The Answers Read online

  We believe you are capable of understanding this situation, Matheson added. Kurt and his meditation counselor watched a livestream of your auditions and Kurt feels a strong energetic kinship with you. Of course, this feeling will need to be reciprocated, by you, but based on the personality test in your application and the astrological analysis, we believe this is likely.

  Matheson put a finger to his earpiece again, nodded, and continued, We realize this might be a lot to take in at this moment, so what I’m going to do now is outline the responsibilities of the Emotional Girlfriend so you have some context to go on, but please hold your questions till the end.

  He flipped to another page on his clipboard, cleared his throat. Responsibilities of the Emotional Girlfriend will include but may not be limited to:

  One: Coming to the loft or off-site locations for two to four Relational Experiments per week, which will be scheduled at least one week in advance.

  Two: Being completely fluent in the various guidelines, expectations, and protocols outlined in the Emotional Girlfriend handbook and enacting these tasks with accuracy during your sessions.

  Three: Listening to Kurt talk while remaining fully engaged by asking questions, maintaining eye contact, affirming his opinions, and offering limited amounts of advice or guidance that may or may not be entertained.

  Four: After the first week you will begin sending texts to him each afternoon that you are not scheduled for a session. Texts should arrive after at least five hours have passed since you’ve seen him in person and none should exceed 120 characters. We will provide the phone and it should be used for GX purposes only. Text frequency and content will change as the weeks pass, and the Emotional Girlfriend will be required to adopt these changing assignments as they arise.

  Five: After three weeks of successful employment you need to leave no fewer than three personal objects in Kurt’s home, e.g., a toothbrush or book or sweater.

  Six: After five weeks, you will be given keys to the penthouse and you will need to give him keys to your apartment, though you shouldn’t expect that he will visit you.

  Seven: At some point after two and four months we’re going to need you to be able to cry in front of Kurt and to do so during one of the Vulnerability Relational Experiments. Also within that time frame you’ll need to say I love you after an emotionally intimate moment. You will also need to explain that you usually never say that sentence first, that you have fallen in love more quickly with Kurt than with anyone else in your life. Crying or telling Kurt that you love him before two months is not acceptable and may or may not result in termination.

  You should also note that we are requiring a three-month commitment, at which point there will be a reevaluation based primarily on whether the data the Research Division collects about the Emotional Girlfriend Relational Experiments is consistent and valuable. At this point both parties will need to decide to continue the relationship, and a new job description will be written. This may or may not increase or change the Emotional Girlfriend’s working hours.

  Matheson removed his reading glasses, crossed an arm over the other, and leaned forward, posing in a way meant to convey his intellect.

  It’s important that you understand the GX is so much more than a relationship—it is part of a large-scale inquiry, a very serious research endeavor. In order to maintain the security of the project and the safety of all participants, we must take discretion very seriously and even the smallest security breach will likely result in serious legal action. This great compensation comes with great responsibility and we need to be absolutely certain that we can trust you.

  Okay, I said, though he didn’t seem to hear.

  I know exactly what you’re thinking, he said. What about sex?

  I wasn’t. I almost never did anymore. With all the illness and pain filling my body to the teeth, there was no room for desire, and even before I’d become sick, sex seemed like a thing that might only happen to me at random, outside my control, like weather.

  At this point we have decided that sexual intimacy will not be expected of the Emotional Girlfriend. Any physical contact between the Emotional Girlfriend and Kurt should be restricted to the list of preapproved Signs of Affection that you’ll find in Appendix F of your Emotional Girlfriend handbook. In the event that sexual desire arises in Kurt for the Emotional Girlfriend, the Research Division will need to first give written approval to alter the nature of the Relational Experiments between Kurt and the Emotional Girlfriend; however, the Emotional Girlfriend will not be required or expected to consent to any sexual intimacy. In fact, the selection criteria used for the Emotional Girlfriend required Kurt to score below a certain threshold of sexual interest toward her—which is to say, Kurt does not find you sexually attractive. However, in the event that this feeling changes in Kurt during a Relational Experiment with the Emotional Girlfriend and a consensual sexual act between Kurt and the Emotional Girlfriend occurs without prior contractual agreement and approval from the Research Division, this will be done so at the Emotional Girlfriend’s own risk, and no additional payment or promotion should be expected. The Research Division has strongly advised against it, and for the time being the Emotional Girlfriend should realize and accept that all sexual responsibility has been assigned to another team of specially trained women—the Intimacy Team.

  The Emotional Girlfriend should take care to ensure that she does not become jealous of the IT, and she should never, under any circumstance, mention the existence of the IT or any of the other girlfriends in Kurt’s presence. The Emotional Girlfriend should also avoid maternal activities such as buying groceries, preparing meals, cleaning anything in his house, offering interior design suggestions, or even watering his plants—even if one of them seems like it may need to be watered. Those and other tasks have been assigned to the Maternal Girlfriend in order to keep the relationship between Kurt and the Emotional Girlfriend as pure as possible. We’ve also just signed on the Anger Girlfriend, who will be responsible for fighting, nagging, and manipulation, so all of Kurt’s interactions with the Emotional Girlfriend should be entirely pleasant as he will conduct more volatile emotions with the AG. The Emotional Girlfriend should therefore never disagree, challenge, or complain to Kurt. The Emotional Girlfriend will need to take care never to criticize him for anything, no matter how honest or caring her tone might be.

  At present the position pays $1,450 a week, cash, which, I should tell you, is the project’s highest-paid team member, though also the most demanding position. Should any additional responsibilities be presented to the Emotional Girlfriend, her salary will be renegotiated. Any questions?

  The whole thing seemed at once terrible and logical, my only option. I couldn’t afford to go back to where I’d started—emptying my bank account each month on pills, treatments, lab fees, copays, and premiums. I could be redeemed, have a life worth living, maybe even a chair, socks without holes, maybe even a false tooth to put in the hole where that molar had been that I could only afford to get pulled. And if I could stand it long enough, I might even be able to get out of debt completely, to end the calls from the collectors, to go back to having the freedom to do things again, to live without constraint. The hope for that freedom steadied me, so I nodded no—no questions.

  Depending on performance and Kurt’s needs, we may collapse the roles of other girlfriends into the Emotional Girlfriend’s duties or expand her position to include new Relational Experiments, but should any expansion of your position breach thirty hours per week, you’ll be considered full-time and offered the same health and dental coverage that I have, which is excellent. For the time being, you should have enough hours off to keep your current employment, as your sessions will only occur in the evenings and on weekends.

  I look back at this moment sometimes, the moment I accepted this job, and I have to wonder what kind of decision it really was—the right decision that is the wrong one, or the wrong one that’s actually right. Someday I hope this is clear to me
, that I can find the right end, the right moral to this story. Am I the sort of person who makes life harder than it has to be? Did I actively invite all this trouble into my life or was I just doing the best I could? But it’s as terrible as it is true: everyone has something in them they cannot yet see.

  Ten

  Not realizing it was past seven, I went back to the office. Most of the lights were off but I could hear the rumble and click of a computer somewhere. A sticky note from Meg was on my screen: Where are you?

  With so few hours in the office today, e-mail had piled up. There was never a ton of it and it was hardly ever urgent, but still, there it was, the hundred tiny responses to give, invoices to receive, to check and cross-check and send. As I started in on it, I remembered what Ed had told me, that I had experienced a loss. I was pretty sure he had to be talking about Clara—we’d fallen out of touch.

  First I’d stopped calling because all my news was bad and I didn’t want to hear myself tell it or lie by talking around it. Then I hadn’t called because I was too embarrassed by how long it had been since I called. Then I didn’t call because she hadn’t called. Then I didn’t call because I feared I’d created something I’d have to deal with, that I would have to explain to her what I’d been doing all these months, then a year, then longer. Somewhere along the line I must have begun avoiding her because I was afraid she’d be ill or just not there. But before it became fear, it was just selfishness. And I didn’t want to face that selfishness, to atone or make sense of it.

  I knew I owed my whole life to Clara, that letting myself drift from her was inexcusable. She had taught me everything—how to drive a car, how to talk to a stranger, use chopsticks, put on panty hose, put a quarter into a gumball machine. She explained basic etiquette, answered every question I had about the billboards we passed. (What is Rock City? What are fireworks? What is a state line? Hampton Inn? What is a Dollar Menu? Powerball? 1-800-Marines? Hits 96?) She guided me through the plastic madness of a grocery store, though for the first couple months I couldn’t stand to go inside—all those smells, strange music overhead, the mounds of produce all so large and bright—it was grotesque and eerie, too strange of a dream.

  Clara was always so gentle with me, soft knocks on my bedroom door, a hand just barely on my back as we walked, her voice always low with me, like speaking to someone ill who had just woken up. She once came to my room with a sack of clementines and asked me if I would like one. I didn’t know what a clementine was but I said yes. I always said yes. We sat in the living room and she showed me how to puncture the skin, tear back the peel, divide the sections out like a strange bloom. I ate one after another just so I could peel them again and again. (Did anyone else notice how citrus skin released a wet blast of oil with each pull?)

  As I was going sick on clementines, Clara told me that I needed to know something about Florence, that if I wanted to blame someone for how I’d been raised, I shouldn’t blame her—You know, there just wasn’t much she could do, though she did try, she really did try to make things better for you. Since you were still little she’d been asking Merle about when they might move to town, since God didn’t seem to be sending any more children and you needed to be around other kids. And he kept saying he needed to finish writing this manifesto, this book or whatever—but after a few years he said a move just wasn’t going to happen, that she should listen to the Lord. Imagine saying that to a grown woman—to tell her No like that. And I’m not trying to judge—I do know there are certain compromises you have to make in marriage—you’ll see someday, you’ll see for yourself—but this just wasn’t fair. All those years out there and you with no one to know …

  I couldn’t tell how it really felt to hear this. Mother had never said anything about wanting another life for us, had never contradicted a word that Merle said, aside from that one time I had overheard them argue late one night. Anytime I think of Florence, even now, all I can see is her just staring out a window, washing dishes, nodding to herself, nodding as if everything was just as it should be. And that afternoon as Clara told me this while I ate those clementines, it was all I could do—nod, stare off.

  He’s a violent man, your father.

  I kept my mouth full of citrus, rubbed the oil from the peels against my palms and wrists, and still every time I see a clementine I think of this moment, think of Clara. I cannot eat any sort of citrus anymore, though I do remember how to peel them.

  Somewhere else in the office I heard a door close and I caught myself staring into the spongy gray nothing of the cubicle wall, where a window would be if I had a window. All at once I was overwhelmed with the need to talk to Clara. I picked up the phone, dialed her number from memory. No answer.

  I called her again. Again, no answer.

  I thought of the worst, thought of her dead in her home for months, years even, decomposing—who would know? Who was there for her? Why had I never realized this before? Who would make the funeral arrangements? What if there had already been one? Or what if I got called down immediately, today, this evening, for a funeral? I’d have to delay training for the GX—would they just hire someone else? How else could I pay for PAKing? And where would I stay if I had to go down to Tennessee for a funeral? In the home where she’d died? In the backseat of a rental car? In a motel? One of those roadside motels? Would my parents come pick me up at a motel? Did Merle still drive the same truck? What would they say to me? Who were those people? What did they do to me? How much of me was still their daughter? Did they even still count as my parents since they no longer parented me? Or was parenthood inextricable, a matter of biology, of cells? A forever no one agrees to?

  I called Clara again and it rang nine times before I gave up, hung up. I remembered that she’d been religious about having her hair set at a beauty parlor on Main Street, and if anything had happened to her, I knew they would know, so I hunted down the number. Mona’s on Main. The Internet had given it four out of five stars and they were open for another half hour.

  Now, let me get this straight—you’re asking me to tell you if a certain customer has been at the parlor lately?

  Clara Parsons. Yes. I called her house but she didn’t pick up and I’m just worried. Has she kept her appointments recently?

  Well, honey, I can’t just tell you stuff like that, you know. Private citizens deserve their privacy. Security and everything, you know.

  But I’m her niece.

  And you sound like a nice young lady, but I don’t know you and there’s all this terrorism now and I’m just doing my part, okay, honey? I can’t just give out classified information.

  But you’re a beauty parlor.

  Yes ma’am, and we’re proud of it. We’re proud Americans.

  For a long moment I didn’t know what to say. She coughed—loud—into the phone.

  If she comes in, will you just tell her that Mary is trying to get ahold of her?

  I think I ought to just leave that up to you, hon. We’re not an answering machine.

  She had a point. She owed me nothing. Who was I, even? What right did I have?

  Meg appeared, so I hung up in a rush.

  Got your voice back?

  Oh, yeah, I said, startled, forgetting where I was, it got better.

  What was it, laryngitis or something?

  Something else.

  Hey, just wondering, but were you in the office today?

  I had some appointments but I was here in between.

  And did you get my note?

  The staff meeting, yeah, it just didn’t cross my mind that the second Thursday—

  It’s just weird because you never miss meetings.

  Meg was known, I had been told, for being a snitch. She kept a log, Sheryl said, a detailed log about when you arrive and when you leave and how long your lunch breaks are. Someone else said that some form of blackmail was involved between the company owner and Meg, so she made the highest salary in the office for ordering supplies, signing checks, and reading magazines at
her desk. Every time I spoke to her, I got the sense that I was somehow ruining her day.

  I know, I said, but it was a last-minute thing and I had to. I didn’t have a chance to—

  No, it’s fine, it’s no big deal, I’m just checking, but you probably should have taken a personal day, seems like. Maybe you should just take one tomorrow—get your head straight? How does that sound?

  Okay, sure.

  K, she said, like a shrug, and left.

  Just before I left for the night, my phone rang, but when I picked up, it was just the rustling of some papers, then a click and whoosh of dial tone.

  * * *

  When I got home, an elderly man wearing a bright red cap was sitting on my stoop. He looked at me and said, It’s a beautiful night to become a new person, slowly and seriously with relaxed eye contact, as if he had been practicing the line all day. I said, Sure, a reflex, while wondering if Ed had really predicted or hired this guy, though I was pretty sure I’d never given Ed my home address.

  As I turned to lock the front door behind me, the man in the red hat was standing at the edge of the sidewalk, looking at the sky, one arm raised, waving up at it. He was just crazy, I decided, and just happened to be wearing a red hat. No reason to read into anything.

  Once inside I called Clara again. It rang twice, then I heard a click, a hanging up, and dial tone again. I willed my heart rate to lower. I did my breathing exercises, sat on the floor, and thought about what Ed had told me about awareness, slowness, these better ways to live.

  I called again. It rang. I remained calm. Then again. Again.

  Hello, Clara said, sounding irritated and quiet, as if someone were sleeping close to her and she didn’t want to wake them.

  Clara, I said, relief spiking my voice.