The Ladies of Horror
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Breakage 
by Lisa McClinsey 

There’s a work-around for everything in the old house. The marks on the kitchen floor show where it’s safer to stand, where the wood isn’t as rotten. I make tea with bottled water in the tiny electric skillet. I have electricity in some of the rooms, for now, but fuses are hard to find these days. I don’t use anything that takes more than 400 watts, just to be on the safe side. I heat with space heaters set on low, light with a stovetop full of candles, wash dishes by hand, make hot water with a little hot pot kettle.

This is the house I grew up in, but I didn’t live here when I was married. It’s the only place I can afford to live, now. Most people couldn’t do this, but I know how to live when I’m poor. Right now, I’m flat broke.

Winters kill old houses when they’re not heated. At the end of the marriage, the ex didn’t want to pay for the oil, so this house has been dying for six years. The water heater was the first organ to fail, followed by the furnace. The washing machine soaked the carpet and warped the floor boards when it kicked the bucket. I washed the laundry by hand in the bath tub for a while after that, but never could get enough water wrung out. The dryer failed soon after, because no matter how hard I tried, the clothes were too heavy with water.

Everything that could possibly break has broken at least once. The screen door handle snapped off in my hand the day in February when I took Daddy to the medical center, the year before I got married. The garage door broke soon after and never would go down all the way anymore. One thing after another, the vacuum cleaner, the stair at the bottom of the cellar, the clock in the living room. Daddy died in April, so they said at the nursing home, but I think what really happened was that whatever was breaking everything in our house finally broke him, too.

The lift chair in the TV room froze in mid-lift just after the funeral. The photo of our family fell off the wall and the glass and the frame broke the day after that. The leaf for the kitchen table got a big crack in it the day all our relatives showed up for the wake. The stove stopped working the week after that, my bedroom door sagged on its hinges and stopped closing right, the shower head fell off and shattered a few weeks after that.

The funeral was eight years ago, and nearly everyone who showed up for it has passed on. Even my cousin Terry, who was only 36, and Aunt Berta, who was only 53. Sixteen relatives, most under the age of 70.

My ex said that in old houses, things break. It seems like something sinister is afoot, but when you think about it, when was the last time anything here was new? How often did things here get maintained? Things that were new at roughly the same time broke at the same time, too.

The year after he said that, our marriage broke. Things seemed like they were okay, until suddenly, they weren’t. He emptied our bank account and flew off to some resort in Mexico with an old girlfriend from high school.

I ended up here. That was two years ago.

I started getting arthritis two weeks after I moved in. Chronic bronchitis, tinnitis, dizzy spells. Six months after that, my left ankle broke. Histoplasmosis, diabetes, high blood pressure, Lyme’s. Now my doctor says I have some kind of incurable disease that’s slowly paralyzing me, turning my skin hard, turning me to stone.

I’ve been working on my will, writing my own obituary. Estate planning. I have to think about what to do with this place, who I’m going to pass it on to.

I have a couple of cousins I always thought a great deal of. We played here together as kids. I always wanted to do something nice for them.

I’m willing the place to the ex.

Fiction © Copyright Lisa McClinsey
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com