Susan Senator

Bubble, bubble
Our toilets are trouble.
–William Sh**speare

As you may be aware, I live in a big house. In this house, there are four bathrooms (five, if you count the strange scary toilet in the basement but you would never, on your life, use that one). I am not bragging. Don’t envy me my toilets. In fact, don’t think this is some kind of nirvana house. Oh, it looks good on paper. And I have made sure it is very, very pretty. Every room is carefully decorated (by me, not a decorator. That is my other would-be profession, had I not become a writer of sorts, etc. As it is, I decorate my friends’ houses, for fun.), all the colors are well-thought-out with the furniture and art. But if you look close, you will see all of its flaws. Just like me.

If you focus on the flaws, as I tend to do, (alas), you will probably find that the biggest problems of all center around our plumbing. Every single one of the bathrooms has issues. First, there is the new bathroom. New! We put it in when we moved in, around six or seven years ago. We gutted the one that was there because the tub leaked to the front entryway ceiling below. It was a tiny clawfoot tub; kind of cute, but with a ramshackle shower and, as I’ve said, a leak! So, we did a whole new bathroom, state-of-the-art, all white and new nickel, new beadboard. Took me several iterations with the stupid contractor to explain that I wanted real beadboard tongue-and-groove wainscoting, not some wallpaper-thin stuff with lines etched into it. It also took me a few go-rounds with him to make him understand that, yes, I wanted tile, not some kind of fiberglass unit that I would never have to scrub! Yes, I wanted real grout that really collects mildew. By the time he was through with me, $20,000 later, I felt as if I had the (slightly crooked) matte nickel shower curtain rod wedged right up my —

But I digress. The whole raison d’être for this new bathroom was the leak. Not only a leak that you take but a leak that we got. So what happens, the moment we use the new shower? A leak!!

Even after that well-recommended contractor came back with his wall-eyed plumber (probably a clue to the terrible work he did) and fixed the shower drain, we had leaks, this time, from the toilet. It turns out, after a long winded discussion, we learned that, you should not plunge toilets; you can break the “seal,” or some such circus animal. God knows. But seal-breakage = leakage = money shrinkage.

Why do I mention plunging? Because we were plunging a lot. That brand new toilet clogs every other day. I don’t know if it’s my growing boys and what they eat, or if it is someone’s fascination with toilet paper. I can’t exactly catch them in their wrongdoing, if you know what I mean. So, every other day, you flush, and you don’t get the beautiful symphonic whoosh, you get a constipated toilet and the whole stew rising just to the edge of the toilet.

So, the master bathroom toilet sucks — or rather, it doesn’t suck enough. Which causes me to use the one near Max’s and Nat’s rooms. Not so much. No matter how often I clean in there, it is always dirty. What is it with males, that they just don’t even think about trying to aim better? And guess what else? The toilet in there is also relatively new, though we did not renovate that room (there is a huge clawfoot tub and a rubber hose attachment for the shower, but never mind, I use it only for lovely baths). That toilet clogs when the other one clogs!

So, where else can I go? Upstairs, you might think. To the Hinterlands. The third floor, which is on a different heating system, the old heating system, which still uses a converted former coal furnace and radiators. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It is another mystery, like the plumbing. So the third floor is cold, and frankly, so cut off from the rest of the house that it is a little too quiet up there. A little scary. But the toilet works. Provided you push the handle down long enough. But for the longest time, the faucets would moan like a dying monster when you turned them, so…

So, down, down the bolge, to the first floor toilet. If you lift the lid, it reads, in fancy black script, “Number 21,” on the porcelain lip. [It is telling you that this is the 21st circle of Hell. ] A very old toilet, original to the first renovation of The House, which was built in 1886. The first renovation occurred in 1913, before World War I; the little bathroom is a brick addition to the house (literally a brick s***house). The heat in there, just a tiny black radiator, is never on, because it is on the old heating system, which we don’t use because it is so flakey, so it is cold. So cold, that when the little faucet drips, it freezes in the drain. It might as well be a washstand whose ice I have to break every morning in order to wash, like a girl in a nineteenth century orphanage.

But let me tell you, they don’t make them like they used to; toilets, that is. This toilet is the champ. This toilet has a wooden tank high up on the wall and a pull chain and a 90 decibel whoosh that scares children, but it will flush a carburetor. And that is good.

I won’t go too far into the fact that this toilet tank was lined with new copper several times until it finally stopped leaking, and the plumber who did that gave up on us, saying, “Your plumbing is haunted.” I believe him. It is all too weird the way the toilets on the second floor clog in tandem, even though they are completely unrelated stacks. And sometimes, all of a sudden, there will be a burble and a whoosh, and the toilet in our bathroom unclogs itself.

I would not lie to you. We don’t understand it. We just live with it. It’s like something out of Harry Potter. And so, we all have our toilet preferences in this house, that kind of match our personalities/issues. Nat and I want completion, so we suffer through the cold and use the first floor toilet. Ned, because he likes a challenge, will use the new bathroom, so he just gets out the plumbing snake and unclogs it every other day. Ben uses the new bathroom, too, because he does not even notice if his stuff goes down or not, and refuses to use the first floor one because of the noise (he has some sensory issues, I believe). Max uses his bathroom, doesn’t notice the dirt, because he wants his privacy and space.

And now, flush with my toilet stories, I will bid you a-doo.