Originally posted 09.29.2005

Stella is a name that used to conjure up certain images: the tragic-romantic Stella Kowalski; Stella by Starlight. Short for Estelle, who has a bit of a mustache problem and is somebody’s great-aunt, Stella I always pictured as solid, but definitely girlish, the object of someone’s long-time affection.

But three years ago I moved to Brooklyn and Stella became the wall of stubbornness between me and the execution of basic household maintenance. The hand that holds the phone that calls the plumber belongs to this woman, 10 days older than water, short but vast, who lives on the third floor and climbs the stairs with a three-pronged cane.

My heart goes out to the old woman. She has suffered tremendous losses in her life and she’s doing a job she shouldn’t have to do any more: tending to an old building as falling apart as she is. But why, when one of her favorite tenants has a complaint, must she become part of it?

Two days after I accepted the fact that the kitchen sink would never empty itself again, despite heavy doses of caustic treatment, I return from work to find the sink still plugged, no note or message from Stella or the plumber. She answers on the third ring and, before I reiterate the problem, says she wants to look at it.

I’m familiar with her M.O. No matter what the damage is, Stella must investigate and attempt a repair herself. So she painstakingly pulls herself up the last flight of stairs, lumbers into my kitchen, and declares the drain not a problem. “The water will go down dear. It just takes a while.” When I tell her that the water has been there overnight, she grasps the long plastic chopstick at sink side and desultorily pokes it into the drain. After a few more minutes of peering into the sink, like a cat at a mouse hole, she admits defeat and says she’ll call a plumber. A real one.

This is kind of a surprise, because Stella will usually call in a bevy of non-pros, who usually make the problem worse (and more expensive), before enlisting an expert. I wish I had a dime for everyone who tried to fix our toilet last year. Likewise, I wouldn’t mind financial compensation for every day that we had no electricity in the living room two years ago, or for every winter’s day we went without heat or hot water. “Just put on a sweater,” she says. “Spring will be here soon.”

On her way out, I show Stella the other problem: the pull chain for the bathroom’s sole light fixture no longer pulls. “Michael will be back in a couple of weeks,” she says, referring to the exasperated young handyman who lives, about three weeks out of the year, on the ground floor. (The rest of the time, he lives in Rome, where Stella can’t call him.)

“That’s really not acceptable Stella,” I say. “We have to turn it on and off by tightening or loosening the bulb. We can’t put the shade back up.”

“Michael can fix it,” she says, affecting selective deafness. “He’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”