Leaky Pipes

Bartholomew Schroeder watched the girl approach from the entrance to the hotel dining room. In her late teens, she was about the same age as his youngest granddaughter. “My name,” she stumbled over the words, which sounded stilted and rehearsed, “is Holly Heatherton, and my family came over Monday on the same ferry from Woods Hole.”

“Yes, I remember -”

“No, don’t speak!” She waved a hand distractedly and, for a brief moment, Bart thought the girl might do something outlandish. He once watched a woman dancing with her husband at a wedding. The woman was quite drunk. The husband said something disagreeable and the woman pulled her slinky black evening dress up over her head, revealing a dainty white camisole and a pair of control-top nylons. Not that he thought Holly Heatherton was inclined to make a similar scene, but the girl was noticeably agitated, distraught.

“I dreamed about you last night.” The girl moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and slid down into the vacant chair opposite the older man. A thin girl with chestnut colored hair that hung limply down almost to the small of her back, there was an austere refinement to the pale face. A patrician’s daughter? An ax murderer? “In the dream you were surfcasting off the breakwater.” She pointed out the window toward the Oak Bluffs Bay.

“I don’t fish,” he replied. “Not salt water or fresh.”

“I was walking near the shore searching for sea glass,” she conveniently ignored the remark, “and, when I passed by, you whispered, ‘I have a message for you, Holly Heatherton.’”

Mr. Schroeder blinked and stared at his breakfast, which was growing cold. Eggs scrambled with flaked salmon, chives and a tart, Monterey jack cheese - a meal to die for under any other circumstances. The waitress approached and asked the girl if she needed a menu.

“No, that looks scrumptious.” She pointed at Mr. Schroeder’s plate. “Could you also bring me a coffee and small orange juice?”

“Listen here!” Mr. Schroeder objected. “Your parents will be coming down to eat any minute now, and when they see you sitting here -”

“They already know,” Holly interrupted.

“Know what?” Bart Schroeder could feel any semblance of normality slipping away.

“I told them about my mysterious dream, and that I intended to speak with you.”

The elderly man cleared his throat but could think of nothing to say. Finally, he took a sip of tepid coffee and glanced out the bay window. A trawler with a winch at the stern and woven net was sputtering out toward open water. “My name is Bartholomew Schroeder. A plumber by trade, I’m recently retired. I spent the last forty years installing boilers and commercial air conditioning units. I possess no supernatural powers. I don’t commune with the dead or much of anyone else if I can help it. I’m a misanthrope.”

That the girl was emotionally disturbed was fairly obvious. Even a blue collar, working stiff with no college education could sense her distress. The waitress returned with her drinks. “Why me?” Bart asked.

Holly shrugged. Since breaking the ice, she seemed less agitated. More to the point, all of the willowy young girl’s anxiety had been conveniently transferred over to Bartholomew Schroeder. “I had a feeling about you from when we boarded the ferry back in Falmouth.”

“A feeling?”

“You came to the island unaccompanied. Each day I see you roam the beach alone, and in the late afternoon, you sit over by the landing staring out to sea like a true believer, a mystic.”

“I believe in central heating and keeping cool during the dog days of August.”

That his wife of forty years died a year ago to the day he wouldn’t tell her. Three days earlier, Bart drove across the Bourne Bridge to Falmouth where he parked his car and took the shuttle to Woods Hole. He was a man on the run from memories, loneliness and profound grief. The mourning process had continued unabated through the previous year. Bart Schroeder had come to the island of Martha’s Vineyard to find solace; instead he got Holly Heatherton, a mentally unbalanced, first year piano major at the New England Conservatory of Music.

During her freshman year at college, something had gone haywire. Reclusive by nature, Holly made few friends. A psychiatrist prescribed Adapin for anxiety, but then she got depressed. Really depressed. The young girl didn’t bother to complete the semester, taking a medical leave of absence. "I'm not totally whacked out." There was a subtle loosening, a relaxation in her tone. "It’s not like I’m going to swill a bottle of sleeping pills or rat poison.” She grinned sheepishly. “I just prefer being alone more than with people." She ran an index finger around the rim of her coffee cup.

The waitress brought the girl’s eggs. "Do you have many friends?" Mr. Schroeder asked.

"No, not particularly."

"On occasion, you must meet someone pleasant or interesting?"

"Yes, of course, but most people ..." She seemed to lose interest in the topic. "Does that make me crazy?"

Mr. Schroeder smiled. Her candor was a bit unnerving. "No, certainly not."

Holly gestured with her eyes in the direction of two elderly women seated at the far end of the dining room. One was short with frizzy blonde hair and bowling pin legs, the other bean pole skinny. “Stay away from those bitches,” she counseled.

Bart stared at the women. He had seen them traipsing about the town. “Why? Are they dangerous?”

“They were sitting out on the porch last night when you returned from your walk. The fat one leaned closer to skinny Minnie and smaned, ‘There goes Bartleby, the Scribner.’”

“You’re losing me.”

Holly placed a sliver of salmon on her tongue and washed it down with a swig of coffee. She slathered her toast with globs of jelly from a small crock. “Bartleby was a fictional character in a Herman Melville story. He became distraught and completely withdrew from society. When anyone tried to talk to him or get him to do anything, Bartleby repeated the same five words over and over again.”

“Which were?”

“I would prefer not to.” The girl flicked a strand of dark hair away from her eyes. “Having mental issues myself, I resent it when other people act that way.”

Mental issues. Yes, Bartholomew Schroeder had been living in something of a hermetically-sealed vacuum, a numb existence for the past twelve months. He ignored friends, let his membership at the golf club lapse and avoided Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Devotion. “So what happened to Bartleby a k a Bartholomew the Plumber?”

“Oh, he went nuts. Totally bonkers.” She was nibbling on the last of the toast. “The authorities locked him away in the loony bin.”

Bart chuckled good-naturedly. “I’ve got my pension and social security so hopefully that will cushion the blow.” He glanced distractedly at his plate. The cheese had congeals, stuck to the flaked salmon like mortar on chimney brick. Not a very appetizing sight. “You said something about a dream?”

Holly’s eyes brightened and she leaned forward across the table. “As I approached, you put your fishing rod aside and said, ‘Holly Heatherton, I have a message for you.’” She stared intently at the older man as though this latest tidbit of information might jog his flawed memory.

“A message,” he repeated dully. Gurus and wise men brought messages. So did hucksters, charlatans and flimflam artists, when the price was right. Lawyers, politicians and priests favored portentous pronouncements. Bartholomew Schroeder had nothing to tell the petite, dark-haired girl. The waitress arrived with the bill. “My treat.”

As they were leaving the dining hall Bart said, “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you, Holly.”

Should he have used her first name? Mr. Schroeder climbed slowly to the second floor landing, lumbered into his room and locked the door behind him. For good measure he threw the security bolt.

*****

In December two years earlier, Penelope Schroeder suffered a massive stroke. “Your wife will require round-the-clock, custodial; care,” the hospital social worker spoke in a no-nonsense, officious tone.

“Custodial,” Bart muttered. He usually associated the word with janitors and maintenance workers.

“We’re talking parenteral feeding, nasal oxygen, a Foley catheter bag to manage incontinence, infusion therapy and a host of other neurological and skilled nursing services.” The woman removed her glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t soliciting Bart’s opinion; she only wanted a signature on the discharge paperwork.

The following day, the brain-damaged woman was shipped via ambulance to Shady Pines Rehabilitation Center. The two-story building offered independent living on the first floor and, for people in failing health, a fully-accredited, acute care rehabilitation center upstairs. Strange thing was, the residents on both floors looked pretty much alike. They hobbled about on canes and aluminum walkers. Some arrived in wheelchairs; more than a handful lugged bottled oxygen about in portable canisters.

“Hey, mister.” An elderly woman in a motorized wheel chair was beckoning to Bart Schroeder, who had just arrived to visit his wife. The woman was gussied up in a floral pantsuit. The outfit was impeccably tailored with a matching scarf knotted at the neck. She wore a collection of gold bracelets and her nails were brightly enameled.

Bart approached and bent down. “The waiters served an absolutely mouthwatering cherry cobbler al a mode for lunch.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “A la mode. It’s a French expression. It means - ”

“I know what it means.”

The woman stabbed at a lever on the armrest causing the wheelchair to lurch forward banging Bart in the knee. “Go to the kitchen and speak with Alfonzo about extra servings... one for me, one for you.”

“But I don’t work here. I’m visiting my—”

“Make sure,” the woman continued, “he warms the cobbler. It never tastes right unless the ice cream softens before it’s served.”

Bart went out into the main hallway and headed off down the corridor toward the rehabilitation unit. Off to one side was the dining hall where healthier residents ate their meals. The space was arranged like a swanky restaurant with a centerpiece of fresh-cut flowers on each table. The high back chairs were covered in a maroon, floral brocade fabric.

Bart shrugged. The place reminded him of a Holiday Inn he renovated in the late sixties. Halfway down the corridor was a small reading room with hardcover books arranged neatly on shelves. A copy of Tom Sawyer in large print for the visually impaired lay on an end table. “Well, this is cozy,” he mused, “except for the fact that nobody’s here.” At the end of the hall was a spacious recreation room with a flat screen TV showing local news. A dark-skinned, Hispanic woman dressed in a white uniform was sitting on a sofa eating an apple. A banner across the top of the television news desk read La Planetera.

Bart counted thirty doors the length of the hallway but not one solitary human being. Nobody coming or going. All the doors were shut. Locked. The place was less like a hotel than a morgue. And there was a tedious sameness to everything, a benign gentility, the man found unnerving.
So where were the residents? Squirreled away in their tidy apartments? Doing what? Reading the newspaper? Watching television? Waiting to give up the ghost with neither family nor close friends to bless their soul’s passage to the next world?

On the wall at the end of the corridor hung a portrait of a young girl with a sun bonnet and lace shawl escorting a herd of cows down a country lane. A very safe and appropriate painting. Bart felt an evil urge to blacken a couple of the girl’s front teeth with an indelible marker and scrawl a bristly moustache over the dainty top lip for good measure. In the morning, how many of the elderly residents would appreciate the bawdy humor?

A bullet to the brain.! If I ever become that debilitated, get a gun and just put me out of my misery. The third week of January Penelope Schroeder died in her sleep. A meager blessing of sorts, the woman never emerged from the coma.

*****

God was playing a trick on Bartholomew Schroeder. A nasty, malicious prank. Struggling with his own dark night of the soul, what scintillating message could he possibly offer Holly Heatherton, musical prodigy and social malcontent? He lay down on the unmade bed and fell asleep.

At noon Bart wandered down to the bar. He needed to sit by himself in a darkened corner and think things through. Right brain, left brain – a couple Heinekens might lubricate the powers of reasoning. He found a stool at the far end of the mahogany bar and ordered his drink. Tilting the glass at an angle, he poured the amber liquid.

A message for Holly Heatherton. What message? Someone entered the room and Bart shifted in his seat so that his back was facing the door. He felt a moral obligation to do something for the girl, who reminded him of a frail and utterly defenseless animal caught in a snare. Holly’s life was just beginning while his was winding down. How many close friends had died in the last year alone? Nothing made any sense. If death was simply a culmination, a recapitulation of all the successes and failures of a life well lived, then he ought to be able to tell the child something. But Bartholomew Schroeder was never particularly good with words. Metal pipes, blowtorches, solder and PVC were his stock in trade.

“Retired?” The bartender, a tall, stoop-shouldered man on the front side of forty, was leaning on the bar.

Bart looked up momentarily. “Five years now.”

He nudged a plastic bowl of pretzels crusted with salt within arm’s reach. “That’s swell.” The bartender looked bored. There would be little activity in the bar until after supper. Five minutes passed without a word. “Red Sox won last night.”

“That so?”

“Five to three. Wakefield the knuckleballer got the decision.” It was a guy thing. A room full of men could stand around scratching their crotches and nursing beers. They didn’t agonize over the inevitable or suffer existential ennui tinged with spiritual angst. Rather, they nibbled pretzels and talked sports.

A message for Holly Heatherton. The bartender rubbed at a water spot with a towel and went off to service another patron. Bart Schroeder was getting nowhere fast.

Then there was that odd incident with the piano.

Bart Schroeder was heading back to his room after breakfast. As they reached the staircase, Holly Heatherton grabbed his arm. “Just a moment.” In a small sitting room off the dining hall was a baby grand piano. Holly sat down on the bench. Positioning her hands, she began to play an impressionistic passage built on fourths and odd-sounding passing tones. The music was fairly simple, an intermediate level version of the original composition. After only a few measures, she removed her hands from the keys. "Did you recognize that?"

"Debussy," Mr. Schroeder replied.

She nodded. "And this?" She offered up a jagged, dissonant theme in a percussive rhythm. The meter kept changing every third or fourth measure so that it was impossible to follow.

"Not even a clue," Mr. Schroeder said when the strange tune came to an abrupt end.

"Bartok." She launched into a third piece that was even more obscure with a series of tone clusters played in the bass as the right hand hammered out single notes in a random, vertical pattern. She played the melody through from beginning to end, including a legato interlude.

"That was a twelve-tone row by Hindemith," Holly said, turning completely around to face him. A large, egg-shaped tear glistened in the corner of either eye. She reached up and deftly wiped them away. "Very unusual, don't you think?"

"Not as accessible as the Bartok," Mr. Schroeder said, "but interesting."

"Few people appreciate Hindemith's music. It's an acquired taste." The tears had reformed but this time she let them be and they quickly multiplied, dripping down her cheeks in thick rivulets. "You do understand what I'm talking about?" Her chest - what there was of it - heaved up and down in womanly anguish.

“Yes, I understand."

“So what should I do?”

Bart Schroeder was beginning to feel edgy again. “I don’t understand the question.”

“About my miserable life?”

A young family cut through the sitting room on their way to the dining room. “Let me think about it,” Bart replied, “and I’ll get back to you.”

*****

“Drinking alone?” Bart felt a warm, slightly sweaty hand resting on his forearm. The fat blonde from breakfast had eased up on the stool next to him. A double martini with a plump olive rested on a coaster. The woman was skunk drunk. Before Bart could collect his thoughts she added, “I got a bottle of red wine up in my room, if you care to join me.”

The woman was wearing a frock that did a commendable job camouflaging the excess flesh. She tilted her head to one side, running her tongue over her top lip, a transparently salacious gesture. The act both horrified and titillated him. The blonde wanted to fornicate, have someone - it didn’t matter who - do obscene and unspeakable things to her morbidly obese body. Bartholomew Schroeder felt a massive erection coming on.

Throwing a bill down on the bar next to his beer, he climbed off the stool. The fat woman was staring at the grotesque bulge in his pants. Herman Melville. Bartleby the Scribner... what was that gibberish, the bizarre phrase the deranged character repeated endlessly?

“I would…”

“Yes?”

“I would prefer not to,” Bart Schroeder mumbled as he brushed past the florid woman and left the bar.

*****

Two streets down in back of the old-fashioned Movie Theater, Bart rented a three speed bike with a straw basket draped over the handlebars. “Bike path is up by the dock, winding all the way to Edgartown and the southernmost beaches,” the proprietor noted. “Take it slow, though, in this heat.”

Bart pedaled out to the landing and watched the afternoon ferry dock with a fresh load of tourists, then headed out to the bike path that skirted the harbor. Up ahead, a pink burst of color from a hedge of salt spray roses edged the trail. A seagull resting on a telephone pole watched him pass with stony indifference.

The plan was to ride several miles south from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown along the winding trail dotted by sand dunes and scenic marshland. Bart walked the bike up the steeper hills and glided down effortlessly with the shift set in first gear.

A message for Holly Heatherton. Salt air and a tart, late summer breeze off the ocean accompanied the ride. Yes, this was much better than trying to sort things out in the bar, which reeked of stale cigars and flat beer.

“Hey, man.” A teenager with hair down to his shoulders and a goatee was waving at Bart, who braked to a halt. A paisley bandana was knotted around the youth’s neck. “Any idea where John Belushi’s buried?”

“The cemetery in Chilmark,” Bart replied.

“Where the hell’s that?”

“Fifteen miles that way.” He pointed due east.

“Way wicked cool!” The youth flung a backpack with an aluminum frame over his shoulders, and headed off down the road. Bart rested the bike on the kickstand and leaned against a scraggily pine. Ten minutes passed. He climbed back on the three-speed and pedaled leisurely back to Oak Bluffs.

*****

“The Heathertons, what room are they in?”

The desk clerk checked the register. “Room 301.”

Bart took the elevator to the third floor, locating the room at the far end of the hallway. “My name is Bartholomew Schroeder and I’m here to see Holly.”

“Yes, of course.” The woman stepped out on the landing and closed the door behind her. “I haven’t a clue what you said to my daughter earlier, but she’s much calmer since breakfast.”
“I’m a plumber not a psychiatrist,” Mr. Schroeder qualified.

“Holly didn’t cry at all today.” The woman reached out and grabbed his hand. “That’s a good sign.”

“In the morning, I’m leaving the island on the first boat out from Vineyard Haven and wanted to say goodbye.” He gave the woman’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I’ll wait for her downstairs.”

Before descending to the lobby, Bart went back to his room, washed his face and combed his hair what little there was of it. Then he bent down and felt the pipe under the toilet tank. The metal was dry.

The night Bart arrived at the Oak Bluffs Hotel he spotted a ring of wetness pooling on the floor near the toilet. Drip, drip, drip. A steady stream of cold water was bleeding out from the compression fitting. He closed the shut-off valve feeding the tank and went down to the front desk.

“My toilet’s leaking.”

“Oh, dear,” the desk clerk seemed flustered. “Finding a plumber at this late hour could be a problem.”

“I’m a plumber.”

The woman’s mouth fell open. “You’re joking?”

“If you can scare up an adjustable wrench, I’ll fix it myself.”

The desk clerk fished a small toolbox from under the counter. Bart rummaged through the offerings, finally settling on a small pair of pliers. “This should do the trick.”

Back in the room, he loosened the fitting and separated the flared section of tubing from its narrower counterpart. The metal was mildly corroded but nothing looked structurally damaged. After washing the crud from the mating surfaces with hand soap, Bart dried the metal.

The trick was to secure the fitting, which looked to be about ten or fifteen years old, tight enough to seal the joint and no more. Even the slightest excess pressure might stress the metal and fracture the delicate tubing. Sliding the pipes together, Bart screwed the compression fitting in place, hand tight with a little play, then opened the water supple. Drip. Drip. Drip.

Grabbing the fitting with the pliers, he twisted the nut clockwise a quarter-turn. Drip. Pause. Drip. Pause. Drip.

Another eighth of an inch. One final drip then nothing.

He wiped the pipes dry and a slick film of moisture quickly reappeared but it was condensation, nothing more. The leak was fixed. He sat down on the edge of the tub. Five minutes later the floor beneath the toilet intake line was still bone dry.

*****

Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. Four decades earlier.

Bartholomew Schroeder and his new bride were settling into their honeymoon suite. A six-foot tall, soft bellied woman of Norwegian descent, Penelope ran the bath water but the tub wouldn’t fill. Using a silver quarter as an impromptu screwdriver, Bart loosened the bolts and pulled the chrome lever and face plate away from the tub. The rod that connected the drain and overflow assembly had slipped off its mounting bracket. He crimped the wire and tightened the two bolts holding the mechanism in place but, when he raised the lever and turned the water back on, the gurgling continued unabated.

Coming up behind him, Penelope wrapping her arms around his chest. “What’s the matter?”

“Minor adjustment,” he murmured, brushing her cheek with a flurry of kisses. “No need to panic.”

Bart removed the bolts a second time, pulling the entire bucket assembly out through the hole in the tub wall. He adjusted the heavy brass plunger three full revolutions lower and put everything back together. Yes, that did it! Mr. and Mrs. Schroeder took their first bath together as a married couple.

“I’m getting out now,” Penelope said and leaned forward, but her husband held her by the shoulder.

“Open the drain,” Bart said. Penelope reached up with her right toe and nudged the chrome lever upright. The soapy water rimmed with lavender scented bubble bath made a loud gurgling sound before beginning its slow descent.

“Now close it again,” Bart instructed. Curling her toe like a prehensile tail around the lever, she yanked the metal straight down.

Glob! There was an abrupt noise as the brass plunger slammed downward like a guillotine shutting off the rush of water. Silence. Bart released his grip. His bride of ten hours rose from the warm bath water but, instead of climbing out of the tub, turned to face him. Penelope Schroeder raised her elbows high in the air, crisscrossing the forearms directly overhead then nonchalantly squatted, her glistening buttocks coming to rest on his stomach. “Now, if you have no objections, I’d like to go in the next room and make babies.”

*****

Holly Heatherton wore a print dress, her hair tied back in a French braid when she joined him in the lobby. Bart led the way back up the main drag toward the Steamship Authority landing where they watched as an endless stream of cars, motorcycles and produce trucks crept out of the belly of a docked ship. When the last vehicle left the hold, the ferry began loading passengers headed back to the mainland.

Bart turned away from the pier and, in no great hurry, retraced his route toward the town center. He ducked into a building where a crowd of parents and young children were queuing up to ride the musical carousel. The hardwood floor was littered with pop corn, the nonstop calliope music deafening. Riders leaned far forward gripping the horses’ reins with one hand as they lunged for brass rings dangling from a wooden chute positioned at a steep angle. Each time a rider managed to snare a ring, another slid down to take its place.

Bart bought bags of popcorn. They went out in the street where the sun was almost down. A trawler that might have been the same ship he had noticed on the morning that Holly joined him for breakfast was lurching in to shore. “There’s something I want to show you.”

He led the way back to the hotel and brought the girl up to his room. “Sit there.” He indicated a Windsor chair with curved armrests and spindly legs splayed at a generous angle. Next to the chair was a bedside table that Mr. Schroeder had dragged to the center of the room.

“Where did you get all this stuff?” Holly indicated a collection of plumbing supplies—tubing cutters, copper fittings, emery cloth, lead-free solder and rosin flux.

“Hardware store.” Mr. Schroeder reached for a propane torch. “I’m going to teach you what little I’ve learned about this beautiful and sordid world we live in. Are you ready?”

Holly Heatherton, folded her hands in her lap. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Half an hour later he shoved the night table back where it belonged. “That’s all I have to say,” Mr. Schroeder muttered. “Did you understand what I told you?”

“Yes, emphatically.”

Shrouded in a twilight haze, objects in the room were beginning to lose definition, blend and blur. The nautical pictures hanging over the brass bed had shed their vivid colors in favor of more somber, elegiac tones, while the reading lamp was dissolving into the night table. “So what did you learn about the human condition?”

“Copper tubing must be bone dry and heated to the proper temperature,” she said, “before solder flows into a fitting sealing the joint.”

“Patience is a virtue. What else?”

A muggy breeze from the open window carried with it an acrid potpourri of decomposing fish, slimy seaweed, salt spray roses and fresh-mown grass. “Some plumbers dress the joints by cleaning away excess flux and solder but the final step is more a matter of professional pride and not absolutely necessary.”

“You’ll be alright, then?”

“Can’t imagine why not.”

“Here, take this,” he handed her a small piece of emery cloth stained with flux, “to remember me by.”

“A talisman of sorts.”

In the morning for his last meal on the island, Mr. Schroeder ordered the salmon omelette with Monterey jack cheese, chive and diced scallions. The ferry departed promptly at eight o’clock. For the first time in over a year, he felt free and unencumbered, as though a slab of stone as thick and weighty as a marble cemetery monument had miraculously lifted from his heart.