2,000 Gallons and Holding

Episode 5 If you’ve read earlier posts in this series, you’ve certainly come to know of the adventurous nature of David’s and my early marriage. We’ll skip an intervening episode of living in a Maine farmhouse with a secret passageway for hiding Indians, frozen pipes that Dave used a blowtorch to thaw, and his wedding ring lost somewhere beneath patched floorboards.

We’d now returned to New Hampshire. Dave was teaching automotive service at the local technical college, and I was managing a group of job coaches for people with disabilities. We found ourselves living in an old carriage house belonging to a lawyer and his colonial-era mansion. Its sloped roof made it difficult for six-foot-one-inch David to stand in some places, including the tiny bedroom, where our queen-size bed nearly reached wall to wall. It had just enough passage to the bathroom, which had a footed tub and linen shelves behind a knee wall where squirrels had made nest. For a rent discount, David had sanded and refinished the pine floor of the living room, and we’d painted the downstairs kitchen—the only other room in the house. In other words, there was absolutely no room for …

… a baby. Yes! After four years of trying, I was finally expecting! We were beyond delighted and now in the market for a new place to live. One of my job coaches was a lovely widow named Carolyn, who worked simply to keep herself busy. She lived in a classy condominium and also owned a three-bedroom house just yards from the coast in Rye, New Hampshire. Knowing we had a baby on the way, she offered us the house for ridiculously low rent.

The price came with a caveat, however. The house was flanked on two sides by a pond and marshy wetlands reaching in from the sea. For that reason, it did not have a leach field for the sewer. (City sewer was and probably still is unavailable in many New Hampshire towns.) Instead, the house had a 2,000-gallon concrete holding tank that required pumping out every two weeks for $55 a load. And Carolyn asked whether David could figure out how to pipe the house so the dish-and-laundry gray water would drain into the marsh? We weren’t at all sure about that, but the price was right, the house was quadruple the size of the carriage house, and it sat just steps from the Atlantic Ocean!

So, we moved in and basked in all the space. My belly grew. We traded my little Subaru for a heavy Renault station wagon that could safely carry our new child. Every two weeks, we had a visit from the pumping service—the sewah suckah, per New Hampshire vernacular. In the meantime, Dave frequently went outside the house to look at the pond, the marsh, and the configuration and possible re-configuration of the outdoor plumbing.

Behind the pond lived a woman several years older than me—about Dave’s age—let’s call her Céleste. She was not particularly lean or attractive, but wore jeans cut off to just above the thigh and shrink tops that showed off her generous endowment. She had clearly claimed the pond and its management as her domain. She showed up every time Dave came outside to consider alternatives to the pumping dilemma. She was no ignoramus and certainly keyed in to what David was likely doing. More importantly, her dress and behavior made it clear she intended to claim Dave, as well as the pond, as her domain. As a young wife with a growing belly, I made my way outside every time she appeared with her jiggling cleavage and French accent. Dave waved off my concerns, walking the line between enjoying Céleste’s admiration and cuing her to his resounding “no.”

Our precious first-born arrived near Thanksgiving, at which point we celebrated! Carolyn doted on our little one, and Céleste backed off, understanding her prey was now an unavailable family man.

Meanwhile, we continued to pay our $55 pumping fees as David explained to Carolyn there was no legal way to reroute the house’s “harmless” gray water into the marshland and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.

Not long thereafter, Céleste free, we amassed enough of a down payment to afford a house of our own. Certainly such a place would signify an end to our sewer issues.

If only.