by James Smythe
Safer for you both, the orderly says. He calls Vic Mr McAdams, which makes Beth feel sad. She wheels him down the ramps, pulling him behind her as she walks backwards, because he’s so much heavier than she is. At the end of the corridor is a wall of glass that’s so reflective and so dark inside as to be almost a mirror. She sees herself with him, her hands on the handles of the chair. She looks older, and his hair has become mussed in the move to the chair. She straightens it again with her hands. He doesn’t look at the reflection. She remembers something that she read this one time: how the only animals to recognize themselves are chimpanzees and elephants. You can put a mark on their heads and they will see the reflection and reach for themselves, to rub the mark off. Every other animal tries to find the thing by looking behind the mirror, unable to understand what it’s seeing. Vic doesn’t even look at the reflection. He sees nothing there; if he thinks it’s another person, he doesn’t care.
This is how it is, Beth says. She wheels him down the entrance ramps and into the garden, and then across the tarmac path. It’s even hotter than she anticipated, and within seconds she can see the beads of sweat on Vic’s forehead. She mops them with her sleeve. Jesus, she says.
Around her, other families are attempting to relax. All of this is too demanding. Being with people who are so far gone that they aren’t the people that they once were. And some argue that it’s like coma patients, and how you would stand by them, but Beth has heard the other side of the argument. That they’re more like the dead. There’s nothing inside them. They might look the same, and they might smell the same, but they’re different. The person that they were is gone. Inside them, the part that made them who they were, that’s gone. So what’s left? Beth’s heard the argument that there’s nothing. She’s seen the divorce figures for the vacant. Two years ago, a judge in America had annulled a marriage, but that was still an exception.
This is mortality, he said. Life and death. We’d never force somebody to stay married to a corpse. When a person loses this much of themselves, they have lost their soul. And what is left when you have no soul?
Most of the people here with her are parents, looking at their children, all grown-ups. Grey-haired men and women trying to act as if this is normal, because there’s a bond there that’s indelible. There’s no annulment between parents and their children. At their worst the patients are back to the way they were before they walked and talked, when they lay and were inattentive and cried for no reason. She sees the parents trying the same tactics they might have tried then. The snapping of fingers to try and draw their eyes. Calling their name, over and over, in the hope that it will stick. Nobody knows why the brain doesn’t work like it should after the Machine’s had its way with it. This would be much easier for all involved if it was just a wipe. One doctor who worked on the project wondered if the brain hadn’t had its ability to record memories wiped. As in, it had forgotten how to remember. Beth doesn’t like to think about it. So she and the parents lie on the lawns with their charges and they treat them like pre-toddlers. She knows that they wonder why she’s still with him, because they can’t see what she can be getting out of this. Nobody dreams of a vacant shell for a husband.
She wheels the chair out towards the gates, and the road. She wants to see how far she can push it without being noticed, if anybody’s going to question anything. There are no security cameras in the grounds because there’s no danger of the patients escaping, not when most of them can’t even walk. And those who can, can’t work door handles, or dress themselves, and certainly couldn’t get past the manned security desk. She pushes the chair further down the path, to the gates themselves, and then onto the street. She turns the corner and she stands with him and waits. She can see the people across the road staring at her. Or staring at Vic. It’s quite shocking, the first time you see him, because it’s not like seeing a disabled man. There’s no life in him. When you look at the vacant, there’s something wrong, and you can tell. It’s immediate. It’s what the overly religious factions who oppose the Machine use as evidence: they present the intangibility of the soul as proof of the existence of something less tangible still. The people across the road all turn their heads and stop talking. Beth ignores them. She puts her head down and looks at Vic, and she gently rubs the sides of his head. Apparently they itch, the burn marks; and she used to do this before, to the bullet scar.
After a minute nobody’s followed her, and there’s no sign of a security guard when she pushes Vic back into the grounds. None of the other visitors notice, even. Too preoccupied with snapping their fingers and whistling as if their offspring are dogs. Beth pushes Vic back the way that they came. She wipes his brow again. Through security with no hassle, and then to his room. She thinks about doing this herself, which is something that she’ll have to learn. She sidles the chair right next to the bed and locks the wheels in place, and then stands behind him.
I need to get my arms under here, she says. She pulls his arms up and puts hers underneath them. He’s so heavy. She struggles, pushing him forward, and he turns himself out of the chair and onto the bed. She puts a hand on his back to support him. Pushes him with it, and then she uses her other hand to try and get his legs up. His body turns too much, so she pulls him up the bed. He still gives her nothing.
She tries to manoeuvre him onto his back. She does this by pushing one shoulder and pulling the other, trying to make him do it himself. Now one hand on his shoulder, pulling, and the other on his knee, then his thigh. Incremental stages to get him flipped over. Next, her hand on his shoulder and her other hand looped around his thigh. She heaves and pulls, but doesn’t know if she can do it. Heave and pull, and finally his legs start to move, and, almost independently, his torso. He’s not flat on his back now, but as near as, and he starts to make a noise from deep inside him. She tries to yank him up the bed again, because he’s a foot clear of his pillows, and his legs dangle off the end of the metal frame. Small movements, but movement all the same: an inch at a time. Maybe less. Over and over, tiny repeated movements.
She remembers meeting him for the first time. They’re at school, their last year. Everybody says it’s perfect. That they’re perfect.
Pull and release, over and over, until the pillow is underneath his head, the first pillow at least. The pillows are so thin and unsupportive. No pillowcase. Instead gauze, designed to be easily washed, so that the whole pillow can be put straight in the washer. She tries to squeeze it into a shape that’s more comfortable.
Lift your head, she says, knowing that it won’t do anything. She bunches the pillows up but she can’t make him look comfortable. This would be easier with normal pillows, she says. She tries to shift him up the bed more, but he won’t budge. This is as much as she can do. She stands back to look at him, and he rolls his eyes and opens and closes his jaw, and his hands twitch and his legs are totally, unbearably still.
I’m sorry, she says. She’s not apologizing for her inability to make him comfortable, she knows, but if anybody heard her, that’s what it would sound like. All the way home on the train Beth tells herself that this will be easy. That this is the right thing to do.
When she gets home she sits in the spare bedroom and puts the Machine on and listens to audio of Vic talking about her: not the good stuff, the stuff that he wanted to keep, but the bad. The bits that they wanted jettisoned.
10
On Monday, after school, Laura is waiting for Beth by the gates. She’s smiling.
I was hoping to catch you, she says. Good day?
It was a day, Beth says. Wouldn’t go as far as the good part.
Fancy telling me about it over a glass of wine?
Beth stalls. I was going to do marking, she says. Her bag feels pitifully light for that excuse. I’ve got a bit to catch up on.
You could do it after the wine and get it done twice as fast, Laura says. The looseness you get from wine really helps with your marking, I’ve heard. She persists. Go on. I don’t know anybody els
e, and this is getting pretty tiresome, being here like this. It’s you and wine, or by myself in the guest house all afternoon, sweating under my dodgy air-conditioner. Her last try. The first round’s on me, she says.
Okay, Beth says. Sure, why not?
They walk down the road away from the school, past the kids. They know what they’re like: smoking, playing up. Across the way, a group of them pull their hoods over their faces and start walking with an affected limp. Beth can hear music from one of their cars. It sounds like drumming. Nothing but the headache of a beat.
They have cars, even here? Why would a teenage boy need a car on the island? asks Laura.
How else are you going to crash one and write it off? Beth replies. That makes Laura laugh. They don’t really talk, because it’s so hot, and then they reach a pub that Beth recognizes but has never been into.
This one? Laura asks. The temperature inside is much lower. They open the door and there’s almost a thin mist from within, as if they’ve opened a freezer, and Beth feels goose-bumps thrum up her arms. They pick a table away from the bar, where it’s quiet, and Laura leaves her bag there with Beth while she goes and orders. Beth watches her talking to the barman, who seems like he’s been asleep – he rubs his face and yawns as she orders, and he fumbles a wine glass as he places it on the bar, nearly smashing it, but Laura catches it before it rolls off the lip – and thinks about how long it’s been since she had a drink out like this. She drank at the Christmas party once, a few years ago, but she never goes out. Not to pubs. Not with her workmates.
Laura comes back with the wine. Went with this, she says, waving the bottle around. It sloshes, nearly up the neck and out. Got the bottle, because it worked out cheaper, if we drink it. She sits down. We’ll drink it, right? She pours them both a glass, filling each well over the recommended-measurement line, and then drinks from hers. Sorry, she says, should’ve made a toast.
You don’t need to, Beth says.
No, I do. Thanks for this. I was getting lonely. Here’s to not being lonely, Laura says. They both raise their glasses and chink them across the table.
How are you getting on? Beth asks.
Fine, Laura says. She tells Beth a story about one of the boys taking his penis out in class, under his desk. She says, You warned me about him as well, and there was I thinking you were insane. Butter wouldn’t melt, I thought, and suddenly … Well, there it is.
Jesus! Beth says.
The rest of the class died laughing. Even the girls.
They try. They’re good kids.
He had his penis out. Doesn’t matter how good a class is, they’re always going to push that one. But I’m enjoying it, the teaching. She smiles. Not the penis. They both laugh. They need something, Laura says. Seems like a lot of them here don’t have faith. Not big on churches or family here, are they? Beth doesn’t answer. She’s not big on either herself, but that isn’t something she can say. It’s not something she can hold against Laura either. The silence pushes Laura to change the subject. So what about you? she asks. She looks at Beth’s hand and points. You’re married?
Beth has to stop herself telling the truth. It’s there, in her mouth. She’s suddenly aware of how much she wants to talk about it. Yes, she says. He’s in the army, so I’m sort of alone a lot.
No sort of about it, Laura says. My dad was in the army. I get that, what it’s like. Selfish, I used to think. Sorry, I mean. You know.
Beth nods. I know, she says. It can be, a bit. She thinks about how many people she’s told the truth to since it happened. Her doctor, the psychiatrist she took herself to when she was having trouble sleeping, after Vic went into the home; a man on the telephone, when she called the helpline for Victims of Vacancy; a man who nagged her insistently once, in the early days, in a bar, practically rubbing himself against her body, taking her to the point of tears and then, from him, remorse. Three people, that’s what a tight secret it is. And here, now, she’s thinking of telling all to a woman who’s nearly a complete stranger.
Kids? Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.
No, Beth replies. No kids. Just me.
Right, so that’s definitely alone then. There’s a hint of something in Laura’s accent, something Irish maybe. Something lilting. Makes everything she says sound somehow vague. How often is he back? she asks.
Not often.
Where have they got him?
Iran, Beth says. He’s out there as one of the last peacekeepers. It’s safest: everybody knows about the chaos that was there, and how many people have died in the last decade. They don’t push when they hear Iran, because it could mean anything. It’s a delicate subject matter to talk about.
How long have you been married?
Eight years, Beth says. She’s met people like Laura before. Lots of questions because they like being interested. Not nosy, just stockpiles of information, immediately involved in the lives of their acquaintances. What about you? Beth asks. Married?
Me, no. Laura says it with the smirk of somebody who’s had this conversation a lot. No no no. I have a boyfriend; Rob. He’s noncommittal and infuriating. No matter how many hints I give him he never picks up on them, or he ignores them and plays dumb. He’s like a trained dog who chooses when he’ll obey. She leans in conspiratorially. Full of promises when there’s a treat in the hand, Laura says. We’ve been together too long now, as well. I think he’s complacent.
You live together?
No. No, I won’t. She pulls a necklace out from the neckline of her shirt. A cross, with a miniature Christ figure draped over it. I’ve told him that we should wait, she says.
Right. And he’s …
He’s stubborn. Laura finishes her glass of wine. She necks the final inch back in one. So is this all there is to do for fun on this bloody island? she asks.
11
Laura says goodbye to Beth. There’s no thought of this continuing onwards – Beth remembers when that wouldn’t have even been a question, that a pub shutting didn’t mean you had to go to bed and tuck yourself in and end the night – but Laura’s adamant. She’s drunk and swaying, and Beth asks if she can find her way; if she’ll be all right. She’s insistent that she doesn’t need Beth’s help.
I can get home, Laura says, I honestly can. She reaches over and grabs Beth’s shoulders. Beth, she says. Beth. It’s been such fun. We have to do this again.
Laura stumbles off and leaves Beth in the street. She starts home. The walk back takes her ages, as she keeps stopping, leaning against walls. She catches sight of herself in the huge mirrored windows of the porn shop tucked between the kebab house (heaving) and the tiny grocers (which is perpetually empty, and seems to survive only on the occasional sale of a bunch of flowers) and she realizes that she doesn’t look anything like the woman she’s been for the last five years. She’s relaxed, and it’s all over her face. Her posture, even; the comfortable slump of her shoulders. It’s enough to make her cry, and she does, facing the water on the far side, away from the street. She’s never been in one of those shops, but she wonders if they can see out of that mirror: if they’re all watching the strange woman sobbing on the other side of the window.
For the rest of her walk home – which she extends by taking side-streets, by passing back along the front, by stopping and watching the people drinking in the streets, grabbing each other’s arses, chewing each other’s mouths off – she wants to be discovered. She wants everything out in the open. She doesn’t think about Vic for at least half an hour, and when she realizes that, she feels incredible. Magical, even. He’s everything, but that pause … to take it was so freeing. She passes students and parents and colleagues, but they don’t notice her, or they aren’t looking, or they don’t say anything. She doesn’t know which. She’s drunker than she’s been in years, and she can feel it through every inch of her.
Beth opens the front door on her third try. She drops the keys on the mat and bends to pick them up, but her ankle shakes as she does it, so she props herself agains
t the frame with her hands.
Shit, she says. She swats the keys into the flat, and they skirt along the floor, making a noise, scratching the fake wood floorboards as they go, ending by the wall of the living room. She kicks her shoes off after them. Then pulls the door shut as she staggers forward.
I’m home, finally I’m home, she yells, and she puts her bag down, takes her coat off and she marches down the hall, pressing one hand against the wall the entire way. Home is the hunter, she says, which is something that Vic used to say, as a joke.
She opens the door to the bedroom and there it is: the Machine. She kicks the power on and the vibrations start, more acutely than before: she can hear it, feel it coming through the floorboards, the carpets, the walls. She can feel its vibrations through the wallpaper. She says his name, once, quietly, to remind herself of him – of what this is all about – and then walks to the Machine and puts her hands on it, palms out, on either side of the front panel. Its vibration runs all the way through the metal of every panel and part as it readies itself. She paws the screen, which is black, blacker still than the metal body of the thing, and her touch brings it to life.
You’re in there, she says.
Through the scrolling list of dates one leaps out, one that took place on the day after his birthday that first year of his treatment. She wonders. She presses play, and the doctor speaks, a prelude to Vic.
What did you do yesterday?
Beth took me out for a meal. We, uh. She booked a Greek restaurant. We both really like Greek food.
You seem distracted.
No. No. Just, it’s just coming hard today. Difficult for me. Don’t know why.
She pictures him there, struggling to keep it together, and she takes the Crown down from the docking station and nearly puts it on but doesn’t. Instead she rests it on the bed next to her, and she moves her right hand from the screen and down between her legs, pulling up her skirt, and then into her underwear, sliding down. She rubs herself as she sits on the edge of the bed, and then moves her body along the lip of the mattress. She remembers how she used to do this before she knew him, when she was still a girl.