by Jerry
“Stand up,” she said, “and take off your pants.”
It did so with coordination but without agility, one leg pulled loose from the slacks, the robot almost stumbling, then one bare leg down and the other pulled loose. It stood before her, naked except for its shoes. Looking at it, all except for its face and its two eyes with the light behind them, it looked so human. A bit plasticky, but so human. Hair upon her head, under her armpits, tracing her lower abdomen. The thought of what she was going to do caused Claire to hesitate. But it was just a thing, and she had to know. Her hand reached out along the downward curve of its belly and touched hair. She tried to discern if the hair felt human or not and knew she was just stalling. Then she let her hand slide down the folds of plastiskin, sliding between them, feeling the increasing moisture, realizing it was all there, the thing suddenly human and inhuman, and its hand was reaching toward Claire’s cheek and it was saying something about alternate programming and she imagined the long white fingers wrapping themselves around her neck and . . . squeezing.
Claire jumped back, almost stumbling over the chair, which crashed to the floor. “Get away from me! Step back! Put your clothes on or something—what the fuck are you?”
It gave its make, model, and serial number as it dressed itself.
Feeling sickened at what it was and what she had been doing, Claire darted about the house looking for the telephone. The game-show contestants seemed to scream even louder at her from the kitchen counter. When she found the telephone and not the cord, she cursed her mother for having taken it off to work with her. She quickly, almost fearfully, glanced over at the thing to find it sitting back in its usual chair, reading, as if nothing had happened.
Claire rushed over to Rosa Martinez’s house, told her neighbor something (which sounded to Claire like a lie) about a broken phone, and called her mother’s office to tell her to come home, that it was important. In the pause while one of the girls at the office went to look for Mother, Claire felt a certain calm. Mother could control the robot, set things right, maybe decide to get rid of it. Rosa Martinez prepared coffee as if there were nothing wrong. With the coffee in her hand, Claire wouldn’t have to go right back to the house. In the lull of her pain, Claire for a moment let herself think that it was a thing made to be used for testing, to be used for other things. To be used. She felt a certain bond of sympathy. Then she saw it naked, remembered her fingers probing and reaching into it. Her dislike for it returned with the full force of her disgust.
In the cars where they place me, I am seated with Mother, Father, and Brother. There may be a bond there, but I cannot describe it. In Ivy’s books there seem to be two types of families. In one, each member is yelling at the other. The main character, as they call the one who thinks and talks most often, marries a member of a family and is not sure if she can trust the family. The word suspicion is used often, and the homes seem full of dark shadows and locked rooms. In the other type of family, everybody touches and kisses and uses the word love very often. Something happens and the second type of family sometimes begins to resemble the first type, but at the end of the novel “things are put right,” as the characters refer to what resembles a return to mechanical equilibrium, and the original situation is resumed.
From the books, I almost comprehend family.
But in this house there are no locked rooms and the shadows emerge only in the evening when the electricity is cut back. Ivy and Claire rarely touch, and neither uses the word love, except for the times when Claire says to Ivy: “Tell me that you wouldn’t have done differently if you had been in love”; “What about Dad? You were in love with him. Everybody told you not to, but still you married him”; and: “Being reasonable and being in love have nothing to do with each other.” Claire and Ivy seem to be neither type of family.
In Claire’s books there is no type of family. The main character has a mother and/or father and perhaps several siblings, but they have the same clarity of detail for the main character as my residual memories have for me. Ivy and Claire are not this type of family either.
I think I almost comprehend. But I do not. When Ivy and Claire work together in the kitchen they do not collide with each other. It is analogous to the dances Ivy and Claire watch on the television screen. Ivy says: “The best dancers are the ones who have danced with each other a lot. When we could afford that sort of thing, your father and I would dance up a storm. Your father was good on his feet.” Claire demonstrates to me the largeness of her abdomen and explains pregnancy to me. She says: “This is what family means.” Ivy says: “Don’t be mean, Claire.”
I conjecture if before my arrival, Claire and Ivy touched more frequently. If they used the word love more often. Maybe it is my presence here that is the disruption. The books confirm that hypothesis. But at times the books appear to be poor evidence.
Once, Claire says to Ivy: “Sometimes the baby is the only reason I stay alive.” The prostitute says to the minister: “God is the one who gives my life value.” I have no baby. I have no God. I have no feelings. But one claims belief in such things because it seems evident that beyond the stimuli I register there must be something more.
Ivy’s eyes hurt, and the tension headaches she hadn’t felt in so many years were now pounding at the back of her eyeballs like giant timpani. Seated on the Metro, she took off her glasses to let the world slide by in one giant blur, but that didn’t ease the dull aching that seemed to squeeze her eyes. She had never felt it this bad, she told herself. But she knew she must have, back during those two times she had been laid off or the time when she and Jerry had almost got divorced. It had been pretty bad then. Or when Claire had told her she was pregnant.
It was just that this time she’d lost all control; she couldn’t even comfort herself with the notion that this happened to other people, too. Other people had been laid off; other people had lost their husbands; other people had pregnant, unwed daughters. But here she was, alone on the Metro, unable to remember exactly what her daughter had said on the phone, if she had given away too much, if she had planned to say something later on to Rosa Martinez. Ivy felt so frustrated and worn out. She wondered why she had brought that machine into her home. But she had always felt like there had never been any other choice.
The Metro approached her stop. She slid her glasses back on, the clarity and its strain tugging at her eyes as much as the passing blur. She got off and walked along the streets of row houses and finally made her way home, coming in through the back door. The robot was sitting in her usual chair, reading the Robin Harrison novel about the secretary who falls in love with her ladies’-man boss, only to discover that he is the head of some worldwide conspiracy. Claire was standing in the kitchen, waiting for her.
“It took you long enough.”
Ivy felt the anxiety release itself as anger. “I’m sorry. But you know how hard it is to make connections before rush hour.”
“What did you tell them at the office?” Claire asked in that snotty voice of hers.
Ivy threw off her jacket before turning on her daughter. “Do you wanna tell me what you dragged me here for, or don’t you?”
Claire hesitated, then pointed at the robot. “That thing is sick.”
“It’s a robot, honey. It can’t get sick.”
“Mother! You know what I mean. There’s something wrong with it. They built it like a woman.”
“You mean you brought me home early to tell me that?”
“No . . . I mean . . .” Claire shook her head and then shouted it out with all her frustration: “It’s got a—it’s got woman parts—the kind you can stick a cock into!”
“Watch your mouth, Claire!”
“Mother! It’s got a woman’s parts!”
Ivy didn’t want to believe it. “And how do you know that?” Claire glanced down at her feet. It seemed like she was blushing. “I looked,” she whispered.
“How do you mean, you looked?”
Claire swallowed hard. “I told it
to take off its clothes.”
“You what? Don’t you have anything better to do than to mess with her? Why can’t you just leave her alone?”
“It’s an it, Mother. An it. It was made for testing—and for other things . . . It’s so sick.”
“I don’t see anything sick about it,” Ivy lied. “Men have been doing the same to human women for years.”
“But I set something off. It tried . . . to touch me. It may be going crazy like they said.”
That’s when the visitor rose from her usual chair, placed the book down, and walked toward the two women, each footstep loud, or at least louder than human footsteps upon the carpet, which made it worse. Both Ivy and Claire turned to watch her, Ivy reminded of the way she would walk over to the breakfast table and sit down with Ivy to ask questions. But this time the movement seemed less quaint, almost ominous. She stopped alongside the women; Claire tried, unsuccessfully, to hide her step backward.
“I am sorry,” said the visitor in her artificial, squeaky voice, the words surprising Ivy. “I will not touch again.”
“There,” said Ivy, looking for a reason to sound relieved. “It’s settled. You two can get along with each other now.” Ivy could hear the nervousness in her voice.
“It’s too late,” Claire said, much too softly.
“What?”
“I said it’s too late.”
“What do you mean it’s too late?”
Claire swallowed hard, didn’t say anything.
“Claire, what do you mean it’s too late?”
The visitor stood there, as if she too was awaiting an answer. Ivy wished that she’d go sit down.
“Oh, Claire, you didn’t!” The disappointment sank into her along with her voice.
“I didn’t tell her that it was in the house. But . . . I told her I saw it.”
“Honey, how could you?”
Ivy watched guilt burst into a desperate anger, Claire’s face reddening. “What the hell was I supposed to do? There’s that strangled woman, and this thing starts touching me. I was scared, dammit! Scared!”
“But . . .”
“But what? You haven’t been the one sitting here all day with this thing. You can be so friendly with it because every day you get to get the fuck out of here and go to work.”
“Please, Claire, watch your tone of voice. It’s your mother you’re talking to.”
“Yeah. Right. That’s what you always say when you know I’m right and you don’t want to listen.”
“Claire . . .” It came out almost as a plea. And like some silent referee, the visitor stood along with them. Why couldn’t it just go sit down?
“I want it out of here, Mother.”
“No.”
“Don’t look at me that way. I don’t want the reward or anything. I just want it out of here.”
“No. It stays.”
Claire forced a shrug. “Have it your way.” She stomped off to the living area and plopped down in a chair. She turned on the television and stared at it.
The robot stood at Ivy’s side, still unmoving. Ivy watched her daughter sit in front of the TV screen, the whole act reminding her so much of Jerry. Always, when he had gotten mad at Ivy, he’d stomp off and read the newspaper, trying so hard to act as like he was concentrating on some section—the society page, the want-ads—that didn’t interest him a bit. Sometimes Ivy had broken into laughter at the sight. But now she didn’t feel much like laughing.
“I suppose,” said Ivy, “that we should say something to Rosa Martinez.”
“You say anything to her and she’ll just get more suspicious.” Ivy didn’t know what to do, so she began to prepare dinner. The kitchen seemed to turn into the office: nothing would cut right, measured-out quantities seemed to keep spilling over. The visitor stood and watched her.
The doorbell ring was both a fright and a relief. “Get into my bedroom,” snapped Ivy, and the visitor walked into Ivy’s room. Ivy closed the door behind her.
The man at the front door was one of the private detectives hired by the motor companies and the Testing Center. Ivy couldn’t make heads or tails of his ID, so she handed it back to him. “I’m sorry to be bothering you, ma’am, but your next-door neighbor called our offices and said that your daughter might have sighted the robot.”
Ivy didn’t know what to say.
“The missing robot, ma’am, you must have heard of it on the news.” The detective seemed to look at her the same way Mr. McHinry at the office did, almost as if she really weren’t there, as if her only true importance lay in her response. Everything was just words.
“Yes. I guess I heard about it.” She knew the words sounded forced, weak in their ability to convince.
“May I speak with your daughter, ma’am?”
Ivy wanted to say no. What else would Claire do but tell the truth? Like her father, she had never been much of a liar.
“Is your daughter home, ma’am?”
Ivy found herself nodding to the sound of authority in the detective’s voice.
“May I speak with her then?”
“Claire!” Ivy called out. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
The detective shifted as if he wanted to step right into the house. Ivy felt too lost to move aside, and the sudden but small advantage she gained lifted her spirits. But the robot could still do something it shouldn’t: step out into the living room, knock something over. And then it would all be over. Here, she still had the man outside.
Claire walked sluggishly to the door, looked suspiciously at her mother, and then took Ivy’s place on the doorstep. The look on Claire’s face snatched away Ivy’s feeling of control: Claire could now say what she wanted.
“Yeah,” Claire said, sounding almost like an insulted child.
“Ms. Claire Hart?”
Claire nodded. “That’s me.”
“Ms. Rosa Martinez, your next-door neighbor, reported that you sighted the escaped testing robot.”
Claire didn’t reply. Ivy nervously glanced over her shoulder at the closed bedroom door, then jerked her head back, realizing too late what a giveaway gesture that was. “Yeah, I saw it,” Claire finally said.
“When?”
“Sometime this morning. When I was out for a walk.” It sounded to Ivy like a lie, one she couldn’t believe her daughter was telling.
“Why didn’t you report it?”
Claire looked down at her feet. Without seeing it, Ivy knew that her daughter was swallowing hard, trying to concentrate. “I don’t know.” Her voice was barely audible.
“There must have been a reason.”
“I just don’t know.”
The detective looked up at Ivy. “Ma’am, could you please impress your daughter about how important this is? The escaped robot could be dangerous.”
It’s not dangerous. Ivy wanted to say.
“Could you at least tell me,” said the detective, “where you think you saw it?”
Claire hesitated, then pointed vaguely. “Somewhere over there.”
“When did you see it?”
“I don’t know.” Claire’s voice had become a whine. “Sometime this morning, I guess. I was out walking.”
“Did you notice what it was wearing?”
“I guess so. It had on dark pants and a shirt—you know, the kind with flowers on it.”
Claire glanced up at Ivy, and then both realized what Claire had just said. The robot was wearing a flower-print shirt, the kind Ivy always wore, the kind she was wearing now—and the robot had escaped wearing something tom, something designed in a somber blue-gray.
“May I ask once again: why didn’t you report it?”
Claire hesitated for a moment, looked at Ivy, looking at her almost in supplication, as if asking for permission, then looked back at the man. “I don’t know,” she said, and paused. “I guess I just didn’t want to get involved.”
The faint look of suspicion on the man’s face became one of mild disgust. Ivy, for a moment,
let herself believe that Claire had given the right answer. “Well, thank you for your assistance. Someone may come by later and ask you to fill out a report.”
Ivy knew she should say something, but didn’t know what or how.
“Is that really necessary?” asked Claire.
“I’m afraid it is. Sorry to have disturbed you both. Good afternoon.”
He walked away and left the two women alone with their fears. Someone might be coming later; more questions. Maybe the detective would make the connection between the two different shirts, maybe he’d ask the neighbors about any strange behavior. What would Rosa Martinez and Mrs. Buloski say—those were really the only two neighbors they ever saw, and they hadn’t seen too much of them for the past two weeks. Ever since the robot showed up.
They let the visitor out of the bedroom. She sat down and resumed reading. She didn’t ask any questions, which, to Ivy, seemed odd. Ivy suddenly felt uneasy around her: why wasn’t she saying anything?
Claire and Ivy ate dinner, the silence almost as substantial as the food they ate. After dinner they sat and watched TV and waited. When would someone else come?
The visitor asked for paper and pen. She spent the rest of the evening writing out the alphabet, the speed and the neatness of her handwriting increasing over the hours.
“I don’t see why they didn’t teach it to write,” said Claire. “They built it to do everything else.”
“Hush.”
“You could at least thank me.”
Ivy didn’t know what to say.
The eleven o’clock news announced the sighting. Actually, there had been two of them, each one in a different area. Authorities refused to reveal where; the newspeople gave their own conjectures. A house-to-house search, authorized by several district judges and criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union, was being conducted. Ivy could feel Claire’s eyes upon her but had no idea what to say. The fear was closing in on her. For the first time in a long time, she wished Jerry were here. But Jerry would have been no better at handling this than she was.