Love to you and Olivier, C.
My dear Peter, January 15, 2086
Yesterday we had a bit of relief from the heat wave, which is expected to move north tomorrow. The past few days have been agony: more deaths, and then I had to use some of my coupons to replace the air conditioner. I’d been saving them to buy Charlie something nice, something to wear for our appointments. You know I don’t like asking you for these things, but would you mind sending me something for her? A dress, or a blouse and a skirt? The drought means there’s very little fabric coming into the city, and when it does, it’s prohibitive. I’m attaching a picture of her here, and her sizes. Normally, of course, I’d have the money, but I’m trying to save as much as I can to give to her when she gets married, especially as I’m still getting paid in gold.
Certain expenses, however, can’t be avoided. It was A. who introduced me to this new marriage broker, the same person he used to arrange his own marriage, to a widowed lesbian. If I needed proof of how diminished my reputation is, it’s that I couldn’t immediately get an appointment with this broker, although he’s known to help anyone who’s affiliated with a state ministry at a senior level. Yet it took A., whom I rarely see anymore, to secure a meeting with him.
I hadn’t liked him from the start. He was tall and bony and unable to make eye contact, and he made it clear in every way he could that he was seeing me as a favor.
“Where do you live?” he asked, although I knew he already knew the basic information of my life.
“Zone Eight,” I said, playing along.
“I usually only see applicants from Zone Fourteen,” he said, which I also already knew, for he had told me this by letter before we even met.
“Yes, and I’m very grateful,” I said, as blandly as I could. For a moment, there was silence. I said nothing. He said nothing. But finally, he sighed—what more could he do, really?—and took out his pad of paper to begin our interview. It was stiflingly hot in his office, even with the air-conditioning. I asked for a glass of water, and he looked affronted, as if I’d asked for something impossible, like brandy or scotch, and then called for his secretary to fetch me some.
And then the real humiliation began. Age? Occupation? What rank? Where exactly did I live in Zone Eight? Assets? Ethnicity? Where had I been born? When had I been naturalized? How long had I been at RU? Was I married? Had I ever been married? To whom? When did he die? How? How many children had we had? Was he my biological child? What had been his father’s ethnicity? His mother’s? Was my son living? When did he die? How? I was here on behalf of my granddaughter, was that correct? Who was her mother? Why, where was she? Was she living? Was my granddaughter my son’s biological child? Had she or my son had any health problems or conditions? With each answer, I could feel the air around me change and change and change, getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer, the years crashing and colliding into one another.
Then came the questions about Charlie, although he had already seen her papers, the scarlet “Enemy Relation” stamp x-ed across her face: How old was she? How much education had she had? What was her height and weight? What were her interests? When had she become sterile, and how? For how long had she taken Xychor? And, finally, what was she like?
It had been a long time since I had had to describe so precisely what Charlie was and wasn’t, what she could and couldn’t do, what she excelled at and what she struggled with: I think I last had to do this when I was trying to secure her a place at her high school. But after I told him the fundamentals, as best I could, I found myself still talking—about how attentive she had been to Little Cat, how, when he was dying, she would follow him from room to room until she had understood that he didn’t want to be followed, that he wanted to be alone; about how, when she slept, her forehead furrowed in a way that made her look not angry but inquisitive and thoughtful; about how, although she could not give me a hug or kiss, she knew, always, when I was sad or worried, and would bring me a cup of water or, when we’d had it, a cup of tea; about how, as a child, just home from the hospital, she would sometimes slump against me after her seizures and let me stroke her head, her hair light and thin and as soft as down; about how the one thing that remained from her pre-sickness life was her scent, something warm and animal, like hot, clean fur after it’s been in the sun; about how she could be resourceful in ways you wouldn’t expect—she was rarely defeated, she would always try. After a while, some part of me realized that the broker had stopped taking notes, that the room was quiet except for my voice, and yet still I talked, even though it felt with every sentence like I was ripping my heart from my chest and then replacing it, again and again—that terrible, awful pain, that overwhelming joy and sorrow I felt whenever I spoke about Charlie.
Finally, I stopped, and into the silence, which was now so complete it vibrated, he said, “And what does she want in a husband?” And here again, I felt that anguish, because the very fact that it was I having this appointment, I and not her, was really all the broker needed to know: Everything else I said about Charlie, everything else she was, would be eclipsed by this fact.
But I told him. Someone kind, I said. Someone protective, someone decent, someone patient. Someone wise. He didn’t have to be rich, or educated, or clever, or good-looking. He just had to promise me that he would protect her forever.
“What do you have to offer him in return?” the broker asked. A dowry, he meant. I had been told that, given Charlie’s “condition,” I would likely have to offer a dowry.
I told him my offer with as much confidence as I could, and his pen paused over the paper, and then he wrote it down.
“I’ll need to meet her,” he said, at last, “and then I’ll know how to direct my search.”
And so, yesterday, we went back. I had debated about whether I should try to coach Charlie, and then had decided not to, because it would be both pointless and anxious-making for her. Consequently, I was much more nervous than she was.
She did well, as well as she could. I have lived with her, and loved her, for so long that it sometimes takes me aback when I watch other people meeting her, when I understand anew that they don’t see her as I do. I know this, of course, but I allow myself the luxury of incomprehension. And then I look at their faces, and there it is again: my heart being ripped from its veins and arteries; my heart being replaced, sucking back into my chest.
The broker told her that he and I were going to talk and that she could wait in the reception area, and I had smiled and nodded at her before following him inside, almost shuffling, as if I were back in school again and had been summoned by the headmaster for causing trouble. I had wished I might faint, or tumble to the floor, something to upset the moment, to garner some sympathy, some sign of humanity. But my body, as always, performed as it ought to, and I sat and stared at this man who could secure my child’s safety.
For a moment, there was silence, each of us staring at the other, before I broke it: I was tired of this theatricality, of how this man understood our vulnerability and how he seemed to enjoy it. I didn’t want to hear him say what I knew he would, but I also wanted him to say it, because then this moment would be over, would be becoming the past. “Do you have anyone in mind?” I asked him.