The Perfect Wife

by Delaney, JP

  “Put the iPad in, too. I’m finished with it.”

  “Certain? I won’t be able to undo this.”

  “Certain.”

  Shrugging, he tosses the iPad in as well.

  “Great.” You reach for the cable on your hip and yank it out.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” he says, watching you. “The last time. You’re running away.”

  “None of your business.”

  “I’m going to miss you.”

  You snort. “Miss staring at my insides, you mean.”

  “Not just that. I admire you.”

  “You think I’m cool,” you say with a sigh. “I get that. But I really don’t give a shit.”

  “I don’t mean as a machine. As a person. You’ve been dealt a tough hand and you haven’t let it define you. You’re strong and resourceful and you don’t take no for an answer. It’s like you’re…” He searches for an analogy. “It’s like you’ve got a disability, and you’ve turned it into a superpower.”

  “Spare me the Hollywood platitudes,” you say. “Are those hard drives done yet?”

  74

  At home, you replace the wiped drives in the servers and quickly pack a suitcase for Danny. Then you put the SIM card back into the burner phone and look up the names Nathan found. According to the printout, Charles Carter set up a corporation called Zumweld—right down at the end of any alphabetical list, you note—which purchased plots of building land in different states. Most are feints, you imagine, to cover Abbie’s tracks. But one will be the real thing.

  Scanning the list, you let your intuition guide you. Montana? Iowa? Oregon?

  Oregon. Somewhere by the ocean. There’s no address, but you do a separate search for Oregon + Positive Autism. About a dozen results come up. In major cities, mostly, but then you spot one called Northhaven.

  You do another search. Northhaven has a website—just a single, well-designed page, with very few photos and no videos.

  Northhaven is a 4,000-acre off-grid oceanside community near Otter Rock, OR. We practice low-impact living and regenerative farming. In addition, residents make hammocks, artworks, tofu, and honey, working together as a collective where each member contributes whatever they can, regardless of ability; every individual valued for who, not what, they are.

  That sounds like Abbie’s kind of place. You google some travel planners. You can get an Amtrak all the way from Oakland to Albany, just north of Corvallis, then an Uber to the coast. The train takes sixteen hours and there’s a sleeper service. It all looks incredibly easy. Hopefully, you’ll be there before anyone’s even noticed you and Danny are gone.

  75

  You get to Meadowbank just after lunch, so Danny will have had some food before you set off. You’ve no idea how stressful this will be for him, and he may find eating difficult for a while.

  You go to the principal’s office, where you tell Hadfield that Danny has a medical appointment. “Unfortunately, the hospital forgot to send the details until just now.”

  “No problem,” he says easily. “I’ll send someone to fetch him.”

  He goes and speaks to his assistant, who glances in your direction and says something you can’t hear. Hadfield comes back frowning.

  “It seems there’s a standing directive that Danny can’t be removed from school without written instructions from his father.”

  “Those must be very old instructions.” You smile. “I was here with Tim just the other day—you showed us around yourself, remember? And the hospital is less than twenty minutes away. I’ll have him back before you know it.”

  He thinks for a moment. “Perhaps I can find someone to accompany you. Wait here.”

  You wait. Your head is hurting—an unfamiliar ache.

  Minutes later Hadfield returns with Danny, who’s twirling his fingers in front of his eyes, apparently unbothered by this break in his routine.

  “Hi, Danny,” you say. He doesn’t reply.

  “Danny,” Hadfield says warningly. “Quiet hands and listen.”

  “Hu,” Danny mutters, without taking his eyes off his twirling fingers.

  “Great to see you too,” you say, before Hadfield has a chance to decide this isn’t good enough and shock him. “Coming?”

  “And fortunately, I was able to find someone to go with you both,” the principal adds, nodding behind you.

  You turn. It’s Sian.

  * * *

  —

  “Which hospital?” she says as you walk to the waiting car, Danny’s hand in yours.

  “Stanford.”

  She stops. “Danny usually goes to UCSF Benioff.”

  “Well, this is Stanford. Danny, get in, will you?”

  “And which doctor?” Sian sounds suspicious now.

  “I can’t recall,” you reply brightly. “We’ll sort it out when we get there, shall we?”

  She pulls a phone out. “I’m calling Tim to check.”

  “Really, there’s no need.”

  “Sure,” she says sarcastically. “But I think he’ll be glad I did, all the same.”

  You don’t have any choice. You grab the phone from her hand and toss it into the shrubs. “Hey!” she protests, outraged. Then you hit her. You have no idea how you’re supposed to hit someone effectively in a situation like this, but it seems likely that if you slam the point of her chin with the palm of your hand, it will probably floor her.

  It does. For once, you’re grateful to Tim for the obsessive overengineering that went into your limbs. You step over Sian’s sprawled body and get into the car with Danny, who doesn’t give her so much as a glance.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The news we got of Danny after the diagnosis was sketchy. Danny was trying out different treatments, we heard, some of them experimental. Danny was being enrolled in cutting-edge research programs. “We’re going to beat this thing,” Tim told people confidently.

  Later we heard they’d abandoned any hope of finding a cure and had started looking at special-ed programs.

  Alongside that, we heard fragments of gossip. Abbie had started drinking. Abbie had totaled her car. Tim had been seen looking at hookers’ websites in his office. They were going to couples therapy.

  Once, Abbie brought Danny to the office. It was the annual children’s party, held by tradition on the day before we closed for the festive holidays. There was a bouncy castle, a petting zoo, and children’s entertainers.

  Danny walked in on tiptoe with a weird, prancing gait, his body scrunched up and distorted, holding his mother’s hand. The eyes that had once danced with mischief were now deep-set and bruised looking. He met no one’s gaze, and from his mouth there came a series of wailing sounds. Sometimes he would mutter little phrases from TV programs.

  Needless to say, he showed no interest in the bouncy castle or the entertainment. He was fascinated by the photocopier, though. Someone was printing out a big presentation, some thick marketing deck that had to be copied multiple times, and Danny seemed mesmerized by the whirring, flickering automation of it all. When the machine stopped because it had run out of paper, he began howling, absolutely howling with misery, until Abbie set about reloading it.

  Seeing the boss’s beautiful wife squatting down, frantically tearing at the nylon ribbon that secured a fresh box of paper, was enough to send the person printing the document running over with scissors and apologies.

  “Thank you,” Abbie said gratefully. “We’re not really meant to give in when he screams. But when it’s a party…” She looked over at the bouncy castle, where all the other kids were happily playing, oblivious to Danny’s distress.

  The photocopier started printing again, and Danny instantly calmed down. He sat cross-legged on the floor to watch, like it was a TV playing cartoons. After a while he laughed.

  “We’re trying this n
ew therapy,” Abbie went on. “We’ve done the research, and it’s definitely got the best weight of evidence behind it. But it’s really hard on Danny.”

  She looked over to where Tim was chatting with Mike and Elijah. But Tim wasn’t looking at them. His eyes were following Bhanu across the room. Bhanu was the new project manager he’d just hired from Google. She was slim and sassy and extroverted. Some of us were already predicting that Bhanu wasn’t destined to stay with us very long.

  76

  The Uber driver doesn’t try to make conversation, for which you’re grateful. You need to think. You’d been hoping to get across the state line before your absence was discovered. That might have to change after what you’ve just done to Sian. Most likely, the school will already have alerted the authorities.

  Technically, what you’re doing now is probably child abduction, you realize. But frankly, it can’t make much difference. If you’re caught, you’ll be wiped anyway.

  You’ve booked the Uber to take you to Jack London Square Station in Oakland. The traffic’s flowing freely over the bridge, and you’re there in under thirty minutes. Your train doesn’t leave for another half hour.

  To pass the time, you take Danny to McDonald’s.

  “I had lunch,” he objects, confused by this unexpected change in his routine.

  “I know. But you like fries, don’t you? You can have fries as well as lunch.”

  “I had lunch,” he insists. “I had fish…fish…” He starts to twitch with anxiety.

  “That’s all right, Danny. You don’t have to have anything. Would you like to see the train timetable?”

  You get out the timetable and his eyes light up. He spends the next twenty minutes happily working out connections.

  * * *

  —

  You board the train and find your seats. Danny’s still in the mood to treat this as an adventure, with the bonus of added scheduling. While you wait for the train to leave, you get out his Thomas engine and explain that Thomas is especially happy now, because he is a train going for a ride on a train.

  A family settles in across the way. The oldest girl, a teenager, immediately demands the Wi-Fi password and logs on to the onboard system. You can see various alerts and messages blipping onto the screen of her phone—

  Wi-Fi. You hadn’t thought of that. In your mind, the Amtrak was going to be a bubble, a news cocoon in which no one would be aware of anything happening back in San Francisco. But the reality is that everyone here will have the latest bulletins on their phones. Those smiling conductors settling people into their seats—they’ll have them, too. Already the alerts and lookouts will be going out to all the transport hubs. And once the train starts traveling up the coast, you’ll be trapped, unable to get off, a sitting target for the cops to come and pick you up, farther up the line.

  “Change of plan, Danny.”

  “Change?” he says anxiously, looking up.

  “We’re getting off at the next station.”

  “Emeryville. Four thirty-four,” he announces in his staccato mumble.

  “That’s right. And soon I might have some more schedules for you to look at.” You log on to the Wi-Fi and start searching.

  * * *

  —

  At Emeryville you transfer to a Greyhound, paying cash. The bus is filthy, full of tired workers with a few crazies thrown in for good measure, but at least no one takes much notice as you find two seats at the back. It gradually empties as people get off at local stops; by eight P.M. you’re the only passengers left. The driver pulls in at a Burger King and cheerfully informs you this will be your only chance to get dinner. You’re glad Danny didn’t have those fries earlier.

  And then it’s past eleven and you’re in a small town named Arcata, at the grandly named Intermodal Transit Facility, the end of the line. You start to walk with Danny to the Comfort Inn across the street, then remember the instructions on the website. Don’t use chain restaurants. Don’t use chain motels. Always pay cash. Don’t leave DNA. You’re starting to appreciate just how difficult it is to disappear like this; how incredibly disciplined Abbie must have been, to leave no trace for anyone to follow.

  * * *

  —

  When did the scales finally fall from Abbie’s eyes? Perhaps, after all the other things she’d discovered about Tim, it hadn’t even come as much of a shock. On some level, perhaps she’d always known. There was her art, for one thing. Every single piece she’d made at Scott Robotics had been, in some way, about what that place did to women. Could an artist do that, at a subconscious level, and not admit it to herself?

  Later, she must have smelled unfamiliar perfume on his clothes countless times. Or did she choose to believe that was just from some seedy bar he’d been forced to visit in the company of potential investors? “There’s only so much silicone a man can look at, honey. I’d far rather have been home with you.”

  And then, abruptly, the memory comes to you. Jenny. Dropping in for coffee that time. You won’t like this, but hear me out. She knew the women’s names, the dates. She’d even worked alongside some of them, passed them tissues, knew how much they’d been paid to keep quiet.

  That visit was Jenny’s quiet rebalancing of the books, you realized. Payback for all those years of having to sit at her desk and suck it up.

  Even so, you’d sensed there was something more, something she still wasn’t telling you. Something that made all this personal—

  And then you’d guessed.

  “Did Tim ever try it on with you?”

  Jenny held your gaze for a moment. “Just once.” She paused. “After Mike first told him we were dating. And that it was serious.”

  You stared at her.

  “When I told him to get lost, he just laughed. Claimed he’d only been joking. That he wasn’t into little boys, anyway.”

  Jesus.

  * * *

  —

  Danny has been remarkably good all day, but next morning he has more energy and wants to know when you’re going home. When you say you aren’t, you’re going to find Mommy, he starts to stress. You can’t blame him. To him, it’s as if you said you’re going to find yourself. When the restaurant of the no-name budget motel you ended up at can only offer him own-label Cheerios instead of the real thing, he has a meltdown. All you can do for him is to let him howl himself out without getting cross or impatient with him. It takes twenty minutes, but he eventually brightens up when you tell him you’re catching a bus at exactly ten twenty-eight. And once you’re on the bus—a tiny minibus, little more than a van, with REDWOOD COAST TRANSPORT emblazoned across the side—he’s almost cheerful. Motion and timetables: two of his favorite things.

  The 101 runs along the coast for a while, then veers inland through towering, shadowing redwoods. Tourist season is over, and the road is nearly empty. You notice how, when people here board the bus, they say hi to those already on it. No one seems to notice you’re not like them. You wonder if that’s because you’ve gotten better at fitting in, or whether people are simply more polite here, away from the big cities. Hardly anyone stares at Danny, either.

  It makes you think about the nature of being human. It seems to you that you’ve met many people over the last few weeks who weren’t, not fully. It would be easy to single out Judy Hersch, with her plastic smile and botoxed face, parroting her autocue, or Sian and the therapists at Meadowbank, shocking their students whenever they flapped their arms, but actually it goes much wider than that. To the judge, mechanically applying the rule of law to every situation that comes before him. To Tim’s employees, diligently turning his wishes into lines of code while ignoring the toxic, misogynistic environment he created. And to Tim himself, believing that every problem of the heart must have an engineering solution.

  The bus driver interrupts your reverie. “Your boy ever drive right through a redwood?�
� he calls over his shoulder.

  “Not yet.”

  So the man makes a left, turning into the forest, where the road passes through the middle of a growing tree. The redwood is evidently a local celebrity: the other passengers applaud as you go through it. “That’s something, huh?” he calls cheerfully.

  “Sure is,” you call back. Danny hadn’t looked up from his toy train. You don’t have the heart to tell the driver that.

  And Danny? Is he more or less human than others? Some might see his rigidity of thought, his love of schedules, and his lack of imagination as robotic. When people talk about their “humanity,” after all, they generally mean their empathy, their compassion, their moral code. But of course Danny isn’t any less human just because he doesn’t have those things. He’s just differently human: someone with an unusual ratio of rigidity to empathy.

  Perhaps the real test of someone’s humanity, you think, is how tenderly they treat those like Danny. Whether they blindly try to fix them and make them more like everyone else, or whether they can accept their differentness and adapt the world to it.

  77

  You get off at the last stop, Smith River, a tiny town a few miles inland that seems utterly deserted. When you inquire about catching the next bus north, which you already know from Danny’s schedule checking is called the Coastal Express, you find the service is suspended for twenty-four hours because of a breakdown. This is devastating for Danny. He loves schedules precisely because they seem to offer order in a chaotic world, and now here they are, letting him down.

  To add to the misery, it’s started to rain. You check into another no-chain motel, where Danny stares dully at the TV. He doesn’t even blink when a picture of himself appears on the screen. ROGUE ROBOT ABDUCTS CHILD WITH AUTISM is the caption. There’s the old clip of you striking Judy Hersch, along with a new one of you knocking aside the TV camera outside the courtroom. You didn’t hurt anyone on that occasion, but the way you bang into the camera makes it feel like you did, so they play it over and over. Then there’s footage of Sian, her chin bandaged, gesticulating as she recounts how she bravely fought you off as she tried to save Danny from your clutches. Finally there’s an interview with someone who claims to be a “cyber-psychologist.” His gist seems to be that you’ve formed some strange robotic attachment to Danny because you think the same way he does.