Near + Far (23 page)

"Yes. They want us getting to know each other and doing some team exercises."

"Well, that should be interesting," she said.

"Will you be all right if I go? You seem so fragile lately."

Fragile
, she thought.
Smashable. But already smashed. Maybe the only way to make something non-breakable was to break it. A very Zen approach.

"I'm not fragile," she said. If he thought her fragile, wouldn't he be in even more of a hurry to get rid of her? She'd read an article the day before that had said when people developed cancer, women had a much higher chance of their partners leaving. She'd thought another of those uncontrollable thoughts,
yep, he'd be out the door like a shot.

Could she blame him for it, really? You go through childhood thinking they're promising you your soul mate will come along eventually. And then you find yourself, after a lot of trouble and discouragement, with someone who you think might fit the bill, only to discover that they're as broken as you are. Marriages were work, but no one ever told you all that.

She was trying to figure out where she fit into his new life, and the fear was that there was no niche for her. And he didn't care about that, or if he did, he'd factored it in and it didn't outweigh the other considerations. Nor did any of her good intentions.

No, she couldn't stand it. And he knew that no marriage had survived this, and he'd accepted that. It wasn't that he was stupid, or overly optimistic. It was that the dissolution of the marriage, the strong and almost certain possibility that it would be destroyed, didn't matter enough to make him reconsider.

Could he even go back, at this point? He'd signed papers. They'd given him training and installed a very expensive piece of equipment in his head. He was committed.

The Korps hadn't even bothered to talk to her about the transition, she realized. They'd written her off without even thinking about it. She wondered if that was one of the things Emilio and the other new agents would bond with during their training, commiserating with each other about their ambitions and the partners who had tried to drag them away from it.

He stood watching her, and she wondered how much of her inner turmoil he could perceive. Either more than either of them thought, or more probably the question showed in her eyes, because he said impatiently, "It's not like that, Jamie. It takes effort to read someone. I will never read you unless you ask me to."

"You can control it that well?" she said.

"Why do you think they give us all this training? They don't want rogue psis running all over the place giving them a bad name, you know that as well as I do. They had to struggle hard enough just to get the airport screening process in place. Everyone screamed about privacy laws. Remember that show, I can't remember the name, about the PsyKorps hunting down rogues? Lasted a season, but it showcased all the anxieties pretty well."

He leaned back on the railing, regarding her. "Believe me, I understand," he said. "But we can get through this, Jamie."

"When no one else has?"

He caught her hand. "No one else is us. No one else loves each other the way we do."

Despite the wariness that barb-wired her, she could not help but be warmed by the emotion in his voice.

But was it real?

She kept watching him, waiting for the moment he would get inside her head. Early in their marriage, he had asked, "What are you thinking?" so many times, checking her state, his state. He wouldn't be able to avoid it. Curiosity would force his hand.

But he didn't seem to notice. He practiced every day, asked her to help him, and she did, thinking word after word, then phrase after phrase. He drove himself hard, would not stop until he was shaking with weariness.

He gave her some of the money from the Korps for household expenses, and she put it away. She wondered what he was doing with the rest of it. Building himself an escape fund, money so he could leave when he was ready?

She had thought it would be a revelation when he gave himself away, but it was nothing more than her thinking that she needed salt and looking up to find him handing her the shaker.

He paled. "I'm sorry, you were thinking loudly," he said.

"You couldn't help yourself, could you?" she asked, her voice and heart cold. "Must have been asking for it, on some subconscious level
I
don't have access to."

"You don't need to worry," he said. "Listen, Jamie, we're all broken inside. We've all got bits that we want to keep hidden. Look, every time I find something out, I'll tell you something in exchange. I picked my nose when I was little, did I tell you that? A nun at school shamed me out of it."

But she had stood, was walking out of the room. He followed her, proffering more secrets: the roommate he'd been attracted to in college, his hatred of his mother's pressures to succeed, the time he'd taken money from the store he worked in.

"It's not that," she said, packing her bags. "Or maybe it is, I don't know." She looked tired and broken to him, and he felt a wash of guilt and shame over how he'd treated her, but he couldn't make her perceive it, no matter what he said or did.

Emilio watched from the doorway as Jamie marched away, suitcase in hand. A fine mist filled the air, glistened like a greasy sheen on the back of her unhatted head. She'd said she'd get the rest of her belongings later.

He stood there with his fists braced against the doorway, watching till she was gone, broadcasting
guilt
and
shame
and
sorrow
, but there was no one around to hear him at all.

Afternotes

Writers mine our own lives for material and this story is one of those. I don't think any married person escapes marital stress. This story, as with a number of others in Near + Far, came out of a rough patch in my own.

It owes its title to the eminently quotable Stevie Smith poem by the same name, and the lines "I was much further out than you thought/ And not waving but drowning." The lines sum up a certain interior desperation that I strongly identified with at the time.

This story originally appeared in
Redstone Science Fiction
and was selected by editor Michael Ray.

E
ver since my husband installed a Vocobox (TM) in our cat in a failed experiment, he (the cat, not my husband) stands outside the closed bedroom door in the mornings, calling. The intelligence update was partially successful, but the only word the cat has learned is its own name, Raven, which he uses to convey everything. I hear him when I wake up, the sound muted by the wooden door between us.

"Raven. Raven. Raven." Beside me, Lloyd murmurs something and turns over, tugging the sheet away, the cold whispering me further awake. When I go out to feed the cat, his voice lowers as he twines around my ankles, words lapsing into purrs. He butts against my legs with an insistent anxiety, waiting for the dish to be filled. "Raven. Raven." Kibble poured, I move to make our own breakfast, turning on the coffee maker and listening to its preparatory burble.

"I don't know what I expected," my husband mutters as he drinks his coffee in hasty gulps. "That cat was never very smart for a cat." He glares at Raven as though blaming him for the failures of the world at large. The Vocobox (TM) is his own invention; his company hopes to market it this fall, and a promotion may hinge upon it. The last laurels my husband won are wearing thin; if the Vocobox (TM) is a success, he'll be able to rest a while longer.

But when he first proposed installing it in the cat, he didn't say it was still experimental. "The kids are gone, and you need some company," he'd said. "The cat loves you best anyhow; now you can talk to him, and he'll talk back." He gave me a slight smirk and a raised eyebrow that implied that without him I'd be a dotty old cat lady, living in a studio apartment that smelled of pee and old newspapers.

"I'll be late again tonight," he tells me now. "And when I'm concentrating, I've found leaving my cell off helps. If you need something, just leave a message. Or call the service, that's what we pay them for." He's out the front door before I can reply.

Every morning seems the same nowadays. My husband's heels, exiting. The immaculate lawn outside. On Thursdays, the housekeeping service remotely activates the grass cutting robot. I see it out there, sweeping through the fresh spring grass that never grows high enough to hide it. A plastic sheep, six inches tall, sits atop its round metal case, someone's idea of creative marketing. But the robot is done within the hour and then things are the same again. Back in the box.

I go into the living room, activate the wall viewer, and lose myself in reality television, where everyone has eventful lives. Soon Raven curls up on my lap. "Raven," he murmurs, and begins to purr.

The mouths of the people on the screen move, but the words that come out are meaningless, so I hit the mute button. Now the figures collide and dance on the screen; every life is more interesting than my own.

At noon, I push the cat off my lap and have a sandwich; at dinner time a hot meal appears in the oven. I take it out myself, pour a glass of Chardonnay, take the bottle to the table with me. When did I become this boring person? At college, I studied music, was going to sing opera. I sang in a few productions, fell in love, became a trophy wife, and produced two perfect trophy children who are out there now, perpetuating the cycle. All those voice lessons wasted.

On the EBay channel that night I look for a hobby. There's knitting, gardening, glass-blowing, quilling ... too many to choose from. I remember quilling from my daughter's Bluebird days. We curled bits of paper, glued them down in decorative patterns on tiny wooden boxes. What was the point? I drink a little more wine before I go to sleep.

When he comes to bed, my husband snuggles up, strokes my arm. He murmurs something inaudible, the tone conveying affection. This only happens when he feels guilty. From the recently showered smell of him, I know what he feels guilty about. This must be an assistant I haven't met yet.

When I don't speak, he says, "What's the matter, cat got your voice box?" He chortles to himself at his clever joke before he lapses into sleep, not pursuing my silence. Out in the living room, I hear the cat wandering. "Raven."

"You're like a cliché," my husband says at breakfast. "Desperate housewife. Can't you find something to do?"

The cat's attention swivels between us, his green eyes wide and pellucid with curiosity. "Raven?" he says in an interrogative tone.

I watch my husband's heels, the door closing behind them, the deliberately good-humored but loud click, once again.

"Raven," the cat says as it looks up at me, its voice shaded with defiance.

"Dora," I say to the cat. I'm tired and sore as though I'd been beaten. The room wavers with warmth and weariness.

"Raven."

"Dora."

"Raven."

"Dora."

I can't help but laugh as he watches my face, but he is not amused as I am; his tail lashes from side to side although every other inch of him is still.

Online, I look at the ads. Nannies, housekeepers, maids ... I am a cliché. I embrace my inanity. Desperate housewife indeed, being cheated on by an aging husband who isn't even clever enough to conceal it. This is my reality. But if I explain it, I start the avalanche down into divorce. I'll end up living in a box on the street, while my husband will remarry, keep living in this expensive, well-tended compound. I've seen it happen to other women.

"Raven," the cat says with tender grace, interposing himself in front of the monitor. Facing me, he puts his forehead against the top of my chest, pressing firmly. "Raven," he whispers.

Sunday, while my husband's out playing golf, the phone keeps ringing. "Caller's name undisclosed," the display says. And when I pick it up, there is only silence on the other end. The third time I say, "He's out playing golf and has his cell phone turned off, because it distracts him. Call back this evening." and hang up.

He scuttles out in the evening after another of the calls, saying he needs to go into work, oversee a test run. Later that night, he curls against me, smelling of fresh soap. Outside the door, Raven is calling.

"Another cat would take the implant better," my husband says. "I'll get a kitten and we'll try that."

"No," I tell him. "He's too old to get used to a new kitten in the house. It will just upset him."

"I'm trying to do something nice for you."

"Buy the other woman a kitten," I say, even as dire predictions scream through my mind, commanding me to silence. "Buy her dozens. I'm sticking with this one."

He rolls over, stunned and quiet. For the rest of the night, I lie there. Outside, the night continues, limitless. I pass the time imagining what I will do. Nannying is, I hear, pleasant work. I'll sing the babies lullabies.

He's silent in the morning as well. In the light of day as we sit facing each other across the table, I reach down to extend my hand to the cat, who arches his back and rubs against my fingertips.

"We need to talk," Lloyd finally demands.

"Dora," I say.

"What?"

"Dora. Dora, Dora." I rise to my feet and stand glaring at him. If I had a tail, it would lash back and forth like an annoyed snake, but all my energy is focused on speaking to my husband.

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

"Dora. Dora. Dora." I almost sob the words out, as emotions clutch at my throat insistently, trying to mute me, but I force the words past the block, out into the open air. We stand like boxers, facing each other in the squareness of the ring.

Lloyd moves to the door, almost backing away. His eyes are fixed on my lips; every time I say my name, his expression flickers, as though the word has surprised him anew.

"We can talk about this later," he says. The door closes behind him with a click of finality.

What can I do? I settle on the couch and the cat leaps up to claim my lap, butts his head against my chin. He lapses into loud purrs, so loud I can feel the vibration against my chest, quivering like unspoken words. He doesn't say anything, but I know exactly what he means.

Afternotes

This story was one of my first speculative fiction publications, and led to my first reading at Seattle area science fiction convention Norwescon. It grew out of a joke about a cat's intelligence and what one would say if actually given a voice.

While the plot is straightforward and the ending uncomplicated, I'm fond of the relationship between Dora and her cat. I've included it in tribute to my own, dearly-loved cat, whose name is also Raven and who definitely appears in these pages.

This piece originally appeared in
Twisted Cat Tales
, edited by Esther Schrader.