James Smythe - The Machine

No, he tells her. There’s no petulance in the voice, just a declaration that he doesn’t want to.

Then help me pack this stuff.

None of it is even mine, he says, which is untrue, because all the male clothes are his, every single item, but how would he remember that? So Beth does it for him: folding his t-shirts and shorts and trousers, which all seem to be white or shades of white, and which take up twice the space of Beth’s own clothes. She puts in toiletries, but they’re all hers, and then she decides against it: he needs ownership, she thinks. So she puts them back in the bathroom and decides that he should buy his own when they get to wherever they’re going, buy real male-scented toiletries that he wants to use. But then she wonders if he’ll even know what he wants, or if he’ll stare at these things on their shelves in the shop, and she’ll ask him what scents he wants, what sort of products, and he’ll be blank and clueless because it doesn’t matter to him. Because he never cried to a doctor, or to Beth, about the shampoo he preferred, and so it was never logged, and so it was never put back in. She wonders if maybe the gaps that the Machine filled in, if maybe one of them will have taken care of that. She wonders what Vic can smell at this moment. She sits on the bed and wonders these things as time rockets past, and all she can think, as she reaches every empty conclusion, is that she’s made a terrible mistake.

She takes one of the painkillers she bought, that she didn’t crush up for Vic, and another straight afterwards, deciding that one isn’t enough. Two isn’t even enough. Vic is asleep again – both of them are constantly exhausted, but after what they’ve been through maybe that’s okay – so she opens her laptop, standing with it at the kitchen worktop. On her forum, she looks at the topic that she created, and the replies. There are a few standard responses, from users who assume that she’s having problems – We’re so sorry, they say, or It’ll get there, give it time – and then there’s one from somebody whose username she doesn’t recognize. This is their first and only post.

They write that they’ve been a long-time lurker on the boards, but that they never had the urge to write anything before. They write that their partner – their choice of word, keeping everything ambiguous – had treatments in the earliest days, to get over a terrible event in their life. When they came out the other side, their faculties were hanging by a thread, and one day that thread snapped. It was, the post says, the worst day of their lives. (Beth thinks about what the writer wouldn’t have given to have had the Vic she was presented with: rough and unfinished and crudely drawn, but stable; and how she had destroyed him because she wanted so much more than that.) The writer’s partner spent four years, nearly, in a home, and then they were pulled out – not by the writer, but by the company who made the Machines. They needed people to trial their cure on: the writer didn’t see how it could make things worse.

There were five trial cases, the post says, and nothing has been said of them in public. They signed non-disclosure agreements and waivers of responsibility, but it was a way to get their loved ones back, in some shape or form. A year, they spent being worked on. (Beth thinks about her time rebuilding Vic, such a condensed period.) And then they were handed back to their loved ones: complete, or so they were told. Beth reads all this with her hands gripping the laptop sides, and biting into the inside of her cheek, worrying the flesh there with her back teeth. But they weren’t complete: the author of the piece doesn’t go into specifics, but says that there was something wrong.

They had it all back, says the writer, but there was something missing, and it made me think that there was something wrong with the way the Machine glossed over the gaps. But what if that wasn’t the problem? What if the problems – my partner had a temper, and said things that they would never have said before, looked at me like I was nothing, dead, filth – what if the problems are something that’s part of us already?

What if they’re part of humans, and we paste over them; and the gaps that are left after this, what if they’re just holes that let the darkness out?

Beth stands back from the work surface. She doesn’t write her own reply to the post; not because she doesn’t have anything to say, or doesn’t think that she can contribute, but because she can’t stop shaking, and she clings to the fridge, which is behind her, and she can feel that shaking with her, and she thinks, How did the Machine do this to us?

They’re not finished packing, so Beth tells Vic that she’ll get them a takeaway. She asks him what he would like from the Indian, and he says that he doesn’t mind.

You must mind, she says.

I really don’t.

Spicy, creamy, what?

For fuck’s sake, Beth. Just whatever. Whatever I like. He makes fists and bangs them on the table and doesn’t look directly at her. You can go out and I can’t? he suddenly asks.

No. It’s not like that. But nobody knows you’re here, Vic.

What are you so scared of? he asks. Are you ashamed of me?

You killed that boy, she says, her smallest voice. He still doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t apologize, or explain, or even react. He’s just still.

She slams the door as she leaves, and she walks down the balcony and into the stairwell, and she forgets about the blind corner. She’s never met anybody here, even though it has always felt like a threat. And then now she turns it, and there’s somebody there, waiting, or just getting ready to climb the stairs. Laura. She staggers backwards, and then she smiles: out of pity, or pleasure, somewhere between the two.

I was coming to see you, she says. She reaches out and takes Beth’s arm before she’s even had a chance to react. I wanted to tell you that it will be okay: that you can tell the police, and I will support you. You had nothing to do with it: it was all that monster of a husband of yours.

Get off me, Beth says. She starts to walk: she has to carry on. Twelve hours and they’ll be on a boat to somewhere else entirely. Laura runs behind her, stepping double-fast to keep up.

Beth, she says, you have to listen to me.

I don’t.

This is creation, Beth. You don’t mess with creation, as it is the purview of our one God, Beth. Don’t you see that?

Beth stops and turns. I didn’t mess with creation, she says. I put back what had been taken out. Nothing more. This isn’t some bullshit that involves your fucking church, Laura: this is my husband, my life.

And what about that boy’s life?

Beth turns and walks on again, because she doesn’t want to react. Laura shouts after her, not bothering to match pace now, but still walking.

Did he deserve to die? Laura asks. Did he fall at the hands of the monster you call your husband, Beth? She shouts loudly enough that somebody listening could hear, which scares Beth slightly, so she walks even faster. Did you really think that he could get away with this?

Beth steps inside the restaurant and stands in the entryway, in front of the curtain that leads to the tabled area. There’s nobody at the bar. She breathes. She can’t hear Laura any more, not from in here. She shuts her eyes and counts down from fifty. She’s wondering if it will be enough, when the curtain rustles and the waiter appears.

Jesus, he says, you all right?

I’m fine.

Yeah, okay. You want a drink? She doesn’t answer, but hears the pouring of something anyway, then the clink of a glass on the side. Go on, he says, and she does, and it’s bitter and sharp, but exactly right: enough to wake her up a little, to shock her into remembering where she is and what she’s doing. You want food, or you just hiding from somebody?