A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,42

to hide nascent breasts, hair straggly. Lise and Giancarlo at a scenic overlook, maybe somewhere in Italy, Lise’s face tanned, her chest freckly, and her nose beginning to peel, Giancarlo looking off behind the photographer with a surprised and pleased expression, as though he were seeing someone he knew unexpectedly.

Gabriel felt like a detective on an American television show. He was looking for a problem, something off, a Photoshop mistake that would reveal the entire hoax. But he knew he would find nothing. Lise had real photos of her childhood, trips, birthdays, etc. Gabriel had only his memories and one photograph, the low-quality colors fading into oranges and reds, of his parents posed stiffly on their wedding day. That was it. The sum total of his past: one kitschy photo and a gaggle of memories. And his name. Maybe talent, if he had any.

Lise reappeared with a plastic tray that Gabriel recognized as IKEA circa 2001. He could hear the cars outside honking as they entered the intersection, the horns muted through the windows. Lise went over and opened one slightly, hooking the handles together so the panes wouldn’t bang. The horns immediately got louder, drowning out the cloying baby music, and a cold breeze blew in, smelling faintly of fish.

In another room a child began to cry. “Be right back,” Lise said.

There was no sugar, so Gabriel put three small disks of sugar substitute into his coffee and sipped it. It was too sweet, sickening. He debated sneaking into the kitchen to pour it out, but in front of him, staring at him, was the same little person who had opened the door.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Gabi,” he said. “An old friend of your mother’s.”

“You talk funny. Are you foreign?”

Gabriel nodded and tried not to be offended. Now that he had a chance to examine the child, he wasn’t sure it was a boy after all. He’d had so little experience with children that he wasn’t sure how to tell how old they were, or what it was appropriate to talk to them about. Plus, it always felt odd that someone who had lived in France—lived on the planet—fewer years than he should speak the language with much greater fluency.

“Which foreign?”

“I’m Spanish.”

“My father’s Italian.” The child picked at the fringe on a throw blanket.

“I know.”

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably. The conversation appeared to have hit a dead end.

“But you don’t talk as weird as he does.” Gabriel felt a silly flush of pride. Why was he in competition with Giancarlo? To live in this suburban aerie working a soulless job and raising some brats?

Lise came back into the room carrying a parcel wrapped expertly in brown paper. “Here they are,” she said. “Do you want to look at them? Oh, you’re talking to Gabi?” She held another child on her hip. This one’s face was wet with tears, and he/she was making small hiccup noises. Lise balanced the package on a chair.

“He talks funny like Papa.”

“Maybe you talk funny? Did you ever think about that?” She smiled and bent to tickle the child’s ribs. It giggled and ran out of the room.

“My six-year-old,” Lise explained.

Gabriel knew he was supposed to say something like “So cute” or “How precious,” but he wasn’t sure how to do so without revealing that he didn’t know the child’s gender, so he just smiled.

“I’ll look,” he said.

He unwrapped her package. The drawings were good, remarkable likenesses of Ganedis, his soft lines, his domestic subjects. There were the requisite charcoal still lifes, and a gouache of the child he’d just been talking to wearing a yellow dress and holding the small white dog.

“Coffee’s no good?” Lise asked. She slid the child down her leg and it landed on its feet, rubbing its face into the back of her knee.

“I put too many sugars in,” Gabriel said.

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to warn you. Saccharine. I’ll get you another one.”

“It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “I should get going.”

“Thanks for coming by. I’m sorry it’s so chaotic here. You must think my life is hugely boring. That’s because it is.” She sat down and the baby climbed up her, sitting on her lap and burying its face into her neck. She instinctively hugged it and began to rock. What would it be like, Gabriel wondered suddenly, to have something love you that much? He felt an urge to join them in an embrace.

As he left her apartment, with its overpriced furniture and the small fingerprints on the preposterous white walls,