The Bradbury Report

by Steven Polansky

  “Mortal,” I said. “Battered. Like so much meat.”

  “That’s to be expected. You should also expect some postoperative depression. I can give you a prescription for something to mitigate that.”

  “I won’t need it.”

  “I’ll write it anyway,” he said. “If you do need it, you’ll have it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I want to talk with you about what comes next. Are you up to that?”

  “I’m not sure I want to know.”

  He understood this as a joke. I was not joking.

  “First, I’d like to see you again in seven weeks. I’ll have one of my nurses call you to schedule an appointment. Of course, if anything occurs in the meantime, if you have any concerns—you’ll doubtless have some—if you feel any discomfort, experience any pain, I want you not to hesitate to call my office. But, in general, I think you’re good to go. At least for the time being.”

  “And then?”

  “Well,” he said, “then we have to see. We’ll take a look at your heart, run some tests, assess the damage, and make a decision about what course we take.”

  “What are the options?”

  “There are basically three,” he said. “If the damage your heart has sustained is minimal to, say, moderate, we might want to see if changes in diet and exercise and, for want of a better term, lifestyle, in combination with medication, might be sufficient to keep you and your heart in reasonably good health.”

  “I don’t exercise,” I said. “I eat most every meal out.”

  He smiled. “You’ll want to change that. In any case.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “Maybe so,” he said. “If the damage is more significant, we’ll consider the possibility of a bypass. It’s a simple procedure. Effective. And the convalescence isn’t bad.”

  “Though not something to look forward to.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said, “but preferable to the alternative.”

  “Which is death?”

  “Oh, no. I didn’t mean that. There’s no reason on earth for you to die. I meant a transplant.”

  “Christ.”

  “No, no. Listen. We do four or five a month here, and we’re a small outfit. I don’t do them myself. But I watch them done. It’s not without risk, but, if everything’s in place, it can be pretty much routine. The convalescence is long and sometimes a bit tricky, but if you need it, it’s not something to be inordinately afraid of.”

  “I’d be damned afraid,” I said. “I can tell you that.”

  “Yes. Of course you would. But, statistically speaking, given the proper circumstances, you’d do fine.”

  “I’m not sure I would,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d agree to do it. What are the proper circumstances?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Here’s where, given your age, I need to ask you a question.” He stopped again. “I’ll be frank with you. It’s a question I find repugnant. Asking it is among the more distasteful things required of me in my job.” He put a hand to his face, pushed his glasses up on his brow, pinched the bridge of his nose. A conventional gesture, but the vexation was genuine. “My views on the matter are of no consequence. You should disregard them. Do you understand me?”

  “I’m not sure I do,” I said. “What is the question?”

  “The question is, ‘Is there a copy? Do you have a copy? Did you have a copy made?’ ”

  “I did do that,” I said. “I suppose there is. I don’t know for sure. I don’t know anything about it, really.”

  “No. That’s the way of it. But, you remember, at the time, participating. In the program.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are sixty-six.”

  “Yes.”

  “If he exists, and from what you say he does, your copy would be, approximately, twenty-one.”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “Well, then,” he said. “ Those are the proper circumstances. They couldn’t, in point of fact, Mr. Bradbury, be any more proper, or propitious.”

  When I got home, Sophie and Marie were outside in their front yard playing with a little boy their age I hadn’t seen before. It was midafternoon, and bakingly hot. The girls were dressed alike, as they were whenever I saw them. This afternoon they wore yellow shorts and white T-shirts and looked—I was glad to be home, glad to see them—like daisies. They were pretty girls. I could not tell them apart, though I hadn’t ever needed to do so. In the seven or eight years they’d lived there, I’d said no more than hello to them, and they’d not said one word to me. From my perspective, they were clean, quiet, untroublesome children. I enjoyed sitting in my house, looking out the window, watching them play. (I do think it curious that anyone would choose twins, though I’ve read more and more couples are doing so, in spite of government dissuasions. There have even been reports of triplets. I wonder, in the case of twins, is a copy made of each, or does one copy serve both?) I was sad to think they were afraid of me, that, for them, I was the bogey next door. Or—I was less sad to think this—that they’d been directed by their parents not to speak to me, to stay away from me. Whatever they’d been doing before I got out of the taxi—one of the girls was holding a large, silver-foiled star—the three of them stopped and stood quiet and watchful as I walked to my door.

  I looked terrible, I knew, ghostly, ogrish, making real their fears. I was sorry about this for the children’s sake and, in advance, Anna’s. I had on the clothes I’d been in when I was taken to the hospital. I was wearing the chenille slippers they gave me, and the ID bracelet, and carrying a plastic bag that contained oddments I’d collected during my stay—lotions, toothbrush and toothpaste, shampoo, patient information sheets, samples, hospital receipts, and various magazines I thought Anna might want to look at. I smelled like antibacterial cleanser. I’d not washed my hair in four days, but had remembered to comb it that morning, so I would not be too unsightly meeting Anna again. As a matter of courtesy, not vanity. I was no longer vain.

  Anna’s truck was not in the driveway—my car, which got little use, was around back in the garage—and I could see no trucks, no unfamiliar vehicles of any kind, parked on the street nearby. The house was quiet and still. The front-facing windows were shut, the drapes drawn. The front door was locked. I didn’t have a key. There was a spare badly hidden in the garage, but I was exhausted and out of breath from my short walk, and did not have the strength to get it. There was no doorbell, just a brass knocker Sara had bought, in the shape of a watering can. I lifted the knocker and let it fall several times, my predicament observed with interest and satisfaction, and, I gave myself license to think, with some reflexive sympathy, by Sophie and Marie.

  There was no noise from within the house. Not a creature was stirring. (I am susceptible, lately, near death and far from home, to washes of nostalgia.) I sat down on the front step. I smiled at the children in the adjacent yard, to signify, I suppose, that though I looked like a cadaver, I was not abject. Maybe I hoped they’d come over and chat. They turned away. The twin who was holding the star dropped it on the lawn, and, as if this were the signal to take flight, the three of them scurried around the far side of their house.

  Moments after they’d gone, the drape on one of the front windows was pulled back a bit, then dropped. I was impatient to get in out of the heat, to reclaim my house. The latch shifted, then the door was opened.

  I got to my feet slowly.

  “Ray.” Anna stood behind the door. “Come in. Come in.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She opened the door wide enough to let me in, then closed it behind me. We stood in the small foyer, too close, really, to regard one another.

  “Hello, Ray,” she said.

  “Hello, Anna. It’s good to see you.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “Give me that.” I handed her the plastic bag. She moved past me. “Come inside.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I followed her into the living room, which w
as hot and dark and stuffy. The windows were shut, and, unaccountably, she had not turned on the air-conditioning.

  “Might we open the windows?” I said. “It’s oppressive in here, don’t you think?”

  “I do,” she said. “Very. You sit down.” She pointed to an upholstered wing chair, which, it happened, was where I habitually sat. “Do you have visitors?”

  I sat down in my chair. “Rarely,” I said.

  “Women?”

  “Never. Why?”

  “I’m reluctant to call attention to myself,” she said.

  “I can’t imagine anyone is paying attention. Who are you talking about?”

  “Your neighbors. Or those children in the yard. They would have seen the ambulance. They would have seen you taken away, would have known the house was empty.”

  “I don’t know. Say they did?”

  “Well,” she said, “who am I?”

  “Why would they care? This is my house. I live here. Why would anyone care?”

  “I want to be unnoticed,” she said, “unremarkable. Here’s what you say, should anyone ask you.”

  “Ask me what, Anna? This is absurd.”

  “Listen, Ray,” she said. “I’m not good at this. All right? I haven’t done this before. I don’t really know what I’m doing. But I feel like I need to take precautions. I know I need to take them.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If anyone asks you, after I leave, who I was, you tell them I was a nurse sent by the hospital to see you through the first days of convalescence.”

  “No one will ask. I don’t speak to anyone. No one speaks to me.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” she said.

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I do,” she said. “You’ll have to find a way to tell them. Shall I open the windows?”

  I watched her as she went around the room, pulling open the drapes and raising the sashes. She was old, which should not have surprised me as it did, though, compared to me, she had aged gently, appealingly. She was taller than I remembered her, and thinner, her face longer, more angular, her features sharper. Her hair, which, forty-five years ago, had been dark, was now a kind of gunmetal gray, parted in the middle, curling inward just below her ears. Her eyes were bright. She did not wear glasses. She had on blue jeans, a white, short-sleeve shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and running shoes. Her arms and hands looked strong, like she was used to some sort of heavy work. If not pretty or particularly feminine—she had been neither at twenty-two—she was a more than passably handsome woman, who looked to have lost none of her energies.

  “There,” she said. The room was lit with the withering light of a midsummer’s late afternoon. The air was heavy. There was no breeze. I was sweating. She sat down across from me, on the sofa. She sat up straight, both feet on the floor, and appraised me. “So how are you? You look like hell.”

  “I imagine I do. I’ve been through it just now.”

  “I know you have. Are you okay? I should have asked you first thing.”

  “I think so. You look good. You look good, Anna.” I was feeling resentful, but I was willing to say this.

  “You’re surprised,” she said.

  “No. You look good.”

  “For me, you mean.”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said. “You look healthy, strong. From where I sit.”

  “Well then, thank you.” She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “I’m a tough old bird.” She smiled at me. “You had your chance.” Then: “Are you in any pain? Is there anything I can do for you, to make you more comfortable?”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m happy to be home.”

  “You’d prefer to be alone.”

  “I suppose I would. I wish you’d tell me what’s going on. Why have you come?”

  “I’ve come to tell you. That’s why I’ve come. For goodness sake. This isn’t a social visit. I can’t be as quick as you’d like. I remember you; I don’t know you. I don’t know how you’ll respond. I’m worried about it. I need to worry about it. I have to get a sense of things, a sense of you. And with your condition, now, everything is more complicated, more difficult.”

  “For me?”

  “Of course, for you. And for me. And others.”

  “Others?”

  She did not respond. I saw no way to force her to talk about what had brought her. In truth, I didn’t care, so long as it was done. I would have been happier if she left without telling me. I couldn’t imagine it was anything, given how I was feeling, I needed to be concerned with. I was ill, perhaps critically. I was frightened by what had happened to me. I wanted to rest, to be quiet. Just that. More than once, in the course of the following day, I was at the point of asking her to leave. (It would have done no good. There was only one thing I might have said to cause her to go, to give up on me, and I could not have known what it was.) I believed—I was surely right—that Anna’s presence, made more taxing by her unexplained, inexplicable, behavior, was dangerous to me. I said this to her. “It’s not good for me. It can’t be good. It’s too soon for me to manage this. It feels heartless of you.”

  “I know it does,” she said. “I am so sorry. I didn’t expect to find you this way. If I had known, I would have postponed my trip.”

  “What about that? Might we do this another time? Some other way?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  We had several such fruitless and circular conversations, each one more inane than the last. Anna prepared our meals. She stayed with me one week. Every morning, she drove some distance—I now participate, wholeheartedly, in the hugger-mugger—on the interstate to the giant food nexus, buying only what we needed for that day, so she could carry the stuff to the house from her truck, which she continued to park on a residential street, several streets off. I was restricted to a bland diet. She fixed me broiled skinless chicken breasts, plain pasta, boiled potatoes, toast, clear soup, green Jell-O, hospital food, which Anna rendered—I have to say—quite palatable. I slept intermittently throughout the day, sometimes several hours at a stretch. In part, because I was often unable to stay awake, in part because it was trying to spend so much time in the house with a near stranger. Anna did laundry, did the dishes, kept the place orderly and clean, read the newspaper, watched television, read the books she’d brought with her. We spent much of my waking time apart. I closeted myself in the study, which, as I’ve said, was not characteristic of me. When we were together, for meals and at other times, Anna talked about her three kids, her grandchildren, and her late husband. We’d both had long careers—hers evidently more satisfying—as teachers, and, though I wasn’t eager, we talked some about that. She insisted I tell her about Sara, and I did, though guardedly at first. It felt good, and right, to describe for Anna, room by room, just how different the house had looked and felt and smelled, when Sara was alive, how little in it or about it, now, was telling of her. Anna was animated when we talked about Sara, and it was obvious that she, too, had loved her. It was only this shared affection, I think—whatever the difference in degree—that kept me, finally, from abjuring all dictates of courtesy and, supposing I was able to do it, throwing her out.

  Three

  Before Anna’s first visit—she would be back, having assured herself I could be trusted, though she remained, with regard to my safety and my emotional and physical equilibriums (to say nothing of her own vulnerabilities), apprehensive and more than ambivalent about involving me—I knew next to nothing about the universe of cloning. Except on the one day of the American year prescribed for ritualized remembrance, for the national experience and expression of what, on the occasion of the very first Louise Brown Day, some undersecretary mawkishly called “original gratitude,” I never thought about it, gratefully or otherwise—not about cloning, nor about the race of clones. (“Race” is self-evidently wrong, but I can think of no other word. Species? Subspecies? Metaspecies? Paraspecies? The practice beggars taxonomy.) Least of all—model cit
izen, I—did I think about my clone. My copy, as we are meant to say, and to think.

  About the issue of cloning, I’d been apathetic. Even so, I’d always found the holiday—I’ve been around for them all—discomforting and sinister. Its very name, I now see, was, like all the authorized nomenclature, cunningly chosen to mislead and trivialize. As most of us have forgotten or never knew, Louise Joy Brown, born July 25, 1978, was the first human product of in vitro fertilization. She was not a clone. She was the sexually reproduced daughter of two parents. She lived and died a postal worker in England, where human cloning has always been outlawed. She had only obliquely, “inspirationally,” to do with cloning. This may be one reason why, despite governmental dicta, the day has come more commonly to be called, especially among children, “Dolly Day.” Which translation—chillingly apt—led inevitably to the surreal and grisly scene of summer streets filled at dusk with flocks of children in pink or white sheep suits, in their woolly innocence folded among debauched bands of grown men and women, conspicuously drunk, in bizarre, I’d say monstrous, sheep’s-head masks. (I remember my grandfather, an inveterate Live Free or Die Yankee who fought in the shameful war in Vietnam and somehow survived it, in his dotage telling me about southern boys in his platoon who’d claimed to have had, as he slyly put it, congress with sheep.) The unseemly pack of them, children and parents, prancing and cavorting, raucously bleating deep into the night. Imagine at this the sweet twins next door. Sophie and Marie. I have seen them.

  I knew nothing—and still know very little—about what goes on inside the Clearances. (This name is not misleading. It is meant to be forbidding.) Almost no one knows anything. Not even those who, like Anna, live in contiguous towns and villages. (You’d think it would take a concerted effort for them not to know, living on the border. Remember the assiduous ignorance of the citizens of Dachau, the sleepy town of that name. Anna assures me the opposite is true.) Not even the sedulous, sparse, and painfully ineffectual resistance, of which Anna is a low-level part. Many of her fellow dissenters, living purposefully as near as they can to the boundary, have devoted their lives to investigating the unholy business transacted there. So far as is known, none of them has ever gained access to the Clearances. (And lived to speak of it?) None of them had ever encountered a clone or seen one from a distance. (There are two public roads in the Clearances. They bisect the territory, north to south and west to east. I have, one time, driven the length—it was go the whole way or turn around—of the north-south route, from Valentine in Nebraska, through what once was Minot, and into Canada. By design, one can see nothing from these roads, except vast open fields and the occasional collocation of abandoned houses and commercial buildings.) Not one of them has ever met or spoken with anyone even tangentially involved with cloning. No one has. In this respect, these abolitionists, Anna’s compatriots, are exactly like the rest of the population, including, it is generally believed, those in the very highest reaches of government. The best the abolitionists could do, even aided as they were by anti-cloning, anti-American thinkers from abroad, the nearest they could come to an accurate or even approximate sense of life, if the word applies, inside the Clearances, was informed speculation, basing their guesses, and the elaborated schema derived from them, on what was known about the science and technology of cloning, and, more determinatively, on fundamental and empirically verifiable assumptions about the way the government thinks and acts (that is, pragmatically, cynically, venally) and about what invariably motivates it (that is, profit).