Quiet Nights

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By the time I walked in the door, my phone was already in my hand to call my husband. I had not even consciously decided to do it. My thumb just went there on muscle memory, like it had been operating under an old agreement nobody ever formally terminated. Then I looked down at the phone, remembered where life actually is right now, and stood there in a hot house with water spreading across the floor while the air conditioner apparently decided it, too, was no longer interested in participating in this household.

The children are at a cousin sleepover for a couple of days. I had been to the salon. I was feeling beautiful and strong, independent-female type vibes, until I walked through the door. I was supposed to come home, enjoy a quiet house, sit down for five damn minutes, and maybe experience the deeply underrated pleasure of nobody needing anything from me. Instead, I had a dead air conditioner, water on the floor, and a July evening in Louisiana slowly turning my house into the part of hell where they make you keep your clothes on.

The air was not struggling. It was gone. The thermostat was on, the vents were blowing, and every bit of air coming out felt like it had been pulled directly from Satan’s laundry room. Then I saw the water. At that point, I had no idea whether the house was leaking, the unit was leaking, the floor was leaking, or whether the entire place had simply decided to start crying because it was tired of all this too.

I did not have a graceful little homeowner panic. I had the kind where you walk from room to room quickly, accomplishing absolutely nothing but giving your panic different scenery. I changed the thermostat. I changed it back. I stared at it like it had enough shame to correct itself. I said “oh, for fuck’s sake” enough times that I genuinely thought the water might stop out of embarrassment.

Then I did what every strong, independent female does, I called my friend for help before I crossed the line from irritated homeowner into a woman whose insurance starts throwing around the words “intentional damage”. Because, let’s face it, I can sit in a locked room with accused murderers all day long, but air conditioning problems? Nobody trained me for that.

While the air conditioning man was working on the unit, I sat down with a seventy-page criminal court docket because apparently even a flooded floor cannot get me out of reading about murder, theft, drugs, violence, probation violations, and every other way people have found to make an already bad day much worse. There I was with towels on the floor, a man trying to fix my air, and a docket full of people who had made objectively terrible choices. By about page fifteen, I had started to understand, spiritually, how a person ends up charged with criminal mischief. I did not commit any crimes. I am just saying the thermostat and I had a moment.

Luckily, nobody else was around to capture it for Facebook this time. (My lawyer may make me remove that, but it’s better to say sorry than to ask forgiveness, in my humble opinion.)

The air-conditioning man was calm, competent, and professional, which was generous because I was none of those things. He got the air back on for now, the water stopped for now, and then came the part that felt very on-brand for my life lately: he has to come back next week to find the leak. “Fixed for now” is one of those phrases that ought to be prosecuted for fraud.

Something that is fixed for now but requires another visit next week is not fixed. It is simply resting between acts.

Later, after the water had stopped, the air was cold again, and the docket was finished, I finally sat down in the quiet I had planned on having in the first place. And that is where the night changed on me. Not in some dramatic, tragic way. Just in that small, irritating way quiet can get into your head after you have spent an hour being busy, angry, hot, wet, and trying to solve a problem. (And not in the fun way)

I handled it. I made the call. I got the help. I paid the bill. I kept the house from becoming a small indoor swamp, and I stayed out of jail despite the emotional tension between me and that thermostat. But sitting there afterward, I missed having somebody I could call and say, “You are not going to believe what this house just did now,” without needing to explain why it got to me more than it should have.

Tomorrow will be another story. The leak will still be out there somewhere, plotting. Something else will need me before I have finished my first cup of coffee. But tonight, the air is running, the floor is dry-ish, the docket is read, and I remain unindicted.

Here’s to the quiet nights.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney At Law

Hampton Law Firm