Made for Love

by Alissa Nutting

  “STOP!” her father yelled, wheeling toward her from the other side. “Jesus and Joseph! What is happening here?” He slid the door open and looked at the blurry smears of knuckle blood Hazel had left. “This is always unlocked. God, look at you. You’re having an emotional meltdown? I don’t want to get into a discussion of feelings. What I can do is dismiss my expectations regarding the light household tasks it would’ve been civil of you to have not fallen behind on, particularly given the state of my health and mobility. Come inside and shut the door behind you and don’t wash a single dish today.”

  “You’re dying,” Hazel said. “And you’re refusing medical attention. I get the feeling you aren’t going to miss me.”

  “Oh, Hazel.” He raked his nails through the chest hair beneath his bathrobe. “I just want some peace and quiet.”

  Was he talking about death? About the present moment? Both? “Liver’s dead,” Hazel near-whispered. “Someone killed him.”

  “Good grief,” her father said. The silence filled with the mechanical sound of him moving the Rascal back a few inches then forth, thinking. “Go to the kitchen and make yourself a drink then join me and the girls in the living room. We’re going to watch Jeopardy! and pretend for a half hour that things aren’t going to hell in every direction. Let’s do it while we still can.”

  She didn’t want to feign normalcy, but drinking sounded okay. And from her time growing up and her time being married, Hazel knew that if you were having a moment where you couldn’t bring yourself to pretend, sitting quietly was a good enough substitute.

  Out of nowhere, Hazel thought of the driver who used to take her between The Hub and her father’s house. She’d been fond of him; he had a family. Byron could hurt all those people. Then she scolded herself for having the thought. Since he received all her thoughts, any fear she experienced might as well be a wish.

  She’d call him soon. I will talk to you soon, Byron, she thought. She’d wait until her father got so weak he couldn’t fight being admitted into medical care, and then they’d both go to The Hub together. She didn’t want to screw things up for anyone else.

  14

  HER FATHER HAD BEEN TELLING HER DAILY THAT HE MIGHT HAVE ONLY a few weeks to live, but Hazel factored in some wiggle room: nothing was ever as bad as he made it out to be. Growing up, prior to each summer vacation they’d take in the family sedan, he’d recite a lengthy soliloquy as they packed about how the next week was going to be the worst waste of time and money imaginable: every motel they’d find to stay in would be a rat hole with broken plumbing; every bedsheet would be rife with parasitic infections; every tourist trap would be packed and overpriced and an uncomfortable temperature. “I’m going to walk around all day and get a groin rash, then we’ll retire back to the motel and some bug with a heavy abdomen will crawl on my thigh while I sleep and lay her eggs in my open sores.” But the vacations and rooms were never that awful. “Boy,” he’d exclaim as they headed home. “We really lucked out. We really dodged a bullet.”

  This time, though, her father had perhaps underestimated. His fever wasn’t breaking; he couldn’t keep anything down. Hazel kept begging him to go to the medical center with her, but he still had enough strength to forcibly spit on the floor and refuse. “I’m not leaving,” he’d stress. “And no one’s asking you to stay.”

  Hazel wished he was, but it was becoming clear his decline would not include emotional delicacy. He’d had her place Diane and Roxy into bed with him. She figured that soon his slips in and out of consciousness would become deeper and farther apart, and then she could call Byron and tell him they were ready.

  There were things she ideally wanted to say to her father before medical personnel were present, some a little bitter, but now also didn’t seem like a good time to pick a fight. He’d retreated into his cave, and Hazel knew he’d prefer to stay there alone. He wanted to advance toward expiration without giving his embarrassment an audience. At least not a living one.

  Since they had no physical needs, Di and Roxy could keep a constant vigil. Maybe lifelike mannequins were the way to go in terms of hospice. They could be tailor-made for this purpose—Diane’s full breasts could lactate morphine, for example. Roxy’s torso could slide open on command and double as a bedpan chamber.

  Hazel found it depressing, or maybe just disappointing, on a personal level, how even though her father was fatally ill, on the whole she was still incapable of appreciating him. She tried watching TV on the bed with the three of them—she placed eye masks on the dolls so it looked like they were resting, peaceful and waxen. It was like instead of dying, her father was turning into a doll too.

  But the smell. Death did have an odor. She kept the bedroom window open although she hated the vulnerable feeling that caused. It was illogical; a pane of glass wasn’t going to make any difference to Byron. Plus he was already camped out inside her mind. But it felt so much easier for him to get to her when there was just a screen between the inside of the house and the open air. She looked out of it at least twelve times a day, fearful that he’d somehow transported her father’s entire house into a warehouse chamber of The Hub without her noticing. It was a slight comfort when she looked into the yard and saw palm trees instead of the wall of a cement bunker.

  Hazel decided to go watch TV by herself in the living room instead. She found a sitcom about a horny single mother who ran a secret yoga studio in her living room after her children went to bed each night; the only moves and positions she taught were ones adapted to allow for autocunnilingus, and for two hours other single mothers would come over and guzzle red wine then lie on mats and lick their own crotches to orgasm. The show’s sound track featured bursts of soft jazz and the punctuated orchestral swelling of frenzied violins. Hey, one woman on the show said. They were panting and heaped together on the mats post-session; their thin legs had intertwined to form a nest of Lycra and spandex twigs. It’s great we can touch ourselves like that. Independence and all. But why don’t we ever touch each other? I mean, we’re all just here to get off, right? Does it have to be a solitary thing? The rest of the women giggled in unison. But then it’s not yoga. Then it’s an orgy! Now everyone laughed. Orgies on a school night would be a little strange, said a third.

  When their sex had begun to wane, Byron installed something for Hazel in the shower, and in the bed. You seem increasingly uncomfortable with that aspect of our companionship, he’d told her. So be it. I’ve long had efficient and solitary ways to bring myself to orgasm. I’d like to make these available to you as well. Physiologically, daily orgasm is healthful. I have to insist on your continued monogamy for social reasons. We could certainly do scans of potential partners and take precautions against disease and pregnancy, but it’s the secrecy we can’t guarantee, and an affair going public would irrevocably maim our image in the media. We’re a deeply happy and deeply private couple. That’s who we are. To summarize, I’m encouraging you to touch yourself often and develop an effective self-satiation routine. This will minimize any temptation you might feel in terms of breaching our union. I’ll discontinue all physically romantic advances toward you until you ask me to resume. Well, Hazel had thought at the time. That’s that.

  She’d tried out the machines, and they were effective. But too effective? They worked in seconds and made climax feel like a reflex. Afterward she had the feeling of having watched something on fast-forward, the need to go back and see it again on normal speed so she could understand what had just happened. Plus she knew that Byron probably watched surveillance video of her using them. So when you’re pleasuring yourself, he’d asked her one night, what do you think about? Hazel had swallowed, laughed. There’s not really time to think, with those things, she’d joked, but if she’d answered honestly it would’ve been something along the lines of how she thought about having sex with everyone she met or saw while Byron was made to watch, in person. It was the in-person part that was critical. It didn’t count if he was watching it on a screen. He’d ha
ve to stop working entirely and just be there, and have to see both Hazel and whomever she was fucking actually see him being there. He couldn’t hide.

  But she’d stopped using them because it angered him. Anything healthful she failed to do made him mad, as did her abstinence from cell phones and tech devices.

  Hazel blinked. The living room TV screen had just turned a weird sky blue color. One second she’d been watching a woman in capri leggings theatrically lift a glass of wine between her toes, pretzel her body to bring it to her mouth while she held a uttana padasana pose, and drink through a crazy straw. Now, nothing.

  Hazel got up to bang the TV on its side, which she remembered her father doing when she was younger. That was something she felt nostalgic about—the good old days when people beat the shit out of technology if it didn’t perform. She knew from her father’s rants that he agreed with her on this. These silly phones! People treat them like they’re porcelain eggs holding the fetus of the baby Jesus. Now the concern was on protecting and encasing devices, not giving them repeated blows.

  Some of her father’s roundhouse fights with their old TV had been epic. He had treated the thing like it was an insane cow that had charged into their living room.

  HAZEL, the TV screen suddenly read.

  “Oh,” Hazel remarked. “Oh shit.”

  HAZEL, YOU NEED TO PUT ON THE HELMET. THIS IS URGENT. LET US DO A CHECK OF YOUR FATHER’S CONDITION. HE NEEDS TO BE HOSPITALIZED. IT IS NOT HUMANE TO LET HIM SUFFER THIS WAY.

  “TV,” Hazel remarked. “Tell Byron that my father is dying of cancer. Humane is not, you know, possible. I get that there might be more we can do to mitigate his physical discomfort. But in the global sense, which I think is what my father has chosen to tether himself to, in terms of his death, in that his body is painfully breaking down against his will and is going to continue to do so until he is gone and then he will be gone forever and that is all, humane does not apply. Also maybe tell Byron that ‘humane’ is a funny word for him to use! For example, murdering an eccentric renegade who mainly lived off the land and wasn’t doing anything criminal in any of the moments I knew him just because I slept with him? That is not humane. Bring up how his company masterminds futuristic weapons and betrays all individual rights to privacy—both those created by law and those imposed by the insight of biological evolution, like the sanctity of one’s own fucking brain!”

  IF, the TV continued, YOU ARE FINDING MEANING IN THIS SETUP AND FEEL YOUR CURRENT PURPOSE IS BEING PRESENT FOR YOUR FATHER AS HE VENTURES INTO SOLITARY EXIT, AS SOME OF YOUR RECENT THOUGHTS SEEM TO INDICATE, THEN CONTINUE. BUT ONCE HE DIES, WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE THEN? WHEN YOUR FATHER IS GONE, COME HOME. YOU CAN ENTER INTO THE NEXT CHAPTER KNOWING YOU SAW HIM OUT OF THE WORLD HONORABLY AND HAVE NO OUTSTANDING PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITIES TO GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR DEVOTION TO THE BIGGEST MEDICAL-TECHNOLOGICAL ACCOMPLISHMENT OF ALL TIME, AND YOU CAN FULLY NETWORK WITH YOUR BELOVED SPOUSE. MAKING HISTORY IS EXCITING! LET’S START TO GET EXCITED. IT’S ALSO A WAY FOR YOUR FATHER’S DEATH TO NOT BE TOO SAD, BECAUSE IT MARKS THE HERALD OF A NEW DAWN FOR NEUROLOGICAL ENHANCEMENT. HIS DEATH WILL BE THE LAST DOMINO, AND ITS FALL WILL BRING AN END TO THE OBSOLETE WORLD OF ISOLATED THOUGHT.

  The TV returned to a woman in a pretzeled position, her bunned head moving up and down rhythmically between her thighs. I don’t know about Syrah, as a vintage, her muffled voice said. I think it numbs my tongue.

  Do we have it all figured out, or are we lonely? another woman mumbled between dubbed smacking noises.

  I’m just trying to make it to Friday without killing myself, a third woman said. This camera angle showed only the woman’s back, but her voice implied her mouth was open very wide; she sounded like someone talking to one of those dentists who asks patients questions while he drills. I’m just licking my way through the week.

  Hazel tried out the position they were all in and failed. She looked up at the cracks on the ceiling and imagined it falling down upon her. She’d made bad choices in life. Irreversible wrong choices.

  A low wail came from her father’s bedroom. It was not a sound so much as an aural collage of human misery. A fresh one whose glue hadn’t dried.

  When Hazel was young, her mother had taken her to an art gallery and Hazel had been surprised to find most of the paintings ugly. Early education had taught her that art was supposed to be beautiful—that was its point! Mom, Hazel asked, what’s it called when you’re looking at something, I mean staring at something, like how we’re doing, but not at something pretty? That’s the whole reason to stare usually, right? Because something’s beautiful. What about when something isn’t nice to look at but you’re still looking at it and thinking and stuff? She’d watched her mother’s thick brow wrinkle up and push out, which always reminded Hazel of the top of a cardboard milk carton being opened. When you’re looking at something that isn’t nice to look at and thinking? her mother said. Well, that’s called reality, Hazel. That is called L-I-F-E.

  WHEN HAZEL ENTERED HIS BEDROOM, HER FATHER’S MOUTH OPENED like he was going to speak, or play a single note on a wind instrument. “Whoa,” Hazel said, realizing what she was seeing. She ran to his side and listened for a final word or noise, some hiss or pop or fizz of a soul leaving the body. Instead his silent lips parted and froze. More than life exiting his body, it looked like death was entering into him between his teeth. “Dad?” Hazel asked.

  He’d been wearing only a bathrobe the past few weeks, and between the dolls seemed like an elderly gentleman partier who’d just died of a cocaine overdose. It was a far more festive deathbed than she’d imagined him having. For some reason she’d always pictured an ill-lit room full of beeping machines, a hospital bed, her father yelling at an orderly about the lack of flavor in that day’s turkey. Then his face turning bright red mid-rant as he clutched his chest and flatlined. “I guess you went out on top, Pops,” Hazel said. “Sort of.”

  She did, then, begin to start hearing vague digestive noises and gurgles from beneath the covers, the staccato bursts of sound a cooling engine makes when turned off after a long drive.

  Hazel walked back into the living room and felt very weird. Sadness wasn’t hitting her in those exact terms. It felt more like the acceptance of anticlimax, which was what all major events seemed to be. Nothing ever felt like a big enough deal. Her father had just died and she didn’t feel transformed or epiphanic or even especially glum. She tried to get upset about not feeling that upset.

  Now what, though? She looked at the clock; it was just after 4 PM. Best-case scenario, she had twenty hours before Byron knew her father was dead. Twenty hours to think about what to do next. She had to go back to The Hub now. Otherwise no one still living whom she might ever think about, even briefly, would be safe.

  Except Hazel didn’t seem to be thinking. Instead she was turning around to take a focused walk down the hallway to the bathroom. It felt very easy, like she’d practiced it a thousand times. Like she’d done suicide drills to make sure that when the time came she would take her life with record speed. First she used tap water from the bathroom sink to swallow a full bottle of her father’s heavy opioids. Then she went to the kitchen and took terrible, profound gulps of the cheap whiskey her father liked to drink. He felt that in social settings, its ethanol reek made other men respect him.

  If she died now, maybe there wouldn’t be another download. Maybe Byron would never see her father’s last moments, or hers. She liked the thought of that: perhaps she was stealing a private death for the two of them. She didn’t want to go back to Byron; no matter how glorious the general public might find the “breakthrough” of their synced brains to be, there wouldn’t be any joy or meaning in it for her. And Byron would hound her until she returned to him or died. So that was that.

  Hazel climbed into her father’s bed, angling herself between him and Di. She took the dolls’ eye masks off and put one of them on her father and then one onto herself. Cuddling up to her father’s body was awkward, but in a way she wa
s grateful for the opportunity—it wouldn’t have been all that possible when he was alive. At least not alive and conscious.

  He had wanted to die alone yet not alone, which Hazel understood—other people bring their own wants and needs and sadness into a situation that is already too full of feeling—but loneliness is hard. And now with the three of them she was getting the same thing: people were there with her but also were not, being in a category of either “dead” or “never alive.” As the painkillers began to kick in, she felt a little noble about it all. It was like her father had decided, as captain of their retirement-trailer ship, that it needed to sink and he and all his creations, including Hazel, should go down with him. She felt like she was following orders, and owning up to her failures—she’d screwed up and it was probably best to just call it. His body was still warm, and the deep echo of Hazel’s slowing breaths that she could hear with one of her ears pressed to his chest was relaxing in the way that hearing his heartbeat might’ve been. There was an acrid sharpness to his smell that insisted everything was expiring: it was okay for her to leave because everything was almost used up, including the oxygen around them.

  She hadn’t cuddled with anyone in a very long time. Byron sure didn’t cuddle. Early on, if he held her after sex, it was more an immobilization than an embrace, like a parent putting his arms around a child before a vaccination shot to ensure stillness. It felt like something bad was going to happen and Byron knew about it but she didn’t. Which made perfect sense now.

  She thought of Liver. Holding him hadn’t exactly been the same as cuddling—it had been pleasant, but he was cold-blooded in a different way from Byron, and rubbery. Their snuggles were more akin to two hard-boiled eggs rubbing up against each other as they pickled together in a jar.