A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel Read online

  She fidgeted. If she crossed her legs, she slid at each turn across the white leather, but her feet weren’t comfortable on the pristinely upholstered floor. She opened the folder. The literature was specific. It diagrammed how the clone would be produced (engendered was the word they used). There was a sheet of paper on what to expect for the mother with a list of medications to take, and an additional sheet for the father. Elm noticed that neither had any of the clinic’s contact information. She was abruptly terrified. She put one hand on top of the other to stop their shaking. When that didn’t work, she tucked both under her thighs until they were numb from lack of circulation.

  She sat back and looked out the window to calm herself. She opened it a crack to get some air and the driver immediately turned the fan on so that cold air blew on her shins. They were in the suburbs now. The housing projects rose from the ground, broken windows like corn cobs missing kernels. Men sat on the benches in playgrounds, the old ones resting their hands on their canes, the younger ones performing calisthenics. The few women Elm saw were wearing dark robes and long veils that hid their faces. She knew the outskirts of Paris were mostly Muslim, but she didn’t expect to feel like she’d traveled to Yemen. She didn’t think that the buildings would look so much like Detroit. Or, rather, if she was honest, like Escape from New York.

  And then, just as suddenly, the projects ended and a field began. The scenery turned rural—a few stone farmhouses, an old barn. Some were obviously second homes whose manicured English lawns and in-ground pools betrayed their owners’ wealth, while others were occupied by farmers. The small gardens were staked out back, tomato plants just beginning to climb. Occasionally, they passed through a small town, the houses built right up to the road, dating from before the invention of cars. Her driver sped through these towns, and Elm bobbed with the turns, attempting to avoid an open shutter or a leaning broom she was sure they were going to hit. As they drove by curtains ruffled, and Elm got a split-second glimpse into someone’s life—a woman washing a baby in a large sink, a teenager talking on a telephone, an old man napping in a reclining chair—before they were out of the small town and back in the fields.

  Elm thought the driver was deliberately trying to disorient her so that she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the clinic. He needn’t have bothered. Elm’s sense of direction was so poor she often relied on Moira to remember where they were going. Or they could have blindfolded her and gone directly, saved everyone some time.

  They circled a roundabout and headed down a long dirt road that had recently been graded. When they got to a fence, seemingly in the middle of a field, the driver leaned out the window and swiped a card. The gate swung in. Only once they were inside did she see the guard station.

  The clinic was smaller than she’d expected, and newer, though built to look like an old house. Two columns held up the front entryway and five pale stone steps led to an ornate door with decorative wrought iron. They drove counterclockwise around the circular driveway.

  A man opened the door and held out a hand to help her out of the car. “Your voyage was fine, Madame?”

  “Thanks,” Elm said. He closed the door behind her and the car drove away before Elm could thank the driver, say good-bye, or debate tipping him.

  “This way, Madame,” the man said, gesturing with his hand up the stairs. When Elm reached the last step the large door opened.

  While she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness within, she found herself questioning what she was doing there. Really, it was all very silly, a gothic novel. Now all that remained was for Count Dracula to approach her from behind and ask her if she wanted to stay for dinner.

  Instead, a small man wearing khakis and a polo shirt appeared at her right. “Ms. Howells,” he said. “So nice to meet you. I am Michel. We spoke on the telephone?”

  She recognized the voice from their brief conversation. His accent sounded less pronounced in person, and he had a warm smile. His face was angular, his body compact.

  “You would like to freshen up, after the journey? You are not experiencing vertigo?”

  Elm shook her head. “I don’t get carsick, luckily,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind freshening up though, thank you.”

  He pointed to a door along the hallway and Elm went in and closed it behind her. A powder room, wallpapered with violets, a pedestal sink, and a toilet paper stand. Elm sat down on the closed toilet lid and put her head in her hands. What was she doing here? She was embarrassed and frightened. She could no longer pretend she was here for a joke, or out of curiosity. She couldn’t even relate the story afterward, in a “look what stupid thing I did” way. Traveling across an ocean on a lark wasn’t funny. It was obsessive, pathetic. Crazy.

  Her heart was pounding; French espresso was much stronger than coffee at home, and she felt a knot of anxiety. She went to the bathroom, then washed her hands and face in the sink. The soap was lavender, a scent her mother used. She’d washed all her makeup off, she realized, so she applied some lipstick, which just drew attention to her unshadowed eyes and unblushed cheeks.

  Outside, she found Michel conversing softly with another man. He looked up at her as she came out. “Mattieu will get you a beverage. Would you like a coffee?”

  “No, thank you,” Elm said. “Just some water.”

  “Why don’t we go to my office?” Michel said, using one arm around her back to herd her down the hallway. Their steps echoed on the marble. On the walls, Elm noticed a sort of fabric wallpaper that reminded her of the tapestries she’d seen hanging in castles in the Loire. The gothic novel, the castle in France, James Bond films: her mind was trying to make sense of this place, to render the unfamiliar recognizable.

  The office was sparsely furnished, a large desk polished to mirror-like shininess and a large Aeron chair. In front there was a seating area with two suede chairs and a small table between them. Michel gestured to one and sat in the other.

  “So,” Michel said.

  Elm smiled. Out the window she could see the round driveway she’d just come from. She looked at the windows—unbarred. Other than these two men, she’d seen no signs of life. She had expected … She didn’t know. Pregnant women walking around, two-headed goats, identical Labradors. Not silence.

  “Are you all right?” Michel asked.

  Elm tried to reassure him, but then a lump in her throat rose faster than the words, and suddenly she was crying.

  Michel reached over and handed her a box of tissues. Then he took her hand in his. Elm had not held hands with anyone besides Moira in years. Colin didn’t like public displays of affection, and said it was difficult to walk attached to someone. Elm didn’t really like them either. They seemed boastful. And yet, here was this stranger, holding her hand while she cried for no reason. Or, rather, for the same reason she always cried.

  Michel said nothing. His hand was cool; it didn’t squeeze. “I’m sorry,” Elm said. She wanted to pull her hand away, but she didn’t know how to do it without being rude.

  “There is nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “People come here and they tell me that they feel silly, or desperate or embarrassed. They’re worried that we are taking advantage of their grief. I assure you, that is not the case. You should not feel embarrassed, any more than you would feel looking for a medical answer to a medical condition. And do not be afraid to hope. There is a very good chance we can return your son to you. But if we can’t, you have tried everything in your power, exhausted every option, you see?”

  Elm nodded, taking back her hand. She wiped her eyes. The tissue came back with deep black smudges from what was left of her mascara. She crumpled it into a ball and held it in her free fist.

  “I wasn’t expecting … this,” she said. “I thought it would be a hospital, or a sanatorium or something. I didn’t expect a mansion.”

  “We house the laboratory in an addition in back,” he said. “And the in vitro is routine—it can be done at the office of any doctor. And then you have
a normal pregnancy.”

  “I just thought it would be sort of like a farm, with animals? My friend … her dog—”

  “We have another site for nonhuman subjects,” Michel said, with such an earnestness that Elm smiled. “Maybe you’d like to tour the facilities?”

  They stood and walked into the hallway. At the end, a sharp corner revealed glass doors secured with a fingerprinting panel. Michel put his second finger on the pad and said his name in a loud voice. The doors swung inward, revealing a small lab about the size of a high school science room and decorated somewhat similarly, with petri dishes and microscopes. Inside, two people were standing in front of what looked like a microwave oven, watching something inside whir and whistle. They smiled at Elm and said nothing. Michel led her to another door, which revealed an examining room with a table and stirrups. Behind a wall was a small operating theater, tidy and silent.

  “And that is all,” Michel said. “You’ll never see any other guests here. And if you decide to go ahead, we will meet only once more.”

  They walked back into Michel’s office. The space between the blinds projected a rectangular patch of light on the floor.

  “You have questions?” Michel asked. He walked around the desk to sit down, motioning that Elm do the same in one of the two brown leather club chairs that faced it.

  “I was wondering about … compensation.”

  “Our fee structure is outlined here.” Michel handed her a sheet. “The total fee is $250,000. We ask that you make a down payment of forty percent. Another forty percent is due when we successfully replicate the DNA, and the third payment of $50,000 is due upon implantation. All of these deposits are nonrefundable. We can make no guarantees about the outcome of each of the parts of the proceedings. If a certain part of the process is unsuccessful and you would like to try again, and we consider it within our medical power to rectify the problem, then an additional $25,000 is required to retry that step. Is that clear?”

  Elm took a deep breath. Where would she get that kind of money? “I’m not sure …”

  “Say you decided to go ahead. You give me $100,000 as soon as possible, and the DNA sample. My lab retrieves the DNA and grows several cells to retrieve the DNA nucleus. You, meanwhile, take an estrogen receptor modulator to prepare yourself for egg retrieval. This is easy to order from Mexico or Canada. You will come to see us in about two months, at which point you will pay an additional $100,000 and we will retrieve your eggs. Wait, I remember in your file that you have poor ovarian reserve. Very well, we get a donor egg. That will add an additional $20,000 to the price, and increases the chance the egg won’t implant, but only very slightly. Then you pay the remaining $50,000 and we implant the egg. Voilà.”

  “What kinds of things can go wrong?” Elm asked.

  Michel blew air out of his cheeks in a way that reminded Elm of Colette, making a poof sound to indicate that many problems might occur. “Well,” he said. “It has happened that the artifacts fail to produce a valid sample that we can extract DNA from. Sometimes, for reasons unknown, the cells fail to reproduce when implanted into an egg. Then there are the risks associated with IVF—that the egg won’t implant, that the woman will have an ectopic pregnancy. And there are the associated risks of pregnancy—risk of genetic mutation, risk of cells that divide unevenly. There’s also the possibility, though we’ve never seen it, of identical twins.”

  He sat back and crossed his legs. “I should tell you too that there is a higher instance of miscarriage among cloned fetuses. We’re not sure why. And a higher risk of genetic malformations. Of course, you can choose to terminate any fetus that shows these signs. However, what you might have heard about the genes being improperly expressed is nonsense. We simply changed the medium for growth and the cells mature normally.”

  Elm shook her head. “What kind of elevated risk of genetic malformations?”

  “We estimate it to be twice as high as a regular pregnancy, which is still fairly low. There is only the normal risk of pregnancy to the woman.”

  Elm shifted. “What about, I’ve read, I mean, that there are diseases that …”

  “The risks I outlined are the only ones we have seen. Will your husband be participating?”

  “I haven’t talked to him about it,” Elm admitted.

  “We each grieve differently,” Michel said. “I do not pretend to get involved in marriage negotiations, but we will need to discuss what you will want to do.”

  “How come you can do this and no one else can?” Elm asked.

  “You think no one else can clone?” he said. “That we are somehow light-years ahead of other governments and private institutions? No.” He shook his head. “The technology is there. They are afraid.”

  There was a small silence while Elm stifled her desire to question the man’s bravery. She was reminded of Colin’s joke: “The pharmaceutical companies cured the common cold years ago but haven’t released the cure to the public because it will cut down on cold remedy profits.” There was something about the doctor’s attitude that irked her; his self-righteousness. She supposed, though, that you would have to believe deeply in the rightness of your cause to ignore its ethical and legal implications.

  “What about the law?” she asked.

  Michel shrugged. “They know about us; they have to. But who would bring charges, and for what? Every government agency claims this is the jurisdiction of another. In any event, you would mostly likely be unimpeachable—you are living in a different country. And how would they prove that it was a clone? I wouldn’t worry. That said, it would of course be in your best interest to keep the information a secret.…” He slowed his voice down so that Elm understood it was a veiled threat, and she was back in the gothic novel from earlier. Her hesitation must have shown on her face, because Michel drew in a deep breath to continue.

  “Yes, it’s against the law, but so are many other things we do daily that we don’t consider crimes: walking against the streetlight, for example, or not reporting the money we pay the babysitter on our income taxes. These are crimes without victims. The legal prohibition against cloning hinges on the fear of its abuse. Because the potential for abuse is there, people have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, pardon the expression. Consider this: Do you think it is a crime to want your child back? Who does it hurt when we succeed? I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I did.”

  Elm thought. His argument made logical sense, but it was the logic of the criminal. Still, Elm imagined herself holding Ronan again, his blind eyes closed while his puckered mouth sought out her breast through her shirt. She would give anything, anything, to be able to watch him retrace his path, to outlive his eight-year-old self, to hit ten, then enter high school, to go to college, get married, have children of his own. As his mother, she owed him this chance. As his mother, she deserved it too.

  “How does the payment work? How do I get the money to you?”

  “You’re buying an oil portrait of the deceased,” Michel smiled. “On installment. And you will get the oil painting as well. I’m afraid it won’t be very good.”

  “I might even get a tax write-off,” Elm said, attempting humor.

  “So,” Michel stood up. “Do you need time to consider?”

  “No,” Elm said, surprising herself. She felt a strong sense of relief at having made the decision she wanted to all along. She knew she would try. She had to. Why even pretend to hesitate?

  Michel smiled widely. “I’m so glad,” he said. “From the pictures I saw online he is a fine, handsome boy. I’m glad we’ll be able to give you some comfort.”

  “I brought you … what you need,” Elm said. She reached into her purse and took out the envelope with Ronan’s DNA samples. She had to force herself to hand them over, these pieces of her son. And it seemed impossible that this envelope would re-create Ronan, that this doctor had the gift of necromancy. And yet, she clung to the hope that he did.

  “I don’t have the cash. I’ll need to �
�� move some things around.”

  Michel accepted the envelope. “I’ll get Pierre to drive you back. When you send in the first installment, we will let you know if the DNA extraction is successful. Then we can talk about the next step.”

  As the driver wound back through the small towns of the rural countryside, Elm’s relief began to take on a more anxious edge. Where was she supposed to get the money? She could cash in her 401(k), but that would cover only the down payment. Even if she were somehow able to convince Colin that this was a good idea, they would be able to scrape together maybe fifty thousand dollars. They could sell the apartment, she guessed. She clenched and unclenched her fists until the car dropped her off back at the hotel.

  There was one other way to get money, but it seemed so farfetched that Elm couldn’t even consider it. Or could she? Presumably, she could do it on the sly. And it wasn’t illegal, exactly. Not the most moral decision, but a victimless crime, like the cloning. And then the decision felt inevitable, a force moving with the laws of nature propelling it forward. It was desperate, yes, but she was desperate. Consideration to decision lasted a surprisingly short time. When she got back to the hotel, she didn’t even put her purse down before she took out the card and dialed the number Augustus Klinman had given her.

  “I have a proposition,” she said.

  Colin spent more than a minute unlocking the door. It was after ten p.m. Elm sat on the couch watching a Law and Order episode she’d already seen. She’d been back from Paris for two weeks, but had somehow never found the proper time, or adequate words, to tell him the details of her trip.