Bedroom Renovation

When she walked into the room, she stepped on a pile of outlet covers and their loose, tiny screws. Eddie was on the floor, hunched over the small, square hole in the wall. Wires poked their wild yellow and red heads out. The room was losing light as the sun set. She crossed her arms and looked at Eddie. Here they were again. Out of electricity.

"It's been days," she said. It had been days. She woke up every morning and reached for the flashlight on her bedside table. She made her way to the kitchen, where Eddie set up a camp stove. Some mornings she fumbled her way through making coffee in a french press. Other mornings, she sat in the dark until and the light hit the windows and then she banged around the kitchen and slammed the cabinet doors until Eddie woke up.

"Getting a late start," he said as he came down the hall.

She glared at him. "I work for myself," she answered.

She lived in unfinished rooms without flinching. The possibility of a splinter sticking in her bare feet as she walked down her hallway didn't phase her a bit. Drywall and plaster and tools on the floor - she could handle it. But she needed to be able to see the mess in order to live with it. She had to confront it daily, and the darkness in the morning made her aware of it on another level. She knew it was there. She could feel it. She couldn't see it. And to fix it, she had to look at it.

Eddie sat on an empty milk crate. She kept a lot of those lying around. He reached for her cup of coffee, which she sat on the counter. She watched him lift it up and bring the mug to his lips. He sipped from it. He flinched at the bitterness of it. She drank it black when she made it at the house. Any other time, she'd have filled it with cream and sugar. But at her house, in the dark, without a refrigeration to keep the cream cold, she didn't bother.

"I'll have the bedroom done today," he said, and sat the mug right back where he found it.

She simply nodded. There was a time, in the beginning, when she directed his work. She would have told him that the kitchen was more important. She would have demanded faster progress. That time was long over. Instead, she nodded. She understood. He knew which room was the most important in the house.