Everything is Breaking
The shiny red box truck backs up into the driveway.
I walk down, after a brief walk back into the house to grab a mask, as both the men from the local water and well company are wearing masks. In semi-rural New Hampshire we are — I have learned by practice, not native habit — pragmatic. I wear a mask indoors, which I can here without seeming too militant; this is permissible. But outside this is somewhat negotiated territory. The risks outdoors are low, if we keep our distance. If we don’t touch the same things. I don’t want my mask to be a reprimand to two young men coming to do labor. If I wear a mask and they aren’t, will it be seen as a rebuke? As if to say, look, I am wearing my mask, where is yours?! Once you leave I will write a scathing review on Google about how you risked the lives of me and my family!
Look, I am wearing my mask, where is yours?I Once you leave I will write a scathing review on Google about how you risked the lives of me and my family!
My mask is ill-fitting; it’s been through the wash and is crumpled and wrinkled. It may have shrunk. It sits oddly on my face and my glasses tilt sideways on it. Two breaths and exhales later, my glasses are completely fogged up.
I take them off.
We smile in an unseen way and hope our eye crinkles are enough, as there is none of the usual warm shaking of hands, either.
“The water pressure is decreasing,” I say, once we’ve managed the usual — minimal — New England pleasantries. They nod. There’s no joking; around here, that’s serious. Everyone is on wells, including us. There’s no public water. If the well is dry or nearly dry that could be it, forever, for the property.
The scab from the shave biopsy is healing, and it itches like a motherfucker.
“The best kind of cancer to have,” they told me at the doctor’s office, which is, hilariously, the second time I’ve heard this now, about two different kinds of cancers. Although I’m still here for round two of the Big C so apparently there’s some truth to it.
Tomorrow I go in for surgery, which is a fairly portentous word for what will amount to a couple of injections to numb the area, an eye-shaped incision cut deep enough to include the tumor and a safe margin around it, and a few stitches — maybe a dozen at most? — to close it all up. Then home.
Easy.
Although last time they said that, the surgery turned from three hours into nine. It turned from maybes to definitely, unknowns to real, and that reassurance that while things looked good (the best kind of cancer to have!), when it goes bad it tends to go bad lethally.
“Do you think the water pressure has been the problem with my dishwasher?” I ask the water and well guy. We’ve discussed the weather, dogs, and the best kind of inverters to buy on Amazon to power portable drink coolers. In terms of New Hampshire relationships, he’s practically my best friend at this point.
“Oh yeah, probably,” he says. “Did you get a low pressure light?”
“No,” I say. I’ve torn the dishwasher apart once already to clean a clogged filter. I’d torn it apart again trying to figure out the new problem, but the internet had yielded only unhelpful suggestions to try and replace the heating coil or the thermostat. I’m not even sure where the thermostat electronics live in there, actually.
“Hm. Maybe it’ll fix it.” His tone says exactly the opposite. This was not the best dishwasher problem to have. Clearly.
My son comes down at around midnight. He sits, as the kids often do, midway down the last flight of stairs.
“You heard about Barrett?” he asks.
I pause the show. This is not going to be a short conversation. Or at least, I want to give my newly-adult child a chance to talk. To vent. We’ll hear whatever he wants to say.
“We know,” my wife says. We know because of course we know. Because if you look away from the news right now you miss threats! To Democracy! To life! And limb! To Our Way of Life! To Our Rights!
And I’m not even joking.
My wife and I got married back in the nineties in California. “We’re getting married,” I’d say happily and instead of congratulations people said “whoa, is that legal?”
Like we’d be standing there in our beautiful dresses in the farm garden, surrounded by family and friends and then
WEEEooooooo WEEEEEooooooo WEEEEEEooooooo
“OH MY GOD IT’S THE WEDDING POLICE”
“OH SHIT IT’S A RAID EVERYBODY!!!”
“It’s not illegal,” I’d say, for the millionth time. Is a cheerful ‘fantastic, congrats’ so difficult? “It’s just not legally recognized.”
I’ve been married for 25 years. Through several different legal permutations of the definition of “married,” at least as far as the paperwork goes.
I’ve been married for 25 years. Through several different legal permutations of the definition of “married,” at least as far as the paperwork goes.
And now, here we are again. Oh, this old chestnut. The same arguments, to the same people. For what? I’ve been married, I’ve been married, I’ve gone and had two kids (I mean, my wife had them, I cheered her on) and raised them up to be beautiful adults.
Doesn’t matter.
They’re going to tell me it’s not real again and take all our rights away again anyway.
My neighbor has Trump flags and banners and stickers all over her house. She got an anonymous letter in the mail, supposedly from Democrats living near her. Telling her once we “won” the election, we were going to come burn her house down.
She said, presumably of Democrats, liberals, the faceless other side: “You protest and riot about BLM and think you’re trying to protect one another then turn around and threaten to burn my house down? You don’t love this country you want to see it burn.”
Scared. Angry. Letters like these are turning up all over. Very likely sent by outside agitators. But having someone threatening to come burn down your house is still frightening.
The good news on the water pressure is, it isn’t the well. There’s plenty of water. The other good news is that it isn’t the pump, which the well and water guy installed himself four years ago (this is what living in a small New England town is like; “I thought I remembered this place…”).
The bad news is, this leaves the strong possibility of a leak somewhere in the pipe that runs from the well to the house. It could be anywhere. They’d have to just dig it all up and see.
We’ll get you going with better pressure though, they reassure me. New England pragmatism. The problem at hand isn’t the actually leak, but reliable running water.
The plan is to run a hose, made of one of our garden hoses connected to some of their extra hose, coupled to the pump. It will have to go under the garage door, through the garage and into the yarn studio where we do all the family business yarn dyeing.
“It’s a little rough,” the water and well guy says, “but it’ll get you going.”
I use a random piece of junk in the garage to prop the garage door up so it doesn’t impinge the new makeshift water line. They warned me about that. Impeding the flow can cause the pump to labor and burn the pump out.
Meanwhile we’ll see if the new water in the culvert dries out over the next day or so, which means the leak is nearer the well.
That’s the plan, anyway.
A few days after my neighbor got her letter in the mail a group called NSC131 put supremacist stickers all over our neighborhood exhorting “white men” to organize. We heard a rumor that they did it in response to the letter. They said they would “protect their own.”
I’ve seen posts on social media from people who are actively hoping that liberals try and interfere with the in-person voting process. “I’m coming armed and ready to rumble,” they say.
I remind myself that just because one surgery went badly does not mean this one will.
I remind myself that if the cancer is currently not spreading, then once again, it probably won’t.
I remind myself that leaking underground pipes are absolutely what we sign up for as a homeowner, along with the deck boards that rotted and that I just tore out and replaced. (Meanwhile, I re-stained the decks to try and eke out another year or so before I have to replace everything).
I remind myself that on the whole, my neighbors and I have shown up for each other. We volunteer together at the food pantry. We clean up trash together on the local trails. We show up together and bang out local governance at the town meetings.
I remind myself that on the whole, my neighbors and I have shown up for each other. We volunteer together at the food pantry. We clean up trash together on the local trails. We show up together and bang out local governance at the town meetings.
We are, or have learned (if we are not, natively) to be pragmatists. We get the water running at least, we get everyone safely to and from the polls, for today.
We sit with the show paused and talk with my son about Barrett’s confirmation. I scratch idly at a bump on my chest and as we’re mulling the whys and timing of the confirmation, I realize that’s a bump on the other side of my chest.
Really? I think. Fucking really???
They’re still talking about the confirmation. I yank down my collar. It’s not cancer, this time. There’s a tick there. Head buried, back legs energetically wriggling.
I grab it and yank it out. The way you’re not supposed to. Says anyone who NEVER HAD HALF A BUG WRIGGLING IN THEM.
“ — Which we’ll just have to… hm?” My wife inquires, at the sudden movement and thrashing.
“Tick.”
As every mother does by habit, she puts her hand out for it, for her inspection. I surrender the majority of the tick, still lively.
“Not a Lyme tick,” she pronounces, after I ask for the third time.
Everything. Everything is fucking dire. Everything is dire right now and the majority of it we have no control over.
It’s fucking awful. Awful and shitty and scary.
Everything. Everything is fucking dire. Everything is dire right now and the majority of it we have no control over.
It’s fucking awful. Awful and shitty and scary.
I remind myself my wife is rarely wrong about things (as she’s quick to remind me), and even if it were a Lyme tick I probably didn’t get it.
Probably.
After the guys in the truck leave I come upstairs to the house and put the dishwasher back together.
I’ve gotten good at this; I’ve done it a couple of times now after a lot of instructional YouTube watching. It’s reassuring to reassemble it. Each part has a place, and snaps back together. I’m even able to find and reinstall the stops that will keep the top rack from rolling out, then flying off the rails and into the kitchen with all our glassware in it.
Future crisis averted.
Tomorrow I will have to call someone about testing the ground for water, before we dig all the pipes up. If the culvert doesn’t do something… significant looking.
Right now, each piece of the dishwasher goes in and I load it carefully, from the pile of backed up dishes although my wife has been handwashing everything.
I turn the washer on. It goes. I exhale.
That’s one thing, I think.
How we’ll have to take things. Just like that, moment to moment. In the altogether it’s too much.
But for now I don’t know that this is always how the dishwasher starts, before it stops working again.
For now I don’t have to worry about the temperatures dropping too far, and having to go down and uncouple and drain the interim house water garden hoses so they don’t freeze.
For now it’s still some days away from whatever happens on Election Day.
We do what we can.
We try not to fall into the panic of what if.
We get the water to the house.
For today.
