A Nearly Perfect Copy (38 page)

Ian looked at her quizzically across the table. “You’re pregnant, admit it. Or admit that you’ve joined some weird cult. Otherwise there is no excuse for not ordering a martini.”

“What if I’m just not in the mood?” Elm asked.

“Impossible,” Ian said. “Admit the state of your uterus, or I’m ordering you a kamikaze and you’re chugging it.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll admit it, I’m pregnant.”

“Aha!” Ian said. “Congratulations!” But his voice was hollow. “How long have you known?”

So the lack of inflection was jealousy at being left out of the loop. “I couldn’t tell at work yet.”

“So I’m just work to you?” Ian sat back and grinned goofily, but Elm could tell that he was genuinely hurt.

“That’s right. You’re a rung on my ladder to success.”

“Stepped on, again!” Ian flung the back of his hand to his forehead.

Elm wondered if that’s how easy it was, if that’s what would put everything back to normal. She had dreaded telling him for weeks, worried about his reaction and his ability to keep it a secret. She didn’t want him to make a big scene, to turn it into a cause for boisterous celebration. He was prone to making everything into a big production, and Elm just wasn’t ready.

Wasn’t that the way of it, she mused. You worry so much about something and put it off and then it turns out not to be worth even a third of the anxiety. And then something you didn’t think would be important turns out to be a bigger deal than you thought, worthy of concern and strategy.

They toasted with seltzer water and Elm let herself smile, just a little, from the inside, instead of out of sheer muscular will. And then
her chicken sandwich with garlic mayonnaise and roasted red peppers looked delicious and she ate it as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. They even indulged in a chocolate soufflé.

After the CVS she spent a tense two days in bed waiting for the cramping and spotting to stop. They did, and the report came back: a boy (
quelle surprise
) and a clean bill of health. Elm let out a long exhale. The next hurdle was twenty-five weeks, the limit of viability, and then she could relax a bit, although not fully until week thirty-four, when he’d be full-term, but then not really until his actual birth, and even then not until he was past SIDS age, and then he’d be into skateboarding and rock climbing like Ronan. Who was she kidding? She would worry for the rest of her life.

Colin said nothing further about the situation at work. He said he didn’t want to worry her, and there had been a stay of execution while the investigators untangled some jumble of cords in other departments. Colin said he was doing nothing at work all day, playing Scrabble online with some insomniacs in New Zealand, reorganizing his files, exchanging jokes with coworkers in the canteen.

“It’s horrible, Elm,” he said. “Like it’s obvious that we’re going to starve so we’ll have to eat someone and we don’t know who it is. The fat guys are especially afraid,” he joked.

She scheduled a meeting with Greer for the following week. Everyone had to know she was pregnant, though. With this third pregnancy her abdominal muscles just gave up, stretching in anticipation of her growing belly. She was pinning her pants shut by the sixth week, and now, in her twelfth week, she was wearing full maternity gear.

She purposefully scheduled her appointment for the afternoon, when she knew that the sun streaming in Greer’s office window wouldn’t blind her. But she needn’t have worried. The day was overcast, gray like canvas had been laid outside the window. She sat down and attempted to make small talk. Was Greer going to the family estate in August?

“Yes, we’re all going up there. The kids are each bringing some monstrous friend. The mosquitoes have been unbearable these last couple of years.”

“They were always bad,” she said. “Down by the boathouse?”

“I suppose they were. And it’s really gotten hot. We’ve had to put air-conditioning in all the cottages. The main house is insufferable.”

Elm remembered many nights on the screened-in sleeping porch,
praying for breezes and hoping her bed partners (there were always piles of cousins) wouldn’t move any closer, sweat pooling in any concavity. But she gave a sympathetic grunt.

“And, well, there’s this situation there, but I’ll tell you later.” He was doing it again, piquing her curiosity by bringing up something and then delaying telling her. It would probably be something completely uninteresting, but now she wanted to know. She knew he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of telling her, so she didn’t give him the satisfaction of showing her curiosity. A silence descended.

“So,” Greer said. “To what do I owe the honor of this meeting?”

“You may already know,” Elm said, “but I’m expecting again.”

“That’s great!” Greer said. “I’m sure you must be very happy after …”

Elm’s face flushed. It absolutely infuriated her when people tried to suggest that someone could ever replace Ronan. But of course, she had replaced him.

“Can I ask you when you’re due, as a relative, not as a boss. I’m not sure I’m allowed to ask that legally, except as a cousin.”

“June,” she said.

“That’s when we’re ramping up for fall.”

Elm nodded. What was she supposed to do about it? It wasn’t like some sort of vacation she could postpone to a more advantageous time. “We’re always busy.”

“I suppose June’s as good a time as any.” Greer sighed. He jiggled his mouse and looked at something on his screen. This was WASP for “time to leave.” “You’ll work up until the date, yes?”

Elm stood up. “Unless doctors tell me otherwise.” She smiled. “Thanks for your consideration, Greer.” She sounded like the close of a business letter, but if he detected something less than genuine in her tone, he didn’t respond.

The e-mails of congratulations started pouring in. Having a baby was slightly more interesting in New York, where almost everyone, it seemed, had some sort of journey toward parenthood, either to China or Ethiopia or via infertility treatments. What Elm had been through was everyone’s worst nightmare, and now they wanted to believe it could be erased. Also, while everyone had been unable to help Elm, to share in
her grief, they might be able to make up that lapse now, by celebrating the happy occasion. Elm had to insist on only one baby shower.

And then came the censorious looks. Elm had forgotten that when you’re pregnant you’re public property. People touch your stomach without asking, even when any visible roundness might be an accumulation of fat rather than the swell of fertility. Because you are a vessel that is carrying the Future of the World, your every move is scrutinized: Should you really be eating that? Sugar in pregnancy can lead to gestational diabetes, which can lead to obesity in the infant’s later life. That Diet Coke has caffeine! Phenylalanine can be neurotoxic to developing fetuses. Elm began to eat lunch in her office. She hid her diet Sprite in a Vitaminwater bottle.

It was really happening. It wasn’t just in her mind; people were starting to cede seats to her on the subway, smile at her on the street. Moira loved to lie on her, cooing baby talk to her belly button, drawing circles around it with her fingers.

Colin’s reaction Elm found more puzzling. He swung from the extreme solicitousness he showed during her pregnancy with Ronan (he scolded her for overexertion for merely bending to tie her shoes) to his laissez-faire “I’ve done this before” nonchalance with Moira (she’d nearly had her daughter at home, waiting for Colin to finish up his phone calls and take a shower). Sometimes he was gallantry incarnate, propping her feet with pillows, offering to take out the trash, letting her watch the dance competition television show that was her guilty pleasure. Other times he barely seemed to notice her. His snoring, which in addition to being annoying and a source of complaint was also a comfort to Elm, began to change. It grew erratic, staccato. Elm wondered if she was sending him mixed signals, excited and scared in such a complicated way that he was unable to understand how he was supposed to feel.

In early February, Ian showed up at her office door. Elm was snarfing an egg salad sandwich on white bread, shoving it down her maw before anyone came in to comment on fat content or salmonella. She held up a hand while she swallowed.

“Have you seen?” he asked.

“What?” Elm asked.

“Turn your computer on. Google Indira Schmidt.”

Elm did, and read:

Elm stared at the screen in disbelief. Klinman arrested? Indira a person of interest? Indira was innocent; she had to be innocent. But if she were a person of interest, sooner or later the investigators would come and speak to her about the drawings and paintings Tinsley’s sold on Indira’s behalf in the spring auction. At the very least it would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the drawings’ attribution. Elm could be implicated in the conspiracy as well. And if they found out about the drawings she sold with Relay …

She could do this. She’d had months of practice. “Wow,” she said. “That’s a scandal.” Her mind spun. Elm thought to herself: What do I need? Wallet, keys, phone.

“But her pieces last spring in the auction. The provenances were good, right?” Ian looked at her expectantly.

“Hmmm,” Elm breathed. They were decidedly not good. Flimsy, really.
Mercat
was given to her before the war and she kept it behind the sofa all those years? It threw everything into doubt. “I have to go,” Elm said. “I have a prenatal appointment.”

“That must be wonderful, to see the baby moving on the sonogram,” Ian said.

“Yes, it is.” Elm shut down her computer. Did Ian not see that Elm was hurrying, putting on her jacket, gathering her briefcase? “Can you hold down the fort?”

Ian spread his hands wide across the desk, bolting it to the floor. It
was a quick gesture that would have been corny had anyone else done it, but he was fast enough to remove his hands to seem like he was parodying the type of person who would make such a stupid joke, even as he made it. “You’re in a meeting,” he said. “All afternoon.”

“You’re a peach.”