Notes from the Fog

by Ben Marcus

  “I ate a horse’s face once,” the littlest boy said one night.

  “Oh? Did the horse cry, or was it already dead?”

  “That’s not what you’re supposed to say. You’re supposed to say gross. Ew.”

  “Well, in some cultures, the horse’s face is like candy. It’s a rare treat.”

  “What’s a culture?”

  “It’s a group of people who are stuck with each other.”

  “Like a family?”

  “Yes, but bigger. Without a house. Spread all over the place.”

  “Is there a dad and mom?”

  I snuffed out the conversation with some tickling. The two of them were ridiculously easy prey. I could gesture at them, a snatching motion with my hand, not even touching them, and they would weep with laughter, protecting their soft spots, which was pretty much every part of them. The tickling was foreshadowed, and I almost didn’t even need to be in the room. I could hold up a single finger and they trembled. They were mine. I owned them. As I was doing it, triggering the most helpless giggles from these two little guys, I couldn’t help thinking how much I’d love to be able to end an adult conversation this way. Just when things got fraught or tense or dull I’d slide my hand along an inner thigh or into an armpit, and poke into the sweetness to see what sort of explosive verbal helplessness came back. Except of course adults aren’t ticklish. Profoundly not. Parts of their bodies have died, the whole interior—a kind of early death of the nerves. Immune to sensation to a large degree. Dead person walking, and etc. Being tickled, once you’re older, is simply like being excavated, as if your flesh were soft and would give way, as if it could be spooned out of you with a long finger.

  * * *

  —

  We got into a little bit of a routine after the kids went to sleep. Drew drank too much at night, then pretended, I think, to need my help getting to bed. He would act sort of out of it, almost asleep. Bereaved, tired, and drunk. He would murmur in some private dialogue with himself. The widower’s soliloquy, I guess. I heard Sarah’s name, but I tried not to listen too carefully—it was like eavesdropping on his thoughts, which I wanted no part of. I pretended that he was speaking a language I didn’t know, and it sort of worked. I’d take his arm and escort him upstairs. Thank god he didn’t really need to lean on me, because he was huge and leaden and I am only as big as I need to be—that’s always been my size. We’d get upstairs and I’d help him strip down to his boxers and T-shirt. Beyond that I had no interest, or even tolerance, I don’t think. There was not a human being on earth whose sleepwear concerned me, least of all Drew’s. Nor were there any nude bodies beyond those freely available on the Internet that I felt I needed to see. Anywhere. And I must say that the human body, in this sort of man at this age, perhaps especially after the loss of a spouse, can cause some feelings. If I looked at him too closely I felt like I was at the morgue or the butcher or that the world had ended. Somehow I had started to associate Sarah’s death with him. Because she had died I started to think that so had Drew, by association. Or literally. That he was effectively dead and whatever he’d been doing these last few days only amounted to final spasms and twitches. Throes, I guess they are called. Soon he’d stop seizing. Soon he’d go cold. I’d have to make a call and get him removed. I knew this wasn’t true, of course, but I also worried that it was. I was torn between worry and knowledge, and worry was always more persuasive. Worry had the upper hand. It was best to just get Drew under the covers so that I didn’t have to see. I could deal with his head, poking above the blankets. That was manageable.

  “Sometimes I pay for hand jobs,” he mumbled one night, as I was pulling down his shades.

  I was hardly listening, and I didn’t think he was even fully awake, but I was curious. “How much?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer, but he tossed and turned a little bit and issued a high-pitched cough.

  “How much do hand jobs cost?” I asked again.

  Drew rolled over and spoke into his pillow. “You have to pay for a massage, and then it’s extra for that.” Maybe he was being shy or maybe he was just barely awake. “Sarah knew. It wasn’t like that. I mean, I never told her, but I know she knew. She was okay with it. We never discussed it. She didn’t mind. I wanted to tell her.”

  “So you can’t go in and say, no massage, just a hand job. I’m in a hurry?”

  “No, you can’t even say hand job. They will kick you out.”

  It sounded like he was talking from experience. I pictured him getting kicked out of a massage parlor, emerging into the afternoon light of a strip mall, shielding his eyes, deciding if he should maybe just get some ice cream. “So how much then?” I asked.

  “Two hundred dollars.”

  “Interesting.”

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I got the boys to their bus stop early and they begged me to wait with them. Of course I would never have left them alone, but it was nice to be wanted, and I let them try to talk me into staying. Usually they’d just pull on my arms until I fell in the grass with them, and that was it, they’d made their case. I told them that they should both be lawyers, they were very persuasive young men. And I would say just this once as they sat on me and played with my hair, telling me that I was their favorite couch, the best couch ever.

  The rule in the mornings was that the boys could wear their helmets to the bus stop, but when the bus came they had to take them off, and then I carried the helmets home, two stinking shells that clacked together and that I dreamed of hurling far into the woods, where I am sure they would serve as a cautionary tale to the animals, a dual beheading of some mythical beast. Except there weren’t any woods. The land was too valuable in this neighborhood. Just lawn after lawn after lawn. For some reason, Drew had warned me not to use anyone else’s trash can. Like, ever, or else I would have already ditched the helmets in one of them by now and then played dumb later. He was very solemn in his warning. If you put even the littlest piece of trash in someone else’s can, they’d see you and they’d go nuts, apparently. It was worse than shitting on someone’s floor, I guess. Every house had a massive trash can out front, nearly the size of my bedroom in college. You could easily put a body in one. You could stuff blankets and pillows down into the bottom and have, I bet, an incredibly cozy and private nap. No one would think to look for you in there. It was sort of the ultimate panic room. Hidden in plain sight. With mountains in the distance, too, if you drilled yourself a little peephole.

  The boys held my hands and together we leaned over the curb and looked down the street to see if the bus was coming. No feet allowed in the street, I always said. At times like this the boys were fond of interviewing me. Did I know how to swim? Did I like cheese? Who was my favorite superhero? How old was I? Why wasn’t I at my own house right now? Did I ride a school bus when I was a little girl? When was I leaving? Would I be gone when they got home from school today? How did I get to be an aunt? Is there a school for that? When did I meet their mom? Were we friends or enemies? Could I beat their dad in a fight?

  “I have two girls at home, you know,” I told them. “You guys have met them, but you were little little little.”

  I slipped into baby talk here, while holding my hand low to the ground to indicate how small they had been, and the boys suddenly looked uncomfortable.

  “I’m sure you don’t remember them,” I said. “They are your cousins. They are very tall now. They are taller than I am!”

  “Our cousins? We heard they tried to beat us up.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “From our dad. He called them hitters. He said we were only babies and they tried to bounce us like basketballs. One of them kicked me in the face.”

  “By mistake,” the little one added. “That’s what Mom said.”

  I held the elder boy’s face in my hands and studied it cl
osely. What a soft and sweet and smooth little face. I squinted. I pretended to think. “Yes, hm,” I said. “I believe I do still see a footprint.”

  He pulled away from me, giggling. “Liar!” he shrieked.

  The little one wanted to look. “I want to see the footprint!” he shouted.

  I thought back to the few times all of us had been together—morose, drunken, silent, family time, with the exception of Drew’s explosive, alienating cheer, while the kids had squirted off to god knows where. All of this was possible, but if someone was truly kicked in the face, even a young boy, I’d like to think my daughter was provoked.

  “Well, listen,” I said to the boys. “If they had tried to beat you up I’m sure they would have succeeded, because they were bigger than you, and stronger than you. Still are. So no funny stuff. Have you ever heard of a teenager? Have you ever seen one? I’m not sure if they have them around here.” I looked up and down the street. I pretended to be afraid.

  “You’re weird.”

  “I’m your aunt. That’s how it is.”

  “Girls are smarter and faster and better at everything than boys,” said the littler one.

  “Oh? Who told you that.”

  “Our mom.”

  “Oh, yeah. Your mom. I really miss her a bunch. In fifth grade she wore a cape all year, and she wouldn’t answer to her real name.”

  “But boys aren’t bad, are they?” the eldest asked me.

  “Oh, sweetie, no, they’re not. Not even close. And you know what your mom meant when she said that, right?”

  No, they didn’t, neither of them. The looked up at me, waiting.

  “That the two of you,” I said, poking each of them gently in the chest, “in your own ways, are going to be special and great and fantastic at brand-new things, things no one has even heard of yet.”

  When their bus came the little one hugged me and the big one ran off without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  When I got back to the house, Drew had already left for work. On the table was a neat stack of cash. I counted it. Two hundred dollars exactly. I left it there.

  It took me a little while before I felt like I could masturbate in that house, but soon I had a good system set up, and I grew more comfortable with my visit. If you’re staying somewhere over an extended period of time, and you cannot masturbate, not ever, then you start to plot your exit. It’s just untenable after a while. I have no trouble in hotel rooms, what few I’ve stayed in, but somehow it’s different in a home other than your own. It feels more obviously complicated, although I’m not sure why. We take shits in other people’s homes. That’s arguably far worse than touching oneself delicately in the shower. I’d taken a shit right under Drew’s nose the other day. We were making dinner, and suddenly I had to go, and I was gone for a while—ten minutes, maybe, more. I read several op-eds on my phone while sitting on the toilet. I definitely wasn’t peeing that whole time. He knew for a fact that I’d taken a shit, or tried to, and I’m sure he didn’t care. I guess I don’t know for sure. But still, I’d been nervous about masturbation, even though it was part of my routine at home, and that had made me less inclined to do it. I can’t succeed at it when I’m afraid or tense. But then I decided that if Drew wasn’t home, and the boys were at school, with hours before anyone was expected to return, I could add this to my schedule, in between sorting and storing my sister’s clothing, jewelry, and papers.

  There was very little left to do with respect to Sarah. I organized her clothing according to type, then packed each group separately—sweaters, pants, socks. I boxed up her jewelry, leaving a few favorite pieces out for Drew, which he said he would keep in a dish on his dresser. I wasn’t sure if Drew had a special dish in mind, so I just dumped the jewelry there, a tangle of metal and colored stones. Drew also wondered if Sarah’s coats could be given away, and I took care of this, driving them down to a clothing donation center. I went through Sarah’s computer and dragged her files to a folder Drew had set up in the cloud. It was called “Sarah.” Would anyone ever open this folder? Would the boys grow up and one day decide to look through it, and would there even be computers by then? Instead of carefully going through her papers and everything else she filled her drawers with, I put most of it in boxes and tried to label things as accurately as I could. Holiday Cards. Pictures. Letters. There were fabric swatches and catalogs stuffed with yellow Post-its. Big plans. These went into a box called “Ideas.” But soon her things were boxed away and that was that. I’d cruise through the house looking for objects that were explicitly hers, and eventually I found none. I’m not the first person to observe how little evidence people leave behind when they die. Or, I don’t know, maybe I am. Sarah was just a few boxes, and the boxes were moved out of sight.

  * * *

  —

  My husband called, wanting to know what was up. When was I coming home? The girls missed me, he said, which was poorly encrypted code, and he should have known better. He didn’t say “we” miss you. And by saying the girls missed me—since they were not exactly capable of believing that either of their parents were fully human—he meant that the technical side of their upkeep, which mostly meant the coordination of schedules with the intolerable parents of their friends, people he often refused to even name, suffered during my absence. I was needed to receive and relay signals, mostly, to rehearse concern with other parents over the frequently uncertain whereabouts of our children, who would soon be gone. A metal tower might have served the same function, and it wouldn’t need to eat. What was true was that I sort of missed the girls, but if I was home their doors would be closed, and I wouldn’t even be knocking. I’d stopped trying. I could miss them here, or I could miss them there. I wasn’t sure it mattered.

  I asked my husband about homework and bedtimes and food and screen time, in relation to our fiercely willful children, and he gave short, empty answers, assuming each question was a veiled accusation, designed to expose his inattention, which perhaps it was. I loved and trusted him, which turned out to mean that sometimes I also did not.

  “So is Drew just a mess?” my husband asked. “Is he a disaster?”

  “You know, he’s okay. He’s either in shock and holding it all in, or this is the extent of his reaction. I don’t know him that well. It’s sort of hard to say.”

  “I can’t imagine,” he said, which is often what we say when we obsessively imagine something all the time.

  “The boys seem okay,” I said, and he said, “Oh right, the boys. Holy crap. I forgot about them. The boys. Jesus. Are they just? Are they just so?” And he wasn’t really able to finish the sentence. A silence bloomed on the phone. The boys. They were and they weren’t, I thought. That’s how I would answer that question. They were just the boys and that was all.

  * * *

  —

  At dinner that night Drew explained that there would be a sum of money from the hospital. Accidental death, is what they called it. No one wanted a lawsuit, Drew told me—which I’m sure wasn’t true. I’m sure there were lawyers living in the walls who pined with their pants down for any lawsuit, anywhere, ever. How much money would it take, the hospital apparently asked Drew. How much do you have, he answered. They named a number and he named a number, and those two numbers entered the sunless, dank bodies of a team of lawyers. Out came the shiny, fresh-smelling settlement, more than enough to keep the two young boys in bright new helmets long into their dotage. Mouth guards, helmets, visors, Doritos, and game consoles: a full, rich, satisfying life on this planet.

  This was good, right? I asked. Of course it was no consolation whatsoever, and how could it be, but maybe having less financial pressure around the raising of the boys would help him somewhat, or help ensure a good life for the boys?

  Drew shook his head. There was no financial pressure to begin with, he said. They were fine. The money didn’t re
ally mean anything. But it was connected to an idea he had. A kind of plan. And it involved me. He looked at me pretty carefully. It was something he wanted to run by me.

  Drew would turn these funds over to me. Along with the two boys. That’s what he wanted to talk about. There would be plenty of money to take care of them, to pay for clothing, food, and school. He didn’t know what to do with them, what to say to them. He couldn’t stand the thought of letting them go, and he couldn’t stand the thought of keeping them. He put his head in his hands and I felt that it would not be a good idea to touch him right now.

  There was no use pretending I hadn’t seen this coming. He was such a hulking, sad figure. He thought his life would be easier without those two weird sweethearts running around bopping each other over the head.

  “Just for a little while,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  When I called my husband, he met the request with silence. It was one of the ways he responded to things. A long, thoughtful silence. Sometimes he’d leave the room. Days could go by. The conversation wasn’t over, you knew. It had just been suspended, time had stopped, and when he spoke again the world would start back up and life would continue. I admired this thoughtfulness, except when it reared up in situations that did not warrant long, pensive silences, like at restaurants when he was asked what he would like to order. Or now.