The Echo Wife

by Sarah Gailey

  But he didn’t even give me that. He just picked his jacket back up and smiled at me, a smile that wasn’t bitter or triumphant or even regretful. It was the worst kind of smile I could possibly have imagined, and it hurt beyond any cruel words he could have mustered.

  It was polite.

  “I’ll send a service to pack my things next week.” He grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter. “I won’t need anything of mine before then. I’ve got what I need at home.”

  I was stunned into silence by this, until I realized that by “home,” he meant the house he shared with Martine. By the time I found my words again, he had already walked out the door, loudly biting into the apple as he went.

  A week later, he sent the service, as promised. I asked the head of the crew for a business card and, just a few months later, on the same day I received Nathan’s notice of intent to file, I called the service again to set up my own move.

  It was as easy as that. Nathan didn’t fight. He didn’t cry. He never even tried to stay. It was a matter of boxes and paperwork, and then it was finished.

  We were finished.

  * * *

  There was so much to do, and so little time to do it in.

  Nathan’s tissue needed to be prepared, and then the tank needed to be prepared, and 4896-T needed to be neutralized and examined and disposed of. Normally, the entire process would take two days—one day for the old specimen, one day for the new.

  For this work, we had a matter of hours, and no room for error.

  It was two o’clock in the morning by the time we began working in earnest. Two thirty, really, because Seyed insisted I take Martine out of the lab while he drained and euthanized 4896-T. Sentimental of him, but I understood. Watching the neutralization of a specimen isn’t easy, especially if they wake up.

  Still, it felt like a waste of time. Martine could have turned her back, if she didn’t want to watch.

  By the time we returned to the lab, the failed specimen was on the autopsy table. Seyed had erected a cloth drape between the dissection setup and the rest of the lab. It was a screen we typically used to hide works-in-progress from view during rare visits from company executives who wanted to see where their money was going—they wanted to see our progress, but they were always squeamish about our process.

  The drape seemed like overkill to me at first, but the moment Seyed made his first incision, I understood his reasoning. The sound of flesh parting echoed in the near-silent lab, and Martine flinched violently at the clang of Seyed dropping his scalpel onto a lab tray.

  Perhaps turning her back wouldn’t have been sufficient after all.

  “Martine,” I said, noticing the way her hands twitched nervously at her skirt, “would you like to help me get started?”

  “All right,” she whispered.

  I could pretend that I let her help out of kindness, in order to distract her from the wet sounds that came from behind the screen. Or maybe I could pretend that I was exploiting her need to help—cruel and mercenary, taking advantage of her accommodating nature to make my work move along faster.

  I could pretend either of those. I could even pretend that I knew which one it really was.

  It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Martine was the one who prepared the tissue sample for sequencing.

  I loaned her a lab coat to protect her dress, anticipating that she would spill something on herself. I showed her how to double-layer her gloves so it would be easier to change them again and again, even if her palms started to sweat. I gave her careful, step-by-step instructions. I used a soft voice and small words.

  When I thought she understood what I was asking her to do, I left her behind with a set of shears, a scalpel, and an emulsifier. I was already dreading the way I’d need to coddle her through the next few hours of work. I’d always resented having to cosset my assistants, but I was prepared to hold Martine’s hand through the entire process.

  Much to my surprise, Martine turned out not to need coddling at all. She was quick and efficient, and she asked for the right amount of guidance. I checked her work at every step of the process; every time, she’d done precisely what I’d asked.

  We traded places at a few critical junctures—her taking over a menial part of the tank preparation while I handled a tricky bit of tissue separation or fluid sampling—but ultimately, it was her work.

  I trusted her with a job that I should really have given to Seyed. He knew how to prepare samples, and he would have done it without any management from me. I could have let Martine deal with the tank preparation, and I could have done the autopsy, and Seyed could have prepared the tissue, and everything would probably have been fine. If I were going to do the experiment again, I’m sure that’s how I would do it.

  But it didn’t occur to me at the time. Sample preparation is more concrete than tank preparation, smaller in scale. It’s a more complex job, but it’s simpler to explain, and the steps are easy to break down. And, all that justification aside—it felt better, somehow, giving Martine that job. Challenging her.

  She sank into the task, enough that she didn’t seem disturbed by the whine of Seyed’s bonesaw. I occasionally caught her giving her work a satisfied smile.

  For all that I’d feared she’d be incompetent, it was startlingly easy to guide her through the process. She was a natural. I hadn’t expected to be proud of her, but there it was.

  By dawn, we were ready.

  Specimen 4896-T was bagged and ready for incineration. The yolk that would grow Nathan was prepared—machine-printed stem cells, a half-dozen growth factors, stabilizers, stripped-down free-floating cell frames, all suspended in a low volume of synthetic amnio. My hands shook with fatigue as I double-checked the levels on the emulsion. This was the compound that we were going to use to grow a new version of the man I’d married.

  We didn’t have extra growth materials to spare, not ones I could justify within my operating budget, especially now that I was going to have to reconcile my budget with Seyed’s little side business. And we didn’t have extra Nathan.

  It needed to be perfect.

  “Okay,” I said. “I think we’re ready.”

  There was nothing climactic about the work that followed. There was no charge in the air, no tension, no triumph. We were all exhausted. Seyed and I were trying to maintain our usual routine, while stepping around the betrayal that lingered between us. Martine stayed out of the way, watching quietly, her eyes lingering on the equipment.

  Filling the tank went according to plan, exactly the way it always did. Seyed depressed the plunger that pushed Nathan’s emulsion into the base of the tank. At the same time, I started the flow of substrate—a combination of synthetic amnio and perfluorocarbon. The two liquids entered the tank at the same rate, mixing together as they equalized. The process was exactly like tempering eggs; the amnio that was already in the tissue slurry made it easier to combine with the substrate. It kept the tissue from crystallizing too rapidly, from congealing into a sloppy archipelago of useless flesh.

  Nothing went wrong. The tank filled steadily, blood-pink fluid rising to the top of the tempered glass. Bubbles moved slowly through the thick liquid, rising to break at the surface. By the time all of those bubbles were gone, the liquid would set like cooled gelatin.

  On the day I realized that my husband had been having an affair, we had seeded specimen 5183-N. That night at the lab, I’d filled the tank myself, staying up late with work to avoid having to go home. I wasn’t ready to confront Nathan, not until I had all the evidence to support my accusations. And I couldn’t stomach the thought of sleeping beside him.

  I’d stood in front of the tank for an hour that night, watching every bubble that drifted sluggishly skyward. Watching as the pink liquid in the tank smoothed itself out, clarified, and became a place where a person could grow. By the time those bubbles were gone, I knew that our marriage was a place where nothing could grow.

  Not anymore. Not after what he’d done.r />
  Martine stood beside me, now, staring up at the tank exactly the way I had stared up at it that night so many months before. She held the edges of her lab stool in a loose grip, drumming her fingertips under the lip of her seat. “It doesn’t look like much.”

  “That’s good,” I replied, stripping my gloves so I could rub my eyes. “It’s just broth right now. It’ll take a few hours to thicken up.” White spots danced in my field of vision. I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes and tried to calculate how many hours it had been since the last time I’d had any sleep.

  “Evelyn—” Seyed started to ask a question, but I cut him off.

  “Take the rest of today off,” I told him, intentionally brusque, leaving no room for argument. “Go home. Get some rest.” I gave him a sharp look. “Make your delivery tonight, and make damn sure you tell them it’s the last one. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.”

  “Should someone stay here to keep an eye on … on him?” Martine gestured to the tank that would, within the next month, contain a replica of the man who had created her. The man who had gotten her pregnant. The man who had tried to kill her.

  It struck me as fantastically funny, that she should think of keeping an eye on him. I swallowed a hysterical laugh.

  “No,” I said. “There’s nothing for us to do right now, and even if there was, we wouldn’t be able to do it with any kind of skill. Not right now. Honestly, Martine, look at you.” I waved a hand at her vaguely, disdainfully, as though she were a mess—although in reality, it was difficult for me to discern any visible signs of fatigue on her. “You’re exhausted. We all are. We’ll go home, get some sleep.” I nodded significantly to Seyed. “Wrap up loose ends.”

  Seyed handed Martine a pair of mirrored sunglasses. They were too big for her. “Wear those when you leave,” he said, and Martine nodded, letting the sunglasses swallow half of her face. Beyond that, he didn’t say anything. He wisely chose not to argue with my instructions.

  This was not new: He usually did what I asked of him, usually acted without argument. But there was something different between us now. We’d had a respectful, easy partnership. Now, our interactions carried the flavor of obedience. It put the taste of ruin in my mouth.

  So be it. He put himself into this position, and I wouldn’t discourage him from being there. Maybe, I thought, someday—with a lot of time, and a lot of work—I could trust him again. We could work together again, the way it had been before.

  We left, a sunglassed Martine walking a few paces behind me, just as the first of my colleagues began to arrive. None of them gave her a second glance. I greeted them without warmth, and they didn’t think anything of it, because I always spoke to them that way. Cordial, but dismissive. Uninterested. As though I were on my way to something more important.

  I didn’t need them to think they mattered to me. I just needed them to stay out of my way. Martine kept the sunglasses on when we got to the car. She put on her seat belt, tipped her head back, and blew out a long stream of air. The sunlight caught some of the fine, tiny hairs that dusted her cheek. I couldn’t help but stare at the places where her face was unwrinkled—the corner of her mouth, the plane of her cheek. Beneath those sunglasses, I knew that the corners of her eyes were smooth too. She had the beginning of a crease between her brows, though. I wondered what made her frown often enough to put that crease in place.

  “Why are you helping me?” she asked, not looking at me, although I’m sure she felt me staring.

  I didn’t lie to her when I answered. I could have. It would have been easy enough to make myself seem kind. Because it’s the right thing to do, or because you need me, or of course I’m helping. But after all we had already been through, I thought she deserved honesty.

  “I’m helping you because I don’t want to go down with you,” I said. “If I don’t help you, you’ll be found, and my research will be compromised.” I started the car, needlessly adjusted my rearview mirror. “There would be an ethical inquiry, an investigation into my methods. I would lose credibility. It would take me decades to recover from that. I can’t afford it.” I braked to let another car pass and took the opportunity to look at her. “This is risk mitigation. Damage control. I don’t have a choice.”

  Martine nodded and pushed the sunglasses up onto the crown of her head. Her eyes drifted closed as she did it. After a couple of silent minutes of driving, she spoke, her eyes still shut. “I’m not sleeping,” she said. “It’s too early for that. My eyes are just a little tired, is all. Don’t feel like you have to be quiet on my account.”

  I swallowed hard, because I had been staying quiet on her account. I had been trying to let her sleep, aware of how exhausted she must be. But, of course, it didn’t matter how exhausted she was.

  She couldn’t fall asleep before nine thirty.

  She had fourteen hours still to go. Fourteen hours of wakefulness, of waiting for sleep to come. I tried to imagine staying awake with her that whole time. A wave of nausea swept through me. In its wake, it left behind a primal urge to lie down someplace dark.

  “Have sedatives ever worked for you?” I asked.

  She gestured at her belly. “I’ve never tried. I was always either pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Nathan wouldn’t let me take anything that might hurt our chances.”

  I thought of the Klonopin on my bedside table, tried to recall if it would be safe for Martine. Safe for the baby. I couldn’t think fast enough, couldn’t remember. I was too tired.

  “It’s okay,” she said, her lips tightening into a perfunctory smile. I doubted that the smile extended to her eyes, but with the mirrored glasses in the way, I couldn’t tell for sure. “I can still put my feet up and rest my eyes for a little while. Don’t worry about me.”

  I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. This fresh shame I felt was, I told myself, almost certainly a byproduct of my own fatigue. It wasn’t as though I’d done anything wrong. Martine had known that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until later, I reasoned, and she hadn’t said anything. She hadn’t asked to lie down during the window of time that would allow her to rest. That was her choice, not mine.

  I couldn’t be expected to manage her every need.

  Still, my conscience twitched, a child plucking at a mother’s shirtsleeve. It didn’t matter how true it was that I wasn’t in charge of Martine’s decision; I couldn’t convince myself that it was as simple as I wanted it to be.

  Martine had been programmed to please. She had been programmed to obey. Nathan had used my technology to make her into the kind of person who would give up a night of sleep in order to help me with a tricky project, and I had known as much when I brought her to the lab. I’d forgotten about the limitation on her sleep cycle, but that wasn’t an excuse—I’d used her, and she was suffering for it.

  I sighed and let guilt and weariness crash through me, knocking my defenses flat. Fine. “Would you like to stay with me?” I asked, then quickly added a hopeful caveat. “If you’d prefer to be alone, obviously that’s okay too, I just thought—”

  “Please, yes,” she said. Her voice was taut with exhaustion. “I would prefer not to be in that house at all today, much less by myself.”

  “My place is a mess,” I warned her, turning onto my street. “I’m barely even unpacked.”

  “It’s fine,” she said with a faint note of irritation. It was the first time I could recall hearing her sound anything but placid. “I don’t mind,” she added, a bit more gently—but I clung to the contrast. She had sounded annoyed.

  She had very nearly argued.

  It was a relief, for reasons I couldn’t quite get a grasp on. She wasn’t completely pliant. There was something in there that felt familiar to me—a hint of the hornet Nathan had always accused me of being.

  Maybe, I thought, Martine wasn’t entirely different from me.

  Maybe she wasn’t entirely better.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  I woke up on my new couch
in the middle of the night with no recollection of how I’d gotten there. The fabric still smelled like the showroom. I was under a fleece throw blanket, one I’d purchased the week before, when the prospect of unpacking enough boxes to find my blankets had nearly crushed me. I’d gone to the store in a kind of manic rage, indignant at the idea that I needed to open boxes to find the things that would comfort me. This was Nathan’s fault, I’d thought savagely.

  He deserved to be dead for the way I’d been unable to find a fitted sheet after an hour of searching.

  The blanket I’d bought that day was soft and thick, and it imposed a kind of artificial coziness on the mostly bare living room. Even though I was the one who chose it, I resented it for being so comforting. It felt like a blatant manipulation, like an inadequate consolation. I hated it for being a thing I needed. I hated myself for clinging to it.

  I gathered it around myself in the darkness of my living room as I tried to reconstruct how I’d gotten onto the couch. I remembered pulling onto my street. There was a vague fog in my mind where parking the car and entering my home should have been—and then a long gap of darkness, the thick dark velvet of deep sleep.

  Wrapping the blanket around my shoulders, I padded into the hall on silent feet. The heater wasn’t on. I suppressed a shiver as I tapped the button to activate the heat for the first time since I’d moved in. Something deep in the walls of the house clicked and hummed, and the smell of dust filled the air.

  Martine hadn’t thought to turn the heat on, though it was certainly cold enough for it. Was it that she hadn’t been able to figure out the thermostat? Was she afraid I wouldn’t want her to change the temperature? I thought back to the way she’d stood in the rain over Nathan’s grave, the way it had taken her so much longer than me to start shivering. Maybe she just didn’t notice the cold as much as I did.