A Nearly Perfect Copy

Part Three

Fall 2007

Elm


Elm tripped over a cable that hadn’t yet been taped to the carpet. She caught the edge of a chair, banging her elbow in the process.

“Watch out, Mrs. Howells,” one of the facilities guys said. “You okay? We don’t want you to sue.” He laughed; she wouldn’t sue her own family. Still, she heard a little derision in his voice.

“I’m fine. Can’t get rid of me that easy.” She looked at the empty room, numbered chairs at the ready, red carpets vacuumed neatly. In this room her fate would be decided.

She walked to the front to check on the catalogs. “They’re almost all gone,” the receptionist said. “Don’t worry.” She pressed on her earpiece to receive a call.

Elm took a catalog, though she had plenty at her desk. She paced back across the floor and went up to the mezzanine gallery. There they were on display, in a row like solitaire cards: Indira’s Mercat and her other treasures, alongside the rest of the items to be sold. Elm felt the old thrill of seeing her pieces come to auction. When she had made her first acquisitions, she felt almost like the artist. The power she had over the drawings was enormous. She decided their reserve, how they’d be listed in the catalog, where they would hang, what part of the mailing list might be interested. Then she waited anxiously in the back of the auction room for the lots to be called, as nervous as a pianist at her first recital.

The day waned, the hour of the auction approaching, Elm’s anxiety mounting. Her first few auctions had been heady, then Elm settled into the routine and began almost to dread them. They seemed to be the worst part of her job. Procuring and curating works was worthwhile, noble, even. But selling them, and to the highest bidder, no less, seemed lacking in respect. So she had stopped thinking of the auctions as mercenary affairs and instead began to view that part of her job as a necessary evil. She put her head down and did what she was supposed to do. And then Ronan died and it all seemed even more like a shadow puppet show, like something someone else was doing.

The room was filling up, some of the regular characters—George de Marie Bosque, the drawing collector; the man whose name she could never remember who wrote that blog artsnob.com; and a curator from a nascent Impressionist art museum. He’d come in before the auction, explaining that he wanted to add to the already impressive collection donated by its founders, the Lees, wealthy Asian Americans. There were some dealers and art advisers, and a celebrity she recognized as being from one of those forensic television shows. Relay was there too.

Elm stood off in the wings. From there she had a clear view of the mounting platform as well as the audience. She waited until 7:00, then 7:05, when the auctioneer called for attention. The room was about two-thirds filled. Three auction agents were on phones at the side of the room, taking requests from anonymous bidders or those who could not be present at the auction. Usually these were Russians, eager to spend their new wealth. Though they especially liked contemporary pieces, they occasionally spent vast amounts of cash on important older items.

The platform spun slowly, and the first drawing was displayed. A Woodridge that Indira had consigned garnered an appreciative murmur from the crowd. Elm’s bladder clenched. The auctioneer announced the minimum of $120,000, and the bidding began. The curator from the Lee museum raised his paddle. The auctioneer acknowledged him by name. Then a severe-suited woman Elm didn’t recognize pushed the bid to $130,000. An older man, shirt slightly wrinkled and jacket shiny, raised again. Elm saw he had missed a spot shaving, a small patch of dark near his chin. She’d noticed that about older men; they had a neglected air, like the damp pages of an old book. No one to oversee their ablutions.

Elm wasn’t sure how she felt about the auctioneer, Petr Hoosman, a Dutchman who wore patriotic orange ties every day. He had come to the auction house as an accountant, but was quickly encouraged to enroll in the auctioneer education department. Unlike a typical lackadaisical Tinsley auctioneer, he had his own gregarious, untraditional patter. He recognized important auction attendees, studying pictures of bidders and price lists before the auction, but never let on that he prepared obsessively. His shoes bordered on boat wear, and his sunglasses were eternally in his breast pocket. He had studiously floppy hair in the early Beatles style and was attractive, with high cheekbones and a lopsided dimple. Ian had had an enormous crush on him for a year, though no one was ever able to figure out his sexual preferences. He flirted indiscriminately with young and old, men and women (dogs, even), and after Elm had declared him asexual, Ian had corrected her: “Omnisexual.”

“What’s that?”

“Kind of like pansexual, you know, but instead of having desire for all types of sexual experiences, omnis just use sex, or the threat of it, to get what they want.”

They were having a martini lunch, an occasional ritual on slow Fridays. She leaned over and sipped her full drink. “I guess,” Elm said. She had had a bit of a crush on Petr too, the harmless fluttering she associated with the second decade of marriage. Just enough to make coming to work interesting, but nothing she would ever act on. She called these crushes “ab rollers,” mostly futile exercise to keep the flirt muscle tight.

“Plus, I saw him in the bathroom”—Ian leaned closer, a sign that he was about to make a vulgar statement—“and, shall we say, it’s all bluster.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to look at each other in there.”

“I snuck a peek.”

“Are we talking gherkin, Fruit Roll-Up, or Second Avenue Deli pickle?”

“What’s a Fruit Roll-Up?”

Elm sighed. Sometimes Ian’s youth was tiresome. “A snack.… It doesn’t matter.”

“Normal, I guess, small size.” Ian cast his eyes about the room, looking for a comparable object. “Um, like if you rolled up that cell phone.”

Elm nodded, though she had no idea what this would look like. After that discussion, though, her ardor for Petr had waned to a trickle then dried up completely.

Now, though, she could see Petr’s appeal, and the way both sexes responded to him. The attendees were beginning to relax: shoulders slumped, legs slack. There were genuine smiles appearing on the faces of bidders, not just grimaces of concentration. Petr had been a good hire, had shaken up the image of staid Tinsley’s and injected it with a bit of youth and iconoclasm.

The bidding reached its estimated $135,000. Lee’s representative bid again, and the bidding stalled at $140,000. Then a new bidder at the back of the room raised her paddle, and Petr squinted into the lights to see her. He must not have known who she was, a certain blow to his ego. A dark horse, bidding the price up to $145,000. Petr acknowledged her as the “woman in the blue suit toward the back.”

Then Relay raised her paddle for $150,000. This was a bit uncouth. No one liked a buyer to sweep in at the end of a bid. Elm found herself silently critiquing Relay’s outfit—Ann Taylor Petites for sure, pearls as accessories. Were you allowed to wear pearls without irony anymore?

Apparently, Petr knew her, because he supplied her name on the first bid. But Elm guessed that as a Lacker, Relay had been around art royalty since she could be relied on not to drool on it.

Between volleys, Relay hunched over, leaning on her elbows. She bid by raising the paddle high, like a cat springing to action. When Petr awarded her the drawing, at $207,500, Relay looked estatic, beaming like a child who finally got the pony she’d been begging for.

Then Indira’s Mercat, the crown of Elm’s contribution to the auction, made its appearance. The audience gasped. It was indeed beautiful; the texture of the pastel glinted in the stage lights. The woman’s eye, the dog’s tail, the blue sky, the scales of the fish for sale glistening. It was a magnificent lighting display and Elm was proud at having orchestrated the arrangement with facilities. If she’d left it up to them, they’d have just shined a fluorescent bulb straight at it like they were interrogating a prisoner.

The woman in the blue suit who bid on the first sketch raised her paddle, and now Petr, who had learned her name in the interim (his staff was nothing if not competent and swift, delivering updates into his earpiece), called her Mrs. Kostlestein and then shortened it to Mrs. K in subsequent acknowledgments like he’d known her for years.

The piece, which had been on reserve for $750,000 and expected to fetch as much as $850,000, managed to reach $900,000 before being awarded to the woman in the blue suit. Elm let herself hope, near the end, that it would reach seven digits, that magical threshold that would really make people stand up and take notice. But bidding had petered out, and Elm tried to remember that it had done well, better than she’d expected.

Elm smiled. Finally, she let herself relax, and realized she had been worrying a hangnail on her index finger and a bright spot of blood had formed. She stuck her finger in her mouth to stanch it. She looked up and could see Greer staring down at the proceedings from the private room. Ian winked at her from across the room, smiling widely. It was his victory too.

Other lots came up and were purchased. Two mediocre Callebaut sketches didn’t make their reserve. Indira’s esoteric postcard oils sold to a miniature fetishist. Then, though it seemed that no time at all had passed, all the lots had been presented. The auction was over.

Elm called Indira as soon as she got back to her desk. “Good news!”

“It sold well, then?” Indira tried to rein herself in, but the anxiety sounded in her voice, which rose squeakily at the end of the sentence. Elm wondered what she needed the money for. Medical bills? A debt?

“Very … $900,000.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Indira sounded, like Elm, more relieved than happy.

“You’ll collect about $550,000 when all is said and done,” Elm half-apologized, though she had been careful to explain the terms to Indira in front of her lawyer to make sure she understood. Though Indira was a famous artist, she was still an Attic and had to be treated like one. “Plus the Woodridge and the oils.”

Elm went back to her office to shut down her computer and collect her purse. An e-mail had arrived from Greer, asking her to lunch the following day. Elm sneered at it. Now he wanted to be a relative, now that she’d had some success. She left it in her in-box. Let him sweat it a little.

Ian stood in her doorway. “Grab a drink?” he asked.

“Can’t,” Elm answered. “I haven’t been home in years, it feels like.”

Ian smiled, the ends of his mouth turning up disingenuously. “All right. We’ll celebrate another time. It was smashing, wasn’t it?”

“Smashing?”

“I’m trying it out,” Ian said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Elm said, standing and reaching for her purse.

“Gnarly auction, dude.” Ian led the way to the elevator.

“Did I see your friend there?”

“Who, Relay? Yeah. We had a chance to catch up. It was nice.” Ian leaned over and pushed the elevator call button, then looked at something down the hall.

“What?” Elm asked.

“Hmmm? I didn’t say anything.” Ian flashed her the same smile he gave the really dumb cashier at Starbucks who always charged him for an au lait instead of a latte. The smile that actually meant its opposite.

“What’s wrong?” Elm asked.

“Not a thing.” Ian put his arm in front of the elevator door, making sure it stayed open for Elm. “Have a lovely evening.”



For two weeks Elm had been giving herself shots of Lupron and estradiol/progesterone in the bathroom after Colin left for work. She hid the medication with the stinky cheese in the refrigerator, one place she felt confident Colin would not look, as he hated any kind of blue cheese, claimed its smell of decay upset him and that it made no sense to eat anything rotten. He was irritable. He wouldn’t tell Elm what was going on at work, which would have worried her in the past. But she wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to her husband, occupied instead with deceiving him.

She blamed her inattention on hormones. She felt swollen, perpetually about to get her period, a little crampy, and so, so tired. Her ass was sore from her inept poking with the needle, and she had flashes of anger at Colin because he wasn’t sharing this with her, wasn’t helping her through this time, wasn’t giving her the injections himself, then rubbing the pain out of the flesh with the heel of his hand.

Intermittently, she was subsumed in an enveloping heat. She fanned herself and undid another button on her too-tight shirt. The side effects of the fertility medication made her a teenager again—mood swings and breast tenderness. She had almost thrown a coffee cup at Colin the previous morning when he ate the last piece of raisin toast.

Elm hadn’t anticipated that seducing her husband would be so difficult. She had a very small window, she realized, to pretend to get pregnant before she flew back to France. Michel had given her explicit instructions when he called to tell her they’d successfully extracted and replicated DNA from the samples she’d left with him.

She asked Wania to stay overnight with Moira and booked a fancy dinner and a hotel room in Midtown. But though it was Friday, Colin got stuck at work and didn’t make it back to the city until after nine p.m.

When he walked in, Elm and Wania were watching television. Moira lay in her pajamas in a sleeping bag on the living room floor.

“Hi,” Colin said sheepishly.

“Hello,” Wania whispered. “The baby’s asleep.”

“Not a baby,” Moira mumbled, barely conscious.

“Then let’s go sleep in your big girl bed,” Elm said, ignoring Colin’s hello. “Wania can take you.”

Moira was too tired to argue. Wania lifted her up and carried her down the hall.

“I’m f*cking knackered,” Colin said, falling onto the couch, not bothering even to set down his briefcase. “And we missed dinner.”

“Well, I ate,” Elm snapped. “Pizza with Wania and Moira.”

“I’m so sorry,” Colin said. “I know you went to a lot of trouble.”

“Yeah, well …” Elm focused on the television.

“Is this Finding Nemo?”

“It’s oddly compelling,” Elm said. “Even the five-hundred-and-first time.”

There was a silence that lasted so long Elm wondered if Colin had fallen asleep. “Can we go, still, to the hotel?” she asked.

“Ummm,” Colin considered. “Okay. I’ll just shower, then.”

“No,” Elm said. “Shower there. I’ll help you.”

Colin smiled tightly in a way that showed more politeness than interest. He stood and went over to the table where the leftover pizza was oozing onto the cardboard box. He rolled up a piece and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, chewing as he went down the hall to the bedroom.

Elm peeked into Moira’s room. Wania was lying in the trundle, reading a gossip magazine. “We’re going now,” she said.

Wania nodded. “Okay. Have a good time, then.”

Elm paused. She suddenly had an overwhelming desire to confide everything to Wania, to hear her calm, lilting acceptance. She was outside of Elm’s world, and Elm wanted Wania to take her in her arms the way she did Moira when the little girl was upset about something. This was a skill Elm had never mastered, the art of comforting. She felt how inept she was at it every time Moira attempted to seek solace. But the desire to tell Wania that she was attempting to get pregnant with Ronan’s clone faded just as quickly as it had arisen, and Elm realized how stupid it would sound. When she had the baby, if she had the baby, she could never tell anyone who he really was. Ever.

When Elm walked into the bedroom, Colin had changed from his suit into a pair of jeans and a collared shirt. She walked over to him, sorry for being so cold to him earlier. She hugged him to her and heard him sigh heavily, felt his breath hot on her neck. He pulled away. “I—” he started.

Elm said, “Let’s just go.”

She checked them into the hotel while Colin waited just behind her. Once in the minuscule room he flopped down on the bed facefirst. “I should shower,” he mumbled, sounding much like Moira’s sleepy insistence.

Elm lay down next to him on the bed. “I miss you,” she said.

He rolled over; his eyes remained closed. “I miss you too. Work’s been … I don’t know if I can take it any longer, Elm.”

Elm didn’t say anything. He couldn’t quit now. They’d need the money, especially after she’d raided their accounts to pay Michel.

“It’s bad, Elm.” He pulled his knees to his chest, fetal style. “I haven’t told you because, well, it’s not that I don’t want you to worry, rather … it’s proprietary, but more than that, it’s just that it’s borderline, well, f*ck, it’s … it’s one of those things it’s better not to know.”

“Okay …” Elm stretched the word out. She didn’t really understand what he was saying. She knew it was important. She knew she should pay attention, but she was so singularly focused on her goal that she was having trouble concentrating.

“They might call me in to testify,” he said.

Elm drew in a sharp breath. Had she really been paying so little attention that Colin had done something illegal? Hidden evidence of a drug trial that would require the drug to be pulled from the market? Had he embezzled funds, or helped someone embezzle them?

“Could you be charged with something?” Elm asked. She permitted herself a horrible fantasy image of being a single mother with an imprisoned husband, asking Wania to move into the apartment so she could care for Moira and the new Ronan full-time while Elm worked her ass off to make ends meet. Then Greer Tinsley would really have something to hold against her.

“God, no. Elm!” Colin opened his eyes and looked at her incredulously. “What are you thinking? No, I’m not a criminal. It’s my department that’s in trouble, not me. For chrissakes!” He was offended.

“Sorry,” Elm said. She decided to pretend that she’d been joking. She smiled and his face softened.

Colin was so earnestly honest. When they wrote their vows for their wedding, he insisted on including an honesty clause—it was that important to him. And here she was not only deceiving him but forcing him to abet her. She had been hoping, she realized, that he would confess to having committed some crime, or at least an indiscretion. She also saw, equally as surprisingly, that her recurring worry that he was having an affair was her desire to see him humbled by a poor decision or a regret, the same way she was every day of her existence. She felt relieved that he might be capable of deceit as well. She understood then that she would never tell him about Ronan, that she would always have to keep it a secret until their graves. Her chest collapsed with the weight of it.

“I’ll go shower. Then we can talk more,” Colin said.

She watched him sit up from her position on the bed. He took off his shoes and placed them next to the nightstand, a gesture of neatness he never managed at home. Then he pulled his button-down over his head. He was still thin, but doughy in a way that he hadn’t been when she married him. He had a small belly, which bulged over the belt of his pants, and his chest was fleshy with sparse hair. He turned away from her—residual shyness, after all these years?—and took off his pants. He walked in his boxers to the bathroom and closed the door. She could hear him pee, then the rush of the shower.

She took off her skirt and top as well. She’d bought new lingerie for this excursion, black lace with small red bows. When he emerged with the towel wrapped around his waist, he uttered a caricatured fake whistle in appreciation. Then he pulled back the covers and dropped the towel, revealing the same boxer shorts.

He lay down and Elm scooted toward him, putting her leg up over him and rubbing her mouth against his neck. He sighed and did not stir.

“Elm,” he said, craning his neck back, “would you be angry if we didn’t …”

“No,” she said, a little too brightly.

He didn’t catch the disingenuousness in her voice; he murmured, “Thanks, grand,” and fell asleep.

Elm turned over onto her back and put her arm over her eyes. She felt tears start and clenched her teeth to hold them back. Why was she crying? How was it possible to feel so lonely with your husband of over a decade snoring softly beside you?

It was a big decision, choosing to lie. And she had done it so cavalierly. This must be what adulterers felt—caught up in the moment and hit by the magnitude of their duplicity. She felt almost sorry for cheaters at that moment. Certainly their pain was worse than that of the faithful spouse who suspects nothing.

She had known, though, that of the two of them she would be the one to betray. A friend of hers from college had made the astute comment, wise before her years, that in each relationship there was one who loved more than the other, the belover and the beloved. It was easier in medieval times, she said, when the roles were defined, the inequality accepted. Now it was among our neo-romantic myths that love should be equally distributed, like communal wealth.

In Elm’s first real relationship, she had been the belover. She had loved Jason so intensely that she told herself it didn’t matter if his love was less ardent, less pressing. She would have sacrificed anything for him. And when he broke up with her (kindly, he was always kind), his flaw was that he didn’t love her enough, and she swore she’d never be the one to give more than she got again. When Colin came into her life, and loved her with a passion equal to that she’d felt for Jason, she found herself in the position she considered correct. She loved him, very much, and she liked him too. But there was something about his love for her—patient, completely unconditional—that Elm knew her love for him couldn’t match. And here was the proof. She was willing to risk her marriage on a science experiment.

In the morning, Colin woke her up by pressing an erection into her back and they made love. In the moment, Elm was able to convince herself that this act was creating Ronan; this merging of bodies and souls in this Midtown hotel was sparking the life that would soon grow inside her. But as she lay there while Colin ordered Continental breakfast, wondering aloud as he did each time they stayed in a hotel about why it was called Continental breakfast since no one he knew from the Continent ever ate like that, not even those German wankers, Elm reminded herself that she was taking hormones to sync her cycle with the egg donor’s, and that as much as she wanted to believe that they could re-create Ronan by themselves, it was science that would ultimately provide them with the son that nature had taken away. Colin looked at her and smiled in such an innocent and unadulteratedly happy way that she was almost able to forgive herself.



On the plane from JFK, Elm sat with her head against the window, holding a James Patterson novel she’d bought in the airport. She watched the ground recede and then the clouds bounce off the wing. A drop of water formed on the window, rolled across its plastic surface, and flew off into the expanse of air. Elm was startled when land appeared three hours later, but then remembered that the fastest way to Europe was to fly north and east before turning south again. So that large island would be Greenland, or Nova Scotia. Then she fell asleep and woke, unrested, to the smell of baked croissants coming from the first-class section of the plane. Cruel, to do that to economy passengers. Self-moving freight, she heard they were called by airline staff. Such contempt we all have for our clients, she thought.

Elm had liquidated all the stocks she could, sold her Magritte sketch to a private collector, and emptied her 401(k) (with penalties), but she still needed to come up with $150,000. So far, her deal with Relay had earned her $30,000. She was contemplating taking out a home equity loan, if she could manage to do so online so Colin wouldn’t know about it. Of course, by tax time, he would. But by then she’d be pregnant. She knew she was digging herself into a hole, but she wanted this so badly that she would endure a prison sentence, torture, to have the opportunity to see Ronan one more time. If he could just come home once, after playing baseball in Central Park, and she could smell the outdoors on his hair, the mowed grass and the slightly sweet scent of child perspiration, fragrant, not sour like adult sweat, she would give anything.

Calm down, she told herself, knowing that her hope might be too strong, that it was possible she would need two or three implantations before she got pregnant. Where she would come up with that extra money was beyond her. Maybe she would start stealing art, she joked to herself. At least she knew what was worth stealing.

Tinsley’s had arrested and prosecuted an employee two years ago. He was a new hire, working within the transportation department, and someone reported him walking off with a tiny Giacometti sculpture. He claimed he had removed it by accident and then, when he discovered his mistake, was going to return it the next day, a lame enough story that Elm almost believed him—surely a lie would be better constructed. Security grew tighter after that. All employee bags were searched, even, oddly, on the way into the building.

They served the breakfast, tasteless melon balls and chewy rolls with butter and sugared jelly. She looked down at the Parisian outskirts as the plane descended, trying to see the clinic, but all the large houses looked alike from this height.

She stayed in the same hotel. They gave her a room overlooking an air shaft, and she considered complaining but then decided it would be quieter and darker than if she were facing the avenue. She left her bag on the bed and went out, walking along the Seine, passing Australians and Germans (most French knew better than to take the scenic route).

The Seine wasn’t really water, in Elm’s opinion. There was nothing about it that was riverlike. At most, it was an excuse for historic bridges, a way to maintain the vista of the opposite bank. No one walked along it, no barges trawled, no commerce was conducted, and it never rippled. Yet it was probably one of the most famous rivers in the world. In front of her, a dog stopped to pee, looking at her. The urine, green against the stones, shiny like antifreeze, slinked down the pavement toward the water.

She had lunch in a cute little square with a fountain in its center. She was early; the seating area was almost empty and the waiters were crowded together like bored pigeons. She ordered an omelet with salad and sipped water while she waited for it to arrive. Her anxiety turned to hunger and she nibbled on bread.

Tomorrow at this time she would be at the clinic. There would be a syringe there with the few cells that were almost Ronan and she would climb up onto the table and put her feet in the stirrups and then pray for implantation.

Her eggs arrived, and the symbolism of what she’d ordered struck her. She put down her fork and drank more water to quell the gag reflex.

She took the métro back up to the Seventh and bought a ticket for the Musée Rodin, one of her favorite museums in Paris. She had always loved Rodin; she had taken her first sculpture class because of him. But sculpture was so technical—the clay models, the covering with wax to make the negative mold, the pouring of the metal and then the melting of the wax, the conduits that had to be scraped. It was impossible for her to understand the negative space, that she was making the inverse of what the final product needed to be, and that’s how she understood that she wasn’t really an artist.

After she entered, she went straight to the garden. The grounds were well manicured, but dead in spots where people had tromped on the grass (FORBIDDEN, the signs warned, but the command was unenforceable). Neatly spaced bushes marked the edge of the gravel path. Her shoes chopped noisily on the gravel—she wanted to be quiet and yet her footsteps were so loud, so regular, like a deafening heartbeat.

She stood in front of the Bourgeois de Calais and looked at their faces, wondered how Rodin was able to convey their expressions so precisely through all those various stages of the casting. She put her hands in her pocket and found a sticky note. “Very Important,” she had written, with nothing else. What had been so important, she wondered, and wasn’t it funny how time made lint out of importance?

She left without looking at any of the other sculptures, not even The Gossips, her favorite Camille Claudel work. She had loved the movie they made out of her life, the romantic way in which she seduced and served as muse to Rodin, and then went mad. The Gossips she loved because of its title in French, Les Causeuses, which was both onomatopoetic and slightly vulgar, and because of the way the women leaned into one another. It explored the erotic nature of female friendships, a comfort in sharing their bodies, brushing one another’s hair, touching hands, hugging. The sculpture always made her feel sad that she didn’t have intimate female friends, that she rarely experienced this kind of closeness devoid of sex, the wonderful ease of sameness.



Again the mysterious car, again the circuitous route, again the deserted grounds. Elm’s anxiety seemed to move up her body, like a cloud of warm air, starting in her restless legs and ending up a metallic taste in her mouth. When she contemplated what she was about to do, she felt like she had entered an alternate reality.

The car stopped at the large house and the porter opened her door. Once inside, a woman in her early twenties, hair pulled back into a messy bun, lab coat open to reveal a blouse and black pants, shook her hand, introducing herself as Catherine.

She put her hand on Elm’s shoulder, steering her toward the wing of the mansion opposite the labs she’d seen earlier. They walked down a long hall. Tapestries hung on the wall, geometric and vegetable patterns. At each column a plaster bust stared dully out. Elm recognized them as copies of Greek Kori, standard-issue. “We have rules that we ask that you respect, for the security, you know. If you encounter another client, which should not occur, please, you will not look at her or talk to her. She will do the same.”

“Are there others?”

Catherine didn’t answer. “This is yours.” She reached past Elm and opened the door.

Inside was a spacious room. A four-poster bed stood against the far wall, so high there was a small step stool next to it. The wallpaper had tiny fleur-de-lis in stripes, the curtains were velvet. Elm crossed to the opposite end of the dark room. There was a secretary desk, a phone with no buttons. In the fireplace, ashes shifted. Elm reached next to the window and pulled the cord to open the drapes. The windows were shuttered except for the top third. Light flooded in, but she couldn’t see out.

“You’ll find the … um … to open for air,” Catherine said, demonstrating the lever that tilted the window out. “It’s not for viewing, you know.”

Elm sighed. She was, actually, trapped. She panicked for a moment: What if she died? What would Colin and Moira do?

Her face must have blanched, because Catherine laid a reassuring hand on her forearm. “You look scared,” she said. “Don’t worry. I know it seems like cinema here, but it is a very normal place. We just have security, for obvious reasons. You will very much enjoy it, I think. Most women do. A vacation! Here you have the television with cable international, and a computer.” She pointed to the rolltop desk. “We ask you use our computer because we have a special server. The same with the cell phone. You pick up the phone and tell us the number and we will call it. It’s all protection!” She smiled, showing a gap between her front teeth.

“You have the refrigerator here, and fruit and also cheese,” she continued. “Here is the menu for the food. If you want something special, let us know with advance, okay?”

“Sure,” Elm said. She felt her lower lip tremble.

“Awww, pauvre petite,” Catherine said. “Viens, je t’embrasse,” and she pulled Elm into her bony shoulder for a practiced hug. Elm let herself be held for a moment, then withdrew, rubbing her eyes.

“I tell them to bring your bag, yes?” Catherine smiled. She patted Elm on the shoulders and shut the door softly behind her.

Elm went to sit on the bed and had to use the stool to climb onto it. Her feet dangled. She leaned back and found that the canopy above the bed had been painted. It was a Baroque scene of cherubs and nymphs, not one style or time in particular. Oddly, this made her laugh, this ignorant parody of art. Relax, she told herself. You’re just getting in vitro fertilization. It was practically a hobby in New York.

Someone knocked at the door. “Excuse, Madame.” The porter was back with her overnight bag, which he placed on a valet near the desk. “Thank you.”

Elm stood up. Should she tip him? This wasn’t a hotel.… Before she could decide he’d left. She opened the suitcase. Someone had obviously been through it and wanted her to know it. The clothes had been refolded, much better than she’d folded them herself.

Elm supposed they had to check everyone. After all, she could be a journalist, or a government agent. How were they supposed to know? Except that they seemed to know everything.

She laughed at herself. “They.” Like some spy organization or an evil empire. When the phone next to her bed rang, she had unpacked and was watching a show on a nature channel in French about African elephants. The narrator was speaking too fast for her to understand, but the camera told the story: elephants have families, trek long distances, get killed by poachers, mourn their dead.

“Bonjour, Madame Howells.” The voice on the other end pronounced it “ow-ELS.” “You are installing all right?”

“Yes, very comfortable, thanks.” She recognized Michel’s voice.

“We would like to perform an ultrasound, to look, yes? I will have someone come for you in five minutes, all right? There is a robe in your armoire.”

Elm was about to answer but he hung up. She put on the robe and continued to watch television until she heard the soft knock.

“Hello!” Catherine said brightly. “Let’s?”

She followed Catherine back down the residential hall, the busts still staring eyelessly at her. Then they passed the office where Elm had met with the doctor and turned down the corridor that led to the lab.

Inside, Michel was laying out instruments. He turned to shake hands with Elm. He had cut his hair since Elm had seen him. It was too short now, sticking up, freshly mowed, the gray more prevalent. Elm thought it made him look older, less attractive. Probably better for his line of work. He didn’t wear a ring, she saw, but he was European and about to perform a gynecological procedure, two very good excuses for no jewelry.

“Before we start, you have questions?”

“Yes,” Elm said. She climbed onto the table. Rather than regular doctor’s office stirrups, she saw that they were lined with sheepskin. There was a blanket behind her. Everything was designed for comfort and luxury. “The embryo is ready?”

“We have grown a two-day blastocyst and a four-day. Whichever looks more promising tomorrow we will choose.” The doctor smiled. He turned on the screen behind him and pulled the stool closer.

“If you’re using donor sperm and a donor egg, how are you sure that what you’re getting is a cl—You know, a copy and not a fertilized egg?”

The doctor laughed. “Please lie back,” he said. “We remove the nucleus and replace it with your son’s genetic material. The egg is just the casing, the sperm just the signal to start replicating. Like planting and watering a seed.”

He hadn’t really answered her question, and she was still puzzling out the plant metaphor, but before she could speak he announced: “I’m putting the wand inside now.” Elm felt the push then the ache of the intrusion. “This looks good,” he said. “Looks fine. Excellent. You have had two children before?”

Elm nodded. “And we got pregnant after just thinking about having kids.”

He removed the wand. “Tomorrow we will implant. You will be in a twilight sleep, so it should not feel painful. There is just a catheter we place in your uterus. Now we give you special low-alkaline food, injection …” He turned to Catherine and spoke rapidly in French. She nodded and took notes.

“Try to relax. I know it will be hard, but try. You do meditation?”

Elm shook her head. She had trouble sitting still for a pedicure.

“Well, try. Deep breaths, calming thoughts, you know. I see you tomorrow.” He extended a hand to shake.

“Come, I’ll take you back,” Catherine said, helping her off the table.

There was no way that Elm was going to sleep that night. The best she could do was to sip the tea they’d given her (something herbal, calming, womb-preparing) and watch the fire they’d lit. She thought about Ronan, something she rarely let herself do consciously.

She remembered the obstetrician putting him in her arms. Then she realized what she was remembering was the video they’d made of his birth, Colin’s scrubbed hands waving in front of the camera, Ronan’s furrowed face. Were they supposed to be that small? she had wondered. That squishy and wrinkly? She wanted to rub some of the gore off him, but she wasn’t sure she was supposed to. In fact, she had no idea what to do, so she just held him to her chest. In the video her face was hilarious—white and confused, her mouth pursed in a cartoonish expression of bewilderment. And then the nurses took him from her and she felt the absence of his small weight like a punch to the gut.

Now a memory that was a real memory, sitting on a bench in Central Park and nursing him. Her uterus contracted in a way that was almost sexual, and she pulled the blanket she was using to cover her breast over her head as well, so she could watch him suckle and no one could see her. That same bench a couple of years later, watching Ronan play in the disgusting sandbox, planning how best to disinfect him and listening to the mothers complain about their sex lives. She thought so much then about snacks. She was always planning the most insignificant activities: laundry, dinner, baths …

A dinner where he threw his chicken at her, and she swept him up roughly and shoved him in the crib, slamming the door on his angry cries. His face when he saw Moira for the first time, the mixture of wonder and curiosity and jealousy. He touched her tentatively, amid Elm’s admonitions: “Gentle touches, Ronan. Gentle touches.” Then he touched Elm’s stomach, amazed at the no-longer-taut skin.

On the sofa, Elm making dinner, Ronan reading to his sister from Thomas the Tank Engine. He was making up the words, “picture reading,” but had most of it memorized, even the questions that Elm used to ask them all the time: Which one is Thomas? Why do you think he’s smiling? Who can find the blue engine?

The images of Thailand, Ronan turning his nose up at a whole fish, refusing to wear his green swim trunks, putting Moira’s Dora shirt on for a joke, being dwarfed under Colin’s sun hat, excited to go fishing the next day.

And then it was morning.



The implantation didn’t feel like anything. Like a vaginal exam. There was no moment of eureka or a pop or ping. She’d always thought that was a fallacy anyway, and that women who claimed to have known instantly at the moment of conception were just feeling nostalgic, the hormones planting a false memory.

“Et voilà,” the doctor had said, sounding so French that Elm giggled. Probably her nerves. Or the Valium they’d given her. She felt like she was dreaming this scene, like she was above her body looking down, and had the feeling that she could control the events if she could only focus on them. As they wheeled her back to her room with strict instructions to lie down for the rest of the day, it seemed so right that she couldn’t believe she had ever contemplated not doing it.

She waited for the Valium to wear off to see if she would change her mind, but if anything, the logic had cemented itself while she was floating in psychotropic-land. If she was pregnant, if this was indeed her chance to redeem herself, to prove that she could take care of her son, then she owed it to him to do this. She had no other option.