Mrs. Caliban

Dorothy is a suburban housewife trapped in a hollow marriage. Each morning, her husband Fred fumbles through a ritualized departure for work while Dorothy patiently supplies forgotten items. He has not kissed her goodbye in years, and his pattern of staying late at the office reminds her of a past affair, leading her to suspect another has begun.

For the past three weeks, the old cathedral-style radio in Dorothy's kitchen has been delivering messages no one else hears: a voice during a commercial assuring her she would have another baby if she relaxed, a news item about a violin-playing chicken no other listener caught. Dorothy does not think she is losing her mind; she theorizes the old radio picks up interference. The messages have a soft, dreamlike quality and feel directed specifically at her.

One morning, she turns on the radio and hears a public bulletin: a creature nicknamed "Aquarius the Monsterman," captured six months earlier on a South American expedition and held at the Jefferson Institute for Oceanographic Research, has escaped. Two employees were found dead near its empty cage. The bulletin describes the creature as a giant, amphibious, lizard-like animal of incredible strength. Dorothy determines this is a real broadcast, not one of her private messages, because it lacks their intimate quality.

The bulletin triggers painful memories. Dorothy's son, Scotty, died from an allergic reaction to anesthesia before a routine appendectomy. Months later, she lost a second baby. These losses drove Dorothy and Fred apart: Each secretly blamed the other while resenting the perceived blame from the other side. They stopped communicating, moved to separate beds, and let their intimacy collapse entirely.

Her routine continues. While exercising in the spare guest room, a space she painted herself and originally intended as a playroom for the children, the radio emits another private message: "It's all right, Dorothy. It's going to be all right" (16). That afternoon, she visits her closest friend, Estelle, who is well-paid and independent from her studio work and has two boyfriends, Charlie and Stan, both of whom want to marry her. They avoid the subject of Dorothy's marriage; Estelle once urged her to leave Fred, but Dorothy explained that she and Fred were "too unhappy to get a divorce" (26).

That evening, as Dorothy prepares dinner, the screen door opens and a gigantic, frog-like creature enters the kitchen. She freezes, registering his huge dark eyes, rounded head, slightly webbed hands and feet, smooth spotted green-brown skin, and well-built, hairless body. The smell of burning cheese toast breaks her paralysis. When the creature growls, she picks up a stalk of celery instead of the nearby knife and offers it to him. He eats it, touches her hand, and speaks with a slight accent, saying he needs help and has "suffered so much already" (30). Dorothy agrees and hides him in the spare guest room.

The next morning, she finds him still there, the bed neatly made. He has eaten all her prize apple cucumbers overnight. They exchange names: He is Larry, a name he adopted at the Institute because he could not pronounce "Aquarius." His people do not use names and communicate in a language he describes as "more like music" (34). That morning, Larry removes her bathrobe and nightgown, and they become lovers. Larry describes his captivity: Two keepers taught him speech using electric shocks, then escalated to torture with prods and restraint devices, and subjected him to sexual abuse. Dorothy connects his tentative first approach to this trauma.

They settle into a domestic routine. Dorothy buys Larry sandals, vegetables, and avocados, which become his favorite food. Her happiness returns. At night, she drives him to the beach, where he swims with extraordinary power. She teaches him to drive and constructs disguises: a modified hat, widened sunglasses, makeup, and a double wig. At the beach one night, Larry describes his underwater home near the Gulf of Mexico. Dorothy proposes a plan: She will drive him to the nearest coastline so he can swim back, then cross the Mexican border by car to meet him. The plan requires waiting for Fred's vacation. After one long swim, Larry returns troubled, saying something felt wrong in the water and worrying the Institute's experiments may have changed him.

Fred confesses to Dorothy that he has been seeing another woman. Dorothy, sustained by her secret with Larry, responds with calm generosity. Fred hints at reviving their marriage, but Dorothy steers him toward separate vacations to preserve time for her plan.

Then Larry tells Dorothy people are searching for him. A broadcast reports that five young men were killed by "Aquarius the Monsterman" in the museum gardens Dorothy and Larry had visited. Larry explains the five attacked him with broken bottles and knives, and he fought back in self-defense. Television coverage sensationalizes the killings. Larry notes with alarm that they keep calling him "the killer" (109). He tells Dorothy that if caught, they will kill him rather than recapture him. No one on the broadcasts suggests the creature might be sheltered by a friendly person.

Dorothy sees a photograph on television that resembles Joey, the teenage son of Estelle. At midnight, Estelle calls and confirms Joey was among the dead. Dorothy is stricken by guilt. She visits Estelle the next afternoon and finds her transformed: quiet, expressionless, refusing medication. Estelle does not believe in the monster, attributing the killings to a rival gang. She reveals that Sandra's older married lover was someone Estelle herself had been seeing for years, and asks Dorothy not to attend the funeral.

One warm evening, Dorothy takes Larry to a bamboo grove. Approaching, they hear moaning. In the dim light, Dorothy sees two people: a nearly fully dressed man and a naked girl. The girl is Sandra, Estelle's daughter. The man is Fred. Dorothy whispers that it is her husband and stumbles away. She realizes Fred must be Estelle's secret longtime lover, the one Sandra pursued to hurt her mother.

Fred's rented car appears behind them on the highway, Sandra visible in the passenger seat. Both must have seen Larry. Fred tries to force Dorothy off the road. Sandra fights him for the wheel. Fred's car veers over the center divider into oncoming traffic and bursts into flames. Dorothy's car skids to a stop. She tells Larry he must go; they are near the sea. He disappears into the darkness while everyone watches the wreckage.

At the morgue, Estelle confronts Dorothy: "We kept it from you for years, so you wouldn't be hurt any more. We could have been happy if it hadn't been for you" (125). Dorothy shakes her head: "It wasn't me" (125). She reflects that one betrayal covers another and stops feeling ready to forgive.

Every night, Dorothy drives to the beach and waits for Larry. He never comes. She rules out capture or death, since either would have made the news. She visits Fred's grave and develops a nodding acquaintance with an old woman tending a neighboring plot. When the woman asks her husband's name, Dorothy says "Fred," then changes to "Larry," explaining his name was Frederick but she called him Larry. She goes on job interviews and listens to the radio, but there are no more special messages. The novel ends with Dorothy walking the beach, hour after hour, watching the waves "like the knitting of threads, like the begetting of revenges, betrayals, memories, regrets" (128). The water makes a musical sound, "a language as definite as speech" (128), echoing Larry's description of the sea as the voice of his home. But he never comes.