Free Neighborhood Watch by Cammie McGovern Page B

because I was interested in solar panel heating for our house. I’d had three miscarriages at that point and was looking for explanations: The heat when it first came on in the fall smelled funny to me, full of chemicals. I’d gotten pregnant in the late summer twice, and both times lost my babies after the first freeze. Our ducts were full of toxins, I decided. Our furnace was a laboratory of poisonous chemicals. “I don’t want to go another year with this heating system,” I said to Paul, who looked aghast and asked if I realized how much solar heating cost.
    In prison, when I told Wanda some of these stories, she always laughed. “Shit, honey, I used to know ladies like you. High maintenance, we call them.” I always defended myself. “It wasn’t me I was thinking about, it was the babies, my children. ” I don’t know if she believed me but it was true. I didn’t want material goods, I wanted a house full of children and their distractions. Wanda had three children, grown by the time she came to prison. “You don’t know what it’s like to never have one,” I told her.
    It was January when I first knocked on Roland’s basement door. It was cold and I was surprised to find him in sweatpants and a T-shirt, as if I’d just woken him up. “Oh, wow,” he’d said, running his hands through his hair. “Sure, yeah. Come on in.”
    I’d never been in his basement workshop before, but it was just as I’d imagined: crowded with bookshelves and worktables cluttered with rolled-up drawings and designs, notebooks propped open, covered in illegible handwritten notes—data, I assumed, and diagrams that looked a little bit like the electrolytic converter I’d once made for my ninth-grade science fair.
    “So what are you thinking about?” He looked around sheepishly at the mess. Shoes and socks on the floor, a comforter balled up at one end of the sofa. For the first time, I wondered if he slept down there.
    “Well, solar, of course,” I said. “I was thinking about the panels you have on your roof. Maybe we could start with something like that.”
    He was surprised by my interest and a little stumped, too. As it turned out, Paul was right—it was a costly investment and, even Roland had to admit, a little unpredictable. “You still need your backups. We go weeks without sun here.” His panels heated water and not much else. “Solar works better in Florida, to be honest. Here, winter is tough.”
    “Isn’t this what you do, though, Roland? You work for this company, right?” I held up the catalog he’d given me from Sunburst Enterprises.
    “Right. Sort of. I’m a consultant on some research and design projects they have. I’m not a great authority on what’s happening right now. Our system, for instance, doesn’t work that great. We get maybe ten gallons of hot water a week. If that.”
    He stood in front of me, barefoot and handsome, with a five o’clock shadow. It was hard to imagine him doing a worse sales pitch. “There’s a lot of kinks to get worked out with solar. The longer I look at it, the more I think these panels are inefficient, the recovery problematic. Sure, it’s renewable, but waste gets created. No one wants to talk about the panel disposal problem.”
    “Roland.”
    “What?”
    “Are you saying I shouldn’t look into it at all ?”
    He leaned closer, weighing his words, as if he were not sure he should say them. “There are other things out there,” he finally said, staring hard. “If you’re interested.”
    I didn’t look away. “Like what?”
    “I’d have to lay it all out if you want to hear more.”
    “Yes,” I whispered, a little breathless. “What is it exactly?”
    He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows at me. I’d never seen him flirt like this before. “Cutting-edge stuff. The energy future. Just this last year there’s been some breakthroughs—I shouldn’t say too much.” I tried to imagine what he was implying. “It could be life-changing,