THE BOSTON GLOBE
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​WHAT COULD A CONSTRUCTION CREW OUTSIDE MY APARTMENT DO ABOUT A BROKEN HEART?
My heart felt just as broken as the hole in the road outside my building.
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By Lauren DePino
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The steady beeping of the truck backing up told me I was in for another long night. The evening prior, I’d just fallen asleep for the first time in weeks when the shudder of breaking concrete woke me. Now it was happening again. I raised my shades.
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A backhoe hummed; its eyes — two oval flood lights — exposed my navy comforter, balled up on my bed. One floor down, a huddle of people dressed in reflective yellow were peering at the ground.
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My Philly apartment sat atop the Dunkin’ Donuts, which sounds storybook for a twentysomething. And it would have been storybook, had I not been reeling from my first major heartbreak. Not even a secret door to free chocolate doughnut holes could console me.
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My only reprieve from my state of excruciating consciousness was the promise of rest. Yet as I stared at the gaping hole below, it was obvious it was going to take a lot of work to repair the road. More nights of back-up beeping and despair.
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Wearing an OG Mariah Carey T-shirt and Beavis and Butt-Head boxers, I stormed downstairs.
“Do you have a permit for this work?” I yelled at a burly man with thick hair.
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safety goggles, and I caught my reflection. My black waves were greasy, cobwebby. I didn’t care. I pointed up to my apartment, tears springing to my eyes.
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“We do have a permit, ma’am. Sorry to disturb,” he said. “But emergencies happen.”
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Me, still yelling: “Can’t you just stop? I haven’t slept since I was broken up with.”
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The man’s green eyes widened. Raising his voice over the clamor, he said, “Oh. I’ve been there. Torture. Even if all this noise wasn’t happening, I still wouldn’t sleep. Why don’t you just stay up? You’ve got company.”
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The man pointed to his hard-hatted work mates. As he rejoined them in the cloud of grit and dust, I paused and saw the puncture in the ground, as fractured as the state of my heart. It was craggy and torn, to what seemed imperceptible depths.
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I pictured the pain of my heartbreak outside of myself, in the beat-up street, in the lacuna below my bedroom.
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I couldn’t do anything about that right now. But I could try to make up for my insufferable behavior. I walked a couple of doors down and bought some soft (sawf, in my Philly accent) pretzels for everyone.
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I waited on my stoop for the workers to go on break, the brown paper bag of pretzels hot in my hands. My heart rate began to calm as I watched the team hard at work in front of me.
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Soon they drew near, accepting my offering, laughing about something I can’t remember now.
Weeks later, I took another look at the hollow spot in the ground. Over glazed doughnuts, the construction manager said they’d finally pinpointed the problem. But it was sunup; traffic would resume soon. The workers covered the chasm with a slab of steel, a temporary fix. All day I heard the intermittent thump of cars driving over it.
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But one night, eventually, I didn’t hear the truck backing up. I didn’t see the backhoe, the ditch digger, the jackhammer. Nor the bright lights. The worker who’d confided in me instead of chiding me was nowhere in sight. Where the break in the road once was, I now saw a faint crack. A blurry rush of cars.
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I thought about those who worked overnight with care and steadfastness, and what they’d accomplished, restoring the cleft with concrete and asphalt. I imagined how ridiculous I must have looked in my Beavis and Butt-Head boxers, desperate to oust my pain. To push it on them, to put it anywhere but on me.
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Their kindness had reminded me: We all encounter challenges that require us to rebuild. And in the calm between, when everything appears smooth and new, it’s promising to look back and see how far we’ve come.
