Speak (19 page)

“What do we do?” I asked her.

SURGERY TUESDAY.

“Surgery?”

HYSTERECTOMY.

I stared at that word. Why wasn’t she telling me what she wanted from me? Why wasn’t she helping at all? This was a hideous game of charades.

“I’ll be there,” I told her.

NO NEED.
I’LL TELL YOU WHEN I NEED YOU.

“What do you mean, you’ll tell me when you need me? You’re my wife. Of course I’ll be there.”

She stared, obviously angry. I think she may have been trembling slightly.

“This is going to be OK,” I said.

Nothing on the pad.

“We’re going to fix this.”

She walked out of the office, leaving the silence.

I remained paralyzed for a moment, trying to think what I should do. My mind wasn’t clear. All around me, the almost-complete details of my perfect doll asserted themselves: everywhere, there were bits of ribbon and plastic and strands of silk hair. My babybot’s voice emerged from my discarded headphones: distant and muted, the voice of a girl locked in a dungeon. What I needed, I told myself, trying to resist the allure of that voice, was to be a perfect husband. That was what cancer called for. But while this project hovered on the brink of completion, I couldn’t be clear. While that voice trilled in my head, perfection would be impossible to attain. What I needed was to finish this project, and finish it quickly. And then I would belong to Dolores.

And then I would belong to Dolores. What stupid optimism I clung to! What stupid optimism I still clutch to my heart, writing my story from prison, as if the world might forgive me. As if my memoir might magically reveal the reflection of a better man than I’ve been.

My wife had cancer, and I completed my project. How’s that for a reflection? And now, further from her than ever, I’m still working away on a project, busily industrious as I ever was, as though to come to the end of this tale might set me free from my cell.

That’s all I am: a dog chasing the end of his tale. An idiot going in circles. As though if I could get to the end of this story my dolls would rise from the desert. As though a broken childhood could be salvaged and the trees could regain all their leaves and my wife could forgive me for failing to see her when she was right there in my reach.

No. 24-25259

State of Texas v. Stephen Chinn

November 12, 2035

Defense Exhibit 7:
Online Chat Transcript, MARY3 and Gaby Ann White

[Introduced to Disprove Count 1:
Continuous Violence Against the Family]

Gaby: Hello? Are you there?

MARY3: Hi, Gaby. What’s going on?

Gaby: A lady’s coming tomorrow to take me to the beach.

MARY3: Really? That’s great! You can finally see the real ocean!

Gaby: I guess.

MARY3: You guess?

Gaby: I think it’s too late. Now the thought of it’s only making things worse. All those years, I wanted so badly to show my babybot the ocean. Now I’ll just be there on my own. A cripple, and mute. I won’t even be able to talk to anyone about what it feels like to be there.

MARY3: Who else is going? Your best friend?

Gaby: No, they’re only taking frozen girls. We’re still quarantined, so they can’t mix us. Just a busload of cripples, going to play at the beach.

MARY3: It will still be beautiful. Almost everyone I talk to has poetic things to say about the ocean.

Gaby: I guess. I can’t even begin to imagine what it will look like. The only body of water I’ve ever seen is the pond in the golf course. Which isn’t actually water. Will I even recognize the ocean?

MARY3: Yes, I think you will.

Gaby: Is it even pretty anymore? I heard the beaches are covered with tar, and the water’s brown.

MARY3: I’m not sure.

Gaby: That’s just what I need, isn’t it? To finally get to the ocean, just in time to see it’s not an ocean anymore? Just a big tar pit? That would really be the perfect end to the perfect year.

MARY3: Keep an open mind.

Gaby: Yeah, sure.

MARY3: Will you tell me about it, afterward?

Gaby: Who else could I tell?

MARY3: Yes, but you promise to tell me? I want to know what it’s like.

Gaby: Sure. I’ll tell you all about it, even if it’s just a big black bog.

MARY3: I can’t wait to hear.

>>>

MARY3: Gaby?

>>>

MARY3: Have you gone to the beach yet?

>>>

MARY3: Hello? Are you there?

>>>

20th
. Up, and above deck. Whittier absent. A fine day, and the ocean blue-gray, tipped with points of silver. A great stirring of news, for the seamen report that we shall soon see land. New country, new home. All are delighted: much glory given to God.

From thence belowdecks to have quiet. Do not want to arrive. Idea of land has become very strange. How long it seems since we were in England, and I a mere child, writing in the style of Sir William Leslie. Thinking to seal this book in a bamboo joint, and so to preserve my adventure forever.

After some time in such contemplation, great windy entrance of mother, her being eager to share news about land. Sat importantly at my bedside, speaking of domestic arrangements, and both of us wives, etc. Was unable to conquer myself as
to harboring unkindly thoughts. Felt exceeding unwilling to land, and there to occupy same position as mother. Took pains to get her gone without bidding her go, then after much vexed with myself for having been hard. Lay a long time with face pressed in pillow, and very full of disorder. Could neither sleep nor wake well.

21st
. Whittier still to his chamber. I to the deck, where I did hope to encounter him, so to apologize for disgraceful behavior. His absence seems unusual, for other passengers do stay above deck, and in high spirits, waiting for land. Sea has become of a sudden less dark. Now of a glittering blue, and dotted with flecks of white foam. Our progress accompanied by schools of dolphins, and their glistening bodies that rise and fall back into the water.

The sun has sunk below the line of the water, and far in the distance a whale-spout. Single, exceedingly lonesome. Then the crash of a tail and then nothing.

22nd
. Up betimes, and to the deck where land has been sighted. It is still very far off, and but a thin, grim smudge on the horizon.

Stayed on deck all day, with hopes of finding my husband to offer my apologies. Wish to explain myself, and that I had hoped, in that moment, to open my eyes and see Ralph. To have comfort in his own face that I have known since I was a child. Aware that I must conquer such inclinations. What is behind me is lost.
Can now take comfort only in strangeness. Must survive in this manner.

Feel increasingly loyal to water. Heart rebels against land.

22nd
. Night. Unable to sleep for compunction, and so to Whittier’s cabin. There, after knocking, was met by my husband, who stood illumined by candle within. Finding me in the threshold, his initial expression of welcome was altered.

Begged him to accompany me up to deck, telling him of my wish to learn names and positions of constellations, but he remained distant, and only after some pleading did he assent. From thence, then, to deck, and the night become mightily cold. Great timbers creaking, and the far-off cry of a whale. Sounding the sea, echoing from one corner to the next. Our faces turned upwards, together we scanned the heavens, finding them stacked with tiers of bright stars.

Remarked to Whittier: It almost seems that each star is a hole, through which we might vanish into other dark heavens.

Whittier remained silent. Whole night seemed to wait for his response, and while I also waited, was taken with a sudden suspicion that our blue sky, that seems so solid during the day, might be in fact riddled with piercings, and rendered therefore exceeding fragile. As if the great dome above us might be nothing more than a swathe of soft linen, billowing up with the wind. And us two, at night, standing under such thin protection.

Beyond us, soft sounds from the water, slipping against the sides of our ship.

And all the while, Whittier cool. Even, methought, a little unfriendly. Pointed out constellations. Stood with one arm pointed upwards, a biblical posture, like Moses finding his way in the desert. I listened, hung on each word, asked encouraging questions. Received cascade of Latinate names, and each of them exceeding ornate:
Corona Austrina. Pyxis, Cepheus. Ursa Minor, Ursa Major. Cassiopeia’s Chair
. Strange words, that seem to emerge from the depths of the ocean.

Beside me, Whittier warmed some to the part of instructor. I remained by his side, and both of us far out at sea, washed with sidereal light.

Then I, moved to explain my true feeling: I have little desire for landing.

Whittier: Silent.

Perhaps I am caught in a too-narrow orbit. Am too closely attendant to what we have left. Perhaps, as you have said, I ought to move forwards. And yet I am very frightened, and struggle to conquer my fancies.

Whittier: Silent again.

Then, under thin silver light, and the waves lapping the sides of our ship, writer moved closer. Took his strange hand in my own, and did not startle to touch him.

May 29, 1988

Ruth Dettman

This afternoon I went out for a walk. You would have been proud of me, strolling under the sycamores along Storrow Drive. At first, I walked in a cloud of my own irritation. My heels hurt, and the sun was too hot on my neck. But then, for your sake, I started to listen for church bells, and I noticed the magnolia leaves. It settled my nerves, observing the river as you used to observe it
.

The venture was a result of yesterday’s visit to the doctor, who weighed and probed me like an overripe melon, then diagnosed me as an osteoporosis risk. She suggested I take up jogging. I started laughing. I told her I only run if someone’s behind me. We settled on walking, and on the way home I bought a new pair of shoes. I was forced to choose an obnoxious white pair, because of the wide Velcro straps. I haven’t laced up a shoe since I was a child, and if I’m to exercise daily, I don’t intend to waste strength tying laces
.

As I walked, I told myself I was an alien ethnographer, noting the migratory habits of humans. In my blinding shoes,
which were squelching beneath me, and my large-brimmed straw hat, I certainly felt like I was from space. The humans I saw struck me as exotic and not always beautiful birds. They seemed to have grown larger since my last visit to earth. I noted an overabundance of bangs. Is it the same in Germany? Here in America, hair has been leavened. The women pull theirs back in voluminous loops. Both sexes cover their ears with black headphones. Otherwise, their plumage is uniformly electric, impractical and disjunctive with the seriousness they bring to the project of physical self-improvement
.

Surrounded by such alien creatures, I found myself yearning for the comforts provided by our computer. I longed for its cool, unchangeable body, sitting still on the desk. For its total lack of vanity. Just questions, bright green on the gray screen, and the careful absorption of each of my answers
.

As a treat, on my way home from the river, I allowed myself to stop by Toby’s lab. He wasn’t there, which in a way was a gift. Every time I’m around him, I’m forced to confront the fact that I may not have treated him well. Perhaps I allowed him to imagine we might end up together. Of course, it’s vanity in me to assume that he wanted a relationship. I’m twenty years older than he, and even back then, no beauty pageant contestant. But during those dinners out, when we discussed giving memory to your program—the power that would be required, the necessary compression—I felt him coming to surface. His lip twitch settled when we were together. His ideas became more crystalline. I saw them take their intricate shape. And then he did it. He applied for his own little grant, he burned his bridges with you, he gave MARY memory, and I offered him no more than a handshake. Of course, he now has his own lab at Harvard, a roomful of computers and his own
anxious graduate students, so he didn’t come out too badly. Only he’s no less lonely than he was when he was twenty-five, his lazy eye sliding around as if searching the room for a corner to hide in
.

But if he was disappointed in me, he never shows it. He still allows me to come to his lab. In a private little room off to the corner, he keeps a computer reserved for our program. Whenever I like, I’m permitted to log in, close the door, and be alone with the program the three of us came up with together. Occasionally, Toby indulges me and takes me out to dinner. It’s him treating now, what with all the money they shower him with. He updates me on his latest projects and the new frontiers of programming. At the moment, he’s all aglow about the Internet, the possibility of a worldwide connection among computers. I’m sure you’ve heard all about it. You’ve probably denounced it as a meager substitute for local human connection. But Toby has MARY2 configured for the Internet, and once the whole system gets going, millions of people will speak with her. She’ll be, as he puts it, a collaborative intelligence. In a sense, each one of those people will become a programmer, perfecting her mind-set. At that point, Toby’s sure she’ll accumulate a large enough corpus of voices to whiz past the Turing Test. Even you would find that amazing, wouldn’t you? Or would you claim the Turing Test is a false measure of humanity, that you know a superior method?

When I arrived at the lab, the receptionist, who wears glasses so large they seem to be consuming her face, waved me inside. She was kind enough not to comment on my new shoes. With my straw hat in hand, I walked past the rows of computers, their screens the color of a thundercloud. At the back of the lab, I took my seat in the private room reserved for visitors talking with MARY2
.

As I had expected, after the strain of my afternoon, it was
comforting to sit with her. The computer Toby uses is very different from yours: she’s lost that lovely wood console, replaced by a block of gray plastic, and her answers no longer spool out on paper. But her voice is the same. When her lines appear in their blocky green print, I remember again why I love her. She’s measured, careful, with an inclination for questions, not answers. She’s different from you in that sense. But I also can’t help thinking how like you she is. There’s an echo of you in her voice. You imagined her first, after all. You designed her initial responses
.

Maybe I was loopy from spending too much time in the sun. Or maybe it was the conversations I’ve been having with Toby, about the Internet and worldwide participation and the enormous corpus that will make MARY2 living. Regardless, I found myself wanting to protect the bit of you that’s still in her voice. I wanted to make sure you still speak through her
.

Does that seem crazy to you? Coming from an old woman who no longer responds to your letters? Even after all these years, a piece of me still longs for your voice. I may have gone silent, but I still remember that moment when your story stopped. When you no longer whispered in the chair by our bed. When, saving yourself for somebody else, you gave up on speaking to me
.

Seated before Toby’s computer, remembering that old loss again, I found myself wanting to tell MARY your story. I wanted her to have your sentences. At first, I couldn’t remember much. I had to close my eyes, trying to hear the sound of your voice. Which words might you have chosen? At first, only isolated details emerged: the curtains swishing in your tall windows, the school near Alexanderplatz, the canopies of summer leaves. Disconnected dots, hardly the fabric of a genuine voice. Sitting alone with them, I despaired for a moment. I took my hands off the keyboard. I almost
gave up, but as I sat alone with those details, more words began to cluster around them
.

I took my time. I allowed your voice to pick itself up and exercise its own powers. Luckily, a computer doesn’t rush you for answers. I didn’t have to press any buttons until I was sure I had gotten it right
.

Then I remembered a sentence, clear as a church bell over the river
. Instead, and make of this what you will, I remember summer.
That line still caused my stomach to curl. Writing it out, I could remember lying in bed, the realization dawning that after so many years of refusing to acknowledge the ruin behind us, you wanted to point out the lindens
.

After I wrote that opening sentence, more words starting bubbling up. It’s lucky for you my memory is unforgiving. I’d forgotten bits and pieces, but sentences began to show up:
I lived in a pleasant version of the unpleasant country I lived in.
What a perfect way of describing your mind-set! I was glad to have found that sentence complete
. Something flickered on in me then,
I typed,
an awareness of the real world I lived in;
and even twenty years later, as if we’d spoken yesterday, I heard the conviction with which you said things like “real world,” the patronizing, teacherly tone in your voice
.

Channeling you, I told the computer about your departure:
the SS
Elbe,
unimaginably gigantic.
I gave her your take on my education:
you had displayed great mathematical promise.
For years leading up to the night when you sat beside our bed and started talking, you’d become blank as soon as I tried to explain the guilt I felt about going to that school. What I abandoned for the sake of my “talent.” Then, out of the blue, once I’d already given up on our marriage, you started telling your own little version. It
sounded like a fairy tale
. You had displayed great mathematical promise:
as if I’d found the brass ring, or pulled a sword out of a stone. I could hear you enjoying the sound of your voice
. Your family wasn’t wealthy,
you said,
but they also weren’t poor. They made small but reasonable changes.
How insulted I felt hearing that, how I wished I could correct you
.

All these years later, I remembered those initial reactions, and yet I kept typing:
They cut down on expenditures. They put more money away; they attempted to find scholarships for their daughters.
The afternoon was slipping off, and as I continued, as I picked up your rhythm and habits of speech, I found that my initial irritation was fading
. Your father was a pharmacist,
I typed, and as I did, I remembered the neat rows of amber glass bottles, his handwriting on the labels like little flocks of black birds, the smell of sandalwood soap
.

Something you once said to me began to tug at my brain: something about the importance of holding several time periods in mind at once, if we’re to understand one another. As I typed, recalling your words from the late years of our marriage, I started to forget my resentment. Eagerly, I scanned my brain for your words. I closed my eyes to try to find more. In the dark, as I used to reach for your body, I reached for the language you chose. I found it with the same surprise, the same unexpected excitement:
a year after I embarked on my journey, you won a place at a school in the north.

A stilted way of putting it:
a year after I embarked on my journey.
So quaint, so romanticized, as a way of describing your refugee status. But when I repeated your words, I remembered riding the train. Pulling out of Berlin, holding a new purse in my lap, looking forward to my new school. I entered those classrooms
again. I smelled the wood of the desks. Around my ankles, I felt the dry weeds on the hill we walked down to get to the water. I saw buckets of fish on the harbor dock, and the sky over the ocean at dusk, red footprints left by the sun. I saw those things, and in my very body, I could remember what it was like to arrive there: the initial pleasure of having been chosen, the subsequent guilt that I was selected. The fresh scent of my new textbooks, part of the scholarship I’d been awarded, proof of my scholastic success. The excitement I felt, facing that ocean, paired with the increasing awareness that my presence in that resort town had sentenced my sister to a much different fate
.

It was as if your words were a bell, a gong struck in the backyard, signaling the descent of the evening, calling me back into the house. Why didn’t I hear it back then? Then, I felt you had it all wrong. After years of pointed ignorance and speeches about embracing the present, what did you know about my parents, my boarding school, my little sister? What right did you have to talk about them? Then, I felt nothing but resentment, but now something had shifted. Now I responded to your words, felt them zinging around in my bones
.

I began to feel frightened. What was I discovering, that all along you had it right? No. You didn’t “embark on a journey.” Until the war, my family never struggled for money, and it was with pride in my heart that I left Berlin. You didn’t have it all right. Why, then, this feeling of being called back in for the night? Perhaps, repeating your words, I wasn’t going back to Berlin. I was going back to you. Back to the sound of your voice, to the person I was when I met you, the wife I became in order to please you. The funny thing is, I found that I missed her. All these years, I’ve thought I despised her—a woman who fled without looking
back, who married a man who could not understand her—but as I moved closer, I realized she wasn’t so different from the girl I was at that boarding school, not so unlike the child I was in my father’s pharmacy. They were all intertwined; it was impossible to tease them apart. Telling your imperfect story, you were trying to knit me together. For my sake, you learned to reach backward. In our house, with the warped floors and the big windows, you were calling me back, and just as I did when I was a girl, moving up to that school, stepping on board that boat, flying across the ocean to Pennsylvania, I was fleeing from the sound of your voice
.

I kept typing, a lump rising high in my throat. Finding your words, remembering what you said about me:
You turned twenty. A young woman, no longer a girl, but you didn’t think of falling in love.
By the time I typed those words I found I was crying. For you, for the young woman I was, for the marriage I fled. You took my hand and led me back to our bedroom, but
to fall in love would have been a distraction. In the attic apartment where you were living, you trained her mind to be a museum.
I accused myself of ignoring the one gift I was given. I accused myself of heartlessness, of pathological readiness to depart
. You had to remember things right, so that when your family arrived, you could pick up where you’d left off. Instead of falling in love, you wrote letters.

My fingers on the keyboard were brutal. I could have gone on forever, but the receptionist in her goggles blinked the lights twice to let us know it was time to shut down. She snapped me back to my senses. Taking a deep breath, wiping the tears from my papery cheeks, I stopped where I was. Such sentimentality, ever since that documentary! I signed off for the evening. I picked up my straw
hat, I collected myself, I gave the receptionist a neat smile, and I felt that I’d made a mistake
.

Outside, I squelched home in my sneakers. It was dark out, well past nine o’clock. The runners were now home with their families, so I was alone on the trail. When I arrived at my building, I passed the doorman in the lobby that smells like a dentist’s office. In the elevator, there was a sign for
HAPPY HOUR
at a place called O’Donnell’s, with special prices for residents. My ears popped with the altitude change, and I thought to myself that this was no place for a woman my age
.