One day the car broke and stayed broken for a week.
The week after that, the fence fell down in high winds. I was home for my lunch break and found myself, instead, braced against 50-mile-per-hour gusts, trying to wedge vinyl slats back into vinyl cross-pieces. The fence, currently is being held up by a bag of peat moss and the handle of a claw twist tiller I wedged into the corner of it. The guy who put it up says he’ll come to fix it, sometime, date to be determined later. There’s a line of scabs across my left index finger where the blowing panels slashed me.
Yesterday, I came home (for lunch, again) and was greeted by what I thought at first was cat pee. I went on a hunt for the source (and possibly cats to strangle) when I realized, “Oh. No. That’s gas.”
I went to check the burners on the stove. They were all “Off.” I twisted them all to the left as far as they could go, just to be on the safe side, then stood for a moment vaguely wondering who you called when your house is about to poison you to death on the one hand and go up in a neighborhood-devouring inferno on the other. I consulted the internet, which recommended 911.
911 transferred me to the police, who transferred me to the fire department. “Angola fire, Angola fire, gas emergency, gas emergency at…”
And then, instead of eating lunch, or even wrestling vinyl wind-sabers into submission, I was sitting in the car with two dogs watching firefighters pull their helmets on and head in to my house. The cats (in case you think I abandoned them) had disappeared at the first sign of trouble, unanimous in their preference for either a slow death by gassing or a quick one by explosion over anything involving the car.
Eventually, the men came out. They couldn’t get a reading. “We’re going to turn your furnace up to see if we can get something,” said the young one, brandishing what I assumed was a gas detector.
“Well,” I said, deadpan, “If you just want a reading, you can turn the burners on and not light them.”
He stared at me.
“Joke,” I said. “Kidding.”
His face spread into a surprised grin. I gathered that women huddling in their vehicles when the fire department arrives do not often joke.
Even with the furnace on, the gas detector remained impotent. Nothing could raise it. Bethany from the gas company showed up with a more virile piece of equipment. The men left and she and I began a survey of the house.
“It certainly does stink,” she said.
I said, “Yes.”
We checked the furnace and the stove, she examined the meter outside. We even pulled the electric dryer out, just for the fun of it, and discovered that a) the vent was detached and b) I had a $20 and a $5 under there. We reattached the vent, left the cash. I said, “You know, the good thing is, if I ever fall on really hard times, I know I’ve got funds under the dryer.” Bethany laughed without missing a beat, but did shoot me a sidelong glance.
I was, clearly, too jokey for disaster.
But I couldn’t help it. I was enjoying a wonderful thing that had started, embryonic, when the car broke down and had grown with each successive setback. It was a delicious lack of worry. I was feasting upon it — this sense that, in the end, everything would be ok, even if the fence gave up entirely, the car had to be replaced, and I found myself sleeping in a pet-friendly hotel off the interstate for the next six months, on the phone with insurance companies every waking minute, well — all would be well.
Even if everything went up in flames, the joy I felt would not be quelled. I had to laugh. A little bit of food, better shared — with Bethany and an unnamed young firefighter who came, yesterday, to feast with me.
Everything worked out with the gas. It’s all ok now…I’ll explain if I see you, but, you see — that was was not the point of this story.
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