Big Brother. Lionel Shriver

      “Pretty complicated for learning to skip lunch, babe.”

      “Well, maybe it is complicated.”

      “So for me it’s even more complicated, dig?” He was getting hostile. “You can’t even lose thirty pounds, and I’m supposed to lose—I don’t know how many.”

      “I don’t need to lose thirty pounds, thank you. More like twenty, at the most.”

      “Don’t worry, if this is a contest, you get the gold star.”

      “It’s not a contest. But we could both agree not to make things worse. That’s a start, isn’t it? The way you’re eating lately, you’re only getting heavier.”

      “There’s the one little problem of my not giving a shit.”

      That was, of course, not one problem, but the problem.

      As I parked in front of Monotonous, Edison said, “Huh. This all yours? Pretty big.”

      It wasn’t much better than a warehouse, with offices on one end—but it was my warehouse. My idea, my employees: my project.

      “I couldn’t have anticipated it at first,” I explained as Edison heaved from the cab, “but one of the keys to this product taking off has been the way it excites competition. Not between companies, but between my customers. Who’s got the wittiest doll. Or the crudest. We’ve had more than one order for a male Monotonous that does nothing but burp, snort, sneeze, hawk, and spit. That has hiccups and a hacking cough. One customer wanted it to stink when it farted, but that was technically beyond us.”

      The short walk to reception, with Edison, was not short. “Then there are the pornographic ones,” I said. “I had to decide whether to accept the orders at first, but there were so many … If a wife wants to give her husband a doll that barks, ‘Suck my dick, bitch!’ why should I care?”

      I introduced Edison to Carlotta, our receptionist, whom I’d alerted about my brother coming by for a tour. I had not warned her about anything else, and was glad she took the lack of obvious family resemblance in stride. “It’s a real pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she said, pumping his hand warmly. “Your sister here’s the best boss a body could hope for. And I’m not just saying that to wheedle for a raise.”

      I brought him into the big open area, which hummed with two dozen sewing machines. The walls were stacked with hundreds of fabrics, while one corner mounded with clear plastic bags of cotton stuffing. “All the dolls are custom jobs, but we have standardized a little,” I said, raising my voice over the machines and leading him to the piles of unclothed dolls with no hair or facial features. “Over here, you can see we’ve got three basic body types in both sexes: thin, average, and portly. Three fabric colors seems to cover the racial bases. These we mass-produce. Angela also churns out denim and leather jackets, though we often add a distinguishing detail—embroidery, a political button. It’s the personalized touches that people like.”

      “So—what, they send you a photograph.”

      “Sometimes we work from one jpeg; other customers send five or six. And a list of expressions. We recommend a minimum of ten. We’ll do up to twenty, but the poetry—honestly, it is a form of poetry—seems to work better with fewer.”

      Edison frowned. “This is shit the cat in the photo says all the time. In real life.”

      Clearly, my brother had neither read my interviews nor looked at my website. I wondered if I felt hurt. I marveled that I didn’t seem to. Instead I felt an increment sorrier for Edison. If I felt any sorrier for Edison, I would faint.

      “That’s right,” I said. “We all repeat ourselves, but certain signature phrases become a form of branding. Most people aren’t aware of what they say all the time unless it’s called to their attention. The repetitions are telling. Our dolls are expensive. But as a substitute for therapy, they’re dirt cheap.”

      I introduced Edison to my staff. I was proud of my workforce. A business with an inbuilt sense of humor gave rise to a natural joviality, and as long as orders weren’t piling up we had a good time. They were nice people, so my impulse to protect my brother from my employees was disconcerting; my first introductions were tainted with a challenging demeanor, like, So? What are you looking at? that made my workers glance to the floor. Some of them may have read correctly in my hard stare, You’re not so skinny yourself, you know. I was dismayed that my brother’s size seemed to be all that people saw. I wanted to object, But his mind is not fat, his soul is not fat, his past is not fat, and his piano playing isn’t fat, either.

      But I wasn’t giving my employees enough credit. You have to provide Iowans good reason to be unkind, and if anything a conspicuous weakness for pork rinds made my nightclubbing East Coast brother seem more down-home.

      “Don’t you believe that guff this lady spouts about Monotonous going down the tubes any minute,” said Brad, the weedy guy who inserted the recording mechanisms. “This biz is going like gangbusters. Gonna be one distant day when people in this country run out of folks they wanna make fun of.”

      I explained that Edison was a jazz pianist in New York City.

      “You mean, like—doo-doo-doo-REEE-do-REE-do-do-do-dum-dum-DEEDLE-DEEDLE-dum-do-dum …?” Brad’s screeching recital was comically cacophonous.

      Edison laughed. “More like, dit. Du-dit. Du-dooo-doodly-do …” He completed an impromptu ska line with a catchy swing beat, and everyone clapped.

      “Lord, that stuff’s right over my head!” cried Angela, tugging the arms of a miniature denim jacket right-side out. “Afraid you’re more in the land of Barry Manilow, honey. Now, it’s a shame you’ve missed the corn. But while you’re out here, make your sister lay in some good country-style ribs. And head over to the Herbert Hoover Presidential Museum—it’s a real treat.”

      “Right after we visit the monument to Enron.” Since Angela didn’t pick up, Edison swallowed any more cracks about this state memorializing an Iowa native still a byword in the rest of the nation for catastrophe and incompetence. When he bantered genially about what kind of a whip his kid sister cracked, I demonstrated: time to get back to work.