A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,53
was attempting to communicate with her from the beyond: sticks arranged in an R shape on the playground, subliminal messages encoded in television commercials and billboards, certain precocious statements by Moira. Elm was even temporarily convinced that Ronan’s ghost was visiting his sister at night. All those, she saw now, were signs of the early stages of grief. She hadn’t experienced them in a while.
When the experts referred to grief as a cycle, they neglected to mention its vortex effect. It was more like a series of concentric circles, and she was merely orbiting around again, returning to the early stages, like aftershocks that do more damage than the earthquakes themselves.
The institute’s website felt like an indulgence, like napping at the office, or eating a brownie while dieting. She knew she shouldn’t, but the gratification was so intense that she couldn’t stop herself. She clicked through the various pages again, stopping at the illustrations of the technical process. Elm had a solid grounding in chemistry, necessary for an art history Ph.D. with a concentration in restoration. But she rarely used her scientific training for anything other than helping Moira build a volcano for the science fair. The cloning process was beyond her powers of comprehension.
Colin would probably understand it. He’d picked up a fair amount of biology at his job; holding his own at medical conferences and extolling the benefits of Moore’s drugs required a working knowledge of biochemical processes. But Elm knew she couldn’t ask him. He knew her too well, knew the way her mind spun, and he would divine that she was interested in cloning for reasons that exceeded mere curiosity.
Elm pictured Ronan’s pink face when they brought him home from the hospital. He had been overdue, and his skin was wrinkly and peeling like a tiny bird. What would they name a clone? They couldn’t call it Ronan.
A tease, Elm thought. A crock of shit. She felt stupid for even looking at the site. Were they going to bring Ronan back from the dead? With their magic potions, their “patented scientific process”? Who fell for this? The same people who actually thought they were helping a Nigerian prince or the Russian czarina in response to an e-mail request.
Was it possible that this site intrigued her because she was secretly interested in cloning Ronan? It was ridiculous, science fiction. She went back to the FAQ section; she imagined Colin asking her: Wouldn’t it result in defects? Wasn’t it dangerous for the mother? Was it ethical? Was it legal?
Most of the ethical arguments seemed to hinge on the slippery-slope philosophy. First you start cloning, and then what? This didn’t apply to her, Elm thought. She didn’t want to make a clone assembly line; she wanted her child. She wasn’t fiddling with nature; she was replacing what nature had stolen from her. There were no larger implications of her actions. She just wanted her little boy back, with all his imperfections intact—his stubbornness, his slightly awkward run, his teeth that would inevitably need braces.
And couldn’t she do a better job raising him this time, having raised two children already? She knew that he was allergic to cherries, that he didn’t like chocolate ice cream, that he would be bad at soccer but excellent at baseball. He had had trouble spelling; she could start him earlier. Elm felt a small hope begin to flutter, a minor lessening of the contraction that was her grief. If she could just hold him again, for a minute, it was worth any amount of money. Surely Colin had to see that.
Before she knew what she was doing, she had the phone in her hands and was dialing an international number. For kicks, she told herself. Just to see. The phone rang in that non-American click that always screamed to her: “Expensive call! Don’t talk too long!” Then she realized that it was evening in Paris—likely no one would answer the phone and she could put this nonsense behind her. She was surprised when a voice greeted her in rapid French.
“Bonjour,” said Elm in her college French. “Je voudrais de l’information, s’il vous plaît.”
“You are American?” The voice was clogged with accent. “I have someone to speak to you.”
Elm was transferred. The phone played generic hold music until a man answered. Hang up, Elm told herself. This was ridiculous. Just hang up.
“You are the American woman who would like information?” He was French too, but his English was smooth, fluent.