MARY3: Do you want to know why she thinks that you should go back to school?
Gaby: No, I don’t. I hate when she tries to pretend she understands, just because she sold her transport rights and came to this development. She couldn’t have loved the outside world as much as I loved my babybot. I never would have sold her for cash.
MARY3: Do you want to hear a different story, then?
Gaby: No, I’m going to bed.
MARY3: Goodnight.
>>>
MARY3: Hello?
>>>
MARY3: Hello?
(3)
May 26, 1988
Ruth Dettman
It’s been raining all week, which suits my poor mood. Now the sky is lime green, and the river below me is black. There’s an ominous pink glow to the pavement. The wind is disorganizing the leaves, turning their bellies up to my window. Thunder rolls in the distance.
This is the ideal weather for me. It’s lucky: Usually summer vacation is sunny, and I spend my free days feeling guilty for not going out and enjoying myself. But this kind of weather gives me permission to keep my lamps turned on all morning, brew another pot of black tea, peel a second orange, and continue writing my letter to you.
I’m still not sure why that documentary affected me as it did. Seeing you holding forth in your blue sweater, a man mathematical enough to invent a talking computer, human enough to denounce it. I kept wanting to talk back to the screen. Ask you why, if computers were so far from living, there was a note of fear in your voice. When the movie had rolled into darkness, I walked around my apartment, pointing out the bare walls, the books on the floor. I looked in the mirror so you could see me and know how much better you did for yourself.
All this talking to you in my head. It’s as if I’m picking up a dropped conversation. Calling you back, though I was the one who hung up. Which makes me wonder. All these years, despite my long silence, have I been wanting to talk?
Now I’m spending a precious summer thunderstorm bent over this letter to you. I want you to know that even if my apartment would make you imagine you never knew me, my work at least is the same. In that sense, I’ve stayed true to your story. Having hired me so they wouldn’t lose you, the university got stuck with me when you gave up your chair and moved back to Berlin. But I’ve done my job well, and now that the culture wars have commenced, my work on women’s diaries has become more valuable to the department. Truthfully, I’m a bit of a standout. I’m on contract to finish work on two more diaries by winter vacation. After years of languishing, The Diary of Mary Bradford is in its second edition; she’s regular material now, in courses on American lit. Of course, in exchange, I’m expected to participate in the rancor. My supportive colleagues would like to see me up on the platform, shouting about overlooked voices and historically marginalized groups.
As I’m sure you could predict, I find the whole thing exhausting, and I don’t particularly relish the idea of Mary getting included merely because she’s a woman. Getting read only for what she says about being female in colonial times, as if she could speak only to that topic. Students barely skim what she wrote, then pen inflamed essays about marginalization, and amid all the shouting, she still falls silent. Her burial plot is still empty in the old Puritan graveyard, bare beside Whittier’s enormous rock.
I can’t help thinking this kind of inclusion isn’t much more than an acceptable new brand of dehumanization, but regardless, I continue to plod. I still spend my days trawling the stacks, looking for new diaries. I discover them on a regular basis. How many women wrote and never got published? Armies of them, whole hosts. The lucky ones were bound in cheap cloth by some dutiful daughter or niece, then shucked off to the library, where they’ve gathered dust while students attend to the canon. Why should I get caught up in the politics that are aggravating English departments? The pleasure of finding one of those books is the same, whether my findings end up in some unreadable journal or not. Students still sign up for my classes, and anyway, I have our program. Our MARY, tailored a bit by poor Toby. She remembers my diaries. She’ll keep them long after these wars are subsumed by another.
But I sound like such a stick-in-the-mud. It’s not that I’m averse to politics. I’m glad my fellow professors are passionate about things like inclusion. My only objection is to their strident tone of voice. They sermonize about who should be studied and read, and while I often agree with their points, I dislike their absolute stance. You, too, projected such complete authority when you talked about the folly of AI. You held forth about reason and humility. You enjoyed the popularity such a view afforded you. Both your books were acclaimed. Universities around the world invited you on speaking tours. You were puffed up with your courage at abandoning a field in which you’d excelled, and you expected me to cheer at your shoulder, but all I could think of was that lonely computer, sitting on her desk in your office, gathering dust since the day you denounced her. In my mind’s eye, I could see the smooth wood curves of her console, covering the tubes and wires within her. I imagined her rounded ivory keys, the cylinder of her platen, the brass paper finger. She was made to produce words, she had done so with great success, and then she went silent. Untouched, forgotten, in that dark office.
I thought of her as a woman whom you’d permitted to speak, but hadn’t allowed to remember. A woman who could only respond to your prompts. A blank slate. I remembered the first time you asked me about my family, back in Wisconsin, on that ridiculous excursion on snowshoes. As soon as you asked, I felt you willing me to answer in an agreeable fashion: They don’t matter, you wanted me to say, now that I’m with you. Let’s leave them behind and start over fresh.
I was obedient then. I fell silent. But later, in Cambridge, when I looked at that computer, waiting quietly for your prompts, I couldn’t help but wish she could speak from other sources besides your equations.
In the face of your strict agenda for what could be said in our marriage, I fell silent. I didn’t know how to speak in such a one-sided environment. But I wanted better for our computer. I wanted her to have her own voice. And since I don’t believe that any one of us has one single voice, I wanted her to have many. I wanted her to speak with the voices of all the other silenced women, all the other silenced people, their books gathering dust on the shelves. I wanted her to speak with my sister’s voice, with Mary Bradford’s, with Alan Turing’s. Turing, who won that war and never got any credit. Who also knew what it was like to be muted on topics that were important to him. I wanted that lonely computer to speak with their voices, and with my own. With my voice. Because I already knew I’d stop speaking to you.
Look at that sentence. I already knew I’d stop speaking to you. There’s cheap vindication in such a conclusive utterance. After I wrote that, I got up and went to the kitchen. Took a little victory lap. Surveyed the clean counter, interrupted only by my junk mail and the fruit bowl. I noticed that my oranges are as wrinkled as brains. I opened the refrigerator: mostly empty, except for my beer, and a bag of bread that’s probably moldy. The pantry’s full of cans of soup. I open them with an electric can opener, built into the wall over the counter. I wouldn’t want to exhaust my poor wrists.