immediately saw what the problem was: one of the cedar trees that line our block had been blown down and had brought down with it a power line. And what’s more, I saw Frank’s van at the site of that cedar along with a few more electric company vans.
From my front steps, it was a strange sight I beheld before I started walking towards them. To me, in the darkening afternoon, it looked as if the power line had lassoed the tree and had brought it down with it. I walked towards the vans and felt a rush of desire as I got closer to Frank. It took all my courage to ask the question I imagined everyone wanted to ask, “Any idea when the power will be back on?”
The shadows in Frank’s face seemed to cradle his good looks. Rugged but kind. Light blue understanding eyes. Shock of wheat colored hair. He looked at me and smiled in spite of the situation. He said, “Good to see you, Brenda.” The rush of desire deepened. He continued, “Unfortunately, the tree brought down the main power line to this neighborhood and we can’t risk stringing it up on the pole with the winds the way they are.” He even made bad news sound good.
“That’s what I thought,” I managed to say.
He then surprised me with the suggestion, “But, Brenda, I can come over later and show you what you can do in the meantime.”
Practically quaking in my boots, I said, “That’d be great, Frank!”
Grateful that the winds had calmed some, I rushed back to my house and through the darkness inside, I straightened the many pictures of my graduating students and me in my cap and gown on the walls, fluffed up the sofa pillows, found a not so cold half bottle of wine in the fridge and got out two wine glasses from my grandmother’s china cabinet. Then I actually found my thick round candles and was searching for matches when I heard a knock on my door.
The first thing Frank spied in my living room was the candles. He said, “Brenda, no, no, no. These winds could cause a fire.”
I felt humbled as he searched inside the gym bag he’d carried in with him and pulled out two sleek flashlights. “These’ll work better. Brighter light.”
He switched one of them on, placing it face up on the coffee table. It brightened the room enough to show him the two wine glasses and the half bottle of cheap wine.
“Well, well, well! What have we here?”
I hoped that the sudden light didn’t show me blushing. I actually hung my head.
A sharp sound of beeping suddenly pierced the encroaching silence between us. I looked up and Frank sighed, reaching into the pocket of his hazard jacket. He opened a utilitarian cellphone and said only, “Ok,” and closed it.
Was that a look of disappointment I saw in the fading light? Then he stood up in a hurry and said, “Sorry, Brenda. Work calls.”
Then he rushed out the door.
I now had no choice but to use the light of Frank’s flashlight to grade some of my students’ leftover homework I’d neglected to finish. There was nothing else to do.
Whatever battery was running Frank’s flashlight seemed to be maintaining the light and I finished grading the rest of my leftover assignments. I was so concentrated on them that I didn’t even notice that the high winds hadn’t started up again in the whole time since Frank had left. What’s more, night had fallen. What’s more, I saw lights on the street a ways from my house.
When I got to the street, all the vans were lit up by floodlights. A group of our neighbors were standing around and looking up. I looked up too and saw that Frank had scaled the high pole almost to the top and was in the process of affixing the now repaired power line from where the cedar tree had dragged it down.
The floodlights suddenly showed him giving us a thumbs up and we all cheered. And just like that, we could see several lights coming on in many neighborhood houses, including porch lights.
We yelled, “Way to go, Frank!”
The floodlights showed him grinning as he made his way down the pole.
After hugging my neighbors and cheering Frank again, everyone started to disperse. I hung back in the darkness, hoping.
Frank, seeing me, threw me what I felt was an “I’m sorry” look, got in his van and headed to his house.
So close, and yet so far.