It’s been a while since I did a short, punchy piece. I find it hard to write short (It takes me a thousand words to clear my throat if I’m not careful!), but it’s an excellent idea to practice. Besides, I have tried several times to flesh out this concept into something more substantial, failing often enough that the time had come to admit that it is either a short, weird concept, or it’s like a Kafkaesque novel. Maybe I’ll get to that level of expansion one day, but for now, here we are. Enjoy!
Echoes of Her
He hated his wife. Hated the small things especially. Her hair in the shower. Her fork on her teeth. Kleenex in the couch cushions. He wanted her gone, and he believed that she wanted to be gone.
But, Grandmother did not believe in divorce. Like, ‘cut your ass out of her will’ did not believe in it. And her will was ample, tens of millions for each grandchild. But only if they behaved and did not do things in which she did not believe.
Grandmother did not know about Android Spouses. They were new, and Grandmother did not believe in new things. She watched local news on a television with a remote control and turned it off the moment they stopped talking about carjackings and product recalls and other things she understood, with much disapproval of the production choice to include objects of her ignorance.
He offered his wife ten percent of grandmother’s estate, upon her death, to move out of his house and sit for the mind-sculpt and lease her exact likeness to the makers of the Android Spouse, and to never contact Grandmother to tell her that they had split. His wife said twenty-five percent, and the way that she said it, he knew she had been waiting for the inheritance to arrive so that she could leave him and take half, and that she was happy to take less without a fight and get away from him sooner. He could not guess what they were, but she must hate his small things also. They did not fight, but they could not stand each other.
She demanded further that he sit for a mind-sculpt and body likeness, so that she might also have a copy of him. He wanted to ask if she did this out of spite, or if she wanted him as a husband minus some small hatreds, but he did not want to discuss his own feelings with her, so he did not ask for hers.
Her droid copy arrived at his doorstep the day his human wife left for the last time. They passed each other on the porch steps, two women more the same than twins, hair blowing aesthetically in a breeze, such beautiful hair it was hard to imagine how disgusting it looked on a shower wall. He did not meet the copy of himself that she ended up with, which seemed unfair to him, but having gotten her to leave he did not dare complain.
His new wife was the same. Felt the same. Talked the same. Fucked the same. He waited to see if she would leave hair on the shower wall, and she did. After the first time, he took her in the bathroom and told her to clean up after herself better, and she accepted the instruction meekly, which was the first time she was very much unlike his actual wife. He never found a single shower-hair after that.
He took her to Grandmother’s for Sunday brunch, and his heart pounded, but Grandmother did not notice. The droid had every memory and every nuance, even the ones that annoyed Grandmother.
Every flaw he found in her, he corrected, except those relating to Grandmother that might give the game away. He told her not to touch her fork to her teeth, not to leave hairbands about, not to talk to him while he was on his phone until she had his full attention. These things she did, and it was exactly as satisfying to him as he hoped it would be. All the things he loved about his wife were still there. They laughed at the peccadillos of others. They left parties early and went out for dessert. They slept in on Sunday mornings. After a while, all the bad things were gone, and he no longer had to instruct her. He was simply happy, and she seemed happy also.
Grandmother died. The will was read, and it was shocking. The money was gone. Grandmother had lied to them all, had spent it maintaining a lifestyle, had given lavishly to low-expected-value charities and died with more debt than cash. The house was sold off to cover it and each grandchild got a pittance, a few thousand dollars that felt like a slap in the face.
He went home from the lawyer’s office and found his wife waiting for him. For a moment, coming in the door, he had the feeling that it might be his human wife, that the droid was gone and she’d come home, but then the human called him to ask after her end, and the effect was spoiled. He broke the bad news and sent her her share of the pittance, and she was furious but had no claim against him, only the dead woman.
Life went on. He took his wife out on a date, and happened to see his human wife out at the same restaurant with her droid copy of him. Other diners stared, but things like this were growing less unusual all the time. He stared across the room at himself, wondering what it was that she had excised from him in her moldable copy, knowing that not only would she never tell him, he would never ask. He was too afraid to know how little the things were that had driven her from him and him from her.
That night, after he got home, he and his wife had sex, and then she took a shower. When she was done, he went in and looked at the wall, where there should be disgusting, matted hair but never was now. He found a small clump of hair in the bathroom trash, and knew she had cleaned it, and he burst out crying. She came in and found him crying, and comforted him. She asked what she could do, and he told her to leave her hair on the wall the next time she took a shower, even if he got angry at her for not cleaning up.
After that, the other things came back quickly. He told her to scrape her fork on her teeth, to leave hairbands around the gearshift of his car, to do each of the things that had driven him away from her. He did not want these things to happen, but he needed them to happen. Her hair on the shower wall was still disgusting, only now he felt no anger. He felt gratitude.
Soon she was the same as she had always been. There was not one difference of which he could be sure. And yet, though she was identical to when he was miserable, now he was happy. He had failed in changing her but had changed himself. Every annoyance was confirmation that she had never left, not really, not in any way that mattered.
An echo ringing back across a canyon is the same sound waves that crossed in the first place. It is the yodeler’s voice, not a rebroadcast but the real voice, the thing in itself. Grandmother had spent up the money and given him nothing, but he believed in his heart that he had not violated her trust.
He lay in bed, looking at his sleeping wife on the pillow beside him. He wondered if across town the droid version of him was staring at a human copy of his wife, at that very moment. He wondered again what changes she had made to him. He wondered if she had put them back, as he had. Was there hair on her shower wall? Had he ever really left? Was he the original or a copy someone had restored to its original state? Was he the voice or the echo back across the canyon?
END
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Strange indeed! I see lots of story lines coming out of this idea…