Side Life

by Steve Toutonghi

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t fix what’s happening in the world. Why am I making a new life?” The hard edges of the digital clock shone and the modest electronic beads on the room’s devices each insisted on its individual presence, a combined blue light misting the hour.

  “My belly is a big curl.” She rolled toward him. “She’s already turned me into a question mark. My whole body is asking what her life will be. She’s turned me into punctuation.” She was playing with the complaint.

  “She’s asking what all our lives will be,” he said.

  “I already see mothers and children differently. I’ve already changed. New babies have opaque eyes, like animals, like birds or fish.”

  “She won’t be an infant like that,” Vin said, uneasiness flowering. “You’ll see her differently.”

  She waited, then sighed, her open hand snaking between his arm and torso, her voice warm. “You always try to answer, but we’re not a question.”

  ONE TRUTH HE DIDN’T EXAMINE was that Kim’s pregnancy was distancing him from his experience in the crèche. Shortly before their daughter, Trina, was born, Vin realized it had been weeks since he’d dreamed of inhabiting other people.

  The delivery seemed difficult to Vin but the doctor told him it had gone smoothly. After, Kim told him that she was uncomfortable housing a desperate stranger in something like a prison in their basement. Mona always appeared to be peacefully sleeping. They had put a tablet, books, notebooks, and pens in the apartment, but nothing got used. They never encountered her but she sometimes changed caskets.

  Vin took Kim’s concern seriously but didn’t want to exaggerate the problem, so he didn’t tell her when he bought a .38 caliber handgun and stowed it with a small stack of cash in the bedroom safe under the title to the house, Kim’s adoption records, and their living wills. And, working from home, it was easy to discretely visit a firing range. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to know, it was that he was preparing for a possibility so remote it wasn’t worth discussing.

  TRINA HAD WISPY CHESTNUT HAIR and steel-gray eyes, a wide face and plump baby cheeks that looked happy and vaguely middle-aged. As soon as she came home, Kim started to strategize about how they’d talk to her about drugs and addiction. Vin wanted to look at their new creature, this coagulation of living systems thickened by mutual interdependence in a way that invited future expansion, that offered forage for bacteria, and that promised to be friendly to autonomic function, to the transformation of proteins, the binding of oxygen in organic matter and the irresistible catalysis of affection. He wanted to put the conversation off.

  While Kim’s ability to rigorously assess a situation and make quick decisions awed Vin, that brilliance also made her creative with her fear. She faulted her parents for being distant and said she wanted to be close to her daughter, but in the early months, Vin felt she was often cool toward Trina. He saw it when she blinked in response to the same floods of affection that he felt. She held back, as if she feared unintentional currents would submerge her or pull her into error.

  A standing person can face in any direction, but the first step Trina took was toward Kim. Kim and Trina were on a lumpy blanket in the big room, Kim cross-legged and glancing through a magazine, Trina squirming on all fours like a felted sea creature. Sophie was stretched out on a plank of sunlight, just beyond Trina’s reach. Vin sat at the dining table, tapping on his laptop. Time blurred and sharpened and Trina was standing, her legs bowed but suddenly stalwart and a puzzled look on her face as if Kim had asked her to describe the purpose of a flintlock. Kim straightened to breathless attention. Trina’s foot twitched up and then wound forward, her arms stretching. She grinned at Kim. Her foot jerked down and she pitched toward the ground. Kim scooped her up before she hit.

  “What are you thinking?” Kim asked, hefting Trina to her shoulder as she stood and carried her laughing to the big window.

  BEFORE TRINA TURNED TWO, VIN got a windfall from the sale of Sigmoto. The new CEO had done a decent job—not great, but decent—and one of the technology behemoths snapped the company up, killed the product, and moved staff to other projects.

  Then Kim got pregnant again, but in her ninth week she fell into a depression, calling in sick for a week and a half, dragging out of bed at eleven, and saying little beyond what was necessary. Even Trina didn’t move her, and then she miscarried. She felt responsible, tormented by the possibility that her depression had triggered the loss. Her new gynecologist told them Trina’s birth had defied the odds; Kim had always been more likely to miscarry. Surgery might help.

  They were angry with the doctor who had delivered Trina and hadn’t told them about the risks. Kim was still struggling, forcing herself out of bed early and into each wobbly day, forcing herself to exercise, reminding herself to smile at work even though it felt mechanical. Vin worried about her backsliding but the opposite happened. Weeks after the miscarriage, Kim began to recover her old self and she rediscovered skydiving.

  One evening as she was cutting celery, Vin asked what had helped her through it. She shook her head, her strong fingers pausing the knife midstroke, mouth half-open, dark eyes unfocused.

  “I jump to feel the rush,” she said. “It sort of connects me with how big everything is. I think, before, I could feel that kind of thing in a quiet way too. I didn’t need to jump. I could look at the world and think about things. But, with this sadness, nothing seemed to matter except what my body was doing, almost without me. It was like I didn’t have my own body anymore. And I lost that feeling. But I was able to stay in things, and I did. And then I started to feel that I did need to be here, and it started getting better again.”

  Kim liked to skydive in new locations, often when she was traveling for work. Vin sent pictures of himself and Trina making V signs to celebrate her courage. Kim said she kissed them for luck. She bought a helmet-mounted camera so they could watch her. Moments after she left the plane, there would be a minute when the sky was so large, the horizon so distant that the falling was invisible. Except for the constant rush of wind, everything seemed still.

  AS SOON AS THE PHONE started playing Vin’s custom tone—the first fourteen seconds from the “Floe” movement of Philip Glass’s Glassworks—Trina yelled, “Tell a phone,” from her high chair. Kim straightened from where she’d been leaning against the island counter, stepped over to Trina—who recently turned three—and kissed the top of her head. “That’s right,” Trina said proudly.

  Vin killed the flame under the morning’s tofu scramble and answered. Than Nguyen was calling to discuss a large software check-in that Vin had finished the night before. It was the kind of thing they could have covered in the regular morning call, but Than was being extra careful because Vin was working on a public interface. It only took a minute for Vin to reassure him.

  Kim was leaning against the island, tapping at her phone. “I really have to go, now,” she said, glancing up as though she were repeating herself. “They want me to look at the end-caps that got delivered to the office. I need to sign off before the shippers come. And I’m out of town on Monday. I’ve got to go to Chicago.”

  “Okay. But, no breakfast?”

  Vin was wearing a loose short-sleeved T-shirt. Kim was in her work uniform—a navy jacket and slacks with a maroon silk blouse—an outfit that would have been inconceivable to the Kim he knew in high school. She’d recently been asked to review two production contracts in addition to her marketing responsibilities. “People wear lots of hats,” she had explained to him, happily. He would have hired her at Sigmoto.

  She tapped out the last fragments of a message and straightened, lifting a hand at him. “I don’t have time anymore. I was really in a hurry.”

  “Oh. That was Than again. You know. He’s trying to go the extra mile, even though I’ve already done it.”

  “Yeah, sure. You don’t have to justify your”—she looked down and took a breath—“I’m not trying to make a big deal out of it. I just don’
t have any time anymore.”

  “Well, the food was done, you could have served yourself.” Vin moved the frying pan to a trivet.

  Kim said. “Okay. You didn’t tell me. I’m not angry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Or upset. Right sweetie?” Trina was trying to fold a big chunk of apple into her mouth. She pulled it out and said, “No, Mom.”

  “You should cut the apple smaller than that,” Vin said.

  “She’s okay. It’s not a problem.” Kim turned to Trina. “Aren’t you?”

  Trina nodded.

  “I just know how she likes it,” Vin said, “and usually, it’s smaller pieces than that.”

  “Okay,” exasperation drove Kim’s voice higher. “You just do what you want. You always know what’s right.” She stopped, took a breath, and then asked Trina, “Do you like the apple, sweetie?”

  Trina nodded.

  Kim said, “Okay. See? She likes it. I’ve got to go.”

  She was looking at the screen of her phone again as she hopped down the stairs to the entryway.

  “Alright,” Vin said, “love you.” He heard the door open. “Thanks,” he yelled quickly.

  “What? Why?” Kim called back.

  “For cutting Trina’s food when I was on the phone,” he yelled, but the door had clicked shut behind her.

  Trina would get picked up for daycare just after nine, and he would retrieve her at three. It was Friday, and they were planning to host a barbecue after work, their first attempt at hosting in years. Clouds had rolled in and it was looking like it’d be a cool day for August—seventy degrees, or maybe high-sixties by dinner, though it wasn’t supposed to rain.

  He said to Trina, “Daddy’s going to be on the call.”

  Frowning, she shifted her head back and forth in an exaggerated gesture of indifference. “I’m going to be quiet.”

  “Thank you, Loop.” Her pet name was their code word for a circle, a perfect shape.

  “You’re welcome.” She was coloring a mouse that had grown too large for its house and now towered above it and she seemed intent on using each of her thirty-two crayons. Vin imagined she was searching for the difference between complexity and sophistication.

  The morning call was routine. Afterward, Trina surprised him by asking why he had phone calls.

  “It’s work,” he said. “You know, so I can make a living.”

  “Why do you make a living? Momma makes a living.”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t sure what she was asking.

  “Why don’t you ask her to bring what she made to our house?” Trina concentrated on coloring the air around the mouse dark green. “Then she could show you how to make it.”

  WITH TRINA AT DAYCARE, VIN brooded, batting away a growing sense that the life he was enjoying was limiting him and he should be trying for more. Raising a child well was one of the most important tasks that individuals could set themselves to, but the world beyond his home was still rife with the lethal problems that his parents’ generation had allowed to fester. He felt he was losing his balance.

  He wished he could call Bill and get high. He’d been thinking about Bill a lot recently. Dead, but only in a limited sense. The person he knew was still alive in another universe, or many others. And who was wearing the body that Vin had been born with? Had that person been surprised to see Bill? He tried to distract himself from spiraling into metaphysical confusion. He answered a few emails, but got little real work done.

  He’d uncovered a bug in a server operating system. For his use case, it crippled performance on an object he needed. He had half a mind to submit a patch, just to keep moving, but if he wasn’t seeing the whole picture—and he probably wasn’t—that could be a massive waste of time. More to the point, his company allowed contributions to external projects only after endless discussion and negotiation. Better to wait for a response from support.

  In this sort of situation, he would usually work on tests and designs for the next sprint, but today he decided to visit Nerdean’s office. He wanted relief from the aching, dragging sense of sameness that was unexpectedly grating through his limbs and chest.

  The crèche was a wild and dangerous secret, an endless opportunity to imagine alternate futures, and even though nothing could eject him from his protective orbit around Trina, he wished there were a way to release just a scent of its power into his day-to-day routine. He stepped outside and followed the curving walk of circular concrete pads to the apartment’s yellow steel door.

  Mona was a lesson in the risks of the device, and flashbacks from his own shots could still hit him without warning, an almost paralyzing sense that everything, even the air embracing him, might suddenly thin and be stripped away. To hide the panic, he would pretend to be deep in thought. He pitied Mona and wanted to sustain her privacy and shelter, but didn’t feel capable of explaining all of that to Kim.

  He unlocked the door’s second deadbolt and then the knob, but the door wouldn’t open. The top deadbolt was locked from the inside. He’d never found it locked before.

  A phone app could unlock both deadbolts. Though his phone’s manufacturer assured customers that the phone’s radiation was too weak to do harm, Vin kept his phone beside his computer, where he’d left it. He couldn’t see past the curtained half windows. He knocked loudly and waited, then knocked again.

  He went to the master bedroom where the walkie-talkie was charging, and pressed the button that would sound a tone on the basement handset. He waited, and then pressed the button to speak. “Mona? If you’re there, this is Vin. Would you like to talk?” He tried twice but received no answer.

  The point of the top deadbolt was for Mona to signal that she wanted to be left alone. She might be in the shower or sleeping after a long shot. He decided to give her space and look for an interesting design problem to work on.

  THE EVENING TURNED OUT TO be warmer than expected and when people began arriving for the barbecue the house felt stuffy to him, its bright spaces dimmed, its rooms stilled and sullen. On the plus side, he’d put the best gas grill he could find on the first floor deck and would be able to cook while feeling as though he was levitating over Puget Sound. His mood was improving and he liked almost everyone they’d invited.

  He didn’t tell Kim that Mona was moving about. The less they discussed Mona, the less likely Kim was to insist they do something about her. He poked the long tip of a steel thermometer into a grayed chunk of pork that was cooking on the hot side of the grill and left it in for a moment, watching the needle on the radial dial tick upward.

  “So?” John Grassler, a senior developer on Vin’s team, was standing beside the grill. He waved a large hand over the rising heat, drew in a deep breath through his nose, and made a smacking noise. John was in his midfifties, heavy, bearded and bald, with sometimes veiny pink cheeks and a resonant laugh that spread comfortingly through enclosed spaces.

  “Maybe another minute and a half for that one,” said Vin.

  “And thusly do we stalk our desires,” said John.

  “Do we?”

  “Aye, with mighty grill and spicy sauce.”

  “Verily,” said Vin, “and we lucky few will have all the desires we can eat in just a few more minutes.”

  Through the sliding doors, Vin could see that the table inside was already packed with food and Kim was setting down a large bowl of corn on the cob. They’d decided not to grill it to make more room for the meat. Trina was near the sectional, showing a new drawing to one of Kim’s co-workers, Hanna Dawkins—a young black woman with a beautiful, dimpled smile and an alert reserve. She was in her second year at the company and, to hear Kim tell it, might be running the place in a decade.

  Kim had also invited her boss, Laughlin, whom she described admiringly as a “take-charge kind of guy.” Vin had invited John Grassler and two younger programmers, Brant Spence and Corey Nahabedian. Corey, Brant and Hanna had formed a little clique on the sectional with Trina. Kim and Laughlin were in the kitchen at the o
ther end of the room, just out of sight.

  Everyone turned toward a pounding at the front door, an insistent hammering with the fleshy part of a fist. “What’s that?” Vin said. Kim was coming out of the kitchen and crossing toward the entry. She said something over her shoulder, presumably to Laughlin. There were more blows at the door, then muffled shouts.

  As John said, “what’s their problem?” Vin handed him the tongs and the thermometer, saying, “Can you keep an eye . . .” John quickly set his beer on the edge of the grill to manage the handoff, and then Vin was in motion.

  Kim stood in the wedge of space between the threshold and the partially opened door. Vin couldn’t see who was on the other side but heard a man’s voice, threatening and indistinct, crackling through a catalog of curses. Just as Vin reached the entry, the man yelled in a deep, hoarse voice, “I know it’s in here. I’ve been in here.”

  Kim paled and leaned back. Vin pulled on the door and she let go, letting it swing open so Vin could see their visitor. The man outside took a half step backward.

  He might have been in his late thirties, with a narrow face, high forehead and short dark hair. He was wearing an army service uniform, a black jacket with yellow piping and gold buttons, white shirt, black tie, blue slacks. The uniform was loose, shiny with stains and rumpled by hard wear. His tan face was mottled by the pink of high temper, his eyes red-rimmed and glassy as if he hadn’t slept for a while. A holstered weapon was strapped to his belt.

  “Can I help you?” Vin asked as he shot Kim a look that was his best attempt at asking her to call the police without actually saying it. She, of course, had no idea that he was requesting anything.

  “What’s going on, Kimmy?” Laughlin asked as he arrived behind Vin, his presence announced a moment before by the spicy scent of pot.

  “You,” the man said loudly, staring at Vin, “I know you.”

  “I don’t think we’ve met.” Vin could feel his blood pressure rise, feel the sudden arrival of the floating sensation that could lift him into real anger.

  “You were in the war cabinet,” the man said, and Vin went cold, shut down. He was able to whisper, “What do you mean?” but it appeared as though no one around him heard it.