A Nearly Perfect Copy

by Allison Amend

  This was the time, she knew. If she was going to tell him about the baby, this was the time right here. He was vulnerable. He had admitted a mistake; she could admit one too and they would be even. It would never again be this easy. “Colin,” she began.

  “I’m so sorry, Elm. I don’t think … I didn’t think …” He grabbed her hands in his and lowered his face. She felt the warmth of his tears.

  Her decision to tell him dissolved. She of all people knew what it was like to fuck up and feel guilty about it. And here was a case in which he had fucked up royally, so royally that it was possible, though not likely, Elm knew, that there would be major repercussions. If he cooperated now, nobody would bother prosecuting him. Still, Elm pictured herself enormously pregnant, taking the train to Sing Sing and waiting for visiting hours in a room with greasy handprints on the Plexiglas dividers. She freed one hand and put it on his head, ruffling his hair. She felt a wave of love, and a sense of relief remembering that he too was fallible, that mistakes and misjudgments were the hallmarks of humanity.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s all right. We all make mistakes.” We all lie, she could have added.

  That night Colin wrapped himself around her in bed and slept with his hand on her stomach. She lay still, sleepless but comfortable, watching the lights travel across the ceiling and wishing she’d had the courage to admit her own secret. She could be sleeping now like Colin, soundly and righteously, instead of willing her breathing to be rhythmic, focusing on moving air in and out of her lungs to match her husband.

  She realized that her opportunity for unburdening herself had passed. Now it was too late and she could never tell him, never tell anyone. The weight of this knowledge pressed on her and she rolled over, letting Colin’s hand slip over her hip to rest on the empty sheet between them.

  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, w
hile 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:

  Reuters, Paris, France—February 4, 2008. French police, in cooperation with United Kingdom law enforcement, today arrested Augustus Klinman, who holds a U.K. passport. Klinman, 66, is accused of creating and selling forged paintings and drawings for personal profit.

  “Mr. Klinman has raised vast sums of money by selling fraudulent art,” said the head of regional Interpol, Sevier Becard, in a statement made today in Paris.

  “He was able to perpetrate these acts by claiming that the pieces were found after the Nazi regime fell, and the works’ owners were either deceased or unable to be identified. While it appears he has indeed shared some of the profit with other families of survivors, this Robin Hood is still a criminal.”

  Tobias Schnell, a spokesperson for Holocaust Survivors for Reparation of Stolen Art—a nonprofit organization dedicated to uniting Holocaust survivors and descendants with their families’ art—reached at his home in Frankfurt, Germany, said, “It is unfortunate that a criminal is using the tragedy of the Holocaust for personal profit. Those of us who deal with art stolen by the Nazi regime aim only to return it to its rightful owners or their heirs.”

  The Nazis looted many homes in France, Austria, Germany, and Holland. Hitler and Goering, his commanding officer, took many of Europe’s greatest works for their own personal collections (and a planned Führermuseum). Other art that was considered “degenerate” was destroyed. Still more was injured beyond repair during bombings.

  In 1946, the Monument Men, a group of American art lovers, found a trove of masterpieces in a cave in the Jura region of France. Since then, the idea that works by such artists as Rembrandt, Ingres, Picasso, Vermeer, and others might be hidden in cellars has captured popular imagination.

  “There is definitely art out there that has yet to be returned to its owners, or is still unidentified in a hiding place since forgotten,” Schnell confirmed. “But to use it to perpetrate fraud is unconscionable.”

  Even when art is authenticated, its owners are difficult to determine, as records didn’t exist or were destroyed. “This makes it exceedingly difficult to reunite art with its owners,” Schnell said.

  Klinman, whose extended family perished in 1943 in Bergen-Belsen, was born in China and grew up in Leeds, England. He is unmarried and has no children. His lawyers made this statement: “These allegations are completely false. Augustus Klinman has done nothing illegal, and it is unfortunate that anti-Semitism so persists in this day and age that people are quick to condemn before evidence is presented.”

  Police officials claim that Klinman had the art, mostly drawings, forged in Paris, though he seems to have had several international victims and clients. According to officials, who have yet to interview her, the internationally known ceramicist Indira Schmidt is a person of interest in this case.

  Klinman’s arrest follows an intensive multiyear investigation into international art forgery rings in Europe.

  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.”

  “Did you just call me a peach?” he called after her down the hall. “The PC term is ‘apricot-challenged.’ ”

  Elm

  The cab ride took forever. The driver went across the park and then up Riverside, but the street was blocked off for some reason and he had to go around all the way to Columbus and then back over. Elm tried to call Colette—she had brought Klinman to Elm’s attention, maybe she knew something about this—but there was no answer. Elm was buzzed into the building without speaking to anyone, and rode the piss-smelling elevator up to Indira’s apartment, willing it to go faster, even as she wanted to postpone what she knew would be a confrontation.

  It took the old woman several minutes to answer the door, during which time Elm’s bladder filled. She found that with this pregnancy, her urges to urinate were more frequent and more urgent. When the door opened, Elm said, “I need to use your bathroom.”

  “Go right ahead,” Indira said.

  Elm peed and washed her hands. When she came out of the bathroom, Indira was sitting in her armchair smoking a joint.

  Elm said, “Can you please not smoke that? I’m expecting.”

  “That’s good,” Indira sai
d, letting out another fragrant breath. “It’s nice that now even older women can conceive.”

  Elm flushed. You have no idea, she wanted to say, what science has wrought in this body. “I read the article.”

  “I thought you would,” Indira said. “And now you want to know what I know. What I knew.”

  “Right.”

  “Sit,” Indira said.

  “I’d rather stand.”

  Indira shrugged, indifferent. There was a long silence.

  “Well?” Elm asked.

  “Well what? Ask. I will answer.”

  “Do you know Augustus Klinman?”

  “That is complicated. Yes, I have met the man. He spoke a few years ago at a symposium about stolen art that has found a home in the United States. No, I have never dealt with him professionally.”

  “Then why did the paper say that you’re a person of interest?”

  “Maybe he dropped my name to exonerate himself. How should I know? Maybe he believes I’m an authority? Because I’m an artist?” Indira stared off dreamily out the window, her eyes cloudy with cataracts. It must have been a habit; she couldn’t possibly see anything. Maybe the light was refreshing. Something in Elm softened. Indira was just a little old lady. Even if she had committed a crime, she could hardly be held responsible at her age. Elm sat in the armchair across from her.

  “What about the drawings I sold for you?” Elm said. “Those were authentic, right?”

  “How should I know?” Indira asked with exaggerated innocence. “You’re supposed to be the expert.”

  Elm stiffened. She sat up straight. She saw that she had been played and was breathless, as though the baby had suddenly begun pressing on her lungs. “You knew they were fake?”