Severance

by Ling Ma

  I don’t feel sympathy toward Evan, not even in his wrenching, humiliating despair. What I feel instead is a small, dense bud of anger, wedged tightly inside my chest. The idea that he and I could have just gone off and escaped together, to find other survivors and perhaps join a new group, now seems ridiculous.

  *

  Like Evan, I also have late-night lunacies. Mine is a recurring dream: It’s of a retainer in green mouthwash, in the same white mug. I’m looking inside the mug, looking at it moving and clattering around of its own volition. But after a moment, I realize that it is speaking. I put my ear to the lip of the mug, as if listening to the ocean through a seashell. Maybe Jonathan is sending me secret messages. Maybe he wants to come and save me.

  Except instead of the sound of ocean waves, my mother’s voice comes out.

  She says, You’re not doing too well. You barely eat. You don’t sleep enough. You don’t do things to keep your mind active. You don’t read.

  She says, Only in America do you have the luxury of being depressed.

  She says, Change your clothes. Brush your teeth. Wash your face. Moisturize. Exercise. Get yourself together.

  She says, Now is not the time to give up. It’s only going to get harder. You need to figure this out.

  And sometimes I say things back. Figure what out? I ask, but she doesn’t answer. Figure what out? I repeat, and the sound of my own voice jars me awake. I have been talking in my sleep.

  *

  Night passes into day.

  *

  The only way to metabolize time, I decide, is to partition it into digestible packets. I wake up in the morning. I lie in bed, meditate for a few minutes. I do my morning stretches, replaying a memory of a YouTube yoga video in my mind. I brush my teeth and wash my face, using the water jug. I moisturize, applying the only thing available, stretch-mark belly cream. There is a sink in my cell, once used for demonstrations of skincare products. The faucet no longer works. I spit out mouthwash down the drain. The water circles clockwise before disappearing.

  I watch things that happen outside my cell. Today, I see Evan and Bob standing across the mall in front of Hot Topic. Evan looks like he’s cracking jokes, and they’re both laughing, lightly. Then Evan holds his hand out mischievously, as if he was waiting to be given something. Bob shakes his head, smiling.

  Evan always tries to suck up to Bob. It’s a daily occurrence. Sometimes he walks into Hot Topic with a mug of what looks like hot chocolate. Or he fetches Bob some requested items, such as an extra pair of socks, or a pen. It’s all so obvious and desperate.

  But today, the pace of the conversation quickens. The discussion seems to escalate, though both make an effort to keep their voices quiet. I can see Bob shaking his head. When he begins to walk away, Evan grabs him. The fighting looks playful, but then I realize they’re actually struggling. Their voices rise.

  But it’s been three weeks! Evan says. He is trying to wrestle the key chain connected to Bob’s belt loop. He’s trying to take it, with amateur desperation. There is the sound of some scuffling, some struggle.

  Finally, Bob wrests free. Evan plays it off with a laugh, but Bob doesn’t join in.

  Don’t do that again, Bob says.

  *

  Three weeks. Has it been that long since we’d arrived at the Facility? That must mean we’re well into December. There is a discernible change in the weather. Though it has not begun snowing, the cold is unmistakable in its intensity.

  Dressed in a North Face coat zipped up to her chin, Rachel brings me my lunch: a can of fruit cocktail, two trail-mix bars, a few strips of beef jerky, bottled water, a prenatal supplement for the baby. It is the same lunch every afternoon. We communicate in looks and nods.

  Looking around to check that the coast is clear, she slips two packets of HotHands warmers out of her jeans pocket and stows them underneath the bedcovers. We rely on space heaters for warmth, but it is nearly impossible to heat up such a vacuous space as a mall on only a handful alone. Bob is wary of overusing our supply of electric generators. I am only allowed to run the space heater at night.

  I nod at her in thanks; she gives me a tight-lipped smile before leaving, locking the slide-down metal gate.

  When Rachel first served as my escort, she would keep up a steady patter of chitchat, despite the rules. She said that this solitary confinement thing was a charade, that it would blow over in a few days and we’d play along until it did. But after a while, she seemed to be increasingly observant of Bob’s requests, including his rule that others limit their interactions with me. She began to disengage from our conversations, even as she accompanied me on daily walks to the restrooms, or brought me my meals. Secret favors, however, never diminished: a fresh change of clothes, a Pop-Tart warm from the toaster. She had given in somewhat to Bob’s rule. I resented the change in Rachel’s behavior but couldn’t totally blame her.

  *

  Things I know about Rachel: In her past life, she worked in the publicity department for a cable news channel. Her job was to disseminate YouTube clips of reactionary political debates by random talking heads on various shows, generate controversy, and make the clips go viral. The more “sticky” these clips could be, the more it generated publicity for the shows. It was incredibly stressful and incredibly meaningless, she once said.

  *

  Day passes into night.

  *

  It gets dark early in the winter. The skylight above us grows dim. And then in another few hours, the flashlights and LED lanterns are turned off in each cell one by one, and the entire mall is once again submerged in darkness so complete and absolute. It is a primitive darkness. It has always been here, after all the city lights have gone out, carrying its own time with the sun. And as I lie here in a vacuum, it feels like a miracle I exist at all. And I realize that, given the odds, with New York wiped out, it is indeed a miracle I am still here. I am alive, I think to myself, and my baby is alive.

  Under the covers, I break the disc of a HotHands packet and keep it on my stomach, trying to keep the baby warm. I’ve begun to think of it as a girl. She sleeps during the day and awakens at night, like the moon. I call her Luna for her nocturnal habits.

  *

  At night, Bob comes out and takes a walk. It’s dark enough that I can’t see him, but I hear him. The ring of car keys, which he keeps hooked onto his jeans at all times, jingle and jangle. He is the designated keeper of all car keys, which he grudgingly doles out to others undertaking his assignments.

  He walks through the mall alone. I track his location by the sound of those keys clanging. When he gets to the end of our floor, he descends the still, deadened escalators and takes a lap through the first floor. It is the first of several laps he makes around the mall.

  The only way to metabolize anger is to direct your focus to things at hand. Like my breath, which comes out in fogs. Like the whirring of the space heater, its thin heat disappearing out the cell as soon as it is made. Like Luna’s nocturnal activity inside of me. Sometimes her movements are like a flurry of butterflies unleashed all at once, their wings giddily fluttering. Other times, she’s a teakettle at full boil, whistling shrilly at fever pitch, as if enraged. Tonight, she is enraged.

  I feel a strange intimacy with Bob as I hear him snaking around. To despise someone is intimate by default. I understand that he feels under a tremendous amount of pressure, relieved only by the act of doing one simple, mind-clearing thing, over and over. As Bob walks, he mutters to himself, sayings repeated like a Buddhist mantra over and over. Sometimes I can make it out: We need more inventory.

  Other times, his thoughts are strung together. He worries about the weather, the days growing colder and colder, the deep freeze that pervades the nights. He takes mental stock of our supplies, from the water gallons to the batteries. He goes over the next day, the tasks he’ll assign, with the goal of making this mall a sustainable home.

  The Facility means more to Bob than just a place to live. It is the man
ifestation of his shoddy ideology. He dictates and enforces the rules, rules that only he fully knows and understands. He sees us as subjects, to reward or to punish. He compliments you when he wants to control you. He doesn’t see you. It doesn’t mean he’s not a person. It doesn’t mean he’s not vulnerable. In certain moments, he’s just vulnerable enough that you feel sympathy for him. You make excuses for him, often to yourself. You think that if you just work with him a little, then eventually things will get better. Even if he makes you pray, or breaks your iPhone, or makes you shoot at fevered. You think things will be different, more comfortable once you arrive at the Facility. But he doesn’t work that way. Or you wouldn’t have ended up locked up in a cell.

  Whatever happens to me, I don’t want Luna to be in this environment. I don’t want her to grow up here, in a group controlled by someone like him. I don’t want her to be within his reach. Even if the threat isn’t immediate, when it becomes immediate it will be too late.

  As Bob cycles through his route, coming closer to this side of the mall, he’s become silent. Only the sound of the car keys in his belt loop is clear.

  I can hear it no matter how far away Bob is. It beckons me. All I need is one key to unlock one car. Then I hit the gas. Then I am gone. If I make it into another city, I can disappear inside of it.

  *

  Night passes into day.

  *

  It begins to snow in the morning, lightly at first and then intensifying over the course of the day into a raging blizzard. Rachel comes in and wakes me up.

  Bob wants you to come downstairs, she says, touching my arm.

  I look back at her, confused. Am I … Am I allowed out?

  Only for this morning. It’s a special occasion.

  Is it Christmas or something?

  That’s already passed, she says gently, with unbearable pity.

  I look back at her blankly. The surprise I feel is not just that they celebrated without me, but that it actually stings.

  I’ll come back in fifteen minutes, Rachel finally says. Get dressed and clean up.

  I do as I’m told. I psych myself up: Don’t screw this up. Maybe Bob is letting me come out on a trial basis. I comb through the dresser, clothes pilfered from past stalks. There are no pregnancy clothes, only large sizes to accommodate my belly. I put on a Lacoste sweater over a new pair of black trousers, rolling them up as they are too long for me. Over this, I throw on a Marmot parka.

  Rachel comes back and opens the metal gate. She leads me down the escalator, like a crazy aunt coming down from the attic for Thanksgiving. They are also dressed a little nicer, business casual attire. When I smile at each face, they either look away or give me a slight nod. Everyone is here, except Evan. He has been increasingly late to these breakfast meetings.

  The table is decorated a bit more elaborately, with a boho-chic floral tablecloth and crochet place mats pilfered from Anthropologie, which means Genevieve decorated. There is even a centerpiece of fake flowers in a pitcher. But the food spread is the most impressive: There are pancakes upon pancakes, with a gravy boat filled with maple syrup. And slices of fried Spam and Vienna sausages, charred on the sides in a frying pan. In lieu of fresh fruit, there is a bowl of canned fruit cocktail, mixed with multicolored marshmallows.

  Genevieve is asked to say grace.

  Lord, we thank you for this meal, she says. And on our one-month anniversary at the Facility, we would like to thank you for providing for us so generously.

  Amen, everyone echoes.

  Happy one month! Rachel says. We clink our mugs of coffee, made with Evian and freeze-dried coffee granules.

  From the head of the table, Bob looks around. Evan’s not here. Can someone get him?

  I’ll go, Todd volunteers. With that, he bounds back up the escalator and disappears inside Journeys.

  We all eye the food, waiting.

  Before we begin eating, Bob says, I’d just like to say a few words about our guest of honor today.

  Everyone turns their heads to me.

  Candace, Bob says, addressing me, you’ve been through a trial during this confinement period, perhaps longer than you had expected. But I believe that this time has provided you time for reflection, for seeing the error of your ways, and, we hope, for correcting your duplicitous nature.

  He looks around the table. As we accept you back into this group, you’ll be receiving the privileges previously revoked. Leading up to the birth of your child, we will return these privileges one by one. Today, we’ve allowed you to join us.

  Everyone in the group claps, as if on cue.

  Since you’re the guest of honor, why don’t you begin to eat, Bob says.

  But I can wait for Evan. I glance up at the second floor, expecting to see him.

  Well, we insist. You’re with—you’re with child, he says, his voice stumbling at the word child, as if it were a foreign word.

  I look around at the table, the few people left assessing my state of compliance. Well, of course, I say, and fork two Spam slices onto my plate. But this choice is a mistake, I realize too late. Because meat is typically reserved for special occasions, and it is what everyone wants, and I’m eating it right in front of them. Well, good.

  Bob! We look up to see Todd’s face, looking down at us over the railing from the second floor. His expression is somber. Bob!

  Bob looks up. What is it? he says, annoyed at being interrupted.

  I can’t wake him, Todd yells down. He’s not … He’s not breathing.

  Bob looks at Adam. Wordlessly, they get up and go up the escalator. We hear them going into Evan’s cell, together. Minutes pass.

  Genevieve, Rachel, and I remain frozen at the table, looking uneasily at one another, pushing the food around on our plates. Then I put my fork down, unable to eat, already sensing what they will find.

  At the table, Genevieve begins to cry.

  20

  In the end, there was the empty office. It was dark inside, smaller and more sparse. They had closed the lower floor. We, the remaining employees, circled around in our smaller confines, bumping against locked rooms we weren’t allowed to enter. Like the glass offices of upper management. As we walked past these offices on our way to and from our desks, we glimpsed their belongings sealed off and entombed behind glass like emperors’ afterlife provisions, the photographs of their wives and children smiling out at us. Their framed motivational prints hanging on the walls, dispensing career advice. YOUR GREATNESS IS NOT WHAT YOU HAVE, IT’S WHAT YOU GIVE. Or AS LONG AS YOU’RE GOING TO THINK ANYWAY, THINK BIG.

  In the end, there were a half-dozen of us left to man the course. We were a ragtag crew of younger employees, including Blythe and Delilah, many of whom remained out of ambition, in the hopes of career advancement after this catastrophe passed. We shared an unspoken understanding that Spectra would once again resume at full capacity. Every Wednesday, the antifungal cleaning company still came to spray down and vacuum our offices for microscopic fungal spores.

  Management had left without establishing a clear hierarchy of our positions, so inevitably there was competition and jostling. Our camaraderie was uneasy; everyone was keeping score. Like who would get to compile and send the weekly productivity reports to management, who arrived on time and who arrived late, who heeded corporate policy by wearing those hideous N95 masks, who was taking the initiative for the greater good by restocking the coffee filters. When we passed each other in the hallways, in our ridiculous professional outfits of wool trousers or pencil skirts and button-up shirts, we instinctively smiled tight-lipped smiles—which of course weren’t visible behind our masks. Only the stiffened cheeks.

  Me, I kept to myself. I stayed in my office. I hated the whole scene, partly because I could so easily see myself joining their petty games of one-upmanship if I got too involved. I preemptively eliminated that possibility by alienating myself. I was there to work, I reasoned, so I would just work.

  And yet there was no work. It had dried up by t
he second week. Clients asked for estimates but refrained from placing any new jobs, and the remaining production jobs had been palleted and shipped out to sea. The only thing to watch out for was to make sure customs didn’t turn them away at the port, since they increasingly rejected shipments of export goods from China, or even Asia in general. Correspondence with Spectra Hong Kong was sluggish and infrequent, as all Spectra offices had reduced their in-house staff. It was all getting pretty boring.

  Instead of going through the Hong Kong office, as was protocol, I sent an estimate request for a reprint directly to Phoenix Sun and Moon Ltd., the printer that had done the initial printing of the Daily Grace Bible.

  I received an email from Balthasar right away, unusual considering it was nearly midnight in Shenzhen. I had forgotten about his ever-courteous, slightly British way of correspondence.

  Dear Candace,

  I am pleased to hear from you. Unfortunately, Phoenix is no longer accepting new print jobs at this moment. My apologies. I do hope you are doing well, given these trying times. I wish you the best.

  Sincerely, Balthasar

  It wasn’t all that surprising, but I had a job to do. I clicked Reply. My response was carefully calibrated in my usual office-speak.

  Dear Balthasar,

  It’s great to hear from you as well. Let me just clarify: This estimate request is not a new job, but a reprint of a job that Phoenix has already done, the Daily Grace Bible. You should have all the files and plates on hand from the original printing. We only have to update the copyright page. As the initial printing was a great success, it makes sense that we work with you again.

  I want to emphasize the scale of this project, and the opportunity that you may be turning down on behalf of your company. You are right that these are trying times, to say the least, but we are still in business and looking forward to working together.

  Best,

  Candace

  I clicked Send, knowing it was fruitless. Two of the Chinese printers we worked with had also closed, another one in Singapore. Like them, Phoenix was suffering from a diminishing supply of migrant laborers. Due to federal efforts to curb mass panic, most media outlets collectively agreed to limit their coverage of Shen Fever, but the consensus was that the level of Shen Fever in China was worse than in other places. How bad the situation was depended on whom you asked. Maybe the whole city of Shenzhen was fevered. Maybe the whole province of Guangdong.