Mrs. Moyer didn’t like holding her husband’s hand. It wasn’t shaped right for holding anymore. (Mrs. Moyer was certain that it used to be). It was a little too big or a little too small now. If it were only bigger or smaller she was sure she could more easily bear it. The size wasn’t the only issue, though. More recently, she had noticed the webbing. It seemed as if the webbing in between her husband’s fingers was growing at what can only be described as an “alarming rate”. Mrs. Moyer was sure that one day, while she was holding her husband’s poorly shaped hand, its webbing would grow all the way up between his fingers and in so doing devour her own hand. Apart from all this, the average temperature of her husband’s unheld hand must have been somewhere around negative 12 degrees. It felt like the first 2 minutes of holding the hand was like fighting a snowman. Mrs. Moyer did not like holding her husband’s hand at all. In fact, she hated it.
Mrs. Moyer sat holding her husband’s hand at 6:00 p.m. as she did every night. Her husband smiled and drank a beer, as he did every night. He clicked the news into the television in living room. Charming looking anchors smiled at each other across a semi-circular desk and reminded Mrs. Moyer that the world outside her home was still the same scary place it always was, where African American men shot guns at other African American men. Sometimes an African American man would steal a car and there would be a car chase on the news. (Mrs. Moyer worked with a black lady at her office and had become very cautious about never, ever saying the word “black”). Some nights her fear of the African American men would take the place of her fear for the hand, and those nights on the couch were more bearable. Tonight there were fewer African American men on the news than usual. Mrs. Moyer thought it must be because they were all already locked up. She felt terrible immediately after having this thought and started to make promises to herself that she would go out of her way to do something nice for the African American woman at her office.
After pining over what to do for her African American co-worker and not feeling any less uncomfortable with her apparent lack of racial sensitivity, she decided she could no longer bare both the stress of being a racist and the torment of the hand. She let go of her husband’s hand and quickly took hold of the family pet (which appeared to be sufficient enough reason to her husband and his hand not to bother her for now). Annie was an orange and white cat that did not like being held. She would struggle to get free for the first 10 minutes of anyone holding her before she would give up her hopes of escape and sit with an obvious dissatisfaction while her hijacker would pet her until they got bored and shooed her off. The whole process usually took about 13 minutes. In Mrs. Moyer’s case, Annie would be held onto until she thought the hand was catching on to the fact that she was avoiding it. This added about 8 minutes to the process.
The hand seemed so hungry tonight. She had barely had Annie for 6 and a half minutes when it started petitioning her for more of what it craved. It sat impatiently glaring at her on the couch, and when she had finished stroking the last bits of comfort out of Annie, she knew that she would have to reclaim what sorrowfully belonged to her. Adding to her extreme discomfort over the hand’s appetite, she noticed that the hand looked more and more like a predator every night. It inched closer to her, doing what appeared to be an evil little hand dance. It was disgusting.
Mrs. Moyer let go of her orange and white savior and latched onto her husband’s malicious appendage. It was ready to take her in for the kill this time, with a mixture of its natural coldness and the added affliction of wetness (probably from the condensation on her husband’s beer bottle). She battled the ice monster until 35 after 6:00. She squirmed and tugged in so many ways to make the hand loosen its grip, but it seemed to only pull tighter. Occasionally, the hand would rub its thumb down the length of her hand, as though it was caressing or tasting its prey.
Mrs. Moyer had almost stopped fighting and let the hand have its way with her when something that must have been akin to divine intervention occurred. A loud ringing on the far side of the room erupted and Mrs. Moyer was able to free her hand from the icy vice and take hold of the miracle phone ready to express her gratitude to her mysterious rescuer. She held the phone close to her face as if embracing a hero after he’s done some great service and chimed out a “Hello” that was meant to be interpreted as “Thank you so much for saving my life. I am eternally grateful.”
A silence answered, then moments later an automated voice recording came on informing her that she had recently been approved for a free debt handling service. Mrs. Moyer had never listened past 5 seconds into any message of this sort before, but felt obligated to her hero, and since it was the only thing standing between her and a return to an icy, cold, wet bear trap of a hand she listened patiently while her robot savior informed her that she could cut her payments “Almost in half!” When the recording was over she was given a choice: She could either hang up or press the number 2 and speak to a credit counselor.
Knowing nothing about the household’s financial situation (Mr. Moyer paid the bills), she stood clutching her phone savior, feeling very torn. She would have nothing to say to the debt counselor and would look very silly trying to explain the husband’s evil hand situation to the kindly debt handler.
Mr. Moyer, for the first time since sitting down to watch the news, spoke to his seemingly immobile wife.
“Who’s it, darling?” Mr. Moyer said with a ring of sincere pleasantness.
Mrs. Moyer lied quickly. “It’s my sister!”
“Oh. Well, tell her I said hello.” Mr. Moyer didn’t break his smile or his attention on the television.
“My husband says hello,” she told the robot who had started repeating the instruction to press the number 2.
Mrs. Moyer walked out of the living room and up the stairs, feigning a conversation with a sister who had already started to connect her to a debt counselor. A sick feeling came over Mrs. Moyer: The way her husband had sat there looking at her so lovingly as she lied just to get out of holding his hand. By the time she reached her room at the top of the stairs, she didn’t feel at all relieved about escaping the hand. She sat down on the edge of her bed and started to cry. She cried until about 8:15 when she fell asleep.
Her husband came into the room quietly that night, climbed into bed next to her, and kissed her gently on the cheek. She woke up after he kissed her. She couldn’t help how repulsed she was by him. It wasn’t her fault, but it wasn’t his either. She didn’t sleep very well that night.
Mr. Moyer was a man who prided himself on being reasonable and the reasons he hated his wife were honestly too numerous to count. Her voice was shrill, her hair was wiry, and Mr. Moyer suspected she had some serious issues regarding race. Still, being a man of calculations, Mr. Moyer felt that the numerous reasons for his hatred of his wife must have all sprung from the same source. It was her unreasonable emotional attachment to everything and everyone. She could cry watching a spider’s web get torn down and was made giddy by commercials with kittens. He couldn’t stand it. He had felt this way for some time, and in the past 8 years had started constructing ways to make the affable Mrs. Moyer less happy. He had taken on the project of his wife’s increased unhappiness first as sort of an experiment: Could it be done? She was, after all, one of the least naturally unhappy people he knew – a contradiction of sorts considering she sat frozen by fear as he watched the news every evening (Yes, there was calculation in everything Mr. Moyer did).
He first considered simply divorcing her, but he wasn’t the bravest man himself and really didn’t feel like starting over, romantically speaking. Besides there was a good chance that she would become more happy if he wasn’t able to monitor her, and the goal wasn’t to be rid of her, but to make her unhappy. He decided that in order to make her truly miserable, he would have to be with her always.
As with all of his undertakings, some of Mr. Moyer initial tactics were terrible failures. On one occasion he told her (in a very round-about way, so as to not seem cruel) that she was fat. This had no effect other than causing her to childishly sulk, but after talking with her friends and her mother (Mr. Moyer hated Mrs. Moyer mother almost as much as he hated her) she decided that perhaps he was right and that her ever-loyal husband was only looking out for her best interest. Since then she had worked out 3 times a week. It had made little difference in her weight or appearance, but it did seem to have made her happier. On another occasion he mentioned something or another about her cooking being sub-par. This was an absolute failure as the ever-amenable Mrs. Moyer said she felt the exact same way about her cooking and so it was decided that going forward each spouse would prepare his or her own meals. Mr. Moyer didn’t believe his wife’s cooking to be sub-par at all and was actually very disappointed to see it go.
Mr. Moyer tried only a few more attempts in the arena of insult before realizing that Mrs. Moyer had no intention of being made less happy by kindly masked insults and he would have to dig down deeper if he was to ever have her feel the pain her annoying timidity and irrational emotional behavior was worth. He spent a reasonable amount of time trying to decide what his next approach might be. For a time he entertained the idea of pursuing an affair, but upon considering the amount of time and money this would take he moved in a more frugal direction.
One evening after his wife had gone to bed Mr. Moyer sat watching a public television special on how cancer works in the body. Mr. Moyer learned several things about cancer that night. He learned that the root of cancer is uncontrollable cell growth and division. He learned that cancer doesn’t transport itself around the entire body; rather it grows in a single spot and then uses the body’s preexisting transport system to carry it wherever it needs to go. In this way the body’s own cells and systems kill it from the inside out.
Mr. Moyer was inspired by cancer. He began trying to find the single spot in his relationship with his wife that would be his original, uncontrollably dividing cell. He could change the way he spoke slightly to make his words sound nasally and portentous or he could pick up some nasty habit or he could start getting his hair cut in some horribly ugly fashion. He calculated and reasoned until he believed he found the one thing, which Mrs. Moyer could never see as his fault, but only blame herself.
Mr. Moyer and Mrs. Moyer held each other’s hands. It was a sign of devotion that no doubt Mr. Moyer had always overlooked, not understanding the importance such a gesture might have for a woman. This is where Mr. Moyer decided he would plant his cancer. He started reading articles about which way to position your hand in order to convey certain emotions. He found that an entire science exists around the psychology of handholding and placement. For example: A woman is most likely to feel soothed by her significant other in a time of severe stress if the “fingers intertwined thumb on bottom” approach is utilized or the “palm-to-palm” signifying long-lasting love. But there was much more to it than that. The positioning of the hand in casual situations draws much more attention than Mr. Moyer ever thought possible. Simply by holding the pinky and index below the middle and ring finger one had a high probability to making people around you feel uneasy. (This had something to do with a subconscious fear of snakes that most people have).
There were tricks for every aspect of the hand: Temperature, nail growth, wrinkle lines, knuckle placement. Every part of the hand played a part in human psychology.
Mr. Moyer began implementing each of the techniques he learned one week at a time. He started noticing his wife’s uneasiness in only 2 weeks’ time! By week 6 she was making excuses not to hold her husband’s hand. Whenever this happened Mr. Moyer had only to smile pleasantly and his wife’s guilt would cause her to give way and take up the task of holding the monster Mr. Moyer had created out of his appendage.
Presently he was in week 64. His wife had settled into holding her husband’s hand as little as she thought she could get away with. Around 25 minutes a night (or half way through the news). She employed the help of several household items to make her distaste for her husband’s hand less noticeable. Sometime she would hold a cup of coffee with two hands. Sometimes she would pet the cat. Other times she would pretend to have brought work home from her office and she would be far too busy to hold hands. But at least three days out of the week she had no excuse and would be forced to endure the hand all night long.
Mr. Moyer had completely forgotten all about the tricks to make your hand seem imposing or the 150 hand stretches he did on his way home from work to make the webbing between his fingers appear to be growing. He had settled in nicely to knowing how much his wife dreaded her own home and knowing she battled with her discomfort every night. She was definitely unhappy. Victory was his. Mr. Moyer was abominably evil.
