The First Lady, the droid, the dog, and the baby are all on the square of green, each making their own distinct movements. The First Lady stalks the borders, crossing where the droid has just mown, the dog pacing a line behind the baby’s cot. A queen, a knight, a pawn, and a king-in-waiting.
“Look, Heron,” I say, and he turns his head downward and burbles his delightful bird nonsense in agreement. It is so soothing to watch the droid mow the lawn. He begins at the edges and works his way toward the center, like he’s resolving a puzzle.
The First Lady straightens up and looks at the flowers laid in her basket. She touches her fingers with such delicacy to the blooms, turning some, shaking them free, before laying the scissors across the stems and turning back toward the house.
She and the droid pass whisper close, each ignoring the other. She passes the cot and places a single stem on top of the baby’s blanket. I watch, delighted, as he picks it up in his little fist and swings it about, petals falling onto him. Although I admire the grace of the First Lady, there is something satisfying too about seeing the unembarrassed grasp of her son, the destruction that he brings to learning about the world.
I take a seat, thinking I will watch the last perambulations of the droid. I invite Heron up onto my hand, and together we lean forward toward the glass. The droid passes behind the cot, and my eyes, as so often before, delight at the effect of the grass brightening from dark green to light as his blades pass over it. It is like when I smooth my hand across the velvet of the chaise, leaving a swath through it, swish.
My eyes return to the baby. His fist is smushed up against his mouth, his eyes screwed nearly shut. The flower and its stalk that he was just waving are nowhere to be seen. I recalibrate, look deep and close into the grass around his cot, and see no sign of its having been dropped. When I bring my wide-open eyes back to him, I see his head trembling side to side, and a slight tremor in his spine, lifting his head from the softness of the blanket. The longer I look the more certain I am. There is a change coming over his body that I have not seen before. A stiffness, a panic.
Carefully, my own hand a tense talon, I transfer Heron onto the top of his cage and lean further forward in my seat toward the window. I keep my eyes calibrated to take in the tiniest scraps of information. A red flush passes over the baby’s forehead, and then a paleness follows, as if chasing it away. A pall, like smog over the sun, is sickening his complexion.
At this moment, an area of my wiring that I did not even know was there buzzes with life, and I am on my feet, my fingertips pressing the glass. I beat my fist on the window, to make either the dog or the droid look up toward me. But each cuts their own mysterious path across the lawn, unaware of what is happening beside them.
For a moment after my fist has struck the glass, making only a dull thud that is absorbed back into the room, nothing happens. The garden is suspended. A dragonfly drops down between branches, accentuating the stillness around it. Then I register movement at the edge of the scene. The First Lady running across the immaculate lawn, arms out, toward the cot.
Her back to me, she leans over and raises the baby up into the air. He is soft, inert, as if set to Rest Mode. I focus on his face, visible over the First Lady’s shoulder, and see only a peaceable blankness there. The First Lady, her back still toward me, her face hidden, flips him swiftly over onto his stomach and, to my amazement, hits him firmly on the back. Once, twice. Again. His little bottom jiggles in his fleecy baby suit, and then, clear as a bell, a single cry.
She turns him to face her, holding him under his freshly flailing arms, and I see his face, changed again, full of red fury at being restarted so unceremoniously. The poor thing. I almost want to laugh at his obvious indignation. A Human laugh, I would dare to venture. A laugh mixed with relief. The First Lady finally seems to relent, softens her stiff arms, and lays him down onto her shoulder. I watch her bend her knees, bouncing them both, turning a lazy half circle on the fresh green. And she looks up.
What story does my face tell? The traces of laughter, the furrow of concern? My palm is still flat to the glass, my forehead tilted onto its cool surface. But as her eyes rise from the arena of the lawn and meet mine, I recoil. There is accusation, as if I have been caught spying on something that is not my concern. I have intruded on her privacy. I press my hands together in a gesture of apology, bow my head slightly, and withdraw.
TUNING
The events in the garden weigh heavily on me. For one, I cannot help but wonder how the baby felt when he was restarted. If his conception was a switch being flicked, what of the pause I just witnessed? Where did he go?
Worse, I could see that the baby was coming to harm, and yet I was unable to stop it. Thank goodness that the First Lady realized what was happening. But still, I feel as if I have failed in my role. I find myself in a heightened state. There is an extra layer of alertness that has been introduced. Perhaps what Humans recognize as anxiety. Where before I would try to shut out any noises I overheard from downstairs, now I find that I tune in to them, in case another emergency might arise. The fragility of the baby has been brought home to me—imagine one’s life being in danger from something so flimsy and pretty as a flower.
Processing this, I wonder whether I could be of more help, to my Husband and the First Lady, if I was allowed a little more freedom to move about the house, outside of my room. I could be on hand to watch the baby when the First Lady is doing other things. I would sit in the corner of the baby’s room quite happily, while my Husband didn’t need me for anything else. The more I think about it, the more sound this idea seems to be. And I should so like to see the baby up close, unmediated by glass.
When my Husband comes to see me I am eager to share my idea, expecting it to please him. But he seems irritated.
“Out of the question,” he says without a pause. “She—we—wouldn’t feel comfortable with that. She’s getting on just fine.”
“Of course,” I say, and bow my head to show I accept what he says. And yet, something still nags at me. Perhaps he has not understood that my intention is purely to be helpful. He was not there when the baby swallowed the flower, after all. Perhaps he doesn’t even know about it.
“But, I do spend so much time alone. I was thinking it might be a help. To the First Lady. That is all.”
“I know, Sylv.ie, I know,” he says, drawing my head to his collarbone, and his free hand slides up my thigh. “But please, try and see it from her point of view. As a woman. So much of their role has been . . .” He pauses, as he often does when he’s searching his vocabulary for a word with less sting than the first that came to him. “. . . shared. With you Dolls. Being a good mother means more than it ever did.”
He tilts my chin up so he can look into my face, to see the effect of his words. “It’s not easy, Sylv.ie, for me, to keep all these demands balanced. To keep you both happy. You can understand that, can’t you? For me?”