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Just My Imagination
By Chris Kuell “Oh, crap,” Art sighed. The electrical box that held the GFI outlet in the master bathroom was loose. Half-assed contractors probably put it in with Elmer’s Glue, he thought, jiggling the loose fixture with one hand, holding the electric screwdriver in the other. Art was entering the home stretch on a bathroom renovation project he had started a few weeks ago. His neighbor Mona hired him for the job. Pull the tub, knock down the walls around the shower, rebuild the floor and put in one of those fiberglass shower/tub units that were so popular nowadays. Art preferred keeping things original and true to the time period during which the house was built. Preserving the character, so to speak. A nice ceramic tile floor and a claw foot tub. You could install a showerhead with a wrap around curtain if you liked, but Art favored the unadorned, yet beautiful, old-fashioned cast iron tub. Finish off the job with a pedestal sink and some nice tile work on the walls and you got yourself a first class bathroom. But not Mona. No, Mona wouldn’t go for that at all. Mona was a widowed, grouchy old lady with nothing better to do than smoke two or three packs a day and hand out unwanted advice to all the unfortunate people who happened to cross her path. Rumor around the neighborhood was that Mona’s late husband hanged himself. “Don’t know if it is true,” Art told his wife one night over dinner. “But after two weeks of listening to her incessant nagging, I can believe it.” Turns out, around six years ago, Mona’s loser son retiled her bathroom after water dripped from the living room ceiling onto an expensive Persian rug. Art figured the rug actually came from Sears, but that was beside the point. Dwayne was Mona’s only child and was thus blessed with the Midas touch. According to his proud mother, Dwayne was a well-respected, very successful contractor. Tons of business, everybody loved his work, the money just kept rolling in. If you listened to Mona you would think this guy owned a fleet of Lear jets and was building the next Guggenheim Museum. Art didn’t bother pointing out that everybody knew Dwayne drove a ten-year-old, rusty Chevy van, spent a short vacation in the state pen a few years back and was often overheard at Mona’s asking for money. Or that she hired Art to re-do a job that the prodigal son screwed up when he and his master crew did it the first time. No, to Mona the problem wasn’t in Dwayne’s workmanship; the problem was in those tiles. “The things are designed to fall off, don’t even tell me they’re not. That’s how they keep bleeding you for money time and time again. No more tiles for me, no way.” That was how she arrived at the decision to go with the fiberglass insert. And of course Dwayne must have been so busy building a new mansion for the Rockefellers that she hired Art, the blind man that lived just a few houses down. Some people might hesitate at hiring a blind handyman to renovate their bathroom. But Mona had done her homework. Charlie down at the plumbing supply store told her that Art learned the business from his father, who was a real big contractor in his day. To hear Charlie talk you’d think Art’s father had built half the town. Apparently Art was his helper for many years as a teenager, so he learned how to do just about anything as far as home repair. Yet, Mona was still skeptical. She was a nosey old lady and had snooped around Art’s house enough to see he did real nice work. He replaced all the windows in his house with new storm windows and everybody said he did an expert job. Mona peeked in the bay window of his kitchen and saw the cabinets he built and the floor tiling he had laid, and she had to admit it looked professional. In fact, it was just about as good as Dwayne’s work. Last summer Mona spent hours watching Art build a Japanese-style water garden in the Spencer’s backyard. Her guest bedroom side window offered a good vantage point. When the job was finished she approached the Spencers and asked for a closer look. After scrutinizing the garden she asked, “How much did he charge you?” Ted Spencer picked her cigarette butt out of the pebbles and reluctantly told her the ballpark figure. “I’d have saved my money and gone to Niagara Falls,” the old lady cackled. However, Mona’s frugal mind was elated to learn that the blind guy worked cheap. So, after a little deliberation, an agreement was reached on a reasonable fee (fifteen bucks an hour less than Dwayne charged) and Art commenced fixing Mona’s bathroom. Now, shiny linoleum tiles covered the floor and the tub insert was installed and functioning without drip or leak. Art only needed to add a few finishing touches and he could collect his check. The sooner the better, since the old hag was driving him crazy with her non-stop interfering and questioning. Talk, nag, and smoke. Talk, nag and smoke--all day long. A few days into the job Art brought his tape player and tried listening to a book on tape, but Mona talked right over it. “How can you listen to that? Don’t you miss reading? I can’t stand listening to that. How can you understand it? What did he say? Can you rewind this thing?” And on and on. Which was why it was particularly aggravating that the damn electrical box was loose. Sure, Dwayne would probably leave it, maybe get some more Elmer’s glue or duct tape to hold it in. But Art knew that wasn’t safe. Art was not known as the speediest handyman in town, but he was proud of his projects. Top quality results were his way of showing the world that blindness did not stop him, and that blind people could do just as good a job as sighted. He used custom tools with audible features, and his fingertips were far more critical than most homeowners’ eyes. So every joint was flush, every tile perfectly placed, every crack plastered and sanded and every space caulked and sealed. No, a wobbly outlet box would not do. He shut off the switch that controlled the outlet and the light. That assured him that no power would reach the box. He could now rig the electrical box to a stud without having to go to the basement and shut down the circuit breaker. Not that he minded running the two flights of stairs to shut off the breaker, but it would involve enduring an hour of interrogation by the old lady. He could hear it now. “What if my food spoils? It’ll come out of your paycheck. How am I supposed to make phone calls? You never mentioned shutting the power off.” Art just couldn’t deal with listening to her prattle. So, he turned the switch in the bathroom off and put a small piece of masking tape over it to hold it down so if he accidentally bumped it, it wouldn’t turn on. Holding the electric screwdriver he removed the outlet cover and then unscrewed the outlet from the box. Not a whole lot of room to work, but he was able to pull it out about six inches from the wall. He held the outlet in his left hand and was able to feel around in the box with his right. He found one nail holding things down, a nail that was only loosely in place. He pulled the wire a little more hoping to clear enough room to get his hammer in there. “Why’s this taped down? Why you working in the dark?” Mona’s grating, scratchy voice pushed past the smoldering Pall Mall clenched between her lips. She pulled up the masking tape and switched the light on to see what Art was doing. Her brain was slow to process what was happening. The lights, normally bright and illuminating, were flickering off and on. Art was making an odd aaahhhhh sound, and he was shaking. Was he having some kind of seizure? Was he an epileptic too? He never mentioned that. Then a slightly acrid smell pierced through the ashy smoke of the cigarette. Burning wood? No, more like burning hair. She noticed Art’s hand holding something with a fat wire running into a box in the wall. A trickle of white smoke escaped from his fingertips. Before she could shut off the switch, the lights went out in the bathroom as well as half the house. For Art, the realization of what happened was faster, but speed of thought made no difference. Holding the outlet with its exposed wires in one hand and his hammer in the other, he was focusing on the head of the nail so he could hit it solidly. He didn’t notice the waft of smoke from Mona’s cigarette, but then again the whole house smelled like a nightclub. He didn’t hear her small, slipper-covered feet approaching the bathroom doorway. He never considered that it was dark and that Mona would be likely to turn on the light. Art was just focused on hitting that nail until a strange tingling sensation began in his palm then surged through his veins like a fireball engulfing an old, dried out Christmas tree. Blam! First an uncomfortable, massive tingling went through him, then a wave of heat. His scalp was ablaze; his tongue burned like someone tossed it on a flaming barbeque. He dropped the hammer and then all his muscles began to twitch involuntarily. Spasms racked his body; he couldn’t stop them or alter their random path of movement. He thought, Oh, shit! but couldn’t seem to let go of the outlet. He must have lost consciousness after that because there was a period of time when contact with all things physical and mental was gone. Sometime later he discovered he was lying in a bed. Not his bed; the mattress was too thin and soft. He reached over to his side but his wife wasn’t there. Just a cold, steel railing. His left palm ached a bit, but at least he could move his arm and that horrible burning sensation throughout his entire body was gone. Raising a hand to his face, he felt two eyes, a nose and two lips. That was a good sign. Usually, Art kept his useless eyes shut just because it was more comfortable, but slowly he opened them. Instead of the blackness his defective retinas had registered for years, he experienced a lighter scene. Was this what they called gray? Lying on his back, his eyes faced the ceiling. Slowly he moved his head to the right and looked down. Breaking up the gray was a square shaped lightness, very bright, yet fuzzy. The unusual shape reminded him of when he was losing his vision as a child. Doors and windows would sometimes appear this way, a marshmallowy glob floating in the dark void. His mind reached back to a time when he sat in a doctor’s office at age 7. The shadows of black against the gray barely registered, so Art had stared blankly at the only window in the office for visual stimulation. He heard wet breathing sounds coming from his mother while his dad inquired if his son would ever see again. The doctor said flatly it wasn’t likely. The disease was progressive and could not be stopped. Maybe sometime way off in the future perhaps, but not in this lifetime. Turning his head away from the window and the memory, Art looked toward his feet. Shapes seem to be there, like lumps of clay at the bottom of a glass of milky water. Art rubbed his knuckles gently into his eyes and tried his best to focus. How does one do that, he wondered. It had been over 30 years. Scrunching his nose a bit and squinting, he discovered that the shapes got clearer. There were yellowish things sticking up at the bottom of the bed. Leaning closer, he noticed with his eyes that they swayed as he consciously moved his feet. Reaching out and touching them, he felt and saw each of his stubby toes. Tears welled up in Art’s eyes as he stroked his own feet, noting carefully the shape of his hands as they touched his toes and ankles. To an outside observer, Art had that fascinated look of wonder, like a kid seeing a set of newborn kittens for the first time. It must have been the electrical shock. Art closed his eyes and shook his head. No, it just wasn’t true. He must be medicated, on some strong narcotic that was causing him to hallucinate or something. Morphine probably. But when he opened his eyes again, things were even clearer. The bright square was definitely a window, the sky was blue outside and there were little people running off in the distance. Children, he thought. Playing baseball. Mesmerized, Art watched for a few moments as one big kid smashed the ball well beyond the right fielder’s head. A dozen children scampered about. Turning his head slowly, he could see the edges of his bed and some sort of table with a book and a cup. Over in one corner of the room, there was a dark box with a bright image on its front. The picture moved and Art reasoned it must be a television set. A woman in bright colors spoke to him, her lips moved but no sound came out. Not far from the TV was a doorway, and Art noticed what appeared to be hardwood floors outside. As a kid he used to love to run in his socks on the yellowy-waxed hardwood floor in the upstairs hallway of his parents’ house. If you got moving you could glide for over ten feet. That is, until his little brother Sammy fell and broke his elbow, ruining it for everyone. On the wall opposite the window was a picture of a car. It seemed like a big black Ford Thunderbird, a happy family cruising with the top down. His dad used to own such a car, until Art and his four siblings came along and Dad had to sell it for something a little more practical. Funny, a picture of a Thunderbird being here in his hospital room. Art tried to let it all soak in. He had been blind for thirty-four years now, and he had forgotten how much visual input there was in the world. How completely foreign things looked, as compared to how they felt. The shininess of the bedrail, so bright and reflective. Formerly it was just cold, metallic and smooth. Running his fingers along it he saw his own warped reflection in its surface, his head flat and squished. As he moved closer it went away altogether. Looking up to see where it went, he noticed someone standing in the doorway of the room. Although he had never physically seen her, Art knew right away that it was Carrie. She looked exactly like he had imagined her. She stood smiling, a rounded face with a small, flat nose and bright, penetrating eyes. Golden brown hair hung loosely around her shoulders. She was wearing a simple dress and her hands were folded in front of her. A small cross hung around her neck on a gold chain, a Christmas gift from Art a few years back. Carrie didn’t seem flustered in the least at seeing her blind husband sitting in a hospital bed, taking it all in. Art wanted to call her name but nothing came from his mouth. Undisturbed, he let the thought go casually by, focusing instead on absorbing the image of his beloved wife. Part of his brain wondered how this could be real and the other accepted it as perfectly normal. This is beautiful, he thought. I am experiencing beauty in a way I never could before. Wordlessly he beckoned her inside to be with him. Cautiously she approached, still smiling but not speaking, seeming to study him with the same fascination that enveloped Art. She brushed away a lock of his hair then gently ran her fingertips across the stubble on his cheek. Art reflexively ran his hand across the familiar curve of her hip and heard her tender voice, “Hey Babe, you had me worried there.” Art lay remarkably calm considering the miraculous events that had transpired. In fact, he experienced a wave of exhaustion, which he mentally attributed to shock. His drained body commanded him to rest, but he needed Carrie to stay with him. His mind overloaded with unaccustomed thoughts and images, Art defaulted to an instinctual mode and sought comfort from his wife. Looking into Carrie’s face, Art finally understood the wonderful pleasure contained in a smile. In that telepathic way that occurs between longtime lovers, Carrie knew to kiss him. Art closed his eyes as his wife’s mouth closed on his. Somewhere in his head church bells were ringing a little off key, just like on their wedding day. The hammer Art dropped hit the faucet, then the edge of the sink, did a half gainer into the radiator and finished with a rapid tink! on the pliers lying open on the floor. The EMTs tried in vain to resuscitate the blind handyman. The attending emergency room physician pronounced him Dead On Arrival a short time later. Suspected cause of death: accidental electrocution. Mona was also taken to the emergency room, treated for shock and released to her son three hours later. The first thing she did upon Dwayne’s arrival was light up a much needed cigarette. He dropped her at home and returned to Callahan’s Bar and Grill for the conclusion of the late afternoon 9-ball tournament. |
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