Chapter 10
They awaken to the sound of running water coming from somewhere down the hall. Is it a leak? An intruder? Could that be the shower?
Rebecca jerks up, wild eyed. Mark is already shoving his legs into jeans.
She thinks of the busted pipe they had last winter that flooded the powder room and forced them to tear out the floor and redo the wainscoting.
She pulls on a bathrobe and enters the hall at Mark’s back. Maddy’s door is closed. The nursery door too.
They creep down the unlit hall together in the direction of the kitchen. As they near the nursery, it becomes undeniable that the sound of rushing water is issuing from behind the shut door.
Rebecca’s breath has quickened, shallow gasps. Her vision starts to dot, and she reminds herself to draw full inhalations. Ever the stalwart engineer, Mark proceeds, steady on his feet.
His hand on the doorknob, he hesitates. Looks back at Rebecca.
She gives him a quick downward jerk of her chin, the best version of a nod she can muster.
He twists the knob.
The door opens with a faint squeak of hinges.
It takes a moment for them to comprehend what they are seeing.
The lid of the prism is lifted.
The inside, shadowed.
Spots glimmer wetly on the floor.
Puddles?
No—footprints.
The marks of bare feet, outlined in translucent goo.
The footsteps lead across the laminate floorboards to the bathroom. The door is slightly ajar, steam from the shower sheeting through the gap.
Mark breathes more than speaks: “What the actual fuck?”
She has never heard his voice this way. She tries to respond but cannot.
They draw close to the open prism, peering over the lip, holding their weight back on their heels as if they are gazing over the edge of a cliff.
The first thing Rebecca notices is the bed of goo, viscous and clear.
It reminds her of the ultrasound gel applied liberally across her pregnant belly, the primordial sludge that accompanies the emergence of life.
The bed is indented in the middle, like a body impression on a well-used mattress.
The goo is lit a futuristic blue from beneath and both sides by what look to be microchips lining the casket’s interior.
“Circuit boards?” Mark says in that same breathless voice.
Once again they track the trail of footprints leading to the bathroom.
Rebecca can’t help but notice the heavy-handed stagecraft of steam turning the room into a science fiction landscape. Without dropping her eyes from that gap in the door, she reaches for Mark’s hand, which finds hers halfway between them.
His palm feels cool against hers, which has gone clammy with fright.
They stand there frozen, unsure.
And then the shower shuts off.
Then comes the purr of the shower door rolling back on its modern-by-way-of-Restoration-Hardware barn track. It thuds to a stop.
Rebecca’s ears are suddenly and acutely attuned. She can hear the sound of water dripping onto the bath mat. The whoosh of a towel pulled smoothly from the rack. Fibers drawn across . . . skin? The pad of a footstep. Another.
And then the bathroom door inches outward.
A form stares there in the doorframe, backlit and naked, bath sheet hanging from one hand at its side.
For a moment, Rebecca thinks it is Mark.
“Hello,” it says.
Rebecca’s throat is too dry to use.
It steps forward into the light. Smooth features, average build.
It—he?—is well endowed but not grotesquely so.
The only thing grotesque is the flagrant sight of his nakedness.
His parts seem nonoperational, statuesque, in the image of man rather than man himself.
He is not bald so much as hairless. Smooth limbs, no eyelashes, twinning ridges of—flesh?
latex?—above each eye in place of brows.
Somehow in the midst of all this, Rebecca finds time to marvel that the grayish shade of his skin seems engineered to inoculate against any sensitive issues around race.
The form-thing-man gets down on all fours and begins mopping up the goo footprints with the bath towel. “Don’t worry,” he says, “this will wash out of the bath sheet.” His voice is flat but not robot flat; there is a soothing human inflection to it. “What would you like to call me?”
Mark and Rebecca exchange an anxious glance.
Mark manages to respond: “I . . . don’t know.”
“I will wear clothing for your and Maddy’s comfort,” the thing-man says. “I fit the same size of clothes that Mark wears. The T-shirt pack you bought at Costco last week is fine. Same with the sweatpants you ordered from and a pair of the 501s purchased on June 13 from .”
Mark manages to say “Right.” He clears his throat and clears it again. “How about . . . footwear?”
“I don’t wear shoes. Being barefoot provides better sensory input for balance and coordination.”
Mark nods several times rapidly, processing, and then takes a step toward the door.
Rebecca grabs his arm. “I’ll get the clothes. Why don’t you wait here.” It is not a question.
Moving swiftly, she fetches the items, rushing between rooms, breath hammering in her throat.
When she returns, Mark is precisely where she left him. The thing-man is standing, the sodden towel neatly folded at his feet along with two others from the bathroom.
“I can put this in the laundry,” he says as he gets dressed. “I’ll do colors and whites tomorrow so the dryer won’t wake Maddy up.”
“Mommy?”
Maddy stands in the doorway, holding her stuffty fennec fox by his oversize ears. In keeping with her unvarying system of nomenclature, he is named Mr. Fox.
Maddy’s left shoulder is shrugged up as if to block her ear, a premonition of sensory overload. She blinks wide eyed at the scene before her.
Mark and Rebecca are voiceless, caught completely off guard.
The thing-man lowers himself to one knee, making himself small, unthreatening. “How nice to meet you, young lady. Is that Mr. Fox?”
Maddy hugs the fox tight to her chest and rocks back and forth.
“Did you know that the ears of a fennec fox are the largest relative to body size of anyone in the dog family?”
Maddy’s face explodes in a smile. “Six inches!” she says. “They grow up to six inches.”
“Do you know what they are used for?”
“Radiators!” Maddy says. “Cuz it’s hot in the desert, so they have to regulate their body temperature.”
She pronounces regulate like reg-goo-late, and Rebecca feels a surge of unadulterated love for this pure, pure child. And the first premonition of appreciation for whatever this thing is in their nursery.
“I’ve been wondering,” the thing-man says, “are fennec foxes diurnal? Or nocturnal?”
“Nocturnal,” Maddy says, a touch shyly.
“Ah. That makes sense. Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
Mark and Rebecca have been watching the exchange like idiot spectators at a tennis match.
“May I call you Maddy?” the thing-man asks. “Or do you prefer Madeleine?”
“Maddy.”
“Thank you, Maddy. What would you like to call me?”
Maddy cocks her head. Her shoulder has lowered, and her arms have loosened, Mr. Fox swaying from her fist. She studies the thing-man, her brow furrowed adorably.
Then she says, “Mr. Man.”
Mr. Man nods. “I like that,” he says. “What do you say we all get back to bed. We have a big day tomorrow.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I have some cleaning to do in here.” Mr. Man nods to the goo-filled prism. And then, to Rebecca: “Would I find more towels in the linen closet?”
Rebecca somehow finds her voice. “Laundry room. Cupboard above the dryer.”
“I will do that. And I will see you all in the morning.”
“Mr. Fox is awake at night too,” Maddy says. “Want him to keep you company?”
“That is so kind, Maddy.” Mr. Man presses one hand to his heart. Or, Rebecca supposes, to the place where a heart would be. “I’d be honored.”
Maddy trudges over and offers up Mr. Fox.
Is that a wink Mr. Man makes at Maddy with one of his smooth eyes?
Maddy gazes up at him. She looks so small. “Sydney says stuffties are for babies,” she confides.
Mr. Man regards Mr. Fox with tenderness. Then he gives Mr. Fox a hug. “It seems like Sydney does not understand stuffties.”
“That’s right!” Maddy says. “She doesn’t. She doesn’t get stuffties at all.”
Mr. Man makes one of Mr. Fox’s hands wave goodnight to Maddy.
“G’night,” Maddy tells Mr. Fox and Mr. Man.
“Thank you for having me here,” Mr. Man tells them all.
Mark clears his throat. “Sure,” he says.
They stand a moment longer and then withdraw awkwardly.