Page 3 of Iron Heart

A hint of relief courses through me. So, I guess, problem solved? If the fuse has blown, then the current is cut, right? I don’t know. I know basically nothing about this stuff. Despite owning a house with wiring that hasn’t been updated since probably World War II.

I run back up the stairs, and when I’m back in front of the counter I see the sparks have stopped and nothing looks like it’s burning. Tentatively, I reach out a hand to touch the antique metal strike plate. It’s so hot it burns the pads of my fingers, and I yelp and quickly pull away.

“Ouch! Shit,” I hiss again in the now-silent kitchen, shaking my hand against the receding pain in my fingertips. It’s only at this moment that I notice my heart is pounding in my chest. A tiny surge of alarm spikes in my brain, making me instantly forget everything else except calming down the beat before it starts to get worse. Putting both hands on the counter, I lean into them, stare at a fixed point on the wall, and make myself take a moment just to draw a few slow, deep breaths, counting as I go. Five, then ten. Blowing out the last breath, I notice my heart seems to be slowing again.

Okay. Good.It’s fine. Fine. We’re all good here.

Thank God I wasn’t on the phone with my mother when that happened, I think with a nervous bubble of laughter. She’d have called an ambulance already, and she’d be in her car racing toward Ironwood right now.

With a final shaky sigh, I turn around and lean back against the counter. I stare at the open door that leads to the basement, the problem of my wiring issue coming back into focus. I guess calling an electrician has officially moved to the top of my home renovation and repair list.

“Thanks, Aunt Jeanne,” I say out loud to the empty room. “I think.”

When my Aunt Jeanne died early last year, I’m sure she thought she was doing me a favor by leaving me this old, sprawling Queen Anne-style house in her will. With the house, she also left me an entire new life. An easy, comfortable life that I only had to step into, like slipping into a warm, comfortable bath.

I’m sure she thought she was doing me a favor with that, too. It certainly did make some things easier for me. But sometimes — like today, for example — the ready-made life I’ve been leading in Ironwood, Ohio since I moved here feels more like a prison than anything.

I only found out that Jeanne had been diagnosed with terminal cancer after after she died. She hadn’t bothered to tell anybody in our family — which, even though it was a shock, was just the sort of behavior I would have expected out of my only aunt. Jeanne was never the kind of lady who wanted sympathy or attention. She absolutely hated people fussing over her. She would have especially it in a situation like hers, when ultimately, we found out later, there hadn’t been much to be done to help her. Her family doctor shared with us after her death that by the time they found the cancer, there was no chance of successfully curing it. The only thing that could have been done for her was potentially to give her more time — but that would also have probably involved a long, drawn-out death in a hospital bed or hospice.

Knowing Jeanne as well as I did, I imagine she didn’t want to have to argue with family and friends about expensive and ultimately futile treatments. She probably didn’t want to spend her waning energy batting away their insistence that if anyone could beat the odds, it was her.

Instead, my aunt Jeanne had chosen to live out the last months of her life much as she had lived the previous years: on her own terms, fiercely independent, and with no intention of sacrificing her freedom to anyone or anything.

Jeanne lived here in Ironwood for her entire adult life. She moved here as a newlywed with her brand-new husband Jim when they were both in their early twenties. When Jim died twelve years later, the two of them hadn’t yet had any children, so Jeanne was left alone with this house, in the town that had become her adopted home. She never remarried — never even dated again, as far as I know. She just got on with life, as was her nature.

I always wondered if Jeanne regretted not becoming a mother. But if she did, I never heard it from her lips. Instead, my mother’s older sister treated me like the daughter she’d never had. All throughout my childhood, I would come to Ironwood and stay with Jeanne for six weeks every summer. She was a school teacher and had summers off herself, so she’d spoil me rotten with lazy days at the public pool, trips to the local Dairy Queen for my favorite hot fudge sundaes, and movie marathons complete with all the popcorn I could eat, slumped back in her overstuffed couch in front of her TV.

As I said, Jeanne didn’t tell anybody in our family that she was sick. But she clearly wasn’t in denial about her state. In those final months, having been deprived of a future for herself, she turned to thinking of somebody else’s: Namely, mine. Jeanne wrote up a simple will with her lawyer, saying that the house and everything in it would be left to me, as well as her car and everything else on the property.

And I’ve never been able to verify this, but I’m also pretty sure Jeanne talked to her old friend Frank Lamoine — the editor and half-owner of theIronwood Post-Gazette— and got him to offer me the job of features writer three days after Jeanne’s funeral.

To this day, I’m not sure if either of these things has been quite the gift she meant them to be.

Hands on my hips,I heave a deep sigh as I stare at the outlet, and at the now-black piece of toast in the cooling toaster.

Well, at least the coffee finished brewing before everything went to hell.

I turn the toaster upside-down and shake it until the burnt toast falls into the sink, where I leave it for now. Then I reach into the cupboard and pull down a mug with a picture of a daisy emblazoned on it, and pour myself a cup. I take an experimental sip, testing the hotness. Sitting back down at the table, I lean over, grab my phone from whee it’s fallen to the floor, check to make sure the screen isn’t broken, and send two texts.

The first one is to Jake, the photographer. I tell him to get the address of the Jesus lawn house from Frank, and say I’ll meet him there at noon.

The second is to Savannah, telling her about the toaster incident and warning her to watch out for any new problems.

I’ll figure out what to do about all of this later. Right now, I need to figure out something else for breakfast. And then I need to get ready to go do my damn story.

3

Dante

The second the harsh knock sounds at my door at ten o’clock on a Monday morning, I know shit is about to go seriously tits up.

Nobody ever comes to my door this early. They fuckin’ know better. They should, anyway. I’m not an early riser. And I ain’t someone who’s overly fond of having people in my house, at any time of the day.

My club brothers know this. My neighbors know this.

And for everybody else, the sign on my front door that says “GO THE FUCK AWAY” should convince them not to take their chances.

I lie there silent for a few seconds, hoping whoever it is will just obey the damn sign and go the fuck away.

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