Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  “Because Morgan wasn’t going to ask for you. Or Lin. He didn’t want any women on the project. I guaranteed him we’d have a successful trial before the president left for France, but only if you two were on the team.” After a moment, he adds, “And we’re already there.”

  I don’t know whether to kiss him or slap him. “You know what happens to me when we’re finished, right? And to Lin?”

  Lorenzo looks down at my wrist, at the faded ring of an old burn encircling it. “I know.”

  His voice is sad but holds an undercurrent of fury. Once again, I’m reminded of the difference between Patrick and Lorenzo. Both are sympathetic, but only Lorenzo has fight in him.

  “Also, I need the bonus money,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “A personal matter.”

  “What kind of personal matter costs a hundred thousand dollars?”

  His eyes meet mine over the running tap. “A very personal matter,” he says before turning off the water. “Okay, you feeling better now?”

  “Sure,” I say, not understanding whether he’s talking about my puke-fest this morning or our conversation. “Right as rain.”

  “Good. Because we’ve got work to do.”

  “Wait.” I twist the cold water back on. “When did they contact you about the project?”

  “Just after Bobby Myers broke his head.”

  I nod. “No one gets two Tesla MRI tubes ordered, delivered, and installed in three days, Enzo. Not even the government.”

  He cracks a smile at the old nickname. “Yeah. I know. Come on. Let’s dig Lin out from her techno-orgasm and grab some lunch.” The tap goes off for a second time, and we walk back to the neuro section of the lab as the clock pings one.

  “Who do you have in mind for the first subject?” Lorenzo asks.

  “Definitely Delilah Ray. I saw her son the other day, you know. He’s our mailman.”

  He’s also the man who blinked three times at me and said he had a wife and three daughters. I jot a mental note to be at the door the next time he makes his rounds. Right now, the only other thing on my mind is food.

  THIRTY-ONE

  This afternoon, as I wind along with the snake of cars on Rock Creek Parkway, hunched down behind the steering wheel to avoid the stares of the male drivers who populate rush hour, I think of Jackie Juarez again.

  She called Patrick a cerebral pussy; she’d never hang that epithet around Lorenzo’s neck.

  “Men come in two flavors,” she said once. “Real men and sheep. That guy you’re dating—”

  “—is a sheep,” I finished. “I suppose you’d think that.”

  “I don’t think it, Jeanie. I know it.” Jackie lit a cigarette—she was in her Virginia Slims stage, and You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby kitsch decorated our flat that year—and blew out a cloud of menthol smoke. “I mean, if I were to switch over to your team, I’d want a man who—I don’t know—stood up for me.”

  “Look at you, the romantic,” I said.

  She shrugged it off. “Maybe. I’d just want someone who was tough when he needed to be.”

  “Patrick’s kind,” I said. “Isn’t that worth something?”

  “Not in my book.”

  When I’d defended my thesis and Patrick started his residency, we got married. I invited Jackie, hoping she would come.

  She didn’t.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have, either.

  I pull off the parkway and stop at the light beside a middle-aged man in a matte black Corvette. Sports-car menopause, I think. The back window is plastered with stickers: MYERS FOR PRESIDENT!; I’M SURE PURE, ARE YOU?; and MAKE AMERICA MORAL AGAIN! He honks, waits for me to turn my head, and rolls down his window. I do the same, thinking he wants directions around the labyrinthine Washington streets with their devilish diagonal avenues.

  He spits into my car as the light turns from red to green, then roars off.

  I realize I’ve still got the other candidate’s sticker on my back bumper.

  What would Jackie do? Speed on after him? Probably. Spit back? Likely. What’s on my mind, though, is what Patrick would do: absolutely nothing.

  He’d sigh and shake his head at the barbarism, and then he’d clean up the mess of phlegm and forget about Mr. Midlife Crisis. And Lorenzo? Lorenzo would beat the living shit out of the bastard.

  For some reason, I find that appealing. I didn’t use to. It hits me that I’ve turned into more of a Jackie than I expected, and suddenly I want to see her again more than anything.

  I doubt she wants to see me, and even if she does, Jackie’s in a place where the word “visitor” doesn’t exist.

  Jackie is in a camp (Say it, Jean: prison) somewhere in the middle of the country, where she works on a farm or ranch or fish hatchery from morning to night. Her hair—whatever color it last was—shows graying roots and split ends, and her arms are red with the sunburn of a farmer’s tan. A redneck tan, we used to call it, the kind that leaves your shoulders pale. She wears a wide metal bracelet that does not display any numbers because, in Jackie’s new world, there are no words to count. Like the women in the supermarket, the ones with those small babies, who did nothing more than try to finger spell a bit of gossip, a message of comfort, a mundane little I miss talking to you, too.

  Jackie Juarez, feminist turned prisoner, now sleeps at night in a cell with a man she doesn’t know.

  I saw a documentary about these conversion camps on television last fall. Steven had turned it on.

  “Freaks,” he said. “Serves them right.”

  The last of my words flew out, little daggers aimed at my oldest son, who had begun acting less like my son and more like Reverend Carl Corbin. “You don’t really believe that, kiddo.”

  He muted the television as an endless line of men and women marched from a hole in a concrete wall toward the working farm. Jeeps with armed soldiers flanked the parade of prisoners.

  “It’s a life choice, Mom,” Steven said. “If you can choose one sexuality, you can just as easily choose another. That’s all they’re trying to do.”

  I sat speechless as I watched the faces of gray-clad people, once mothers and fathers and accountants and lawyers, make their way from wall to fields. Jackie might have been among them, tired and blistered from day after day in the sun.

  Steven upped the volume and pointed at a screen of statistics. “See? It’s working. Ten percent after the first month, up to thirty-two percent as of the end of September. See?” He was referring to the conversion success rate.

  I didn’t see at all. But I saw, and still see, Jackie Juarez in work boots and a khaki uniform, weeding and harvesting until her hands are raw and bloody.

  Or.

  Jackie is married. Maybe to a fat fuck like Jack the security man, maybe to one of the gay guys she knew before. She wears a word counter and spends her days baking and hoping to get pregnant, so the authorities will know the marriage is bona fide, more than a convenient arrangement to dodge life at one of the camps.

  No. Jackie would never fold, never work the system, never whore herself out to the president’s men in exchange for money or a voice or a month of liberty. Patrick would, of course. Lorenzo wouldn’t. That was the difference between my husband and my lover.

  But Lorenzo did, the second he signed the contract and agreed to work on the aphasia project.

  As I pull into my driveway, the reason dawns on me:

  Lorenzo has another agenda, and I think it bears my name.

  THIRTY-TWO

  I put on my Mother and Wife face when I walk through our back door. Sonia and the twins are playing a game of cards on the den carpet; Patrick is chopping vegetables in the kitchen, an open bottle of beer next to his cutting board. I wonder if this is his first of the afternoon.

  “Hey,” I say, dropping my purse—thoroughly searched at the security
checkpoint before I left the office—onto a side counter.

  “Hey, babe.” Patrick sets the knife down and gives me a squeeze. “Everything go okay?”

  “Well enough.”

  “What was it like?”

  “We’re under the pain of torture not to talk about it outside the office,” I say. It’s probably truer than I think. “Where’s Steven? He’s about to miss his six o’clock predinner feeding.”

  Patrick knocks his chin toward the left side of our house. “Next door.”

  “He and Julia must be talking again,” I say. “You really need to speak to him about this marriage thing. He’s too young.”

  “I will. Oh, and your parents FaceTimed. I said you’d call tomorrow, but your mom wants to talk to you tonight.”

  “Can I use your laptop?”

  “Where’s yours?”

  Mine is currently in quarantine with one of Poe’s computer geeks. “Locked up tight in a building with no name somewhere in Washington,” I say. “Sure I can’t help in here?”

  He flicks a dish towel at me. “Go on. Git. I don’t need no jive sous chefs in my kitchen.” We both laugh at his attempt at Southern fry-cook slang.

  Well. That’s different.

  After a lightning-quick round of old maid with the kids—Sonia manages a few careful words—I go to Patrick’s study, which he’s left unlocked, and call my parents. The Italian comes back slowly at first, then eases into a steady cadence, all vowels and rhyming syllables. Papà has nothing positive to say about the president, or the president’s brother, or pretty much any part of this country; Mamma is more subdued, quieter than usual.

  “Tutto bene, Mammi?” I say.

  She assures me everything’s fine, just a few headaches recently.

  “You need to stop smoking,” I tell her.

  “It’s Italy, Gianna. Everyone smokes.”

  This much is true. Second to soccer matches, smoking is the national pastime, especially in our part of the South. I let it go for now and focus on happier talk. For a while, I listen as they tell me about the lemon and orange trees in the yard, the vegetable garden, the gossip about Signore Marco, the fishmonger, who is finally going to marry Signora Matilda, the baker. It’s about time—put together, Marco and Matilda must be 170 years old.

  The axe falls when Mamma asks if I’m coming for a visit this summer. “You don’t want me to die all alone,” she says.

  “Nobody’s dying, Mammi,” I say. Still, a cold current jitters up and down my spine. “Promise you’ll go see Dr. Michele, okay?”

  Between the “Ciaos” and the kisses and the promises to talk again tomorrow, it takes a full ten minutes to end the call. If the Italian women had quotas like we do, they’d spend every last word on the goodbye part of a phone conversation.

  Only after I’ve shut down FaceTime do I notice the manila envelope with its TOP SECRET stenciling on Patrick’s desk. Whoever came up with the idea of labeling classified documents with larger-than-life red stenciling that advertises—or at least hints at—the contents was a schmuck, I think. You might as well put a tag that says OPEN ME! on it. If it were up to me, I’d hide all secrets in back copies of Reader’s Digest.

  Patrick whistles in the kitchen, and the kids are now arguing over whether Sam cheated at cards by swiping one queen of spades from another deck and hiding it in his shirtsleeve.

  It would be so easy to take a peek at the contents of this envelope. I can practically feel the weight of that little red devil on my left shoulder, urging me on. Go ahead, Jean. Have a look. No one ever has to know.

  So that’s what I do.

  The contents don’t surprise me. As the president’s science adviser, Patrick would of course be in the loop on the Wernicke project. What I don’t understand is why the first page inside my husband’s top secret envelope refers to three separate teams: Gold, Red, and White. Lorenzo, Lin, and I are on the White team. Other names, all unfamiliar to me, are listed under “Gold” and “Red.” A few of them have military ranks attached.

  “Mommy!” Sonia’s voice in the doorway startles me. “I won old maid!”

  Now the sequestered queen of spades that Sam had makes sense. Quickly, I slide the project memo back into its envelope, hoping I’ve left things as they were on Patrick’s desk, which always seems to be organized with the help of a T square.

  “That’s super, baby girl,” I say. “How about we go check on Daddy in the kitchen?”

  “I love you, Mommy. I love you so much.”

  Nine words are all it takes to make my heart skip a beat.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “Anything interesting?” Patrick says when I’m back in the kitchen.

  I’ve always been lousy at secrets. The merest hint of a lie forces my lips into a curl; then my eyes join in the game. Only once did I try to throw together a surprise party for Patrick—his thirtieth birthday, I think—going through his then secretary and a couple of guys from work. When the day finally arrived, Patrick acted as stunned as if a bomb had fallen from the sky.

  Success! I thought. Right up until the next morning when Evan King blabbed about what a terrific show my husband had put on.

  “Saw it in your eyes, babe,” Patrick said. “Good thing you’re not the one with the security clearance.”

  So. No more surprise parties.

  He looks up from the stove. “Good news?”

  “What?”

  “Was it good news? From your parents?”

  I feel the weight of terror slide off me and melt into a puddle on the kitchen tile. “Um, I guess. Papà’s sold a store to some chain. So I guess that’s good news.”

  “Time for the old man to retire,” Patrick says. “Here. Taste this and tell me what it needs.” He spoons up a bit of the veg he’s been sautéing.

  “Perfect,” I say, even though it tastes off. Nothing smells good right now. The red wine Patrick pours stinks like rancid oil; the meat, which I think is chicken, but could be goat liver for all I know, fills the kitchen and dining room with a hellish stench. I should be starving, but I’m not. “Steven’s not back yet? Oh. Speak of the devil.”

  My son walks in, slamming the back door behind him. Sonia brightens, as do the twins. Patrick and I are about to say a “Hello,” but Steven walks past us, past the fridge, and straight down the hall toward his room. His face is flushed, a bloom of mottled red on his cheeks and neck. Somehow, he looks thirty-seven instead of seventeen, the entire world on his shoulders.

  And here’s the shittiness of parenthood, wrapped up in one sullen teenager.

  “I’ll go,” I say. I need a break from food odors before my olfactory nerves decide to rebel. “Ask Sonia to tell you about her card game.”

  Steven’s music shakes my bones as I walk down the hall to his bedroom door. I knock once; there’s no answer. On the second knock, Steven grunts a bored “Enter.”

  “You okay, kiddo?” I say, sticking my nose in the doorway.

  Whatever he’s listening to fades to dull background noise. “Yeah,” Steven says.

  “School go okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s Julia?”

  “Fine.”

  “Coming out for dinner? It’s almost ready.”

  “Soon.”

  I turn to go, and he breaks the chain of monosyllables. “Mom? If someone you knew—maybe even someone you really love—did a shitty thing, would you rat them out?”

  It’s necessary for me to think about this.

  Once, I’d have said yes. See someone go sixty in a school zone, take down their license plate. Watch a parent hit his kid in the Walmart, call the cops. Witness a robbery next door, report it. For every action, there’s an opposing and appropriate reaction. Except there isn’t, not anymore. The reactions might be opposing, but they sure as shit aren’t appropriate. I knew about Ann
ie Wilson and her backdoor man in his blue pickup truck, although he didn’t bother using the back door. I know Lin Kwan, who now lives with her brother, is the type of woman who prefers other women. I also know that if I—in Steven’s words—had ratted Annie out, I’d have a hell of a time facing myself each morning. The idea of playing informant on Lin is anathema, whatever Reverend Carl and the rest of the Pure have to say about it.

  “Depends,” I say. “Why?”

  “No reason,” Steven says, and hoists himself off his bed. “Guess I should take a shower.”

  As he brushes past me, leaving me with the hum of electronic music—a tune from the time before, whose lyrics probably don’t mesh with Fundamentals of Modern Christian Philosophy or Pure Manhood or Carl Corbin’s twisted worldview—I feel the heat of trouble settle on me again. It presses, squeezing out the air from my lungs, forcing me into a breathless state.

  There’s no way Steven could know about Lorenzo, I tell myself. No way. We were careful that last time, meeting accidentally at Eastern Market, driving through traffic toward our Maryland crab shack with all of me scrunched down on the floor of the back seat. It was March, and Steven would have been in school.

  Fatigue and worry hit me like bags of bricks, one on each side, and I head back down the hall to join Patrick in the kitchen.

  He’s still whistling.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The sirens wake me up. They’re like screaming animals in the quiet of the night, growing louder and louder until it seems they’re at my bedroom window. Reds and blues flicker through the blinds, and I know I’m not dreaming.

  “What the hell?” Patrick says, rolling over once, then twice, then pulling a pillow over his head. He doesn’t last long in his cave; reality seeps in, drawing back the curtain of sleep, and he’s up.

  All I can think about is the conversation I had with Lin in our office this morning. Still got a thing for our Italian colleague? . . . How long has it been going on? . . . Be careful, honey. You’ve got a lot more to lose than your voice.