Girlfriend in the Basement

Robert and Vanessa returned from their honeymoon of scenic, mountain views to an out-of-town airport and a two-hour commute. They arrived home to find news vans parked before their lemon-yellow bungalow. Vanessa’s mother shooed at cameramen standing in the tulip beds. Her father, still spattered with lemon-yellow paint, led the bewildered couple inside to shut out the crowd. Two men waited in the living room. One wore a dark suit, pressed against their peach couch. The other held a dolly containing a long wooden crate with Tigris Industries stamped on the top.

The man with the suit stood and extended his hand. “Robert Slater?” he asked.

“Yes?” Robert said, keeping his arms around Vanessa.

“Mr. Slater, I represent Lilly Adams.”

Something dropped in Robert’s throat. He felt Vanessa stiffen against him.

“I’m afraid Miss Adams has taken some rather unorthodox measures,” the man said, avoiding the couple’s eyes. “She was recently diagnosed with a rare and fatal heart condition—so rare, in fact, that it attracted the interest of an overseas research facility. Tigris Industries has pioneered new breakthroughs in cryonic stasis. It's still a fuzzy area according to law and jurisdictions. Sufficient to say, she was able to qualify for Tigris’ services. Her body will be preserved now, typically, until such time as medical science can find a cure for her condition. Miss Adams complicated matters, however, with a revised will and advanced directive. As far as her estate is concerned, she’s considered deceased, but she still has the rights of a patient in her current condition.”

Vanessa traded her husband’s side for her father’s, leaving the sweat against Robert’s ribs to cool in her absence.

“What does this have to do with me?” Robert asked. He looked at Vanessa. “I haven’t spoken with Lilly in over a year.”

“In Miss Adams’s will, she left her preserved body to you” the man said, gesturing to the wooden crate. “Which makes you responsible for her care as a patient.”

Vanessa buried her head in her father’s shoulder.

“Her advance directive,” the man continued, “states she is to be revived only in the event that you divorce your wife and sign a form of intent to wed Miss Adams.”

“I’m taking you home,” Vanessa’s father said, turning her toward the door.

But when it opened onto the eager faces of reporters, Vanessa made a sharp turn. “No,” she said. “That’s what she wants.” Vanessa walked over to the wooden crate. “But she’s not going to get it.” She looked at the man holding the dolly. “Put her in the basement.”

“I’ll need a power source ma’am,” the man answered.

“I said, in the basement.”

***

Headlines like LIFE, DEATH, OR NONE OF THE ABOVE and DID GOD CREATE MAN TO BE VEGETABLE? were tossed on Robert and Vanessa’s doorstep each morning. The phone rang constantly with talk show producers, eager to exploit the “Macabre Love Triangle.” The constant messages from lawyers and special interest groups overwhelmed Robert. Though it moved things along when Vanessa’s father stepped in, bringing his lawyer and sure-headed advice, Robert felt like a child watching adults clean up his mess.

Vanessa’s raging didn’t help. “I swear to God, I’m going to take a sledge hammer and smash her frozen little face in!”

“I’m just as angry as you are,” Robert said. “But what can we do?”

“Are you? You seem to be handling it just fine. Wife upstairs and girlfriend in the basement, what’s there for you to be upset about?”

“That’s not fair,” he answered, too weary to continue the argument. Vanessa knew the danger they were in as well as he did—religious and social organizations threatening to sue over human rights and healthcare violations, while their legal liability was yet-to-be-determined—but she wasn’t happy, it seemed, unless Robert was squirming. His protection of the chamber, checking the meter on the box daily and rigging a backup generator, was all evidence of the torch he still carried for his ex-girlfriend. Why couldn’t Vanessa understand? The shame that tugged at his core, every time he turned on the television or caught a reporter peeking through the curtains, brought him nothing but resentment for clingy, neurotic Lilly.

He hadn’t even dated Lilly all that long. After three weeks of mostly sex and a weekend “monthiversary” at a buddy’s timeshare, she started talking about what they would name their kids and asking if he minded being confirmed Orthodox for her mother’s sake. He’d backed off fast then, and the breakup lasted longer than the relationship. “Why so sudden?” she’d asked, unable to accept it. He started declining her requests to talk “just one more time,” and eventually ignored her altogether. She had never gone more than a week, though, without leaving him a message and even sending him a card on each following “monthiversary.”

When he’d begun dating Vanessa, Lily’s obsession took a dark turn. She’d made silent phone calls to Vanessa’s house, to see if Robert was there, and left wilted bouquets on her doorstep with notes like “He’ll soon be over you too.” Vanessa was convinced that Robert still saw Lilly occasionally. Why else would his ex be so persistent? Nothing short of a diamond ring would prove his commitment to Vanessa. Finally, when they’d announced their engagement, Lilly seemed to get the message and stopped all contact with them both. Robert felt foolish now, reading Lilly’s name next to his in the papers. She hadn’t given up at all.

***

Not until the tech’s first monthly visit did Robert see Lilly in her current state. As the drop cloth fell, lightning struck down the back of Robert’s neck. Lilly rested upright against a gray foam substance in her glass casket, making her body appear to float. She was naked except for thin strips of linen draped across her chest and pelvis, for accurate readings, the technician explained, though Robert suspected Lilly’s flare for seduction. Her closed eyes and naturally pale skin added to the death-like appearance, especially in contrast to the black waves of hair that rolled down and around her shoulders. She would have looked peaceful except for the harsh, industrial light provided by a green electric coil twisting around the inside of the chamber.

***

The court “understood the strain” the situation must place on Robert and Vanessa. “It is likely,” the judge proclaimed, “that Miss Adams had tragically gone undiagnosed for mental illness. Her obsession with Mr. Slater and inability to make rational decisions regarding her health and well-being seem to prove as much. But now we’ll never know.” He stalled then with some harsh words for Tigris Industries before giving his verdict: “Though laws are now specified to prevent another such occurrence, in this case it is wise to err on the side of life and protect Miss Adams in her current state.” He made eye contact with Robert. “Yet we must respect the conditions of her do not resuscitate lest the court set a dangerous precedent.” So much for the court’s understanding.

Vanessa didn’t speak for the entire drive home. When they parked in the garage, Robert had to jog after her into the house. As he suspected, she trotted downstairs. “Crazy bitch!” she screamed, hurling her purse at the stasis chamber.

Robert half-expected Lilly’s eyes to open. They didn’t, but when he looked back to Vanessa, she was popping the top from a paint can they had used to accent their bedroom.

“Stay there, then,” Vanessa continued. “Rot in your little display case, while our life goes on around you.” She wrenched her elbow away from Robert’s grip. “But no one’s going to pay any attention to you.” She swung the can toward the chamber, and a red, plasmatic mass bloomed through the air to splat before Lilly’s forehead and ooze down the casing above her body.

“Oh God, Vanessa,” Robert said. “You have to stop. You heard the judge.”

Vanessa turned the cold fury in her eyes onto her husband. “You don’t have to look at her to read the meter,” she said, before walking upstairs.

Robert spent the rest of the evening cleaning the glass, gliding his hands back and forth above the quiet contours of Lilly’s body.

***

From then on, Vanessa avoided the basement. Robert did the laundry, stored each season’s clothes, and did all he could to anticipate and redirect his wife’s plummeting mood when she dwelt on their predicament. He still had to check the chamber’s meter daily and escort the technician on each monthly visit, yet as the headlines and reporters faded, Vanessa seemed to pretend that their marriage was nothing out of the ordinary. Though she stopped speaking of her husband’s girlfriend in the basement, she grew quiet if he added “only” to his “I love you.”

Still, she began cooking his favorite meals and even showed a renewed interest in sex. Robert didn’t know what to make of it until she took to humming lullabies and browsing baby clothes at yard sales. He didn’t think they were ready for a child, but he received such frightening peeks behind her serenity when he tried to discuss waiting. “You just want me to remain alone,” she said. “What am I supposed to do while you’re downstairs with your whore? You can’t give me an honest marriage, and now you refuse me this?” Then she became so warm when he gave in. “This will change everything. You’ll see. We need a part of us in living flesh to bring us back together. I love you enough to want this. Don’t you?” It was an escape for her, he knew. He wondered what effect his charge in the basement was having on his wife’s own mental health.

***

Sometimes, when Vanessa fell asleep, Robert would creep downstairs, pull back the door of the crate, and stare at the shrine that Lilly had made of herself for him. She was like an enchanted photograph, an hourglass body frozen in time while Vanessa’s body ballooned with child. With each visit to the one part of the house that was solely his own, he developed an affinity for his lovely mute companion. When he was alone in the house, he spoke to her in the glow of devotion the chamber’s backlight would cast on her memory. Soon she became a different person from the trouble-making ex-girlfriend, not even a person at all, really. The girl in the basement became an angel, saving his sanity from the storm that constantly ebbed and flowed upstairs. He divulged his fears and hopes, and after a verbal onslaught of Vanessa’s hormones, he would retreat downstairs and caress the convex glass to gain a new perspective.

***

As their grandson Jeremy slept in the maternity ward, Vanessa’s parents offered to cover the cost of storing the stasis chamber in a hospital’s research wing. No child should grow up around such a thing. Vanessa laughed through tears at the generous offer, and Robert knew better than to dissent. But as he held his son, a weight pulled at the joy in his chest. He had no desire to leave Vanessa for Lilly, but losing his time alone with the still life downstairs felt like losing the last secret part of himself. He would be nothing more than what was already laid bare for all to judge and command.

He disguised his fear and desperation as concern for his family’s welfare. What if something happened to the chamber? He was still liable, no matter what kind of contract for care and protection he signed with a hospital. And what would become of his new family if he were to be prosecuted? In the end, he had to settle for storing the chamber locally, with visitation rights to ensure its upkeep.

Though the room was private, machines of all sorts were set to monitor, so his visits had to remain chaste. The fluorescent hospital lighting cast his reflection onto the glass above Lilly, and from a distance the sight of them encased together brought a sense of order to Robert’s universe. Then he’d step closer and see the lines around his eyes and the gray around his temples, hovering there above Lilly’s forever perfect flesh. He shied away, lest his mortality tarnish her eternal devotion. He might have stopped his visits altogether if not for the way the nurses treated him, with no condescension or reproachful stares. Perhaps it was the conditioning of their job, but they treated him with the same sympathy and respect they might give a grieving husband. He felt solid and surefooted walking down the white corridors, past the smiles of powder blue cherubs and mint green seraphs, as he came to mourn at Lilly’s living grave.

***

Jeremy was a natural in Little League, and Vanessa was his eager groupie, dancing in the stands and bringing water to the dugout. Robert bowed out of the spectacle as often as possible. He was Jeremy’s father, but Jeremy was Vanessa’s child. Robert’s wife had become a mother, and they rarely spoke if not about the boy. He tried to form his own bond with his son over Treasure Island, video games, and chocolate bars, but Jeremy didn’t have the attention span and Vanessa placed a ban on junk food and too much screen time. She preferred Jeremy outside with her, playing in the yard while she sunbathed beside the long dead flowerbeds.

The passing of Vanessa’s father only exacerbated the situation. Jeremy became her twelve-year-old nurse and confidant in grief while Robert handled the business end with his mother-in-law. Going over the finances, he saw an opportunity for self-serving chivalry and offered to take over care of Lilly’s chamber once again, to ease the strain on the widow’s fixed income. Vanessa was on too many depression and anxiety prescriptions to care. Robert wasn’t even sure if she’d understood him when he told her, but there was the matter of what to tell Jeremy. How much did he already know?

While Vanessa slept off a Xanax one evening, Robert took his son for a drive. He tried to find the right introduction. He hadn’t spoken about Lilly in so long that the words were too deep to find. As they browsed a convenience store, it occurred to Robert that the candy bar Jeremy had picked up on his way to the magazines was the first willful act of rebellion he’d seen his son take against Vanessa, and he did it openly before his father. Robert felt they had come to an unspoken understanding.

Yet what could he say of Lilly? How could a twelve-year-old boy understand even a fraction of the subterfuge between men and women, what they needed from—and loathed about—each other? Yet maybe Vanessa’s coddling and chastising had already taught Jeremy more than most boys his age. Robert didn’t say anything but bought his son the Penthouse the boy had been hovering in front of and said, “Keep it from your mother.”

***

When Jeremy left home, Robert moved into the basement, listening to Vanessa’s footsteps, the incoherent warble of her phone calls, and all her ups and downs muffled through the floor. He was sure she’d taken a lover. Their attempts to remain secret brought a wry grin to his lips, the lighter-than-usual footsteps, the loud-then-hushed man’s voice, as though Robert would care. Let her have her transient passion, he thought. The truth of ecstasy lay in the glowing chamber set upright at the foot of his bed. It could never be held on this side of life.

What would become of Lilly after Robert’s death had never been determined. Lilly never provided for that eventuality in her directive, and the courts shied away from the value judgment the decision would imply. Robert had considered leaving the glass tomb and its living occupant to Jeremy. As the Adult Films Award-winning director of Beach Blanket M.I.L.Fs I, II, and III, his son might appreciate the conversation piece. But the thought of people gathered around his private treasure, appraising her, projecting their own emotions and desires onto her, thickened Robert’s blood with indignation.

***

Robert kept no mirrors in his downstairs home. The image of his age was sacrilege next to Lilly’s beauty. He fantasized about waking her up, but to see himself in her eyes after all that time would be to see himself dying. Still, he asked the technician in roundabout ways what was involved in the process. The chamber would awaken her if the seal on the glass were broken, yet it wasn’t safe to do so outside the Tigris facility, without regulators to keep her returning heartbeat steady.

Robert dreamed about the development of some rejuvenating technology that could return him to the age he had been when he returned from his honeymoon. He’d long since decided that her heart never had any fatal condition, other than the pieces he’d left it in. It was all part of her glorious plan. He sometimes wished he’d left Vanessa that very moment and revived the beauty who had sacrificed everything for him. But as the fantasy played out in his mind he knew Lilly would only have become another Vanessa. He was in love with the eternity of the maiden before him, but he couldn’t live forever—so neither could she.

***

Four people came to Robert’s funeral—the Tigris technician who had discovered the bodies, a retired nurse from the research hospital, and Jeremy, who arrived late with his girl of the month. Vanessa refused to attend, too livid over being questioned in a homicide investigation. The priest lamented the loss of both lives and said poignant things about reaping what we sow, forgiveness, and how all things happen for a reason. But none could imagine Robert’s reason for opening Lilly’s chamber, climbing inside, and then resealing the airtight lock.

THE END