refrigerator

our refrigerator is a special kind of ugly. now, this refrigerator has been ugly a long time. i think it may be a long lost sibling of the fridge my parents had back in 1974. it dates from just about then. the first generation ice maker is connected to nothing and covered with tape. the bin for vegetables most fridges have is sitting useless in the bottom of the thing. the runners that held it to the sagging shelf above are missing. the outside is pitted with rust and although i clean it regularly, the inside seems always to have a sweaty grayness to it.

sometime in the spring we started to notice things wouldn't last in the fridge very long. scallions could get by maybe a day before we'd hear their faint screams wafting out from behind the yellow doors. lemons or limes made it three days. meats grayed overnight and anything we used part of- a tomato, a red onion- and put in the fridge for later use, would wither up so fast you could almost watch it happen, no matter what method of containment we used. our fresh food consumption dropped dramatically. when we were gone for large parts of the summer, we forgot the fridge and its hideous interior. but then i noticed my yogurt, as i spooned it into my mouth, didn't feel cool. it didn't feel even coolish. if you've never eaten room temperature yogurt, it can be quite upsetting. there's the temperature, first. then there's the texture and smell. not quite right. not quite.

so i grabbed the thermometer off the back porch, scooted the wilted scallions and souring yogurts aside and slapped the thermometer, reading 78, in the fridge. now, for those of you who don't know, a healthy refrigerator runs at somewhere between 35 and 38 degrees. that's high enough above freezing that the milk stays milk and cool enough to keep bacteria from dancing around on your food. by 40 degrees, you start laying out welcome mats for all sorts of bacteria that will make you cry. and other things. a few hours later, the thermometer read 52 degrees. the sweetie suggested i crank up the dial. our dear refrigerator comes with a dial reading 0-5, with five being the coolest possible setting you could ever want. ever. it will make your plums shiver. so i turned the dial way on up to five, against the insistence of a sticker on the inside of the fridge warning me to keep things set at 3 for optimum performance. no fridge that comes from my generation can be expected to be optimum this far down the road, so i paid that sticker no mind. you've seen those shows where the space ships shift into warp speed? a field of wiggly air developed around the fridge as it shot up to five. i am sure the foods inside were pressed back against their seats.

next morning, that two settings up on the dial bought us three degrees. i opened the door and stared at the 49 degree food sweating in there and got out the garbage can. goodbye yogurt. goodbye blue cheese dressing. goodbye (sob) small hunk of cheese made with local beer. goodbye wilted salad greens. you were too good for this world.

the sweetie ran into our landlord and mentioned the 50ish degree inside of our fridge. our landlord said it sounded dead. i wrote him a little note because he sometimes needs what you'd call reminding on things like this. because he's trying to sell the house, he's not interested in buying a new fridge, no matter how cheap. "i've got one in the basement," he tells me, smiling. because that's what everyone wants. to go three days with no fridge, then have the busted one replaced with a basement fridge. mmmmmmmm! because you know there's no good reason a fridge should ever go to the basement and you know this fridge is down there because ten years ago the fridge languishing in our kitchen won out over it. so tomorrow, the landlord will arrive with "some guys" and they will, without assistance of a dolly, drag the old fridge out, exposing more than ten years of whatever builds up behind a refrigerator. and while i am on hands and knees, scrubbing up this frightful mess, they will drag in the basement fridge, managing to gouge a big scrape along the hardwood floor and probably knock off plaster on at least two of the doorways they have to drag it through.

i will wait the whole twenty four hours for the replacement fridge to cool down and will spend sunday restocking. milk. cheese. salad greens. olives. mustard. blackberry preserves. i will make a pitcher of iced tea. clean slate. brave new world.