Vox

by Christina Dalcher

  I’ve already run these numbers, and I didn’t need calculators or spreadsheets. Ten weeks ago was a cold day in March, when I went to Eastern Market for a hunk of cheese and returned home with Lorenzo in my body after an afternoon at our little Maryland shack. Love shack, crab shack, baby shack. Patrick and I hadn’t been together for a while.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  He pulls me close. This time, it’s all softness; no edges, no probing, only a warm cocoon of lips and arms and our mingled breath. I’m safe here, in this sterile room with its supermagnets and banging and no cameras to watch us or recorders to pick up our sounds. For a few moments, it’s only us. I have no children, no husband, only Lorenzo and the baby inside me, and a desperate need to stay like this.

  “I’m working on it, Gianna,” he says into my ear. “I’m working on it.”

  I want to ask what he’s working on. If it has something to do with the money and the personal problem he talked about yesterday. I want to ask if he has a way out for me, for Sonia, for our baby. It would mean leaving Patrick and the boys, maybe only temporarily, maybe until they’re able to travel and find me. And what then? Would Patrick take me in his arms this way? Would we return to normal in some new place? Would Steven ever speak to me again?

  But that’s foolish talk. There’s no way out for me.

  Suddenly, every new bang of the machine is Jackie’s voice, saying:

  I told you so. I told you so. I told you so.

  FORTY-ONE

  The banging of the MRI stops.

  “Okay, you two,” Lin says. “Visitor. Good thing I looked up when I did. That Poe guy makes absolutely no sound. Zero. He’s a fucking ghoul.”

  I uncoil myself from Lorenzo’s arms with enough force to slam me backward, into the wall. My ears ring with the monotonous thunder of the machine and Jackie’s words. Lin, cool as a cuke, takes me by the hand and leads me to the main area of the lab.

  “What the hell was that?” Poe says. “It sounded like the goddamned building was falling apart.”

  “Magnetic resonance imaging,” Lin says. “It’s supposed to sound like that.”

  Poe grunts. “Why was it on? The other ones aren’t on.”

  “We only have one other one,” I say, looking toward the first MRI room.

  Instead of responding, Poe starts a slow tour around the lab, opening drawers and cabinets. He makes no sound, as Lin said, and it occurs to me that, if Lin hadn’t been here while Lorenzo and I were making out to the tune of a thrumming machine, I’d be joining Julia King on a podium, listening to Reverend Carl recite his morality tracts. We never would have heard Poe enter, not until it was too late.

  By the look on his face, this possibility has occurred to Lorenzo as well.

  “Morgan wants to see you in his office,” Poe says, addressing me. “Now.”

  I leave Sharon Ray’s number with Lorenzo and Lin, telling them to set something up for Monday morning. With any luck, we’ll be ready over the weekend, and I want Mrs. Ray in here as soon as possible. If I can give her a voice again, Sharon and Del might be more receptive to the favor I plan on asking.

  In the elevator, Poe sticks his key card into a slot and presses the button for the fifth floor. It’s the first time I noticed the slot, and I assume only the floors with our offices and the lab are accessible without a key. The doors open, and Poe extends a hand.

  “This way,” he says.

  The fifth-floor corridor is plush, more like a five-star hotel than a government science building. My shoes make no sound on the thick carpet—blue, naturally. As we walk, I read the names on the doors. General So-and-So, Admiral So-and-So, Dr. So-and-So. All men’s names. A few of them stare out at me through semi-open doors. One scowls.

  Morgan is at his desk when Poe knocks. He calls “Enter!” in a small voice he’s trying to make big. I want to tell him it doesn’t work.

  “Where were you this morning?” he says without looking up from whatever he’s reading.

  “I had a family issue. A neighbor was supposed to look after my daughter, and—”

  He cuts me off, closing the fat binder on his desk, moving a blank notepad on top of it so the label is obscured. Then he sits back with his hands behind his head, elbows pointing out. Maybe he thinks he looks bigger this way, more powerful.

  “See,” he says, “this is why the old way didn’t work. There’s always something. Always some sick kid or a school play or menstrual cramps or maternity leave. Always a problem.”

  I open my mouth, but not to speak. It just falls open in disbelief.

  Morgan hasn’t finished. He picks up a pen and jabs the air with it. “You need to get it in your head, Jean. You women aren’t dependable. The system doesn’t work the way it was. Take the fifties. Everything was fine. Everyone had a nice house and a car in the garage and food on the table. And things still ran smoothly! We didn’t need women in the workforce. You’ll see, once you get over all this anger. You’ll see it’s going to be better. Better for your kids.” He stops stabbing. “Anyway, let’s not argue about it. You be a good girl and get in here at nine from now on, and I won’t report this.”

  “I have Fridays off,” I say. “It’s in my contract.” I need every bit of concentration to keep my voice steady and my hands still.

  “Well, I changed your contract,” he says, tapping a folder on his desk. He still hasn’t asked me to sit down. “Before you signed it. And we’re moving up the deadline to the third week of June.”

  “Why?”

  Now he’s talking like a teacher to a small child. “Jean, Jean, Jean. You don’t need to know.”

  “Fine, Morgan. Whatever. By the way, we’ll be working over the weekend and running a trial on our first subject this Monday or Tuesday.” I take a seat in the chair facing him.

  He looks shocked.

  “Surprised?”

  “Well, yes. I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think what, Morgan? That Lorenzo, Lin, and I could actually make this work? Come on. You were in the department with us. You know Lin’s a rock star.” I don’t say, You probably had to lower the chair in her office so your feet could touch the ground. It wouldn’t do to piss him off, not when I need something.

  He studies me with those beady eyes, bright and alert, like a terrier’s. No. That’s not quite right. Terriers are clever little things. “That’s just terrific, Jean. Really terrific.” He stands up, an indication the visit is over. “I knew we could do it.”

  I don’t correct him. Instead, I drop my purse. When I lean over to get it, I can read the label on the side of the binder Morgan covered up. It’s upside down, but the two words are clear, blue block letters on a white field.

  The side of the binder reads PROJECT WERNICKE.

  FORTY-TWO

  Poe, whose job seems to entail everything from site security officer to babysitter to office escort, is waiting outside Morgan’s office to take me back down to the lab, and I follow him along the corridor of generals and admirals and doctors, along the blue carpet, to the elevator bank. Inside, he uses his key card again.

  I didn’t need the card to access the lab floor, so it must be the only way to leave floor five. Of course it is, I think. They would want to know who’s leaving, and at what time.

  Or they’d want to be able to block anyone from leaving.

  On the way down, I think about the binder I saw in Morgan’s office. Altogether, my files plus Lorenzo’s and Lin’s would fill several binders. We had reference materials, statistics, experimental designs, grant applications, progress reports—everything, the entire academic kitchen plus sink. The Institutional Review Board documents—all the paperwork and disclosures and subject consent forms we collected to assure the university we wouldn’t be running another Tuskegee syphilis scandal on unsuspecting prisoners—would fill a file cabinet on their own.

  T
here wouldn’t be a single “Project Wernicke” binder; there would be a hundred, neatly housing years of our research.

  But Morgan had only one, and it wasn’t labeled with a number indicating its position in a sequence.

  Also, the spine was broken. Morgan’s binder was, evidently, well used.

  I think about this as the elevator begins its descent, while Poe stands silently behind me, slightly to my left. He seems not to be breathing; he’s that quiet.

  First, there are three teams: White, Gold, and Red. That much I learned from spying in Patrick’s study last night. Poe’s slips about our team and the other MRI tubes make sense now—other teams mean other labs. Other labs mean other projects.

  Second, our equipment wasn’t installed three days ago. No way. This machine—however large it is, and whatever it encompasses—has been months in the making.

  Third, Morgan’s binder has a broken spine.

  I catch my reflection in the polished steel elevator walls and realize I’ve been talking to myself. Poe is in the reflection too, dwarfing me. He has the slightest of smiles on his face, a sliver of a smile, and I think about what sharp teeth must be behind it. Sharp enough to tear me to shreds without making a sound.

  “Here we are.”

  The voice shocks me. Its echo, cold and quiet, bounces off the interior walls of the elevator. I will the doors to open, and after a few interminable seconds, they do, onto the bone white hallway of the lab floor. My key card is still inside my purse, buried underneath lipstick and wallet and all the other crap my fingers find first.

  Lorenzo, I think. I need to find Lorenzo.

  My heel catches in the gap between floor and elevator; such stupid things, high heels are. Jackie always said they were as sinister as that old Chinese custom of foot-binding. Fucking high heels. Made by some asshole of a man to hobble a woman, make her walk two paces behind him, she said, twirling a sandaled foot while sitting on the sofa. But I’m not walking anywhere right now; I’m facedown, half of me inside the elevator, half of me on the tile of the corridor. More than hobbled.

  Cheek to the ground, I can see the locked lab door only ten feet away, and I scramble to my feet. A cold hand, heavy as a meat hook, grips my arm and pulls.

  “I’m fine,” I croak. Or I think I do.

  “Careful, Dr. McClellan,” the voice belonging to the meat hook says.

  I’m up now, key card clenched in my fist, running to the main door of the lab, footsteps behind me. Poe isn’t as quiet as he was. I slide the card into the slot; nothing happens.

  There’s a laugh behind me, a soft laugh that makes me jump and drop the key card.

  And that hand again, its long fingers digging into my shoulder, turning me around.

  “You all right, Gianna?”

  I turn and sink into Lorenzo’s chest. Behind him, the corridor is empty. Poe is gone.

  FORTY-THREE

  We can’t risk turning on the MRI machine again, so Lin and Lorenzo suggest a different plan when I tell them we need to talk.

  “You’re sick,” Lin says as we approach the security checkpoint. “We’re taking you out to your car.”

  She’s to my right, pretending to support me, while Lorenzo has an arm around my waist. Our purses and briefcases are searched, and a uniformed man—army, I think, but he could be a marine—pats us down one at a time.

  “They’re clean,” he barks to another man, and a light above the doors turns from red to green. “Have a nice weekend.” The soldier says this as if he hasn’t just spent five minutes groping us, as if this were any other office building in Washington.

  The doors slide open, letting us out into the late May afternoon. Lorenzo doesn’t let go of me, only holds me tighter, pressing his hip against mine. Someone is probably watching us from the windows five floors up, so I pause and bend over at the waist, hands on my knees, as if I’m catching my breath. It isn’t that difficult an act.

  “The projects are all color coded,” I say, keeping my focus on the asphalt. “One red, one gold. The one we’re on is the White team.”

  “Morgan told you that?” Lorenzo asks.

  “Right,” I say. “All Morgan wanted was to lecture me on how perfect the world was when women stayed home. No. Morgan didn’t tell me anything, but he had a thick binder he tried to hide. Didn’t work, of course. Morgan’s twice as stupid as he looks.”

  “Can you ask Patrick about it?” Lin says. She’s crouched beside me in the parking lot, her back to the building. “No, never mind. Can you get back into his study and have another look?”

  “Maybe. Patrick’s been drinking more lately, and it’s Friday. I might be able to work something out tonight.” I say this without really knowing where the words are coming from. They can’t be mine, these spy-like thoughts. Jackie, maybe, would think up a scheme to get her husband drunk and pry his desk drawers open, but not Jean. In seventeen years of marriage, I’ve never snooped around Patrick’s papers, either personal or business, never looked for clues of a mistress or a one-night tumble. Once, when I couldn’t find my planner, I thought I might have left it in his car. Even then, as I clicked open the driver’s-side door, I felt like an infiltrator.

  “We don’t keep secrets from one another, babe,” Patrick said when I told him about the missing planner. “Never have, never will. I don’t care if you go into my car. Snoop around all you want. You might find a dirty handkerchief in the glove compartment, though, so watch out. Cooties, you know.” He played lightly with his fingers up and down my arms as he said this. “Beware the Irish cooties!”

  Of course, I turned out to be the one with the secrets. Or with one six-foot-tall Italian secret.

  Correction. Make that two secrets. One of them is about the size of a small orange.

  “I’d better get going,” I say. The drive out to Sharon Ray’s farmette will take the better part of an hour in traffic, and I want to stop in to check on Olivia King before dinner, call the hospital where my mother is, and—don’t forget, Jean—get my husband liquored up so I can steal classified government documents from his office. It’s a tall order for a Friday evening.

  Lorenzo helps me into my Honda—not that I need the help, but it keeps up the pretense. It also gives him the opportunity to talk to me without Lin hearing.

  “Have you told him?” he says.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “He’s a medical doctor. He’ll know the baby can’t possibly be his.”

  Lorenzo’s face distorts into a question mark.

  “We haven’t—we weren’t very active for a few months,” I say.

  He relaxes into a smile. “I see. So there’s no doubt?”

  “None at all.” I already feel the slight bulge, sense where the waistband of my skirt cuts in more than it did two weeks ago. Sooner or later—sooner, I think—I’ll have no choice but to tell Patrick.

  He won’t, in Steven’s words, rat me out. I know that. Even if he wanted to, the news would run the kids over like a freight train. That train would keep coming, unexpectedly, in the form of an intruder while Sonia watched cartoons, during a soccer match, in between CNN news segments. School, for them, would become a daily trek into hell. Patrick would know this, and he would keep silent.

  But the thing, that unspeakable It, will always hang over us like a storm cloud. No, that’s not true. It won’t hang. It will crawl and toddle and walk and laugh and be a living reminder of how I spent a cold March afternoon fucking Lorenzo. And fucking up everything else.

  “That other matter I said I was working on—I may know something by Monday,” Lorenzo says, snapping me back to the parking lot. “Hold on until then, okay?”

  “What is it?”

  Lorenzo straightens, pulling his hand away from mine.

  “You two,” a voice says. “What’s going on?”

  Poe i
s standing in front of the Honda, arms folded across his massive chest, aviator glasses masking his eyes. I hate Morgan, but the only person I’m scared to death of is this quiet giant named Poe.

  I manage a smile, throw the car into reverse, and back away without meeting his stare.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Never let a child visit a farm, I think as I drive Sonia back home from the Rays’ place. They’ll want to stay forever.

  Sonia, only two days free of her counter, has developed the gift of gab. Nonstop chatter about Aristotle the mare—who is really a girl horse with a boy’s name, Sonia informs me—is interrupted only by a narrative about brown chickens laying brown eggs and white chickens laying the normal white ones. She can’t wait to go back tomorrow, and I wonder if I should have left her at the Rays’ overnight.

  No, it’s better to bring her home. If Delilah Ray’s trial goes well on Monday, I may not have more than a week’s talking time with my daughter.

  I planned to ask Del if he would do us the same favor he’d done for his own family, remove our wrist counters and replace them with decoys, but I haven’t. Not yet. A small voice keeps reminding me of Steven. He’s drunk every flavor of Kool-Aid the Pure has handed him. Also, the twins might blurt something out, reveal the secret at school. I can’t risk that.

  As we drive, the landscape changes from rural to suburban. All those houses, I think, are little prisons, and inside them are cells in the shape of kitchens and laundry closets and bedrooms. Morgan’s words come back to me, his matter-of-fact talk about how things were better before, long ago, when men worked and women stayed in their private sphere of cookery and cleaning and baby making.

  I don’t think I really believed it would happen. I don’t think any of us did.

  After the election, we started believing. Some of us became vocal for the first time. Women, for the most part, spearheaded the anti-Myers campaign—women like me, who hadn’t ever tried on a pair of marching boots, piled into buses and Metro cars and froze in the Washington winter. There were men, too, I remember. Barry and Keith, who had three decades between them of fighting for gay rights, spent a Saturday painting signs at their house two doors down from ours; five of the graduate students from my department said they had our backs. And they did, for a while.