Power Outage

If she cries, she cries, I thought to myself while pressing on the gas pedal with even more angst. No matter what, do not give in. I was closing in on our street, even as the raindrops got thicker and began coming down in harder splashes with each passing minute. Once home, I was going to officially part ways with my wife. The seven year itch was as real as ever, if mostly coming from her end of the union.

The timing however, couldn’t have been worse. We’d made it a tradition to revisit our college town every summer for our anniversary. Ann Arbor, Michigan—U of M. She studied art history while I majored in anthropology. A happy accident in the dining quarters led to a stained hoodie of mine which quickly turned into dating the love of my life. A year later, we were married and buying our first home together. The visit back was always lovely, except for one small detail that drove me absolutely crazy—that hairdryer of hers. She never trusted the ones in the hotel rooms, so she always brought her own pink ConAir along for the ride. It was a ridiculous request of hers that I’d go on to oblige each and every year.

Our marriage wasn’t perfect, but it was perfectly flawed. We’d often cook dinner together, even if it didn’t turn out as expected. We’d see monthly horror movies, even if we’d get shushed by the other people there for laughing too loud. Everything we did was so us. Then things cooled down, slowly but surely. We stopped cooking. Stopped going to movies. Stopped laughing. Finally, the lovelessness of it all eventually boiled over with a creeping normalcy.

“How do you feel about open marriages?,” she nonchalantly said one night while laying in bed. It ripped my heart in half knowing she’d already made up her mind if she had the guts to ask me such a question. I tried to brush it off as one of her spur-of-the-moment ideas for the longest time. But now, here, I finally felt all of my frustration swirling itself into a chaotic ball of pure desperation. It didn’t matter how much planning went into tomorrow’s trip, I was officially calling it and the entire marriage off. Seven whole years, down the drain. If she wanted to see other people then I was going to give her the opportunity to do just that. Permanently.

I pulled up into the driveway and upon reaching the front door, I could already sense something was different. Maybe it was just the anxiety rushing through me. But then I realized that the window lamp was weirdly turned off. Loud thunder came at me from all angles as I fumbled to find the right key. Finally unlocking the door and quickly stepping inside, I saw that everything was completely dark. No lights on anywhere at all.

“Kate?,” I called out. Nothing. No noise from upstairs, no shuffling in the kitchen, just me and my heavy breathing. “Kate?”

“Down here!” I finally heard her voice coming from the basement as she quickly ran up the wooden steps toward ground level. “The power’s gone out!”

“Ahh…, of course it has. Did you report it?”

“Twice,” she coyly said. That was her way of dealing with stressful situations. She checked things and checked them again, at least twice every time. Why hadn’t she applied that approach to our mutual happiness?, I couldn’t help but think.

The plan was simple enough: sit her down, offer her a cigarette which would immediately show her that I meant business, and drop the bomb within a minute, tops. My escape route was going to be the News app, for at least an hour or so. Then, a movie as I fell asleep by myself on the couch, naturally. She could throw a tantrum, she could raise her voice, she could even call the cops, but nothing would shake me from my commitment to stand firm in my decision. Though now with the power being out, we’d actually be forced to communicate like two normal adults. It'd make my way out of the inevitable devastation impossibly difficult.

“So how was work?,” she asked, trying to seem interested in the mundane details of my everyday life.

“It was…, whatever…,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. She raised both eyebrows in slight surprise.

“Problem?,” she nearly snapped. A sudden bolt of lightning lit up the entire darkened living room and pulled me back into the present moment as the rain outside increased in ferocity.

“No. I’m just…, a little tired, that’s all.” There was nothing to do, nowhere else to go except sit next to one another and soak in each other’s presence. She placed her feet in my lap and shot me her signature look that just oozed some type of flirtatiousness. It was something I hadn’t seen in a while so my fingers instinctively began gliding atop her exposed ankles. Still, my thoughts began traveling to prior moments.

I began thinking about my ruined hoodie still hanging in some lonely corner of the closet, collecting dust, never to be worn again and kept only for its sentimental value. How could she not have seen me right behind her in that line?, I thought to myself. A quick, inattentive turn and her lunch was immediately on my clothes and dripping down to the ground below, leaving a stain on my heart that I’d never be able to get out.

A subtle anger began growing and boiling up to the surface of my skin. Not so much from how she made me feel these past few months, but these past few years. She was so…, perfectly flawed. How could I love someone so much and be hurt so deeply by them at the same time? It wasn’t just how we met. It was how we kissed and texted one another from work and made love at night. It was how she danced by herself in the middle of the living room and added sugar packets to the dinner’s green beans and everything else which comes along with going on to marry your best friend. I hated that I loved her as much as I did, and at the same time, I’d found some sort of comfort in it. The rain was intensifying which strangely matched my feelings to a tee.

Was it a type of self-hatred that personified itself in wanting to love someone who was losing interest in me? Maybe she just wanted to experience different things. Maybe she wasn’t losing interest necessarily but just wanted to spice up a lusterless marriage. Maybe, maybe. I didn’t know the answers to all of the questions which drove me to doubt every word she’d spoken within these last few months. I wanted to simultaneously rip my hair out while start making out with her right there on the couch. I wanted to yell, to swear up a storm, but couldn’t muster up an ounce of courage to do anything at all but remain perfectly quiet.

How am I going to approach this?, I thought. Easing into it would needlessly tear her heart in two much slower than if I were to just come out with it, though blurting it out would be incredibly insensitive. I closed my eyes and again saw the stained hoodie in my mind’s eye. Like an annoying gnat, it kept buzzing around my psyche with glee. I felt my fists balling up without warning, like I was on the verge of ending it right there and then.

I peered over at her and noticed she was looking at the walls, deep in thought, just like I’d been. I noticed her crimson lips, her slightly ruffled hair, her long eyelashes and pierced ears. I hated and loved all of them at once. There were a million emotions swirling around my head and I wanted to say all of them at the same time. I felt my mouth opening and my heart preparing to spill itself over into the thickening atmosphere around us. Take a deep breath…, then go…

“So…,” I finally managed to get out. “Will you be bringing your hairdryer tomorrow?”

“It’s already packed.” Kate smiled. I smiled back and slowly resumed my caressing of her ankles as the rain quietly died down to a gentle patter. A calmness would descend over our minds for the rest of the night and by morning the power would be restored. We just didn’t know it yet.