Free A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus

It was probably one of the few prewar artifacts left in the apartment. They had never replaced it because they had supposed—without actually talking about it—that the kids would eventually contrive to lock themselves in. They had assumed they would have to force it open, but now the mechanism held. Marshall began pulling and pushing the door violently, rattling the screws. Joyce shrieked.
    “Come out!” he bellowed. He gave the door a powerful punch. Everything in the bathroom was shaken by the blow. The container of baby powder tumbled off the vanity onto the tile, spilling and testifying to its anomalous presence in the household. Of course those g ’s were his. Everything in Marshall’s sad, twisted life pointed to his guilt. Had the container’s clatter reached him?
    “Leave me alone!” she cried. She picked up the container, twisted it shut, and put it in her bag.
    He pounded against the door again. He was certain to break the lock or the entire door. This was a man who had just crapped in the kitchen sink.
    “Joyce!”
    “You’ll be sorry.”
    “I can’t be any sorrier than I am now,” he said.
    He was working the knob back and forth. It was coming loose. She desperately checked her messages. There was another from Agent Robbins. She opened it—and this one had a full text:
    ELLO, ARE YOUGETTING THIS EXCUSE ME WEHAVNT HAD OUR TRAIBNING YET CANT “CALL UP” YOUR EMAIL ANYWAY WE HAVE A SUSPECTA PRANKSTER IN NJ HEEWALKED HIMSELF INTHABNK YOUFOR YOURHELP
    “I swear, Joyce,” Marshall was yelling. “I’m calling my lawyer. The agreement calls for each of us to have full access to the bathroom, the kitchen, and the TV. Do you hear me?”
    “Go away!”
    “Don’t think I’m going to forget this!”
    She said, “That would never have occurred to me.”
    A screw fell from one of the hinges. She stared at the screen, not even hearing Marshall. She ran her thumb feverishly over the BlackBerry’s keys. She wrote back:
    agent robbins, i’m glad that worked out. nice to meet you. by the way, do you ever see your potential felony witnesses socially?:)
    Marshall started banging on the door again—a steady drumbeat. Joyce ignored it and launched the message into the ether. She calmly rewrapped her towel, taking care to make it as neat and prim as possible. She looked at her face in the mirror and brushed away the signs of upset. One of her contacts had slid off-center and she blinked a few times to put it right.
    “Joyce, I’m calling my lawyer! I have the phone in my hand! I’m dialing!”
    She breathed deeply and forced a smile at the mirror, only to reassure herself, and then she just as forcefully took it away.
    “Okay, okay,” she said.
    She opened the door. Marshall did indeed have his phone, holding it in the air like a loaded pistol. His face was flushed and he had allowed his shirt to come halfway out of his pants. He looked perfectly capable of terrorizing the city.
    “Can’t a person have some privacy?” she said quietly. “I’m going to ask my lawyer about that .”
    And then she scooped her clothes from the couch and went into the kids’ room to change.

NOVEMBER
    B ACK WHEN JOKES were made, a running joke in their household was that neither Marshall nor Joyce could properly pronounce or spell the vowel-packed name of their doctor, a burly sad-eyed general practitioner from some mysterious country of the East. “I’m going for a checkup with Dr. Mouiwawaa—” Marshall would begin, and Joyce would giggle. Before she had children Joyce had come down with bronchitis three winters in a row, but otherwise they saw him only once every several years, when he would take their blood pressure, check their urine, and listen to their hearts, which had not yet shown signs of breaking, and write scrips for blood tests that they often put off until the week before their next checkups. The doctor hardly ever spoke to either. They were unsure whether he recognized them from one visit to the