A Lot Like Christmas: Stories

“Our Town,” I said, thinking, Of course. It was perfect. Except for Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Emily Webb was the most sickeningly sweet ingénue to ever grace the American stage, tripping girlishly around in a white dress with a big bow in her hair and prattling about how much she loves sunflowers and birthdays and “sleeping and waking up,” and then dying tragically at the beginning of Act Three.

  “It was her mother’s favorite play,” Dr. Oakes said. “And Emily was her favorite character.”

  “Oh,” I said, and added casually, “I hadn’t realized she was named after someone. I’d just assumed it was an acronym.”

  “An acronym?” Dr. Oakes said sharply.

  “Yes, you know. MLE. For ‘Manufactured Lifelike Entity’ or something.”

  There was a dead silence, like the one that follows the revelation that I’m Hope’s daughter in the third act of Only Human, and the reporters began to thumb their Androids furiously.

  I ignored them. “And then I thought it might be your model number,” I said to Emily. “Was your face modeled on Martha Scott’s? She—”

  “Played Emily Webb in the original production, which starred Frank Craven as the Stage Manager,” Emily said. “No, actually, it was modeled on Jo Ann Sayers, who played Eileen in—”

  “The original Broadway production of My Sister Eileen,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said happily. “I wanted to be named Eileen, but Uncle—I mean, Dr. Oakes—was worried that the name might suggest the wrong things. Eileen was much sexier than Emily Webb.”

  And Eileen had caused an uproar everywhere she went, ending up with half of New York and the entire Brazilian navy following her in a wild conga line, something I was sure Dr. Oakes didn’t want to have happen with his artificial.

  “Women sometimes find sexiness in other women intimidating,” Emily said. “I’m designed to be nonthreatening.”

  “So of course the name Eve was out, too?”

  “Yes,” she said earnestly. “But we couldn’t have used it anyway. It tested badly among religious people. And there was the Wall-E problem. Dr. Oakes didn’t want a name that made people immediately think of robots.”

  “So I suppose the Terminator was out, as well,” I said dryly. “And HAL.”

  The media couldn’t restrain themselves any longer. “When did you realize Emily was an artificial?” the Times reporter asked.

  “From the moment I saw her, of course. After all, acting is my specialty. I knew at once she wasn’t the real thing.”

  “What tipped you off exactly?” the YouTube reporter said.

  “Everything,” I lied. “Her inflection, her facial expressions, her timing—”

  Emily looked stricken.

  “But the flaws were all very minor,” I said reassuringly. “Only someone—”

  I’d started to say “Only someone who’s been on the stage as long as I have,” but caught myself in time.

  “Only a pro could have spotted it,” I said instead. “Professional actors can spot someone acting when the audience can’t.”

  And that had better be true, or they’d realize I was lying through my teeth. “You’re very, very good, Emily,” I said, and smiled at her.

  She still looked upset, and even though I knew it wasn’t real, that there was no actual emotion behind her troubled expression, her bitten lip, I said, “I’m not even certain I would have spotted it except that you were so much more knowledgeable about the theater than the young women who usually come backstage. Most of them think A Little Night Music is a song from Twilight: The Musical.”

  All but two of the reporters laughed. They—and Torrance—looked blank.

  “You’re simply too intelligent for your own good, darling,” I said, smiling at her. “You should take a lesson from Carol Channing when she played—”

  “Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” she said, and then clapped her hand to her mouth.

  The reporters laughed.

  “But what really tipped me off,” I said, squeezing her lifelike-feeling shoulder affectionately, “was that you were the only person your age I’ve ever met who wasn’t stagestruck.”

  “Oh, dear.” Emily looked over at Dr. Oakes. “I knew I should have said I wanted to be an actress.” She turned back to me. “But I was afraid that might give the impression that I wanted your job, and of course I don’t. Artificials don’t want to take anyone’s job away from them.”

  “Our artificials are designed solely to help humans,” Dr. Oakes said, “and to do only tasks that make humans’ jobs easier and more pleasant,” and this was obviously the company spiel. “They’re here to bring an end to those machines everyone hates—the self-service gas pump, the grocery store checkout machine, electronic devices no one can figure out how to program. Wouldn’t you rather have a nice young man fixing the bug in your computer than a repair program? Or have a friendly, intelligent operator connect you to the person you need to talk to instead of trying to choose from a dozen options, none of which apply to your situation? Or”—he nodded at me—“tell you who starred in the original production of a musical rather than having to waste time looking it up on Google?”

  “And you can do all that?” I asked Emily. “Pump gas and fix computers and spit out twenties?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, her eyes wide. “I’m not programmed to do any of those things. I was designed to introduce artificials to the public.”

  And to convince them they weren’t a threat, to stand there and look young and decorative. Just like Miss Caswell.

  “Emily’s merely a prototype,” Dr. Oakes said. “The actual artificials will be programmed to do a variety of different jobs. They’ll be your maid, your tech support, your personal assistant.”

  “Just like Eve Harrington,” I said.

  “What?” Dr. Oakes said, frowning.

  “Margo Channing hired Eve Harrington as her personal assistant,” Emily explained, “and then she stole Margo’s career.”

  “But that can’t happen with artificials,” Dr. Oakes said. “They’re programmed to assist humans, not supplant them.” He beamed at me. “You won’t ever have to worry about an Eve Harrington again.”

  “Dr. Oakes, you said they’re forbidden to take our jobs,” one of the reporters called out, “but if they’re as intelligent as we’ve just seen Emily is, how do we know they won’t figure out a way to get around those rules?”

  “Because it’s not a question of rules,” Dr. Oakes said. “It’s a question of programming. A human could ‘want’ someone else’s job. An artificial can’t. ‘Wanting’ is not in their programming.”

  “But when I asked Emily about her name,” I reminded him, “she said she originally wanted to be called Eileen.”

  “She was speaking metaphorically,” Dr. Oakes said. “She didn’t ‘want’ the name in the human sense. She was expressing the fact that she’d made a choice among options and then altered that choice based on additional information. She was simply using the word ‘want’ as a shortcut for the process.”

  And to persuade us she thinks just like we do, I thought. In other words, she was acting. “And what about when she said she loved the play?” I asked him.

  “I did love it,” Emily said, and it might all be programming and sophisticated sensors, but she looked genuinely distressed. “Our preferences are just like humans’.”

  “Then what’s to keep them from ‘preferring’ they had our jobs?” the same reporter asked.

  “Yeah,” another one chimed in. “Wouldn’t it be safer to program them not to have preferences at all?”

  “That’s not possible,” Emily said. “Simulating human behavior requires higher-level thinking, and higher-level thinking requires choosing between options—”

  “And often those options are equally valid,” Dr. Oakes said, “the choice of which word or facial expression to use, of which information to give or withhold—”

  Like the fact that you’re an artificial, I thought, wondering if Dr. Oakes
would include in his lecture the fact that higher-level thinking involved the ability to lie.

  “Or the option of which action to take,” he was saying. “Without the ability to choose one thing over another, action, speech—even thought—would be impossible.”

  “But then what keeps them from ‘choosing’ to take over?” a third reporter asked.

  “They’ve been programmed to take into consideration the skills and attributes humans have which make them better qualified for the vast majority of jobs. But the qualities which cause humans to desire jobs and careers are not programmed in—initiative, drive, and the need to stand out individually.”

  “Which means your job’s safe, Claire,” Torrance said.

  “Exactly,” Dr. Oakes said without irony. “In addition, since artificials’ preferences are not emotion-based, they lack the lust for power, sex, and money, the other factors driving job motivation. And, as a final safeguard, we’ve programmed in the impulse to please humans. Isn’t that right, Emily?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to steal anybody’s job. Especially yours, Miss Havilland.”

  Which is exactly what Eve Harrington said, I thought.

  But this was supposed to be a photo op, not a confrontation, and it was clear the reporters—and Torrance—had bought her act hook, line, and sinker, and that if I said anything, I’d come off just like Margo Channing at the party—as a complete bitch.

  So I smiled and posed for photos with Emily and when she asked me if I’d go with them to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show (“I’m sure the mayor can get us an extra ticket”) I didn’t say, “Over my dead body.”

  I said regretfully, “I have a show to do, remember?” And to make Torrance happy, “All of you out there watching, come see Only Human at the Nathan Lane Theater on West Forty-fourth Street. Eight o’clock.”

  “You were absolutely marvelous!” Torrance said after everyone had gone. “Your best performance ever! We’ll be sold out through Easter. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to reconsider doing the ice-skating-at-Rockefeller-Center thing? It would make a great photo op. All you’d have to do is put on a cute little skating skirt and spend half an hour gliding around—”

  “No skating skirts,” I said, stripping off my earrings. “No tights. No—”

  “No leotards. Sorry, I forgot. Maybe we can get her back here for a tour of the theater. If we can, we’ll be sold out all the way through summer. Or you could invite her to your apartment for luncheon tomorrow.”

  “No luncheon,” I said, wiping off my makeup. “No tours. And no robots.”

  “Artificials,” he corrected automatically, and then frowned. “I thought you liked Emily.”

  “That’s called acting, darling.”

  “But why don’t you like her?”

  “Because she’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous? That sweet little thing?”

  “Exactly. That sweet little innocent, adorable, utterly harmless Trojan horse.”

  “But you heard Dr. Oakes. His artificials are programmed to help people, not steal their jobs.”

  “And they said movies wouldn’t kill vaudeville, the synthesizer wouldn’t eliminate the theater orchestra, and CGI sets wouldn’t replace the stage crew.”

  “But you heard him, they’ve put in safeguards to prevent that. And even if they hadn’t, Emily couldn’t replace you. She can’t act.”

  “Of course she can act. What do you think she was doing in here for the last hour? Mimicking emotions one doesn’t have—I believe that’s the definition of acting.”

  “I can’t believe you’re worried about this. No one could replace you, Claire. You’re one of a kind. You’re a—”

  “Don’t you dare say ‘legend.’ ”

  “I was going to say ‘a star.’ Besides, you heard Emily. She doesn’t want to be an actress.”

  “I heard her, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be waiting outside that stage door when I leave, asking if she can be my assistant. And the next thing you know, I’ll be stuck in the middle of Vermont, out of gas and out of a job.”

  “Vermont?” Torrance said blankly. “Why are you going to Vermont? You’re not thinking of doing summer stock this year, are you?”

  Which made me wonder if I should hire her as my personal assistant after all, just to have someone around who’d actually seen Bumpy Night. And knew what “Dance ten, looks three” meant.

  But she wasn’t in the crowd of autograph seekers—a crowd considerably smaller than that outside the Majestic, where Forbidden Planet was playing, I couldn’t help noticing. Nor was she waiting by the limo, nor at my apartment, already making herself at home, like Eve had done in Scene Three.

  And she wasn’t outside my door when I got up the next morning. The Post–Daily News was, no doubt left there by Torrance, with a very nice write-up—a photo and two entire columns about the backstage visit, which I was happy to see did not refer to me as a legend, and half an hour later Torrance called to tell me Only Human was sold out through February. “And it’s all thanks to you, darling.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said. “I’m still not going ice-skating.”

  “Neither is Emily,” he said. “It’s pouring rain outside.”

  Good, I thought. Emily would have to go convince the public she wasn’t a threat to them at the Chrysler Building or MOMA or something. Or if she’s such a huge fan of mine, maybe she’ll come see Only Human again. But she wasn’t in the audience at the matinee.

  I was relieved. In spite of Dr. Oakes’s assurances that AIS’s artificials weren’t here to steal our jobs, and Emily’s earnest protestations that she didn’t want to be an actress, the parallels to All About Eve were a bit too close for comfort. I mean, who were we kidding? If artificials weren’t a threat, Dr. Oakes and AIS wouldn’t be expending so much time and effort convincing us they weren’t.

  So I wasn’t at all unhappy when the rain turned into a sleety downpour just before the evening performance, even though it meant there were cancellations and the audience that did come out smelled like wet wool. They coughed and sneezed their way through both acts and dropped their umbrellas noisily on every important line, but at least Emily wouldn’t be waiting for me outside the stage door afterward like Eve Harrington in Scene Two.

  In fact, no one was at the stage door or out front, though the sleet apparently hadn’t stopped the Forbidden Planet fans down the street. A huge crowd of them huddled under umbrellas, clutching their sodden Playbills, waiting for Shiloh and Justin Jr. And so much for Torrance’s saying my meeting with Emily would bring in the younger demographic.

  My driver Jorge splashed toward me with an open umbrella. I ducked gratefully under its shelter and let him shepherd me toward the waiting limo and into the backseat.

  I sat down and shook out the tails of my coat while he went around to the driver’s side, and then I bent to see how much damage had been done to my shoes.

  A girl was banging on my window with the flat of her hand. I could see the hand but not who it was through the fogged-up window. But whoever it was knew my name. “Miss Havilland!” she called, her voice muffled by the closed window and the traffic going by. “Wait!”

  Justin’s not the only one with fans who are willing to freeze to death to get an autograph, I thought, and fumbled with the buttons in the door, attempting to roll down the window. “Which button is it?” I asked Jorge as he eased his bulk into the driver’s seat.

  “The one on the left,” he said, slamming his door and starting the car. “If you want, I can drive off.”

  “And leave a fan?” I said. “Heaven forbid,” even though with the week I’d had it would probably only turn out to be a Forbidden Planet fan who’d gotten tired of waiting and decided to get my autograph instead of Justin’s so she could get in out of the sleety rain. “Signing autographs is a Broadway legend’s duty,” I said, and pushed the button.

  “Oh, thank you, Miss Havilland,” the girl said, cl
utching the top of the window as it began to roll down. “I was afraid you were going to drive away.”

  It was Emily, looking like a drowned rat, her light brown hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks, rain dripping off her eyelashes and nose.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, though it was obvious. This was exactly like the scene in Bumpy Night when Eve told Margo Channing she hadn’t eaten for days because she’d spent all her money on tickets to Margo’s play.

  “I have to talk to you,” she said urgently, and I had to admire Dr. Oakes’s engineering genius. Emily’s cheeks and nose were the vivid red of freezing cold, her lips looked pale under her demure pink lipstick, and the knuckles of her hands, clutching the rolled-down window, were white.

  She’s not really cold, I told myself. That’s all done with sensors. They’re programmed responses. But it was difficult not to feel sorry for her standing there, the illusion was so perfect.

  And it had obviously convinced Jorge. He leaned over the backseat to ask, “Shouldn’t you ask her to get in the car?”

  No, I thought. If I do, she’ll tell me some sob story, and the next thing you know I’ll be hiring her on as my understudy. And I have no intention of being the next Margo Channing, even if she does look pathetic.

  I didn’t say that. I said, “Where’s Dr. Oakes? I thought you two were supposed to go see the Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall tonight.”

  “We were…we…I did,” she stammered. “But something happened—”

  “To Dr. Oakes?” I said, and had a sudden image of her killing him like Frankenstein’s monster and rampaging off into the night.

  “No,” she said. “He doesn’t know I’m gone. I sneaked away so I could talk to you about what happened. Something…I…something happened to me while I was watching the show.”

  Of course. “And you decided you want to be an actress after all,” I said dryly, or rather, with as much dryness as it was possible to muster with gusts of icy rain blowing on me.

  Her eyes widened in a perfect imitation of astonishment. “No. Please, Miss Havilland,” she pleaded. “I have to talk to you.”