Madison Garber

Flight in the Anonymizing City

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2022: VOL. 37.

You’re asleep beside me when they start to grow, the change unfolding slowly, silently. I wouldn’t have noticed had you not whimpered. By now, your sighs and snores, the drunken gibberish of your dreams after a night out, are as familiar to me as my own voice. But this outward echo of some private nightmare makes me turn. I reach for you in the darkness, then freeze when my fingers meet your back, your skin hot and slick with sweat.

I grab the lamp switch, ignoring your grumbling as light floods the bedroom. From my place behind you, I can see what you can’t: the bubbling of flesh as two bones push out from between your shoulders. I can’t say how I know they’re bones. Maybe it’s the sharpness of them, thick blades straining the soft flesh of your back. How they don’t break your skin I don’t know, but the thought turns my stomach. I reach out again, slowly this time. When the growth twitches beneath my touch, I recoil.

“Turn off the light,” you mumble, tugging the covers over your head. But even after the growths disappear beneath the fabric, I can still see them there, anomalies in your body that I can’t comprehend. I do as you ask though and turn off the light, lie down again. My mind cycles restlessly between explanations—tumor, cyst, bone spur, abscess—but I’d bailed out of pre-med years ago; Latinate terms and chemical compounds gibberish to me then and now. Still, I strain for answers if only to distract from the simmer of worry—of some inexplicable sense of dread.

When you wake, you don’t recall the pain I’d listened to all night. You don’t remember how I’d wrapped my arms around you, avoiding the growths as I pressed my forehead to the nape of your neck. I’d whispered soothing words as you sweat, but they had drifted through the dark un- noticed. The fever has drained from your body, leaving you polished as a tumbled stone, and when you rise from the sheets yawning, I almost believe that what I’d seen last night was the result of my own fever dream.

I thought you’d panic when you saw them—beg me to take you to the doctor, where they’d scrape the growths from your skin like a cancerous mole. But in the reflection of our bathroom mirror, I watch you smile as you gaze over your shoulder, twisting this way and that as if you’re trying on a new dress.

When you finish inspecting, you turn back to me and ask, “Coffee?”

I dig through a box of thrifted clothes until I find the bomber jacket I’d bought last year on a whim, desperate for a break from weekday blazers and button-ups. In a tiny dressing room in Camden, you’d sounded your approval, but when I offer you the jacket now, you look at it doubtfully.

“What?” I sniff the jacket, the faint musk of my cologne clinging to the lining. “I washed it. It’s fine.”

You shrug the jacket on, rolling your shoulders until the corduroy settles awkwardly on your back. You fuss with the length of your hair until it settles in waves around your shoulders. Already you look more like yourself, and some of the tension in my chest eases. You just frown at the oversized jacket.

The protrusions continue to grow at night, extending, stretching, pulling at your skin until they occupy the space between us in bed. I wake and reach through my drowsiness for your solid warmth until I find something unfamiliar instead, jagged and knobby as an elbow. I withdraw my hand, the remnants of my sleep falling away with a jolt.

It’s getting worse—I don’t have to be a doctor to know that— and in my worry, my mind travels to strange places. The stuff of fantasy, or horror.

Mutation. The word rises in the darkness, keeps me awake as an image starts to form, fanning out like the bones on your back—an impossible possibility. I close my eyes against it and concentrate instead on your snores, steady and familiar.

The following week, the growths are almost too large to hide, and I fear what will happen when you finally shrug the jacket from your shoulders. You nearly do it on our Friday-night trip to the cinema, a ritual for us—medium popcorn, large drink, box of Maltesers. Hunched over in the bus seat beside me, you tug at the jacket the whole trip, your fidgeting growing more and more frustrated until I’m sure you’ll rip it off.

I reach over on instinct. “Don’t,” I say.

You freeze at the force of the word and then pin me with a questioning look. I hesitate. “Keep them protected,” I say. I glance around as if one of the commuters might tear the growths from your back if they caught sight of them. It’s only partly a lie—the threat of something physical is not what frightens me, though I can’t explain what it is I’m afraid of exactly. You seem to buy it for the moment, pulling the jacket back into place, but I can tell it’s only a matter of time, so one morning I ask if you’ll see a doctor.

I leave for work that day lighter than I’ve felt since waking to your whimpering. The doctor will fix this. Already, I’m imagining the smoothness of your shoulder blades peeking out from your bath towel—that place you can’t reach where I lather your skin with sunscreen on trips to the beach. There will be scars there now, but I love your scars and the stories they tell—childhood accidents and injuries nearly forgotten. Soon, these growths will be forgotten too.

When I return that evening, I find you sitting on the windowsill, staring out over the rooftops as the day melts away. In the low light, I can see you’ve pinned your hair up, leaving your shoulders bare, your profile highlighted in evening gold. The pose is oddly regal despite your outfit—a paint-spattered ensemble that tells me you visited the studio today. Your t-shirt hangs awkwardly on your torso, the slits I had cut into the fabric at your insistence straining around the growths. Until we could find a solution, I’d figured a few ruined shirts couldn’t matter much. But when you turn from the window, I can see that temporary had never been the idea.

“Wings,” you say.

You rise and lift your chin, roll your shoulders until the wings unfurl, eclipsing the remaining daylight. I can see your smile growing in the gloom though. I look away. You’ve named them for what they are now, no longer cancerous entities with a will of their own. They are a part of you. And though we’re both grounded there in the same room, I can’t help but fear that you, flightless for now, are already starting to drift away.

You leave the jacket behind, set the wings free. No longer stunted, they only seem to grow faster. Bones fan out beneath expanses of skin thin enough that I can see the network of veins branching beneath the surface. The bones themselves are spindly and sharp, like the tendons of a vast hand that flex and flutter with your gestures.

“I’ll have to give them a tan,” you say, inspecting the virginal skin. I shudder a little at the thought of having to spread sunscreen between the webbed joints and then feel guilty. It’s you, I think. They’re you. But for some reason I have a hard time convincing myself of this.

The first day we go out without the jacket, I brace myself for the stares and whispered comments, the looks of revulsion quickly hidden— the same looks I hide when I close my eyes during sex, your wings like a dark tent looming above us, pronged and trembling with your breath. But sitting outside our favorite café on a tepid spring day, the looks do not come. Or at least, not the ones I had expected.

People’s steps slow as they pass us on the sidewalk, taking in the spectacle that is your wings—a meter long now—tucked against your back. You let them fan out just a little, to catch the breeze like a sail. Most don’t say anything, just blink until they notice you attached to the wings and then quickly move on. One comes forward and asks to touch them—a little girl, no more than ten, with braids that remind me of your Catholic school days, knee highs and patent leather shoes you loathe to think about, even now.

I bristle at the request, but you simply smile and spread your left wing as if in a handshake. “Sure,” you say. “Go ahead.”

The girl runs her fingers lightly over the skin, her eyes widening as you flutter under her touch. She smiles as she pulls her hand back, a wow taking shape on her lips. I frown into my tea.

On our anniversary, I take you across town to Primrose Hill, where we’d had our first date. Back then, we’d been trying to find our footing in the anonymizing city, half broke and half homesick for the towns we’d left behind. In the shade of a rowan tree, I told you about the paper route I’d ridden as a kid, and you named the wildflowers you used to pick in the fields between home and school. In your mouth, their scientific names were like old friends, distinct and familiar. I walked you to the park’s rose garden, and though the blooms were more manicured than the Pulsatil- la vulgaris or Helleborus foetidus back home, they’d made you smile all the same. Later, we bought ham and cheese sandwiches and threw our crumbs to tufted ducks. When I reached for your hand, the move felt easy, the natural effect of your gravity. And even after the sun had set, fireflies blinking lazily beneath the trees, I didn’t want to let go.

I sit back and admire the picnic I’ve spread on the blanket today, purchased on a larger budget than we’d had before—your favorite cheeses carefully packaged in plastic containers with small jars of black- currant jam and honey. Bottles of cold cider sweat in the sunlight, and I eat the crusts of your baguette slices until the warmth of the day and the cider in my stomach begin to weigh on my eyelids. I lie back then and shut my eyes against the sun, trying to forget how you’d knocked over a tower of candy boxes in the grocery store earlier, your wings catching the bottom of the display until they all went tumbling in a cascade of cardboard. You’d giggled, apologizing to aproned workers who waved off the blunder, their eyes drinking in your wings while I stacked the boxes back up, cheeks burning.

As the afternoon lengthens, my cheeks grow sun-warmed, and I stroke patterns in your palm while you hum a tune I can’t place. I smile, enveloped in something that feels like before, when you and I dreamed aloud about a quiet house outside the city with an overgrown garden and a washing machine that works.

When you go quiet, I blink away my drowsiness to see you gazing towards the geometry of the distant skyline, where spindly steel cranes peak out over the baby-leaf green of the park. A cool breeze stirs the hair around your face, almost obscuring it. The long curls that used to drape down your back are now gone, lopped off so they don’t get tangled in your wings. The new length gives your heart-shaped face a defiantly tousled frame.

After a moment, your eyes drift to where the sky yawns wide and blue. The faintest of smiles stirs, and your wings, now a meter and a half in length, flex in some unconscious daydream.

The commute home is more of a trudge than usual. Forehead pressed to the bus’s window, I gaze at the puddles we pass in the gutter, the cloud cover overhead mirrored in muted shades of gray. It’s the kind of image I think would be lovely to paint if you ever took the time to look down. When I step off the bus, I plunge my foot directly into one just to see the clouds ripple around me. I savor the squish in my shoe as I walk the last stretch home, already anticipating the particular shape of a smile saved for returns, anticipatory and infectious.

A half block from our flat, I hear someone down the street shout—a man standing outside the deli across from our building, plastic grocery bags swinging from his hands. I follow his gaze upward and then freeze.

You stand outside our living room window, three stories above the street. Your bare feet grip the stone sill, your hands holding fast to the window frame as you lean over the edge, giving your wings space to unfurl between you and the brick of our building. They look large even from far away, but I know, I just know in that moment that they are not big enough.

To beat the wings, you have to let go, and so you do, in one breathless motion. I grip the strap of my messenger bag as if I can get you to hold on by force of will alone. But your feet are already pushing off the sill like a runner off the blocks, and then you’re there, in the open air.

You beat once, twice, three times, the motions sharp and desperate, confirming what I already know to be true: the wings are not strong enough to support you. Your fists are clenched, your eyes narrowed as you keep your gaze trained on the open sky above. You fight with one more beat before the wings shudder and fold, like an umbrella going inside out. Your scream rises and extinguishes as quickly as it takes for you to drop to the ground. Faster than seems possible.

I can’t help it; I close my eyes before you hit the street. I hear it though—the smack of skin on asphalt. The groaning a half second later. When I open my eyes again, I’m afraid of what I’ll see. The man outside the deli runs towards you and then hesitates a few steps shy of where you lie. Eventually, I push past him and kneel beside you, nudging the wings aside, searching your body for blood or broken bone. Behind me, the man calls for an ambulance.

Your arm and shoulder are raw, the skin rough and bleeding, and you hold your right ankle as you groan, but otherwise you seem to be okay. I sit back on my heels, letting go of the breath I’ve been holding.

“What were you thinking?”

I bite the words off like I’m the one in pain, unable to keep at bay what could have happened—the rigidity of paralysis, blood like a halo on the concrete, splinters of bone piercing your skin. Somewhere in the distance, a siren starts to wail.

Though your eyes are squeezed shut, I have yet to see any tears. It’s just those muffled groans of pain I’m not ready to acknowledge yet— punishment maybe for scaring me like this. Then, through the groans you ask, “Are they okay?”

I frown. They? It’s you, love—you who jumped out the window. Then, I realize.

“They’re fine,” I say, just as the ambulance comes barreling down the street.

In the weeks after your fall, I try to dissuade you from another attempt. But words like too dangerous and stupid are as good as meaningless. Wings are a promise for flight, after all, and falling from the nest is the first step to fulfilling that promise.

“But you’re not a bird,” I tell you.

You sit back from our tiny kitchen table, the tips of the wings curling under where they rest on the floor. I know you’ve already tried again—not because I’ve witnessed it but because the joints where the wings meet your back have thickened with new muscle. Now, they’re as broad as my forearms.

“You’re right,” you say, and the relief that sweeps through me is almost dizzying. Then, you turn your gaze somewhere over my shoulder. “I’m something more.”

I recoil, jaw clenching, and nearly shake my head. More than what, I want to ask. But for some reason, I can’t, afraid maybe of what you’ll say. Instead, I lie awake in bed wondering why you? The idea of mutation is easier to accept now—a random accident. A spontaneous change in genetics. Something out of your control and mine.

Harder to accept is the thought that you were always bound to evolve.

I find you one morning inspecting your back in the bathroom mirror. You’re too absorbed to notice me standing in the doorway. There’s hardly enough room for the two of us with those things on your back—the scaffolding of bone, the pale skin stretched taut, the branches of your veins bulging blue-green through the membrane. The once-familiar landscape of your back is now utterly strange, as is the way you gaze at it, pleased. Purposeful. When you catch my tears in the mirror, I don’t attempt to hide them.

“You hate them,” you say, as if the thought is just now occurring to you—as if my pleas have been the nagging of some overprotective parent. The accusation in your voice is tinged with a hurt I try to ignore. “I don’t understand,” you say. “I’m still me.”

I think of the scabs still healing on your arm, the muscles in your back that tell me you’ve ignored my worries, the looks that tell me the sky holds more allure than I ever have.

“No,” I say. “You’re something more.”

You still at your words tainted by my bitterness. Only your wings seem to move, a faint trembling that betrays the anger you keep from your face. The tip of one stirs the edge of the shower curtain. That’s all it takes for the moment to snap. You push by me, heading straight for the front door. The breathless release of a truth laid bare is already over, and regret rushes in to take its place.

Come back, I want to say. I’m sorry. “Where are you going?” I stammer instead.

I try to stop you but instinctively shy away from the wings, giving you enough time to wrench open the door to our flat, not bothering to put on shoes. I follow loosely behind as you thunder down the stairs— it’s not like you can get far in bare feet. You’ll have to come back. Or else you’ll stew on the front stoop until your anger passes like it has before—a flare of frustration that eventually burns itself out.

I call your name—one last plea for reason—but my heart is halfway up my throat, the syllables strangled. When you throw open the front door of our building, I freeze. Sunlight streams into the foyer and passes through your wings as you extend them, the skin glowing faintly red. You step out onto the stoop and bend your legs, your wings rising over your head before surging downwards as you push off. I stop breathing, thinking of your fall—the sound your body made when you hit the concrete—but instead you rise, creating buffets of wind. My hair flies back, and I take the last few steps out the door. Already you’re out of reach, disappearing over the row houses across the street.

Part of me wonders if I should follow, make sure you’re safe, coax you back to earth. But there’s no hope of that now. The streets are a maze beneath the infinite direction of open sky, and you have a head start. So I go upstairs. Try to call you. Leave messages I struggle to track. I’m sorries mingle with frantic questions, asked and unasked. What were you thinking taking off like that? From what height can you fall and still live?

Then, I feel your absence. The weight of it in the silence. The faint snapping of the joints in your feet as you walk between rooms. The clatter of utensils that signals the mess I’ll find the kitchen—your satisfied smile as you dip your finger into a bowl of cake batter. The way my name floats featherlight from your mouth in the dark.

When I turn on the TV, the inane jingle for a cereal commercial breaks silence. Then, the ad is cut off mid-lyric. Breaking News flashes across the screen, and I struggle to comprehend the words of a manicured news anchor. It isn’t until she turns to a correspondent on site that the words finally compute.

The reporter stands across the street from the southern doors of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the limestone columns and Roman molding tinted pink in the afternoon light. Tourists’ faces poke through the balustrades of the Stone Gallery at the rim of the cathedral’s massive dome. A few arms reach through the railing to point towards the river. Then, I see you suspended there some fifty meters above the street. My breath catches. The camera zooms in unsteadily until you fill the frame.

You beat the air with great whooshing strokes, your wings, extended at last to their full length, corded with muscle where they meet your back. The spindles of bone beneath your skin seem almost too delicate for the wind they create, but you don’t look in danger of falling. Your eyes are closed, face turned to the sun. You raise your arms just slightly from your sides, tilting your palms to the light, serene and powerful—a strange glory in a ratty t-shirt and bare feet.

The camera cuts to the crowd gathered along St. Paul’s Churchyard. Suited businessmen and phone-wielding tourists are at a standstill on the sidewalk, all craning their necks to a cloudless sky, their eyes wide, mouths agape. I feel that awe too when they cut back to you—a faint glow in my core that dispels my fear. I raise my fingers to the screen and trace your face, both familiar and unrecognizable this far above the ground. Yes, something more.

As if feeling my touch, your eyes flutter. You look down at the rapt crowd, a smile blooming on your mouth, faint and delicate as snow- drop petals. Galanthus nivalis. Then, you raise your eyes to the setting sun and surge forward until the zoomed-in camera loses you. By the time it finds you again, you’re sailing south over the muddy ribbon of the Thames towards home.

I take the stairs two at a time. Outside, the air is humid with impending summer, the rooftop radiating heat. I go to the bricked edge and, placing my hands on the still-warm stone, gaze out over the city. The gathering twilight and distant haze make it difficult to see at a distance, but I search for the speck of you flying above it all.

I think then of everything I’ll tell you when you return—I’m sorry, I was afraid. I understand now. I see—until lights begin to twinkle in the skyscrapers above the city center. Somewhere, a siren wails long and low.

The sun at my back grows weaker. I back away from the ledge, eyes still on the horizon, and ease into the plastic chair you brought up months ago to smoke a midnight cigarette. Night stains the sky. Stars blink out, planes all along.