The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

One evening when he says he wants to go home she puts him in the car and starts driving. When Dan was a baby, when he wouldn’t go to sleep, the sound of a car engine would soothe him, and this evening it seems to have the same effect on Gus. He settles happily into the passenger seat of their seven-year-old Honda sedan, and as she drives he strokes the armrest and croons. She’s not sure at first if the crooning means he’s agitated, but after a while she decides it’s a happy sound.

“You like going for a ride?” she says to him.

He doesn’t answer but he keeps on crooning, “ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.”

Another night she wakes up alone in the bed. Alzheimer’s victims don’t sleep much. Used to be that if Gus or Dan got up in the night she heard them, but she’s pretty tired these days.

She finds him downstairs in the kitchen, taking the bowl of macaroni and cheese out of the refrigerator. It’s covered in foil because she’s out of plastic wrap. “Are you hungry?” she asks.

Gus says, “I can take care of it.” His tone is ordinary and reassuring. He puts the bowl in the microwave.

“You can’t put it in the microwave, honey,” Mila says. “You have to take the foil off the top first.” She hates that she only calls him “honey” when she is exasperated with him, and when she doesn’t want to make him angry. It feels passive aggressive. Or something.

Gus closes the microwave door and pushes the time button.

“Gus,” she says, “don’t do that.” She reaches past him and opens the microwave door, and he pushes her away.

“Gus,” she says, “don’t.” She reaches for the door and he pushes her away again.

“Leave it alone,” he says.

“You can’t,” she says. “It’s got foil on it.” Gus is an engineer, for God’s sake. Or was.

She tries to stop him, puts her hand on his forearm, and he turns to face her, his face a grimace of anger, and he pulls his arm back and punches her in the face.

He is still a strong, tall man and the punch knocks her down.

She doesn’t even know how to feel it. No one has punched her since she was maybe twelve, and that was a pretty ineffective punch, even if her nose did bleed. It stops her from thinking. She is lying on the kitchen floor. Gus pushes the start button on the microwave.

Mila touches her face. Her lip is cut, she can taste the blood. Her face hurts.

There is a flicker as the microwave arcs. She doesn’t have it in her to get up and do anything about it. Gus frowns. Not at her, at the microwave.

Mila sits up and explores her face. One of her teeth feels wobbly to her tongue. Gus doesn’t pay any attention, he’s watching the microwave. He’s intent. It’s a parody of the engineer solving a problem.

The microwave starts arcing in earnest and Gus steps back.

Mila sits on the floor until the microwave starts smoking and only then does she get up. She doesn’t even feel like crying, although her mouth and cheek hurt. She pushes cancel on the microwave and then pulls it out of the alcove and unplugs it. She leaves it half pulled out and goes over to the sink and spits bloody saliva. She rinses her mouth and then washes the sink out.

“Go on up to bed,” she says.

Gus looks at her. Is he angry? She steps back, out of range. Now she is scared. He’s not a child, he’s a big man. Is he going to be upset with her because he’s still hungry?

“I’ll heat you up some soup,” she says. “Okay?”

Gus looks away, his mouth a little open.

She grabs an oven mitt, opens the smoking microwave carefully and takes out the macaroni and cheese. The ceramic bowl has cracked in half and the foil is blackened, but she holds it together until she can throw it out. Gus sits down. She takes the microwave outside on the grass. She doesn’t think it’s burning inside, but she isn’t sure. She can’t sit and watch it, not with Gus unsupervised. So if it starts to smolder, it starts to smolder. The grass is damp.

Back inside she finds Gus in the living room eating ice cream out of the carton with a serving spoon. There is ice cream on him and on the couch.

She’s afraid to go near him, so she sits on a chair and watches him eat.

She cannot shake the feeling that the man in front of her should not be Gus, because the Gus she has been married to would not, would never, hit her. The Gus she was married to had certain characteristics that were inalienable to him-his neatness-almost fussiness. His meticulousness. His desperate need to be good, to be oh so good. But this is still Gus, too. Even as the ice cream drips on his legs and on the couch. What exactly is Gus? What defines Gusness? What is it she married? It is not just this familiar body. There is some of Gus inside, too. Something present that she can’t put her finger on, maybe only habits of Gusness.

Later, when he goes up to bed, sticky with ice cream, she throws out the carton even though it is still half full. Outside, the microwave sits inert and smelling faintly of hot appliance. She goes upstairs and goes to bed in the other bedroom.