In my bedroom at pre-dawn, I stare at the ceiling fan, inspired by silence in motion. “Be the fan,” I whisper, then kiss the birthmark on my husband’s back, the one resembling the Aquarius constellation starting from the nape of his neck. I peel away white linens. My knee’s crack like raw carrots as I stand. I whip around to find Derek undisturbed, and slink into the hallway, grabbing the long sweater over the footboard as I tip-toe out, reduced to a nervous criminal sneaking in the night.
The cleaner and coffee scented kitchen is a refuge of natural materials: marble countertops, blonde shaker cabinets, wood paneled appliances, stone floors, and a mini-kumquat tree planted in a jute basket.
I pour water into the tree, taken from my mother’s house after she passed, and sip my coffee from my favorite oversized mug spelling, “Human Race.” I open the window and leer towards the dew, the chirping birds, the pink rising sun, breathing with my eyes closed, finding gratitude for the compromised life I lead. I remind myself of what I have, perform my daily acceptance of dead dreams, and flutter my eyes open as I exhale through thirty-year-old lungs, hoping it’s not too late for one or two dreams to still come true. A spark. A sip.
I turn for more coffee and am startled by Derek sitting on the countertop in his underpants. “Holy shit,” I gasp. He smiles at me, a side smile, like he’s pleased to spike my cortisol.
“Weird sunrise, huh?”
“Is it? I’m so used to the city sky I can’t tell if this is just what it’s like upstate.”
“It’s almost time,” Derek says excitedly, as he hops from the counter and nearly skips down the hallway to his office.
“Aren’t you cold?” I call to him, but he closes the door without answering.
Later in the morning, I emerge from my shower to a completely dark house and approach the kitchen in my robe to investigate. Derek drew the blinds, even the curtain next to the kumquat tree. I find him staring into a toaster. We don’t have a toaster. I am simultaneously interested and cautious.
“Hey babe, the kumquat tree needs light. You have to keep that shade open.”
Derek ignores me, staring close to the toaster’s bright red coils. I imagine clear blue eyes piercing into the electricity, laser focused until a spark bursts from the slots, causing him to jump back. He looks towards me, wide-eyed. “Pretty cool, right?”
“Um, I, where did you get that toaster?”
“I made it.”
He takes eggs from the refrigerator, and I notice a burner on full blast with no food cooking. My eyes dart to the toaster, to the drawn blinds, to my husband’s wild hair as he breaks his eggs, still in his underwear.
“When was the last time you took your medication?”
“I’m done with that.”
“Babe, you’re really not supposed to just stop that medicine.”
“You know? I think this thing will actually make toast.”
“I’m calling the doctor.”
“I feel great. Better than ever.”
“You’re going to kill my mother’s tree.”
He shrugs and tends to his eggs. I throw the curtains open, flooding light to my mother’s plant, filling the room with blinding white in the process. I squint and sit, seeing white snow from the yellow sun hitting my face. When my eyes clear, Derek stands with plated eggs, toast and a proud grin.
“It totally works.”
He walks over to the blinds and closes them, making the house completely dark again. I can’t tell if I’m more stunned by the speed in which he cooked, or the sheer disregard for me wanting the light.
I snap from despondence, hearing Derek say, “Hag.” But as I look at him sitting and eating, then admiring his toast, it seems impossible that he spoke.
“What did you say?”
“What? I didn’t say anything.”
“I gotta get to work.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Can I make you a doctor’s appointment?”
“You can, but I’m not going.”
“Will you at least put my mother’s tree outside if you’re going to be a vampire today? I don’t know what I’d do if that thing died.”
“Yes. Yes, I will. As soon as I eat.” Derek holds up his toast, “You want some?”
I drive from Pleasantville into White Plains, to my day job as a receptionist at an advertising agency. Next to me, the other receptionist is a heavily tattooed, queer woman a few years younger than me. Charlie. She also moved up from the city not too long ago. We got along right away, both open books after a gentle prying, both doing the job for the paycheck, and later that day, when my entire life changes, Charlie becomes my co-captain. We both wear headsets.
“I’m bringing her home to my mom this weekend,” Charlie says.
“Is this the one?”
“You know me.”
“Right, ho’s in different gender codes.”
“I am only seeing her at the moment.”
“Maybe you’re settling down. You can be like me doesn’t that sound great?”
“It does actually.”
“I miss my life. The city.”
“How’s baby making going?”
“I think Derek called me a hag this morning. So, that well.”
“You THINK he called you a hag?”
“It might have been the voice in my head.”
“I have that. She tells me to eat weed and have ice cream for dinner.”
“He’s so extra. All the time. He stopped taking his medication.”
“Uh, that’s no joke. I could die if I stop mine.”
“Maybe I should let him tether away. I could probably still get my career back.”
“Self preservation, sister. I feel that. I mean, who hasn’t had a starter marriage?”
My cell phone rings with Derek calling. I hold the phone up to show Charlie, and she nods, letting me know she’s covering the lines while I take a personal call.
“Hi, I’m working.”
“Lauren, you need to come home.”
“What happened?”
“The skin on my back is on fire.”
“Babe, I can’t leave work because you have a rash.”
“My moles are pulsating. They are really big. They’re as big as soccer balls.”
“What?”
“Oh my God, one just popped! My back is bubbling like boiled water!”
As his moles swell and burst, he screams in agony. I scream-whisper into the phone, “I’m calling the doctor right now.”
“I don’t need a doctor!” Derek screams, and hangs up the phone.”
I sit at my desk watching the hustle of a functioning office while my partner is melting down. My phones ring and I answer the lines, then transfer them to the appropriate extension. My world spins. Charlie tries to make eye contact with me, but I’m shell shocked, re-traumatized from the last time Derek tried to kill himself, from uprooting the life that made me happy, from being indentured to a psychotic. Charlie grabs my arm to get my attention.
“Is he going to hurt himself?
“I really don’t know.”
“You need to go. I got your lines.”
“Thank you.”
“Call me if you need anything. Or if he tries to hurt you.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
I race home, screech into the driveway, and run into the house to find Derek passed out on the floor of our bathroom. His back is full of blood. I try to pick him up, but he is like a corpse. I check his pulse. It’s faint, but there is so much blood. I scream his name, throw cold water on his face, and shake him furiously, to no response. The best I can do is put a blanket on him and call 911.
Our bedroom is full of ripped clothing. Derek tore his closet apart. He must have put on tee-shirt after tee-shirt, and I imagine they burned his skin, clearly specifically his back. His sensory issues with clothing is extreme at times, but this time it seems like he wrestled his closet like an alligator. I retreat to the kitchen to get my breath, knowing the medics en route.
Peering down the hallway, his usually locked office door is cracked. I push open the door to reveal a sort of inventor’s workshop. It is supposed to be an artist’s studio, but as I pick up guts from dissected machinery, I wonder, is this art? Or madness? All around the room, inventions crackle with life. A drafting table holds a sketch of another solar system. Complicated math equations hang on the walls. I find evidence Derek is creating a device to open a worm hole, or at least attempting to.
I cry. I cry hard. A post-it note is stuck to his laptop that says, “Lauren, open the flash drive and play the video.” He left his password, and when I hit play, there is a video of him, blood dripping down his arms. I look for blood around the desk where he’d just filmed, and find no trace of him. I hit play.
“Lauren! Lauren, I hope this is working. I’ll keep talking. They are coming. The things that took me when I was a kid and made these markings on my back. There are hundred’s of us. Find their families. Start at the Field of Daisy’s headquarters in New Mexico. I’ve been in contact with them already when I was on Earth. It’s where we organized, so you have some explanation. I hope you get this message. I will be trying to contact you. Keep all my machines turned on.”
I run down the hall towards the bathroom, to where Derek has mutilated himself. I want to scream that he cannot collapse the energy of multiple suns from his home office. He is not a quantum physicist. We do not own a super computer. He cannot travel through space time. He must start his medication again. I want to beat on his bloody back for being this heavy a burden, for letting his brain fall apart at my peril.
But when I get to the bathroom, Derek is gone, along with any sign of a bloody man on the ground just five minutes ago. I grab the door frame, completely floored by the impossibility.
Red lights fill the house, followed by a powerful pounding on the front door. I excuse myself, telling the paramedics that Derek is fine after all. When they ask to see him, I explain he left. They look at me dubious, and give me a warning, telling me it’s illegal to call when there is no emergency. I close the door and melt to the ground.