The Agony of the Pedestal Sink
Oh, how I loved my pedestal sink, with its sleek, single-legged, porcelain base and separate hot and cold faucets, designed nearly a century ago, before spouts merged into a solo stream. Stepping into my bathroom, I joined the long lineage of daily ablutions done by generations of New York City apartment dwellers before me, going back to the 1920’s flappers in their chiffon finery, with their adorably naughty, Marcel-wave bobs and kiss curls, who must have enjoyed my very sink, brand-spanking new, when the building was first erected, in 1927. I touch them all through my pedestal sink. Ah, the glorious history in my home. All was well.
But then one day, there came a knock, knock, knock. The super called out, “Something’s leaking into the apartment below and we think it’s coming from your bathroom.”
“But my floor is dry as a bone!”
“It’s behind the walls.” The super and his henchmen came in and spent the next 40 minutes breaking my wall, looking for leaks. “Well Ma’am, it looks like it’s your sink. It’s very old and the pipes are completely shot. We have to remove it, right away.”
“And when will you return it?”
“We won’t. It can’t be saved.”
“But why can’t you just change the pipes?”
“Not possible.”
“Noooo!” Pluck out my perfect porcelain pedestal, never to be touched, again? “But I need my sink.” I may be a mere rent-stabilized tenant in an upper west side multi-million dollar coop but I still deserve my pedestal!
The flood of my tears sliding down my cheeks and chest added to the gushing waterworks. Unmoved, the super and his crew heartlessly demolished my happy haven and uprooted this beautiful, evocative geyser of life-giving liquid and put in a new teeny-weeny cabinet-at-the-bottom suburban efficiency box of a so-called sink. Yes, it had new pipes but, for some unknown reason, it was surprisingly small. I was a big girl with an itsy bitsy sink — like Alice in Wonderland after she eats the cake and outgrows her dress and furniture. I felt woozy, off balance and a little disoriented.
The new basin was about the size of a Ramen noodle soup bowl, with barely room for wontons, let alone hand-washables. It was also rubber-topped instead of porcelain. I guess I’ll be thankful next time I slip and bang my head on it. The newly exposed wall revealed a few missing tiles, which the super said could only be replaced with solid black or white. Can’t he see my tiles are an elegantly divine sea green?
This lousy little sink was too, too small and still leaked with every use, though now the water dribbled down shiny pipes instead of rusty ones — out through the cabinet front and onto the floor. My floor. Ok, this is not ok. It’s a miserable, wet, sloshy mess and they’d better fix this, pronto.
In the meantime, I mourned my altar to every-woman goddesses in my own way, staring into the expanse of freed up space between tub and toilet, imagining the flappers, sadly slipping on their stockings before their dance marathons, in this very room. My beloved pedestal is lost to me. “Where’s my amazing sink? Don’t you miss it, too?” I asked my boyfriend, who’d popped his head in, to interrupt my wails, woes and reveries. Let’s just call him, Sartre because “Hell is other people”. “What is wrong with you? Sinks don’t need to be special,” he growled sotto voce, ordering me out of the bathroom so the super could get back to his search for the limitless leak. Poor dear Sartre can’t comprehend the power of a pedestal and the bittersweet significance of our shared loss.
I try to be happy with very little, which certainly helps my spiritual world but not my material one. I got a tad of unsolicited coaching from my hyper-practical Sartre, “This is ridiculous and they know it. Tell them no.” So I did. I asked the super for an upgrade: “Does the sink seem a bit tiny to you? Is there any way we could possibly get a slightly bigger one?” Sartre was right, which does occasionally happen. The next week, the workers installed a larger, regular-sized, porcelain-topped, cabinet-bottomed sink. Alice shrunk back to normal. And within a week, they finally found and fixed the elusive freaking leak.
Still, whenever I returned to my water closet, which one is wont to do many times daily, I still saw no pedestal and my heavy heart heaved a sigh of hopeless wonder — how was I to live without my pedestal? The loss was worse than when I was eight years old and a string of our pet turtles, Tommy, Bobo and Jake, died and went bye-bye down our toilet, right before my eyes, one by one, within weeks. We fed them; we changed their water, though perhaps not often enough. Why did they die? We’ll never know.
I’m not saying it’s not great to have a cabinet under the sink because really it is. All the cleaning products and extra supplies are neatly hidden, tucked out of sight — toilet paper, soap, shampoos and laundry detergent. That’s a plus.
Unfortunately, within a few days, no lie, the paint already began falling off the two wooden knobs. Simply closing the cabinet, the paint ever so gently flaked into my fingers, like the sunburnt skin of dried blisters, scorched and shriveled after a long beach day gone bad. Where was my plush pedestal upgrade? Amazing how such a gentle falling away of paint can be so quietly shocking. Denial was my only defense. Unbelievable. Was I too rough? Did I pinch it too hard? Are my finger tips too groping and greedy, grasping for goodies inside? Perhaps it was the extreme moisture conditions naturally found near any shower or a floating black hole of destruction engulfing my carefully cultivated, cosmic universe. How is it possible something so new is so swiftly decrepit?
On further inspection, I noticed there were also splits in the wooden cabinet doors. Were they there on delivery? Did I sleep through an earthquake? Renters have rights! I don’t know exactly what they are but I can definitely find out and get back to you. How could the wood crack in a week? Doesn’t anybody care about doing quality work, anymore? You know a lot of people are slaving away to make this schlock, probably in China. They live hard, hard lives, working in factories seven days a week, and sleeping in tiny, shared bed-closets. They’re jumping out of factory dorm windows, to their deaths, to escape their miseries. China is cheap with human rights and product quality, but Americans keep buying their junk, supporting these abuses. Such a waste of human resources, let alone the wood, paint and pipes. It’s alienating to the spirit to build garbage and call it progress.
Maybe paint lasting a month is all we can expect. I remember learning about planned obsolescence, in high school. Spark plugs in the new cars were designed to stop working at a set point, after 30,000 miles, a typical two years of suburban driving, at which time the car owner buys either boring new spark plugs or an exciting new car.
I went back to tell the super that my cabinet was disintegrating before my very eyes and he reassured me that he didn’t know what to tell me. Of course, I pleaded with him to come see the tragic collapse of quality with his own eyes but instead he passed the buck. He said he’d send over the sink salesman, Salvatore, from Chile, to investigate my complaint. Salvatore called me on the house phone, from the lobby, to announce his visit. His resonant, velvety voice sounded like a man who would take care of me. Certainly, Salvatore will straighten things out. He’ll be a South American compadre to my Venezuelan Sartre and make things right. Salvatore would understand my aesthetic sorrow. Hopefully, he’d replace or repaint. Maybe he could find me a pedestal at cost. Salvatore would be my knight in armor and rescue me from this horrifying ordeal. He rang the door buzzer and my heart started racing for my very own Javier Bardem but when I opened the door, it was Ralph Kramden. He glanced at the sink perfunctorily and told me that he didn’t see the paint problem or the cracked wood. Move your big gut, kneel down and take a good look up close, Mr. Lazy. After some pressing, he agreed to talk to his boss and see what he could do for me. I was still blocking his exit, so he added, “Look lady, it’s a cheap $100 cabinet — you get what you pay for.” Really? A $100 cabinet is considered so cheap that the paint is extra?
The super had told me he wanted me to be satisfied since it was a $500 cabinet. Well, which was it — $100 or $500? Did the other $400 go into the super’s pocket or was he just lying to make the landlord sound generous? Salvatore said you have to pay more for quality. But rent stabilized tenants are supposed to get these things provided for them by the evil landlords, right? Was he calling my landlord cheap or suggesting I pay for an upgrade? Was Salvatore calling me cheap, too? Moi? I looked in the mirror. Okay so I’m cheap. So what? I didn’t offer to pay — on principle. Oh, the cruelty of it all! Wait a minute — maybe he was asking me for a bribe and I totally didn’t know it. Oh, Salvatore. I guess I’m just some greedy broad acting entitled like a princess.
Still, he may have a point. Why not buy my own pedestal? I could invest in my quality of life. I Googled it and there’s a lovely pedestal for $144 that I could easily pay someone to install. I may be here another 30 years. When I die, will I leave this lovely apartment better than I found it?
Should I splurge on a high quality bathroom sink or just let it go and buy the boring spark plugs? Where have they sent my cast-off objet d’art? I picture it sadly peaking out of a garbage dump, with little birdies poo-ing all over it. I want what was mine! These capitalist vampires feed off consumers and sell us crap. And if I don’t complain to the super to demand more decency from my fellow human beings, I’m no better than he is and I’m just going along with the degradation of America.
But all this arguing was just too, too much to bear in my beloved abode of delicate sensibilities. So I picked up a couple of glossy new porcelain knobs, door nipples. They seemed like teeny baby sproutings from my mama pedestal. They catch your eye and you almost don’t even notice the cracked doors. Yet, the joy of my newborns was short-lived. They’re a paltry replacement, a measly compromise, to avoid absolute shoddiness. Really I’m just kickin’ the can down the road, in my silky, satin slippers, like a poor capitalist. The pedestal is gone and so are the flailing flappers. I can only hope they’ve reunited, in some happy home-decor heaven. It’s the end of an era, as quality sinks are no more. All the while, I remember the days long gone, and the empty space in my heart, aching for my antique freedom fount of flapper fantasies and turn-of-the-century tarnished innocence.
Adieu.
