Bellied Out
2008 RobertYu
Having the toilet back up right before I left for work--man, that ruined my day.
When I flushed the toilet (our autonomous RoboToilet), the turds and paper began their reassuring swirl, but then things went awry and the toilet filled to within an inch of the rim. Just half an hour ago, Tracy had noted that the toilet complained ominously during her shower, glug glug, so I suspected that this was no ordinary toilet backup. In the years that we've owned the house, I'd never worried about the sewage system. It just worked--poop and pee and dishwasher dregs, mysteriously conveyed to the city sewer by pipes somewhere under/around (above?) the house.
When we first bought the house, I had bad dreams. Nightmares, really, brought on by innumerable cracks in the plaster, stuck windows, and first-time buyer's remorse. In one dream, I was sitting on the crapper during a heavy storm. The electricity was out, and water was leaking through the roof. With a loud crash, the floor fell away to reveal the basement (illuminated, briefly and dramatically, by the lightning). Below me, I clearly saw the toilet connected to an open pipe, rain gutter style, and emptying directly into the swirling pool forming in the basement.
There'll be swirlage, warned Ulric. Swirlage was the company's amazing capacity for endless discussion, worrying about self-imposed processes and self-generated requirements, analysis paralysis blah blah blah until the money ran out. Swirlage was also the sound I imagined every morning when I entered the office: my enthusiasm for work taking a brief stroll around the vortex before plummeting into a dark, smelly place. It's just a job, I told myself. To pay for the house.
Keith the Plumber snaked a camera down my sewer line, grainy images revealing an antique, cast-iron pipe badly in need of help. It's bellied out, he assessed, using the technical term for a fucked sewer line and a homeowner who would carefully limit toilet flushes in the coming days.
He measured, then punched numbers into a calculator. I can reline your sewer for nine, he announced.
I was caught off guard. Nine what? Nine ladies dancing? Nine hundred dollars?
Keith the Plumber gave me a brief look of surprise, then laughed. He paused to shake his head--no, not nine hundred you poor bastard!--and laughed some more.