Stove

A small story:

Many years ago, Consort went to CES in Las Vegas. Upon returning, he did what he always does, which is carefully pile his dirty laundry on top of the closed lid of the laundry basket because apparently he is trying to see if he can aggravate me to death.

I did what I always do, which is dump the laundry on the floor, open the lid, put his laundry in and remind myself that since we are not married, I could, technically, date others. This time, I was distracted by a slip of torn paper that fluttered out of his convention pants.

I opened it to see an email and a name written in a girlish hand. I have forgotten the name, but I seem to recall the traditional way to spell it involved less I’s and Y’s than she used. I handed it to Consort.

He looked at the paper.

I looked at him.

“Oh, her,” he said, “She was a booth babe and we started talking and she has a daughter she’d like to start learning Mandarin and I couldn’t remember what the name of that free language website you liked and I said I’d send it to her.”

The father of my child had gotten the contact information from a young woman hired to wear small clothing and entice male middle managers to needlessly upgrade their routers, and I was to believe it was absolutely innocent.

I handed him the paper and thought no more of it, because I knew it was perfectly innocent. Consort adores me, his life with me. I trust him implicitly.

Last night, he came to bed well after I had gone to sleep. I stirred briefly and mumbled, “Toe?”

“Yes,” he said.

I sat up and sleepily shuffled out of the room.

“Why do you even bother to ask?” he called to my retreating back. I saw no need to respond. I had a job to do, because I also don’t trust Consort at all.

I have lived with parents, with platonic roommates, a boyfriend, by myself; in all that time, I never considered the stove as anything more than a tool. Considering how little thrall food holds for me, I probably went weeks at a time without thinking of the stove at all.

Twenty years ago, Consort and I moved in together. Six weeks later, on Christmas Eve, the nasty, tacky, cheap seventies stove which had come with the house decided to die, mid-dinner, leaving us with what I would have sworn was impossible, even less affection for that device.

We decided to give ourselves a Christmas present of a 1948 O’Keefe and Merritt stove, a great big sedan, all white and chrome and Post-War optimism. It is gorgeously sturdy and low-maintenance, designed to feed families created before the advent of effective birth control.

In 20 years, Consort has had to fix one thing in the stove, which is good, because in order to fix it, you must get behind it and then up in it, and this stove weighs more than the earth. I have no recollection of the stove being brought in, but it must have involved a C-5.

There is only one quirk with our Mid-Century friend: the burner knobs are a bit stubborn. You will turn the burner off, then try again and discover there’s always just a tiny bit more you can turn. Early on, Consort fussed with it and determined this belligerence is a natural side-effect of the stove’s age and its…heaviness.

You just learn to turn it off not like this but like this.

Fine.

Except.

In 20 years, I've come into the kitchen three times and discovered the knob wasn’t all the way up, meaning there was an uncertain amount of gas leaking into the house for an uncertain length of time. One was my fault, one was Consort’s fault, one time fault cannot be definitively established.

(It was Consort)

And yes, “Three times over two decades” may not sound like much but MAYBE WE NEARLY DIED YOU CAN'T SAY WE DIDN'T. How does “We nearly died three times in twenty years” sound to you?

Like something you might lie in bed and wonder about, visualizing yourself roasting in Hell, bemoaning how you could have avoided an eternal wasp-enema for a few more years if only someone had checked the stove?

I returned to the bedroom, slid under the sheets. Consort, in the dark said, “How’s the stove, Quinn?”

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

I lay there for a second, starting to drift back to sleep when a thought barreled into my mouth.

“Lard?”

“Yes, I set the alarm.”

Such a good man. So trustworthy.

Better check.