Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  “Mommy loves you,” I say. Pulse, pulse, pulse. I’ve hardly registered my own words when she breaks the hug.

  “Won prize!” Sonia squeals, thrusting the paper into my hands, pointing to her mouth, licking at it with a pink tongue. When I wrinkle my eyes at her, she makes three stabbing motions with her index finger at the smear of dried ice cream lingering at the corner of her mouth. I take her hand and move it away from her mouth, shaking my head. She forgets, sometimes, about the cameras.

  And Steven.

  Sonia points to her mouth again, desperate to make me see the chocolate smear, and again, I press her hand down, holding her fingers in my fist. A few seconds of pointing or gesturing at home might not matter—unless it becomes a habit. A single, painful image of Sonia doing this in public flashes in front of me—or worse, in front of Steven the goddamned Spy Kid. I squeeze her fingers a little more tightly while my other hand turns over the envelope she’s brought home.

  On the front there’s a label, addressed to Dr. Patrick McClellan. And, of course, the envelope is sealed.

  So there we are. My three words of the day, unless you count the ingredients list on the bag of flour, and the green LED message Your beverage is ready glowing from the microwave when I reheated my coffee.

  “Why?” I say, leading Sonia inside, trying to ignore the next pulse on my wrist. “Careful with your words.” This is more conversation than we usually have, but I’m desperate to know what news my girl’s brought home. I’m also desperate to keep her from blurting out more than she should—I haven’t yet checked the total on her counter.

  In the kitchen, while I fix a mug of cocoa for us—our silent afternoon ritual—Sonia hops onto a barstool, thrusts out her left hand, and speaks one ear-splitting word. “Lowest!”

  What the hell?

  Then I read the counter on her red bracelet. They call them bracelets in school, at the doctor’s office, in the advertisements they show before movies. I consider this as I wet a paper towel and wipe the smudge of chocolate—what I suspect is Sonia’s prize—from her mouth and watch her create a new mocha-colored mustache as she spoons hot cocoa from the mug. Advertisements for electric-shock-inducing silencers: pick your own color, add some sparkles or stripes. They’ve got a mood-ring type that will match your clothing if you’re obsessive about being coordinated, a variety of ringtones, cartoon character designs for the younger set.

  It’s everything I can do to keep from cursing the men who made these, or the marketers and their sinister efforts to persuade us we have any kind of choice. I suppose, if things ever return to normal, they’ll use that old chestnut of a line: I was only following orders.

  Where have we heard that before?

  I can’t be in this kitchen now, can’t watch my girl sip cocoa and study the white envelope on the counter as if it contained a fucking Congressional Medal of Honor. So I go somewhere else. I try to imagine her on the playground, skipping rope and playing alphabet games, singing “Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat” and giggling at the thinly veiled curse words. I see her lining up, whispering about the new boy in class, writing love notes and fortunes on paper she’ll fold into cootie catchers. I hear her speak thousands of useless, but precious, words before the first bell rings.

  Another motor purrs, then growls, through the screen door of the back porch, and I’m out of my daydream. At least Patrick is home before the boys return from school. I don’t have anything to say to him, but I need him alone; I need to see what secrets Sonia’s mystery letter holds.

  But I don’t, not really. Across the kitchen island, my daughter’s counter glows its horrid and up-to-the-second report.

  Won prize! she said. Lowest!

  I know what her school is up to. I know, because the counter on her thin wrist says the number 3.

  My daughter has been silent all day.

  TWENTY

  I was right; it is a contest.

  The letter Patrick opens and reads to me announces with great pleasure the launch of a monthly competition for all students enrolled at PGS 523—the PGS stands for Pure Girls’ School. Obviously, the boys attend PBS, Steven at the high school, Sam and Leo in another for grades five through eight. They don’t divide the girls this way, possibly as a method of fulfilling yet another pledge from the manifesto—that older women provide teaching and training to younger women—possibly because they don’t want to double up on the number of digital sewing machines and garden equipment.

  “They’re doing daily contests first,” Patrick says, settling onto the barstool across from me after grabbing a beer from the fridge. It’s early for him, but I don’t say anything. “Ice cream for the girl in each grade with the lowest”—he takes a rather large swig from the bottle—“with the lowest number on her counter.”

  So it was exactly as I expected.

  He continues. “At the end of the month, they’ll tally all the counts, and—”

  “Words,” I interrupt. The black band on my left wrist pulses once.

  “Right. Words. There’s a grade prize of what they’re calling an age-appropriate gift. A doll for the younger girls, games for the middle graders, makeup for the over-sixteens.”

  Super. Trading voices for crap.

  The worst part is that Patrick is smiling.

  “Enough of this,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Like hell it doesn’t.” The contraption circling my wrist pings four times and I watch the number tick up from 46 to 50. Then it emits a sound like a diseased frog, and the 50 becomes 60. Okay. “Hell” is now out of my vocabulary. So much for George Carlin’s list of seven dirty words. I wish I knew why Patrick was beaming at me.

  As if he’s read my mind, he leaves the kitchen, retrieves his briefcase from the front hall, and sets it on the counter dividing us. “Present from the president, babe,” he says as he removes an envelope from the leather case. In the upper-right-hand corner is the presidential seal. In the left, where the return address would normally go, is a silver embossed capital P, the model for Steven’s new pin.

  And speak of the devil: the boys are home.

  Leo and Sam bound into the kitchen first, kiss me hello, and make a beeline for the snack drawer. Steven, more composed than even he usually is, goes for the fridge after a curt “Hi, Dad. Hi, Mom.”

  He’ll be looking for milk, which of course I forgot to buy.

  “Nice,” Steven says, shaking the last teaspoon of milk in the carton. He seems surprised when I don’t come back with a response, then sees the latest addition to my wardrobe. “You got the new model! Awesome. Julia has one too, except hers is purple with silver stars. Just got it today. She showed me when I was walking home from the bus.”

  I don’t hate my son. I don’t hate my son. I don’t hate my son.

  Except right now I do, a little bit.

  “Read the letter, Jean,” Patrick says.

  President Myers was on television again today. He’s always on television, it seems, always trumpeting a new plan to turn the country around, constantly telling us how much better off we are. The economy’s up—but not in our household, as the broken air-conditioning reminds me; unemployment is down—as long as you don’t count the seventy million women who lost their jobs. Everything’s great and everything’s fine.

  Everything wasn’t so fine today as he fielded questions from the press.

  “We’ll find someone,” he said. “Whatever it takes, we’ll find someone to cure my only brother.”

  Like hell you will, I thought. The same slight smile on Anna Myers’ lips told me she thought it, too. Good for you, sister.

  Even if I agreed, there were no guarantees of success. Wernicke’s aphasia is a tricky devil. Maybe I’d have a chance if I could make sure Lin Kwan was actually on the team, and not just the backup Reverend Carl mentioned. Even better, Lin and Lorenzo.

  But I don’t want to thi
nk about Lorenzo just now. I don’t like to think about him when Patrick is around.

  “You going to open it?” Patrick says.

  I slide a nail under the flap of the envelope. Inside is a single trifold sheet of bond paper, off-white letterhead. It’s addressed to me, Dr. Jean McClellan. So I’m back to “Dr.” for the time being.

  The body of the letter is one sentence long.

  “Well?” Patrick asks the question, but his eyes tell me he already knows what the president has to say.

  “Hang on.”

  He gets another beer from the fridge but doesn’t drink it with the same celebratory mood as he did the first bottle. This one is medicinal, liquid anesthesia to get him through the wait while I remove myself from the kitchen with my yet-unvoiced decision. Maybe he expected me to do backflips on the tile. I don’t know.

  Anyway, it’s too hot in here to think. The back garden, under Mrs. Ray’s magnolia, is better.

  Please call me with your price, the president says. It’s rather pleasant to see that the bastard is begging.

  My price. My price is to turn back the clock, but that’s not feasible. My price is to eradicate the Pure Movement from the ground up, like pulling weeds from what was once a lively garden. My price is to see Reverend Carl Corbin and his flock hanged or torn to shreds by wild dogs or burnt to cinders in hell.

  The back door creaks open and slams shut, and I expect to see Patrick coming toward me, but it isn’t him. It’s Sonia. She’s holding a sheet of pink construction paper, the same color as her lips. When she reaches me, she holds it out.

  For a six-year-old, she’s got some talent, and this drawing is among her better ones, in a way. The six figures actually resemble us—Patrick, Steven, the twins, me, and Sonia. We’re all standing in our garden, holding hands under a tree that’s blooming with white stars. She’s got the twins in matching outfits and she’s drawn something that looks more like a suitcase than a briefcase in Patrick’s free hand. Steven wears his new pin; my hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Around my wrist and Sonia’s are bracelets: red for her and black for me. We’re all smiling under a sun she’s decorated with orange hearts.

  “Beautiful,” I say, taking the drawing. But I don’t think it’s beautiful. I think it’s the ugliest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

  Instead of standing next to Patrick, or even at the far end of the family line, bookending our kids, I’m fifth. After my husband, after Steven, after the eleven-year-old twins. And Sonia has made me smaller than everyone except for her. I manage a forced smile and take her into my lap, pressing her head against me so she can’t see the tears that are welling up, that I won’t be able to contain.

  I think of Jackie, and those last words she spoke in our crappy Georgetown apartment, the accusations and admonitions. Jackie was right: I was living in a bubble. I inflated it myself, one breath at a time.

  And so here we are. Me, my daughter, and the wrist counters that keep us in line. I wonder what Jackie would have to say about it. Probably something like Good work, Jean. You gassed up the car and drove it straight into hell. Enjoy the burn.

  Yeah. That’s what she’d say. And she’d be right.

  I blot tears with my sleeve and set my face into a less crooked state before turning Sonia’s tiny head toward me and planting a kiss on her cheek. Then I check my word counter.

  Sixty-three words so far today. Plenty left for what I have to say to President Myers.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I can do this, I think.

  I can do it in fewer than the thirty-seven words I’ve got left. In my head, I rehearse my half of the telephone conversation:

  I want three things, Mr. President. I want my daughter’s counter removed. I want her excused from school; I’ll teach her at home Friday through Monday. I want Lin on the project full-time, not just backup.

  No need to mention any other names. Lorenzo will be back in Italy now, anyway.

  Sonia and the boys are in the add-on rec room watching cartoons whose sound effects trickle all the way into the kitchen. It’s cooler in there, because of the window unit, and that leaves Patrick and me alone.

  “Go on, babe,” he says after yelling to Steven to turn the volume down. “Make the call.”

  I’ve never dialed the White House before. Patrick’s job there started after the wrist counters went on, and I have little reason to phone him at work, unless all I want to do is engage in some telephonic heavy breathing. I don’t. Not with Patrick.

  My fingers find the numbers and press each one, hovering over the last. I almost miss it and dial a five instead of a four; that’s how badly my hands are shaking. A voice answers, not of a secretary or any other gatekeeper, but his, and I speak my thirty-six words.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. McClellan, but I can’t do that.”

  Except these aren’t the words he says in his gruff voice, a voice I sometimes think is unnatural in its harshness because I suspect the president is, at heart, a weak and insecure excuse for a man. I suspect they all are.

  What he says, after a slight pause, is, “Very well, Dr. McClellan.” And he ends the call.

  “Wow,” Patrick says. He’s been close to me, breathing beer-scented air into my nostrils as he listened in. He seems shocked.

  A moment later, the phone rings. Patrick answers it with a cheery “Hello!” and says single words: “Yes.” “Fine.” “Okay.” I have no idea what he’s agreeing to.

  “Thomas will be here in a half hour,” he says. “To take off the—um—”

  Don’t you dare call them bracelets.

  “Counters,” he says.

  I nod and take out two boxes of pasta for dinner. Tomorrow, I’ve already decided, it’s going to be steak. A mountain of steak. We haven’t been eating much of it lately.

  While I’m squeezing peeled tomatoes into a pot for sauce, I think about Sonia, how in less than thirty minutes she’ll be free of that metaphorical collar, free to sing and chatter and answer questions that involve more than a nod or a shake of her head. What I don’t know is how she’ll greet this freedom.

  In college, before I switched gears and plunged headlong into the black hole of neuroscience and linguistic processing, I’d studied psychology. Behavioral, child, abnormal, and all of that. Now, staring into this pot of tomato mush and garlic, I’m thinking I did a crackerjack job on the behavioral part, conditioning Sonia with bribes of cookies and marshmallows to keep her words unspoken. Someone should take away my mothering license.

  I keep reminding myself it isn’t my fault. I didn’t vote for Myers.

  I didn’t vote at all, actually.

  And here’s Jackie’s voice again, telling me what an acquiescent shit I am.

  “You have to vote, Jean,” she said, throwing down the stack of campaign leaflets she’d been running around campus with while I was prepping for what I knew would be a monster of an oral exam. “You have to.”

  “The only things I have to do are pay taxes and die,” I said, not holding back the sneer in my voice. That semester was the beginning of the end for Jackie and me. I’d started dating Patrick and preferred our nightly discussions about cognitive processes to Jackie’s rants about whatever new thing she had found to protest. Patrick was safe and quiet, and he let me bury myself in my work while he crammed for one medical school exam after another.

  Naturally, Jackie hated him.

  “He’s a pussy, Jean. A cerebral pussy.”

  “He’s nice,” I said.

  “I bet he quotes from Gray’s Anatomy while he’s eating you out.”

  I put my notes to the side. “The book or the television show?”

  This time, Jackie sneered.

  “He doesn’t talk politics, Jacko.” It was my pet name for her, or had been. “That’s all I hear in this fucking city.”

  “One day, hon, you’re going to change you
r mind.” She tossed a paperback onto our thrift shop sofa, which I’d spread out on. “Read this. Everyone’s talking about it. Everyone.”

  I picked up the book. “It’s a novel. You know I don’t read novels.” It was true; with five hundred pages of journal articles a week, I had no time for fiction.

  “Just read the back cover.”

  I did. “This would never happen. Ever. Women wouldn’t put up with it.”

  “Easy to say now,” Jackie said. She was in her usual outfit: low-rise jeans; a cropped T-shirt that didn’t cover her belly, which Jackie didn’t care to hide, even with its slight paunch; ugly-but-comfortable sandals; and three hoops in her right ear. Today, her cropped and spiked hair had a few green streaks in it. Tomorrow, it might be blue. Or black. Or cherry-cola red. You really never knew with Jackie.

  She wasn’t unattractive, but that square jaw and sharp nose and oil-drop eyes of hers didn’t have guys banging down our door for her company. Jackie didn’t seem to mind, and I found out why one night in September after she’d dragged me to a party. It was less of a party than a Planned Parenthood commercial with snacks and booze, both of which Jackie sucked down as if Armageddon were set for tomorrow morning. We didn’t have a lot of spare change for liquor and junk food, although Jackie always managed to find a few bucks to keep her in cigarettes.

  Christ, she was drunk. I ended up having to half carry her back through cobblestone streets to the apartment, no small trick when the person you’re carrying is trying to chain smoke.

  “Love you, Jeanie,” she said when I finally got her through the door.

  “Love you too, Jacko,” I said automatically. “Want a cup of tea or something?” We didn’t have any tea, so I popped open a can of Coke and tried to feed her a few aspirin.

  “I want a kiss,” she said after she’d fallen onto her bed, taking me with her. She smelled of patchouli and red wine. “Come here, Jeanie. Kiss me.”