A Nearly Perfect Copy (20 page)

Elm said, “I’ll take a look.”

“Well,” Colette said, after a pause. “I’ll say good-bye.”

Before Colette left the room, she rolled her skirt up and put on another coat of lipstick, smoothing her hair in its bun. The sight of her primping disgusted Elm. Her willingness to use sex to further her ambition, the strength of that ambition, reminded Elm that she had entered a different age. An age where having children was no longer possible. The light, when Colette closed the door, was an odd brown shade, nearly ochre, thrown up either from the play of light against the dark carpet or, more likely, from the palimpsestic echoes of the brown wash lingering in Elm’s visual cortex.

By the time Elm got back to her office, Colette had sent the PDFs from her contact, Augustus Klinman. Did she forgo her coffee with Franz? Elm wondered. She opened up the file.

The images were actually quite interesting. The first seemed to be a Piranesi. The subject matter was typical Piranesi—blueprintlike attention to architectural detail. An arch, in ruins, with Romans strolling nearby. And the line was spontaneous in the manner of a study for an etching. And certainly, the wash and ink, the exaggerated shading, and the lack of interest in nature all suggested that the famous artist had created this with his own hand.

There was also a gouache by that artist who was a contemporary of Connois, that Greek guy, what was his name? Elm could never remember. It was of a little girl, a bow in her hair, petting a white dog whose tongue lolled out of its mouth, giving it a rather dumb appearance.

The third was by Connois, a market scene, a sketch that looked to be a finished drawing in its own right, which was curious, because Elm wasn’t aware that Connois ever finished his drawings. Two Connoises so close together—Indira’s pastel and now this sketch? How strange, their popping up like toadstools. But, then, coincidence was commonplace, and this was rather lovely.

Klinman’s web page said he dealt primarily in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pieces, especially French, Italian, and Flemish artists,
maintaining offices in London and Paris. Working in conjunction with museums, restorers, and master framers, he presented the art in its best possible condition.

Other Google entries quoted Klinman in articles about stolen Nazi art, specifically the faking of provenances. “Ruthless dealers and incompetent experts abound, sadly, in the art world. The temptation to verify that which is not verifiable is strong.” “Art stolen by the Nazis should be returned to the family of the original owner whenever possible. When not possible, the families should be compensated. Descendants of murderers should not be allowed to profit from their grandparents’ marauding.”

Another entry was a press release announcing the highest price ever paid for a Raphael sketch, $48 million, sold via Sotheby’s in London by a family who wanted to be known only through their representative: Augustus Klinman. The purchaser’s name was also kept anonymous.

The uneasy feeling that started the second she dialed the clinic hadn’t subsided all day. It remained through the rest of the afternoon, following her on the bus up First Avenue, to the grocery store, and home, where she was distracted.

Colin was involved in his own drama. “It won’t be inked for thirty days, the deal,” he said tersely in response to her automatic
How was your day?
“I don’t want to discuss it before then.”

“Fine,” Elm said. She slammed the door to the microwave. She was planning on telling him about her visit with Dr. Hong, but his hostility made her want to keep it to herself.

Moira must have sensed the tension. She refused to eat the spaghetti Elm made for her, and then, after Elm microwaved some chicken fingers, refused to eat the middles, or even touch the single stalk of broccoli alongside them.

“Just eat it,” Colin said with uncharacteristic harshness. Moira sat up as straight as if he’d thrown a glass of water in her face. She began to cry. Elm frowned at him. She picked Moira up and carried her to the bathroom for her bath. Moira began to cry louder, in a whining, overtired way that grated on Elm.

“Please, Moira,” she said. Then: “Don’t you dare kick me. You love baths.” She tried to strip her daughter, who had turned her body to stone in protest. Finally, she wrestled Moira into the bath still wearing underwear and a T-shirt.

“Mom! You forgot to take this off. Now it’s all wet,” she said with an accusatory and slightly teenage inflection. She removed her shirt in disgust.

Elm sat on the closed toilet while Moira splashed and sang. She both hoped the man from the institute would call her back and dreaded that call. She rubbed her eyes, worried again that she was going crazy. Crazy like those people with the dog. Would a sane person believe her son could be cloned? The dog’s name popped into her mind, Dishoo, and got stuck like song lyrics. She repeated it as a mantra: Dishoo, Dishoo, Dishoo, Dishoo.

“Mom?” Moira interrupted her reverie. “Can we get a cat?”

“No,” Elm said.

“You didn’t even say maybe, or we’ll see.”

“That’s because there’s not the slightest glimmer of hope that we’ll get a cat.”

“But why?” Moira whined. Elm wondered if Moira was entering one of those phases through which Elm wished she could fast-forward.

For a while, in a bathroom humor phase, Moira had finished every sentence with “in your butt.” As in, “Where’s your jacket?” “In your butt.” “How was school?” “In your butt.” Elm wasn’t sure if she should say something or just let Moira get over it. In the end she decided to ignore it and it wore off within the week.

It was terrible, she knew, to compare children, but Ronan hadn’t been this difficult. She recognized that she was looking back at the experience, and the past was always gossamer and preferable to an uncomfortable present. Maybe she’d been more involved then. She remembered looking at him in the bath and thinking, I created this. His smooth small arms pushed a rubber duck around, creating small swirls of water. “Duh-key,” he said slowly, his first word after “Mama” and “Dada.” He grabbed her hand, wanting her to touch it too; he always wanted her to share his experiences, as if to maintain the closeness they had when he was part of her body. “Duh-key.”

She’d been finishing up her dissertation then; really it was all finished except for the formatting, and she was home with him constantly. Everything he did was miraculous and amazing to her, because he was her first. Then Moira came and did the exact same miraculous
things at nearly the same rate (or faster) and Elm simply couldn’t muster the same enthusiasm.

Her guilt was so repressed—she couldn’t bear even to think about her children in this manner. But the truth was that Ronan had been
her
child, while Moira was Colin’s. Colin had had little to do with Ronan’s first months—the processes by which he might have bonded with the infant were opaque to him, plus it was a particularly busy time at work. Colin would stare at Ronan, the baby’s legs windmilling while Colin changed his diaper, as if he were looking at an exhibit in a museum. Maybe Elm had made it difficult for him to spend time with Ronan; she was so protective. By the time Moira was born, the bond between Ronan and Elm had been cemented, and babies were a known quantity: Colin wouldn’t inadvertently drop her, or do some irrevocable damage with his neophyte parenting skills. Since then Moira had been Daddy’s little girl.

While Elm never speculated or wished that Ronan had survived and Moira had been taken from them, she did admit to her psychiatrist that she felt it wasn’t fair that “her child” had been taken, while “Colin’s child” remained. She refused to elaborate on this line of thought, though Dr. Schultz had prodded and pried. Some things said in the throes of grief should not be reuttered.

Now she asked Moira, “Do you miss your brother?”

“Yes,” Moira answered automatically. She rang out a washcloth over her head and blinked to get the water out of her eyes.

“Do you remember him?” she asked, leaning forward.

“Yup,” Moira said. “His name was Ronan and he died in the su-mommy.”

“Tsunami. But do you remember anything else?”

Moira thought. “Umm, no?” she asked, not sure if this was the right answer to Elm’s question.

Elm sat back. She wouldn’t be able to get a straight answer out of a kindergartner. Today Moira might not remember, tomorrow she would, twenty years from now, who knew?

“Time to get out, Mo,” Elm said, smiling to prevent tears.

“Noooo,” Moira wailed.

“Yes, come on, the water’s cold.” She reached in to pick Moira up under her arms. Moira began to squirm.

“Careful, Mo, you’re slippery.”

Moira splashed Elm with her feet.

“Goddammit, Moira. Can you just please for once behave?” And Elm, surprising herself, began to cry.

Moira was immediately contrite. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean it.”
I didn’t mean it
was child talk for
Now that I’m in trouble I wish I hadn’t done it
. But still Elm cried, out of frustration, exhaustion, residual grief.

Moira was not as upset as another child might have been; she’d seen her parents cry innumerable times—so much there couldn’t possibly be any liquid left in their eyes, their bodies. They should be sacks of skin like dehydrated cartoon characters.

Elm sat back down on the toilet, and Moira wrapped her towel around herself, then hugged her mother around the middle. “It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “I remember Ronan. I promise.”

The phone rang twice before Elm picked it up, though it was next to her. She had told Colin she was expecting a call from overseas. “Is anyone awake in Europe?” he asked.

“Asia,” she said.

She walked into the bedroom with the phone to her ear, waiting to say hello until she was out of Colin’s earshot.

“Ms. Howells?” said the voice. Had she given her name? Elm wondered.

“Yes,” she said.

“I am glad we can speak further. You are interested in seeing Ronan again, am I right?”

His name, so unexpected, took her breath away. She gasped. “How did—?”

“The Internet, Madame, is a powerful tool. There is much information about you; for instance, that you took
Inside the Slidy Diner
out of the public library on Ninety-sixth Street last weekend.”

“That’s a little disturbing.”

“That’s the world we live in,” the voice said. He seemed willing to make small talk, speaking rhythmically, hypnotically. “We live in technology. There is no reason to fight the inevitable; it is dissecting clouds.”

“This seems completely unbelievable,” Elm said.

“Yes, there is a lot of misinformation about what we do. When I first began here, it seemed like a science fiction story. But I assure you, it is very real.”

“I thought we were still many years away from … doing what you do.”

“Governments have an interest in disseminating false information,” he said.

“I’m really not a conspiracy theorist,” Elm said. “What possible reason would the government have for suppressing science?”

“You think the government doesn’t keep science from the public? What about the dangers of Vioxx? What about the syphilis experiment with the Negroes of the South? What about how cigarettes aren’t addictive? Even now, they are claiming that the lung problems the people of 9/11 are having are not the result of breathing that air. Ha!” he scoffed. “You should feel surprised your government ever tells you the truth.”

Elm sat silent, chastised. This was stupid, she thought. This was a joke that had gone on too long. This was crazy. This was abnormal.

“The next step, Madame, is for you to come to Paris to tour our facility and to submit to medical examination, if you want to be the host.”

It took Elm a moment to parse this information. If she wanted to carry the baby. “I’m told, my doctor said, I don’t really have any eggs. Follicles. Active ones.” Elm could barely get the words out.

“It’s very easy to get donated ova.” Elm was astonished. He didn’t seem remotely worried about her infertility. A donor egg, of course. If they were removing the nucleus, all the genetic information, what did it matter where the raw materials came from?