Pipe Burst

It just sounded like running water. She stood there, feeling the spray, eyes closed, telling herself it was just running water, blasting from a pipe, from the wall.

“Do I want to know why there is even a pipe in the wall?”

“Where do you want the pipes to go,” came the reply over the sound of the liquid flowing out of a cracked pipe.

“I mean, they start underground and they end underground, so why are they in walls?”

“Are you asking to remove the bathroom from upstairs then?”

“Um, I mean…if it removes this scenario, then maybe.”

Laughter came out in a short burst. The kind of laughter of disbelief, or that you give to a kid who just told you aliens came down and ate all of his socks, so he can’t put his shoes on today.

“Can I go turn off the water?”

“You could, but this will stop as soon as it is empty. That is the nice part about the pipes that leave the house, they are not designed to stay full.” She now knew there was no way she was opening her eyes anytime soon. As this thought tumbled in her head, the sound of forced water began to subside. The flow was stopping. The pipe was emptying.

Thump, thump, thump. Feet coming down the stairs. Boy feet, heavy feet, feet that are going to be suddenly shocked that something had gone wrong, even though there was no way those feet did not hear the sound. Feet that she was pretty sure were in the bathroom when the shower and flush of the toilet filled the pipes that then decided they didn’t need to keep their shape.

“Woh, what happened?” Her eyes were still closed, but only her 13-year-old would say something like that.

“Aliens came in and decided they wanted to see what drywall and PVC pipe tasted like.” Now it was her turn to give a burst of laughter. Sometimes her husband could lay one out there. Her son, however, did not understand the nuances of sarcasm to get through a situation that should cause tears.

“How come mom’s eyes are closed?” She assumed that her husband was now turned to look at her face, which she could not see because she had closed her eyes when the liquid burst out in her direction while she was standing in the hallway outside the office.

“I am going to venture a guess that this was not how she imagined her day going. And that she is hoping to fall asleep and just start the day over.”

“No, I think I am trying to just see if this is a nightmare, and that maybe I am asleep, and I could just force myself back into my sleeping body and then wake up because I am becoming very aware that in this liquid there is probably pee.”

“Ew, mom, that is so gross!”

“Yep, me mentioning pee is definitely way more gross than say when you asked me to wash dog poop off your shoe last week while you were standing in the kitchen.”

“Well, this isn’t my fault, so don’t ask me to clean this up.” She kept her eyes closed, took a deep breath, shifted her neck just a little so her chin rose, and clenched her teeth a little more than her dentist would have liked.

“Nope, of course it isn’t your fault.” Those words did not come out like she meant them at all. It sounded like she truly thought her son had managed to add just too much to the sewer pipes that led from his bathroom, causing them to burst into the hallway. She knew he did not intentionally set out to have the pipe burst as he flushed the toilet at the end of his shower.

“Why don’t you go grab your mom and me some towels so we can try to clean this up?”

“Okay, but I am only grabbing towels.”

“Of course.” Now it was her husband’s turn to take a deep breath. “So, are you going to open your eyes and look at this?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Well, it will make it easier to clean. And it will probably make it easier for you to find your phone and a number for a plumber, maybe even to call the insurance company because pee in the wood floor is probably not great for the finish.”

“Can’t you direct me out of the hallway and let me open my eyes in another part of the house?”

“Um…no. I signed up to do this life WITH you, not on my own, and right now, this is a moment that I want to experience with you, not as a solo artist who has no idea how to do all those things I just said you would need to open your eyes for.”

“Ah. Well, I think that maybe we need to go back and specify some of this in our marriage vows, because I do not remember any part of them where either one of us said ‘in sickness and in health, and for that day that the pipes will burst and we need to figure out how the hell to fix them.’”

“Yep, that is definitely something they should start adding, I am sure it is a key experience that people need to be reminded of.”

“It would be way easy for someone to just say ‘I did not sign up for this’ and walk away.”

“Is that what you are thinking about right now?”

“I can’t even see, let alone walk away.”

“Where do you want me to put the towels?”

“Not…there.”

“What, it’s not like they aren’t just going to wind up in this stuff anyway.” She put her hands over her face and started to laugh. “Is mom okay?” She could feel the eyes on her, and the laughter just kept coming. It was the kind of laughter that you can’t stop, that the more you realize it is inappropriate, or that the laughing was keeping you from accomplishing something, it just rolls out of you. Laughter should be able to turn any situation into a better one, but she had to say that this laughter was just keeping the sanity in place a little longer.