The People with the Purple Thumbs
By Michael Maiello
I wake up with a purple thumb. It doesn’t hurt and doesn’t look like a bruise. It’s a vibrant purple, with hints of magenta that would make for a great king’s robe. My thumb functions normally. Up. Down. Wiggle. I can rest my chin between it and my forefinger. I can pick up the phone by my bedside. The purple doesn’t rub off on anything. My futzing about with my thumb wakes Margaret, who is turned on her side, facing me, her face cradled in the palm of her right hand. Her fingers look fine, her thumbs peachy as always. She murmurs. I complain about my purple thumb.
“It’s early, right?’ she says. “For Sunday?”
We always sleep later on Sundays, but she has to wake up to see my thumb. She pokes it, she rubs it, she pulls on it and she finally says, “hmmp.” She asks if it hurts. She asks if I banged it into something. She asks if I had eaten tree nuts. I remind her that would cause me to suffocate during anaphylaxis, not change the color of my extremities. “Hmmp,” she repeats. She suggests that if my thumb does not return to its regular hue by tomorrow that I should go to urgent care. “Hmmp,” I say.
I make breakfast for the family. Margaret wonders if I should wear a glove, to keep my thumb from contaminating the food. I ignore this suggestion. I grind coffee, fill the pot, set the brew, start a pancake batter, put bacon onto a sheet pan and all of that. Soon Margaret, our son Wally (named after me) and our Daughter Maggie (named after her) all sit together to eat pancakes and bacon while drinking water and coffee and milk. We are seven normally colored thumbs and my oddity.
After breakfast I take a walk, thinking that maybe my thumb needs fresh air. Our community has been through so much, especially with last summer’s police actions, but the neighborhood looks nice, tranquil, and expensive. Cherry and apple blossoms dot the branches of tall trees, the birds of spring have returned and it feels warmer than usual, like we’re going to skip straight to summer’s backyard barbecues and spiked iced teas.
There’s Verne, standing in his newly paved driveway in front of the two car garage attached to the two-story house which he had had expanded last year to include what he proudly called a “millionaire’s walk.” The expansion had been to create a suite for his mother-in-law, but she didn’t live to see it completed, a victim of the aforementioned police actions. They said she died resisting arrest, that she had threatened the officers. But, they always say that.
This left Verne with the upgraded property, a home equity loan, and total freedom. Verne climbs into the bed of his truck and sweeps it out with a broom. He likes to haul things: Snowmobiles in the winter, dirt bikes in the nicer months, lumber sometimes, and even mulch. His truck’s a mess of mud and debris.
“You got the thumb thing, too,” he holds up his purple thumb.
He hops down from the truck and we bring our thumbs together, examining our duplicated digits.
“What are the chances?” Verne muses, though he’s not really a muser.
“Should we go to the hospital?” I say.
“I am not doing that again,” Verne cusses. “We both go in like this, they’ll think it’s a pandemic and they won’t let us out.”
Verne tends towards paranoia about authorities like police, firefighters, medical professionals, postal workers, and court stenographers. Me and Verne are very different people. Our haircuts look the same from head on, but his hair is long in the back. I’ve got a business casual style, like I could stop what I’m doing and start playing golf at any moment. He’s a little dirty, a little gritty, and keeps a record of his wins and losses at cornhole. I’m married with two kids. He’s divorced, his kids live far away and he’s sleeping with a young girl who I suspect is a cousin. It’s weird that the two of us would have purple thumbs.
“I think we just let it go away on its own,” I say. “Strange coincidence.”
“Who knows, maybe it’s just something in the air from that new data center.”
Verne hates the data center. He thinks it’s using up all our water, which he also hated because of the fluoride they put in it. He probably voted for the previous administration, if you know what I mean. Though I bet even he wouldn’t admit that after everything that happened. It’s amazing they even got into power because you will almost never meet anybody who admits to having voted for them. I bet Verne did, though. I’m just too polite to press the issue.
I announce that I am going out for a coffee, knowing that Verne will politely decline to point out what a foppish extravagance it is to patronize Brewstand, the cool coffee shop in the town center. Verne wants nothing to do with that neighborhood and its renaissance of yoga studios, restaurants, bars, and those little stores that sell expensive soap.
Brewstand was hopping. It took me so long to find a parking spot that my power gauge dipped to a point where I had to charge it during off-peak hours, an expensive and dicey endeavor. But I was glad to see people out. People is what I want, and not people like Verne but forward-looking people like me. It’s a young crowd of designer-label wearing futurists, enjoying light electronic music while drinking out of absurdly large mugs. I can’t help swaying my shoulders without a care for looking like a dancing dad. Oh, and the economy is recovering. My latte costs just $38.75 and that’s for free range beans.
When the tall kid with the fade haircut and gold hoop earrings hands me my latte he notices my thumb. “Does that hurt?” I shake my head. “My mom’s got it, too.”
“I don’t know if it’s something you get. I probably just banged my hand on something.”
“I’m trying to get my mom to get it checked out,” and he turns away to fiddle with the steamer.
I take my coffee to a table in the corner. I scan the news on my phone while admiring the barista’s latte art. He had stenciled a line drawing of the capitol right into the foam. Patriotism is back. But, a good kind of patriotism.
I feel bad for the barista, to be his age with no colleges to attend. We’re one of the few areas left with a university in driving distance. Suddenly my B.S. in Business Administration with a minor in Inventory Management looks like a real credential. What’s this kid supposed to do?
A man walks by wearing an Aztecs cap. I used to love taking Wally and Maggie to the games when they were young. They were a great bunch of ball hurlers until the league shut down. I want to talk to the guy about the Aztecs, and maybe the new indoor summer league I’d been hearing about, but when I saw his purple thumb I let it go. I even put my hand under the table so he doesn’t see mine. I don’t want to talk about thumbs all day. Verne did get it right about how these things go. It’s like the last two pandemics:
“Oh, I got it on Tuesday and didn’t even know.”
“Really? I couldn’t get out of bed for a week. Couldn’t eat anything but Aunt Nancy’s Mortadella Calzone Bites. Had to be Aunt Nancy’s, too. Anything else tasted like lawn shavings.”
Suddenly self conscious about my thumb, I tighten up my sip-to-latte ratio while searching for purple thumb news online. It’s not confined to our town, which means the data center’s got nothing to do with it. I finish up and leave, my left hand in my pocket. When I get home, Margaret’s in the living room, watching the Minister of Wellness, “Doctor Nate,” on her tablet. I peer over her shoulder. The minister has the purple thumb, too.
“We don’t know what’s causing it,” he says. “We do know it’s not contagious and we know it’s not a physical injury and we don’t believe it will have any lasting health effects.” The Minister is handsome and confident. Before abandoning his business to serve the new administration he had made millions selling herbal and natural health remedies and even hosted his own online program, “Feel Great with Doctor Nate.” Everybody loves and trusts him. If he has a purple thumb, it can’t be so bad.
“Obviously, as a government that works for the people, we are going to get to the bottom of this and we’ll find some explanations. We know that it can affect men and women and we know that it seems to have spread across the country, over the course of a single day. We also seem to know it doesn’t affect children. At least we have not seen a reported case of this happening to anybody under 18. We need to work together to gather information, so if you have been afflicted, I am asking you to log onto our health portal and to self report. You’ll be helping yourself, your neighbors, and your country. The important thing is not to panic. I don’t think this is serious at all. I think it’s A-OK,” and with those last words, he smiles into the camera and juts his thumb into the air to signal all is well.
“Another health database,” I sigh. “Who knows what they’re going to use this information for?”
“Doctor Nate told you,” said Margaret. “If people won’t share, how are they going to get to the bottom of this?”
I fill out the form, but not accurately. I change my name, my height, my weight, my address, and my sexual orientation. I learned from the previous regime which only asked questions so they could separate those of us they wanted to harass with tax audits and lawn care fines to those they wanted to harass for voluntary financial contributions that people would pay to be kept out of the tax audit and lawn care fine group.
Days pass and Doctor Nate tells us nothing but that the purple thumbs are not a disease, more of a “condition.” It’s completely isolated to our country, including the non-contiguous parts of our country that are connected to other countries. It’s mostly showing up in white guys my age, but it doesn’t discriminate by race or gender.
Doctor Nate says not to worry and to keep working and shopping, for the good of the country. So I keep showing and trying to sell houses. I have a couple worth a billion each. Margaret keeps teaching third grade.
Wally and Maggie are working on essays that could win them visas to countries that don’t have university shortages, so they’ll have something to do after high school. Getting into one of our country’s universities is pretty much impossible. Wally wants to study quantum physics. Maggie wants to be an actor. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for both of them to live abroad. Those fertility treatments really knocked us for a financial loop. I need to make some sales so I double down on my showings, trying to spruce up each home to make it look worth the risk of a 75-year mortgage.
One day, while I’m at the giant hardware store, buying cleaning supplies for the mud room of a glorious but unkempt home, I notice this kid with long hair and a knit cap just staring at me as I’m trying to choose between paint rollers.
I look back at him, mouthing “what?”
He shakes his head and says, “Why did you fuck up our country?”
“What does that mean?”
“You know what that means.” He turns and walks off.
There’s a rumor going around that the people with purple thumbs voted for the previous administration. It’s pretty dumb and I don’t know how people could take it seriously, but the idea has penetrated even my home. When I sulk about this encounter over dinner, which Margaret made after lucking out at the super market and finding enough pork chops, salad, and buttered noodles for four. She must have spent a fortune. I don’t even ask.
“It’s true,” says Wally. “It’s highly concentrated in those parts of the country. Our history teacher believes it.”
“I should have a talk with your principal if your teachers are saying things like that,” I say. “How would a disease know who people voted for?”
“It’s not a disease,” says Maggie. “It’s a condition.”
I eat my pork. It’s a little dry, which is too bad, since this meat is so hard to get. I chew and smile. I don’t want Margaret to feel badly about this special treat turning out less than perfectly. I can smoosh the meat around a bit in the butter sauce to moisten it, anyway.
“It kind of checks out at work,” says Margaret.
“What checks out at work?”
“That the kind of people there who have the… the thumb are the kind of people who voted for those guys.” Before I can respond she adds, “I’m not saying it’s bad. People didn’t know.”
And Maggie says, “People knew, Mom. They were open about it.”
I put my fork down. Now the pork seems really dry and I can’t even chew it. “Is everybody here forgetting that I, your father, also have a purple thumb?”
Everybody falls silent. They have not forgotten. They clearly wish we were discussing something else and so do I. Then Maggie says, “Wallace, if you don’t like the way I cooked the meat, just say so. It’s better than watching you push it around your plate and fake smiling and getting all sore about your thumb, which is no big deal to any of us.”
“I like it, honey. I love it.”
“Oh, just tell the truth.”
I don’t know if she means the pork or about the way I voted in the last two elections, so I just don’t say anything.
Later, in bed, I bring it up again while she’s under the covers and I’m in the bathroom with the door open, brushing my teeth, watching the purple blur under my nose as I scrub the bristles back and forth for two minutes. I spit out, “This condition has nothing to do with how anybody voted, Margaret. If it did, I would not have it.”
“Okay.”
“Why are you saying that like you don’t believe me?”
“I never asked you how you voted. Good night.”
She turns off the light.
“You know how I voted.”
“I’m not angry. You can vote for whomever you want. It’s a free-ish country.”
“We got them out of office,” I insist.
“Somebody got them into office first.”
“Yes. Verne.”
“Who also has a purple thumb.”
The next day, Doctor Nate resigns, along with all the other purple thumbed members of the administration’s cabinet, including military leaders and those behind the intelligence agencies. The administration releases a statement about shared democratic values and the impossibility of moving forward as a body politic without abandoning the failed policies of our recent past.
Then when I go to Brewstand for my coffee, the barista hands me my cup and I take it to a table, remove the lid and there’s no latte art. The kid won’t even look at me after I felt bad for him and his educational prospects. I don’t know what comes over me but I feel unjustly singled out and I get really angry. I stand up, I hold the cup in the air and then slowly tip it. People scatter as nearly forty dollars of scalding brown liquid splatters all over the place.
The manager comes out from behind the counter, shouting at me to leave the premises before he calls the police and I tell him that I will gladly leave and that I will never come back and that he should fire that arrogant, judgmental barista. “Leave the premises, sir,” he says. And I repeat that I will gladly leave and point out that a lot of people have purple thumbs and that he’ll soon be out of business if he insists on discriminating against, like, half the country. And he tells me to leave and I say I will leave and he says, “So leave, then,” and I say I will, after I’ve made my point and the police arrive.
But the two police officers who show up have purple thumbs and I follow them outside, as directed, because under rules passed by the previous administration, they can murder you with an electroshock gun any time they feel threatened, disrespected, or uneasy. Also, everybody knows the police and soldiers are major beneficiaries of the Testosterone Replacement Act, which can add muscle mass but also lead to feelings of being threatened, disrespected, or general unease. The tall cop goes back to his car, to call in that there’s no emergency before a truckload of heavily armed tactical officers descends on the Brewstand. The shorter cop says to me, “I don’t know, people are crazy. They’re really angry.”
I’m glad I have a therapy appointment that afternoon. I need it. Darla will understand the absurdity of all this and how unfair it is to me. I arrive at her office early and drink water from the cooler in the waiting room, listening to the gentle spa-style world music that’s piped in at just the right level, inhaling the lavender aromatherapy in the waiting room. The receptionist, who I usually banter with, doesn’t make eye contact with me or say hello. She seems buried in work.
Eventually, it’s time for my appointment and Darla, who is 5 feet tall and wearing a loose cotton dress with a floral print and an absurdly large dream catcher on a string around her neck, emerges from her office to beckon me inside. A white noise machine hums outside of her office door. The window is open to the summer breeze and the room, painted pale blue, is illuminated by the sun, which is just starting its descent. I begin to speak but Darla interrupts me. “I’m sorry, Wallace,” she says. “I just can’t treat you anymore.”
I hold up my thumb. She nods. “I just don’t feel safe,” she says.
Furious, I sit in my car and write up the nastiest review of her practice, accusing her of psychic cruelty, New Age charlatanism, and the use of aromatherapy oils to cover for questionable personal hygiene practices.
I go home to another awkward family dinner, this one soy-based, which for some reason triggers my temper so I try not to say much. I want meat. After dinner I open our last bottle of wine, which Margaret had been saving for some holiday. I pour a big glass and I take it into the study, away from the screens and speakers of the home entertainment network. Margaret follows me.
“Will you just admit it?” she asks. “Maybe you’ll feel better if you just say it.”
“I don’t support them,” I say. “I’ve never supported them!”
“You voted for them! That’s what support is. They didn’t roll into power on the treads of a tank. You voted for them. Why? Did you think it would be funny? I know you don’t like the more qualified people personally. I know you think they’re arrogant. I know you think they think they’re smarter than you. I know you are insulted by them, for some reason, even though they have no idea who you are…”
“All right, stop it. I just want to have a glass of wine.”
“The last of the wine, nice.”
“Do you know what I’ve been through today?”
“Do you know what the country’s been through?”
Then she insists again that she loves me but that she wants me to be honest and to tell her why. I pour her a glass of wine and we sit in the quiet room with the door closed and I sigh and I say that maybe I did vote for them.
Margaret listens and nods and sips her wine and asks questions about whether I thought of this group’s rights or that group’s rights or our own children who now won’t even get to go to college because there aren’t any. So I say, “You see? You’re not okay with it.”
Then I suggest that to really bring the community together, everybody without a purple thumb should paint theirs so that nobody would be stigmatized. But Margaret says, “That just doesn’t make sense to me at all.”
It doesn’t really get better, either. It seems like the people in power are just going to look down on us purple thumbs forever. Those of us with purple thumbs stick together. I haven’t sold a house to anybody without a purple thumb in months. I get my lattes at the Coffee Barn, owned by a purple thumbed couple. I bought a new car at Thumb’s Up Auto. At least the police are on my side. I can speed with impunity.
Miraculously, Maggie won a visa to go to college outside the country. But Wally didn’t. He has to live at home and work in the front office of the grocery store and try again next year. I am secretly relieved that this lightens our financial burden and worry how that unspoken belief will manifest on my body.
I hang out with Verne a lot. I don’t think Margaret and I will make it. A lot of mixed thumb couples just don’t.
Michael Maiello is a New York City based author and playwright. He recently won the first Republic of Letters fiction contest and has had humor published in McSweeney's, The New Yorker and Weekly Humorist. A former journalist, he has written for Forbes, The New York Times, and The San Francisco Chronicle. He started his career at the sadly defunct Albuquerque Tribune.