Jen slouched at the kitchen table, still dazed from the emotional beating her daughter had just administered. As she tried to neutralize her sour stomach with the stale remains of the pita chips, she surveyed their emergency supplies.
How long will this stuff have to last us? A week?
Forever?
How are we going to eat the peanut butter?
Why didn’t you buy jelly to go with it? Or Nutella? Or anything?
You fucking idiot.
She looked around the room, taking in the dry faucet . . . the cold oven . . . the room-temperature fridge . . .
Nothing works.
NOTHING WORKS. No water, no power, no phones, no cars.
No money.
You should’ve gone to the bank Monday. And the store.
But you just stayed home and drank.
You fucking idiot. You fucked your whole family.
Think your daughter hates you now? Wait till she finds out she’s going to go hungry and it’s all your fault.
You fucking idiot.
Then she heard Chloe’s scream, coming from the upstairs bathroom.
Oh, Jesus. Now what?
Dizzy, queasy, and almost catatonic with self-loathing, Jen pushed herself to her feet and trudged off to find out what else had just gone to hell.
Chloe was banging on Max’s bedroom door and screaming, “Clean it up!”
“Clean what up?” Jen hardly needed to ask—the bathroom door was closed, but the stink had been discernible from halfway up the stairs. As she approached, she covered her nose and mouth with her hand and swallowed hard against the stomach acid creeping up her esophagus.
Her daughter’s face was twisted with revulsion, but at least it wasn’t directed at Jen. “He took a dump in an empty toilet! It won’t flush! It’s just sitting in there!” Chloe turned back to Max’s bedroom door and smacked it with an open palm. “Clean it up!”
“Leave me alone!” Max yelled from the other side of the door.
“Can’t we just get a bucket of water and flush it out?” Jen asked.
“From where?”
“The tub in our room—”
“Dad said we have to save that! We’re going to run out!”
A feeling of overwhelm began to rise from deep in Jen’s gut. She pushed it down as best she could, trying to think of something useful to say.
“Can you just avoid the bathroom?”
“All my makeup’s in there!”
“Why do you need makeup?”
Chloe’s face underwent a rapid transformation from fury to chagrin.
“I’m . . . going out.”
“To do what?”
“I’m meeting somebody.”
A whole series of questions cascaded through Jen’s mind.
Meeting who? Where?
At a nightclub?
I thought you were doing ACT prep!
What about tennis?
And your Dartmouth supplemental?
Jen was searching for a way to express her concern about Chloe’s time management that was tactful enough not to trigger an explosion when her daughter exploded again anyway.
“Ohmygod it stinks!” She kicked Max’s door so hard that the wall shook. “Clean it up!” she screamed one last time before retreating to her bedroom and slamming the door.
Against her better judgment, Jen went to the bathroom to investigate. Inside, the full horror of the situation quickly revealed itself. Back in the hallway a split second later, with the bathroom door shut firmly behind her, it took all the self-will she could muster not to throw up.
Something had to be done.
Jen went to Max’s door and knocked twice, then tried the handle. As she expected, it was locked.
“Max? Can you please open this?”
A moment later, Max opened the door. “I had to go! And it’s not fair! You know why there’s no water in the bowl? ’Cause she took a dump before I did!”
“Will you just help me clean it up?” The thought of doing so threatened to make Jen heave up the pita chips.
Max was no more enthusiastic than she was. “Clean it up how? Where’s it going to go if it’s not the toilet?”
He had a point, the implications of which were obvious. This wasn’t a one-off problem. Until the water came back, they couldn’t flush any of the toilets.
What are we going to do?
Dig a hole in the backyard?
It was all too much. Jen retreated to her bedroom, collapsed onto the bed, and sobbed.
No toilets. No water. No nothing.
I can’t take this. I can’t even take a shower.
I can’t fix the water. I can’t fix the money. I can’t fix my daughter.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I
can
have a drink.
Like a sleepwalker stepping off a ledge, she stood up and glided out of the room.
Inside the downstairs bathroom, she locked the door behind her and opened the medicine cabinet. In the dim light, the rubbing alcohol bottle was just visible between the hydrogen peroxide and the Band-Aids. It was full.
Jen pulled it out. Uncapped it and sniffed the clear, astringent liquid.
Definitely vodka.
Right? I didn’t dream that?
She took a swig. Her stomach rebelled, bucking against the liquor like a horse that wasn’t broken to the saddle.
Teeth sweating, she clamped her jaw shut and rode it out.
As her digestive system slowly submitted to her will, the corrosive stew of fear and self-hatred she’d been marinating in since she woke up began to lose its bite, diluted by the warm sensation of well-being radiating from her gut.
She was debating whether to take a second drink when she heard Max bounding down the stairs. He passed the bathroom door on his way to the garage.
“Max?”
No answer. The door to the garage opened, then slammed shut.
She capped the bottle, returned it to the cabinet, and followed him.
By the time she entered the garage, he was most of the way to Willis Road on his bike. Dazzle was at the farthest corner of her shock-collar perimeter, barking disapproval at the top of her lungs.
“Max!”
He didn’t even turn his head. Dazzle did, but only for a moment. Then she went right back to hectoring Max as he turned and disappeared down the hill.
That fucking dog.
We’re going to die of starvation, and the last sound we hear will be that fucking dog.
Having barked away the threat from Max, Dazzle turned her attention to Jen, standing at the threshold of the open garage. The dog trotted to the near end of her invisible fence, issuing warning barks as she approached.
Jen felt an odd compulsion to bark back.
How long before she realizes there’s no fence anymore?
I should drown her in their pool.
Holy shit, the pool.
Two minutes later, Dazzle was backing away from Jen, her barks growing desperate and frightened at the presence of this human with the audacity to drag a massive plastic garbage bin on wheels into her backyard with one hand while wielding a bucket in the other.
Jen knocked on the sliding glass door. A moment later, Kayla opened it, her eyes a pair of slits under a backward Yankees cap.
“Shaddup, Dazzle!” she growled as the dog fled inside. “Ohmygawd, Jen, what did you do to me last night?”
Jen managed a smile. Her own hangover was submerging beneath a not-at-all-unpleasant vodka buzz. “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Can I borrow some pool water?”
Kayla eyed the wheeled bin with equal parts confusion and suspicion. “How much do you need?”
“Enough to flush our toilets until this is over.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Jen wheeled the bin over to the edge of the pool and began to bail water into it with the bucket, trying to bend only at the knees so as not to aggravate her nausea.
Kayla dragged over a patio chair and sat down to keep her company.
“So whaddaya do, fill up the tank with that?”
“No—you just pour it straight in the bowl.”
“Huh.” Kayla pondered this, then shook her head. “I don’t think that’d work for us. We got really high-end toilets.”
“A toilet’s a toilet—you dump enough water in, it’ll flush.”
“How?”
“Gravity.”
Kayla dropped the subject and leaned forward, hugging her chest with a frown. “Jen, can I tell you something?”
Her tone of voice put Jen on guard. “Sure,” she said, praying she wasn’t about to become privy to confidential information about Kayla and Eddie’s marriage.
“I’m really scared.”
“About what?”
“This whole thing. Like . . . what even is it?”
The bin was as full as Jen figured she could manage given the return trip across the lawn. She stopped bailing and turned to look at her diminutive neighbor.
Kayla was hunched over her knees, peering up at Jen with a plaintive, needy look.
Too needy. Half drunk, half hungover, and with a laundry list of urgent tasks starting to write itself in her head, Jen had way too much on her plate to indulge her neighbor’s potentially bottomless need for emotional support.
Instead of commiserating, she just smiled. “We’re going to be fine!”
“Really?”
“Yeah! Couple of days, this will all be back to normal.”
“You’re not freaking out?”
“Little bit. Not much. It’ll be fine. Look at all the pool water you got! Don’t worry, babe.” Jen started to wheel the bin back toward her house, then paused out of guilt. Kayla looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“But if you’re really feeling bad—”
“Yeah?”
“Take a Xanax.”
Kayla’s face fell. “I already did.”
“Oh. Well, maybe take two. Thanks for the water!”
There were several close calls owing to the terrain and her impaired motor function, but Jen eventually maneuvered the garbage bin full of water across the lawn without losing more than a gallon or two.
She parked the bin inside the garage, then drew a bucket and took it upstairs. Back in the kids’ bathroom, she dumped the water into the toilet bowl as fast as possible without triggering a backsplash, then watched with satisfaction as the rapid accretion of water pressure activated the flush.
Then she strode down the hall and knocked on Chloe’s door. When her daughter answered, Jen smiled at her.
“Fixed!”
“Thank you.”
“There’s a garbage bin of water in the garage.” Jen held up the empty bucket. “I’ll leave this next to it. From now on, if you need to flush, take half a bucket and dump it in the bowl. Okay?”
“Okay.” Chloe’s look had softened almost to the point of being friendly. Jen decided to take a second run at an apology.
“Honey, I’m really sorry about last night—”
“I know—”
“I was overserved, and I shouldn’t have gotten into it with you—”
“It’s fine, Mom.”
“And I’m even more sorry for that comment on the essay—”
“It’s fine!” Chloe kept talking over her, trying to shut down the apology.
“It was a shitty thing to write. I was just trying to help. But I know it came off mean, and—”
“I get it! It’s totally fine!”
“But it’s not—”
“It’s okay! Seriously! Apology accepted.”
“You sure?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. I love you!”
“I love you, too.”
“So . . . where are you going today?”
“Just over to Emma’s. Then tennis.”
“Okay. Good luck! Beat the shit out of Rumson.”
“I will.”
“I love you!”
“Love you, too.”
Chloe shut the door. As Jen walked back down the hall to the stairs, she allowed herself a smile. That had gone surprisingly well.
Now it was time to kick ass. Solving the toilet-flushing problem was just the beginning. Jen was determined to spend the day making up for all of her prior negligence.
What’s next?
Drinking water.
A plan was forming in her head for securing more of that. It was a little intricate, but she was confident she could pull it off.
Once the drinking water situation was locked down, she’d get to work on the food and the finances. Then she’d figure out how to get everybody showers.
Whatever was happening—terror attack? alien invasion? power outage on steroids?—Jen wasn’t going to let it beat her. She’d carry the whole family through this crisis, all while making sure Chloe’s Dartmouth app didn’t get derailed.
She’d quit drinking, too.
Just not quite yet.