Radio Belly by Buffy Cram

crumbs. Cheese and crackers: carbs and protein. Upstairs, in the master bathroom, I found a bar of soap with deep, dark striations where dirt had settled in. There was a faint scum line around the perimeter of the tub, as though several dirty bodies had been washed there. Glued against the porcelain was a curly red hair. I was searching my wife’s drawer for tweezers to collect the hair when I happened to glance out the window and see more hybrids, seven or eight of them, making their way slowly through the ravine at the back of our property. The men were wearing ratty suits and top hats, the women fur and silk.
    Never mind tweezers. I was hauling down the stairs with that hair pinched between my fingers when my wife and daughter stepped into the foyer.
    â€œThank God you’re home,” I shouted and then my feet kicked out from under me and I slid down the last few stairs.
    They were giggling in their matching yoga wear and the hair escaped my pinch.
    â€œThey’ve been in here,” I said. “Those homeless people. I just found a hair in the tub.”
    â€œ Gross, Dad!” Jennifer said.
    â€œI think they’ve been taking baths.”
    They looked at me blankly then, all the giggle gone out of them.
    â€œWell, maybe you should have considered this before you let Lucinda go,” Kathy said.
    â€œNo, not our hair,” I said. “One of theirs. A red one. Wait, I’ll show you.” I was patting the floor around me. I was pleading, “C’mon. Help me look.”
    â€œI’ve got homework,” Jennifer said.
    â€œI’ve got dinner,” Kathy said, holding up a grocery bag and then they split off—north, south—and I headed for the computer.
    THAT NIGHT IT was all protein: breast of something covered in sauce with a peculiar sausage as a side. The blinds were snapped tight but we could still hear them out there.
    â€œYou know they’re calling them hybrids now?” I said. Then in my best newscaster voice: “‘The New Hybrid Class.’” I was the only one laughing. “They’re really quite educated,” I added.
    Neither Kathy nor Jennifer had a response—just the sounds of chewing, scraping, swallowing.
    My fork was poised somewhere between plate and mouth when I noticed the sauce was made from the finest paper-thin slices of mushroom. “What type of mushroom is this?” I asked.
    â€œChanterelle,” Kathy answered.
    â€œSuch a lovely word,” I said, to kill the silence. Meanwhile, I was wondering how, exactly, was I different from this mushroom? I ate, I slept, I too grew larger, paler by the day.
    Eyes on plates. Sipping, slicing, clinking of ice.
    â€œApparently they were once middle class,” I said. “They were students, artists, professor types, too-good-for-the-corporate-ladder types. And when they couldn’t afford their passions anymore, they just... dropped out.”
    â€œLike your father!” Kathy said to her dinner plate.
    â€œPassion,” I said to mine. “Another lovely word!”
    I persisted. “Evidently they’ve been holding ‘salons’ in people’s homes. If a family is away, for instance, they’ll just go right in and read all their books and hold seminars. Apparently property values have really...”
    But I was speaking to myself. They were involved in some sort of mother-daughter communication requiring only the slightest eyebrow movements.
    Kathy put her fork down, folded her arms across her chest and looked at me. My daughter, having missed her cue, joined in at the folding-of-the-arms part, fork still in hand.
    I looked from my daughter to my wife: my Jennifer, my Kathy. It was what one might call an awkward silence.
    A slice of chanterelle fainted from my fork, fell to my plate.
    â€œWhat did you do to Hez?” Jennifer said finally.
    â€œAnd how is it you can afford to be home from work so early?” Kathy asked.
    I