Drowning Practice

by Mike Meginnis

Genres: Family Life; Literary Fiction; Dystopian

Synopsis

Profoundly moving, filled with tenderness, and brought to life by a curious, sprawling imagination, Drowning Practice is the story of a mother and daughter trying to save each other’s lives at what could be the end of the world

One night, everyone on Earth has the same dream—a dream of being guided to a watery death by a loved one on November 1. When they wake up, most people agree: after Halloween, the world will end.

In the wake of this haunting dream and saddled with its uncertainty, Lyd and her daughter, Mott, navigate a changed world, wrestling with how to make choices when you really don’t know what comes next. Embarking on a quixotic road trip filled with a collection of unexpected and memorable characters, Lyd and Mott are determined to live out what could be their final months as fully as possible. But how can Lyd protect Mott and help her achieve her ambitions in a world where inhibitions, desires, and motivations have become unpredictable, and where Mott’s dangerous and conniving father has his own ideas about how his estranged family should spend their last days?

Formally inventive and hauntingly strange, Drowning Practice signals the arrival of a singular new voice in Mike Meginnis, who writes with generosity and precision, humor and sorrowfulness. Stirring and surprising at every turn, Drowning Practice is literary speculative fiction at its best and with a pulsing heart: a mother and daughter trying to decide how they should live out what might be the final months of their—or anyone’s—life on Earth. 

Release date: March 15, 2022

Publisher: Ecco

Print pages: 384

Sample

 

May, Mott

NOT EVERYONE BELIEVED THE WORLD WOULD END THAT YEAR.There remained a few optimists, agnostics, and well-meaning liars who claimed it might endure at least a few months longer, possibly even forever. Until this question was settled, however, there would be little point in spending good money to repair or replace what was broken or used up, and least of all what benefitted children, who would probably never repay such investments. Public schools stopped buying supplies. In the unlikely event that the dream about November proved wrong, they would resume their purchases in December. Taxpayers would thank them for running a surplus.

Mott attended a public middle school for reasons both financial and political, according to her mother, and though some dedicated educators now paid for necessities out of pocket, Mott’s teacher was not one of these. Ms. Rooney attended class each day dressed more or less for the part, but she rarely spoke and often took naps on her desk. Her classroom was down to its last stubs of chalk. Among the dozen long, fluorescent ceiling lights that lit the children, three always flickered and one was entirely spent. These bulbs would never be replaced.

Erica Banach stood in front of the class, a piece of yellow notepaper stretched taut in her hands—it would tear if she pulled any harder. Her knees were covered in Band-Aids. They were shaking and so was her voice. “‘What I Think Will Happen in November.’ That’s the name of my report. I think that everything will be okay. When you hear ‘the end of the world,’ you think about everyone dying. You can’t help it, that’s how you grew up. But there’s another way to think. November might only mean the end of the world as we know it. Would that be so bad? Most people suffer for most of their lives. Most people live in India or China. If everything was different, some things would be better. Maybe in the new world no one will be hungry. Maybe we’ll learn to be nice. In conclusion, I think that’s what will happen. Thank you for your time.”

A student in the front row raised his hand. Erica pointed at him, which meant that he could ask.

“What happened to your eye?”

Erica tore her paper in half. She didn’t mean to do it—she only pulled a little harder.

“When you see a black eye,” she said, “you think of someone being hit by her father. You can’t help it. But my father is a doctor and a good man. He delivered me himself.”

She gave the halves of her report to Mott and went back to her seat.

The children looked to Ms. Rooney. Her head lay on her desk and she was covering her ears.

“I’ll go next,” said Molly Coryell. She walked to the front of the class. “‘What I Think Will Happen in November.’ Everyone will fall down at the same time. If you’re in the grocery store, you’ll fall down in the fruits and veggies. If you’re at your job, your face will fall down on your keyboard and spell a weird word. If you’re at home in your bed, you won’t fall down, but you won’t get up either. Everyone will make a little surprised sound, like they just checked their mailbox and inside there was a letter from their friend.”

No one had any questions for Molly. She gave her paper to Mott and sat down. Ms. Rooney sobbed once.

“I’ll go,” said Malik Boyd. He drew a cloud on one end of the chalkboard, and on the other end a flame. “You already know what’s going to happen in November. The dream was very clear. There’s going to be a flood like the one in the Bible. We’ll drown to death, which is supposed to be a pretty decent way to die, at least compared to all the other ways, and then we’ll have to choose the cloud or the flame. My granddad died from liver failure last year. His car is still parked in our driveway. I worry all the time that it’s going to be stolen. The doors are unlocked, but nobody takes it.”

Malik didn’t wait for questions. He erased what he’d drawn on the board and handed his paper to Mott. It was her turn. She always preferred to go last.

“‘What I Think Will Happen in November,’ by Mott Gabel. I have asked myself one thousand times. We all had the same dream, or close enough to the same, and we all know what the father said. The world will be over, forgotten, or maybe it’s better to say never remembered again. My first memory is I am sitting on a checkered blanket in the park. My mother is scooping potato salad onto my father’s plate. He keeps telling her, ‘A little more, please.’ Soon there’s more on his plate than there is in the bowl. She’s trying not to laugh. He keeps telling her, ‘A little more, please. Just a little more and I’ll be satisfied.’ Finally she can’t hold in the laughter. He says, ‘A little more.’ All of the potato salad is on his paper plate and my mother is dying from laughter. Someone’s blue Frisbee settles on our blanket. No one ever came to claim it, so I still have the Frisbee, and that’s how I know my memory is true. Becoming a person doesn’t happen to you all at once. It takes months or maybe years to learn your name, and then you have to remember it every day. The world has to do the same thing. It’s lucky that when we’re asleep, when we’ve forgotten we’re a world, Australia’s awake to remember. They keep us alive. When November comes and the world is what it is, we’ll all forget our names together. Our bodies will still exist, but we won’t use them anymore. They’ll use themselves.”

Nobody raised a hand and no one asked. She set her paper with the others on her desk. She sat down and tidied the stack. It was quiet in the classroom. Attendance today was less than three-quarters.

The children looked to Ms. Rooney, who was sleeping or pretending.

Erica slapped herself on her own face. The children looked at their desks, most of which were badly vandalized—names scratched into their surfaces, wizards and unicorns drawn with permanent marker, wads of gum stuck there and dried. Erica’s was clean.

Mott said, “I guess that’s enough for today. Remember Monday is a book report. You’re supposed to tell us about the best book that you’ve ever read and try to persuade us to read it. Your title should be ‘If You Read Just One Thing Before November, Make It This.’ Use evidence from your book to support your ideas. Your report should be at least one typewritten page. If you write it by hand, make it two.”

“Class dismissed,” said Malik. “Use your time wisely. You don’t have to leave if you feel safest here.”

About half the students stood, shouldered their backpacks, and shuffled out the door, mumbling goodbyes and invitations. The other half stayed where they were, played with phones, drew in notebooks, read comics, pushed earbuds in too deep, or hunched their shoulders and slumped in their chairs. Erica was one of these. She had removed one of the Band-Aids on her knee too soon. She replaced it with a fresh one from her pocket.

Mott and Malik were among those who left. First Malik put an apple on their teacher’s desk beside her sleeping head.

“She doesn’t deserve you,” said Mott.

“I feel bad for her. She told me her mother is dead.”

“She says that about everyone.”

* * *

Mott and Malik left together because it was safer that way. The halls of the school were empty apart from a cluster of students playing cards on the floor and the girl who slept all day by her locker. Most classrooms were at least two-thirds full, but few students ever moved from one room to another: subjects and specialties were over, extracurriculars forgotten. Each teacher gave as much instruction as they could bear in reading, writing, remedial math, and what history they remembered or saw on TV. Fridays they did an hour on personal hygiene. Children who could not sit still and keep quiet were sent to the principal’s office and never came back. This is not to say they disappeared completely: they were sometimes seen wandering the school before first bell, which had been moved back one hour to accommodate the end of the busing program. Mott didn’t know where the troublemakers went while she was in class. She wasn’t friends with them, would never be, and so could not ask.

Mott and Malik stepped outside. The groundskeepers had all been let go a month back, and now the grass was grown enough to show seed. Butterflies searched the lawn for hidden flowers. Two condiment-colored cars had collided in the parking lot. The drivers, both middle-aged men, chose to avoid confrontation by closing their eyes and waiting for the other one to drive away.

Mott and Malik were going the same way, so they agreed to continue walking together. Mott called her mother. The phone rang twice.

“Hello love,” said her mother. “I haven’t looked at the clock yet, I’ve been feeling very anxious, I don’t know the time. Did they let you out early again?”

“They said it’s some kind of government holiday. Probably they made it up to get out of teaching.”

“Is the weather nice? I haven’t looked behind my curtains.”

“It’s idyllic,” said Mott. “Sun is shining, moderate temperature, cotton-ball clouds, and a pleasant, aromatic breeze. There’s a ladybug on my shirt’s collar.”

Malik searched her shirt for the bug. Mott shook her head and gestured dismissively—he needn’t bother; it did not exist.

“You should come home and do educational activities with me,” said her mother. “We can listen to enriching music. You can read a historically important woman’s biography. I’ll try to finish my work quickly so we can focus on each other once you’re here.”

“I need to go to the library first.”

“Is there somebody with you? Somebody you trust?”

“Malik is with me. After I’m done at the library, I need to go to the grocery store. We’re out of everything. But I promise then I’ll come directly home.”

“Don’t go to the store today. It’s dangerous there. You can do it tomorrow.”

“It won’t be any safer tomorrow,” said Mott. “It could get worse.”

“Maybe I could come with you though. Maybe I can find some courage by then.”

Mott knew that wasn’t going to happen. It hadn’t happened in years.

“Are you breathing on the receiver, Mott? Honestly, it’s very irritating.”

“Sorry Mom, I’m not. You might be hearing yourself.”

“It feels like you’re doing it right on my ear.”

“I’m sorry you feel anxious.”

“Come home soon, okay? Don’t go to the store.”

“I’ll come as soon as we’re done at the library, but the bus might still be late or slow, so please don’t worry if I take a little while, and please don’t call me unless I’m very, very late and you feel too stressed out to wait anymore. I promise I’ll be careful, and I’ll call you if I need your help.”

“You’re sure that you’re not breathing on the phone?”

“Yes ma’am. Try holding your breath and see if it stops.”

They shared a moment of silence, each of them holding her breath. Mott stood still to keep quiet; Malik walked on ahead. Mott’s mother gave a small, happy sigh.

“Did that help?” said Mott.

“I still don’t think it was me. You held your breath too, so it wasn’t much of a test. I’m going to get back to my typing. I want to be done by the time you get home. You know I love you more than the waves love the moon.”

“Am I allowed to say I love you too?”

“You know I would rather you didn’t,” said her mother. “Our relationship’s inherently coercive.” She hung up.

Mott pocketed her phone and jogged to catch up with Malik, who was waiting for her at an intersection. He asked her, “How’s your mom?”

“Still a genius,” said Mott. “But sometimes she’s weird.”

* * *

The library was widely considered a good place for naps. Men who looked like bums and men who looked like fathers slept on all the outside benches. They covered their faces with elbows, newspapers, hats, empty bags. They rolled from side to side and scratched their bellies.

Women stayed inside, using chairs and sofas meant for readers, some with children curled against them. There was a mother sleeping upright on a small bench between the books about crafts and the ones about how to draw. Her baby fed on her left breast; the right breast was covered. Malik apologized to Mott as if the woman’s nakedness was something that he’d done. He took a history of the postbellum South from a shelf. “I also need an atlas.”

On the shelf under the atlases there was a small girl sleeping. She had pushed all the books out of her way, so that now they were heaped on the floor.

“This is all I needed,” said Malik. “What are you getting?”

“Three novels. You should get one too. Take my mother’s third and final book—it was highly underrated. Did you know that she was on a list of the best twenty women writers under forty? The order wasn’t supposed to mean anything, but they did put her first on the list, and you know they wouldn’t do that without thinking it over. Her picture was on the magazine’s cover.”

“I don’t have time for fiction,” said Malik, which made Mott want to slug him.

The younger librarian at the reference desk slept upright in her chair, horn-rimmed glasses hanging from a silver thread around her neck. The elder librarian was reading Little Women. Her white hair was thin like not enough icing.

Mott cleared her throat. “What are the best three novels ever written in English, including translations? I trust your opinion.”

The elder librarian glanced up from her book. “Little Women is one of them,” she said. “I don’t know that I can say for sure about the others.”

Mott clapped her hands together once, too hard. The sound filled the library. The younger librarian stirred, but her eyes remained closed. “I need you to help me,” said Mott. “My mother never tells me what novels to read. She feels that it would poison our relationship, that I would not love the books she chose and that she would hate me for it. So it all comes down to you. What are the three greatest books ever written?”

“That depends on your taste.”

“No it really doesn’t. You can be honest. We don’t have much time.”

The elder librarian tore the title page from Little Womenand wrote the names of two more books beneath that first. “Get these.”

* * *

The woman at the checkout desk asked Mott and Malik if they would like to put the books on their cards. “You can just take them if you want,” she said. “Nobody cares.”

“Put mine on my card, please,” said Mott.

“I’ll just take mine,” said Malik. “I’m not coming back.”

Outside, at the bus stop, Mott asked Malik what he’d meant. He looked to the horizon. “I’m going to travel all around the country with my parents. They want me to see where I come from before the world ends.”

“We were almost friends,” said Mott. “We were getting so close. Now you’re leaving.”

“We are friends. You just don’t know what it’s like.”

The bus was late. Mott imagined her mother was already starting to panic.

“I probably won’t be at school on Monday,” said Malik. “My mom says we’re leaving first thing.”

“Can I have your number?” said Mott. She looked at her feet.

“I don’t have a phone, but my brother does. I’ll give you his.”

The bus arrived and let them on. They would ride together for three stops, and then Malik would leave. Mott would ride alone for two more.

“Do you believe in God?” said Malik.

Mott couldn’t think of a not-cruel response. She shook her head.

“That’s okay,” said Malik. “Heaven and Hell are pretty much the same thing. I don’t like to think about either.”

Mott opened Little Women and started to read.

May, Lyd

EARLIER THAT YEAR, ON THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 9, EVERY LIVING person on Earth had dreamed about a visitation from a man who was like a father. He said the world would end in November. Most people immediately accepted—though only a few would admit it to anyone else the next morning—that this was the truth, not only because they saw compelling evidence everywhere around them, and not only because this was the first recorded occasion of a globally unanimous dream, but because they were so tired.

A vocal minority—people for whom the current way of things was working well, who were mostly wealthy, powerful, or chemically imbalanced such that they felt good all the time—would have preferred that the world should persist forever, and largely unchanged. However, the majority discovered, though most would never speak these words aloud, that they were glad to know it wouldn’t always be this way.

Lyd was the kind of person who mostly felt bad all the time. She responded to the dream by dedicating several weeks to mourning. From the moment that Mott left for school until the moment of her scheduled return, Lyd wept relentlessly. She wept for Mott, for herself, and for the books that she had written, which were supposed to outlive her. When Mott was due home, Lyd forced herself to stop, and rubbed her face with an expired moisturizing lotion, which she believed reduced the swelling.

Lyd found some pleasure in exploring the heights and depths of her own capacity for misery, but the best thing about this dark time was that she felt entirely justified ignoring her job, disregarding every message from the boss, deleting his emails, and offering no explanation. Instead she focused on eating shortbread cookies, drinking instant lemonade, and writing long, nasty letters that she would never send to the book-club women who had asked her prying questions years before regarding her first novel and its presumed connections to her private life.

After the third week of tears, the effort of grief proved too much to sustain. Lyd began to worry she wouldn’t make rent. She threw away her lotion bottle. “At least I know that I won’t have to do this job forever,” she said, addressing her empty apartment. It was good to have an end in sight. She returned to her work with new vigor. The days flew by.

* * *

Lyd consulted the wall clock that was glued to her living room window. The time was half past three. Her daughter should already be home. The sun was lost somewhere behind the clock’s face.

A man in yellow pajamas stood on the roof of the hotel across the street. It was possible he did not plan to jump, but the odds were not in his favor. Lyd put her nose to the glass and squinted until she could make out what he was holding—a large, blue rotary phone. He cradled it against his stomach, advancing toward the roof’s edge, peering down at the sidewalk below. He knelt and set down the phone, nudged it over, watched it fall.

Lyd drew her black curtains closed so as to hide her clock, the man in the yellow pajamas, and his exploded telephone. She focused on her breathing. She bit her thumb’s knuckle and kissed the back of her own hand. She told herself to be patient and calm. Soon her daughter would be home. Everything would be much better.

Lyd resumed her seat at the dining room table, which also served her as a desk. It was centered in the dining room, which also served in her apartment as a kitchen, living room, library, and office. Her work computer hummed. She smoothed the small piece of electrical tape that covered her monitor where otherwise the time would be displayed. The ends were already curling, and every time she touched it things got worse.

She removed the black cloth draped over the webcam that watched her work. This was her way of clocking back in—when the webcam could see her, that meant she was on the job. When it could not, that meant she was at home.

She typed, I want to be done for today. She typed, Mott come home. She typed, Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing. She typed what could have been the first sentence of a short, unpleasant story. She deleted everything she’d typed.

She gazed into the webcam. It was a gray, eye-shaped device that clipped onto the top edge of her monitor. There was a lens on the side that faced her, ringed with glowing blue, which meant the eye was watching. That blue light never turned off, and the eye never stopped. It was a security measure—mandated by the United States Congress and secret NSA policies, according to her boss.

Lyd inserted her right earbud and tucked the left inside her housecoat’s collar. This way she would definitely hear the phone ring if Mott called again before she was done with her work. Using her right foot, she depressed a pedal underneath the table. There was a hiss and then her former husband David’s voice, which was both deep and brittle, with a tendency to whistle slightly on sibilant sounds: “The subject grows increasingly paranoid.”

Lyd typed, The subject grows increasingly paranoid. “She believes the government is listening to her calls. The fact she’s right doesn’t make it rational.” His voice was slowed for her convenience—dilated, low, and strange. She lifted her foot off the pedal, depressed it again. The audio rewound two seconds, repeated itself: “. . . fact she’s right doesn’t make it rational.” Lyd typed this too. “If you’re not rational, you’re wrong.”

David had claimed to be a spy since the fifth year of their marriage, though he’d consistently refused to disclose which agency employed him. Supposedly he had worked his way up the ranks. Supposedly he had indirectly saved the lives of both major parties’ presidential candidates some years ago. Supposedly he was now one of his agency’s top men, highly valued and well compensated. Lyd worked for the government by way of David, typing documents from his dictation. Technically she was a contractor, like the people who build airplanes and long-range artillery. David mostly sent her loosely structured observations about the many people he surveilled. As Lyd understood it, these were grist for memos that would become the quasi-legal basis for further wiretaps, warrants, asset seizures, entrapments, and arrests. The work was sporadic and ethically dicey, but it paid an above-average wage, and she could do it from home. If she still wrote fiction, it would have been a perfect way to make ends meet while she worked on her books. But she didn’t write anymore.

“She has no evidence,” said David. “I don’t allow her any. She claims to sometimes hear a third party’s labored breathing on the line, a man’s, and she says that this is me, or rather she says it’s a government agent, but of course that’s ridiculous. A phone tap doesn’t go both ways. She isn’t hearing anything.”

Lyd typed, She isn’t hearing anything.

“She often speaks to work acquaintances and family in what I think is meant to be a code, each word freighted with a second meaning. But no one ever understands my subject, and no one believes her.” Lyd typed, No one believes her.

Lyd lifted her foot from the pedal. The phone was not ringing. She decided not to check the clock again just yet.

She depressed the pedal. “Last night I caught a call in progress, an old woman and a young man. I assumed she was his mother. She was begging him for money. She said that she would be evicted. He said he was sorry. She said that she was eating cat food. He said he was struggling too. At this point I realized they were strangers. She had called him by mistake, a wrong number. But he kept giving her reasons to hope that maybe he would change his mind and send some money, and so she stayed on the line, and they kept each other company that way. People are really that lonely.”

Lyd typed, People are really that lonely.

“Sometimes I’m really that lonely,” said David. “Sometimes I miss you. Sometimes I forget how impossible you made everything, and I wish that you were with me again.”

Lyd lifted her foot from the pedal and looked at the phone, removing her earbud to make certain she would hear if it were ringing. Mott was smart and brave. She was careful too. There was no need for Lyd to call. If she called, the ringtone would draw attention to Mott on the bus, assuming that she was still on the bus, which any kind of person might be riding. Someone might talk to her, hurt her, or try to take her. Even if none of that happened—probably it wouldn’t happen—Mott would still be annoyed, would feel that she was not being trusted, and so might not answer the next time, and if Mott ever failed to pick up then Lyd might well die from the stress. And even if she did call and Mott did answer then Lyd would be afraid for her again as soon as they hung up, just as she already was, so nothing would be changed.

Lyd promised herself, repeating it to the apartment again and again, with no way of knowing, that Mott would be safe—that very soon now, her Mott would come home.

* * *

Lyd peeked behind her black curtains. The man in the yellow pajamas was seated on the hotel’s roof as if poolside, dangling his feet over the edge. The clock showed quarter after four. Mott was late. The bus should not take so long.

There was half an hour left in David’s recording, but Lyd couldn’t hear him anymore over the thrum of her anxiety. She decided to finish tomorrow. She draped the black cloth over the government’s webcam so she could be home. She turned off her monitor and tidied her work area. She cleaned the frying pan that she would use to make grilled cheese for dinner. She set the table. Though she was confident the webcam could not see her through its cloth, she avoided stepping into the theoretical cone of its vision whenever possible.

She walked a circuit of the apartment, concluding with Mott’s room. She touched the back of her hand to Mott’s pillow, which was pleasantly cool, and stood this way until the pillow warmed.

She bit her nails, but they were already bitten.

She yanked out one of her own hairs and turned it in the light of an end table’s lamp. It was unusually fine for one of her grays, such that there were certain angles where it seemed to disappear. She needed to believe that Mott was safe. She promised herself it was true.

She needed coffee. She went to start a pot but discovered there was one already made and long gone cold. She poured it out but did not start another. The coffee maker’s clock was also taped over, despite the fact that it was always wrong. She had done the same thing to the stove’s clock and the microwave’s, which sometimes made cooking a challenge. She stared at the phone.

She gave in and dialed Mott’s number. A phone rang outside the apartment’s front door.

“Mom?” said Mott, not through the phone. “I’m here.”

Lyd nearly tripped on her own feet running. She unlocked the doorknob, the dead bolt, and the chain, and backed into the living room. “Come in!” she called.

Mott came inside, closed and locked the door behind her, fastened its chain. She slipped out of her shoes without undoing the laces, nudged them up against the wall. Lyd hugged her fiercely. “Sorry I’m late,” said Mott. “The bus ran out of gas.”

“It ran out?”

“When the driver said so, I thought she was kidding. Then she pulled over, got out of the bus, and walked away. Forever later, she came back and I guess filled up the tank, or maybe she was lying, but anyway we started moving again.” Mott lay down on the couch. “It’s really sunny out today. It got hot inside the bus. No one was saying anything. We all just waited. I was scared at first, and then I was just bored and tired.”

“You could have called me.”

“I didn’t want you to freak out,” said Mott. She closed her eyes. “I guess you freaked out anyway.”

“Can I hold you?”

Mott sat up to make room. Lyd took the offered seat and Mott lay down across her lap. Lyd stroked her daughter’s hair. Mott kissed her mother’s hand.

* * *

Lyd made grilled cheese while Mott drank green tea and graded essays. Lyd asked how the students were doing.

“They’ve stopped learning. I’m the only one who earned an A today.”

Lyd set out a plate of greasy sandwiches. “Is it possible that you’re not being totally objective?”

Mott shook her head. “I keep getting better. It’s because I read great novels.”

She tore a sandwich in two, ate half in four bites.

She said, “Do you think I could have been a writer like you used to be?”

“Maybe you should ask me that again tomorrow. Maybe you should reconsider your phrasing when you do. I’m still a writer. Some people write just one great book and everyone calls them a writer forever regardless. I wrote three good books. It’s important to quit before you tarnish the work that you’ve already done. You know this.”

“Sorry Mom,” said Mott, but Lyd knew she wasn’t. Mott felt for others in her own way, in her own time. When she was sorry for what she had said, she would turn on the stereo and put on an album that Lyd liked. She would make them both a peanut butter jelly. She would go outside and take pictures of things that Lyd might like to see: flowers, beetles, fire hydrants, bus stops, trees, anything that looked like a face. She would email the pictures to Lyd as she took them.

Lyd used to tell herself that someday her daughter would learn how not to hurt people without meaning to. First Mott would move out on her own. She would make friends and drink at parties. She would say some bad opinions just a little bit too loud. She would love someone who didn’t deserve it. She would work a grinding job, surrounded by human mediocrities and slackers. She would spend whole weeks not speaking to her mother. These things would make her softer.

Lyd couldn’t believe anymore. There wasn’t time enough for Mott to change or learn or grow. Who she was now was all she would be.

Lyd pushed Mott’s hair aside and kissed her forehead. This was the girl she had made. This was the girl she loved.

* * *

That night Lyd dreamed that Mott’s bedroom door refused to let her inside. In the dream it was not clear whether Mott was actually in the room. That didn’t seem to matter. Outraged by the door’s intransigence, Lyd built a fire in the hall.

She woke with a burning throat and an ugly, bitter flavor in her mouth—the results of stomach acid. The hour was both small and dark. She went to the kitchen and mixed a glass of instant lemonade with twice the recommended powder. This helped a little with the taste.

Lyd knew that she would be incapable of sleep for at least the next two hours, and that the time would pass more quickly if she put it to practical use. Seeing as she was, per Mott, no longer a writer, that left her day job. She sat down at the table that was also her desk. She took the black cloth off the government’s webcam. She inserted her right earbud, tucking the left inside her housecoat’s collar so that she would definitely hear if Mott came out of her room.

Lyd depressed the pedal. Soon there was a sound she recognized as David sucking on a joint. Like Lyd, David was the kind of person who mostly felt bad all the time, but he aspired to always feel good, and so he daily engineered a different chemical imbalance. He coughed into the microphone, thumped his chest, and cleared his throat. “Sorry Lydia,” he said.

She sighed and lifted her foot from the pedal. Once he spoke her name, it meant that he was finished working. Everything else in the audio file would be him speaking directly to her, saying things he wanted her to know. It was Lyd’s firm policy that these were not love letters but professional dictations. She would type each word, including each promise, each tearful confession, each lecture on quantum mechanics, every sexual reminiscence, and all in the same fixed-width government font, ...