The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047

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“Don’t use clean water to wash your hands!”

Intended as a gentle reminder, the admonishment came out shrill. Florence didn’t want to seem like what her son would call a boomerpoop, but still—the rules of the household were simple. Esteban consistently flouted them. There were ways of establishing that you weren’t under any (somewhat) older woman’s thumb without wasting water. He was such a cripplingly handsome man that she’d let him get away with almost anything else.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Esteban muttered, dipping his hands into the plastic tub in the sink that caught runoff. Shreds of cabbage floated around the rim.

“That doesn’t make sense, does it?” Florence said. “When you’ve already used the clean, to use the gray?”

“Only doing what I’m told,” her partner said.

“That’s a first.”

“What’s put you in such a good mood?” Esteban wiped his now-greasy hands on an even greasier dishtowel (another rule: a roll of paper towels lasts six weeks). “Something go wrong at Adelphi?”

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