Severance

by Ling Ma

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  to my mother and father

  PROLOGUE

  After the End came the Beginning. And in the Beginning, there were eight of us, then nine—that was me—a number that would only decrease. We found one another after fleeing New York for the safer pastures of the countryside. We’d seen it done in the movies, though no one could say which one exactly. A lot of things didn’t play out as they had been depicted on-screen.

  We were brand strategists and property lawyers and human resources specialists and personal finance consultants. We didn’t know how to do anything so we Googled everything. We Googled how to survive in wild, which yielded images of poison ivy, venomous insects, and bear tracks. That was okay but we wanted to know how to go on the offensive. Against everything. We Googled how to build fire and watched YouTube videos of fires being lit with flint against steel, with flint against flint, with magnifying glass and sun. We couldn’t find the requisite flint, didn’t know how to identify it even, and before we tried using Bob’s bifocals, someone found a Bic in a jean jacket. The fire brought us through the night and delivered us into a morning that took us to a deserted Walmart. We stockpiled bottled water and exfoliating body wash and iPods and beers and tinted moisturizer in our stolen Jeeps. In the back of the store we found guns and ammo, camo outfits, scopes and grips. We Googled how to shoot gun, and when we tried, we were spooked by the recoil, by the salty smell and smoke, by the liturgical drama of the whole thing in the woods. But actually we loved to shoot them, the guns. We liked to shoot them wrong even, with a loose hand, the pitch forward and the pitch back. Under our judicious trigger fingers, beer bottles died, Vogue magazines died, Chia Pets died, oak saplings died, squirrels died, elk died. We feasted.

  Google would not last long. Neither would the internet. Or any of the infrastructure, but in the beginning of the Beginning let us brag, if only to ourselves in the absence of others. Because who was there to envy us, to be proud of us? Our Googlings darkened, turned inward. We Googled maslow’s pyramid to see how many of the need levels we could already fulfill. The first two. We Googled 2011 fever survivors, hoping to find others like us, and when all we found were the same outdated, inconclusive news articles, we Googled 7 stages grief to track our emotional progress. We were at Anger, the slower among us lagging behind at Denial. We Googled is there a god, clicked I’m Feeling Lucky, and were directed to a suicide hotline site. In the twelve rings it took for us to hang up, we held our breaths for someone else, some stranger’s voice confirming that we weren’t the only ones living, despite Bob’s adamant assertions. There was no answer.

  From this and other observations, it was deduced that we were alone, truly alone.

  After weeks of running amok, of running aground, we rallied and organized a game plan. Our self-appointed leader was Bob, a short, stout man who had worked in information technology. He was slightly older than us, though by how much it seemed rude to ask. He was Goth when he felt like it. He knew about being alone. He had played every iteration of Warcraft with a near-religious fervor; it was as if he had prepared for this, this thing, this higher calling. He held his right arm in a sling close to his chest, tucked inside his shirt, after a botched carpal tunnel surgery. Partly enfeebled, he was especially adept at directing others to his will. Things needed to be taken care of, we needed to be told what to do. We received his clear, concise instructions like manna.

  I have a place for us to stay, Bob said, puffing on his e-cigarette. The scent of French vanilla wafted through the night air.

  We sat around the bonfire, listening. It was this gigantic two-story complex in Chicago that he and some high school buddies had bought.

  For what? Janelle asked, blasé. Just in case the apocalypse happened?

  For when the apocalypse happened, Bob corrected. We always knew it would, though I personally didn’t know it would be this early.

  We waited as Bob took another drag on his e-cigarette before continuing. The Facility, he informed us, had everything. It had big, high ceilings. The roof had skylights cut into it, so it got plenty of light. There was a movie theater. Maybe the projector would still work. Everyone would have an individual room.

  We considered Chicago. The even-keeled, prairie center of the Great Lakes region, its long, hardy winters rife with opportunities for canning root vegetables and stone fruits, the midwestern sensibilities embodied in the large, beneficent scale of its city layout, especially River North and downtown, the larger blocks, the more spacious buildings, and at sunset, the rich, golden light against its stately, modern architecture, structures that had survived fires and floods, so many fires and floods. Such an environment, Bob advised, could only benefit our better natures. We would set up camp in the lake breeze, lay down roots for our new lives, and procreate gently amongst ourselves. We would love the ensuing offspring created by our diverse ethnic offerings. Chicago is the most American of American cities.

  It’s actually Needling, Bob said. Needling, Illinois. It’s right outside Chicago.

  I am not living in the suburbs, Janelle announced.

  Why, do you have a better place in mind? Todd scoffed.

  Making plans heartened us, and as we stayed up late, drinking, we theorized grandly. What is the internet but collective memory? Anything that had been done before we could do better. The Heimlich maneuver. Breech births. The fox-trot. Glycerin bombs. Bespoke candle making. Lurking in our limited gene pools may swim metastatic brain tumors and every type of depression and recessed cystic fibrosis, but also high IQs and proficiencies with Romance languages. We could move on from this. We could be better.

  Anything was better than what we felt. We had shame, so much shame at being the few survivors. Other survivors, if they existed, must also feel this way. We were ashamed of leaving people behind, of taking our comforts where we could find them, of stealing from those who could not defend themselves. We had known ourselves to be cowards and hypocrites, pernicious liars really, and to find this suspicion confirmed was not a relief but a horror. If the End was Nature’s way of punishing us so that we might once again know our place, then yes, we knew it. If it was at all unclear before, it was not now.

  The shame bonded us. In the morning, we Googled diy tattoos and boiled a pan of sewing needles. Soused and sorrowed, we inked small lightning bolts on each of our forearms, near the wristbone, to symbolize our bond. Because it was said Crazy Horse divined that he would be successful in war only if he never stopped to gather the spoils of battle, and to remind himself of this, he tattooed lightning bolts behind his horses’ ears. Strike fast, strike first.

  The key thing, we reminded ourselves, was never to stop, to always keep going, even when the past called us back to a time and place we still leaned toward, still sang of, in quieter moments. Like the canyons of office buildings all the way down Fifth Avenue. Like all the Japanese and Swiss businessmen leisuring through Bryant Park, sipping hot chocolate. Like the afternoon sun cast through our midtown office windows, when it was almost time to leave for all the pleasures of the evening: an easy meal eaten standing up at the kitchen counter, a TV show, a meetup with friends for cocktails.

  *

  The truth is, I was not there at the Beginning. I was not there for any of the Googlings or the Walmart stalking or the feastings or the spontaneous mass tattooings. I was the last one out of New York, t
he last one of the group to join. By the time they found me, the infrastructure had already collapsed. The internet had caved into a sinkhole, the electrical grid had shut down, and the road trip toward the Facility was already under way.

  It had been the nostalgia-yellow of the Yellow Cab that the group had first spotted, parked along the shoulder of a road in Pennsylvania. NYC TAXI, it read on the car door. It was a Ford Crown Victoria, an older fleet model that cab companies had almost phased out. It looked, Bob later told me, as if I’d driven a broken time machine right out of the eighties. It was my in. Entire highways were clogged with abandoned vehicles, but they had never seen a New York cab out in the middle of nowhere, the meter still running, the fare light on.

  I was dehydrated and half-conscious in the backseat. I wouldn’t speak.

  The truth is, I had stayed in the city as long as I possibly could. The whole time, I had been half waiting for myself to turn, to become fevered like everyone else. Nothing happened. I waited and waited. I still wait.

  1

  The End begins before you are ever aware of it. It passes as ordinary. I had gone over to my boyfriend’s place in Greenpoint directly after work. I liked to stay over on hot summer nights because the basement was cool and damp at night. We made dinner, veggie stir-fry with rice. We had showered and watched a movie projected on his wall.

  The screening was Manhattan, which I’d never seen before, and even though I found the May–December romance between Mariel Hemingway and Woody Allen kind of creepy, I loved all the opening shots of New York set to the Gershwin soundtrack, and I loved the scene in which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton get caught in the rain in Central Park, and they seek shelter in the Museum of Natural History, wet and cocooned in the cavern darkness of the planetary display. Just looking at New York on the screen, the city was made new for me again, and I saw it as I once did in high school: romantic, shabby, not totally gentrified, full of promise. It made me wistful for the illusion of New York more than for its actuality, after having lived there for five years. And as the movie ended and we turned off the lights and lay down side by side on his mattress, I was thinking about how New York is possibly the only place in which most people have already lived, in some sense, in the public imagination, before they ever arrive.

  I was saying some of this to him, the shapeless mass lying next to me in the dark, when he interrupted and said, Listen to me. Look at me. I have something to tell you.

  His name was Jonathan and he liked to party. Not really. His name was Jonathan and he was high-rolling. He owned a laptop, a coffee maker, a movie projector; everything else went to rent. He ate air and dust. We had been together for almost five years, about as long as I’d been at my job. Jonathan didn’t work in the nine-to-five sense. He did odd freelance gigs here and there so that he could spend most of his time writing. Divested of most obligations, he lived cheaply, held jobs when he could find them. Once, for a secret Wall Street club, he was hired to slap middle-aged businessmen for a living. I used to clasp his face between my palms, his expression wrought with worry, with unassuaged anxiety.

  Okay, I said. What is it?

  He took out his retainer, didn’t place it in the mug on the floor but held it there in his hand. It was going to be a short conversation. He said, I’m leaving New York.

  What, you didn’t like the movie?

  No, I’m serious. Be serious for once.

  I’m always serious, I deadpanned. So, when are you leaving?

  He paused. In another month. Thom is sailing up to this—

  I sat up, tried to look at him, but my eyes hadn’t adjusted. Wait, what are you saying?

  I’m saying I’m leaving New York.

  No, what you’re saying is, you’re breaking up with me.

  That’s not— He looked at me. Okay. I’m breaking up with you.

  Lead with that.

  It’s not you.

  Okay.

  No, it’s not you, he said, grabbing my hand. It’s this place, this city and what it turns a person into. We talked about this.

  In the past year, Jonathan had become increasingly disillusioned with living in New York. Something along the lines of: the city, New York fucking City, tedious and boring, its charms as illusory as its facade of authenticity. Its lines were too long. Everything was a status symbol and everything cost too much. There were so many on-trend consumers, standing in lines for blocks to experience a fad dessert, gimmicky art exhibits, a new retail concept store. We were all making such uninspired lifestyle choices. We, including me.

  Me, nothing really weighed on me, nothing unique. Me, I held down an office job and fiddled around with some photography when the moon hit the Gowanus right. Or something like that, the usual ways of justifying your life, of passing time. With the money I made, I bought Shiseido facial exfoliants, Blue Bottle coffee, Uniqlo cashmere.

  What do you call a cross between a yuppie and a hipster? A yupster. Per Urban Dictionary.

  Then he said, You should leave New York too.

  Why would I do that?

  Because you hate your job.

  I don’t hate it. It’s okay.

  Name one time, one time when you really like it.

  Every Friday night.

  Exactly.

  I’m kidding. You don’t even know what I do. I mean, not really.

  You work at a production firm in publishing. You oversee the manufacture of books in third-world countries. Stop me if I’m wrong.

  I had worked at Spectra for almost five years. We worked with publishers who paid us to coordinate book production that we outsourced to printers in Southeast Asia, mostly China. The name Spectra suggested the ostensibly impressive range of book products we were capable of producing: Cookbooks, Children’s Books, Stationery, Art Books, Gift and Specialty. I worked in Bibles. The company had huge collective buying power, so we offered even cheaper manufacture rates than individual publishers could achieve on their own, driving foreign labor costs down even further. Obviously Jonathan kind of despised what I did. Maybe I did too.

  I changed the subject. Where are you going? When?

  Sometime next month. I’m going to help Thom sail on his yacht. The idea is to end up in Puget Sound.

  I scoffed. Thom was Wall Street, a client from the club where Jonathan once worked. I said, Right. Like he doesn’t crush on you and expect something in return.

  You think like that because you live in a market economy.

  And you don’t?

  He didn’t say anything.

  Sometimes, I said, I think you hold it against me for not being more like you.

  Are you kidding? You’re so much more like me than you think. In the dark, I could see him winking, bittersweetly. Want to do a sumo roll? he said.

  The sumo roll was when he would roll across the bed, and when he reached me, he would compress his body into mine, belly to belly, until I was sunken into the mattress, obliterated, and then he would roll away. This repeated until I convulsed from laughing too hard.

  No, I don’t want to do a sumo roll, I said.

  Ready?

  When he rolled on top of me, he weighed into me fiercely, indenting me into the bedding. He could be so heavy when he wanted. I squeezed my hands into fists. I squeezed my eyes together. I made my body stiff as a board, inhospitable. Slowly, I felt him lessening. I felt him stop. He could feel me shaking. He put his dry, hard palm on my forehead, as if he were taking a sick person’s temperature.

  Stop crying, he said. Don’t cry. Please.

  He offered me some water but I stood up and retrieved some Evian from my bag. I sat down on the edge of the mattress, taking small, worthless sips.

  Lie down, please, he said. Will you lie next to me?

  I lay down, next to him, both of us on our backs. We stared up at the ceiling.

  Jonathan broke the silence. In a timorous voice, he said he could see clearly now, could see the future. The future is more exponentially exploding rents. The future is more condo bui
ldings, more luxury housing bought by shell companies of the global wealthy elite. The future is more Whole Foods, aisles of refrigerated cut fruit packaged in plastic containers. The future is more Urban Outfitters, more Sephoras, more Chipotles. The future just wants more consumers. The future is more newly arrived college grads and tourists in some fruitless search for authenticity. The future is more overpriced Pabsts at dive-bar simulacrums. Something something Rousseau something. Manhattan is sinking.

  What, literally? Because of global warming? I snarked.

  Don’t make fun of me. And yes, literally and figuratively.

  The thing was, I didn’t disagree with what he was saying. It is an impossible place to live. My salary was enough to keep my head above water month to month. Given my rent and lack of financial savvy, I had very little in savings, let alone retirement funds. There was very little keeping me here. I didn’t own property. I didn’t have family. I’d be priced out of every borough in another decade.

  But having heard all this before, I began to tune out, thinking about what I would do next. When he nudged me, I realized he was asking me a question. He was saying, Would I consider leaving New York with him? We could do it together.

  What would we do? I asked.

  We would live together and take part-time jobs, he said. I would write and finish my book. You could work on your art too. I could make a darkroom for you to develop your photos.

  Can you even have a darkroom on a boat?

  Well, not during the trip. I was thinking that afterward, we could settle in Oregon. There are some cheaper areas out there in the rural Pacific Northwest.

  I guess I’ll be a nature photographer, I said drily.

  Some R&B track with jumpy bass tremored the ceiling. It was that time of night again, when the neighbor upstairs brooded to sad songs with good beats. I didn’t think much of my photographs. When I first moved to New York, I had created a photo blog called NY Ghost. It was mostly pictures of the city. The intent was to show new, undiscovered aspects of New York from an outsider’s perspective, but in retrospect, the pictures just looked clichéd and trope-y: neon-tinged diners, gas-slicked streets, subway train cars packed with tired commuters, people sitting out on fire escapes during the summer—basically, variations of the same preexisting New York iconography that permeates calendars, rom-coms, souvenirs, stock art. They could have been hung in any business hotel room. Even the better, more artfully composed images were just Eggleston knockoffs, Stephen Shore derivatives. For these and other reasons, I hardly updated the blog anymore. I hardly took pictures anymore.