We stood around the mailbox discussing the noise coming from behind the wall of our bathrooms. I was just back from grocery shopping.
Arven, my next-door neighbor said, “That’s what you get with cheap plumbing,” his favorite thing to say. Other condo cohorts described the sound as a whir or grinding. Jannie said that she was relieved not to be the only one with a maniac behind the shower curtain who might suddenly bust through the pipes while she was taking a shit on the toilet. Roger said he’d report the noise to the Home Owners. Like everyone, I had been hearing phantom noises from behind the shower curtain, but had chosen instead to turn up the TV. Basically, I felt my neighbors were making a fuss about very little, I mean, what’s a little noise compared to all the noise in the universe?
It was summer. The kids were playing Marco Polo in the pool. I threw in a few nods before heading upstairs thinking I better get my ice cream into the freezer unless I wanted soup. I turned on a murder mystery and fell out. By the time I awoke, it was past midnight, bathroom plumbing playing an accordion of wheezes. I brushed my teeth and went to bed. The next morning, I took a shower and noticed that the walls behind the fixtures were cracked, plaster falling in the tub. Went for a walk and got back to work at my desk. I heard a noise and went to the bathroom, which is when the entire shower stall crumbled. Maybe Arven was right about the plumbing. But then a hand reached out from behind the hot water faucet.
“For the love of god. Who are you?” I backed away from him. There was nothing I could use to defend myself except the toilet plunger. “Who are you?”
He wiped his hands on his jeans. “A glass of water. Please.”
I reached for my cellphone and dialed 9-1-1.
“Don’t.” He stood there, a man slight in build with an enormous forehead. I couldn’t tell the actual color of his hair, mostly white, as was his mustache dusted with sheet rock and plaster. His eyes drooped away from his face. He fell inside the bathtub and struggled to get up. My terror gave way to pity. I ran to the kitchen and returned.
He gulped down a glass of water. “I’d offer to pay, but…”
“You can’t go around busting up peoples’ bathroom walls. It’s not right.”
“I can explain,” he said. “If I may.” He stepped over the bathtub to the tiles.
I escorted him to the living room, put down a towel on the couch so that it didn’t get covered with dust. He was shaky but managed to maneuver around my cat and sit down. “Who are you?” I said, this time more firmly. “What’s so important that you had to dig a hole through my wall?”
“I’m really sorry, but it’s not that simple.” He sighed and began to tell his story.
“Grief is not something to be toyed with, he said. “It’s a paralyzing hand that reaches you the way Midas turned everything to gold with a single touch to encounter his own grief. Which is what happened when my wife died; my cousin, my soul mate, yes, that fair and radiant maiden whose heart helped mine to move upon gentler waves. But when her last tubercular cough echoed throughout the house, I sorrowed my way to a room without floorboards or walls, only cold wind whining her loss in my ear relentlessly and pushing me against the religion of my own stories, holed myself up in a wall to die, food for whatever rodents scurried around, glad to do what I had imagined as punishment for others, so I dug and clawed my way through brick, plaster, cement, adobe, whatever building material there was, trying to find a way out of my own pit, my own grief. And here I am.”
He died in my living room, right there on my couch.
—to be continued