Vacuum

For the past six hundred and fifty two days, my husband has brought home a new vacuum cleaner to add to his collection. On occasion he has brought home two.

He has no plans for storage. This perturbs me. There was once order to the vacuum cleaners; they were lined along the wall, as if at attention, but now they are simply formed into piles of colour or category, and these piles grow day by day, until every room is no more than a fusion of cheap plastic and cold steel. To reach the garden, one must pass through the winding valley of vacuum cleaners which was once our front room. To ascend the stairs, one must pick their way past the Dustbusters and CarpetCleansers. He has stored the various specialised nozzles - the ones for reaching between gaps or for removing fur - in with our cups and bowls. I can no longer use the bath.

No obvious event triggered his collecting of vacuums. It is not a reaction to grief. Nor is it some late onset mental illness. He says there is a hole in our life, a hole he intends to fill.

*

Sometimes, at night, he perches among the vacuum cleaners. I find him squatted among the Dysons and the Mieles with his head tucked between his knees. When he sees me, he is angry, as if I have interrupted him during important work. He requests I close the door on my way out. In the corridor I hear him tutting.

I try to reason with him. On day eight hundred and fifty two, he enters the house bearing three indistinct boxes. I tell him that we cannot keep this up. He tells me that we have been keeping it up though, haven’t we? We have been keeping it up. Why not, after all? Why can’t you just allow me this? 

“But this,” I say, and indicate the stacks of errant cleaners, which climb to the ceilings, which cascade from every spare room, “this is far too much.”

On day nine hundred, he refuses the food I make for him. I find him chewing and request he spit out whatever he has into my hand. A wad of wet bluish lint hits my palm. 

There is a shrine to vacuum cleaners in our study. It is a four tiered structure with different types of vacuum cleaner on each tier - canisters on tier one, handhelds on tier two, et cetera. At their peak sits an Airway Dirtmaster, its bag a lime green. He purchased it for thousands at an auction. Every morning he kneels before the altar, eyes closed; his lips move but I cannot make out the words.

*

There are modifications you can make, he tells me one day, sitting at the foot of the bed, a Sir Cleansalot across his lap. 

The costs wipe out our savings, but I don’t care. I have been told, by parents and well-meaning friends, that this is what it means to be in love. Until now, I had never experienced it. But within seconds, the money in our bank account reduces to what it always has been: a set of numbers, pixels upon a screen, no good for anything if not for this.

On the way to the hospital, we pass a billboard where a new brand of vacuum cleaner is being advertised. His eyes track the billboard as it slides past the passenger window; there is a light to him which I have not seen since our wedding day.

I must wait in the parking lot while he has his procedure. It takes over eight hours. I wander the nearby industrial estate; I am nervous; I worry about what our life will be like from now on.

When he is returned to the car, he no longer fits in the front seat. I place him in the trunk. I rest a hand on his chrome exterior, run my fingers along the extendable tubing of his new neck. He is still so soft, and newly beautiful. I see it now; he has become a god.