Tell the Machine Goodnight

by Katie Williams

She didn’t, however, tell him about Mr. Waxler’s amputated finger, worried that Rhett would take to the idea of cutting off bits of himself. A finger weighed, what, at least a few ounces?

That's dark.

Her lips parted, and a bubble formed between them, quivering like a word you can’t speak.

Me, I had nothing to declare. Because I was nothing. I am nothing. I’m not interested in any of it. The doctors say I would be if only I ate more, but they think every true part of me is just another symptom of my condition. What they don’t understand is that my condition is a symptom of me. That I am a stone buried deep in the ground, something that will never grow, no matter how good the dirt.

I just know that if I came back I’d stop eating again. And, look, I’m not saying I want to eat. But for the first time, I maybe want to want to.

“It’s an act of courage,” Thomas went on, “to admit that you are indeed better than other people.”

Damn.

Even though he’d divorced Pearl and married his mistress, Elliot needed intermittent reassurances that Pearl was still in love with him. She didn’t know what he’d do if she ever had a serious boyfriend. Probably kiss him on the corner of his mouth, too.

When I arrived home from school, she would meet me at the door with a description for the day’s pain. Like rocks grinding into my temples. Like a giant squeezing my skull. Like a swarm of bees in my brain.

“We don’t use those words. Tabloids use those words.” And doctors, Pearl thought,

“No more nightmares.” Calla snorted. “A girl can dream.”

She believed in determination to the point of stupidity: lying in the pool of fake blood until it dried and stuck to your skin, practicing death faces in the mirror until you couldn’t look at your reflection for days, paying PAs for insults that no one would deliver to your face.

Maybe it’s just that we’ve known each other the exact amount of time we’re supposed to know each other.

Relatable.

“And I found you!” He points at me. Dad. More delighted by the solution than worried about the mystery.

In this overcrowded, underwhelming world, any gesture, no matter how slight, expressing that one person recognizes another person is a nice thing indeed.

Me too, thanks.

David liked to wear the thank-you T-shirts he’d gotten for his volunteer work. “Homeless Youth Food Drive” on the top and naked on the bottom. “Skin Cancer Fun Run” on the top and naked on the bottom. Pearl began to think of these sessions as “charity fucks.” Suffice it to say, it hadn’t been love.

How have people not highlighted this?

It would’ve been one thing if Elliot had told Pearl that it had been a mistake, leaving her for Val. It would’ve been one thing if he’d promised her he’d still been in love with her the entire time. It would’ve been one thing if he’d said he was sorry. But it was not any of those things. Not a one. All Elliot had had to do was touch her cheek and say, Dove, and Pearl had let him in.