Lingering

by Melissa Simonson

  “I can’t go in there,” I said to Jess, pressing my forehead into the glass. “I don’t know how I’ll react if I do. I don’t know if I’ll lose my shit completely or forget how to talk. I can’t go in there.”

  “Just take your time.” She slipped her arm around my waist, and for once I didn’t flinch away from the contact. “We’ve got all day.”

  Nick leaned over the table, pointing at the tablet. “Do you know where you were in this picture?”

  “Bell in Hand. A birthday party about a year and a half ago. That’s what the caption says.”

  “You looked happy, huh? Do you remember it?”

  I remembered that picture. I remembered how light she felt sitting on my lap most of all, her arms twisted around my neck, her whiskey laced breath hot and tickling my ear as she whispered happy birthday, babe. You really think thirty will be that bad?

  And I’d told her thirty couldn’t possibly be bad so long as she was around, but then I kind of ruined the sentiment by saying something lecherous about another present she might give me when we got home.

  “I was happy,” she said, studying the image as the same one exploded into life in my mind’s eye. “He’d always said I was strange for not liking surprises, so I arranged a surprise party for his thirtieth in the bar where we met. He almost had a heart attack.”

  So would you if twenty-odd people suddenly jumped out at you, I thought.

  “Do you really think she knows if she was happy?” I asked Jess, staring at Carissa’s frosty white skin and wondering just how many motors were buried beneath it to make her face as expressive as it had been in life.

  “It’s hard to say, really. She’s got a frame of reference, here. She has texts and Facebook updates and pictures on Instagram proving she was happy in this instance.” She paused for a beat. “Do you think you’re ready to go inside?”

  “Would you be?”

  “Probably not.” At least she admitted it. “Do you want to just come back a different day? Take it in stages? Watch her from here for a few days, and interact with her later?”

  I wanted to tear my eyeballs from the sockets so I didn’t have to see my fake fiancée sitting there way too calmly with her maker. I wanted to run like hell, to get out of there, but I didn’t want to leave her alone with two people who didn’t know or love her.

  I hadn’t consciously chosen to open the door, but I had anyway, Jess following so closely she stomped on the back of my shoes.

  Carissa’s head whipped toward me as I stood in the threshold. She stood so abruptly that I fell back a step, my pulse ratcheting higher than ever.

  “Sit down,” Nick snapped, half-rising to block the door from her view. “Remember what I told you?”

  She looked like she would have quite liked to snap back, gazing down at him with her painted glass eyeballs, but eventually she sunk back into her seat in silence.

  He jerked his head in my direction. “Do you know who this is?”

  “Even if I didn’t know, I’ve just spent the last twelve minutes looking at pictures of him,” she pointed out dryly, her eyes swiveling between my face and Nick’s before settling back on me. “Hi.”

  I felt my lips form the word twice before my voice caught up. “Hi.”

  It all felt as awkward as it had that first night at the bar when I had finally swallowed my nerves and approached her, but at least I’d had alcohol to help with my courage back then. The silence was icy and pervasive, spreading through the room in cold ripples. I knew I should say something, anything, but I couldn’t. I just stood there staring, mentally comparing this thing to the dead girl I loved. She wore an ensemble Carissa wouldn’t have been caught dead in, pale blue scrubs reminiscent of pajamas for the criminally insane falling around her slim frame in baggy folds.

  The neck was marginally thicker and lacking the light blue veins I always found on Carissa’s throat. The skin was paler, no trace of the rose undertones I was used to; I realized it more closely resembled her skin after I’d found her dead. Telling myself it was a trick of the harsh yellow lighting, I forced my eyes on hers. Here, at least, they were an exact match, right down to the silvery veins cutting through ice blue, the dark ring of navy surrounding the iris. What agency had Nick farmed out the eyeballs to, I wondered, and how much had they charged him?

  “This is the lamest romantic comedy meet-cute I’ve ever seen.” Nick crossed his arms, looking over at me. “Come here. Sit.”

  Carissa’s eyes trailed me to the seat opposite hers. The chair I pulled out screeched horribly across the linoleum, but she didn’t flinch.

  Jess slipped onto the chair beside mine, tucking something away in the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. “Sorry. Nick tends to forget his manners when he gets excited.”

  Nick waved his hand in the air. “Fine. I’m an asshole. Let’s move on.”

  “Move on to what?” I directed the question at Nick, but I couldn’t stop looking at Carissa. She didn’t need to blink much; I counted two in as many minutes. She stared right back at me, her eyes roving all over my face.

  “You cut your hair,” she said, pupils raking my hairline.

  “Yesterday, yeah.”

  “How’d you know that?” Nick asked, echoing my thought.

  “Jackson tagged him in a picture on Facebook three days ago. It was longer then.” Her gaze moved off my hairline and onto my eyes. “You were beginning to look a little like a werewolf.”

  “Is that true?” Nick turned to me. “The picture?”

  “Yeah. I went over to his house for the Patriots game.”

  “Did Jason yell a lot?” She leaned forward a little, dark hair sweeping the table.

  The beginnings of a tremulous smile tugged at my lips as my corneas started stinging. “Of course. You know him.”

  “And Jackson made jalapeño poppers?”

  “As usual.”

  “I’m not sure how either of you have any taste buds left, the way you inhale spicy food.”

  Nick’s head moved like he was watching a tennis match. When he opened his mouth to cut in, Jess stopped him with one firm hand against his bicep and a not now kind of look.

  Carissa’s gaze fell on Jess’s hand against Nick’s arm, trained there for a moment before she looked back at me. “You stopped calling me. I wondered why.”

  “How could you wonder why?” I shot an accusatory glance at Nick. “How is that possible? It was a different machine.”

  “I programmed all the information from those exchanges into her so she’d retain all that knowledge. I figured it would help for a smoother transition.”

  Carissa’s face went carefully blank as she listened. Maybe she didn’t like being talked about as if she weren't present, but then again, who the hell did? Maybe she didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, as if she was simply a piece of equipment. Margot certainly hadn’t.

  When silence fell yet again, she opened her mouth, the lighting bouncing off rows of pearly fake teeth.

  “Why did you stop calling?”

  I looked down at my hands, half ashamed, half defensive. I’d abandoned her, but only because I had to. I’d had to if I ever wanted out of this dark hole of grief. Talking to her simulated voice had only dug the hole deeper, wider, sucked me in that much further. I didn’t have any choice. My real Carissa would have understood.

  “It made me happier, talking to you, for a little while, but toward the end it just made everything worse. It made it seem like you were still alive but on some other plane I couldn’t reach. That’s enough to drive anyone crazy, but then this thing with Kylie happened, and…” I trailed off, unwilling to expand on how Kylie worked into the equation, because I didn’t want Nick to know a seven-year-old girl was wise to what he was up to. I hoped she would connect the dots without a more explicit explanation. “And I just thought it would be best to make a clean break of everything.”

  “Do you understand what he means by that?” Nick piped up. “What ‘make a clean break’ me
ans?”

  “To remove oneself completely and finally from a situation or relationship,” she said, sounding more robotic than ever.

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “I don’t know.” She sent me a fleeting glance, like I’d supply her with the right answer. “How am I supposed to feel?”

  “You’re not supposed to feel any certain way about it. It’s just a question. But most people would feel something in this situation.”

  “But I’m not most people,” she said after a syrupy slow blink. “And I’m not really a person, as you like to remind me.”

  I felt a tiny ray of hope on a horizon that had never looked bleaker. This version was as stubborn and argumentative as the original.

  “For argument’s sake, let’s say you are a person.”

  “Then I guess I’m happy he’s changed his mind. Especially if it means someone other than you will be visiting me.” She smiled like she was joking, but I remembered that screwdriver in Margot’s hand, and I wasn’t sure.

  Jess’s laugh split the silence like a gunshot. She covered Nick’s hand with hers. “Why don’t you just let them talk. What’s your favorite memory about the two of you?” she asked Carissa. “Can you think of anything that stands out?”

  She sat back in her chair as she withdrew her hands from the table, linking her fingers in her lap. “Martha’s Vineyard, maybe.”

  The air in my lungs turned to ice.

  “Do you care to elaborate?” Nick prompted dryly after a few silent seconds slugged past.

  “No. It’s personal.”

  Just for the two of us, I thought, as she echoed the same words aloud.

  Carissa had never posted anything to do with Martha’s Vineyard online. She’d complained about the frequency with which her friends felt the urge to catalog their entire lives online. All the humblebrags and snapshots of their dinner and status updates about every mundane thought passing through their minds drove her crazy. She had never subscribed to the selfie culture of most women her age. She was active on social media for work, but she’d dialed back the personal posts in the year before she died.

  Don’t you think it would be nice to keep certain things secret between us? she’d said after I inquired about her complete lack of acknowledgement online about Martha’s Vineyard. I’d been worried she was embarrassed. Didn’t want to publicly admit anything for her own ulterior motives. There had to be some reason she didn’t see fit to post anything about what had to be a pretty momentous occasion in her life. I’d even gone so far as to wonder if there was someone else.

  I had the sudden urge to lunge over the table, grab her by the chin and stare into her face to see if behind that layer of silicone and motors she was really and truly in there. This thing wasn’t her, but how could she know this? Nobody knew about Martha’s Vineyard, nobody. Only us.

  “Have it your way, then.” Nick elbowed me in the ribcage. “I’m assuming you know what she’s talking about?”

  I’d remember until the day I died.

  Had we texted about Martha’s Vineyard? I tried to think back, but I couldn’t recall either sending or receiving any message to do with it. We'd begun living together well before Martha’s Vineyard. I’d worked from home most days and so did she, but for a few hours a week where she’d needed to pop into the office. If we’d ever wanted to discuss that particular topic, we’d have done it in person.

  “Yeah, I remember.” My eyes sealed shut as I massaged my forehead, more confused and flustered than ever before.

  “Are you all right?”

  If Jess asked me that one more time, I swore I’d lose what was left of my mind.

  “Would you stop babying him, for Christ’s sake,” Nick griped. For once I wholeheartedly concurred with him

  She sniped back, but I didn’t pay her words any attention.

  Something soft and cold ran along my wrist. I snapped my eyes open as Nick barked, “Don’t do that,” and found Carissa withdrawing her hand.

  “He needed some comfort,” she said. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

  He rapped his knuckles on the table. “The problem is I told you, hands to yourself.”

  “That’s a stupid rule. Why do I have hands then, if I’m not allowed to use them?”

  And though I reminded myself irresistibly of Nick on that video with Margot, I held my hand out to her. She slipped her fingers through mine as Nick sighed and Jess admonished him.

  Carissa’s skin had often been cold unless I’d reached for her under the bedcovers, so that wasn’t such a huge shock. I’m cold-blooded, like a reptile. She’d said that the first night I met her, shrugging into the jacket draped over the back of her bar stool.

  I lifted her hand close to my face, the better to examine the grooves in her pale knuckles, the way they tensed so humanly at my touch. The silicone was as soft as her skin had been, I had to admit, and from afar I didn’t think the luminescent sparkle would be noticeable. To test my hypothesis, I held her hand at arm’s length, squinting, and found I was correct.

  The only part Nick hadn’t gotten right were the nails. Carissa had always filed hers into slightly rounded squares, while these were oval. I stroked her left ring finger with the pad of my thumb and looked up at her. She was scrutinizing me in much the same way, like how Margot had gazed at Nick in that video. Like she was memorizing every small detail, filing it all away in her computer brain. Would she think it all over later, once Nick had locked her away for the night, or whatever it was that he did with her when he went home? If he ever went home. It didn’t seem like it. Did he power her down? Plug her in? How did he charge her?

  “Does that finger look naked to you?”

  I swallowed the saliva clogging my throat and nodded. “Just a little.”

  Her engagement ring was in my back pocket, but I didn’t tell her, and I didn’t pull it out. I gave her hand a squeeze though, and finally released my grip before Nick wet his pants about the flagrant disregard to his no touching policy.

  I went home feeling oddly depressed and elated, like the Cloud Nine I rode on turned out to be bursting at the seams with a load of rain.

  The snap of the side door shutting behind me was like a knife slitting that cloud open, letting loose a torrential downpour, and I suddenly knew why she’d impossibly remembered Martha’s Vineyard.

  Carissa, reigning queen of gift giving, had always agonized over presents for me, determined each one outdo the last. Last Valentine’s Day, she’d given me a lumpy package covered in brown craft paper which was tied together with a length of twine. I’d been confused at first, too used to her usual neatly-wrapped gifts with perfectly folded paper and fat bows. A stack of envelopes had been inside, some bulging, some flat, some stiff and unyielding. They all bore the words open when in Carissa’s spiky handwriting. Open when you’re sad. Open when you need a pick me up. Open when we’re apart. Open when you’re mad at me.

  The open when you’re feeling nostalgic card had only a URL. I’d typed the link into a browser and found a blog she’d secretly started for me. She hadn’t used our names, hadn’t included pictures of us. Nothing that could be used to identify either herself or me. There were hundreds of posts, which made me sure she’d been working on the project for a while, and one of those posts had been titled Martha’s Vineyard.

  Ignoring Dexter’s meow of greeting, I headed for the home office, fell into my swivel chair, and rooted around in my drawers for the envelopes.

  I spread them out on the desk and found the right one, typed the link into Chrome, and pulled up the blog.

  There it was. Martha’s Vineyard.

  You were so surprised when I told you I’d never been there. How could I live in Boston my whole life and have never once visited?

  So you planned the trip and wouldn’t let me help with any of the details, which was slightly unusual. That should have tipped me off, now that I think about it.

  Much to your dismay, it started pouring rain about
an hour after we got off the ferry. I didn’t see why a bit of rain would make you so upset, but you were livid. I checked the weather report, what the fuck?

  I told you it wasn’t a big deal. It would stop eventually, and the house you rented was comfortable enough to ride out the storm. We could light a fire, hang out and talk. We found some disgusting peach schnapps in the freezer. We didn’t want to know how long they’d been in there, so we told ourselves it couldn’t have been too long and drank them anyway.

  It’s like glamping, I told you as you lit the fire. And then promptly explained what glamping was, because you looked at me like I was crazy.

  A raccoon scared the crap out of us when we saw him on the deck through the glass slider; do you remember that? You wouldn’t let me feed him even though he was so adorable I had half a mind to adopt him.

  So we just sat on the rug in front of the fireplace, passing the schnapps back and forth. I was half in the bag by the time you pulled that box out of your pocket.

  That’s why you were so mad about the weather, I said once I remembered how to talk. I’d thought it was so strange you’d be that upset. You were usually so unruffled. I was the one who freaked out about things. Never you.

  Are you ever going to give me an answer? you finally asked.

  So I gave you my answer, and you refused to tell me how much the ring cost because apparently that’s a rude question to ask and so not the point, and did I realize I was probably the only woman on earth who would ask such a question at that time?

  I’m in the bathroom typing this now. You’re standing outside going on about how I don’t need any makeup because it’s just the neighborhood dive bar for crying out loud and you’re not looking forward to a bunch of gross pervs staring at me (not true) when I doll myself up so can I get a move on?

  Martha’s Vineyard might be my favorite memory, but I’m sure we’ll have plenty more to take its place soon enough. This, one though…it’s just for the two of us.

  I love you the most.

  No she didn’t. I loved her more, always had.

  Martha’s Vineyard was my favorite memory, too. And we never had a chance to make any more that would unseat this one from the top slot.