Chapter 2 Rachel
"Sorry I’m late. Traffic was bad," I huff, dropping my bag on the floor next to my desk. Gramps looks over from where he’s studying blueprints hung on the wall.
Years ago, when his back started reminding him of his age, his physical therapist, Kim, suggested this modification of hanging materials on the wall so he didn’t have to bend over anymore.
"Rachel, we live on the other side of the lot." He turns back to the drawing he’s studying, making some marks as to where lines and pumps will go on a new construction job site. An apartment complex, I think.
"Yeah, but I had to pet Butch and then Hazel and then Gus." I’m not lying. The cats were lounging in the yard and demanded tummy and ear scratches. It’s almost as bad as a traffic jam.
"Don’t get too comfortable. There’s a backup over on Baldpate Road. Dale said you should come. Whole side yard flooded, and they’re supposed to have a party there this weekend."
My grandfather started Cramer-Romero Associates Pumps with his father-in-law more than fifty years ago.
Gramps is the Cramer, and Gram is the Romero.
Boxford, where they grew up, was an ideal place for this business because it didn’t—and still doesn’t—have a public sewer system.
How that still exists in the twenty-first century is beyond me.
The plan had always been for my mom and my uncle to split the business fifty-fifty.
My mom was supposed to handle the pump and grinder install side, while Uncle Robert would do the septic pump repair side.
Since Mom took off for the first time when Richie was three and I was five, the business plan has changed slightly.
During her intermittent visits, usually between boyfriends and husbands, she would work here, when she bothered to show up.
Uncle Robert is out in the field, and now I pick up the slack in the office, doing what should have been my mom’s job.
Officially, I’m the bookkeeper, but I also do parts ordering, scheduling, and basically anything else no one wants to do.
I started here when I was fourteen, so I’ve worked here more than half my life.
Like most small family businesses, weathering economic ups and downs is tricky. The pandemic shutdown nearly did us in.
There was one thing that saved us.
Believe it or not, it’s me.
I started making videos for ClikClak. People are fascinated by septic systems, especially when they fail.
Sure, it’s a niche audience, but we have enough followers to get paid for views.
I mean, it’s not like I’m super viral, like that hot guy who cooks in his underwear.
I’m not one for gratuitous thirst traps, but perhaps I watch for a few seconds before scrolling on. I’m grieving, not dead.
Back to me and my video success. They’ve also expanded our client area, which is both a good and bad thing.
We’re going to have to open a secondary office to handle the client requests coming in south of Boston.
The guys are getting sick of driving down to the south shore, especially for multi-day jobs.
It’ll be more cost-effective for the business to have a secondary location than to pay for gas and tolls, wear and tear on the vehicles, lodging, and per diems.
"Lemme get my gear, and I’ll head over." My gear officially consists of knee-high rubber muck boots and a tripod. Most days, I’m too lazy to use it, so I just do handheld shots.
The tripod, I mean. I’m never ever too lazy to use my rubber boots.
That’s a priority. I don’t even bring a microphone, because I’ll record voice-overs later on.
I hop in Gramps’s Toyota Tundra and head over to Baldpate Road.
If the ground is soft, I don’t trust my Civic not to sink in.
The site is fifteen minutes from the home office.
Enough time to jam out to some old-school 2000s pop and forget my life for a brief moment.
I consider driving a full-body experience, complete with lead vocals, backup singing, and as much choreography as I can manage without driving off the road.
I’m reserved everywhere but in the driver’s seat. There, I’m a star.
However, I am reminded of my reality as I round the corner.
Before the truck is even stopped, I can smell it.
No matter how many years I’ve been doing this, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it.
And it’s ten times worse in the late-July heat.
The yard is a disaster, probably 12–14 square feet covered in an inch or so of standing water that’s created a mud sludge.
But we all know it’s not just mud.
I keep meaning to buy Vicks VapoRub and put it under my nose like the coroner in The Silence of the Lambs, but I never seem to remember. Sometimes I wish for the good ole days of COVID when you’d lose your sense of smell.
I swear, it invades my nose and lives in my nose hairs for days afterward. I really need to come up with a life plan that doesn’t involve poo.
I unplug my phone from the charger and hop out.
This is going to be a good one. I mean, bad for the homeowners and their party this weekend, but probably good for views.
The worse the damage, the more people watch.
And as we all know, the more people who watch, the more money we make.
I’ve offered on more than one occasion to put it back into the business, but Gram insists that I save the money for myself.
"You never know what’ll come up," is her standard reply.
She used to say it to Richie, too. We used her rainy-day fund—not that there was much in it—to pay burial expenses. I mean, dying was one way to get out of paying her student loans back. Extreme, yes, but that was my sister. Her list is proof of that.
The yard is even worse up close, the water squelching under my muck boots. For the record, if it’s backing up this much in the yard, there’s no way it hasn’t backed up in the house. These people’s weekend party plans are toast.
Their homeowners’ insurance premium is going to go through the roof.
I start recording, taking in the yard. Dale’s already got the excavator and has started digging. Uncle Robert walks over, leans on his shovel, and says, "Apparently, they’ve been here thirty years and have never cleaned out the septic tank."
FYI, it’s recommended to clean out your tanks every three to five years.
I wrinkle my nose. "Yuck. It’s been sitting in there longer than I’ve been alive."
"Sure is a long time to be stagnant," he says.
Something about that statement stays with me, like a strand of celery stuck in between my back molars. Annoying and niggling and not going anywhere without significant digging.
Maybe I should ask Dale if I can borrow the excavator for my mind.
I’m on-site for hours, collecting way more footage than I need for a three-minute clip. My work won’t be wasted. I’ll be able to make a lot of videos from what I recorded today, if I can focus long enough tonight. Next-week me will certainly appreciate that her job is already done.
But even as I spend the rest of the evening at the desktop in the office editing, I can’t stop thinking about stagnation. It’s not just for sewage! It’s me. Ever since I was a little girl, all I’ve ever wanted was stability and predictability.
Probably because I never had it at home.
It’s not hard to psychoanalyze. Freshman Psych 101 kind of stuff really.
No matter how hard I’ve worked to repress the memories, they’re still there.
The first night Mom dropped us off at Gram and Gramps’s house, I thought it was just a sleepover.
But I remember the worried looks my grandparents gave each other and the artificially sweet tone to their voices as they kept saying, "Everything will be okay. "
As a five-year-old, I had no reason to suspect otherwise. Until that one night turned into weeks and then months. I remember crying myself to sleep but trying to keep it quiet so I didn’t wake Richie and so Gram didn’t get upset.
She was upset a lot.
At first, I thought it was because of us, something we’d done. Gram never yelled at us, but I could still tell she wasn’t happy. When Mom returned, it was a different story. There was a lot of yelling that night. It was so dark and so late, but Mom said we had to go home.
I was excited. I’d missed my house and the dog who lived next door.
He was a great fluffy golden retriever named Hamilton.
I think I missed Hamilton most of all. But where she took us was a small apartment where Richie and I had to share a bed.
It wasn’t home. Being with Mom never felt like home again.
There was a man there. He smelled weird. Immediately, I didn’t like him. The feeling was mutual.
This was the start of a long cycle of the same scenario over and over again until Gram and Gramps put their foot down and said we weren’t moving out anymore.
Once we went to live with Gram and Gramps for good, things were more stable for sure, but Mom was still in and out. That was the thing—we’d never know when she was going to blow into or out of town. We didn’t know whom she’d be dating—or married to—and how long she’d stay.
The only thing predictable about her was her unpredictability.
Richie and I swore we’d never be like that. We’d never let the dude flavor of the month rule our lives. We were gonna put sisters before misters. We were gonna live for us.
Except Richie stopped living in the physical sense, and I never lived in the metaphorical sense. I refuse to take risks and chances. I want to know what’s coming next. And if you can’t guarantee me a happy ending, I don’t want any part of it.
But even as much as I planned, I couldn’t predict Richie getting sick, let alone dying. I couldn’t predict that my best friend would be gone forever and I’d be stuck here, doing the same thing day in and day out for the rest of my life.