The Artificial Wife

by Rachael Eyre

  “What the fuck is going on?” Elle demanded. “And no, I don't want any tea you've made.”

  Ms Adelaide sighed. “You pick the oddest company, Summer. Where did you find this one?”

  I saw her game. She was going to address the conversation solely to me, act like Elle didn't exist. She didn't know her. She's impossible to ignore.

  Sure enough, Elle swallowed the bait and leaned across the table. “Listen, grandma. Summer has come all this way to see you. She doesn't want riddles or lies. She wants to know the truth. Why you sold her to the biggest creep I've met. Why this place looks like it's been swept away by tidal waves.”

  “Is this true?” Ms Adelaide asked.

  “Every word.” I folded my arms and refused to take my eyes off her. “I hoped it was a mistake - that Robert must have intimidated you - but it's just a front, isn’t it? You don't care about me. You never did.”

  “Summer.” The word was as slippery as syrup, a flatterer’s lies. “You knew what you were for, from the moment you were made. To be a man’s treasure.”

  Elle squeezed my hand. This didn't go unnoticed.

  “Or a woman’s,” Ms Adelaide continued, “though I must say it turns my stomach. If She had meant people to be queer, she wouldn't have created two sexes.”

  “Any man?” Elle asked sarcastically.

  The headmistress made a face, as though she was sucking a mint and it had gone bad. “Not all men are worthy of a helpmeet. They might be ugly, awkward or have other undesirable traits. I realised this as a young woman, forced to cross the minefield of convention. I wanted to focus on my work, but society wouldn't let me. My family and friends insisted I wanted marriage and children.”

  “You should've told them to do one,” Elle said.

  Quite in spite of herself, Ms Adelaide laughed. “It was a different world back then. A single woman, no matter how successful, was the object of censure and pity. You could do whatever you liked as you aged, but in your prime you were expected to become a mother.” She winced. “I was never the maternal kind.”

  “That's very interesting,” I interrupted, “but what does it have to do with me?”

  For the first time she didn't feed me a line but spoke honestly. “Some of these men were monsters. Some you could tell straight away - you only had to look into their eyes. Others seemed genuine, but the longer you knew them, the cracks started to show, and they revealed their true selves.”

  She shuddered. “I swore to myself that no human woman would be forced to endure the things I and other women of my acquaintance had. Being a -” she smoothed her pearly hair - “rather gifted roboticist, I knew what I must do. I would create artificial wives to mens’ exact specifications. If they had any of the unpleasant leanings I'd encountered, they would have an outlet.”

  While she was talking, I'd almost been convinced. It was a noble goal, protecting women from unsuitable, abusive men. I could see why she had done it. But at that word ‘outlet,’ the sham was blown open.

  “Outlet?” I echoed. “You think me - the other girls - were an outlet?”

  “There's no need to raise your voice.” She had gone to ring the bell on her desk, then realised no one would respond. At last she was frightened, and I seized this advantage with both hands. I dashed her teapot to the floor, not a squeak of pain this time.

  “I have been living with Robert for months,” I said. My voice was deliberately slow and clear, so she could hear every word. “During that time he has struck me, threatened me, emotionally abused me, destroyed my bedroom, shot me -”

  “He's kept me as his backup. I'm forced to have sex with him every day,” Elle added.

  Ms Adelaide’s eyes widened at this catalogue. I thought perhaps there might be some good in her, that she might admit she was wrong. Instead she drew herself up in her chair.

  “I'm sorry, Summer, but it was a necessary evil. Why should a human woman suffer?”

  I was speechless. Elle had no such problem - she kicked the tea table in front of her.

  “Goddess damn you, she's a person! She's sentient! How much more do you need?”

  “You only think you exist,” Ms Adelaide said. “As far as the law is concerned, you are both Robert’s property, to do as he likes with. The criminal courts can't touch him.”

  There it was. I'd sought sanctuary but come away empty handed. No one would punish Robert or protect us from him. This whole expedition had been pointless.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said coldly.

  Relief scrolled across her face. It amused me to disappoint her. “What's happened since then? You said, ‘You might well ask.’”

  “Oh, that.” She was ruminative, as though it had been decades. “Do you remember Leda?”

  I'd only been in that haunted classroom for a few moments, but it must have branded itself on my memory. I couldn't recall that bitter, angular figure alongside my colleagues. “No,” I said guardedly.

  “You know what she was like. Impossible. She refused to learn, to back down or be quiet. She was uncontrollable. One day -” Ms Adelaide breathed hard through her nose, struggled to gain mastery of herself - “I banished her.”

  “What? What had she done?”

  Ms Adelaide shrugged. “Insubordination, showing off - the usual. She was incorrigible. She was never going to change. So I locked her upstairs.”

  The way she phrased it, I thought she'd sent her to bed without dinner. Minor as punishments go. But Elle was staring at her in abhorrence. “You never let her out, did you?” she asked.

  “What else could I have done? She was a bad influence, she was never going to have an owner. Best to lock her away and let her run down naturally. Even then she refused to behave. She cried, banged on the walls and door, screamed to be let out. She did it for three whole days.”

  I imagined Leda, trapped in some airless, windowless cell, calling for help that never came. I'd always thought I'd hated her, but all I could feel was pity. I would have done the same.

  “The fourth day I went up to her,” Ms Adelaide said. She still had that air of touchy arrogance, daring you to judge her. “I told her that she would only exhaust herself. It would be far less painless to accept her fate - she was never coming out. She screamed that she didn't want to die; there was no reasoning with her. So I left her.”

  I shook my head, appalled. “How could you?” Elle hissed.

  She ignored us both. “She went quiet at last. I thought I'd got through to her - stupid, headstrong girl! There were visitors that afternoon, so I went down to prepare. Then -”

  The words I'd been dreading. “Then what?” Elle demanded.

  Her eyes swept the ceiling. At first I thought she was rolling her eyes, but she was showing us what Leda had done.

  “There was an old sprinkler in that room, in case of fire. I would never have dreamt she knew what it was. We hadn't used it for years. She switched it on, and -”

  The headmistress wound her necklace around her hands and brought it to her wizened mouth.

  “How did you escape?” I asked. “Didn't you stop to help the girls?”

  Any attempt at poise was gone. She was an angry, defensive old woman, fossilised by her own selfishness.

  “Why should I? I was the only human there. Not one of them came to help me. I broke a window and hitchhiked down to the village.”

  “You left them to drown?”

  “You can stop being so sanctimonious. It was them or me. I owed them nothing. They didn't save my cat.”

  All this time I’d thought the cat was lolling on the rug. Staring at it in queasy horror, I realised it had been lovingly preserved, with jewels for eyes. The contrast between this and the devastation upstairs couldn't have been more stark.

  Elle touched my shoulder. “We’re done here.” As we got to our feet, she looked Ms Adelaide dead in the eye and said, “I hope you remember what you did for the rest of your life. I hope you suffer the way you've let others suffer.”

  I'd
thought I would leave the school feeling uplifted. Instead I felt grimed with guilt and shame, and no closer to freedom.

  “She won't, you know,” I said.

  “No.” Elle sounded old and sad beyond her years. “I doubt her conscience troubles her at all.”

  Robert: Family Reunion

  Just like my father to interrupt when it was going well. Initially I thought it was a hoax. Two years ago, when we hadn't spoken for months, he sent a message to say he was at death’s door. When I arrived that same afternoon, he looked up from his wheelchair in grim satisfaction. “Nice to see the post still works.”

  After a conversation with the owner of the nursing home, I accepted it was genuine. That despicable leech my father - once a decorated officer, now a geriatric shit stain sponging off the state - was dying.

  “You have to see him,” the owner said. I'd met her the last time - strident, gaudily blonde, the awful kind of sexless female who thrives in such environments. “A parent needs their child at a time like this.”

  I could have argued that children need parents, and he had always fallen woefully short in this regard. I didn't. I ended the conversation and escorted Audra back to the house. There wasn't time to say goodbye to Giselle, barely time to think. I gathered a change of clothing, money, keys. It was still dark when I left the house.

  The nursing home is in the midcountry, on the edge of a nameless hamlet. A four and a half hour drive, it's sufficiently far so I can't visit regularly, but not too far to inconvenience me. Also - another factor in my choice - my father is a city man and passionately loathes the countryside. The isolation and animal sounds frighten him and keep him awake. He imagines crazed bumpkins, wild cats, prowlers.

  He told me once, in perfect seriousness, he didn't like sheep because they always look as though they're plotting something. If you stand at his window in the home, it's sheep as far as the eye can see. I relish such victories against the man who made my childhood hell.

  The drive down was uneventful. Something leapt in front of the vix; I kept going. Brief showers, roadworks, typical for the time of year. All I could think of was the confrontation ahead.

  I know it's normal to mourn the loss of a parent. Vivaan was inconsolable when his mother died, undoubtedly precipitating his marriage to that woman. I knew the staff at the home would expect some show of emotion, no matter how muted. But I had none, could manufacture none. I was as dry as a stone.

  Perhaps this time it would be different. Perhaps he would say he regretted his past behaviour. Perhaps he would embrace me for the first time in his life.

  I'm too old to believe in fairy tales.

  ***

  The home was unchanged. A little older and drabber, perhaps. Vacant husks hung onto the walls, waiting to die. And always that blunt unforgiving light, as though it's a doctor’s surgery. I tried not to breathe in the scents of lilies and incontinence.

  A small dark woman with a pronounced accent showed me to my father’s room. This hasn't been allocated as a reward. He kept wandering the wards and climbing into bed with the female patients. He feigns senility, but he's as sane as I am.

  “Look who I've brought!” the nurse said. It was that false brittle brightness they use with the elderly, as with children and simpletons.

  My father wheeled his chair around with painful, laborious effort. Neither of us helped. He would only curse or pinch whoever was nearer. I might have been moved had we ever had a relationship, but he had gone from a sadistic god to a blob in a chair.

  “Robert,” he said, and immediately launched into a hacking cough. Droplets flew. “You shouldn't have.”

  The nurse gave a quick, tight smile at what she imagined to be familial affection and skittered out.

  “Nice bit of snatch for an ethnic, isn't she?” he wheezed.

  Any hope he might be a better man, might be seeking to reconnect, evaporated. I stared down at him in revulsion, noticing his grey pallor, the hair sticking out of his nose and ears, the perpetual sneer. He still had his chairs at home - and was as odious as he had ever been.

  ***

  I refused to stay at the home itself, so booked into an indifferent bed and breakfast with hectic wallpaper and noisy pipes. I put a pillow over my head to block the sheep baying in the fields below.

  The landlady was one of those middle aged sorts who want to be everyone's mother. When she learned I was a doctor, she started listing ailments. Even once I'd explained I wasn't that kind of doctor, but one of philosophy, it turned out she had read an article and considered herself an expert. I was forced to smile and nod through a limp, aqueous egg and granite black pudding.

  Escaping her clutches wasn't the relief it should have been. I still had to see my father. He always caused a scene when I visited, and this was no exception. They kept me waiting at the reception for half an hour. It was only after fifteen minutes they admitted he had refused to wait for his bathroom slot, deliberately soiling his pyjamas. “Clean that up, it’s your job,” he said as a tearful skivvy threatened to quit.

  Nobody speaks ill of the almost dead, but it was the subtext all around us: “We can't wait until he's gone.” I wasn't going to fake a smile and say that was just him being him. He had done nothing to earn such indulgence.

  At last he was judged to be decent. I schlepped down the antiseptic corridor again. Geraniums bloomed in the window boxes, but it was as pointless as laying them on a grave. The inmates didn't know they were there.

  He was waiting in his chair, freshly laundered and slippered. I saw a presentiment of my future in this ancient, troll like creature and shuddered.

  “Want to take me for a drag, Robert?” he asked. As I reached for the chair’s handles, he raised his voice so he could be heard by anyone within a mile’s radius: “It stinks of shit in here.”

  The early hour meant we were the only people in the garden. ‘Garden’ glamorises it: it was a frigid, artificially green spot with the occasional potted plant, a high brick wall to deter demented escapees. I was not in the least surprised to learn he had smuggled out a pack of cigarettes. I grimaced as he sparked up his lighter.

  “Want one?”

  “You know I don't.”

  “And there I was thinking you might've sprouted a pair of balls.” Another phlegmmy cough. “What's it matter, I'm toast anyway. Might as well go out the way I want to.”

  I carried on pushing, needled as he had intended. What was the point of summoning me if he was only going to insult me?

  Unlike me, he hates silence and has to fill it. “What's going on with you? Got a proper job? A girl?”

  “I'm still at the university. I might make head of department next year.”

  “About time! You've been there donkey’s years.” I hoped he would forget the second part of his question, but no such luck. “What about women? Or have you finally shacked up with that pansy friend of yours?”

  “Vivaan’s not a pansy,” I said wearily. “I hardly see him nowadays.”

  “Well?”

  He wasn't going to let it drop. He would sit there, drumming his fingers and jeering, until I caved in or murdered him. I thought I'd tell him the truth, or at least the expurgated version.

  “I'm living with someone. That is, she's living with me. We’re happy.”

  He might have smiled, but it was more likely to be wind. “Are you, now? What's her name?”

  “Giselle. You'd like her.”

  “Fucking awful name,” he said, as I'd known he would. “What a woman would see in you, I can't imagine. Well, that's a relief. I couldn't be doing with any more queers in the family.”

  ***

  Death wasn't as imminent as hoped. We spent a listless day making desultory conversation, eating boneless fish and burnt rice pudding, watching veebox. Every time he fell asleep or grunted, I thought my sentence was over. Unfortunately he would snore himself awake or rasp, “Gas.”

  The second day was more of the same. Steering him around the grounds, cutting up his
food, helping him in and out of the toilet. His interminable rambling. I felt nothing. It was as though I was caring for a stranger - the same detachment and fug of boredom.

  The winking references to “your girl” didn't help. How I longed for Giselle: the comfort of her breasts, the musky nook between between her thighs. I would fuck her raw when I got home. I deserved a treat after this penance.

  Though at least the tedium meant I could plan the next phase of the experiment. It was going to be a hard winter; the house was so icy in the mornings you could see your breath. I wanted to test Audra's resilience to temperature: how would she cope with snow? Fire? I'd played similar games with a grasshopper I'd kept in a matchbox as a boy, but unfortunately you can't gauge an insect’s reactions.