Overestimating my own level of fitness, I bumped up the treadmill to a slight incline, walking briskly and wishing I hadn’t tied my sneaks so tight. Twelve minutes later I was sweaty, breathless, and certain I’d already developed blisters on my heels. I hit the button to see how many calories I’d burned, certain it would be enough to share a bucket of spaghetti with Ian back home. The monitor said I’d burned 68 calories. Certain it was broken, I hit more buttons, but they only gave me more dismal news about my average speed and distance.
Wearily, I climbed off the treadmill and headed back to the locker room, wishing I’d brought soap and a towel to shower.
I had a long way to go, but every hope of recapturing some semblance of fitness.
23
It was time for me to learn how to manage small household tasks when Ian wasn’t around to help. I started with pounding a nail into my bedroom wall to hang a new framed print of children in old-fashioned swimsuits, collecting shells at low tide. I was proud of myself for not hammering my thumb, and for hanging the print straight. I stood back to admire my work.
In the middle of the night, a large crashing noise startled Penny and me awake. I turned on my bedside lamp and stared at the wall where the print had been hanging when I went to bed.
Turns out, you need to find a stud in the wall before you nail something up.
I got up and looked behind the dresser. The nail had pulled loose from the wall, the print had slid down smashing the plastic outlet cover into small, sharp pieces. Somehow, the glass frame hadn’t broken, and it was still standing straight on the floor behind the dresser.
I used two nails the next day to hang it, but had to ask Ian to put in a new plastic outlet cover.
“How did you manage this, again?” he asked in disbelief.
“Just fix it, smart ass.”
Next on the list was letting the gas out of the snow blower to store it until next winter. I went out to the shed and pulled open the wooden door. Inside, it looked like funnel winds had blown through. There were snow shovels on top of beach chairs, boxes of rock salt to melt ice, a tangled badminton net, broken sleds, abandoned bags of topsoil, two tipped-over bicycles, and the boxed spiral light-up trees we put out at Christmas.
Tucked into one corner was a small green pail that Bryan used to water a strawberry plant he’d tried to grow, but the rabbits beat him to the berries. Inside was a plastic toy shovel like ones used to make sandcastles. I put them on a shelf in front of the shed. I liked to imagine Bryan using them with Ben at the beach.
Way in the back, I could see the lawnmower and the snow blower, half-hidden by plastic blue tarps we once used in the garden to try to eliminate weeds. I climbed over the piles, kicking aside the deflated wheelbarrow tire, the garden hose we never remembered we had and kept buying new ones, butterfly nets the kids hadn’t used in fifteen years, a bocce set, and anything else that got in my way. When I finally reached the back, I grabbed the snow blower handle and wrenched it, banging my elbow on the wall of the shed.
“Shit, shit, shit!”
It took me five minutes to pull the red snow blower out of the chaos that was our shed and onto the driveway. Then all there was to do was start it and let the engine run out of gas.
I pulled the starter cord. Nothing. Pulled harder. A short, half-hearted wheeze came from the engine. About six pulls later, my shoulder muscles were screaming. Note to self: start arm work at the Y.
But I was determined not to let the snow blower win. My last pull felt half-assed, but the motor caught and roared. I did a little victory dance.
And then the toilet started running water continuously.
I put on my oldest leggings—faded witches on brooms—still tight around the waist because I had yet to recapture my fitness, went into the bathroom and jiggled the toilet handle.
Nothing.
I washed my hands and went to my laptop to Google “how to fix a leaky toilet.” Seemed simple enough. Back in the bathroom, I took the lid off the toilet and jiggled the chain holding the rubber stopper controlling the water. Then I held it up for a minute. I thought it would help to see if the toilet refilled with the stopper up, so I flushed. It took about a minute for the toilet to fill and overflow all over the floor, bathmat, and my sneakers.
Penny stuck her nose around the corner of the doorway.
“You don’t want to come in here,” I said, grabbing some bath towels and throwing them down on the biggest puddles.
Penny stepped in with her front paws, then quickly retreated.
I knew I had no other choice: it was time to talk to the experts. I asked the men for help the next day at work.
“Never jiggle the handle!” Wes scolded me as if I were a child. “That just makes it worse.”
“And definitely never flush,” echoed Paulie. “You’re just asking for an overflow.”
“Did you pull the chain on the float arm?” Sal asked patiently.
After some unsuccessful attempts to teach me the working mechanisms of a toilet, Wes pulled out a Brew Coffee napkin and drew a diagram of the parts under the lid.
“Ya gotta empty it first,” Sal said.
“She doesn’t have to empty it. She can stick her hand in the back of the toilet—it’s clean water,” Paulie suggested.
“For god’s sake, she doesn’t want to be up to her arm in cold toilet water!” Wes argued on my behalf.
The three men finally agreed the best first step was turning
