A Nearly Perfect Copy

by Allison Amend

  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 t
he 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.

  Gabriel

  September was a busy time in Paris. France woke up from the slumber of August, the government offices reluctantly opening their doors, teachers shuffling to work, professionals stretching out the morning kinks. Gabriel watched everyone scuttle about on important business.

  He was supposed to have spent the month of August painting, but instead had fiddled about with making antique drawings, doing research, and scouring antique and bric-a-brac stores for old pastels, paints, and palettes to make drawings for Klinman. He needed the money. He had joined Colette for a week at her mother’s house in Tenerife, an expensive plane ticket, and his first real vacation. It was such a relief to speak Spanish, to be in charge. He felt swollen with masculinity, ordering for Colette, translating for her, trading proprietary looks with other men at her little ass in her bikini. But when they returned home, he found all sorts of reasons to avoid his studio. He just didn’t feel like working in his own style. When he searched for ideas, his mind was blank. When he looked at colors he found no inspiration. And yet the Connoises kept flowing as though he were channeling the old man himself. He had to hurry to finish his own canvases for his show.

  He had to hand it to Paulette and Patrice, the Galerie Piclut put on an excellent show. The paintings were hung with care. The postcards showed real design savvy, a reproduction of Après-midi au Supermarché in full color, with an appropriately vintage Figueiredo font. Gabrie
l had eked out fourteen canvases in the end, and after the third, he started to have fun. Connois’s tropes were, as it turned out, exactly the kinds of locations that Gabriel had occupied since he moved to France. Tweaking them for a modern audience, with his own flourishes, created a visual pun that also commented on immigration and culture clash. Yes, all this was devised for the artist statement, written by Paulette, but somehow it seemed he’d been thinking about just this melding of styles and ideas all along.

  “Dé/placement, Dé/plaisir” opened on a Thursday, and Gabriel was sweating profusely in his black T-shirt an hour beforehand. The lights were very bright, and he was up on a ladder adjusting one so that it didn’t hit the slick surface of the oil and reflect back into viewers’ eyes. If there were viewers.

  He had gotten lucky. An item in mylittleparis.com highlighting the neighborhood had come out that Monday. Galerie Piclut was mentioned as one of the up-and-coming cool spots to catch emerging artists. He did pause for a moment to sigh that he was still considered “emerging” at forty-two. But he hoped the article would spur some foot traffic.

  Climbing down now and surveying his work, a momentary twinge that it was not exactly his own pained him. He would not have chosen this subject matter (two paintings set in a Grand Prix supermarket; another at the airport; a couple of send-ups of Parisian street scenes, colorful African-print caftans and head wraps worn by the Senegalese; a dead pigeon, an empty wine bottle, and a pair of discarded panties as a still life). But his own choices had never netted him a show.

  People like a story. A locksmith who makes chairs out of keys. An amputee who paints footraces. A flamboyant gay man who pees on his canvases and calls it art. And Gabriel had a good story.

  As the show’s opening had approached he felt alternately elated and full of dread. He was sure Patrice and Paulette would cancel his show. But they seemed as enthusiastic as ever. Probably everyone would see right through the blatant pandering that was now covering the gallery’s walls. But maybe a few would sell. Maybe a few would sell to important collectors and Gabriel’s career would finally be launched.