Splitting the Baby

The van was canary yellow, too cheery for its subject matter. It was plunked on the edge of the city park where I took my lunch breaks. The large white banner on the side proclaimed its purpose in a staid sans-serif:
DIVORCE
QUICK, EASY, CHEAP
I would be lying if I said I approached it in a moment of weakness. I was in the doldrums of an entire miserable decade of weakness.
There was no one in the driver?s seat. There appeared to be a sliding door of some sort, the type one would see on an ice cream truck, but it was shut. Perhaps the owner was out to lunch of his own. On a whim, I knocked.
The door opened with such sudden velocity that I jumped.
There was a person in the van, staring straight at me as if he?d been expecting me. He was a withered old man, wrinkles scoring his face, round bottle-bottom glasses perched on his nose and making his eyes look cartoonishly large. He sniffed the air and flicked his narrow tongue out, like he was tasting it.
?How many divorces would you like?? he rasped in a voice that sounded like a Brillo pad against a steel pan.
The question threw me off. ?Uh, I have just the one wife.?
?One divorce then. A moment, please.? He disappeared back into the van, which was dark enough to render me unable to see him. I stood there with my hands in my pockets, wondering what the hell I was doing. He returned with a stack of papers and started perusing them, filling in blanks here and there with his pen.
?Would you mind telling me a little more about this, um, service?? I asked.
He licked his thumb before leafing to the next page, never meeting my eyes. ?It?s divorce, sir, just like it says on the sign. Unhappy with your marriage? Ready to move onto greener pastures? I do it quick, easy, cheap, just like it says.?
?Are you a lawyer??
?No, siree, just your run-of-the-mill separation specialist.?
?And there?s no lawyers involved??
?Just your signature and, of course, my fee, and voila. Freedom awaits.?
?Doesn?t my wife have a say in this??
?Sir, I find that those who seek my services often have spouses who are not? cooperative. I have worked very hard on this flawless system. No wives needed.? He peered at me now over his glasses, having stopped writing. ?You do want a divorce, don?t you??
I felt a swirl of regret and relief as it dawned on me that this was, of course, just a crackpot con artist, not a legitimate mechanism for destroying my marriage. Still, it was a curious scam, and for some reason it felt like it would be good for my mood if I played along. ?Yes, that?s why I?m here, one divorce, please.?
?Right.? He frowned at me then looked back at the papers. ?All right, all you need to do is fill in your name and date of birth on all of the blanks I?ve indicated, and sign. And of course, I have one question: what percentage of the household assets would you like to retain??
?Dunno, what would be fair??
?A split right down the middle would be considered fair by many, of course, but one may also consider the proportionate contributions of each spouse to the wealth and happiness of the household as a perfectly sound alternative.?
I thought back to all the nights I worked late and came home to find Robin with her feet up on the coffee table ready to bitch about how high the gas bill was because I liked it warm in the house. ?Sixty-forty, I guess. Sixty to me, forty to her.?
He nodded and pulled a lever, abruptly flipping up a little metal desk on the side of the van. He slid the papers over to me. ?Sounds very reasonable, sir.?
Feeling incredibly ridiculous, I filled out my name by every scrawled x, skimming the language of the contract as I went. It was mostly incomprehensible legalese, but a few phrases popped out at me ? irrevocable, binding on all parties regardless of consent or opposition, liquidated damages in event of breach.
I signed my name and handed the stack back to him. His grin deepened the trenches and dimples of old age. ?Congratulations, sir. The divorce will be finalized upon payment of my very reasonable fee of fifty dollars.?
Fifty bucks? Cheap for a divorce, expensive for a worthless swindle. Having gone this far, and still harboring the suspicion that this small act of rebellion would make me feel better, I begrudgingly fished for my wallet and handed over the cash.
He accepted it with a bow. ?Thank you, sir, very kind of you. I wish you good fortune in your new life.?
?Do I get a copy of the contract??
?We will keep it in our archives. Good day,? he said, and slammed the sliding door shut.
. . .
When I got home, Robin was washing the dishes. I must have startled her, because she dropped a plate and it clattered to the ground, splitting in two.
?****,? I swore, instantly earning myself a dirty look.
?****! What does that mean? ****! ****!? sang Ben, my six-year-old. The little ditty made ten-year-old Anna cackle with delight. All right, maybe I deserved the dirty look.
I kneeled down, hoping he would forget about it if I didn?t make a big deal of it. ?Oh, just a silly little word that Daddy made up. How was school today, bud??
?I made a picture!? He scampered to the living room, beaming, and returned with a crayon drawing of the family as stick figures, to which I made appropriate oohing and aahing noises.
As I shooed my kids off to brush their teeth, Robin wiped her hands and picked up the remains of the plate, which had shattered cleanly into two pieces. Not quite equal. I told myself I was being ridiculous, but I couldn?t help thinking it was a perfect sixty-forty split.
. . .
We woke up to the sound of Ben wailing.
He was sitting on the couch with snot and tears running down his face, holding up the drawing he?d shown me the night before. It had been ripped in two, one side slightly larger than the other.
?Someone ruined it!? he sobbed. This was, indeed, the most catastrophic thing that had happened to him this week.
I briefly interrogated his sister, who had a plausible alibi and no discernible motive, and Robin, who regarded me with scorn for even suggesting that she would vandalize our child?s art. I promised Ben a cookie for breakfast and went about getting ready for the day, feeling like something was inexplicably out-of-place.
It was when Ben was munching on his oatmeal cookie ? mostly dessert, with a little a splash of healthy breakfast ? that I noticed the blood on his shirt.
?Ben, what is this?? I asked, inspecting his belly. There was a small vertical cut, almost an incision, on his torso. ?Did you hurt yourself??
He shrugged. ?I don?t know. It feels funny.?
Robin brushed it off as a scrape, but, with an indefinite feeling that something was off, I insisted we take him to the doctor to get it checked out. Anna had a basketball game, so I drove her there while Robin took Ben to the clinic.
I got the call in Anna?s third quarter.
?They?re moving Ben to the hospital,? Robin said quickly, the panic swelling in her voice. ?The cut?s just getting bigger, it keeps growing, they can?t figure out what?s going on. They?re stitching him up and keeping him overnight for observation.?
Anna was upset with me for pulling her out of the game before it was finished, but stopped protesting when she saw the severity in my face. We were pulling up to the hospital parking lot when she said, ?Dad, my stomach really hurts.?
. . .
They wouldn?t let us see either of our children for hours. Robin and I sat in the waiting room, watching grainy reruns of Days of Our Lives so we didn?t have to speak to each other about the reality of what was happening.
Robin had fallen asleep on my shoulder when Dr. Lee came out to speak to us. I shook her awake.
?Your children are alive,? he said. The phrasing made my heart sink like a rock. I hadn?t even considered the alternative. Why was he phrasing it this way?
?What?s going on?? Robin asked. ?What?s wrong with them??
His face was carved of grim stone. A poor sign, for someone presumably accustomed to delivering bad news. ?I? wish I had a better answer for you, ma?am. We?re not sure. They both have long cuts that seem resistant to treatment. The wounds re-open even after we apply stitches or glue. The cuts seem to be growing longer. They seem not to be losing much blood. The wounds seem, uh, self-cauterizing, to some extent.?
?Can we see them?? I demanded.
He hesitated. ?Unfortunately, no. I?m afraid we don?t know of any physiological reason that this could be happening, so we are forced to treat it as potentially contagious. They?ll be isolated until we determine a cause.?
My breath was high in my chest, my lungs forcing out most of my oxygen. This was my fault. I didn?t know how, but it was my fault. This was divine punishment for having whimsically decided to abandon my family. I?ve learned my lesson, I silently prayed. I?ll never do it again.
I squeezed Robin?s hand. She withdrew from my grasp, putting some distance between us.
. . .
They woke us up from our restless doze to tell us it had gotten worse. My children were being cleaved in two. Each child had been split nearly head-to-toe, the crack spreading down the length of their bodies like a fault line, separating their organs and their faces and their brains. Miraculously, they both lived; they breathed, they saw, they screamed.
We were still not allowed to see them.
After eighteen more hellish hours, they made us go home.
. . .
There was a crack in the foundation of the house. Almost in the middle, but a little to the left.
As Robin started complaining about stomach pain, I instructed her to go to bed and drove like a maniac back to the city park to find that goddamn van.
Of course, there was no sign of it, not even tire marks.
. . .
Robin is lying in bed, slowly being rent in two. She wants to go to the hospital, but she can?t drive herself there, and I?m too afraid to be left alone in this house with the weight of what I?ve done.
The incision started just above her left thigh. By the time I returned home from my futile search for the man who cursed my family, it had become a bloody, pulpy mess snaking up her stomach. Now it has cut off her lower body completely into two pieces and it has reached her face. Like someone has grasped each of her legs and is peeling her slowly apart as if she were a stick of string cheese. She was using her voice to curse at me, but now that her throat has been pried apart she can communicate only with pained aspirations and the panicked movement of her eyes.
I?m watching as her mouth splits in two. Her lips are detaching themselves from one another, held only by red, wet threads of skin, like old denim jeans that have begun to tear. A pool of blood has soaked the sheets. I can see the flesh inside her body, sticky and pink, the striations of the muscles exposed, the ends of her intestines floundering in the air like rubber tubes. White slices of bone gleam in pockets and strikes reminiscent of a raw rack of ribs at the supermarket. Her fingers twitch with pain, her breath ? each lung rising individually, at its own unnatural pace ? ragged and strained.
I can see in her eyes that she wishes me to die.
She won?t have to wait long. I felt it about an hour ago: a sharp pain in my abdomen, a ripping of flesh deep in my bowels, hot and angry.
Robin?s entitled to her forty percent.


Source.