Turn 162 of 228

Ask Marcus what he wants — for himself, not just for the family

Marcus is at his workstation when Lena finds him. The steel chair groans as he turns — 760 pounds of naked flesh, the yellow nails curled over the keyboard, the screen showing a half-finished build for a reinforced sleeping platform that will hold twelve hundred pounds. The beard is thick. The body hair mats against the steel. The face in the blue light is the face Lena married, just wider, just fuller, just more.

Lena sits beside him. The concrete shakes — 1,450 pounds settling beside 760. The warehouse hums around them. June is climbing the far shelving. Iris is writing. Mae is asleep on Lena's belly, the round face pressed into the warmth, the tiny fist closed around a handful of body hair.

"I asked the girls what they want to be," Lena says. "June wants to explore everything. Iris wants to be a scientist. Mae wants to be the biggest person alive. They already know. They're six months old and they already know."

Marcus nods. The beard shifts. The yellow nails tap the edge of the keyboard.

"So now I'm asking you," Lena says. "Not what you want for them. Not what you want for us. For you. What do you want, Marcus?"

He doesn't answer immediately. The screen glows. The cursor blinks on the half-finished platform design. The warehouse is quiet except for June's feet on the shelving brackets — the soft tap of bare feet on steel, the rhythm of someone who is always moving.

"I've been thinking about that," Marcus says. "Since the conversation at two in the morning. Since I said I'd build whatever they need. I meant it. I will. But you asked what I want for me and I — I had to sit with that. Because for a long time what I wanted was to be near you. That was the whole thing. Be near Lena. Be where Lena is. And then the proximity thing happened and I got bigger and I stopped wearing clothes and I stopped showering and I grew the nails and the beard and all of it was — it was following. It was following you into comfort."

He pauses. The yellow nails on the armrest. The 760 pounds shifting in the steel chair.

"But the girls aren't following," he says. "June isn't following. She runs to things I haven't built yet. Iris isn't following. She writes things I haven't thought of. Mae isn't following. She wants something I didn't know existed — she wants to be bigger than you. They're not following anyone. They're going. And I realized — I can't just follow anymore. I can't just be the guy who builds the platform and sits in the chair and gets bigger because the air around Lena is making him bigger. I have to want something that's mine."

"What is it?" Lena says.

Marcus closes the laptop. The blue light dies. The warehouse is dark except for the security light from the bay window and the orange streetlight falling across the concrete. He looks at his hands — the yellow nails, the thick fingers, the 760 pounds of body that he grew because he loved a woman who was growing.

"I want to build things that don't exist yet," he says. "Not platforms. Not furniture. Not reinforced chairs. I want to build — I want to build structures. Living structures. Architecture for bodies that don't fit in buildings. I want to design spaces for people like us. Like the girls. Like Diane. Like what we're becoming. I spent my whole career writing software and the last year building furniture out of steel tubing and I — I want to design the world that holds us. Because the world out there doesn't. The doorways are too narrow. The ceilings are too low. The floors aren't reinforced. The bathrooms don't exist for us. And the girls are going to need a world and that world doesn't exist and I want to build it."

He looks at Lena. The face in the streetlight.

"That's what I want," he says. "I want to be the person who builds the world that fits us. Not the world we fit into. The world that fits us."

Lena looks at him. The 760 pounds. The yellow nails. The beard and the body hair and the unwashed skin and the bare feet on the concrete. The man who followed her into comfort and found something there that was his.

"You're going to need to learn structural engineering," Lena says.

"I know," Marcus says. "I started reading last week. I checked out twelve textbooks from the university library. Dr. Pradhan's department. I told her I was designing adaptive housing for non-standard body types. She didn't ask what that meant. She gave me everything."

"You already started," Lena says.

"I already started," Marcus says. "I just didn't know it was mine until you asked."

Mae stirs on Lena's belly. The tiny fist tightens on the body hair. The warehouse holds them. The hum is warm. The hum is patient. The hum is a family becoming what it is.