Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Here is how it happens on this last day.

  Patrick kisses us goodbye—first the twins, then Sonia, then me, and finally Steven. He pays extra attention to Steven. You never forget your firstborn, I guess. You don’t love them more, but the bond is different, primal. As he drives away with the single vial hidden in his briefcase, I’m glad we don’t have a dog anymore. We did once, a silly mix of collie and beagle and shepherd that sat morosely on the doormat from the moment Patrick left in the morning until he came home at sunset. I don’t think I could bear watching that dog wait.

  It’s bad enough for me.

  Everything after his car disappears, taillights glowing in the predawn, is a construct, a video I play while the kids fight over the last brownie Sharon puts out, while Sonia tells her brothers in no uncertain terms that she knows they’re trying to cheat at cards, while Patrick’s half-empty coffee mug sits on a stranger’s kitchen counter, the liquid in it evaporating and condensing into a thick brown sludge. It still smells like shit, this American coffee, but I savor it all the same.

  “Just going to lie down for a minute,” I tell Sharon, who’s making breakfast for a dozen hungry people. She waves me off with an all-too-somber understanding, telling me to use her room if I like. I retreat with the rest of my coffee to an unfamiliar place with still-drawn blinds and a ceiling fan humming a monotonous lullaby.

  I see Patrick slowing and stopping at the security gate, holding out his identification card to the Secret Service agent, a man who wears a white squiggle in his ear instead of an embroidered SS patch on his arm. He parks, and I think he looks at the sky, maybe toward that patch in the east where the sun presses through the darkness.

  The meeting is held over breakfast, but to Patrick it must feel like the Last Supper, and he’s the Judas in the crowd, passing a poisoned cup.

  That was the plan, to put it in the water. Or the coffee. Or the champagne that will be popped open and poured out into delicate crystal flutes for twelve distinguished guests to sip while they congratulate one another.

  One is President Myers. Another is Bobby Myers, miraculously recovered from his six-day journey into the land of aphasia. I’ll never know whether the brain damage was real or fabricated, but if I had to bet, I know where my chips would fall. There’s Reverend Carl and Thomas the Intimidator. Six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are present, also the attorney general and chief justice, both notorious adherents to the Pure Movement.

  Patrick is number thirteen. The Judas Iscariot of the Oval Office.

  As I lie here in bed, numbed by the spin of the ceiling fan, these religious coincidences strike me as funny. Water, wine, thirteen men. Reverend Carl and his insanity. They say Christ was one of three things: a lunatic, a liar, or a lord. Mad, bad, or God, as the saying goes. I can’t believe Carl Corbin is a god—even if I believed in such divine entities. Gods may or may not play dice, but they sure as shit don’t load them with mind-altering poisons.

  My coffee has grown cold, but I drink it anyway.

  Sunday night—was it only just twelve hours ago?—Patrick decided he would dose the water and the coffee first. Then, whatever was left in the vial he would keep aside for himself, should the need arise. I shudder when I think of this way out, the Judas escape, but Poe tells me Patrick insisted on it. So many well-laid plans go wrong.

  This is all I can see. Maybe my imagination isn’t up to the task. Maybe it’s too up to the task, Technicolor vivid and laser sharp. After all, who wants to daydream about her husband dying?

  I check the clock on Sharon’s nightstand. Its hands say this is the time.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  I don’t sleep. I can’t. Instead, I walk with the kids to the horse barn, watching Sonia as she leads her brothers on a tour. She’s all words now, a geyser of them.

  “This,” she says, patting the roan with one hand and stroking it between the eyes with her other, “is Aristotle. She’s a girl horse. Even though Aristotle was a guy. She’s also my favorite. Sharon says she’s super smart.”

  As Sonia passes around thick hunks of carrot, instructing the boys exactly how to hold their palms flat and let the horse take the carrot without taking off a few fingers with it, I pull Sharon’s mobile phone from my pocket and dial a number.

  The receptionist is not thrilled with my sudden change of plans.

  “Mrs. McClellan,” he says, his voice as nasal and pinched as Morgan’s was.

  “Dr. McClellan,” I correct.

  He doesn’t apologize, only goes on with his lecture. “We schedule these tests in advance for a reason. You were supposed to be here an hour ago. I don’t know if we can fit you in until—” I hear papers rustling over the phone. “Until next week at the earliest.”

  “Never mind. I’m not coming in for the test,” I say, and end the call.

  “Come on, Mommy,” Sonia says. “It’s your turn to feed Aristotle.”

  “If Aristotle eats any more carrots, Miss Sharon’s going to have a mess on her hands. And guess who she’ll ask to clean out the stable?” I say.

  “It’s called mucking, Mommy.” Sonia looks absolutely ecstatic at the idea of spending an afternoon raking horse manure. Good for her, I think.

  “Can I be a vet when I grow up?” she says.

  “Maybe. Lots of school, though. You up for that?”

  “You did it, Mom,” Steven says.

  I think my heart might explode, and I know I made the right decision. “I’m going back to the house, okay?” I say, and leave, wiping my cheeks with the backs of my hands. The left side burns, although not nearly as much since Lin went to work redoing the bandaging. Still, the salt stings.

  Lorenzo is sitting on the rear bumper of the van, looking out toward the road, waiting.

  “Well?” he says when I join him.

  “I can’t go without the kids.”

  “Poe says you have to. Even if”—he pauses, as if he doesn’t want to say my husband’s name—“even if Patrick succeeds, nothing’s going to change overnight. They have our names. They’ve got pictures. We need to get out of the country.”

  “Where is Poe, anyway?” I say, changing the subject. My mind’s made up—I need six passports, not one.

  “He left with your husband,” Lorenzo says. Then, looking up: “Speak of the devil.”

  Patrick’s car comes at us like a runaway train, skidding to a stop next to the van. A dust cloud rolls over the ground as the driver’s-side door swings open, and Poe climbs out.

  The passenger door does not swing open.

  “Where’s Patrick?” I say. “Where the hell is he?”

  Poe responds by yelling at Lorenzo. I hear every other word: Go. Lin. Stop. Bleeding. Tried. Help. No. Time.

  My brain fills in the rest, and I jerk the rear door open, hitting the side of the van. The noise is a dull thud. Inside me, there’s screaming, one long and final scream that draws itself out and finally breaks into nothing.

  “What happened to him?” I say, but I don’t need to ask.

  SEVENTY-NINE

  I planned Patrick’s funeral as a quiet affair, but looking around at the crowd of men and women at the Rays’ small farm, I realize my efforts were in vain. Neighbors I didn’t think cared are here, including Olivia and Evan King. Julia, too, of course. She and Steven are talking with the tentative air of frightened children, which, I know, is what they are. A few old friends have driven in from the West Coast, since air travel has temporarily come to a halt.

  The entire country is in a state of chaotic transition, thanks to Patrick.

  In many ways, I still love him. In many ways, I’m sorry he’s gone.

  Radios and televisions have stayed quiet these first few days, and newspapers are running already-told stories. Washington, DC, is locked down tighter than a bank vault. The hurricane of terror may be over, but we all k
now a storm will linger. We all know we’re still not safe.

  Del and Sharon have decided to remain, though, and Jackie’s staying on at the farm to help with the resistance, to clear out the rubble and rebuild.

  “I’ll stay, too,” I tell her after we put Patrick in the ground. “I want to.”

  She treats me with the same heavy hand she always did, back when we were young and stupid. Or back when I was stupid. I don’t think Jackie ever was.

  “You need to go,” Jackie says. “Right the hell now.” When I try to protest, she puts a hand to my belly. “You know you do, Jeanie.”

  She’s right, of course. Jackie’s always been right about some things. She takes me in her arms, now lithe and sinewy from physical work, and in the hug I feel everything. Gratitude. Pride. Forgiveness. No more bubble around me.

  “Go on, girl. Your man is waiting,” she says, and breaks the embrace.

  My man.

  It seems too soon to think of Lorenzo as my man, as my lover. But I feel his hand on the small of my back as he leads me toward the farmhouse. The gesture is so simple, and complex at the same time. Part of me wants to turn back, run toward the fresh mound of earth where Patrick is buried, but I don’t. I stay with Lorenzo and gather the kids, telling them to start packing.

  Maybe, though, a small piece of me will remain here at this farm. To keep Patrick company.

  Chris Poe shook his head when I asked him what happened downtown. I insisted, though. It’s nice to be able to insist once again, even if the information I demanded was hard to hear.

  Life throws little ironies at us. So the fact that Morgan LeBron, the incompetent little shit I took care of only a few days ago, was the cause of Patrick’s death held less surprise than it might have.

  “I wasn’t inside,” Poe said, his eyes studying some lump of clay between his shoes. “And Dr.—Patrick—came running out the side door like a wild boar that smells fresh blood.”

  I nodded, letting him know it was okay to keep going.

  “Yeah.” Poe ground his boot into the clay, swiveling the toe until there wasn’t anything left but dust. “All I heard was ‘Lockdown! Lockdown!’ and something about Morgan’s memo. Well, that’s not true.” Another clay ball suffered under the toe of Poe’s left boot. “I heard shots. You know how they always have those guys on the roof of the White House? The ones no one ever sees?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, I guess that’s who fired. I don’t know any more to tell you, Dr. McClellan.”

  “Jean,” I said, taking his hand. “Jean is fine.”

  He turned to leave, shoulders low and fists shoved deep in his pockets. Then he looked back. “I do know one more thing, Jean. When your husband took that bullet, I swear he was smiling.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “That’s good enough for me.”

  And it still is.

  EIGHTY

  Canada was warm all through June and July while we waded through the red tape and waited as six passport applications wormed their way around Montreal offices. I would have liked to stay, if only through the summer months. Something about the lakes and rivers as heat-drenched days morphed into cool, calm nights was soothing. But home called, and French never came easily to me. Also, I needed to see my mother.

  The south coast of Italy, by contrast, is anything but calm. Tourists have invaded our sleepy town, and more will come in August. Still, it’s the place I want to be.

  Lorenzo has been working on his project day and night since we arrived on Monday. He says he’ll have the serum ready by the weekend, thanks to the notes Poe stole from his office back in Washington. He’s promised to take the kids hiking on Capri when he’s finished. He’s good with them, I think, and Steven, although leery at first, has grown to treat him like an older brother.

  I’ll take that.

  We’ve kept up with the news since we crossed the border from Maine into Canada, and then the Atlantic from Canada to here.

  The radios and televisions came to life again; the presses started to roll out newspapers. Women marched in silence until their wrists and words were freed. Jackie seems to be at the head of every march. She writes that, when she’s ready, she’ll visit us.

  I don’t think we’ll return to the States right away, not even now that my second country has returned to what it should have been for the past year, not even now that a new president has taken the keys from the old one, stating in the simplest of terms that he will never see America repeat the damage it wreaked over the past twelve months. With the first eleven men in the line of succession, well, not quite what they were before their own aphasia serum went to work, the charge of rebuilding went to, of all people, the secretary of health and human services. A funny thing, really, when I think that might have been Patrick’s next job.

  Jackie’s also volunteering as a campaign coordinator. Her letter from last week told me all about the midterm elections, how Congress will be back to normal—maybe even better—with all the women running for office. Imagine, Jeanie, she wrote. Twenty-five percent in the Senate and the House. Twenty-five! You should come back and get in on it.

  Maybe next year, I wrote back. And I meant it.

  For now, though, Jackie has my financial and moral support. I’m not ready to get into politics, not just yet. The boys love the sun and air of Italy, Sonia’s second language is on its way to being as expressive as her first, and everyone is excited about the baby coming.

  Also, I enjoy watching the women here. They talk with their hands and their bodies and their souls, and they sing.

  Vox

  Christina Dalcher

  A Conversation with Christina Dalcher

  How long did it take you to write the novel?

  You’re not going to believe me, but . . . two months. May 23 to July 23, 2017. Granted, I’d written the short story of about 3,500 words in early May, so I had a skeleton to work with. But Vox the novel came together quickly.

  In Vox, you’ve created two characters in direct opposition: Jean, who was politically inactive before the president came to power, and her friend Jackie, who attended every rally and protest. What did you hope to convey by their two extremes?

  Jackie, even though she appears in the flesh later in the book, started out as a ghost. She’s the proverbial haunter, the nagging voice that says to Jean, “I told you so, kiddo” and “You made your bed, now lie in it.” Jean might never turn to activism and become a Jackie, but she does change over the course of the story; she becomes more like Jackie, while still retaining her own identity. We don’t all have to be carbon copies of one another to work on the same team, but we can learn things from other people.

  What was it like to live in Jean’s head while writing Vox?

  It was a special place to live in, and to continue to live in whenever I reread parts of Vox. Being Jean for a while let me experience a range of states and emotions—some familiar, some foreign to me. When I wrote her scenes, I was a mother, a wife, a woman with regrets, a woman with the power to cure a serious language disorder, a lover. And speaking of that last part—it really wasn’t horrible climbing into bed with Lorenzo.

  Do you think Jean views herself as a feminist?

  I think of Jean as a humanist, an egalitarian, a person intelligent enough to view all human beings as created equal. But here lies the rub—Jean takes this for granted. I doubt she ever entertained the idea that not everyone shares her viewpoint. To the extent feminism is a call for equality, then, yes, we can view Jean as a feminist.

  Jean’s teenage son very easily embraces the Pure Movement. Why is his role in the book so important?

  Steven shows us how malleable people can be, for better or for worse. As a teenager, his thinking (and his rethinking) seemed completely natural—he’s a kid, soon to be an adult, navigating a complicated system, a collection of new ideas still very much in flux, and trying to
make sense of them.

  Many of Vox’s most chilling moments involve Sonia, Jean’s six-year-old daughter, and the question of whether she’ll acquire language.

  There’s a looming threat in Vox that we taste but never quite swallow. At six, Sonia is of an age when time is crucial—we could refer to this period as a use-it-or-lose-it stage. And I mean that very literally. Critical periods exist for various types of learning. The theory is that children’s brains are more plastic in early youth, but the circuitry changes as they reach puberty.

  When I began studying linguistics, I read about Genie, a “wild child” rescued from abusive parents in 1970. Almost fourteen years of social isolation left Genie beyond hope of acquiring language. I’ve never forgotten her story, and my own fear and anger about poor Genie stayed in my mind from the first word of Vox to the last.

  What do you want readers to take away from Vox?

  A lot of readers are probably going to think of Vox as a feminist story. In many ways, it is. But I hope people also see this as a tale about oppression, about the horrors that can occur when a faction—any faction—with a specific agenda becomes so powerful that it’s unstoppable.

  Although I wrote Vox as a cautionary tale, a warning call about gender politics and backlash and cultural shift, I also explored how much our humanity, our personhood, is tied to our ability to acquire and use language. In the book’s time period we never reach a point where the language faculty is wiped out, but that threat looms. What would our world look like if we (or some of us) lost the ability to communicate, to think, to express ourselves?