The Voices in Our Heads (9 page)

Doris held her breath. Was that her waste dropping, or something else? She hadn’t felt anything come out just now; she was in that in-between phase where the first portion had exited like a run-away train, and the second round was playing hard to get, aching a bit in the background, gathering itself for a final run.

She was vulnerable here. Suddenly she thought of those idiotic bimbos in horror movies who went down into dark basements in nothing but their panties. Ha. Child’s play. Here Doris sat, thighs and privates laid bare to an open, exposed pipe orifice shielded by nothing but a relatively thin veil of water. How idiotic was that? Who thought this up, some maniac? It was not like the fear she had as a young girl, that some scarred and water-rotted hand was going to come up from the depths of the drain and grab her where it hurt the most, but more an adult’s trepidation about sewage and drainage structures, and industrial accidents that coughed and belched and eventually exploded upward through the toilet a fountain of brown, filthy, infectious waste product . . . yes, where
did
the poopy-kaka actually go when you flushed it down and out of mind, and what really stopped it from all coming back home for a visit like some orphaned child with leprosy?

She squeezed. It hurt, but the relief would be . . . well, a relief. For some odd reason, her AP high school literature teacher came to mind, years and years ago, talking about dramatic structure, climaxes, and camel humps. It was sort of like pooping. Discomfort, pain, climax of release, then resolution. There was some Freudian connection here, mixed with a backward explanation of art imitating life, but when she focused on it the meaning eluded her and it turned into a chicken-and-egg scenario she didn’t have time to bother with. Besides, she was done. She wiped, seven times, then flushed it all down the drain.

There was no incident. And the bowl filled back three-quarters of the way this time. It was a sluggish surrender, but at least the water was clear.

Doris marched back into the bedroom with her nightclothes pinched between her thumb and index finger making the “OK” circle. Into the hamper they went. After turning back and washing her hands, she hit the bedroom again, flung open her bottom bureau drawer, and got out the battle uniform: old loose Levis with the back left pocket torn and curled down, her Syracuse Orangemen sweatshirt with the hole in the elbow, and the cherry-red bandana with the white paisley designs. She dressed and put her hands on her hips. It was going to be a cleaning day.

She felt better already.

Down in the basement, she found the wooden horse brush with the hard nylon bristles, and a spiral wire flue cleaner Frank had used to take rust off a handrail outside their old place in Overbrook Park. This was serious business. Lips turned down to thin blue lines, she took the mop bucket out from its resting place by the red toolbox and dehumidifier, strode over to the washer and dryer area, and flipped across the hot water spigot in the utility basin.

It gave a long groan and then a knocking came from deep inside the pipes running behind the white veneer storage cabinets. She backed off a step, and the faucet piece actually bucked and jogged in its mount. Then it vomited out a dark gray burst of fetid fluid that splattered along the bottom of the basin and kicked up to the left, spotting the swivel-face of her Swifter mop, the handle of an old corn broom, and the pockmarked yellow-tinted cement wall they both leaned against.

Doris reached instinctively for the faucet knob with her face half-turned. She shut it off, but there was a last burp and fart from the bowels of the basin and a hard burst of dark liquid that shotgunned downward, cascading up off the wet bottom and spattering thick, syrupy gobs up into the air. A warm drop of it plopped right onto the end of her nose.

Doris Watawitz fell back two steps, she clawed at her face, she screamed and stumbled upstairs, past the cloak and pantry area where she knocked her black cap with the sunflower on the brim off its hook to the floor. She rushed straight for the kitchen. She reached her hands in front of her like a blind woman. She flipped up the handle of the faucet, cupped her hands under, and brought the affair to her face.

Immediately, she choked and sputtered. The liquid that had come from the spigot was denser than water, more a glutinous slime. She drew her hands from her face, and the substance stretched like phlegm, sickly yellow spotted with dark specks and flakes. Doris screamed long and loud. She wiped her face with her sticky hands and flicked the residue back into the sink. She snatched paper towels off the circular dispenser and pawed, then wiped, then rubbed, it hurt, she moaned, it smelled, she threw the soiled towels in the trash and groped for the phone on the wall. Tommy Preston, her plumber, was on speed-dial, and she selected it through the scatter-picture that her tearing eyes presented. The smell was everywhere, trash, Reading refuse, ancient spoiled liver, maggot-infested fat scraps, meat bones with driver ants crawling in and out of the rotted marrow in the pockets and joints, old emptied cans of white clam sauce with worms swimming lazily in the sickly green oil left in the bottom rims. She barked at his answering machine,

“This is Doris Watawitz at 227 Federal, you get over here right away, there is trash in my water and I have been contaminated, please, get over here right now, please.”

A calmer, but no less shaken, Doris Watawitz spoke to her plumber Tommy Preston an hour and a half later in dulled, shocked disbelief and defeat. She sat at the kitchen table trying not to touch anything including herself, even though she had cleaned off with the four bottles of Deerpark she kept in the fridge. She had used the nine bottles left in the case by the back door to clean off the sink, and then the black residue spattered down in the basement basin. And that was the point, now wasn’t it? Even the spots on the wall had come off too easily; they didn’t even leave ghost-outlines. All the rags she had used were in the second rinse cycle by the time Tommy showed up, and the paper towels were in the trash outside. Of course, Doris could have walked him out there to open up the bags, but the freckled-phlegm from the sink had pretty much been the same as the dark basin sludge. Extremely soluble. He stood there now, fumbling with his red pipe-wrench.

“Like I was saying, Doris, no charge. I flushed the pipes, checked the connections, and snaked the toilet. You’re good. There’s no trace of this muck water you told me about, and besides smelling like disinfectant, there’s no odor in here. Really.”

Doris just stared. Usually, she enjoyed Tommy’s visits. He was a gentle soul and he was cheap, usually nothing over a hundred and fifty. And he always cleaned up after a job. A lot of these blue-collar workers would put an o-ring or something in the shower head, but leave their boot marks in the tub. Tommy was considerate. He was of her son Michael’s generation, yet not so tragic, more accepting of his lot in life. He was a bit too tall, and it seemed all the years cramming himself into tight areas plugging leaks had given him a permanent slump in his shoulders. When he stood in the doorway it made him look humble. He had gone bald through the years, down to the sidewalls, and wore it as if it was meant for him since birth, just like the slightly large and misshapen nose that added integrity to his uncomplicated character. There was a smudge on his cheek that Doris dearly wanted to scrub for him, but she no longer trusted the sink, her perceptions, or her ability to interpret social codes. She looked at her raw, red hands, then back up.

“The sink water is clean now?”

Tommy shrugged.

“I can’t say it was ever tainted, Doris. Look.”

He walked over to the faucet and flipped it up. The plume of water that came down was that beautiful, silvery clear she had come to love and depend on.

Doris paid him fifty dollars anyway. For the trouble. At first, he would not accept it, but finally he caved when he obviously realized it was more important to her than to him. He left with his head down, ducking under the kitchen archway, studying his work boots on his way to the door.

And five minutes after his exit, she smelled trash again, faint somehow, as if coming from two rooms away.

Doris set her jaw, scoured the house, and couldn’t find the source. After checking all the garbage cans, she smelled the sink water, then got on her knees and sniffed in the toilet. She stuck her nose in the basement basin and took a whiff up under the hot water boiler, earning herself a smudge of floor grit swashed along her cheek and a peppering of dust bunnies up across the left side of her hair bandana/bonnet. Nothing. The smell was distinct, yet remained distant. In fact, when she nosed in toward the particular water outlet being investigated, the smell seemed to recede entirely, giving way to the more standard rust, cleanser, pipe flux, or soapy fragrances normally left to linger around appliances and fixtures connected with running water.

By the time Doris was done her stink-hunt, she was filthy and dead on her feet. She hadn’t eaten in almost twenty hours, hadn’t slept more than three last night, and had neglected to start the day off with her habitual shower. The smell had backed off now to a mere whiff, but at least the water was clear. She went up into the bathroom, stripped down, and showered without incident. Afterward, she tossed her old clothes into the hamper, again washed her hands, dressed numbly, and went downstairs to make herself a sandwich.

Before she could even get out the Miracle Whip, she smelled it again. Faint, yet present. Not from another room, but rather . . .

No, it couldn’t be.

Doris began sniffing herself, hands, insides of the elbows, up under the arms. She even sat hard on the floor and struggled her feet up to her nostrils. Frank had gone through a period during his last seven years or so during which his body omitted a salty yet horrid odor, like bad seaweed, old man smell. Did she sense this on herself? Was it faint because she was used to it by now, only picking it up at the farthest fringe of perception?

No. Her body seemed to smell just fine, Ivory and Dove invisible solid, quaint and pretty.

But when her nose wasn’t buried in a body part so to speak, the faint and lingering trash smell came back, off to the side, just out of reach.

Wait.

Wait just one minute.

Moisture was the theme here, right?

Doris looked around as if suddenly under scrutiny. She was still sitting on the floor, and she slid the bottoms of her feet so her knees were pointing up. She hunched down, squinted her eyes, and spit into her hand. She sniffed, and it gave off no odor at all; in fact, the already faint trashy smell faded to near nonexistence. She pushed up with the other hand, padded over to the sink, washed off her hands with a double pump of dish soap, pulled off some paper towels, and dried.

Then she smelled it again. Present, then not, pronounced, and next the shadow of an odor. She looked at the sink, then darted her glance to the fridge, catching the whiff, then losing it, back and forth, clearly a pattern.

Then she had it, though the family doctor wouldn’t believe it.

She didn’t like it.

Oh, she didn’t go for this one goddamned bit; in fact, she actively tried to deny it with every fiber of her physical and emotional being for the next three days, lasting all the way until Friday at nine or so in the morning when she just couldn’t take it anymore. Tuesday wound up being the day of denial, regression right into the cave with a William Lashner mystery novel she just couldn’t finish, a Lifetime movie about a husband cheating with his therapist that she could barely stomach, a half hour of the Barefoot Contessa making something with carrots and celery that came off simply vile, and a last-ditch run at the computer, surfing for shoes. Then she was up all night.

Wednesday, she stumbled around the house rearranging the bedroom and moving the furniture in the living room. She went for a walk, came back, cleaned the entire basement including the short, dark area under the stairs and the corner by the fuse box, then went out to the garage to throw out a hoard of rusty gardening tools, holiday decorations, and old papers in plastic storage bins hiding behind stacked lawn chairs, a yard umbrella, and her grandson’s abandoned Kettler tricycle. Doris ended the day by looking through antiquated photo albums with only the vaguest of recognition. Finally, she tried to shut down by polishing off a bottle of Inglenook she saved for emergencies, but it only made the night thicker, her thoughts darker, and her breath shorter. She went the night without one wink of sleep and rose the next day with a galvanizing headache.

She worked it off. She pulled down the submarine stairway that led to the attic, moved the old cedar chest and hickory crib they never got rid of over by the dinosaur of a computer they fought with back in the early ’90s, the love seat with the stuffing coming out of the left arm, and the broken twenty-four-foot stepladder, just so she could get at the dirt and pollen and spider webs that had gone so long without being disturbed that it felt as if she was in some museum from another world. Doris hauled up her cleaning supplies and vacuumed and dusted and washed and polished, and her bones were aching, and her joints were screaming, and her head felt like lead ball. It was 4:47 Thursday afternoon.

She maneuvered down all her cleaning materials. She washed the buckets, shook out the brooms, hot-rinsed the brushes, and threw the various rags away. She showered and stretched out on the bed.

And each time she moved, the smell came back.

She willed herself to take a nap, forced her eyes closed, denied that the villain here was the one source of moisture impossible to get to.

She thought she slept for four minutes somewhere around midnight, but she couldn’t really be sure. The evening lasted forever, and she actually observed the entire sunrise as fingers of light slowly crept across her room the next morning. Amazing how drawn-out the process actually was. Somewhere deep down and far off she wondered if the novelists and songwriters should have been forced to be real witnesses to this phenomenon before writing and singing about its so-called romantic value and collecting royalties, but the ugly whiff that suddenly worked into her nostrils erased all desire to play art critic.