The clone made a move to stand and Waterson put up a hand to stop him.
“One more thing, Mr. Adams,” he said. “Before you select a facility, there is one procedure I’d like to try, something I think could be valuable in assessing her needs more exactly. It could help in placing her.”
“What’s that?”
“I presume you’ve heard of Meld?”
Jeremiah almost jumped off the couch. “He can’t be serious,” he said.
“You could say so,” the clone told Waterson. “Actually, I work for ViMed Pharmaceutical, the company that produces Meld.”
“Oh, I wasn’t aware you were in the scientific field, Mr. Adams.”
“No, I’m in the communications and marketing department. I’ve worked closely on Meld from that end, though. I know all about it.”
“So, you’re aware of the advantages here,” Waterson said. “Meld would allow us a closer look at precise aspects of brain degeneration. We could pinpoint memory erosion, synaptic collapse, that sort of thing. It could go a long way toward tailoring her treatment.”
“He’s out of his mind!” Jeremiah shouted. “That damned clone better not let this happen!” Brent glanced at him and typed something into his laptop.
“Do you think it would be safe to use on her, under the circumstances?” the clone asked Waterson.
“Oh, yes,” Waterson told him. “Under proper medical supervision, Meld is perfectly safe.” Jeremiah saw an almost imperceptible smile cross the clone’s face at the words, no doubt finding satisfaction at hearing his own jargon echoed back at him. Jeremiah felt like punching in the wall.
“Would you do that here?” the clone asked. “Are you equipped for that? As I understand it, there is a bit of training involved.”
“Not to worry. I’ve already taken ViMed’s course. I know how to use it. I think it would be useful to have it done before the transfer,” he said. “Besides, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been looking for an opportunity to use Meld. It’s a fascinating medicine, really. I think it’s set to be a real breakthrough in dementia diagnosis and treatment. The first real break we’ve seen in the field.”
“It’s a miracle, all right,” the clone said. “I don’t see a problem if you think it could help.”
Jeremiah watched slack-mouthed while his double signed a consent form that would let them submit his own mother to Meld. He wanted to scream. He could feel Brent’s eyes on him, waiting to see if there was anything he ought to put in his report. Every muscle in Jeremiah’s neck strained with the effort to contain himself.
“Jeremiah,” Brent said, “am I correct in assuming you wouldn’t have signed that consent? Would you have refused the Meld? Would you have acted differently from the clone?”
Jeremiah didn’t answer right away. Eyes still glued to the monitor, watching the clone walk out of the office and stop with Nichelle in the hallway, he considered the fact that his double didn’t have all the facts about Meld. Of course the clone wouldn’t see the harm in it. In his mind, it was still the miracle drug Jeremiah had once honestly believed it to be. The clone didn’t know the real reason behind the drug’s creation. He didn’t know what it could actually do. And he didn’t know what it was like to take the drug. To him, it probably seemed like a good idea.
Jeremiah wished, for the hundredth time, that he could jump inside the image on the wall and shake his double by the shoulders.
“No,” he said finally, and with a sorry conviction. “No. I suppose I would have done exactly the same thing in his place.”
Chapter 10
Jeremiah and Brent were quiet as they watched the clone drive home from the nursing home in complete silence, the pamphlets sitting next to him on the passenger seat and the radio turned all the way down. Jeremiah wondered what he was thinking about. When he got home, the clone opened the front door to a dark house, threw the pamphlets and his keys on the hall table and bent down on one knee in a useless attempt to entice Louie over for a pat. The dog just stared at him and lay down under the coffee table, eyeing him like the intruder he was.
“Hello?” he called as he switched on the lights in the living room. No reply.
“I don’t know where everyone could be on a Friday night,” Jeremiah said to Brent. “Why is he coming home all the time to an empty house now?”
Brent looked at him and shook his head. “Maybe things just get busy, Jeremiah. It happens.”
“Never used to,” he said. “Especially not on a Friday.”
On the monitor, he watched the clone wander into the empty kitchen, Louie cautiously following from a safe distance.
“Have you eaten yet, pal?” The clone loosened his tie, picked up the dog bowl and filled it with two scoops of food from the bin on the kitchen counter. He put the bowl on the floor and took a few steps back so the dog would feel comfortable coming in to eat. Jeremiah sighed as he remembered the way Louie used to react to being fed, wagging his tail wildly and balancing on his hind legs in an exuberant dog tango. Now he took to it sluggishly and ate it in nibbles. It was probably the damn pills they had him on, Jeremiah thought. But he had to admit, his distrust toward the clone seemed less obvious now and that was one less thing to worry about.
The cameras followed as the clone went up the stairs into his bedroom. He changed out of his work clothes, carefully hanging his jacket and tie in the closet, and put on sweatpants and a T-shirt. He sat down on the edge of the bed and remained there for several minutes, resting one elbow on his knee with his fist curled underneath his chin. Jeremiah realized that he was sitting in the exact same position on the couch in the lab. He quickly raised his head and leaned back against the cushions and put his arms down at his sides.
For the next half hour or so, they watched the clone wander around the house and then finally settle in the living room and flip through the pamphlets they had given him. Eventually, Diana and Parker came noisily through the front door, greeted by the jangle of Louie’s collar and tags. Both the clone and Jeremiah perked up at the sudden commotion.
“Where have you two been?” the clone asked.
“We waited for you,” Diana said with a look that hinted at irritation, “but we were starved. We went out to eat. I brought you home my leftovers.”
“Thanks,” the clone said. “I was visiting my mother.”
“You might have bothered to call and let us know. Why were you there on a Friday?”
“Yeah, sorry. They called me at the office just as I was leaving. She’s having some problems.”
Diana took off her sweater and walked into the kitchen with the little Styrofoam container of food. Parker put Louie on the leash and took him out to the front yard.
“What sort of problems?” Diana called from the kitchen. The clone got up and followed her, the cameras catching his movements seamlessly from room to room.
“I’ve got to move her,” he said. “Her dementia is bad. She thought it was Christmas Eve.”
“You’re kidding.” Diana shot a startled glance at the clone and then continued scraping the food onto a dish. “Move her where?”
“Well, they gave me some options.” He tossed the pamphlets down on the kitchen table and took a seat. “There are places. I’ve been looking at them. I don’t like them. They’re expensive.”
“I’ll bet,” she said. “But if that’s what she needs, then that’s what she needs. You just have to pick one and make it happen. She still has money in her savings, doesn’t she? And this is a medical thing. There’s help for that, you know.”
“I was thinking,” the clone said tentatively, “that maybe it would be better to have her live here with us. Just for a while.”
Diana stopped what she was doing and turned around to look the clone straight in the eyes.
“Here? Jeremiah, she can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” he said. “We have the
room and I just think it might be easier for her if she could make the transition slowly. I don’t want her to think we’re tearing her away from her friends, from her home. She’s happy there.”
“We can’t take care of her, Jeremiah.” Diana put his dinner into the microwave, turned it on and leaned back against the kitchen counter to face him again. “She needs someone with her and you and I both work during the day. And having her here would disrupt Parker’s whole routine. No, she can’t stay here.”
Jeremiah knew Diana was right. It was entirely unfair to just spring this on her without any warning. It wasn’t even something they’d ever seriously discussed. From the look on his face, he could see the clone knew it, too, so he was surprised to see him keep talking about it.
“You’re home for part of the day,” he said. “We could bring someone in to fill in the gaps. We could make it work. We could at least talk about it. She’s my mother, for God’s sake.”
Jeremiah cringed at the look on Diana’s face.
“And I’m your wife,” she said coolly. “And we are talking about it. What do you expect me to say? I had no idea where you even were tonight because you can’t be bothered to call me, then you waltz in here and drop this kind of a bomb on me out of nowhere? You know perfectly well this can’t work, Jeremiah. It just isn’t feasible.”
“Well,” the clone said, without meeting her gaze, “I suppose with all your extra hours at work these days, you’re right. It just isn’t feasible. You’re not home a lot anymore, are you? If you can’t be here for me and Parker, I don’t suppose it’s fair to think you could be home for my mother.”
Jeremiah leaned in closer to the monitor. Of all the times for his double to man-up and finally nibble at the edges of Diana’s infidelity, this probably wasn’t ideal. She was already pissed off. This could backfire.
“Don’t you dare make this about me,” she said, her words coming out in severe, rapid succession. “Don’t you dare turn this around. That is not fair, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah winced. The clone should shut his mouth about now, he thought, but he inched closer to the edge of his seat, eager to see just how far he would go with this. Was he going to come out and say it? Was he going to confront her with the actual problem? Go ahead, Jeremiah urged silently, ask her who it is. Ask her.
“I’m not turning anything around,” the clone told her, mock innocence raising the pitch of his voice. “I’m just agreeing with you. How could I even think about adding this kind of stress to your life? There doesn’t seem to be enough of you to go around as it is. So, you’re right. It isn’t fair of me. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
Diana stared at the clone through narrowed eyes. Jeremiah shook his head and felt the full brunt of her anger right through the monitor.
Chapter 11
Day 81
The next day Jeremiah admitted to Natalie Young that he often worried about losing his mind.
“I think I’d rather my body went to hell than my mind,” he said. “It’s always one or the other in the end, but, to me, the mind has got to be worse.”
“Why are you afraid of that, Jeremiah?”
“Oh, come on, Natalie. You don’t have to be coy. I know it must be somewhere in that mammoth file of yours—my crazy uncle Charlie.”
“I am aware of your uncle. And I would prefer you don’t use the word crazy.”
“He was crazy.”
“He was a paranoid schizophrenic,” she said. “That is an illness. Nothing more.”
“And then, seeing it in my mother like that...” He shook his head and let out a long, slow breath. “It’s not an easy thing to see.”
“Dementia and schizophrenia are two completely different things,” she told him.
“And it would appear that both run in the family,” he said. “That doubles my odds. Beautiful.”
“You may be genetically predisposed,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s no more probable that you’ll suffer from one of these afflictions than it is that you’ll develop any other genetic trait. Arthritis and ulcers also run in your family.”
“I’d rather have the ulcers, given the choice.” He paused then and grew serious. “Do you think there’s any risk, though? I mean, if these things are in my family, and I’m taking Meld so much, don’t you think that poses a bigger risk?”
“Meld is perfectly safe when taken under the—”
“Yes, yes, I know,” he interrupted, “when taken under the supervision of a medical professional. I know that. I wrote it, remember? But I am asking you, Natalie. Do you think it’s wise, my taking Meld so often with this sort of thing in my genetic makeup?”
“I don’t think the Meld increases your risk at all,” she said.
“Have you seen anything—you know, warning signs, anything troubling—while I’m under the Meld with you?”
“Troubling, how?”
“Any signs of mental illness,” he said. “Instability, wild thoughts, thinking I can fly, that sort of thing.”
“No. Have you noticed anything like that in yourself?”
“Well, if I’m crazy,” he told her, “I wouldn’t be the best judge, would I?”
“Well, consider the more obvious things, then. Have you had any lapses in memory, headaches, anything like that?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. Would that be a symptom?”
“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not.”
“That’s not much help.”
“Well,” she added coyly, “do you think you can fly?”
“I’m serious, Natalie.”
“It is an imprecise science,” she said. “And you are in a very unique situation here, Jeremiah. In your case, anything that might manifest could simply be a normal reaction under these circumstances. We really don’t know because we have no basis.”
“It sounds like you don’t have any idea whether I’m crazy or not.”
“I do not think you exhibit any symptoms of mental illness.”
“But you don’t know for sure.”
“Jeremiah,” she said, a hint of frustration in her voice, “this is precisely why using the Meld at regular intervals is so crucial to this project. Among other things, it allows me to see the first signs of any change in your psychological makeup. I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. If something were wrong, I’d very likely see it under the Meld before you even begin to show outward signs. I’d know it before you do.”
“And you’d tell me, right?”
“And I’d tell you,” she said.
“I suppose I have no choice but to take you at your word, then.”
“Tell me a little about your uncle, Jeremiah. We’ve never talked about him.”
“I never knew him, really. He died more than twenty years ago. I only met him twice, and that was ages ago. He spent most of his life in and out of asylums.”
“We prefer the word hospital,” she said. “He was your mother’s brother. Were they close?”
“Oh, she loved Charlie,” he said. “She used to talk about him all the time, told me all these stories about his ‘wild antics,’ as she called them. I think he made her sad.”
“I’m sure it had an effect on her. Watching someone you love spiral into the grips of mental illness is very difficult. You had a hard time seeing your mother just for a short while. Imagine watching that happen over the course of a lifetime.”
“She used to say he could talk to the fairies,” he said. “That’s why no one else could understand him. Like he was on some higher plane or something, had some secret that all the rest of us could only dream about.”
“That’s a good coping mechanism.”
“Thing is,” he said, “I think she believed it. I think she was even a little jealous of it, if you want to know the truth. The stories she used to tell me, the w
ay she talked about him. She made him seem sort of magical. She made him sound like he was lucky.”
“What do you remember about him?”
“The first time I met him I was just a kid. My mother took me to visit him in some halfway house or something.”
“And?”
“And he was sitting in the dark in this room and he didn’t turn to look at us. He just stared at the wall and talked to us with his back turned. It seemed to me at the time that he must have had eyes in the back of his head.”
“That must have been a little frightening to a young boy,” she said.
“Not really, because my mother just talked to him like it was all perfectly normal, carrying on a whole conversation while he was turned the other way. And I asked him what he was staring at, if he was looking at the fairies, and my mother yanked my arm so hard I thought I’d fall over. But I really wanted to know. I remember that. After everything she’d told me, it seemed like a logical question.”
“And what did Uncle Charlie say?”
“He laughed,” Jeremiah told her. “He laughed so hard he started coughing and hacking. My mother went over to him and tried to calm him down. I just stood there, where she’d left me, wondering what to do. So finally, I went over to him, too, and he turned and looked at me and said, ‘Yeah. The fairies. I’m looking at the fucking fairies. Don’t you see them, kid?’ And then he leaned in close to me and grabbed my face in both his hands and started laughing again.”
“Did that scare you?”
“Not really,” Jeremiah said, remembering it so vividly in that moment that he could almost smell Uncle Charlie’s vinegary breath and the sweat coming off his clothes. “What scared me more was my mother’s reaction. She pulled at his hands and slapped them away and told him never to touch me again. She loved him, you know? But it must have scared her when he grabbed me like that. He told us to leave and we did.”
“And what did your mother say about it?”
The Mirror Man Page 9