Blocked toilet, blocked energy
So much to tell. Been mulling it all over. Maybe backwards is the way to go. Let’s start with last night.
Sophie and I sneak into the basement and sniff around for clues. “Look for anything that looks really really old,” I say.
“I think that thing looks really old.”
She’s looking at the ancient pine jelly cabinet that we found up against the far wall of our damp stone cellar when we moved in.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think that’s what we’re looking for.”
We approach the creaky thing, ducking to avoid low-hanging spider webs. A pie safe? A cupboard? The door’s fallen off and is leaning haphazardly against it, whatever it is. There’s an old ceramic knob on the door. Rusted hinges. Chicken wire front. Shelves have collapsed.
“What would you have kept in there?” I ask Sophie. “If you lived a long time ago?”
“I think I would keep my eggs and my bread and my pies and my cakes in there,” says Sophie.
We stare at the cupboard.
“Maybe we should leave her one of your paintings,” I say. “Inside.”
Sophie looks skeptical. “But what about the spiders? How will you put it in there with all the spider webs?”
I gingerly brush a few dead spiders out of the way. “I think I can slide it in.”
“Maybe we can put it on the shelf that’s still there,” she says.
“That sounds good,” I say.
“Okay.” Sophie chooses one of her paintings, this one of a nighttime sky with stars, painted on a canvas board.
We tiptoe back to the cabinet. She hands me the painting. I place it inside, with the bottle of champagne I also left there.
We decide that the lady who used to live here will like our offering.
We make our way carefully up the creaky cellar stairs into the kitchen. I start worrying that maybe the lady who lived here liked the concept of Prohibition. Maybe the champagne was a bad move. Maybe only flappers drank champagne. A flapper would never own a jelly cabinet.
Sophie and I head for upstairs. It’s bathtime, then bedtime.
On the way, I flick on the light in the foyer: POP. It blows. If you drew a vertical line from the old cupboard in the basement straight up through the floor into our foyer, it would be pointing directly at this light fixture.
She was not a freewheeling flapper. Note to self: Remove bottle of cheap champagne. Leave note of apology.
I try not to think about the light. I wrangle Hattie Belle and plop her in the tub. Hattie Belle throws herself onto her stomach and kicks. “I SEEMING! I A MERMAID, MOMMY! I SEEMING!”
Sophie takes care of business on the potty, then hops in the tub with her sister.
My narcoleptic husband is snoozing on our bed. He had been snoozing on the couch, until I kicked him off of it. So he slunk into our room when I wasn’t looking and passed out again. He always does this, the darn narcoleptic. I need him to bust a move.
“It’s 7:50, David,” I yell down the hall. “I have my energy reading at 8:30.” I have never had an energy reading before. I am very excited about my energy reading. I have been looking forward to it all week.
“Mmrrh. Yup. Be right there.”
He is not right here. Now it’s 8:10. 8:15, even.
“David? Whatever’s left of bedtime at 8:30 will be up to you, okay? I’ll be busy with my energy. I’ll have to lie down and relax and be channeled and you won’t be able to talk to me.”
“Mmmmmrhmmm. Coming.”
I feel a sudden sense of forboding, then brush it away like a mosquito.
Sophie forgot to flush. So I flush, just as David stumbles blearily into the room.
The toilet overflows. Not one of those dribbling overflows, but flood-conditions overflowing. Alert-the-evening news overflowing.
David freaks. I try not to freak, because it is now 8:23, and in seven minutes I am supposed to have told my energy to SIT! LIE DOWN! STAY! so it can be read properly.
“DAMN IT! DAMN IT THIS IS JUST—” He yanks off the tank lid and nearly drops it on the floor. He jams his hands in the tank and smacks at things.
Sewage water pouring onto our floor. I hastily shove piles of magazines and bath toys and laundry to the perimeters of the room, to safety.
“What is it?? What is it, Mommy???” cries Sophie. Hattie Belle is oblivious, still in Mermaid Land.
My energy is not in a good place. 8:27. “You’re in the safest spot,” I tell Sophie. “Nobody move.”
“Is Daddy mad?”
“Yes. Daddy is mad at the toilet. But not at you or your poop.”
David is bellowing at the toilet. “DAMN IT JUST STOP THIS IS JUST TERRIFIC I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS SH—” He jiggles more. I throw towels on the floor to sop up the water, but it is coming out faster than I can sop. 8:29.
David steps into the wet sewagey towels. His slipper is Insta-Gross. He turns purple with rage and starts making a strange growling noise I have never heard before. For a minute I think that maybe his aorta has burst and he is gargling with his own blood.
But he’s still breathing, so I ignore him and I pluck the wet children from the tub and whisk them from the room. I don’t care what happens to them next. My energy has got to get a grip. I am not going to let the damn toilet RUIN MY VERY FIRST ENERGY READING.
David does one final furious maneuver, breaking some important thingy in the tank. “DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT NOW I BROKE THE DAMN THING THIS IS JUST WHAT WE NEED ANOTHER BILL TERRIFIC I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS SH—CRAP WHY NOW WHY NOW OF ALL DAYS—”
But the water stops.
“I…have my energy reading.”
The look on his face is beyond description. “Fine.”
I slip downstairs and sit on the big chair and will my rigid muscles and adrenaline-laced cellular matter to settle down. The dog lies down next to me and begins licking his paws obsessively. LICK LICK LICK. In the kitchen, I hear PLOP PLOP PLOP.
8:31. Crap. I get up from the big chair and bolt into the kitchen. Water is dripping through the ceiling and onto the floor. I grab a stainless steel bowl and put it under the leak. PLAP. PLAP. PLAP.
8:32. I grab my jacket and leave the house. I sit on our front porch and try to take deep cleansing breaths. I start hyperventilating, which is what I do whenever I pay attention to my breathing. I try to think about birds. My chest hurts.
This should go well.
42 comments April 7th, 2006