Shark Heart: A Love Story

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For my parents

SCENE ONE

LEWIS: In the early days after I left New York, I would ruminate, doubt all my choices. But when I met you, I began to thank my failure. Maybe failing was a kind of miracle. Maybe everything happened just right.

WREN: You are an excellent teacher. You’ve said so yourself: everything in New York led you to what you should have been doing all along if you weren’t so stubborn. And you’re still so young. You can do anything. You can act, perform in plays again, if you want. I could support us if you want to try again.

LEWIS: Thank you, but that’s not what— I,

I am saying the wrong things.

I’m talking too much about myself.

What my point is, what I’m getting at is:

My failure as an artist led me to you,

with your bird wrists, twig fingers,

you, with your efficient days

making lists

researching

you, who can make a spreadsheet

about almost anything.

You make everything better than when you found it,

even me.

LEWIS (continued): Will you let me stand beside you on your plot of earth? We’ll tell the weeds to grow tall around our ankles, and when the wind gives us sycamore seeds, we’ll raise them as sprouts, seedlings, saplings until they overpower, shade, and nurture us. Our trees will grow for two hundred years or more as our union becomes even more unquestionable and strong. Unquestionable because no one will remember a time when we were not creating our universe. Strong because trees two hundred years old have been great witnesses to it all. Then, one day, we’ll die gladly into the soil we shared, and fungi will take over what was once our bodies. Bouquets of mushrooms, little families, will mark the place of our lives.

To be of the ground is to be of life.

You taught me that.

You,

a woman whose deepest belly laugh makes no sound

a woman who notices every detail

a woman made of a brilliance you don’t see

no matter how many times I show you.

Sometimes I wonder if you might not be a person at all,

but a spirit

or a fairy

or a memory,

and I’m watching Good Morning America in a hospital room or a prison, or maybe this is all the most wonderful, strange dream. I don’t want to wake up. I like to think we met in a daydream once, a long time ago, and decided to meet right here, right now. Wren, you are the most complicated person I have ever known. I mean—in the best way, complicated, and somehow terrifically unaffected by fragile things like youth, beauty, promises, and dreams, and I want to keep on knowing you—well, trying to—all the days of my life. So, I want to ask you: Will you marry me, Wren? Will you be my wife?

Wren was unlike any woman Lewis had ever met. She presented herself just as she was from the beginning, consistent and clear. No tricks, secrets, or games. Wren did not love him obliquely, making him dance for her affection.

She divided every dinner receipt to the cent and never left a trace of herself at his apartment. Early was on time. She found spontaneity stressful. She did not like the sound of flowery words or the weight of gift boxes. She was five steps ahead. She took notes. She scanned every environment for trouble, hypervigilant. She did not watch television to be entertained but to realize the ending before it happened. Wren would say I love you, but she almost cringed to hear it in return.

Unlike Lewis, Wren did not take life personally or let her feelings run wild. Wren’s love was true but methodical, and for the first time in all his life, Lewis felt secure and accepting of his sensitivity and inner turbulence, because Wren loved him just as he was.

Wren’s skill as a listener endeared her to everyone they knew. She remembered everything anyone ever said to her. As a conversationalist, Wren asked questions that were specific but never invasive. When asked of her own life, however, she gave simple, generic answers. There was never much to say about herself. Wren let others take up all the space they needed, because she was always doing just fine.

Lewis used to miss the activities he shared with the artistically motivated women from his past—drinking cheap wine until two o’clock in the morning, talking about old films, going to warehouse plays, giving notes on screenplays, and comforting each other after a horrible audition.

As their relationship became more committed, deep, and real, Lewis realized Wren’s gift: she would never compete with him as an artist. Now he could relax and enjoy the pleasure of never having to defend his taste.

All the art he shared with Wren was an education to her, and in her unknowing, Lewis found her rarest vulnerability. Wren did not know theater, film, music, or poetry. She did not contemplate the definition of beauty or philosophize about the nature of ideas. She had never wept at an opera in another language or stood in front of a painting for an hour as a creative exercise to see what emerged from an image when one stopped trying to know it.

Wren became soft and young when she was learning, and in these moments, Lewis pretended they’d gone back in time together. On this imagined plane, Lewis and Wren were sixteen years old, discovering new music and spiraling into the sort of cloudless love that fears no consequences.

Wren grew to appreciate what Lewis loved, but she never became passionate about art herself. She let Lewis play that part, alone.

APRIL

Their wedding was intimate and lovely but practical, just like their relationship, which had never been an inferno of public passion or an opulent, material display of caring.

Wren liked quiet structured evenings with a few friends. Lewis liked boisterous gatherings where many people were invited to come and go. They settled in the middle: a ceremony in his parents’ backyard with forty-four guests and a catered BBQ reception.

Since she was a teenager, Wren had only ever had herself. So it made sense that she would be the one to give herself away. A student from the high school where Lewis was a teacher played the violin as Wren came down the aisle.

What moved Lewis to tears in this moment was not the sight of Wren wearing a dress as blue as the Texas sky, his mother clutching her heart, or all the people he loved in the same place but, rather, his remembrance of the trees standing tall behind him. Lit up with string lights for the ceremony, the four live oaks were the main venue for his boyhood imagination. Lewis and those trees grew up together. And now the same trees were his best men, watching and witnessing the life he continued to create. Lewis was overwhelmed.

He’d tried to imagine this moment as a younger man, seeing the mysterious idea of his wife coming toward him down the aisle. Who will she be? he’d wondered for years. Now Lewis could finally answer his younger self’s question: Wren! Wren is my wife! He exclaimed in his mind, the mystery revealed.

As Lewis held Wren’s hands, he thought of her kindness, her intelligence, her inner beauty. Yet, just as he married these known qualities, he also married her vast unknowns. And she, his.

At the end of the ceremony, Lewis and Wren turned to face family and friends, a microcosm of the world who had just witnessed the transfiguration, a microcosm knowing full well that even the most beautiful marriages will bear the weight of challenge one day. But for an evening, the challenge was hypothetical; for an evening, Wren and Lewis were the lucky ones. It was their time to be happy.

They would own the future together now.

Lewis and Wren spent their wedding night at a bed-and-breakfast nestled in a field of Texas bluebonnets just outside Fort Worth. They split a gargantuan caramel pecan sticky bun and dreamed about their summer honeymoon in France. They would have gone directly after the wedding, but Lewis was about to go into tech rehearsals for the spring musical, Sweeney Todd, and couldn’t leave town with the machine of an elaborate high school musical on his shoulders.

They both wanted to discard the pressure of making their wedding night the most romantic night of their lives, so the evening took on the cadence of any other relaxing Saturday night they would spend together. And that was a lovely thing, too.

When Lewis started dancing around the room, singing The Worst Pies in London in a very committed falsetto, Wren laughed until she snorted. Then, embarrassed, she apologized. Even in joy, Wren was careful and restrained.

MAY

A few weeks after the wedding, Lewis noticed something odd. The bridge of his nose was no longer a triangle of bone but, rather, soft cartilage.

Lewis was startled and concerned until he remembered hearing somewhere that one’s nose and ears continued to grow throughout life. His late grandfathers each had had enormous noses and ears. That must be the reason. My nose is growing, Lewis thought. Then he became freshly distraught by the fact that he would be forty in a few years. FORTY! And I’ve done nothing! I know nothing! He forgot all about noses.

A week later, though, Lewis’s nose was completely cartilaginous. It looked normal, but he could flatten it with his hand and press it flush against his cheeks. When he shook his head hard, his nose jiggled, like he was made of rubber. He showed Wren this new feature as if it were a party trick. But she was horrified.

Lewis! It isn’t funny! This could be a serious medical condition. You need to see a doctor.

Wren wanted to drive him to the emergency room, but Lewis calmed her by insisting he was not in pain; he promised to call Dr. Anderson in the morning.

Dr. Anderson had been Lewis’s doctor since childhood and was a family friend. Lewis expected Dr. Anderson’s usual jovial, joking bedside manner, but instead, he expressed deep concern, like Wren. As a nurse drew Lewis’s blood, Dr. Anderson wrote down two numbers, for a rheumatologist and a neurologist.

If you tell their offices I sent you, they’ll work you in quickly. And Lewis: you do need to be seen. Quickly.

At work, Lewis was met with a jubilant theater program, glowing after a glorious run of Sweeney Todd. Dr. Anderson and the ominous appointment faded from his mind. With only two weeks of school left, Lewis let his classes order pizza and sing karaoke. He turned his head the other way when a group started playing the dirty version of Cards Against Humanity, but when four senior guys climbed onto the roof, Lewis put his foot down, winkingly threatening to report them to the principal’s office.

What did Dr. Anderson say? Wren asked before she’d even taken off her blazer that evening.

He didn’t know.

What do you mean, he didn’t know?

He referred me to a couple specialists. I’ve already made the appointments, Lewis said, expecting Wren to be satisfied. Instead, she was just more inquisitive.

What kind of specialists?

I don’t remember.

When are the appointments?

Why so many questions?

Because I’m worried. Aren’t you worried?

No, Lewis said, wrapping his arms around her. I’m young. I’m healthy. I’m not worried at all.

But Lewis wasn’t being honest; he was worried. Whatever was happening to him was coming on fast. He felt thirsty all the time, and even though he drank a couple gallons of water a day, Lewis hardly urinated. Furthermore, his molars were loose, a sensation he had not experienced since childhood. As in childhood, he could feel new teeth coming in beneath the old ones, but these new teeth were not square and blunt. They were sharp, like the end of a knife.

The skin texture on Lewis’s lower back and feet was the most peculiar development of all. When the affected skin became wet in the shower, it felt smooth when he stroked downward, but if he moved his hand in the opposite direction, the skin felt rough, like sandpaper. Throughout the day, the soles of his feet would become very dry. Once, his right heel even split and bled into his shoe. So he started applying a thick coat of petroleum jelly before putting on his socks each morning, and in minutes, his skin absorbed it as the healing force battled the destructive one.

Lewis’s other symptoms included an increased appetite, a throbbing ache deep within his thigh and calf bones, a decrease in focus, an increase in aggression and irritability, and flashes of strong apathy. He recited this list to doctors and nurses until it was a dull, rote monologue.

And then Lewis had other concerns he could not quite articulate to the doctors. He felt different in space, nimble and buoyant, as if he were floating, not walking. Lewis could sprint without feeling his heart race. Looking into the backyard at night, he realized he saw objects more clearly than in the day. Lewis had a new awareness of sound, too, and a sensitivity to peripheral objects moving through space. He could predict someone’s movements before they made them.

On the first Friday of the students’ summer vacation, Lewis sat alone in his office, surrounded by plays he might select for the fall, when his phone rang.

This is Carla from Dr. Ramirez’s office calling for Lewis Woodard.

Lewis had feigned unconcern when Wren had asked if he’d gotten a call from the neurologist, but now he could not deny his anxiety. His hands trembled as he brought the phone closer to his face.

This is Lewis Woodard speaking, he replied in a voice deeper than his natural one.

Hi, Mr. Woodard. I’m calling to let you know we have the results of the tests. Dr. Ramirez would like you to come in to discuss them.

Can you also tell me now?

I’m sorry. Dr. Ramirez would like to see you in person.

Two days later, Dr. Ramirez sat before him, clasping his hands and leaning forward, like a preacher.

We finally have everything back from the lab. The diagnosis is very clear, Dr. Ramirez said briskly to mask the gravity of what came next. You’re in the early stages of a Carcharodon carcharias mutation.

Carcharo— What?

…

Carcharodon carcharias. Great white shark.

Lewis felt dizzy and wished he had brought Wren to the appointment. He hadn’t because, through all of this, he did not want to cause worry if it was nothing. But it wasn’t nothing. His diagnosis was very much something. Lewis heard only snippets:

"Chondrichthyes mutations, what we call the class of cartilaginous fish mutations, are usually fast-developing, aggressive. We don’t currently have a way to ease the transition between air and water breathing. Some patients report a sensation of constant suffocation toward the end…

"Some maintain a few human features at the time of release, but these features do resolve in time. Patients typically continue to develop after being released in the ocean…

I looked over your MRI, and your ankles, knees, hips, and elbows are almost completely cartilage. I’m surprised you’re still walking. How is the pain?

As Lewis hobbled to his car with a few pamphlets and seven prescriptions to pick up after work, he tried to remember all Dr. Ramirez had said and regretted not writing some things down. He could not even pronounce the name of the diagnosis. He would just have to look everything up on the Internet later.

Lewis decided to keep his bad news private, separate from his daily life, for as long as he could. He pretended that avoidance would diminish his symptoms and make the whole ordeal unreal. But as the existing symptoms intensified and new ones emerged, the secret itself had almost as many symptoms as the disease. He knew he had to tell Wren. Soon.

Meanwhile, she kept hammering him with questions: Has Dr. Ramirez called today? Maybe you should follow up. Why don’t you just check in with the nurse? Didn’t they say they would know in about a week? I think they sometimes forget to call. Maybe they sent you an email. Did you check your spam? Maybe they posted something on the patient portal. Do you remember making a password?

Then Lewis’s secret became an outright lie.

When he was alone, Lewis’s mind raced.

When he was with others, Lewis pretended everything was fine.

When he was with Wren, Lewis played a characterized version of himself, punching up his idealism, sense of humor, and creative energy.

He had been an actor, after all.

Lewis often told his students that living itself could be an art form. So it made sense that his life, as their teacher, would be a demonstration of this principle. If this was Act One, Lewis still had control. He could still direct his own story.

What happened after intermission would be in nature and God’s hands, if there was a god. And if there wasn’t, Lewis would blame life, the chaos, the living drama.

PART ONE

WREN and LEWIS

MAIN CHARACTERS

WREN: Woman, age 35. Listener. List maker. Timekeeper. Strives to control the course of events with illusions and intangibles: willpower, pragmatism, hope, and love.

LEWIS: Man, age 35. Theater teacher. Treehouse dreamer. Director. Playwright. Failed actor, that is, until now, the performance of his lifetime.

TINY PREGNANT WOMAN: Former prodigy. Misanthrope. Mother of birds.

SETTING

Dallas, Texas. 2016.

When Wren was in elementary school, the class attached paper wishes to the dream catchers they made with yarn and disposable plates. In thick marker, Wren wrote her dream:

A Medium-Sized Life.

Second-grade Wren’s reasoning was that a life too noticeable might be stolen, and conversely, a wispy existence might blow away or be stepped on. Medium was safe.

Wren’s