Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(63)
My voice wavers a little bit as I see her start to tear up, but I keep going.
“And I know now how important it is to try your best to understand people. Even people you don’t like, or people you don’t have anything in common with. And that’s all from you. All of that stuff? That means you’re smart as hell. Dad’s the stupid one.”
She swallows hard.
“I’m really sorry, Mom.”
A tear rolls down her cheek, and she brusquely wipes it away with the back of her hand, smearing her mascara.
“You don’t have to apologize for anything,” she says. “I’m so proud of you—exactly who you are, every single day.”
When I get home, for the first time since Ruth died, I feel like writing. But not the way I have been. I always rush through stuff. When I read the old installments now, everything seems so flippant, surface-y. Especially the first fic: I cringe when I reread it. How could I have been so catty? And if I stop writing like that, can I even write at all? It’ll be hard, but I have to try.
Chapter 25
The Ordinaria
The Mullens had no language for it until this year. Its anniversary, if you’d call it that, was coming up—six years—and they’d suddenly begun to discuss it for reasons that Sheila did not like. That night, for instance, over their usual haphazard dinner schedules. She ate at six, then he came home and ate at ten; sometimes she sat with him and had some wine.
Steve sighed heavily, put down his fork down, and said, “It’s been . . . you know . . . so long that we’ve been trying to come to terms with the thing.”
They referred to it as “the thing,” as in the drive-in movie or some as-of-yet unidentified bumps you’d anxiously notice on your body.
They hadn’t said her name in the house for four years. They’d never verbally agreed outright not to, but to say it out loud to each other seemed crude, like an unexpected emotional slur tossed at the other person.
Steve had become a workaholic, spending fifty-five hours a week at the lab developing and then overseeing the global release of the Miss Ordinarias. But, blind with grief he hadn’t adequately dealt with, he’d accidentally wound up giving the new products dangerously high levels of empathy, feelings, and life, to somehow make up for the fact that his daughter’s had been taken away. Some he focused on more than others.
Sheila mostly just cleaned. She tried to drink enough to develop a problem but wasn’t very good at it. After she gave up on that, she’d sometimes go sit by the lake that their daughter used to hang out at, drinking and crushing PBR cans with her friends. In fact, that’s what they did that night. In fact, that is why it happened.
She would be twenty-four now, but she made it to only eighteen. For Sheila, the clock stopped right when they saw how slowly the paramedics were walking to the car. She remembered thinking: They should at least fake running around, moving quickly. We shouldn’t have to know before someone tells us who’s a professional at telling people.
This year, though. Almost regularly, with everyone from acquaintances to relatives, The Thing arose. Last weekend it did at Sheila’s book club. They were discussing Jodi Picoult, after Sheila was warned that it was a “triggering” book, and a friend of a friend named Gabrielle had too much pinot grigio.
“This is probably inappropriate,” slurred Gabrielle. “It’s definitely inappropriate, actually, but you’ve just been so . . . it’s been, you know, bad for a really long time.” Gabrielle took a deep breath. “I’m not trying to say this way is the best way, but your husband could probably get a good deal on—”
“Do not.”
So Sheila wasn’t in the mood when Steve said, out of nowhere, even though they both knew exactly what he was talking about, “Sheil, I’m not saying we have one custom-made.”
“‘Made’? Jesus, do you hear yourse—”
“Look. There’s a surplus right now of about ten thousand, and a lot of them are in need of a good home.”
“In need? Steve, they’re like . . . blenders.”
“Well . . . they’re . . . we went a little too far on this one with the ‘human qualities.’” He purposely did not say “I,” even though it was utterly his fault and he’d probably get canned any day now.
“So what are you saying? There are ten thousand silicone orphans now?”
“Listen to me. Okay? Please, please list—”
“No. Steve? No. Absolutely not. You really think it’d be better if some random . . . robot came in here and slept in her bed and wore her clothes?”
“Nothing else has worked! We’re not in a good place! We haven’t been for years, Sheil. It’s been . . . just, no talking, no intimacy. Nothing.”
Her face fell in horror.
“Oh my God, are you using this to try to get a teenage sex robot into our house?”
How could he explain it to her? Why he—vice president of the company, in charge of this new and highly scrutinized product development—irresponsibly tossed out valuable market research results and data and survey feedback on Miss Ordinarias from eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old men left and right. Why he recklessly deleted notes from the server like “pushiness didn’t score well” and “no crude language unless prompted” because all he could hear was his daughter’s unique snort-laugh after she told a “your mom” joke, and all he could see were her freckles and the weird way she drank through a straw, sticking it between her index and ring finger and sipping on it. He’d never get his daughter back, so he made her again, in small ways, by the thousands. Sheila would never forgive him.