Vox: The bestselling gripping dystopian debut of 2018 that everyone’s talking about!. Christina Dalcher
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Jackie fought for airtime.
On the sofa next to me, Olivia chewed her lower lip. “I had no idea,” she said.
“No idea about what?”
“These numbers.” She pointed to one of the charts, now being televised with a prepared voice-over of Baby Blue’s voice. She had moved on from rape and was reciting statistics on antidepressant usage. “Jeez. One in six? That’s awful.”
No one in the studio audience was paying attention to Jackie’s claims of skewed statistics, of the correlation-causation fallacy, of the fact that of course no one was taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in 1960, because they didn’t exist.
That was how it started. Three women with a stack of pie charts and people like Olivia.
It took forever to get Olivia out of the house, her and her goddamned cup of sugar. She probably didn’t even need it and only barged in to stick her nose around, see what I was up to. Olivia has become the purest of Pure Women, always rocking on her porch with her abridged and annotated Bible, always covering up her curls, always smiling and bowing—actually bowing—to Evan when he pulls their Buick into the driveway.
Bibles are still allowed, if they’re the right kind.
Olivia’s is pink; Evan’s is blue. You never see them switch, never see the blue book in Olivia’s hands as she sits in the shade with her glass of sweet tea or drives off to services in their second car. It’s a compact, that car, much smaller than the one Evan takes to work.
By two o’clock, I almost wish Olivia were still here.
I take two packages of hamburger from the freezer and set them in a lean-to on the counter to defrost. There aren’t enough potatoes for all of us, let alone for three growing boys who seem to be hosting persistent tapeworms, so rice will have to do. Or I could make biscuits, if I can remember the proportions. Automatically, I turn to the bookshelf next to what used to be my desk in the kitchen and reach for the stained copy of Joy of Cooking as if I’m expecting it to be there. In its place, and in the place of all the other books, are a few photos of the kids, one of my parents, one of Patrick and me on our last vacation. Sam or Leo took that one, and I’m chopped in half, the right side of my face obscured by the Popsicle-stick frame Sonia made in school. Apparently they still do crafts.
If I move the pictures, the shelf doesn’t look so abandoned, so I shuffle the frames around, stick the kitchen timer and scale in the empty spaces, and step back to admire this achievement of the day. With a little imagination, I can persuade myself I’ve just carved Mount Fucking Rushmore. Start the ticker-tape parade.
Mamma and Papà are now much more prominent than they were before this adventure in interior design. I’m not sure whether I want them to be. They call from Italy, or they Skype Patrick on the laptop he keeps locked in his office, the one with the keystroke logger and the camera and a thousand other custom bells and whistles attached to it. Usually, this happens on Sundays when the kids are home from school and the time difference works out so that they can say hello to the entire family. It’s supposed to be joyous, but Mamma ends each call in tears or hands the phone off to Papà before she breaks down.
So. Dinner.
The kids would love biscuits, and I’m pulling on jeans and an old linen blouse, ready to risk a supermarket trip, when Patrick’s car roars up the street. I know it’s his—if there’s one skill I’ve honed to a point in the past year, it’s sound discrimination. Mustang, Corvette, Prius, Mini Cooper. You name the car, I know the sound.
What bugs me as I look out the blinds isn’t that Patrick’s home early, but that three black SUVs are in a line behind him. I’ve seen those vehicles before.
I’ve seen their insides, too.
Shit.
Three cars means at least three men. Something tells me they’re not bearing precious gifts. Not today, not after my backyard performance of last night.
There will be a lecture. Maybe more than that.
Mrs. McClellan, you have the right to remain silent—
Okay. Lousy joke.
I let the blinds fall back into place and I return to the kitchen, ready to put on my best Donna Reed face (an apron will have to do) and be the picture of domestic bliss. On the way, I hit the television’s remote and change the channel from golf to CNN. CNN isn’t what it used to be—nothing is—but Patrick’s job might have a better chance of survival if it looks like I’ve been overdosing on presidential propaganda instead of watching balls fly over manicured courses.
Breaking: President announces—
That’s all I get to see before Patrick and his escorts—I was wrong; there are six of them—invade my space.
“Jean McClellan?” says the first suit, a suntanned man who is all angles.
I’ve seen him before, of course. Everyone has, only he used to wear one of those black-and-white clerical collars instead of a necktie during his public appearances. On Sunday mornings, while Jackie and I chugged coffee to chase away a weekend hangover, he’d be on the TV, the star of his own show. Jackie turned it on as if she were one of the fold; she claimed it got her anger up.
“Listen. Saint Carl’s about to start his shtick again,” she’d say.
And there he’d be, in his minister’s uniform, preaching about the fall of the American family one week, the joy of surrender to God the next. He welcomed anecdotes, real-life experiences, and the bottom few inches of the TV screen always flashed the same toll-free number. After a few years, he added a second number; in more recent years there were Facebook links, then a Twitter account. God had sent him traffic, he said, and he would deal with it by whatever means the Lord provided.
At the time, Jackie and I couldn’t imagine more than a few hundred Southern Baptists from Mississippi followed Reverend Carl Corbin.
It sucks to be so wrong.
“Dr. Jean McClellan?”
Now, this is different. I haven’t been “Dr.” anything since last spring. Also, Patrick is smiling. I nod, because there’s nothing I can say.
In the den, on the television, one of the talking heads says two magic words: brain trauma.
Those words alone, those three syllables, would be enough to prick up my ears, but the words that surround them hit me like a runaway train. President. Skiing accident. Brother.
“Dr. McClellan, we have a problem.” It’s Reverend Carl again, although he looks less like paste and more like fungus in person than when he’s in front of a camera, speaking for the president.
“Great. Fix it,” I say. “What am I, fucking Houston?”
No, I don’t say this. I don’t say anything.
“Jean,” Patrick says. Not “babe,” not “hon,” not any of those sweetie-isms that spouses share. He’s all business now. “Jean, something’s happened.”
On the television, CNN is blaring. In between live footage of some snow-covered mountain, He Who Rules the Free World flashes on and off, a picture of solemnity. Anna stands at his side, lovely in her blue and beige ensemble. It does seem that she’s smiling, if only in her eyes.
Reverend Carl motions to one of the others, who steps forward into my kitchen. I don’t care for this intrusion; if I’m to be a silent domestic, let me at least keep some domestic sanctuary for my own.
“Go ahead, Thomas,” the man in charge says.
And then it happens.