by Rich Horton
• • •
They could locate only a single wedding photo, the one that hung in the gold frame nailed to their family room wall. “What happened to all the albums?” Michael asked. They had spent a small fortune purchasing hundreds of photographs as part of a package deal. Michael’s wife pointed to the window, then she left the room.
The remaining wedding photo had been taken on the deck of a county park lodge. Michael’s wife had thought the park’s changing trees would create a memorable backdrop, but the trees changed early that year because of the drought. By the day of their ceremony, all the leaves had already fallen, leaving the branches of the trees empty, though the ground appeared to be carpeted in golds and reds. His wife was disappointed. Michael was not. Under a trellis, in a white wind, he promised to love her forever. Nothing about that day had been monstrous. His desire for his wife was considered normal, and loving, and good. He had felt chosen. There his wife was, choosing him out of everybody. He felt a spotlight, a kind of radiance, shining down upon his head. She had worn a strapless dress made out of multiple layers of material. Her sister dusted her shoulders with a powder that made her skin sparkle. They looked too young in that picture to be making any permanent decisions. He looked like he was grabbing her waist. She clutched her yellow flowers. The bridesmaids, lined up behind them in a row, wore matching black dresses and black shoes.
The morning after the wedding, they left for a honeymoon in the Rockies, renting a cabin in a new development north of one of the national parks. The cabin had a croquet set in the garage, which they never used, and a badminton set, which they set up one evening when they were bored with each other. His wife snapped photos of him with her hulking Nikon—what became of those photos?—while he tried to direct a badminton birdie at her head. His aim was no good. He always aimed too far to the right. His wife laughed and laughed at his continued misses and eventually he became irritated with her. They couldn’t see the mountains from where they were staying so they might as well have stayed in a woods near their home. Michael had assumed, wrongly, that every cabin in that area would have mountain views. Each night of their honeymoon they had sex in the evening, he remembered in shimmering detail now, in their loft whose windows overlooked somebody’s unadorned yard. For those two weeks, she had done so willingly, he thought. They lay tangled and hot on top of the moose-themed comforter, his legs twisted around her legs, as they stared into their neighbor’s yard, which had been losing form in the dark. But this was supposed to happen, as it had been growing late.
• • •
“Does it have something to do with the way I wanted to have sex with you?” Michael asked once. “I know it wasn’t . . . the positions, or—we don’t have to have sex that way anymore. I know I used to say that we did, but we don’t.”
• • •
Their second homework assignment was to sit beside each other in a comfortable neutral territory, without judgment or expectation, and observe what happened. They sat on the deck in the backyard and looked out onto their strange and wild yard whose landscaping had cost them a lot of money. Their landscaper had been some big shot from outside of Rochester whom Michael’s boss recommended. The guy worked alone, digging up the existing weeds and clover with a shovel, then he raked and planted the prickly flowerless bushes and native perennials around the border, inspired by a dream he had. He left them with an identification map, sketched by hand, that made the yard feel like some legendary other land. Michael lost the map. They no longer knew the names of the plants that were supposed to be out there. The plants were all dead or dying this time of year anyway. It was late October but warm. Michael missed the sound of his wife talking. She used to talk to other people like she was reading them a story. To him she used a private voice, low-pitched and gentle, when they weren’t arguing. He had no proof of this. In her lap, she held on to a stack of Post-its, a washed-out blue this time.
She wrote, I wish we could be the same thing.
Deer were scrounging that evening in their neighbor’s yard, feasting on the hearty late-season kale. The animals triggered a motion-detector light as bright as a searchlight that the neighbor recently installed over his garage. The light illuminated both properties, the neighbor’s decimated patch of winter greens and their own weird growings. Michael wished the deer would come into their yard, too, and eat their unidentifiable plants, but the deer couldn’t do this, as the previous owners of their house had built an impenetrable cedar fence along the property line. The kids were inside in their beds, curled around their devices.
His wife wrote, I think my skin has these enormous pores that let certain things through, like the wind, and some seeds. She had grown taller these past months, her spine lengthening, and a powdery metallic substance had begun to collect on her tongue, occasionally staining the corners of her mouth silver. Though other of his wife’s symptoms could still be hidden with a scarf or some makeup.
The neighbor, the one with the herd of deer in his yard, stood at his patio door and stared onto Michael’s deck. The neighbor lived alone. Michael’s wife used to set leftovers on the neighbor’s stoop when she had made too much stew or when no one liked that night’s meal. This was back when she still cooked dinner.
She wrote, I think it’s only the transition that hurts. I smell a fire.
She went on writing. He collected a pile of Post-its on his lap. The top Post-it read, I am more real now. This was a new expectation, that certain people could become whatever they wanted, while the other person in the relationship was supposed to stand back and applaud, pretending nothing was being lost. “My wife is turning into something that is not human,” he had told Dr. Sabrina at their previous session. Women did not used to believe they were turning into something else. If they turned into something else, it used to be not okay. The boundaries of what was human and acceptable used to be very clear. Michael liked how things used to be. There used to be a time when, if you were born human, it was difficult—impossible?—to leave your humanness behind. “Define human,” Dr. Sabrina had challenged him, raising her eyebrows like this was a complex argument, one that would really stump Michael. “Define wife,” he had shot back. “Define husband. Define spouse. Define conjugal obligations. Define making love. Define the legal definition of a marriage.”
He wished he knew that neighbor’s name. He could have shouted the name out loud and started a conversation with the man. Then maybe his wife would stop writing about herself. He could feel his blood bulging against the inside surface of his skin. The neighbor slid open his screen door and stepped outside onto the patio holding a spray bottle. He pointed the bottle at the deer and bellowed like an animal.
The next day, Michael broke a mug at work while trying to wash it in the sink. The handle fell off and cracked into two pieces that could have been glued back together again. But who wants to use a mug with a cracked handle? It could have been broken before he picked it up. The day after that, his workplace ran out of coffee. Nobody had any ideas about how to fix this problem. Though it was not that difficult of a problem. But nobody knew whose problem it was. You have nothing to be afraid of, he wanted to tell his female colleagues when he met with them alone in the cramped windowless conference room. I am emasculated.
• • •
In addition to the Hojacki, there turned out to be the Melones, and the Drosis, and the Smith-Smiths, and the Tangers, and the Pourishes. New variations popped up almost every month. Someone else’s happiness used to look recognizable. Now the happy Asbells had light shining out of their knuckles. The tips of a Chacier’s ears were supposed to change color. Michael’s wife sat by herself in the garage with the door closed. Was she happy? What would her happiness look like now? She held some kind of tool in her hand and used the tool to repeatedly strike a piece of wood.
Everybody else on their side of the street had already raked the yellow and red leaves to the curb. Their lawns appeared pale green and sickly while Michael’s lawn looked carpeted with go
ld from the trees. “What happens if I don’t want to rake this year?” he demanded to know. He was saying this to his wife. “What if I stop taking out the garbage? What will happen if I start eating out every lunch? What if I don’t unclog the bathtub drain upstairs?”
Graphs were released showing estimated infection increases of seventeen percent. The evening news ran stories of the Wonderfuls, the Hojacki in particular, who were being kicked out of their homes in substantial numbers, and it’s not as if they had somewhere else to go. It’s not as if they were kicked out of their homes gently, with adequate support and preparation. During one interview, Mooney held up a photograph of a Hojacki on the sidewalk with her skull bashed in, her strange blood pooling iridescently around her head. Speaking very slowly and very clearly, Mooney stated, “Even if we don’t understand their purpose, we must accept that the Wonderfuls have an inherent value.”
One report attributed their appearance to the rapid rise in ocean acidity. Another researcher pointed to rogue bacteria spreading out from South America in the shape of an alluvial fan. It could have been the excess of CO2 in the air. Or something to do with outer space. Michael was convinced the trigger was a lack of effort, a certain giving in to urges that previously would have been considered inappropriate.
• • •
“You are becoming a monster,” he had told her, standing on the deck on the last night she had used her voice.
“I am not a monster,” she said.
“But you’re becoming one,” he said.
“I am not becoming a monster.”
“What do you think you’re becoming?”
“I don’t know. Myself, maybe.”
“You don’t know what you are.”
“And, what, you can’t love somebody unless you know what they are?”
• • •
The first debate aired live Tuesday night. Michael’s wife refused to let him turn on the screen in the living room. She blocked his view, the remote shoved into the front pocket of her green dress. “I could push you out of the way,” he said. He didn’t do this. He went, instead, into the study and watched the debate by himself on their old desktop computer.
The opening question concerned the decline of economic development in the rust belt. Michael flipped through a stack of catalogs while the politicians droned. Twenty minutes in, the moderator read a question emailed from Jane M. in Solvay concerning whether Wonderfuls should share the same rights as regular people. For example, should someone, or something, that doesn’t appear human be allowed to vote in the upcoming election? wondered Jane M.
Mooney wore oversized sunglasses and a navy sweater that covered her neck all the way up to her chin. She kept her hands out of sight behind the podium. She spoke about fairness and goodness. Everything she said was vague. What she was saying made Michael want to get up and leave the room. “The Wonderfuls still belong here,” she said, “here meaning this planet, this country, this state, and this community. It’s our job to make sure there remains a place for them. How we treat them is a clue to how all of us will be treated when the time comes.”
“When the time comes?” asked the moderator.
Kloburcher cut in. “It used to be that people were born human and stayed that way. Now the Wonderfuls—who chose that name, by the way?—the Wonderfuls, they come along, and what the hell is happening to our families? What are we letting happen?” Kloburcher turned toward the left side of the stage and motioned briskly with his hand. “I have some people I’d like to bring out. Some people I’ve gotten to know, people like you.”
“I don’t think that’s allowed.” Mooney glanced at the moderator for confirmation. “Is this allowed?” A man and a woman walked out from behind the gold curtains. The man’s hand rested on the woman’s arm. He led her to Kloburcher’s podium and tilted the microphone until it practically touched his lips. The spotlight was not shining onto the woman directly. It was shining on the man. In the half-light, the woman looked creepy and distracted, the look of a Hojacki on a heavy medication, probably Horiza, which was still in experimental testing but available on the black market, a drug intended to postpone or even eliminate certain changes. There were notable side effects. The woman either wanted to be medicated or else her husband had forced her. “My name is Anthony Papp,” said the man. “When my wife became a Hojacki, she stopped caring about me. She stopped caring for her kids. I lost her, and my kids lost her. We don’t need this new whatever-she-is. I need my old wife back. I don’t know how to bring her back. Can she come back?”
• • •
Dr. Sabrina’s third homework assignment was a page of exercises for them to do in bed. The list of exercises was labeled “Stage 1.” They tried following the handout’s instructions. At least, Michael tried. They were to touch each other in a way that felt good to the person being touched. What was bearable to Michael’s wife that night was his hand, unmoving, on her wrist. If he moved his fingers up her arm, light touches, gentle touches, she started to cry. I don’t want to be touched anymore, she had written. “Come on,” he said. I don’t want to, she wrote. “This is me, loving you,” he had said. He didn’t know which version of his wife was crying in bed, his real wife or whoever she believed she had become.
After the exercises, they were to lie next to each other. His wife reached for her laptop, typed, then tapped at the screen: another happy forum post. “I don’t want to read about those people anymore,” Michael said. He noticed his wife’s eyes had changed. When had they changed? They used to be a familiar blue ringed by gray. He hated his wife’s new eyes, and as he lay in bed staring at her, his hatred turned into anger, and his anger spilled out from his chest like an actual force. It expanded throughout the room. It expanded throughout the house until it became larger than the house. It loomed and menaced above the roof, but harmlessly, without consequence, as there was nothing appropriate these days for a man to do with such unsuitable emotions. A man like Michael should have buried any anger he possessed in his reusable lunch sack. Never mind its insane howling. Look, Michael was supposed to say, everything is always okay! Don’t worry, no one wanted to punch his fist through the drywall of his bedroom. Michael did not even think about that! He did not want to take the grocery clerk with the tattoos running up her arms out behind the dumpsters, and tear off her skirt, and fuck her from behind. The same clerk he saw every time he ran into TJ’s to get whatever his wife told him to get. It wasn’t the fall. There weren’t a lot of dead things in the gutters. Someone hadn’t started shooting the deer in their neighborhood and leaving the carcasses in the street.
• • •
He watched the second gubernatorial debate alone. He didn’t know where his wife was. The children were upstairs in their separate bedrooms. He didn’t know what they did in their bedrooms. This particular debate focused on security.
“Years ago, I used to think safety would look like a wall,” spoke Kloburcher. “Isn’t that hilarious? Do you remember the time, back when a wall and the securing of state borders could have been the solution? But a wall isn’t going to cut it anymore, people. Because, guess what, they’re already here. They’re on the inside. They’re in our homes. They’re in our workplaces. They’re in our beds.
“I want to protect you and the sort of life you thought you were going to get, a life where you can walk down the street of your hometown and recognize where you are. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, to recognize who’s around you. Once elected, I promise you, I am going to gather them up, and I am going to put them someplace else. Someplace enclosed and protected, and I will protect them, and I will protect you. Then we can all stop talking about them. And I mean we stop talking about them! So we can start focusing on other things, like our jobs, our schools, our defenses, and what we were afraid of, and why we don’t have to be afraid of that anymore.”
“What are you talking about?” Mooney asked. She wore the same pair of sunglasses though this time her turtleneck sweater was a soft gra
y. Her hands were covered by gloves. “I mean, what is he talking about?”
“I believe he’s talking about building an enclosure for the Wonderfuls,” the moderator said.
“You want to intern them—is that even legal? How would a governor even do that?”
“I’m not afraid to say out loud how you feel,” said Kloburcher, and he looked into the camera, and he looked into Michael’s eyes.
• • •
Michael’s wife was asleep, and he wasn’t because he couldn’t sleep. So he lifted up the sheets and looked. She slept wrapped in her worn brown bathrobe. “I miss you,” he whispered. The last time he had been physical with his wife, it hadn’t been actual intercourse. He didn’t know what to call it. She had refused to take off her underwear in bed. He hadn’t the energy to rip the underwear off of her, so he had humped against her beige cotton panties. Afterward, she had written him a note. Can you hire a prostitute? “Are you serious?” he asked.
He undid the knot on his wife’s robe and slid off her underwear. Using the light from his phone, he looked at her again. She was his wife. There was nothing wrong with him looking at her. He separated her legs. She had always been a deep sleeper. Her hair down there had thinned to several loose curls and the lips of her labia had flattened. Where the opening to his wife’s vagina used to be, there was only a tiny crevice no longer than a pencil eraser. He slipped the tip of his finger in her to see if he could widen the hole. He moved slowly, acting as gentle as he could. When his finger had worked partially inside of her, she began to stir. Half awake, she swatted at his arm, her face fearful and panicked.