Paul Stanton disappeared on a hot Thursday afternoon in July, quietly and without trouble. His executive assistant assumed he was out to lunch, taking down messages from three clients and directing one partner to call back later. But later came, and all that remained of Paul was his striped blue suit jacket, dutifully hugging the back of his tufted leather chair.
The letter arrived three weeks later. When Paul’s wife Jane saw the address on the envelope, she told herself that in order to stay on her feet for as long as she needed to, she had to come up with a plan. First, Jane decided that she’d get in touch with Officer Kinsley at the police station. She thought about how she’d say it – does one request to cancel a missing person report? Rescind it? Or would the mere mention of the letter arriving from Foul Mountain be enough? After that, she’d call her sister. Formulating these next steps in her head helped Jane momentarily delay the gravity of the news she held in her shaking hands, giving her just enough time to walk from the mailbox to the porch, find her keys, and close the door behind her as she slid down to the floor.
Step one. She took the cell phone out of her purse and scrolled through the recent calls to find the number for Officer Kinsley. Unsure if her voice would be available to her then, she typed out a text message. Officer, you can stop looking for my husband. Paul Stanton. I received a letter from Foul Mnt. Thanks for your help.
It didn’t really matter what she told the police, Jane thought as she hit send. Her husband has been found and forever lost.
***
The first time Paul saw her, Jane was picking out a pomegranate at Gary the Grocer. He rarely shopped for food, subsisting mainly on free pretzels at his office and Chinese takeout. But that evening in June, he was out of the one constant in his mostly empty fridge, a value-size jug of orange juice. He noticed Jane in the produce section with a pomegranate in each hand. She was feeling the weight of each one and rubbing her thumbs across the smooth skin. He’d never seen someone so invested in finding the right piece of fruit before. Her short jet-black hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, and her face shimmered under the fluorescent lights that spanned the store. Paul pretended to inspect the navel oranges nearby, slowly making his way over to her. When he got close enough, he said the first thing that came to his mind.
“How, uh, how can you tell that it’s good?”
“I’m sorry?” Jane uttered, not bothering to even glance in his direction. She picked up a new pair of pomegranates to inspect. She turned them over in her hands, looking for blemishes.
“I love these things, but I never know how to pick a good one. You know what I mean?” Paul lied. He never had a pomegranate in his life.
“Oh, I actually have no idea what I’m doing here,” she said, turning to face him. “I’m just hoping for some special selection power to come to me.”
Paul couldn’t look away from her face. “Well, when it does, you’ll have to be very careful,” he said, picking up the fruit himself. “That kind of power is a privilege that must be used with caution.”
“Oh yes, of course. I’ll be careful,” she said, smiling. “I, uh, I’m not usually this picky. It’s just hard to find a good one. And since they’re pricey, I tend to spend a lot of time doing this, I guess,” she said, chuckling.
Paul stared at her. She realized that words have just been tumbling out of her mouth and into the space between them. It was a rare occasion for Jane, not thinking her way through every moment of existence. She put down the pomegranate that didn’t feel as smooth to the touch as the other and extended her hand to Paul. “I’m Jane.”
***
She felt the phone vibrate in her hand. It was a message from Officer Kinsley. Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Stanton. There’s a support group for spouses affected by The Illness. I can give you more information if you’re interested. Please let me know if there’s anything else that I can do.
Jane wondered how often he repeated those words these days. Until a year ago, The Illness was just a strange rumor people discussed at dinner parties. There were stories out of Japan, Estonia, and Mexico. An offbeat article on the phenomenon in the New Yorker. Jane’s neighbor Sylvia believed it was an unfounded myth dreamt up by the darkest souls of the internet. Paul’s sister told her The Illness was just a social construct, created to perpetuate the patriarchy. But eventually, it made its way to the evening news and to everyday lives.
The Illness became real to Jane when one of her colleagues, a well-respected cardiac surgeon and father of three, didn’t show up to work six months ago. His official letter of resignation arrived from Foul Mountain to the hospital a month after he disappeared. After Dr. Gerush had gone, Jane read as much as she could about The Illness. Dr. Benjamin Foul was the first to attempt to classify the disease based on the initial batch of U.S. cases in Oregon. Asked why he called it The Illness by a morning talk show host, Dr. Foul explained that he found it to be a suitable term that both reflected how little was understood about the affliction and masked its brutality.
There are no symptoms, no warning signs, and no known genetic dispositions for The Illness. The circumstances differ for each married man, but all of them report that once it comes on suddenly, the urge is unbearably definitive and excruciating up until the very moment that it’s relieved. The Illness was now in the news on a weekly basis.
A tourist visiting New York with his wife kisses her softly on the forehead. A moment later, he pushes her in front of an incoming Q train at Union Square. A real estate broker in Arizona sets his house on fire while his wife is asleep on the couch in the living room. She is survived by her husband and their two golden retrievers.
Jane watched interviews with some of these men on YouTube, filmed as part of the research at Foul Mountain. They all talked about a blinding desire to murder their wives with such a sense of calm, you’d think they were chatting about fishing or playing golf. Dr. Foul and his team of researchers still couldn’t explain why The Illness affected only husbands and wives. “As if living with a man isn’t hard enough already,” Jane’s sister liked to say.
***
She ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter. The paper felt nearly weightless between her fingers.
Dear Mrs. Stanton,
I regret to inform you that your husband, Mr. Paul Stanton, has been diagnosed with The Illness. As you were not in his presence when Mr. Stanton felt the initial urge, he acted quickly enough to commit himself to The Illness Research Institute at Foul Mountain. In doing so, Mr. Stanton saved you from substantial physical harm or fatal injury. While we at the Institute at Foul Mountain recognize what difficult news this might be for a family to process, we hope that it will bring you some comfort to know that your husband’s action may be indicative of the commencement of immunity among the afflicted. Mr. Stanton’s choice may bring us that much closer to a cure.
At your earliest convenience, please review the enclosed brochure, which outlines your legal options, opportunities for communication with your husband going forward, and our wide array of family support programs.
With my deepest respect and condolences,
Benjamin Foul, MD
Founder and Executive Director
The Illness Research Institute at Foul Mountain
Tears rolled down her face and onto the letter, blurring the blue ink that made up Dr. Foul’s signature. Jane reached for her phone and scrolled through her recent calls to find Emily’s name. The phone rang once before she picked up.
“Hi there, sis. How are you, honey?”
“Em, I…can you come over?” Jane said, struggling to sound out the words. “Now?”
“Is everything OK? Honey, can you talk to me?” Jane heard the jingle of her sister’s keys. “Is it Paul?”
“He was really good to us, wasn’t he Em,” Jane nearly whispered into the phone.
“Was? Jane, can you tell me what’s going on? Did they find him?”
“Yeah,” Jane mouthed into the phone. “And we can’t know him anymore.” She lowered the phone, her sister’s words now just a collection of muffed sounds. At the house next door, her neighbor’s German shepherd was sprawled across the living room floor. He jumped up suddenly and ran to the window, registering the faint, harrowing sound of someone’s scream.
***
Paul proposed to Jane after two years of dating, but only because he knew she’d need that much time to determine that he was the one. She was unlike anyone he’d ever met – constantly preoccupied with every decision required by life and rarely satisfied but always ahead of everyone else. Paul knew he wanted to marry her after their first date, when she ordered both regular and sweet potato fries and then mixed them together in one bowl. “It took many years of trial and error, but there is no better way to eat fries,” she told him as she dipped a bunch of fries in ketchup. “Trust me.” The mere idea of giving so much thought to everything both exhausted and inspired him.
When Paul pulled out a ring box on a hike in the Adirondacks, Jane had already decided that she would say yes when he asked. She joked that all of the options that came with planning a wedding might just drive her insane, so they got married at City Hall on a breezy summer afternoon. The couple celebrated their three-year wedding anniversary a week before Paul disappeared.
***
Emily insisted on staying with her sister for an entire week after the letter arrived. Unable to sleep, Jane spent the nights wandering through the house. She often found herself on the living room couch, studying the pictures of her and Paul on the fireplace mantel. There was a photo of them from their wedding, a shot of them in front of their house the day they closed on it, and one from his firm’s annual summer cookout. In the photo, Jane is tipsy and laughing wildly about the dollop of mustard on her white linen shirt. Paul is next to her, still unable to look away.
“The pain is mourning, honey,” her sister said right before she left to sleep in her own house. “It will get better with time.” After giving her sister a long hug, Jane locked the door and walked back to the couch in the living room.
***
Six weeks after she got the letter, Jane felt ready to turn to the brochure that described her options. She opened a bottle of wine and sat down at the dining room table. According to Dr. Foul, she was “in control.” She got to decide if she wanted to communicate with her husband or just move on. There were, of course, certain parameters to the interactions. Letters would be the sole mode of communication. Specially trained screeners at Foul Mountain reviewed all of the outgoing patient mail, blacking out anything that may upset the intended receiver. A list of ways a husband could decapitate his wife among questions about how Tommy is doing at school. A paragraph about how a man can’t stop thinking about crushing his wife’s skull after a description of that day’s lunch special at Foul Mountain. At some point, the screeners didn’t have anything to leave uncensored anymore. Instead of a letter, the wife received a phone call from Dr. Foul himself, who explained the progression of The Illness in the least scientific terms that he could.
Couples ran out of time, every time. Jane decided that she didn’t want to go through that. She and Paul never talked about what they’d do in this situation, but she wanted to believe that he’d agree with her decision. She went over the statements next to the boxes on the form that came with the brochure and marked her choice. Jane pressed hard into the paper with the pen and reread the words after she was done. I assert my given right to disengage from all communications with my husband. She drank the last sip of the wine in her glass and headed upstairs.
***
Eight months later, Jane was not the same, but still breathing. She was diligent about doing what you’re supposed to do to keep yourself going – yoga, therapy, meditation, gratitude journaling, kale smoothies for breakfast. But she found that sharing her pain with those who knew exactly what it felt like was the only way to dull it. Jane joined two support groups for affected wives, recommended by Officer Kinsley. She used one to soften her anger towards Paul and the other to manage her guilt. The first group met on Tuesday nights in a musty church basement. Some days, the mere thought of the lukewarm pot of weak coffee, the jug of powdered creamer, and the red plastic stirrers waiting for the women in that basement made her nauseous. But she liked that she didn’t need to rationalize how she felt while sitting on a folding chair in that circle.
The other support group met on Thursdays in a YMCA gymnasium. Among those women, she related most to Sarah, an accountant with twin teenage boys. Sarah’s husband tried to strangle her with a garden hose in their backyard as she cleaned the pool and just as her kids were walking in from basketball practice. They managed to peel her husband off of Sarah and hold him back long enough for her to run in the house and call 911. He was committed to Foul Mountain an hour later. Like Jane, Sarah had decided to cut off communication with her husband immediately. “I chose to jump straight into the volcano, rather than to climb it first,” she told Jane one night after a meeting. “Either way, you end up in the same place.”
***
That night, Jane resisted reaching for her phone for as long as she could. When she finally did, the clock read 3:34 AM. She sighed heavily and decided that she had to go to the kitchen. Too afraid to develop a dependency on the sleeping pills her doctor prescribed, Jane kept the bottle in the pantry. She swallowed the pill without water. As she turned to head back upstairs, she heard him first. “Hi Jane, hello my love.”
Paul was standing by the kitchen island, dissecting a pomegranate. He put down the fruit slowly, without taking his eyes off of her. “Please. Don’t be afraid.”
***
Jane didn’t know how to drive. Ever since she could remember, she found it stressful and never yearned to be in the driver’s seat of a car. Sick of carting her around, Jane’s parents forced her to take driving lessons when she turned 23. And even though she met her driving instructor Mr. Terrio, a retired chemistry teacher, every Sunday afternoon for two months, she failed her driver’s test.
As soon as Jane arrived to meet Mr. Terrio, she would get in on the passenger’s side before he could get out of the driver’s seat. She’d tell him she had a headache, she wanted to look at the clouds merging from the hood of the car, she needed to smell the forest. A neighbor once reported to Jane’s father that he saw Mr. Terrio doing donuts in a field while Jane hung out of the passenger side window, her hair nearly brushing the grass. Paul always loved hearing that story, jolting at the thought of her then, ruthlessly wielding her beauty. “That damn chemistry teacher,” he would say. “That lucky bastard.”
***
Jane registered that Paul was saying something, but she couldn’t make out what it was. His words echoed through the kitchen, distracting her from the task at hand. She ruled out the knife block that stood to Paul’s left by the stove. The cast iron pan was also an option, but it sat on the bottom shelf of the kitchen island. Jane thought of the hammer in the utility closet. If she acted quickly, she could knock over the console table to block his way, buy herself time to grab it from the shelf. When did she use that hammer last?
“Jane. Can you hear me?” Paul asked, trying to keep his voice calm. “Jane, don’t be afraid, please. Just, give me a…can we talk?”
The garden shears were also in that closet. She could grab those instead of the hammer. Maybe both if she’s lucky. She realized she had no idea how much time had passed, but it had to be long enough for him to at least try to lunge at her. She focused on trying to hear Paul’s words.
“Jane, I know this is scary, but just listen to me, please, my love. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“The letter,” Jane finally said. “I got the letter from Foul Mountain. How did you…should I call 911?”
“No, Jane. Please don’t. I don’t know how much time I have as it is, I…can we just sit down and talk?” he said, his voice cracking slightly. “I can-”
“Stay right where you are,” she said. Jane gripped the wooden floor with her toes, a trick she learned in yoga to help ground her body. “I have the letter with Dr. Foul’s signature and your diagnosis.” She hadn’t looked at it since the day it arrived, but she pictured the piece of paper at the bottom of the desk drawer upstairs.
“I know. I know this doesn’t make sense. Can we just sit down and talk about this?”
Jane’s lower back radiated with pain from holding herself so still. I should be dead by now, she thought.
“Look, I’m going to step away from the counter and move toward the living room. I’ll hold my hands up the entire time. You can grab a knife or anything else you want. You can tell me where to sit or stand. However you want to do this. I just want to talk, I promise I won’t hurt you, please. Please, Jane?”
She needed a weapon. Jane nodded and slowly moved in the direction of the knife block. Paul raised his hands above his head and walked backwards toward the living room.
Jane grabbed the Japanese chef’s knife. With the blade in her hand, she regained the regularity of her breath. She made him sit on the armchair across from the couch. Tears blurred her vision and she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Paul was thinner but somehow looked brighter, as if replenished.
“Jane, I’m so sorry,” Paul began. “I have so much I want to say. I can’t stand to see you so afraid of me. First, I want to tell you that Dr. Foul has been testing a cure. And because I checked into the Institute voluntarily, I’ve been a part of the testing, and Jane, I swear, it’s working, it worked,” he said. His eyes were wet, too. “But despite my progress, Dr. Foul says it will be years before it’s FDA-approved.”
“A cure?” Jane nearly whispered. “Is this why they let you leave?” She tried to remember the knife in her hand, tightening her grip on the handle.
“Well, I’ve been taking the pills for a few months now, and I just, all I feel for you is love, like before. I wanted to tell you that I’m better, that I’m coming back,” he said, smiling. “But you didn’t want me to write to you. You didn’t want to write to me, either.”
Jane felt a pang of shame, like she drove by someone in trouble on the side of the road and didn’t stop to help.
“So Dr. Foul let you leave?”
“I understand why you made that choice, I get it,” Paul said, ignoring her question. “But I got better. I feel like me again, Jane. I love you so much.” His hands trembled as he ran them through his hair, across his mouth.
Jane had come to terms with never hearing Paul say anything to her ever again. She was unprepared for the warm pull of his voice, those words. She had to remind herself to focus.
“So they let you go then? Because you’re cured?”
Paul took some time to respond. “They didn’t exactly let me go…I, one of the cooks in the cafeteria, turns out I represented him in a case once. I convinced him to help me out, so I can come see you, Jane. So I can show you that I’m ready to resume our life. I’ve missed you so much, I would never-”
“You escaped?” Jane shouted, instinctively jumping up from the couch.
“I did, but only because I’m better. And I want to show you. And when they come here, they’ll see it, too. I just want to be with my wife. Please don’t scream. Please, sit down. Please?”
Jane heard the familiar desperation in Paul’s voice. It was the same longing tone he used when he asked if he could unzip her dress after a night out.
“When was the last time you got the pill? What if, does it…wear off?”
“I’ve thought about that Jane,” he said, lighting up. “That’s why I’ve been pretending to take the pill for the last month. And still, I just want to be with you. I swear to you, I am me again, Jane. Me.”
“I need to think,” she said. “I need to think this through.” She suddenly felt lightheaded and had to sit back down.
“I understand, I-”
“This doesn’t mean that I believe you,” she said. “I just need to figure out what to do right now. Just, give me a minute.”
Paul leaned back in the armchair. Without his voice filling the room, Jane found herself enveloped in a fog of exhaustion. The adrenaline that fueled her up to this point was receding. She closed her eyes for what seemed like only a moment, but when she opened them again, there was a strip of sunlight across the rug. Paul was still sitting across from her, his hands in his pockets now, shifting his gaze between the pictures on the fireplace and Jane. She surprised them both with a smile.
“That day, that was at my firm’s summer picnic,” Paul nearly whispered. “You didn’t want to go, and I don’t blame you, my colleagues are not the greatest conversationalists, unless you’re really into hedge funds and yachts,” he said, smiling back at her.
“You’re right about that,” Jane said. She rubbed the handle of the knife with her thumb.
“You were nervous, on the way there you told me that you’d feel out of place.”
“And you told me not to worry, you wouldn’t leave me by myself,” Jane said. “But then Frank wanted to show you his new Mercedes.”
“And that’s how you downed two beers before I got back,” Paul continued. “That was a historic accomplishment in the drinking career of Jane Stanton. When I finally escaped Frank and got back to you, you told me you felt fuzzy.”
“And you couldn’t stop laughing at me,” she said, remembering the warm current of the beer running through her body.
“I thought putting some food in your stomach would help with that, or at least prevent a hangover. So we walked over to the hot dog station.”
“Your secretary gave me a dirty look.”
“Yeah, well you stuck your tongue out at her. Loosen up, Carol!” Paul exclaimed.
“I meant it!” Jane said, actually laughing now.
“You insisted on putting more mustard on your hot dog than ketchup, even though you don’t really like mustard. Most of it ended up on your shirt. The photographer happened to be walking by the buffet then.” Paul looked from Jane to the fireplace. “And he captured you, magic as ever.”
Jane suddenly felt hot. The sun was on her ankles now.
“I think about that day a lot. I think about all the days with you,” he said, slowly leaning forward. “Life without you isn’t life. It’s just-”
“Time,” she said.
“It’s just time,” Paul repeated. Jane felt like she was sinking deeper into the crevices of the couch. She tried to raise her head, but her eyelids weighed her down. Maybe there was a way back to the picnic, she thought, a way back to them.
“You hear those birds out there, Jane?” she heard Paul say, then the birds, chirping in the early light.
“They’re feeding each other,” he said.
She smiled. Jane thought she heard a faint clinking noise, like a bunch of champagne glasses coming together for a toast in the distance. Maybe a vow renewal was in order. She forced herself to lift up her head and look toward the sound. The garden shears were at Paul’s feet. He moved swiftly, a knee pressed in her stomach, a hand across her mouth, the palm sticky from the pomegranate.
From the couch, Paul could see the rose bushes in the backyard, clearly neglected in his absence. He always enjoyed those flowers, their cloying sweet smell in the summer heat. With some difficulty, Paul pulled out the shears. He walked outside toward the bushes, forgoing the gloves in the closet. Not one thing would bother him now.
Olga Dauer is an aspiring writer originally from Kherson, Ukraine. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two toddler daughters. Foul Mountain is her first published story.
Idle Ink 