by Ryan Schow
I wait in a large room prepared for visitors, complete with hors d’oeuvres, cut-rate sweets and bitter coffee. There are several families hugging and talking to each other and it seems like a happy day for everyone.
A moment later Margaret appears with the nurse. She looks terrific, fully rested, a little heavier—but in a good way—not so emaciated, and not so painted-up with makeup. Something in me responds to her. I stand. She looks at me, then beyond me. She looks around, then back at the nurse. The nurse points to me, says something, and Margaret shakes her head.
I walk toward her and there’s uncertainty in her eyes. Or fear. Deep down, I wonder if she thinks she’s about to be Punk’d. Last year, on a full blown three day Margarita bender, she watched like nine Punk’d episodes in a row and she couldn’t stop saying how Ashton gave her lady wood. I was so embarrassed for her.
I say “Thank you,” and the nurse walks away.
“That’s the look you have when you’re afraid you’re being deceived,” I say.
“Who are you?” she asks. “Because I don’t have a niece. Are you from the press?”
“No, Margaret, I’m not part of the cockroach squad.” For this part of the conversation I’m glad the nurse has left. “It’s me, Savannah. Vannie.”
“You’re not my daughter,” she says, looking angry. “My daughter is—”
“Fat and ugly? Short on confidence? Gets sick at the thought of any attention? Is this the same daughter who hated learning about her parents possible divorce on EXTRA TV so badly she threw up twice and swore never to talk to her mother again? The same shattered girl who tried to kill herself because everyone in the free world knew she had pathetic, lopsided tits by age fifteen? That daughter?”
Margaret stands there in shock, unable to process what she’s seeing.
“Or is it the girl who wanted so desperately for her mother to see the beauty in her when the girl couldn’t see any beauty in herself?” I feel my eyes welling with tears and I don’t try to stop them. “I wanted you to love me, Margaret, but you didn’t and that devastated me every single day.”
Margaret’s eyes are watering now, too. She puts out her hand, touches my face. “I don’t understand,” she says. She’s feeling for the scars on my cheeks, trying to find them through the makeup.
“Are you trying to see me in here? The ugly duckling is gone. I’m a swan now, albeit a synthetic one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not really a swan, more like a clone of a swan, the ugliness erased for something more beautiful.”
I watch as Margaret’s face fills with hope, then it’s like something inside her refuses to believe me. She pulls away and angrily says, “You’re not Savannah.”
“Why? Because I didn’t go to your plastic surgeon? Because you couldn’t do this for me? No one will ever again ask if I’m adopted, Margaret. You won’t ever have to tell them I got my father’s looks and smile that awful, pathetic smile.”
Suddenly she believes. “You know I didn’t mean that.”
“You spent your entire life embarrassed by me. I was your disgusting little pig. But not anymore. You won’t have to answer tough questions about me ever again. Not those kinds of questions, anyway. About me, you will have only one question to answer, and it is this: ‘Where is your daughter these days?’ Your reply will be simple. You’ll say: ‘My daughter told me she never wanted to see me again, and I haven’t seen her since.’”
“No,” she says. Her voice is rich with pleading.
“Margaret, you horrible menace, I never want to see you again.”
I leave her standing there in her own tears and misery. I leave her there in that big room with all those happy families to destroy herself, to be haunted by the choices she has made, to be ruined by the understanding that she finally has the beautiful daughter she always wanted and now her daughter no longer wants her. I leave her to her pain, to her suffering, to her healing.
I leave her.
3
It’s a bit of a drive to my house, but my father isn’t there. I make the drive to his office, a large Palo Alto complex, a space every bit as big as the Facebook offices. I’ve seen his secretary a dozen times before, but she’s never seen me looking like this.
I ask to see Mr. Van Duyn. She says, “One moment, please,” then picks up the phone, punches the button and says, “There’s a young girl to see you, she says you’ll want to talk with her.” Pause, smile. “No, I don’t know what it’s about.”
She looks up at me and I smile.
Covering the phone, in barely a whisper, she says, “I really don’t know.” Then louder: “Okay. I’ll send her right in.”
I’m walking toward his office by the time she puts the phone down. “He’s the fourth—”
“I know where his office is.” Everywhere I walk, heads of computer geeks turn to watch me, their jaws dropping, drool forming fast. I now have that effect on people and I have to say, it’s a bit surreal. I walk into my father’s office and he looks up from his work.
“Can I help you?” he says. He doesn’t like surprises; he never has. I smile, then turn and shut the door. “Excuse me, you can’t—”
“Hi, dad.”
He sits paralyzed, like a wax figure of himself. “Savannah?”
“I came to show you what twenty-five million buys. Congratulations, you have a brand new daughter.” I try for light and airy, but the truth is some of the hostility in my confrontation with Margaret is still simmering in my voice.
His breath catches in his throat and his eyes become wide as saucers. Standing up, he looks me over the same way he would look over a new circuit board or a brand new Mercedes-Benz.
“Extraordinary,” he says. “I can’t stop looking at your eyes. How did you get those?”
“I sweet-talked the doctor into making a few changes,” I say, deadpan.
He pulls me into a hug that practically squeezes the life out of me. “I had no idea you would look…so beautiful. It actually hurts my heart to look at you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, wow, I don’t see any of you left. You look nothing like your old self, which honestly I will miss.” His tone changes. He sounds sad. “I had no idea how much I would miss the old you.”
“You won’t miss that swamp donkey,” I say.
“I will, and don’t ever say that about yourself. I don’t care what you looked like, I loved you exactly the way you were. It was you, Savannah. You weren’t happy with you.”
“I wasn’t happy because of Margaret.”
“Yes, I know she contributed to the problem. But darling, this is what you wanted. Do you remember? You said you didn’t care about brains. You wanted to be beautiful. Like your mother. Now look at you. My God, sweetheart, look at you!”
“Daddy, you don’t understand. I love the way I look, but these people, this corporation who funds Gerhard and dozens of other scientists like him, they’re playing God. This faceless corporation…I think they’re making soulless clones. Gerhard calls it a master race.”
“I’m sorry Savannah, I can’t stop looking at those eyes!”
“Did you hear me dad? This Virginia Corporation is just plain evil.”
He blinks twice, his enthusiasm instantly waning. “You shouldn’t rush to judgment.”
“How can I not?”
He draws a mighty breath, holds it, then blows it out on a long sigh. He looks her in the eyes—lost for a moment—then says, “Because that’s my corporation. I started it ten years ago.”
I stagger two steps backwards, startled. “No,” I whisper. This feels like that horrid bout of nausea you can’t see coming.
“You knew it as Savannah Holdings, LLC., but when I established a Board of Directors and incorporated, we changed the name to Virginia Corporation. Baby, I never wanted you to have to go under the knife the way Margaret has. I never wanted you to be consumed by your looks. To be doped up on pain medication or obsessed with your features the
way your mother is. It’s like a sickness, you know?”
“You started this…because of me?”
“I started this for you.”
“All those people then, the clones your corporation made—the shells of children whose DNA you’re harvesting—you did that for me?”
“It doesn’t sound so noble when you phrase it like that.”
“And the war prototypes?” I ask. “Are they because of me, too?”
“It’s not just me in charge anymore,” he says. “There are many people involved. The board has many uses for our science and genetics, some I agree with, others I do not.”
“How many people are involved?”
“There are five of us heading up my branch of the corporation, plus dozens of scientists like Dr. Gerhard. With what we now know, this corporation is going to change the world.”
“You can’t do this. It’s not right!”
“Look at you, sweetheart. Did you really want to spend your life feeling gross and taking pills for your anxieties? Trust me, I lived my entire life as the consummate ugly duckling. If not for my reputation and my intelligence, I’d be working at McDonald’s right now.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Once I’m finished here, I’m flying to New York to undergo my own treatment. There are a lot of things in the works right now, great things. When I get back, we can talk then.”
And here I didn’t think it could get any worse. “You’re doing the treatment, too? Like me?”
“I did this for you, but also for me. I hate the way I look, the way I feel. I know I have never said this to you before, but it’s true.”
“I’m sorry you feel this way, but—”
“I worked my ass off building SocioSphere, but not to compete with Facebook or Twitter or MySpace.” Lowering his voice, he says, “The truth is, I could give a crap about social media. SocioSphere was the tool needed to fund this operation. For you, and me. Already laws have been re-written and pushed through Congress. Legalizing stem cell research opened up a whole new avenue for genetic engineering and harvesting, and though there have been many seemingly impossible barriers to entry, my colleagues and I have figured them out. I’m powerful now, and rich beyond measure, but money isn’t everything if you despise your body. This corporation will change the world. It will change the way we view ourselves and others.”
“Do you have any idea of the moral implications?”
“Savannah, darling, the implications are far reaching, some too difficult to comprehend at once. So, yes. I understand.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder to calm me. I shrug it off.
“You can’t play God.”
“Darling, I already have. But this is neither the time nor the place to discuss this. Like it or not, by the time you see me next, I’ll look different, like you, next time we meet.”
“But I don’t want you different,” I say.
“It’s not up to you. The point is, we’ll all be beautiful. You, me and your mother.”
“That’s what you think,” I say. “I spoke to Margaret for the last time about a half an hour ago. Did you hear me? For the last time. Ever.”
“You need some time to process this,” he says, confident, dismissive. “I understand.”
On my way out I turn and say, “Just so you know, the pain is like nothing you have ever known or will ever feel again. During those first few nights I would’ve killed myself a hundred times over if I could have.”
That’s when I leave the office. If anything, I had to get the last word.
I plan to see Netty, but I can’t. Not now. Instead, in the Rover, I pick up the phone and dial Damien’s number. He answers right away.
“It’s me,” I say.
He says, “I like the paper.” He’s referring to my Investigative Journalism paper, the one I did on Kaitlyn. She’s at home now, still hidden from the public, a fact both Damien and I can live with. He’s just now starting to speak to his father again without it ending in screaming and yelling and breaking things.
Since people don’t know she is still alive, I wrote my biography on her as if she was still missing and/or dead. In my paper, I construct the mystery behind her assumed death, then pretty much paint a picture of the person she was, and the grieving family she’s left behind. It’s pretty blasé next to the truth, but I’ll get a B+ on it at least. Maybe even an A. After all, the paper was never supposed to be an unsolved mystery as much as it was supposed to be a biography.
“Thanks,” I say, “but that’s not why I called. Actually I called for a couple of reasons. I’ve been thinking of Maggie and I can’t figure out why her clone would be there, especially if she received her treatments years ago, around the same time as your step-sister.”
He heaves a long sigh, then says, “What I’m going to tell you, you can’t even breathe a word of this to anyone. And I mean ever.”
“I’m a vault.”
“I hope so, because she told me these things in confidence.”
“Go ahead,” I say.
“Two things. First, the clone is here because Maggie was having problems with her body and needed a fresh DNA infusion.”
“Is she okay?” I ask.
“She is now. Sort of. But like you, she’s been going through an incredible amount of pain.”
“I had no idea,” I say.
“I didn’t either. Only recently did she tell me.”
“And the other thing?”
“It’s not about the clone as much as it’s about Maggie. She’s under a tremendous amount of pressure by her father to land a recording contract. Cameron’s father is friends with Maggie’s father, and Cameron’s father is pulling some strings to help Maggie get her demos and some face time with a major record label, a newish group called Outerscope Records.”
“Are they a good label?”
“I guess it’s comprised of disgruntled executives from Innerscope Records who broke off and started their own thing. The problem is, Maggie says being in the music industry, especially if you sign with an industry heavyweight, you have to sell your soul on the way in. She says this like it’s not a figure of speech. She says this like she’s scared for what’s to come.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the rumors.”
“She says her father is pushing hard. Then again, being from an affluent family, you of all people know it’s not always sunshine and roses.”
“Please someone, cry for us rich girls,” I say with a fair amount of sarcasm.
He laughs a bitter laugh, then says, “My father’s calling me, I have to go in a sec.”
“Before you go, I want to thank you for everything.”
“I should be thanking you.”
“Okay,” I say playfully, “go ahead.”
“Thank you,” he says, and I can hear him grinning. I hear his father calling him from the other room, telling him dinner’s ready. “Do you want to come see me during Christmas break?”
Holy cow, did I just blurt that out?!
“We still have several weeks until we’re out of school.”
“I didn’t ask how many weeks we had left, ding dong,” I reply. “I asked if you wanted to come and see me during the break.”
“I don’t know,” he says, quickly. “Now that we’re through this thing, now that Kaitlyn’s alive and home again and you’re okay and Gerhard’s on a leash, I don’t know—”
“You still don’t like me.”
He sighs into the phone and now I’ve become that girl, dumping this pesky issue of my crush on him while he’s got mere seconds of time left. OMG, how did this happen?
“I do. It’s just that, well”—he says, pausing for like forever—“okay, I’ll come see you.”
The suppressing weight of a life of rejection, mixed with that feeling of not being good enough, hot enough or even worth loving, suddenly lifts and my heart floods with an airy sense of possibility and wonder.
“Promise?” I say, trying not to sound too giddy.
He laughs, then after a minute, he says, “Yeah, I promise. Sort of.” In those five words, the optimist in me wants to see a future for me and the boy-God, or quite possibly the beginning of one, and even though it’s not an “I love you,” I hang up the phone knowing this is something.
Who knows what might come next, or what the future holds? All I know is that it won’t be boring.
END OF BOOK I
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Book 2 of the Swann Series Novels:
MONARCH
An innocent family is slain, a beautiful body is mutilated, and the Virginia Corporation opens a kill contract on Savannah Van Duyn with a nefarious organization known as Monarch Enterprises. Savannah’s railings against the moral deficiencies of the Virginia Corporation put a target on her back, but this realization leads her to an even more frightening discovery: the horrifying truth about her body and what Dr. Gerhard really did to it.
