Family Law, Gin Phillips [top novels of all time .txt] 📗

by hand until her arms gave out, and Lucia imagined that she found the ache necessary. It was proof of the work, and work was the lasso her grandmother laid down to keep the snakes away. If you worked hard enough—if you felt the effort in your joints and your muscles and behind your scratchy eyelids, if you worked well enough and long enough and you could manage to be good enough—well, then, everything would turn out fine.

Lucia had never owned an electric mixer.

She considered her angle, hammer in hand. She centered herself, her belly against the edge of the oven, the incessant whir sounding like a taunt. She tapped twice, directly on the knob in the center of the clock. The oven continued to whine. She tapped several more times, increasing the force, feeling each hit more deeply in her wrist. She imagined what lay behind the dull silver panel, back behind the knobs and numbers. She thought it must look something like a travel alarm clock.

Moxie bumped against her knee, curious. Lucia stroked her head.

She could destroy the clock. Easily. It made so much more sense than calling an electrician, which would take days, potentially, and likely cost hundreds of dollars, and all she needed to do was break the clock. She could break a clock. What kind of idiot couldn’t break a clock?

She thought it as she continued hammering away, never missing her tiny target, each hit well calibrated. She could stop calibrating. That was an idea. She could stop being careful.

She hit the knob harder. Five times. Each hit was more satisfying. On the sixth stroke, the glass shattered around the timer, the jagged pieces spraying across the burners and onto the countertop. The glass was thicker than she’d expected. The panel was naked now, hardly a remaining shard, and the whole contraption looked cheaper. The metal backing seemed no more solid than a sheet of notebook paper, so she went back to the tool drawer and traded her hammer for a pair of pliers. The metal peeled back like the top of a sardine can. This work was precise, gratifying in a different way. Her index finger was bleeding, but not enough to make a fuss over. Two drops of blood splatted next to the glass bits, and Lucia stopped to wrap a bit of paper towel around her knuckle and got back to work.

The alarm was no longer just whirring. The sound now was louder and sharper. More like a leaf blower. The oven sounded threatened. Lucia poked and pulled the metal panel, peeling it farther back. She sliced her thumb, but she didn’t stop to wrap it, only wiped the blood against her thigh.

Finally she managed to bend the metal on three sides, every edge turned petallike. Using her needle-nose pliers, she lifted the panel free, only it was not free. She found the gears of a clock, yes, but also a mass of electrical wiring, blue, yellow, and white. The wires were attached in at least four places to the clock mechanism.

Whaaaaaaaaa, went the stove.

She wiped her thumb again, another red streak across her thigh, and she was proud of the blood. The mechanism did not look anything like a travel alarm clock. It looked like a bomb.

She should stop, she thought.

She tugged at one of the wires, testing, and a jolt of electricity shot from her fingers up to her elbow. She dropped the mechanism, her arm slightly numb. Foolish, she thought. Dangerous. And yet she stared at the stove, metal ripped and torn, wires dangling, and she had come this far.

She went back to the drawer for the hammer. She aimed carefully, and she hit the mass of wires where it connected to the timer. Sparks flew, arcing like actual fireworks, and there was a popping sound and a brief rush of terror, but then the buzzing stopped. She stood there in the silence—silence!—with the hammer in her hand, and she felt an overwhelming satisfaction.

Soon, though, she felt other things.

Shame. Dread.

She had utterly lost control.

She could still hear the echo of the popping sound. The air smelled of burning. She reached for the oven and turned the cook setting from “Off” to “Bake,” watching for the power light to flash red. There was no light, though. Not when she tried to bake or broil, not on any temperature setting. The burners, too, were cold and dead.

She had overdone herself.

She wanted a vodka tonic, but she also wanted to tell Evan when he came home that she had not been drinking, so she made a cup of tea and sat down with the Conway file, and eventually Evan opened the door. Before he even set down his suitcase, she was standing.

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck, and he was saying hello and something else, but she cut him off.

“I broke the oven,” she said.

He shook his head once, frowning.

“Oh,” he said. “You stopped the buzzing?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s the good news.”

He stepped around her into the kitchen. She watched him take in the sight: the metal panel, peeled back. The wires, bursting out like tentacles. The few glass fragments still attached to the control panel.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I broke the oven,” she repeated.

“How?”

She could not read his expression. She explained. He did not look away from the oven the entire time she talked.

“A hammer?” he said finally.

“Yeah.”

“A hammer.” He glanced at her and then looked away. “Well, it was ancient anyway. We needed a new one.”

She told herself that she should be relieved. He had not yelled or looked at her as if she had lost her mind. He had seemed surprised, but that was all. And yet she thought, Really? Is he so far away that I can rip apart our appliances and it doesn’t even phase him?

An hour later, she hefted the iron skillet from the counter and considered whether she could use a crème brûlée torch to cook a frittata or whether