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The Countess My father was a plumber. He knew the sudden growl of circumstance, the stubbornness of metal, the Picassoesque patterns of rust and stain. He knew all the velocities of water, the Gordian knots of crud. He knew faint praise and skinned knuckles. He knew haunted housewives and their do-it-yourself husbands with sheepish grins and wet shoes. He knew all the plumbing catastrophes and reveled that they occurred in dim nooks and dark corners where he could savor every shadow. He drowned in the line of duty. I have his wrenches. The manager of the E-Z Loan Company grew tired of listening to the toilet. To me, Singing Toilets, as we professionals call them, are an occupational anthem, a song so symbolic my father often refused to fix them. “The lullaby of trickling water links a person spiritually to his plumbing,” he once said as we stood in the bathroom of Grace and Denton Murlant and listened to a stopper ball not set properly in the flush-valve opening. The Murlants wanted to keep step the sound of a different drummer and demanded silence from their off-duty toilet. We gave them silence, but my father doubled the bill. The employees of the E-Z Loan Company, male and female, shared the same restroom. I informed them it would be closed for repairs. Many took it personally. I shrugged, loitered in the office, constructing paperclip chains, to give everyone a chance to make a final pilgrimage. The song of the E-Z Loan Company toilet was not caused by a simple hung stopper like the one that marred the lives of Grace and Denton Murlant. No jiggling of the flush handle could seat the stopper. There was adjustment needed and with luck parts would have to be replaced. I shut off the water to the toilet, flushed it, and studied the whole operation. The valve seat was pitted, the stopper misshapen, but the real problem was the stopper guide. It had slid around the overflow pipe enough to move the stopper out of line with the flush value seat. I dug a screwdriver out of my toolbox and loosened the setscrew holding the guide to the overflow pipe. With the guide back in place so the stopper seated properly in the flush-valve opening, I tightened the screw. Test flushes confirmed that the E-Z Loan Company no longer had a Singing Toilet. I washed my hands. The only sound in the restroom was the rumble of the hand dryer as hot air evaporated water off my hands. “I want to hear the dew evaporating in morning sunlight,” said Countess Kruplotsky. “That is the essence of this sonata, and you damn well better not screw it up because I haven’t got all day.” My sister Margaret put the violin to her chin, took a quick look at her teacher, and did what she could about the dew. Countess Kruplotsky was the favorite specter of my childhood. A tall, stout woman. She was the crème de la crème of European aristocracy she informed us when she appeared at our door in answer to a notice my mother had tacked to a laundromat bulletinboard. As an innocent bystander, I could savor Countess Kruplotsky. Margaret, too close to the crazy fire, could not. every Saturday afternoon at three o’clock Countess Kruplotsky would show up for Margaret’s two o’clock lesson. Soused on apricot brandy, humming highfalutin tunes, Countess Kruplotsky sailed past the rest of the family. “All right, Margaret, let’s get this over with as fast as we can.” I tried to be out of the house when Margaret practiced during the week, but Saturday afternoon was special, reserved, earmarked you could say. I was awestruck by the mad foreigner, her fifteen pounds of beads and brooches, her strange prophecies. “A child like you, Margaret, will come to a bad end. There are creatures of the night, dark beings who know you don’t practice your goddamn lessons.” The unknown factor in every lesson was the amount of apricot brandy Countess Kruplotsky slung down at lunch. Near legendary lunches, I had soon learned, at Winslow’s Tavern where she and other elderly music teachers gathered each Saturday at noon to fortify themselves for afternoon lessons with nonprodigies. Margaret did her best, but Countess Kruplotsky was not impressed. “That’s C-sharp. What the hell is the matter with you? Mozart would puke if he heard you play this. In this concerto the violin must bring the sky and beech trees together, nature’s proffer, littoral of second chance, extend a blessing for the brittle earth, the bent-nail of geese, leaping salmon, the rabbit hiding in the rickety hedge.” Margaret resumed playing. The notes were a perfect likeness of a dentist’s drill. Countess Kruplotsky shrieked and kicked over the music stand. The unknown factor. I waited all week for its wondrous ramifications, and was seldom disappointed. Once Countess Kruplotsky fell asleep on the sofa while Margaret was fiddling away. Mother woke her at six o’clock and sent the befuddled woman wobbling off into the evening. Another Saturday Countess Kruplotsky spent an hour in our bathroom, singing incoherently and, we believe from circumstantial evidence, soaking her feet in the bathtub. On another Saturday, when Margaret and I were the only family members present, Countess Kruplotsky lay in the hallway for two hours, face-down on the carpet, Margaret playing at her assigned post in the livingroom. But stupor was not the high drama I had in mind when I turned down birthday party invitations for Saturday, all proposed games with the neighborhood kids. I knew I could always go to birthday parties or play baseball, but that brandy-laced loony wasn’t going to last forever. I cherished every moment, especially the few words she spoke to me. Once when accepting a cookie off a plate I offered her, she gave me a woozy stare and said, “I hope I never have to give lessons to a worthless, nose-picking, little cretin like you.” I told her I was going to be a plumber and she nodded her approval. Countess Kruplotsky detected no progress in Margaret’s skills. “Do you suppose Mendelssohn wanted you to skip every other note in this concerto? Here are the first drops of rain in dust, joy and hope, a cresset lit, the startles of pleasure. Your fingertips should be pressed against the unnamed color of the horizon, the scent of lilacs, basket of pears.” Margaret glanced at the clock on the wall and plodded onward, the pig-squeal of steel cable through a pulley. Yet in a way I envied Margaret. I had to crouch in the hallway and peek around the corner to get my share of the action. Margaret had the best seat in the house for the Countess Kruplotsky Show. Only Margaret, for example, knew how Countess Kruplotsky got her head stuck in the venetian blind. Countess Kruplotsky had a standard procedure that won my heart. She put in ear plugs before Margaret started playing. The foam rubber type purchased at sporting goods by trapshooters. “Don’t start yet, Margaret,” Countess Kruplotsky would caution, taking the ear plugs out of her purse and inserting them. Not an easy task in her usual condition. Often she put both ear plugs in the same ear. In the winter Countess Kruplotsky stumbled in wearing the spectacular fur coat and fur hat of a bygone era, and wore them during the lesson, saying, “I don’t plan to be here long.” One snowy Saturday she showed up without a coat or hat. The snow melted out of her hair as she sat cross-legged on the coffee table. “No! No! You pause after the first movement. Wait, poignant as an umbrella left in a trolley. Then begin slowly, following the cello like a cheap detective. Choose! Choose! You can’t afford the upkeep of neutrality. Cross the stream on the vows of rocks.” Whatever the reason, Countess Kruplotsky left beads and brooches in her wake. We’d find them on the livingroom floor, on the sofa, in Mother’s potted plants, in the refrigerator. One string of beads broke every lesson, because Countess Kruplotsky bit on a necklace as Margaret played, the way a wounded soldier bites on a bullet while his wound is tended. Countess Kruplotsky removed the necklace from her mouth when she needed to speak. “An organ grinder’s monkey knows more about music than you do.” Margaret’s music lessons came to an abrupt halt one Saturday when Countess Kruplotsky drank the water in our goldfish bowl, put two very surprised goldfish in her purse, and stormed out in the middle of a Bach partita, each note sounding like a cherry bomb in a mailbox. Mother was never able to locate her. Like Amelia Earhart, she simply vanished. Saturday became just another day of the week for me.
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