Sittin' Pretty

            By 1985, my boyfriend who would later become my husband, Brad and I had lived eight years in a hallway, a ten by fifty foot hallway. Some people would have called it a mobile home. It was convenient, I won't deny: we had hot and cold running water, a washing machine and dryer, and a heater that came on with a twist of a dial. But, not to be distracted by these indisputable niceties, it was still a hallway, so, when a chance to live in a house, a two-story, square house, came up, we leapt at it. Neither one of us gave a thought to plumbing.

            Plumbing isn't an inalienable right here, in Alaska. I think a certain amount of privation is understood, even expected, (possibly even bragged about a little), but when I put my toothbrush in a cup by the kitchen sink, I eyed the red, cast iron, hand-pump perched on the edge of it. I already hated doing dishes. Hand-pumping water and heating it on a propane stove could only make the job less appealing, but while I was majoring on the minors, Brad was outside beating around in the bushes looking for an outhouse. And horrified when he couldn't find one.

            There was a lot of other work to be done, but nothing took precedence over an outhouse. Brad was in his early forties then, and strong. I was in good shape too, but I was (and still am), the kind of person that given a sharp tool and a hard job, will inevitably hurt herself. Knowing this, Brad dug alone. It was September, rainy but cool -- perfect working weather. So while I moved boxes and small items of furniture from the trailer to the new place, Brad dug. At the end of the day, I went to see what progress had been made.

            The sides of the hole were trim and straight and it was so deep that even at six feet tall, Brad had to use a ladder to climb out. His shaggy, dark hair and beard were dusted with dirt, as were his clothes; he could have been a bear climbing out of its den, but no one had ever dug me an outhouse before, so I hugged him anyway. He smelled good for a man who just climbed out of a grave, earthy with a hint of spruce. I could see he was pretty proud of that hole as he walked around it tamping down the perimeter, shoveling away loose dirt, savoring his accomplishment. He gave me his guarantee that this hole would be at least a decade in the filling. Which when you are in your forties seems like a long time.

             It took him another week, I think, to build a platform over the hole, seal it around the edges, make the building, roof it and build a door. Inside there were two seats. I'd always wanted my own bathroom, but this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Still, I had to admit it was nicer, albeit smaller, than some cabins we had lived in, and warmer and more air-tight than the main house itself. The fresh, deep hole, aided by a vent to the outside carried off any odors, and there was absolutely no need for a toilet brush.

            Brad couldn't stop improving the outhouse. He had the interior sprayed with urethane insulation and ran electricity out to it.  A single 100 watt light bulb would heat it, he claimed, until really cold weather set in, and for the really cold weather, he installed a heater with a timer. He built magazine racks, and hauled out an assortment of magazines and books for adults and kids.

            "It's not a Reading Room," I called after him. Undaunted and determined to have complete comfort, he hand-carved a ladies-sized toilet seat and a manly-sized one from blue foam board which never gets cold. His enthusiasm was contagious and inspired his daughter Angie, who lived with us in the summer, to make colorful signs with markers that said HIS and HERS. My mother even made a stained glass window for the door, so when you stepped into the backyard, in the dark of a winter morning, you could see, off to the right, the jewel-toned glow of the stained glass window and the shadowy branches of the spruce trees heavy with snow standing guard. I am not an expert in outhouses, though I have more than amateur standing having lived in my share of substandard housing, but I have to say, I have never known of or used a better or more beautiful outhouse than the one Brad put together.

            I had only a rudimentary understanding of plumbing back then, and by rudimentary, I mean I had cleaned a lot of bathrooms, so it seemed like a godsend to me that I would never have to clean another. I was particularly thankful we weren't in Fort Yukon, where Brad had once lived, and where the indoor commode froze solid at seventy degrees below zero. In order to empty it, he told me, he had to defrost it on top of the kitchen stove.  The thought of which made a hole in the ground just that much more attractive.

            A hole is just so basic, isn't it? So straight-forward and maintainable. Anyone can dig one. Cheaper than connecting to city sewer, even if it was available, which it was not. The only maintenance I could foresee was sweeping out leaves or snow. I didn't have to scour the bowl. I didn't have to mop the floor. No one expected much from an outhouse, and already everyone thought ours was deluxe. Later, I would be regularly reminding myself of how deluxe it was while sprinting down the trail to it on cold mornings.

            Nevertheless, once the outhouse was squared away, Brad converted the unfinished pantry into a shower and got running water going, then hot water and these innovations made life so much better, I barely noticed the absence of the toilet or inconvenience of an outhouse until mid-January when I got a cough that was keeping us both awake at night. Uncharacteristically, I felt bad enough to drag myself to the doctor.

            "Go home. You've got the crud," is what he actually said. Is crud a diagnosis anywhere else? Maybe not, but here everyone knows crud is like the Inuit word for snow; it has many meanings, but unlike snow, all of them are bad.  At first, I had the cough-your-lungs-out crud with raw throat, and continous headaches. A week later, it was brain-boiling-fever crud, followed by get-that-food-away-from-me crud. Some people say that's flu, but I'm not one to quibble. Finally, the day I could keep toast in my stomach I thought I'd turned a corner, only to be hammered by two days of kicked-in-the-stomach crud, followed by don't-try-to-get-off-the-pot crud. Suffice to say, that beating my way like little Liza on the ice floes, to use the facilities in a different building stopped being an option back at the brain-boiling-fever stage.

            I remember my mother used to say, "I'm on the throne," when as a kid I pounded on the bathroom door to fill my water pistol. Nothing could be further from a throne than the plastic bucket that was called into duty as a chamber pot during my illness. Between fitful naps, I had plenty of time to pondered how awesomely throne-like and unobtainable a real toilet seemed to me. Then sweaty and exhausted, I would fall back into bed and contemplate the beauty and majesty of the flush. In reverie, I flushed again and again, and I was indoors. Flushing indoors. Clearly delirious.            

            Brad was flushing too, but in a different way because, poor guy, he carried the horrible bucket to the outhouse, flushed it out with the hose, disinfected it, and brought it back inside so I could continue to lay in bed and be miserable. This taught me that he really did love me as much as he said, and it taught him that a commode really needs a tight-fitting lid. As I got well, I continued to use the bucket, but I took care of it myself, later in the day, when I was dressed and mobilized. When I was completely well, I was comfortable enough about this system to wonder why I hadn't thought of it sooner. It was just another form of catch and release, wasn't it? Obviously, not ideal, but it was what I had to work with.

            Being sick so long motivated me to check out what others in our situation had come up with. In Alaska when you ask to use the toilet -- don't ask to use the bathroom or you'll end up somewhere else entirely --  you never know where you might be directed. Once, at a party, the hostess directed me to a narrow room in the back of the cabin. The "toilet" was a sturdy brown plastic box with a lidded-seat on top. Under the lid, there was a trap door, divided in the middle and when I sat down, I could hear the doors open. When I stood up, the doors closed. Best not to think about what was below the doors, I told myself, exiting the little closet it occupied with a broom and a mop. Best to leave the little closet quickly.

            I'm not sure if it's just the people we know, or if it's an Alaskan thing, but it is not socially unacceptable to talk about toilets (or anything else so far as I can tell) at parties, so I asked my hostess how she liked her alternative toilet. She wrinkled up her nose and waved her hand in front of it.

            "We got it because the kids were afraid they'd fall in the outhouse," she said. "It's supposed to burn 'the product'," she told me laughingly. "That's what the literature calls it, 'the product', but it doesn't always burn all of the 'product'."

            "So what do you do?" I asked.

            "You don't want to think about it!" she said. And she was right.

            "Don't want to think about what?" her husband asked. Naturally everyone wanted to talk about what we didn't want to think about, so we all heard all about the soggy, half-burned "product" wrangled into plastic bags and delivered by Subaru to the landfill. We all  laughed at the story about  how "product" smoke, although that is not what our host called it,  prevented from exiting when the vent froze shut backed up and filled the house. Although it was  amusing, it was not any kind of improvement over what we already had.

            When our friend Don built a houseboat, he got an EPA approved unit, and I was so eager to check it out, I headed straight for the bathroom when I stepped on board.

            "Do not go in there. I'm warning you," he said, his voice thick with disgust. I stopped in my tracks.

            "How come?" I said. He just shook his head.

            "You'll see," he said and turned his head away to look out the window at the ducks paddling around. The toilet looked normal enough except, to my surprise, there was no trap door. The omission of this detail was not a good choice, because not only was the product right there, but in my brief glance, it seemed just a little too close for comfort. From the other end of the houseboat, Don yelled, "See that bag of pellets under the sink? Add a scoop of those when  you're done and turn that knob on the back a few times." The pellets looked like rabbit food. Here's a tip: when you're done, remain seated. Fill the cup with pellets and stand. Quickly empty the cup in the toilet without turning around -- aim the pellets as best you can. Close the lid before you twist the knob on the back a few times. Getting these steps out of sequence will seriously impair your ability to use this model again, I promise you. In this case, product was desiccated, instead of incinerated and the result was condensed odorless cakes which, am I the only one who thinks this is funny? the literature recommended disposing of in an outhouse. How was that a solution to anything?

            When some friends got a high-tech toilet with aerobic microbes that was supposed to be the state of the art (the art?), I couldn't wait to see it. It looked exactly like a real toilet except where there should have been a pool of clean water, there was a round, black hole that could have accommodated a grapefruit. In the event of  poor aim, a flush of white bubbles was only a touch pad away. I appreciated the bubbles. They looked like they'd do a good job, maybe even eliminate the need for a toilet brush, but where did the hole empty? Downstairs in a tank the size of a VW. Inside that tank, fans and rake bars operated quietly, automatically, and blades churned and invisible worms squirmed -- that's how I imagined it anyway. How full did that tank get, I wondered, before it became a problem and who emptied it? 

            I had to eventually conclude that there's just nothing more civilized than regular city water and sewer. It simply cannot be improved upon, but the septic tank is an acceptable impostor. Lots of people have them I discovered, once I figured out how to spot them. Just look for the proverbial greener grass, the place where all the kids and dogs end up playing and rolling around; it's usually right over the drain field for the septic tank. But why should that bother me? The outhouse works the same way; I just never see anyone playing around the outhouse. I wondered how long it took for the leach field of a septic tank to clog up, and how much trouble it would be to unclog it. The memory of a foul, swampy area thick with weeds behind Aunt Babe's house in Virginia popped into my mind. Was that an overflowing septic tank? Could the tank be emptied? Who emptied it? I wondered again, so I asked Brad.

            Call me naive, but until then, I thought the big truck I commonly saw driving around town -- the one that had "honey bear" painted on the side -- was just a cute business name for a water delivery service. Doesn't honey bear fit right in with the rest of Alaska's bears? Brown bear, black bear, Polar bear, honey bear. I mean, how is anyone supposed to figure out that "honey" is an euphemism unless they're told? 

            We stuck with the outhouse and although we didn't expect it, we were still living in the same place, using it ten years later, when its warranty ran out, during one of the worst winters on record. The dreaded family totem was glimpsed rising in the darkness. If you've never used an outhouse in the winter, be advised "family totem" is another euphemism.  Not to be too graphic, but in below freezing temperatures, everything freezes, including what lies below in an outhouse. Once the bottom is frozen, each daily deposit is added to the one before it and gains in height. Even with only two people contributing, the totem grows. It rises even quicker from an overfull outhouse. Neither Brad nor I wanted to check its progress, but it became a matter of self-preservation.
            The ground which wasn't easy to dig in in September was frozen hard as steel in February when Brad decided he couldn't wait another day to dig a new hole. He figured that the building could be moved over a new hole which would save a lot of work.

            "All I really have to do is dig the hole," he told me. It was a frigid morning. There was hoar frost in Brad's moustache and beard when we finished clearing a 4' x 6' footprint of snow and debris. He bow-sawed the dead, lower branches of some spruce trees and I mounded them up, lit a fire. We stood around it, adding wood and even lumps of coal until it was putting out serious heat. When it died down, we raked the red coals carefully. We joked that we were only a motivational speaker short of hosting a fire-walking seminar in self-empowerment. But instead of that, we threw metal roofing over the coals and went inside to let the ground cook. That was the plan: to heat the ground. Defrost it. So Brad could dig.

            In the afternoon, rested and ready, Brad swung the pickaxe like Paul Bunyan, and a walnut-sized piece of dirt jumped loose. He whacked at the earth again, and another nugget was freed. He moved to another place and walloped at the ground there. Bits of frozen dirt so small I couldn't see them bounced off my jeans. I said, "This is impossible," but Brad kept at it without much to show for his effort. Every ten or fifteen minutes, he stopped to catch his breath, and I gathered up the loosened dirt bits in a shovel and piled them to the side. I did this partly to cut down on the ricochets but also to demonstrate what progress was being made. After more than an hour, there was only a pitifully shallow depression. Brad poured diesel fuel in it and set it on fire. The flames danced around, went out, and there was no change in the frozen ground. The earth refused to warm. I was thinking we could work until spring to dig the hole or wait until spring when it would be easier, but I wasn't doing any pickaxing, so I didn't say anything. I didn't ask where he was going either when he laid down the pick and drove away. When he came back, it was with a rented a space heater. He built a makeshift tent around it, aimed it at the ground and ran it half a day. That's what it took to convinced him that only hard labor with sharp instruments was going to do the trick. Guiltily, I slunk away. It was a monumental effort, and Brad labored mightily. For a middle-aged guy with asthma, he did very well, took breaks, and went back at it again and again, but the work went on.

            In the meantime, we approached the old outhouse reluctantly, even tried to be elsewhere for calls of nature. It might have been the only period of time when I topped off the gas tank on a regular, if you know what I mean,  basis. Also I don't think a lot of people are aware of how hard our fast food restaurant works to keep a clean restroom. And you don't even have to be a customer to use it, although I sometimes had a small French fries.

             If the going got easier at the dig site, it was only to the degree that every ax fall dislodged an apricot-sized chunk of rock-hard dirt.  Dozens of swings produced a shovelful. The hole was eighteen inches of gulag-labor deep when Brad finally broke through the frozen layer. After that, the digging went from nearly impossible to just extremely difficult. The spruce roots seemed thicker this time and the caliche and clay felt even harder than they did in that September over a decade past, he told me.

            "Maybe I'm just older," he conceded, but the rocks seemed bigger to me too and almost every shovelful rang out and sent visible jolts up his arm, but the hole got deeper. I detected a slight shift in his mood when he came in one afternoon to warm his feet and drink something hot. The end was in sight.

            The next morning, water started seeping into the hole. It wasn't fast but it was relentless, the way water is. At the end of the day, Brad was soaked to the skin and took a long time to warm up. The next morning, there was an inch of ice to break through and water to bail out. The further he dug, the faster the water came in. By afternoon, he was soaked to the knees, ice-caked and too exhausted to continue, but a further drop in temperature and snow were in the forecast, so the ice would only get thicker overnight. That was when he called our friend David who was ten years our junior and brimming with youthful vigor. I wondered why he waited so long.

            It was dusk and snowing when David left, but the hole was finally finished to meet Brad's expectations.

            "All that's left is moving the outhouse to the new platform," he told me. He was shaking with exhaustion and cold, but determined to get everything in place for the grand finale, the next day. It was dark and snowing when he finished wrapping straps around the outhouse.

            "Tomorrow we'll be sittin' pretty," he said to me before he dropped off to sleep.

            It was colder the next day, but I bundled up to watch. It was just the two of us and I was sorry we hadn't asked David to come back. Brad used a come-along to ratchet the chains holding the ropes and straps wrapped around the outhouse. He cranked effortlessly for a long while before the straps tightened up, but once they did his face and body showed the effort it took to keep cranking. I watched the outhouse closely, but nothing moved that I could see. Then, suddenly spruce planks began to creak, then creaked louder. They groaned, then they screamed, but nothing moved. Brad kept on cranking until a crack so loud it made me involuntarily duck and cover my head rang out. When I looked back, I saw the top two-thirds of the outhouse laying on the ground. The bottom third, the seats still attached to the old base, were surrounded by the broken teeth of rotten spruce slabs. The door had somehow torn free and flopped to safety, completely intact. I was glad to see that the stained glass window hadn't broken, but I could have cried anyway.

            It turned out that the outhouse was in worse shape than we imagined and the door was the only thing salvageable. Even the roof  which also survived the fall was rotten where spruce boughs had lain on it for years dripping water and snow. Although constructing a new outhouse building wasn't nearly hard as digging the new hole, it added another week of hard work to the project. When it was finished, we were only back at square one, where we started. Everything was exactly same.  Even the old signs that Angie made were back on the wall, slightly the worse for wear.

            As yet another decade of use approached, Brad couldn't face digging another hole. If only there was some way to empty the hole, instead of digging a new one, we lamented to one another. Then someone said -- we both take credit for it --  "What about the honey bear?  They did septic tanks, why not outhouses?"  I don't know why this never occurred to us before, but it was a very good idea. No matter whose it was.  The dogs smelled the truck coming. Their ears went back and their noses were in the air before I heard the beep-beep of the truck's signal backing down the narrow road to our house. I watched from the upstairs window. The man who got out wore jeans and tennis shoes. Our dogs, friendly to a fault, shied away from him. Gloveless, the man uncoiled a hose, and dragged it through the yard to the outhouse and stuck it down the hole. Then, he turned on the equipment and the truck rumbled with the sound of machinery. It could have been pumping water. It could have been mixing cement. But it wasn't.
            I just want to say for the record, that if my job was driving a honey bear truck, I would insist on rigorous costuming for every event. I wouldn't so much as open the door of that truck without an impermeable barrier of some kind on my hands. Maybe gloves like the ones scientists use to handle contagious diseases or toxic chemicals. There would have to be boots, hip-high at least and a helmet with a respirator pumping fresh air inside. Or maybe something like the astronauts used for moon walks and there would definitely have to be a decontamination shower. But this man, this plucky hero who came to save my aging husband from having to dig another hole, either didn't understand the magnitude of the job or didn't think body protection was important. The smell he stirred up didn't seem to bother him either, yet it sent our dogs -- dogs that not only roll in the most disgusting things I have ever seen, often things I can't even identify, and even eat what they roll in -- scratching at the door.

            When I heard the machinery stop, I was back at the window in time to see the hose laying on the ground and the top half of the man leaning in the outhouse hole, like it was an unexplored cave and the walls possibly embedded with rubies or pearls. Without coming out, he groped for the flashlight in his back pocket and snaked it and his entire arm down the hole too. When he finally satisfied himself about what was in there, he eventually came out. He shook his head like a guy who'd gotten bad news. Brad who had made himself scarce throughout, finally emerged from his shop. The man offered him his flashlight which Brad waved away. Their talk was muffled, but I could see the man urge Brad into the outhouse, to take the flashlight, but Brad declined. The man talked on and on, then it was Brad's turn to shake his head.
            "The good news is he did a great job," Brad said when he came inside. "The bad news is he won't do it again." Why not? "Calcium buildup or something. This is a quick fix that won't last. He won't come again. Says he can't do a good enough job for us." Which amazed us both. The man was right too. It was only a couple of years later when our dedicated work and contributions from summer visitors including Angie, her husband and their two kids, and we had once again reaped a hole full of dividends. Obviously, the outhouse is not a perfect system despite its intrinsic simplicity. We were considering possible solutions -- eat less, lodge fewer visitors, move -- when the city announced that a sewer line was finally coming down our road. Brad was relieved. I was excited.

            It some ways it was like the arrival of a baby, our little stranger. We had to make a pretty room for it, make sure it was warm.  We had to get whatever was needed, so starting with the basics, we ordered the all-important lift-pump/grinder, essential, I was told because of our status as the lowest house on the road. Once ordered, I put that out of my mind, distracted by the turmoil Brad and Mark created inside as they expanded the pantry area, ripped out the hand-made shower and the out-dated  PVC, and stripped the room down to bare wood then built it back up again with green board and sheet rock. Everything was regulation including a store-bought shower with a glass door.

            Not to make too much of it, but I really, truly never believed I would have a toilet. I'd stopped even thinking about it. We'd been barren for decades, gave up trying long ago. Isn't that always when a miracle happens? A bundle of joy was on the way and I felt like nesting. I hung burnt sienna curtains around the blue Formica-topped sink, put a new fluffy beige rug in front of the shower and a fake Japanese vase with fake flowers on the sink counter. I might have gone too far with the statue of  Kwan Yin I picked up at a thrift store in Anchorage, because our bathroom looked more like a quiet place to practice yoga than anything else. A part of me recognized that I had lost sight of how we were going to use this room, but I was too far gone to reel myself in. In the meantime, the sewer line marched down our road.  The pipe was laid. The ditches were filled. Our path and the road were "restored" and it was time to install the lift-pump, but the lift-pump had not arrived. First it was merely delayed, then finally arrived, but accidentally given to someone else, someone who had ordered earlier, waited longer. More lift-pumps were expected, but no more came. A mild autumn gave way to a rampaging winter with no sign of the pump. "I guess, we'll just have to wait until spring," Brad said with obvious resignation.

             Spring?! I wasn't concerned about my own comfort and disappointment. Alright, yes I was, but I wasn't just concerned for myself. Angie, her husband and their now three children were arriving in early June for a much anticipated visit. Our grandchildren were leery of the outhouse the last time they visited, and were looking forward to indoor plumbing. Wasn't waiting until spring cutting it close? Was that enough time? I didn't want them to be disappointed.

            Although it was premature, I went with my friend Mary to the nearest home building supply store -- 160 miles, round-trip -- to buy a toilet. Mary could drive through hell if it ever froze over which happened to be a good skill to have that day. We could have gone another time, and I won't pretend I wasn't unnerved during the white-outs or when that moose trotted along next to the car, but I needed to keep the dream alive and Mary understood that. Plus she had some things she needed to return. If you're like me, you've avoided places that sell toilets your whole life, yet there I was, willingly, even somewhat willfully, given the weather conditions, browsing an aisle of toilets like it was a dream come true. This was surreal enough in itself, but inexplicably the toilets were displayed on a slanted shelf, high above the head of any customer. The placement required everyone to look up which I did with adoration, with reverence, but how was I to choose? From where I stood, they all looked the same. All claimed to be water-savers. All were about the same height. All around the same price. It was Mary who pointed out the slight variation of the oval bowl which I hadn't noticed. We asked an earnest, young salesman if the oval variation was something more than decorative. He cleared his throat and looked away to mumble, "It's an advantage for the gentlemen." Huh? Mary and I exchanged lifted eyebrows, shrugged shoulders.

            "In what way?" I asked.

            "You mean because a man can stand closer to an oval bowl?" Mary offered, but it was clear that the young salesman was not going to elaborate. He was blushing furiously.

            "Your husband will thank you," was the most I could get out of him, so of course, I got the oval seat. Who doesn't want their husband to thank them, for any reason whatsoever?  With that option out of the way, only the choice of model remained.  Mary had just bought a "Patriot" which she said performed well enough, so I was inclined towards the "Patriot", but it had been discontinued. Homeland Security issues? The "Marathon" suggested an endurance test, exactly what we were trying to eliminate. The "Cadet" had no appeal. No one wants a trainee when an expert can be had for the same price. I was inclined towards the "Champion" when the "Pegasus" caught my eye. Pegasus, like the flying horse?  I could see myself saying to the grandkids, "Anyone need to saddle up before we head out?"

            So it was decided. The saleman suggested a wooden toilet seat over a plastic one. I got red cherry -- I'm not sure if that's the color or the wood -- and when I got back home, the two boxes that were "Pegasus" joined the lift-pump under a blue tarp where they became yard sculpture under a winter's worth of snow. When the snow disappeared and the ground thawed, we hired Mark to help us connect to the city line. "Help," in this case, another euphemism, meaning Mark would do all the hard work which included digging the cellar that was become the exclusive home of the lift-pump, the first machine we ever owned that needed a place of its own, even our truck had to fend for itself in the open yard.

            Progress was slowed because Mark could only work for us part-time, but I was just happy we didn't have to do it, and by "we", I mean Brad, because nothing short of an injured animal, could get me in that crawl space on my hands and knees in the compressed dust bunnies and dead organic matter that covered the ground. I was sure it was alive with bugs and mice and dense with Hanta virus. One quick look was all I wanted. The pump resembled a short, squat hot water heater and in the glare of the clamp-on work lights, it gleamed in its perfect purity. There were no dials, no buttons, no switches, no numbers that I could see. It had an aura of  confident mystery, a machine that said, "I know what I'm doing." Who was I to say otherwise?  I, a troglodyte peering into the future in awe. Still I had my worries. Had any gaskets frozen and cracked? What if it didn't work? Out of my hands, I told myself. Too late to turn back now.

            Finally, a day came without warning when Mark said, "Today's the day." He was all smiles when he lifted the toilet bowl out of the misshapen box where it had lain for months and carried it inside. I was ridiculously happy to see it. I might have even rubbed my hands together, bounced on my heels. This was what I was waiting for. Mark had work to do and the bathroom was small, so I withdrew.  I didn't want to get in the way. 

            He worked for a while, then I heard him groan and say, "Oh, no." My heart, which had been pounding with joyful anticipation dropped like a rock to the bottom of my stomach. It was serious: the tank did not fit the bowl. Somehow, I had gotten the wrong tank or the wrong bowl -- there were no names on the boxes, no pictures, only lots and lots of numbers -- but one thing was for certain, the bowl was already glued and bolted to the bathroom floor. 

            I really appreciated the way that companies which do a lot of business have of apologizing and making things right. The woman I spoke with on the phone was so nice and one hundred percent willing to dispatch another tank, overnight, at their expense, just as soon as they were back in stock. At the end of the month, twenty-six days away. Ask any mother-to-be, due dates aren't always delivery dates, but that was just six days before Angie and her family were scheduled to arrive. Though I worried, I needn't have. The tank arrived as promised and it was a glorious day, a magical moment of family intimacy and love at first sight -- like the birth of a baby -- when Mark invited me into our bathroom for the first ceremonial flush. Brad and our dogs were crowded in there too. After twenty-six days of looking at a dry, useless toilet bowl, I was mesmerized by the clear water. I wanted to put my fingers in it, splash it around just to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I closed the red cherry wooden toilet seat and opened it again. Still there.

            "Can I flush?" I asked Mark. He smiled indulgently, proud midwife to the birth, and nodded yes. I dropped a tissue into the bowl and pushed the handle. A modest, pre-determined amount of water splooshed into the bowl and swept the tissue away leaving pure clean water behind. I shook my head in disbelief and sighed deeply with satisfaction as we all listened to the tank refill and fall silent. Civilization come at last.  Maybe it wasn't a Pegasus, but I could call it that if I wanted. I wasn't sure myself which one we had, so who else would know the difference. We had a few days of friends dropping by to take the tour and watch me drop a tissue in the pot and flush it away, like they had never seen such a thing before.

            "Use it if you like. Go right ahead and flush," I called giddily over my shoulder, nonsensically proud, as if I'd personally had something to do with the toilet, had collaborated at its invention. I loved it. I loved how it was so white, so clean, so right there. No more trips to the outhouse. No sordid commode. I was so happy. Wouldn't you think a strong, positive feeling like that would last a while? It didn't.

            Maybe my expectations were too lofty, because as it turned out, the indoor toilet had some unique problems all its own. Principally, the one all indoor toilets have: we didn't install it to flush tissues, did we? Used as intended, the toilet has got to be the dirtiest thing in the house, and should be cleaned after every use. Interestingly, there have been no innovations in toilet brushes in the years since I'd seen one. Surprisingly, Brad who can figure out almost everything else, still has no idea how to use one. He seems to think the brush magically cleans itself once he puts it in the plastic clamshell behind the toilet. And, how could I ever have forgotten that smell? I went straight out and bought a six-pak of air freshener. And, is there a man on the planet who stands close enough to the toilet or notices if he doesn't? How can it be that it's always my socks on my feet blotting up those drips? Aren't the odds simply against that happening every time? 

            Lately, the toilet has developed the occasional glitch that confounds us: it requires a double flush. That's not a big problem except for those instances after a double flush when instead of emptying, the water rises, lifting its dark cargo higher and higher, sailing it round and round the bowl. At these times, I am rooted in helpless horror waiting for the moment it overspills the rim, cascades over the magazines, soils the fluffy beige rug.  I tell myself there is no need to call for help. What could be done? But I usually  shriek and Brad always comes running. Which of us is more horrified? I wonder. So far, there has never been an overflow; each time, as mysteriously as the water rose, it receded emptying the bowl and leaving me sorry again for inviting Brad to the spectacle. 

            It's been over a year now, and we don't talk anymore about how great it is to have an indoor toilet. Or how disgusting it is either, although we still keep our toothbrushes in the kitchen next to the sink. It's just a fact of life: we have a toilet. Another fact of life is that not many people ask to use your toilet when you live back in the woods like we do, so I've gotten lax about keeping it clean having started with low standards anyway. But even I can't escape housework forever, although sometimes my house looks like I have succeeded. Nevertheless, I insist there are those odd times when I find myself in elbow-length yellow rubber gloves -- my in-home version of the honey bear suit -- on my knees with a toilet brush and a scouring pad, at eye level with the throne. I know every inch of it now. I wipe it's porcelain gullet, disinfect under its seat. I get the brush up under the rim. I try to do these ablutions with humility and gratitude, but sometimes I am truly disgusted by the work and wish the toilet back outside where it belongs.

            The other morning, when Brad was camped out in the It's-Not-a-Reading-Room, I just couldn't wait any longer. I nipped out to the old outhouse. The step had warped a little and the door was stuck open. Inside there were dried leaves and cobwebs in the corners. The magazine racks were empty, and a squirrel had torn into the toilet paper, but there was enough left for me. A flock of tiny twittering birds blew into the spruce trees like a puff of air. I studied their movements until I caught a glimpse of scarlet and figured they were redpoles. An eagle bleated somewhere out of sight. As I was leaving, I noticed a piece of bleached cardboard on the floor. It was one of the "HIS" and "HERS" signs that Angie made, faded almost beyond recognition. I tacked it back on the wall where it belonged.