It all began many months ago when I arrived at the family
homestead to find that all of the shelves had been removed from the
refrigerator. I put a few of them back
in to hold the food I had brought over and went outside to help clean up the
yard. When I got back upstairs, the
shelves were again gone. I was in the
process of putting them back in again when Father arrived and told me in no
uncertain terms that the shelves had to be kept out of the refrigerator as the
refrigerator couldn’t be stuffed with food or it wouldn’t work. Oh, and the freezer had to be kept empty,
too. So the refrigerator had essentially
become an energy sucking decoration of sorts.
It didn’t take long to realize how problematic it was to not
have a refrigerator. Mother isn’t very
mobile and can’t get to the store herself anymore. Father had an Italian mother and then an old
school Irish wife and knows very little about the workings of a grocery
store. He makes infrequent trips to the
store and buy things like cans of hash, fish patties for the dog, chicken legs
for the dog, and a loaf of French bread which would be stale by the
evening. Lunchmeat, eggs, milk, meat for
the human occupants of the house were now forbidden due to the fridge’s new
status as decorative.
The idea of replacing the fridge was bandied about, but met
with hostility. Father is used to doing
everything himself and he wouldn’t be able to get the old, unwieldy fridge down
the stairs, nor would he be able to get a new one up. He would never hire anyone to do it and
wouldn’t think of putting us to any bother.
So the fridge hummed along, mostly empty, and my guilt increased every
time I couldn’t drive over to bring them food.
Every time a new refrigerator was mentioned, he got irate and said the
existing one was just fine. Fine for a
decoration, maybe.
I’m not sure if all of the siblings suffer from the guilt that can become overwhelming at times, but at least a few of them do. When I’m
driving home from work on a bitterly cold, windy night and I see a mom holding
2 bags of overflowing groceries in one hand and a young child's hand in the other as she
waits endlessly for a bus to take her home, the guilt comes. I think back to the burning numbness that
would overtake my hands and toes as a much younger me waited endlessly for
buses to come. I think how my own
children have never even been on a public bus, and then I think how I have
failed them yet again. Surely I am coddling them and doing
them a great disservice by not making them stand in the freezing cold while
waiting for a bus.
Sometimes the guilt
overtakes me in class. I stand before my
students in my expensive, waterproof and warm winter boots while they wear the
exact same clothes to class every day because they have nothing else to wear. Then they collect money amongst themselves
and buy me flowers at the end of the semester. Oh, the guilt!
So the fridge became a chilling source of daily guilt. Finally, Sibling #4 took the bull by the
horns as she is wont to do and just ordered a new fridge. We knew this wouldn’t go well, but if anyone
could pull it off, the spitfire sibling could.
She met the delivery guys and a very hostile father. Needless to say, this did not go well. The deliverymen hummed and hawed and
expressed doubt that the fridge would fit up the stairs. Father got more and more worked up by the
second. The deliverymen, with relief, decided
that there was something wrong with the new fridge so they packed it back up
into the truck and burned rubber driving off.
Father declared that they were just a bunch of thugs that never planned
on delivering the fridge, but wanted to just scope out his house for a future
robbery. We all hoped that they’d come
back and steal the fridge.
Months passed. The
guilt grew. Mother got skinnier. Sibling #2 now jumped into the refrigerator
fray. This time, she went and bought one
herself. She and the husband dragged the
new one up unannounced one day. Father went ballistic. The new fridge got packed up and dragged back
down, and her status as golden child was momentarily tarnished. The old fridge, however, chugged along in its
sunny corner spot.
My work schedule got busier, making my food drops less and
less frequent in an inverse relationship to the guilt. I plotted and planned,
but my new refrigerator plans all fell through. The Husband, who would be
needed to help cart a new fridge up the stairs, had minor surgery that
prevented him from being able to serve as deliveryman. Then, he got the flu shot and promptly came
down with the flu, another three week delay.
I thought about hiring a student to help, but I couldn’t make a student
sit around outside waiting for the all clear call from inside. In the parents’ neighborhood, it’s no longer
safe to sit around suspiciously in parked cars.
Finally, Sibling #4 announced that she was going over to the
homestead on a Saturday and would drop Mother off at church for the evening
mass. Mother would be at church, Father
would leave to feed his stray cats, the husband was healed, and Sibling #4
could give the all clear. All the stars
had aligned! I wouldn’t have a better opportunity
again to get the fridge, so the daughter and I ran over to Menards and bought
the smallest full-sized refrigerator they had.
Later that evening, I text Sibling #4 that Operation Refrigerator was on
and described her role as look out and gave her my estimated arrival time at
the family homestead. I told her I’d drive
around in circles in the minivan until she gave me the all clear. She texted back that if anything changed, I
should call her on her shoe phone.
Things went awry from the get go. Sibling #4 called to tell me that Father had
gone to church, not to feed the cats as he was expected to. That meant I had a little more than an hour
to pick up the fridge, drive to the parents, get the new one up and in and the
old one down and out. The husband,
daughter, and I rushed over to Menards only to be met at the gate to the
delivery yard by a really nice attendant who felt like chatting. Almost in slow motion, he went back in to his little
house to get candy for the daughter.
Then he checked in our receipt, insisted on making more small talk while we
vibrated with nervous energy, and finally let us peel off to the pick up at Door
#9. Fortunately, I had called ahead and
the refrigerator was brought out within minutes. Leaving the yard, however, was
excruciating. The nice gate attendant
now had two drivers before us to chat with and charm before opening up their
trunks. I was on the verge of telling
the husband to just gun it and bust out through the in gate, when it was
finally our turn. I checked my watch, I
called Sibling #4’s shoe phone, and finally we were on our way. When we finally pulled up in front of the
family homestead, we had exactly 28 minutes for the greatest fridge swap known
to man.
Sibling #4 was waiting out in front and we quickly got the
new fridge out of the back of the van.
The Daughter, understanding the pressing nature of the situation, flew
into action. We got the fridge up the
front porch steps and jammed it through the front door, slightly crushing the
Husband’s hand in the process. We tried
to get it up the front hall stairs, but it was futile. We quickly took it around back and had to
bring it up the back stairs. On the
first landing, a cat cage, cat trap, and rolled up piece of carpet blocked our
way. In desperation, the husband tossed
the things out of the way and the carpet went sailing over my head, raining
down lung damaging debris. I felt my
lungs begin to close up. Somehow, the
husband finessed, angled, and just forced the fridge up the stairs while I did
my best to push it up.
His other hand got crushed. We
had 13 minutes to unwrap the fridge, set it up, get the doors off the old
fridge (the shelves were already gone), and get it down the back stairs. “Go, go, go” could be heard as we flew about,
the daughter gleefully shouting orders with the rest of us. Naturally, there were five thousand pieces of
tape holding the doors of the new fridge closed and holding the shelves in
place. These all had to be removed after
the protective outer plastic sheeting that was stuck on like skin was finally
taken off. Then the bottom part of the
crate had to be screwed off, one excruciating screw at a time. 5 minutes to go.
In a frenzy, the daughter, Siblings #4 and #6 all gathered
up the packaging and tossed it out in the garbage cans in the alley while the
husband removed the old fridge doors.
The few contents of the old fridge were transferred to the new. The hardware from the doors was thrown out
separately, to ensure that the fridge wasn’t coming back up. In a barely controlled panic, the husband
dragged the old fridge down the stairs while I helped lean it and angle
it. In the process, the dust from the
top of the fridge rained down on me, completely putting the kibosh on my
asthmatic lungs. The fridge crashed down onto the second landing, then the
first, and was rushed out into the yard.
The husband ran back up for the dolly and then it was wheeled to its
final resting place in the alley. 1
minute to go.
We rushed back up the stairs, wild-eyed, feeling as if we had
just climbed Mt. Everest. The new fridge
was humming almost silently in its corner.
“Maybe they won’t realize it’s new,” I say hopefully as we look at the
clock and listen in fear for the sound of the front door closing. Sibling #4 says, “Do you think they’ll figure
out how to open it?” It has notches in
the doors, instead of handles. I open
one of the notches and look inside, just to be sure it is on and really is
working. I realize that the whole thing
is wobbling. “Fuck! It’s not level!” I cry. Yes, the daughter is in the room, but she has
heard far worse and surely foul language is less damaging than never having
been on a CTA bus. The husband flies
into action. “Hurry,” we urge him,
needlessly. He tightens and twists and
then hops up, gives the fridge a shake, and says, “Let’s get out of here.”
En masse, we stampede down the front stairs, hysterically
shouting out our rallying cry of “go, go, go!”
We burst out the front door and can see the parents tottering along, a
half block down. They haven’t seen us as
it is now dark. The husband throws the
dolly into the back of the car, and we tear away from the curb and around the
corner. It is only then that we take a
deep breath. Only, I can’t breathe at
this point so I take a puff of my inhaler.
It doesn’t work. The lungs get
worse as the night wears on and I consider going to the hospital. Fortunately, steroids and the nebulizer do the
trick over the next few days. Sibling #4
points out that surely a few days of impaired lung function are well worth
it? As we drive home, we all feel high
from the adrenaline rush, although in my case it might be from a lack of
oxygen. #4 texts that she now knows what
it feels like to pull off a great bank heist.
She floats for hours after. “You’re going to get blamed for this,” I
point out to her, as she had been there visiting prior to the arrival of the
new fridge. She is too pumped up by the
whole operation to care much.
We text periodically to see if anyone has heard anything
from the homestead. Not a word, and we
are all afraid to call. Finally, the
next day, Sibling #6 calls and learns that the new fridge is actually
liked! We can’t believe it. Then I realize that Sibling #4 will get all
the credit for this, despite my lungs being totally fucked. So I call to set the record straight. “I just wanted to be sure you didn’t drag the
old one back up,” I say. Father
responds, “I couldn’t if I wanted to.
The junkmen took it.” He sounds
slightly despondent, but says the fridge is "quiet, the motor barely runs." That’s Father speak for he loves it.
It took a good 4 days for my lungs to recover, but the guilt
has been assuaged. I must confess I’m a little worried about Sibling #4. She keeps talking about the adrenaline rush
of it all. As she is crazy like we all
are, I can only hope she won’t take up a life of crime just for the kicks. Should she end up on the run, who would serve
as look out when the next major appliance breaks?