The Resident: An Odd Man Out (part thirteen)

The Resident

Chapter Four

An Odd Man Out

(part thirteen)

They had been married in December of 1989. Claudie had died in February of 2011. A day John remembered also for the weather, emergence from a week of rain, to an upsurge of heat, 85 degrees on a winter day.

Twenty-one years, one month, and twelve days…

Had been their life.

Both his parents came to help with the blinds. The Great Dane Odin spread legs on the kitchen floor, licking under cabinets…where Claudie had tucked a few Cheez-Its.

But she stayed upstairs during visits, writing. “Tell your mother it’s a birth defect. And tell her I can’t have children.”

John’s father decided, “Porphyria. Supposed to be how the vampire legend got started. Keep her out of the sun.”

“Douglas,” Gina said. “Why are we here, hanging blinds?”

“Keep, in the sense of ‘continue’.”

“But. As to children… Wouldn’t genetic testing help? Isn’t it possible in a case like this? John?”

When they bickered, he tuned them out. Their bickering was more a game between them, anymore, of: “I see what you’re doing and you won’t get away with it.”

He had Aura’s list in his back pocket, was itching to check off the first item, then learn from his mother what a traverse rod was. He would rather learn factual things without his father’s store of arcana budging in…

While another thing was budging, busily…

As every day. My wife is telling me she’s a visitor from the future.

“Am I crazy? Well, is Aura crazy, is Teconieshe crazy? Am I part of a whole crazy club? You’ll have to follow the clues and draw your own logical conclusions. Or any conclusions you like, of course, I can’t prove these things. I do have people who will take care of me, John, if you don’t want me any longer.”

(In their life together, she had threatened this only once.)

His father was saying to his mother’s tight-lipped reception, purple urine. Whence the term porphyria, Greek for purple.

“So, the clue is the green,” John said aloud, by mistake.

“What was that?”

“The country  side  I mean. Claudie needs peace and quiet. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near kids… Discussing kids.”

“Keep away from them. Keep, in the sense of stay.”

“Douglas.”

“Gina. Claudie’s doctor can tell her what to do, when she asks him a question of her own.”

“I am not whatsoever pressuring anyone, Douglas. I am curious about a new thing I’ve learned, if that’s all right.”

“What if I take the dog for a drive and bring us back some burgers?” John’s father asked.

48

Tithonians

An Odd Man Out (part one)

(2022, Stephanie Foster)