A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend Page 0,93

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.