So he had kept this thing around for years, this naive, helpless caricature of me. During the time I did not speak to him, did he turn to this frozen trace of me and contemplate this shadow of my lost faith and affection? Did he use this model of my childhood to fantasize about the conversations that he could not have with me? Did he even edit it, perhaps, to remove my petulance, to add in more saccharine devotion?
I felt violated. The little girl was undeniably me. She acted like me, spoke like me, laughed and moved and reacted like me. But she was not me.
I had grown and changed, and I’d come to face my father as an adult. But now I found a piece of myself had been taken and locked into this thing, a piece that allowed him to maintain a sense of connection with me that I did not want, that was not real.
The image of those naked women in his bed from years ago came rushing back. I finally understood why for so long they had haunted my dreams.
It is the way a simulacrum replicates the essence of the subject that makes it so compelling. When my father kept those simulacra of his women around, he maintained a connection to them, to the man he was when he had been with them, and thus committed a continuing emotional betrayal that was far worse than a momentary physical indiscretion. A pornographic image is a pure visual fantasy, but a simulacrum captures a state of mind, a dream. But whose dream? What I saw in his eyes that day was not sordid. It was too intimate.
By keeping and replaying this old simulacrum of my childhood, he was dreaming himself into reclaiming my respect and love, instead of facing the reality of what he had done and the real me.
Perhaps it is the dream of every parent to keep their child in that brief period between helpless dependence and separate selfhood, when the parent is seen as perfect, faultless. It is a dream of control and mastery disguised as love, the dream that Lear had about Cordelia.
I walked down the stairs and out of the house, and I have not spoken to him since.
PAUL LARIMORE:
A simulacrum lives in the eternal now. It remembers, but only hazily, since the oneiropagida does not have the resolution to discern and capture the subject’s every specific memory. It learns, up to a fashion, but the further you stray from the moment the subject’s mental life was captured, the less accurate the computer’s extrapolations. Even the best cameras we offer can’t project beyond a couple of hours.
But the oneiropagida is exquisite at capturing her mood, the emotional flavor of her thoughts, the quirky triggers for her smiles, the lilt of her speech, the precise, inarticulable quality of her turns of phrase.
And so, every two hours or so, Anna resets. She’s again coming home from day camp, and again she’s full of questions and stories for me. We talk, we have fun. We let our chat wander wherever it will. No conversation is ever the same. But she’s forever the curious seven-year-old who worshipped her father, and who thought he could do no wrong.
—Dad, will you tell me a story?
—Yes, of course. What story would you like?
—I want to hear your cyberpunk version of Pinocchio again.
—I’m not sure if I can remember everything I said last time.
—It’s okay. Just start. I’ll help you.
I love her so much.
ERIN LARIMORE:
My baby, I don’t know when you’ll get this. Maybe it will only be after I’m gone. ?You can’t skip over the next part. It’s a recording. I want you to hear what I have to say.
Your father misses you.
He’s not perfect, and he has committed his share of sins, the same as any man. But you have let that one moment, when he was at his weakest, overwhelm the entirety of your life together. You have compressed him, the whole of his life, into that one frozen afternoon, that sliver of him that was most flawed. In your mind, you traced that captured image again and again, until the person was erased by the stencil.
During all these years when you have locked him out, your father played an old simulacrum of you over and over, laughing, joking, pouring his heart out to you in a way that a seven-year-old would understand. I would ask you on the phone if you’d speak to him, and then I couldn’t bear to watch as I hung up while he went back to play the simulacrum again.
See him for who he really is.
—Hello there. Have you seen my daughter Anna?
THE REGULAR
“This is Jasmine,” she says.
“It’s Robert.”
The voice on the phone is the same as the one she had spoken to earlier in the afternoon.
“Glad you made it, sweetie.” She looks out the window. He’s standing at the corner, in front of the convenience store, as she asked. He looks clean and is dressed well, like he’s going on a date. A good sign. He’s also wearing a Red Sox cap pulled low over his brow, a rather amateurish attempt at anonymity. “I’m down the street from you, at 27 Moreland. It’s the gray stone condo building converted from a church.”
He turns to look. “You have a sense of humor.”
They all make that joke, but she laughs, anyway. “I’m in unit twenty-four, on the second floor.”
“Is it just you? I’m not going to see some linebacker type demanding that I pay him first?”
“I told you. I’m independent. Just have your donation ready, and you’ll have a good time.”
She hangs up and takes a quick look in the mirror to be sure she’s ready. The black stockings and garter belt are new, and the lace bustier accentuates her thin waist and makes her breasts seem larger. She’s done her makeup lightly, but the eye shadow is heavy to emphasize her eyes. Most of her customers like that. Exotic.
The sheets on the king-size bed are fresh, and there’s a small wicker basket of condoms on the nightstand, next to a clock that says 5:58. The date is for two hours, and afterward she’ll have enough time to clean up and shower and then sit in front of the TV to catch her favorite show. She thinks about calling her mom later that night to ask about how to cook porgy.
She opens the door before he can knock, and the look on his face tells her that she’s done well. He slips in; she closes the door, leans against it, and smiles at him.
“You’re even prettier than the picture in your ad,” he says. He gazes into her eyes intently. “Especially the eyes.”
“Thank you.”
As she gets a good look at him in the hallway, she concentrates on her right eye and blinks rapidly twice. She doesn’t think she’ll ever need it, but a girl has to protect herself. If she ever stops doing this, she thinks she’ll just have it taken out and thrown into the bottom of Boston Harbor, like the way she used to, as a little girl, write secrets down on bits of paper, wad them up, and flush them down the toilet.
He’s good-looking in a nonmemorable way: over six feet, tanned skin, still has all his hair, and the body under that crisp shirt looks fit. The eyes are friendly and kind, and she’s pretty sure he won’t be too rough. She guesses that he’s in his forties, and maybe works downtown in one of the law firms or financial services companies, where his long-sleeved shirt and dark pants make sense with the air-conditioning always turned high. He has that entitled arrogance that many mistake for masculine attractiveness. She notices that there’s a paler patch of skin around his ring finger. Even better. A married man is usually safer. A married man who doesn’t want her to know he’s married is the safest of all: he values what he has and doesn’t want to lose it.
She hopes he’ll be a regular.
“I’m glad we’re doing this.” He holds out a plain white envelope.
She takes it and counts the bills inside. Then she puts it on top of the stack of mail on a small table by the entrance without saying anything. She takes him by the hand and leads him toward the bedroom. He pauses to look in the bathroom and then the other bedroom at the end of the hall.
“Looking for your linebacker?” she teases.
“Just making sure. I’m a nice guy.”
He takes out a scanner and holds it up, concentrating on the screen.
“Geez, you are paranoid,” she says. “The only camera in here is the one on my phone. And it’s definitely off.”
He puts the scanner away and smiles. “I know. But I just wanted to have a machine confirm it.”
They enter the bedroom. She watches him take in the bed, the bottles of lubricants and lotions on the dresser, and the long mirrors covering the closet doors next to the bed.