The Uninvited Guest

The floor was always cold beneath her feet, but not this cold. Grace felt around blindly for her slippers as she shrugged on her robe, keeping the light off to not wake her husband. The sound of the wind whistled down the fireplace flue and stirred the decomposing leaves in the yard as she closed the bedroom door behind her. The first grey tones of morning were giving contrast to the bare trees which rose through the valley outside the living room window, and she could see the dark, rising shape of the mountains beyond. Pulling her robe tightly around her, her eyes squinted down through the whipping trees to see the distant lights of the town, but there were none. The blank digital clock on the oven confirmed her suspicion of a power outage.

From overhead came the unsteady, rasping breaths of her father-in-law, still asleep in the small loft that sat over the master bedroom. She had been awake nearly all night half-panicked and completely irritated by his nocturnal noises joining with the cold front blowing in. He had arrived uninvited, four days prior, to spend Christmas at her house. She had spent that day wrapped in dread, as he made the eight hour journey from Illinois through the mountain passes of Tennessee and Western North Carolina. When he pulled his truck into the dirt driveway in the dark, he smashed several of the stepping stones they had recently put down, then wobbled slowly into the house with her two children buzzing about him. Today he was scheduled to pack up and make the return journey after breakfast.

Richard, or Papa Rich as he was known by her kids, was a retired chief of police who spent his time working on his array of cars and trucks, keeping up with conservative news stories and watching reruns of shows like Cops and internet videos of law enforcement encounters. He had been married twice, once to John’s mother, who had died of cancer, and then remarried a few years later to a woman who succumbed to the same fate. He had been thoroughly distraught over the passing of his second wife, and in a magnanimous, tearful moment after her November funeral, Grace had insisted Richard join them for Christmas that year. That had been the last such invitation.

“Mommy?” Her daughter’s sleepy voice called from behind her. She turned to see her six-year-old, Lily, with a blanket pulled over her head and around her shoulders like a cloak.

“Hi honey. Are you cold?” Lily nodded and walked into the living room, lifting a quilt from the back of the couch and then diving underneath it, curled into a ball on the floor. “I’ll get a fire going.” 

As she stacked some kindling sticks in the middle of their stone fireplace, she heard Richard struggling to his feet upstairs, coughing and muttering loudly to himself. “Grace?” He called as he shuffled to the railing by the stairs that overlooked the kitchen and living room from the loft. “Grace? Do you have my coffee ready?” 

She cringed. “No coffee this morning unless we get out the camp stove. The power is out.”

“The power is out? Don’t you have a backup generator?”

“No, we didn’t have the budget for that when we built this house.”

“Oh. Well don’t you think you should have gone with a gas stove at least? How are you going to make breakfast?”

Grace held her breath. Richard was from a different generation, she told herself. He wasn’t aware that his expectations of others were often painfully removed from reality. He was an old man. And lonely too. She tried to be patient. “I’m getting a fire going at the moment. We’ve got plenty in the fridge to have for a cold breakfast. I’ll ask John to bring up the camp stove when he wakes up.”

“Ok, Honey. Can you bring me a glass of milk then?” He wheezed out another cough, turned away and walked into the bathroom. 

The diffused light from the gray-sky morning had brought the living room into clearer view. Grace approached the mass of her little daughter under the blankets, crouching and lifting one corner to kiss her temple. “Hey baby. Papa Rich needs your help. Can you bring him some milk?”

“Ok! Yes!” Lily was an enthusiastic helper. Grace filled a cup then sent her upstairs with it. Grace felt relieved she would not have to risk a close encounter with Richard in his boxers and undershirt.

John emerged from the bedroom at that moment, already dressed for the cold weather, phone in hand. He met her gaze and seemed to read her mind. “The power company is saying it could be one to two days before they get the lines fixed. A big tree took out the main line to the town.”

“What? Why do they think it will take that long?”

John shrugged. “I’m going to go check it out. I’m sure they need help.”

“Always on call, aren’t you?” She gave him weak smile, though inwardly she was pleading for him not to leave her with his dad. Her husband’s drive to help was his most defining trait. She knew it was better not to argue with him over the matter. 

John went about pulling on some heavy duty overalls on top of his already warm clothes. He shouted up to his dad. “Dad. That toilet has one good flush in it, then that’s it till the power’s back.” Grace restrained a groan.

“John? Where are you going?” Richard’s voice came from behind the bathroom door. 

“I’ll be back before you leave, dad.” I’m going to drive up the road to where the tree is down and help out.” And with that, he disappeared into the basement to get his tools together. 

Grace rubbed her cold palm on her cheek, peering back at the blanket pile in the living room where Lily had resumed her nest building. She took a breath, and let it out slowly. Power or no power, Richard would be on his way home in just a few hours.

In a few minutes, she had a decent fire going and went to dress before coming up with something to feed the family. Her nine year old son Alex was up now, poking at Lily under her blankets while she squealed in protest and attempted to crawl away from him. Richard had yet to descend the stairs, though it sounded like he was slowly preparing for the day and packing his things. “Grace? Did you open the flue? It smells really smoky up here.”

“I did. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure it’s open all the way? Did you check?”

“Yes, it’s open all the way.”

“Are you sure it’s not blocked? Is it smokey down there too?”

“This is a small house. The smell just carries up to the loft.”

“I think something’s not right. You need to check if all the smoke is going up the flue. You must have a really smoky fire going.”

She decided to change the subject. Richard would stay fixated on the fire for who knows how long, going to all kinds of lengths to point out the inadequacies of both her ability to build a fire and the design of their recently constructed home. “How about a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast?”

“That sounds fine, Honey.”

Grace went about setting up the ancient two burner camp stove John had dropped off in the kitchen before he left in an attempt to boil some water for coffee, but quickly realized that they were nearly out of bottled water, and without power to the well pump there wouldn’t be any drinking water left if she used it all on coffee. She sighed deeply and rubbed her temples, beginning to feel pinched by her dependencies on electricity. She slid the campstove aside, poured some orange juice, put out two bowls of cereal and milk for the kids and spread cream cheese on a cold bagel for Richard. She herself lacked an appetite. 

Richard began to descend the stairs slowly, stepping both feet down one stair at a time. He suffered from chronic back pain earned through years of rough police work. He was winded by the time he arrived at the kitchen counter, sitting heavily on a bar stool in front of his plate. Alex looked up mournfully from his cereal bowl.

“I don’t want you to leave, Papa Rich!”

“Oh now, you’ll just have to get your mama and daddy to bring you to visit me at my house soon! Besides, Papa Rich needs to get home to sleep in his own bed, you know.”

Alex seemed to consider this. “Yeah, I don’t like the bed upstairs either. It’s too squishy. Mom, when are we going to visit Papa Rich?”

“We’ll have to talk about it with daddy. It’s hard to plan around his schedule, buddy.” She then redirected his inevitable line of questioning: “Can you please go bring in some more wood for the fire?”

“Ok, mom!” He slurped up the honey nut flavored milk in his bowl, dropped the bowl in the sink and bounded towards the back door. How to clean dishes was yet another thing Grace hadn’t fully considered with the power out. Did they have any disposable plates and bowls? She made a mental note to check before lunch time. 

“Grace, where is the gas station in town? I need to refuel when I get on the road. My truck is pretty low.”

A jolt went through her limbs, causing her fingers to quake slightly. She conjured up a memory of a power outage from the year before that had lasted several days after a severe wind storm had passed through town. The nearest gas station, she knew, would also be without power. She pulled out her phone and checked the power company website. She clenched her jaw. “How far can you get on what you have left in the tank?”

“Oh, maybe 30 miles. Grace, there’s a gas station within 30 miles isn’t there?”

“Every gas station within 30 miles is also going to be without power, and the road to Hendersonville is blocked by the downed tree right now, so there’s no way to get to town. Let me call John. Maybe he’ll have an idea.” She held the phone to her ear, listening to the ring tone move straight to voicemail. Then she typed in a text message, and watched as the screen threw up a failure-to-send error. John was out of cell range. She switched her phone to battery saver mode and set it down. Her ears felt hot despite the dim, chilly kitchen. 

“He must not have a signal. You may not be going anywhere for a while.”

“Grace, I need to leave soon or I’ll be driving in the dark. The forecast shows snow tonight in Illinois. I don’t want to drive through that. Are you sure John doesn’t have any extra fuel here? Can’t he bring some back?”

Richard had a talent for not listening to her. She turned away from him, looking into the living room where Alex and Lily were now both wrapped in blankets sitting on the floor near the fire. They were giggling as they played with a wooden tea party set of Lily’s - Alex dramatically pretending to choke or vomit everytime Lily offered him a refreshment. “Best we can do right now is just stay warm by the fire with the kids.”

Scooting the kids aside, she poked the fire to reposition the logs, then added a few to the top. She scooted a rocking chair and an old armchair up close and brought out a few more blankets from the linen closet. Richard shuffled over and settled himself with a loud, prolonged sigh in the armchair. “Grace?” His voice rose as he looked at her through his thick glasses, giving the impression he had just thought of something important. “Honey? How do you get to work when it snows here? These roads are too steep for you to drive if they have any snow on them, and you’d never get a plow truck back here!”

She took a tone of nonchalance, despite the urgency in his voice. Richard had a way of speaking that made everything seem urgent and unsolvable. “I am able to work from home now and then if I need to. If the kids are sick or out of school, I can dial into meetings virtually as long as the power isn’t out.” 

He was quiet for a moment, looking over at the kids, who were now regressing into a wrestling match. “I tell you what, if I was the boss - and I’m sure this wouldn’t be legal -” his eyes popped and he grinned slightly, speaking slowly and with presence as though he felt he was on to something “- if I knew someone had kids and wanted to work from home, I wouldn’t hire them.” 

He was baiting her. She felt her cheeks grow red hot “Oh? Why is that?”

“They would be taking care of the kids! Why would I pay someone to stay at home and watch their own kids? There is no way they would be working. I’d be stupid to hire someone like that.”

For four days now she had been polite and a good hostess to him, ensuring he was comfortable, well fed, and entertained. She had swallowed her pride at his short-sighted comments, brushed off his offensive humor, and even smiled in response to his bold statements about how things are in the world-according-to-Richard. But with John out of the house, the rising screech of her kids’ rough housing, and the lack of caffeine beginning to take effect, she was ready for a battle. 

“Did it ever occur to you that most people who work full time from home have some kind of arrangement for child care just like anyone else that works? Being able to work from home is a benefit my company offers when I have a need, and yes it is really hard to be productive when I have the kids with me and John is at work. I usually end up logging in after they are asleep or before they wake up in the morning to make up for lost work time.” Her tone became indignant, “And it’s not lost on me that your comment is directed at women. It would never have occurred to you that if a man wanted to work from home that he could possibly be involved with his kids. You would not hire women with children that wanted to work from home.” She looked away sharply and scolded Alex for pinning Lily down, causing her to squeal loudly in protest. He frowned, then retreated to the couch to pout.

Richard did not respond. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through something slowly, his ample jowls pooled around his chin as he peered down through his thick glasses. Grace stood up and went into the bedroom, dumped a basket full of clean clothes onto the bed and began to sort through them. In the dim light, this was not an easy task, but it was the best excuse she had at the moment to get out of the same room with Richard. In the living room, Richard was calling the kids over to him to watch something on his phone. She heard his voice drop gently when Alex did not come, still distraught by his mother’s temper. “Alex? It’s ok, honey. Listen to this.” Grace heard the opening piano notes of “O Holy Night” coming from his phone speaker. After the first few pleasant-sounding measures, an off-key recorder began fumbling comically through the melody. The kids giggled. 

Grace felt her chest tighten and her shoulders drop. Although her interactions with him left her feeling perpetually defensive, she knew her kids loved their Papa Rich. She had never known a time when she could simply let Richard be himself without feeling constantly triggered. She pictured him now, in the other room, with Lily probably in his lap and Alex leaning his head on Richard’s shoulder to watch the bumbling recorder player’s recital. What was the result of her anger? Why did Richard seem to have so much power over her emotions? Why was it so important to her that he be able to see her through her own experience instead of his? She stared through the window of her bedroom, her thoughts beginning to slow. She saw John had pulled into the driveway and was carrying a case of bottled water up to the house. The sun was breaking through the clouds in places, brightening the tops of the mountains across the valley. 

Grace stepped out of the bedroom to meet John at the door. “You’re back soon. How did it go?”

“They wouldn’t let me anywhere near. The power company is working on it, but it is not looking good. I had this case of water in the truck from work. I’m guessing we’ll need it.” He looked over at Richard. “I got your text. I guess my Dad is going to have to stay until the power is back on. Even with the little bit of fuel I have left, he’d have to take the mountain pass to get around the road closure.” He frowned, looking at her, anticipating her displeasure with this announcement.

She breathed deeply. “It’s ok. We’ll be ok. The kids will be happy to have him a little longer.” She smiled, building her resolve once more. Staying entrenched in her need to be right wouldn’t get her anywhere. She went back to setting up the camp stove to make some coffee with the new supply of bottled water, pleasantly announcing her intent to do so to Richard.

He looked up from his phone momentarily. “That’s nice, honey. Thank you.”