OUTSIDE HUSBAND by Natalie Warther
The survivalist stuff started as a hobby for my husband. An attempt to disconnect from the tech-dependent modern world. But quickly, our renovated backyard started looking more like a trash dump than a place to entertain the neighbors. He just kept making “tools.” Dental floss snares. Crayon candles. Pantyhose fishing nets. Dryer lint tinder. Maple syrup mouse traps. He used every single trash bag in the house for the water collection system. “Where are your shoelaces?” I called to my sons as they trudged towards the bus stop, flopping out of their sneakers.“Dad took them for his tourniquet kit.”When he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was outside. “Are you going to help me with these dishes?” I called one night from the kitchen window as he crouched over his little fire pit, throwing Vaseline-soaked cotton balls into the crayon flame. “I’m tending,” he said.Frisbee plates. Paperclip fish hooks. Cardboard sun hats. Coffee can pots. He took all the condoms from the nightstand and stuffed them with twigs. “To keep the kindling dry.” I marveled at how quickly it happened. One day he was coming into the house, sweaty from a long bike ride, kissing my neck so the kids would scream, the next he was fashioning my black thong into a slingshot and hoarding the apple seeds and peach pits that came back in the kids’ lunch boxes. Now he lives completely outside. His new rule: no coming inside the house, no interacting with electricity, no modern appliances or food products. The part I don’t understand is, isn’t a frisbee just as man-made as a plate?Apparently the Super Bowl is an exception. He comes in at half time, leaving the backdoor wide open. I say, I thought you weren’t supposed to come inside, and he says, We could get a TV for the deck, and I say, I thought you weren’t supposed to use electricity, and he says, I’m observing it, not using it, and I say, Don’t sit on the furniture. His friend comes by to borrow a saw. “Is Jim home?” “Kind of,” I say.We meet our counselor in the park. She asks what I miss most about my husband. I say it was how he made us laugh. “I can still make you laugh,” he says. So now he does weird things in front of the kitchen window, like draw a smiley face in mud on his belly, or pretend he’s being beaten up by a ghost, throwing himself on the ground repeatedly. Mostly I pretend I don’t see him.“Is it a sex thing?” my girlfriends ask.“Right, like, what does that say, that he wants to eat mice?”“Did you try calling him filthy? A filthy animal? Did you try calling him a filthy, disgusting, animal?” I haven’t tried that.The boys play games on his old phone. I buy them new crayons. I’ve learned how to clean the grill, back the truck into the garage, file taxes, fix the TV, fix the garbage disposal, pleasure myself sexually, trim a steak, and snake the drain with a hanger. He’s learned how to shit in a hole and eat bugs.I write reminders for him with sidewalk chalk on the driveway: BEN–SEMIFINALS– SATURDAY 2PM. He walks to the rink. Stands on the dumpster out back. Watches from the window.I know for a fact that he drinks beer out there. He must be taking it from the fridge in the garage. The electric fridge that uses electricity to keep its man-made contents cold.We put his shoes and suits in the dress-up box and my sons pretend to be my old husband. “Can we show Dad?” Luke says, but their dad’s already in his shelter, a piece of bark propped in front like a door. I flick the porch light once, twice, three times, he pops out his head and shouts “GOODNIGHT!” The boys blow kisses, naked except for the suit blazers. “WE LOVE YOU!” They yell. I shut the door and lock it.On Ben’s birthday my husband eats cake on the porch and the kids take selfies with him through the window. They draw pictures of our family: me with a stick-figure boy in each hand, their dad in a tree, beard, no pants. My mouth is a colored-in half moon, sangria red, no teeth, all lips and gums. I could be screaming or bleeding. Luke asks, Is Daddy going to come home soon? And I say, You’ll have to ask your father that. He says, Daddy, are you going to come home soon? And my husband says, I live outside now, Buddy, and Luke says, can we live outside with Daddy? And I say, No, and he says, Why not? And I say, Because we’re people, not animals, and he says, Is Daddy an animal? And I say, Yes. “It’s got to be a midlife crisis,” my girlfriends say. “Did he try jogging?”“Did he try sports cars?” “Did he try strippers?” “Yes,” they say. “We could fix this with strippers.”I take the garbage cans out to the curb and there’s my husband, gathering sticks, wearing his Eagles jersey, no pants. A true outdoorsman. He’s rubbing his beard and glaring at the front lawn. I could teach you how to use the mower, he says, and I say, I don’t have time, and he says, Well, I could mow it. And I say, Oh no, Dear, I wouldn’t want you to break one of your rules. I clean the gutters.I set up the new soccer net.I carry our sleeping sons from the car to their beds.The grass in the front yard gets longer and longer. The boys love it this way; they call it “the jungle.” I carve the Jack O'Lanterns. Pop the eyes out of the one that looks most like him.“I’m sunburnt,” he says to me through the window.“Put some mud on it.”“I have blisters,” he says to me when I walk to the mailbox.“Put some mud on it.”I stop changing the lightbulbs and stop washing the car and I throw out all of his clothes. Change the garage code. Lock all the doors and blast the AC. Bring the beer into the house. Drink it all. The grass just grows and grows.
