VOX. Christina Dalcher

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

ELEVEN

      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.

      Thomas of the dark suit and dark mien reaches forward for my left hand. I instinctively retract, like a frightened wild dog that knows the pain of a trap, but Patrick comes toward me.

      “It’s okay, babe. Just let them do this.”

      With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them.

      Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

      “You can speak now, Dr. McClellan.” Reverend Carl extends a hand toward my living room, like he’s turned magnanimous host.

      It isn’t the only role reversal today. Everything they want is being broadcast on CNN as the story of the president’s brother’s skiing accident unfolds. As further details are reported—posterior left hemisphere, alert but uncommunicative, babbling—I know what else Reverend Carl and his crew want.

      They want me.

      If it were Anna Myers who had skied her way off-piste into a tree, I’d be out the door without a second thought. Although I doubt there would be any SUV-driving men here if it were the president’s wife lying in an intensive care unit.

      “What do you want me to say?” My words come out slowly, tentatively, while I move out of the kitchen, past the television—which I click off—and over to one of the wing chairs. I don’t want to have to share space with any of these people.

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