10. Charlie
CHAPTER 10
CHARLIE
“A ll right,” Charlie said. “This is the hot wire.”
“How do you know that?” Olivia asked, squinting over his shoulder.
“It’s red.”
“It’s red ? That’s all you have to go on?”
“The internet says that the hot wire is the red one!”
“Oh, okay, well it’s a good thing no information on the internet is ever wrong.”
“I found it on a good site,” Charlie protested.
Olivia folded her arms and leaned against the wall, one eyebrow lifted. “What site did you find it on?”
“RewireYourHome Dot Com.”
“Well, that sounds like where all the professionals probably hang out.”
“The guy who runs the site says he’s an electrician with over five years’ experience.”
Olivia just snorted.
“All right, if you’re so smart, how would you figure out which wire is which?”
Olivia reached over and picked up a device about the size of a cell phone.
“What’s that?”
“It’s an electrical tester, Mr. Faraday. This didn’t come up on RewireYourHome Dot Com?”
It hadn’t, but Charlie didn’t want to admit it. “What are you going to do with it?”
“I’m going to test which of the wires has a voltage output. That’s how we’ll know which is the live wire and which is the ground wire. Move over.”
“Have you done this before?”
“I have, as it happens. Did you think women couldn’t do this?”
“I mean, if they were trained for it. You’re not an electrician.”
“You don’t have to be an electrician to rewire a light switch. You do need to use an electrical tester. Do you mind?”
Charlie moved over. To be honest, he was impressed by her. He hadn’t imagined that she would know what to do with the light switch, and though he didn’t consciously hold the opinion that women couldn’t do this, he had to admit that he had assumed he’d be the one to take charge. That was why he had looked the process up online, and he had come into this feeling confident that he knew all there was to know about what needed to be done. Now he could see that he had been wrong to assume that.
Olivia picked up the red wire and held it to a port on her electrical tester. Some numbers jumped around. Charlie didn’t know what it meant, but Olivia seemed to.
“Okay,” she said. “You were right. That was the live wire. But it might not have been. The red wire coating is a decent indicator, but not a foolproof one, especially in an older house like this. I’ve seen houses where all the wires were the same color. It’s always a good idea to make sure, because if you get this wrong… best-case scenario, the switch doesn't work. Worst case, the house catches fire.”
“Well, we don’t want that.”
“We do not! Can you hand me the screwdriver?”
Charlie could see that he had officially been demoted to assistant on this project. He picked up the driver and handed it to Olivia, and she began to loosen the screws on the light switch in her hand. Once they were ready, she wrapped the two wires around them and tightened them back up.
“Okay,” she said. “You can screw this back into the wall, if you want to.”
“Oh, don’t do me any favors,” Charlie laughed, but he accepted the screwdriver from her. “Where did you learn to do this?”
“I’ve done it dozens of times. When you’re fixing up a house to sell, one of the most important things you can do is get all the switches working.”
“Okay, but I mean, where did you learn to do it in the first place?”
“Well… truth be told, I looked it up online too.”
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“Don’t get all smug. After I did that, I talked to an electrician I know. I had him watch me the first time I did it to make sure I wasn’t messing anything up. That’s how I know I’m doing things right. If you try to do home repairs based solely on the information on the internet, you’re going to go wrong as often as you go right. That’s how a lot of the light switches in houses get wired wrong in the first place — people think they’re going to upgrade to a dimmer or something, they wire it in wrong, and then they either can’t figure out how to fix it or else they’re too afraid to try in case they make something even worse.”
“And they don’t call an electrician to fix it for them?”
“Not everyone has trust-fund money,” Olivia said. “For a lot of people, calling an electrician is an intimidating idea. Either they don’t know how much it’s going to cost, or else — if they do — they can’t get their hands on the money it would take.”
Charlie was quiet for a moment. “I didn’t even think of that,” he admitted. “You must think I’m a real jackass.”
“Oh, you’re not so bad,” Olivia said. “You can’t be expected to default to thinking about a lifestyle you’ve never experienced. I don’t always think about what it would be like not to know where your next meal is coming from, because my family doesn’t struggle to keep food on the table. You think about the life you’ve had.”
“Well, that’s not good enough,” Charlie said. “If I have that attitude, I’m not really any better than my siblings. I know most people don’t live the life I’ve lived. I know I’m not the norm. I don’t want to act like I think my life is what’s normal.”
Olivia gave him a genuine smile. “I get that about you,” she said. “You aren’t the rich playboy jackass I used to think you were.”
“No?”
“You’re just a regular rich playboy.”
“Thanks.” Charlie tightened the last screw. “I think this is good.”
“Let me go turn the breaker on, and then we’ll try it.”
Olivia hurried down the stairs to the basement where the circuit breaker was kept. “Go ahead,” she called up to Charlie.
He flipped the switch and the dining room flooded with light. “It’s working!” he yelled down to her.
A moment later, she appeared in the doorway, grinning broadly. “Awesome,” she said. “Now we can get rid of that terrible lamp.”
“What? I like that lamp.”
“Take it with you when you move out, then. That lamp is hopelessly outdated and you must know that.”
Charlie laughed. “I like it because it was Aunt Marge’s favorite,” he explained. “Every time I came over here, she’d have it in a different room, and it sort of became a game — figure out where the lamp is. I never saw it in the dining room while she was alive. I guess this was the last place she moved it.” He was quiet for a moment. “She never got to see me find it here.”
Olivia’s hand came to rest on his arm. “Games like that aren’t supposed to have an ending,” she told him softly. “If you had seen the lamp here, she would have moved it somewhere else. It’s nice that there was one last place for you to find it after she was gone.”
Charlie smiled. “That makes sense,” he agreed. “You know, it means a lot to me when you say things like that, Olivia. I feel like you really understand what I’m going through.”
“I’ve lost people too,” Olivia said. “My father died when I was younger.”
“That must have been hard.”
“It was — and I had to be strong for my mom and my sister.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not saying any of that because I want you to feel sorry for me.”
“I didn’t take it that way.”
“I just wanted you to know that I could understand what you’re feeling. I know how it is to lose someone who means so much to you. I know how the most innocuous things can start to feel full of significance. As if her leaving that lamp there was some incomplete plot thread — some tragedy of circumstance that stopped you two from finishing your story together. The truth is that we never finish our stories with the people we love. Those stories just end, and it’s messy and awful, but it’s what happens.”
He looked at her. “You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“It’s what I said to Izzy when Dad died.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
“So Izzy was…?”
“She was five.”
“God. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry that happened to you guys.”
“We’re all right. It brought the three of us closer, so even though it was a tragedy, we were able to make something good from it. And that’s what you’re doing now, selling this house. A new family will get to start their memories here, and you’ll be able to take the money and— and whatever you’re going to do with it.”
Charlie hadn’t even thought about what he was going to do with it. He had only thought about keeping it away from his siblings. “I’ll have to ponder that.”
“Want some advice?”
It was funny — a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of taking personal or financial advice from Olivia. Now he felt as if she was the only person in the world he did want advising him. “Please.”
“Whatever you do, make sure it’s something you would have liked to tell her about. If you buy a boat?—”
“I’m not buying a boat.”
“It’s just an example. I was going to say, if you buy a boat, let it be because she loved sailing, or because she loved watching the boats on the water, and then every time you used your boat you would be able to think about how much she would have liked that. How happy she would be that the sale of her house gave you this thing, whatever it is. It’s a way for you to stay connected to her.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” Charlie agreed. “And to be honest, I think she would have said the same thing. You two would have gotten along great if you had known each other.”
“I wish we had,” Olivia said. “I can tell how important she was to you.”
“She was probably my favorite person in my family,” Charlie said. “It’s funny. I never thought about it in those terms before she died, but… I think it’s true.”
“It was pretty important to her to see you get married, I guess.”
“She thought it would make me happy,” he said quietly.
“You don’t agree.”
“No, I think it’s oversimplifying things to say that marriage will just automatically make you happy — especially marriage to a stranger.”
“Well, I’m sure she didn’t mean for you to marry a stranger. She probably thought there was a chance you had a girlfriend who you were holding off with because you weren’t sure what you wanted for your future, and that if she held your feet to the fire, you would propose.”
“I would have told her if I had a girlfriend.” Wouldn’t I ? Now that he really thought about it, Charlie wasn’t sure what he would have done if he’d had a girlfriend. He’d never had one. He wanted to believe he would have opened up to Aunt Marge, but maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Maybe Olivia was right, and his aunt had suspected there was someone he was keeping hidden — maybe that was the reason she’d done all this.
Anyway, he would never know now.
But it occurred to him that if it hadn’t been for Marge’s strange stipulation in her will, he would never have been here with Olivia right now. And this conversation, he thought, was one of the most eye-opening he had ever had in his life.
Marriage or not, he was grateful for Olivia. He was grateful for her presence in his life, and he was glad that he knew her.
If nothing else, he could thank Aunt Marge for that. And he would always be able to remember the fact that her final act had been to give him this unexpected new friendship.
He smiled at Olivia. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Let’s break for lunch. After that, we can tackle the upstairs bedrooms.”
“Sounds good to me,” Olivia said, and followed him into the kitchen.