It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [71]
“We have a stove in the basement that we’ll replace it with,” she added. “It’s a KitchenAid.”
Which was a drag, since I had left a similar yet not nearly as grand stove behind in our last house, and felt compelled to do so because it was original to the bungalow I’d just sold. It would have been greedy to break them up.
Indeed, true to their word, the former owners had the KitchenAid in place when we moved in, although they neglected to mention that I’d run three cars into the ground since that thing was considered “new.”
Getting the KitchenAid stove to even function was a process. Before the burners would consider glowing red, there was a series of bumps, groans, and moans that sounded like it was listing and in comparison made the Titanic seem silent when sinking, prompting us to change its name to First Aid. I didn’t even get what was in the stove that was making those sounds, unless it was a portal to hell and we were roasting souls every time we made macaroni and cheese.
I had no idea that I hated the First Aid as much as I did; it was just a stove, it served its purpose, I suppose, as long as I considered that only cooking over a hearth in my kitchen with kindling could take longer to get a heat element working. But one day I looked at it and it made me mad and I decided that I hated its stupid glowy burners, its almond color, and the arthritis it apparently had. I remembered, in pristine detail, how great the old stove looked in this kitchen, and I also missed the gas stove I’d left behind.
I immediately went to eBay, typed “old stove” in the search box, and, within seconds, there it was: a gorgeous old O’Keefe & Merritt, the Cadillac of antique stoves, for sale, fifty miles away in Salem.
The woman who was selling it seemed very nice and within an hour emailed that I should meet her at her storage unit. I asked my husband to come along, just in case I was never heard from again and my mummy was found a decade later in various Rubbermaid totes after an auction of the contents of #209 at Hoarder Storage in Salem, Oregon.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I don’t think they could fit you into just one.”
“Did you know,” I casually mentioned, “that when the wife suddenly vanishes, it’s usually because the husband rented a wood chipper?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to turn one on,” he replied. “Everyone would know that. I’ve broken everything with an ‘on’ button even remotely related to household maintenance.”
“Okay, then you have fun sharing an eight-by-eight with your cellie, George the Whore, for the next ten years until they find my head in a cake carrier,” I added.
“I’ve heard Salem has some of the most beautiful storage-unit structures in the state,” he said wearily. “Meet you at the car.”
It became clear that my fear of being dismembered was rather empty when we spotted the stove lady, Tina, at the entrance with her twelve-year-old son. She was very nice and friendly, but we hadn’t been in the elevator for half a minute when Tina confessed that she loved the stove and really didn’t want to part with it yet had to out of necessity. I nodded and smiled, knowing a sales ploy when I saw one. The soft pitch.
“There’s a man who’s interested in coming to see it tomorrow,” she added, putting a little bit of arm into the second ball.
Sure there is, I thought, as I smiled and nodded at her again. The elevator doors opened and we followed her down the hall to her unit. My husband