Sunday. July 19. 9:15 p.m.
An odd day. They’ve all been odd, these days with the clone. I’ve given up on calling him Sonny. It doesn’t suit him. He’s too grave and sad. Uriah. Maybe it’s Sunday. Sunday has always been unsettling for me, from the time I was little. I’m off kilter on Sunday. Even with my husband I felt aimless and empty. A free-floating anxiety, a niggling sense of some menace gathering, of something impending. Maybe Sunday is like this for everyone. I don’t think it is. I didn’t go to church today. It’s worse when I skip church. Maybe it’s dread, left over from childhood, about the start of the next week of school. But I loved school. Maybe something bad happened to me on Sunday once, and I’ve forgotten or repressed it. Maybe I will die on a Sunday. Sunday nights are especially hard. All the nights are hard now, clone or no. Even so, there is something different about Sunday night. I’m mournful, wary. I miss my children. I wish the clone would talk. Tonight I would like the company.
The vomiting has stopped. His bowel movements appear normal. Two times today, both times his stool was solid. I checked it for blood or worms. Why did I check? I’m a scatologist, a coprophile. I can’t tell anything about his urine. And I am constipated, which I almost never am. Whatever the opposite is of sympathetic reaction. I’m eating dried prunes. I offered him some, and he ate them. The poor thing was starving. He gobbled them up. I sautéed a chicken breast for his lunch. As if he’d been taking regular meals. It was noontime, anyway, and I took it up to him. He made a terrible face. It was a visceral response. The sight and smell of it disgusted him. I had two jars of baby food in the cupboard left from when _____ was here in June with the kids. Vegetable beef, peas with rice. I tried feeding him with a spoon. He wouldn’t open his mouth. I microwaved a pizza, cut it up in bite-sized squares. No go. Then he saw the prunes and ate them. I brought him a banana. I peeled it for him and broke off a small piece. He ate it and the rest of the banana without hesitating. He ate a floret of uncooked broccoli that had started to brown. He ate a whole carrot, which I held for him between bites, and a wedge of pear. I wondered where he got his protein. At dinnertime, as an experiment, I cooked some lentils with celery and carrots and ginger. He liked that and was willing to take it from a spoon. He ate some brown rice, also from a spoon. I gave him a slice of bread and butter. He drank some more juice from a sippy-cup; I am down to fruit punch, then water through a straw. I will try milk tomorrow. I have to get to the store. I looked at his teeth. They seem perfect. Straight and white. No sign of any dental work.
We are through with diapers. Hooray for that. The clone, it seems, is fastidious, left to his own devices. Or it’s his dignity at issue. I wouldn’t wonder. In the early evening, after dinner, I went up to check his diaper. I looked in. He was asleep. I leaned over the bed and began to pull down his pajama bottoms. He opened his eyes. When he saw me, saw what I was intending to do, he pushed my hand away. He tore off the diaper, which happened to be clean and dry, and threw it to the floor. He was angry. Offended, I now believe. I feared he would become violent. I am physically no match. Except that he is feeble. He pulled up his pajamas, covered himself, then sat up in bed. He would not look at me. He slowly rearranged himself on the bed so that he was sitting on the edge of it, his feet on the floor. He held his head in his hands. He stayed that way for what seemed a long time. I thought he might be crying, but he didn’t make a sound. Then he stood up. It was the first time he’d been out of bed. He was shaky on his feet. I was afraid his legs would not support him. I went to him and took his arm. I spoke to him as reassuringly as I could. I said, It’s all right. You’re all right. You’ll be all right. He began to walk towards the door. He moved very slowly. I kept my hand on his arm to steady him. Would you like to use the bathroom? I said. I was guessing. Maybe he just wanted to get away. I couldn’t tell if he understood. He did not look at me when I spoke to him. Let me show you where it is, I said. We walked together down the hall. He could barely shuffle. He was very weak, obviously disoriented and dazed. I went with him into the bathroom. I raised the lid on the toilet, lifted the seat, then flushed it once to show him how it worked. He looked at me. His face was full of sadness. It broke my heart to see his face. Ray’s face. He stood in front of the toilet. His knees were trembling. He was like an old man, hunched over. He just stood there. I was thinking it might be he had never peed in a toilet before, that male clones urinated in those long metal troughs they have at ballparks, that they used toilets only to defecate, or maybe they sat down to pee. It might be he’d never used a toilet. I had no idea how to show him what to do. It did finally occur to me he might be waiting for me to leave him alone, that he might want me to give him some privacy. I went out into the hall. I left the door open and stood where he could not see me. After a few moments he closed the door. I was afraid he’d fall and smash his head against the sink or the tub, but I stayed outside. I heard the toilet flush. I heard the water running in the sink. When he opened the door, I took his arm. He wouldn’t look at me. We made our way down the hall and into the bedroom. I helped him onto the bed. That’s better, I said. He lay back down, turned his face to the wall.
The oddest thing. I was sitting with him while he lay in bed. Sometime after two, midafternoon. It was hot. He was in my husband’s blue shorty pajamas, lying on top of the spread, somewhere between sleep and waking, I’d been singing to him for half an hour, trying to soothe him, show him kindness. Human kindness I almost wrote. Three Little Fishies in that silly voice. Never Never Land. Show Me the Way to Go Home, both versions. Songs my mother sang to me, her mother to her. I tried to think of lullabies, but couldn’t. Good thing I didn’t think of Rockabye Baby, because I would have sung it. I sang Norwegian Wood, an old Beatles song my mother loved. I wondered if anyone had ever sung to him, if he’d even ever heard singing. Out of nowhere he began to shriek. Like a cat in a fight. I stopped singing. He sat up. He looked at the backs of his hands, then he rubbed them furiously against his legs. In an instant he was frantic. He began to claw at the skin on his arms. Then the same on his shins and ankles, in a frenzy back and forth between his legs and arms, flaying himself. I could see he thought there was something alive and moving on his skin. I didn’t know if he was asleep and dreaming, or awake and hallucinating. I put my hands on his shoulders and pushed him gently back against the bed. There’s nothing there, I said. Go back to sleep. There’s nothing there. As soon as I took my hands away, he was back up and scrubbing at himself. He did this for about five minutes, shrieking all the while. Then he stopped. He lay back and fell right asleep. Maybe he was asleep the whole time. I don’t know.
We are in for it now. I was sitting at the computer in the kitchen half an hour ago, writing these notes. I looked up and he was standing just inside the door from the dining room. He was watching me. I hadn’t heard him come down. He hadn’t made a sound. He didn’t seem at all threatening, just interested in what I was doing. It was unnerving to see him standing there in my husband’s pajamas looking exactly like Ray. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I poured him a cup of fruit punch. It was all I had. He drank it where he stood, right from the cup, no straw, no sippy-top. He opened the refrigerator, as he’d just seen me do. He poked around inside. When he touched something, I named it, bread, cheese, butter, eggs, as if I were teaching him the language. Who knows what he knows? He opened the cupboards, and I named the things he touched. He was very careful not to disturb or break anything. He turned the water on in the sink, then turned it off. He looked at my computer on the table, but didn’t touch it. He seemed most interested in the framed photographs hanging on the wall by the cookbooks, and in the ceramic cookie jar on the counter in the shape of a bear. When it seemed he had seen and heard enough, we walked back upstairs. Climbing the stairs was hard for him. I led him back to bed, and sat with him until he was asleep. All of it very peaceful and sociable, as if we were old folks at home. One of us mute. He is up and about, on the loose. What do I do now?
Monday. July 20. 10:30 p.m.
No hallucinations today. None I witnessed, anyway. I believe we are over the worst. He was awake for longer stretches at a time. We have dispensed with diapers. When he needs to urinate or defecate he uses the bathroom. He seems to know what to do, seems grateful to be allowed to do it. No more howling. He is with me now in the kitchen, sitting beside me as I write this. He is watching me write without much interest, sipping hot tea from a mug. Still not talking. What if he can read? _____ didn’t talk until he was three. The other two talked early. Our pediatrician said he’d talk when he was ready, and he did, and then we couldn’t shut him up, and now he’s a philosopher. Maybe the clone isn’t ready. For goodness sake, he’s not a toddler. I can tell he is, by nature, gentle and calm, particularly so now he is off the drugs. He is stronger today, but still weak. It is late. He should sleep. I should walk him up to bed, but I like having him near me.
They called this morning. Exactly at eight. The clone was still asleep. I was just back from a quick trip to the store. I was afraid to leave him alone. I loaded up on produce and juice, and bought a cheapo intercom so I could hear him downstairs when he was in bed. There has been a change of plans. They are coming to get him a day early. Tomorrow night at eight. I am to have him ready to go, though they failed to tell me what that means. I will make sure he has clean clothes to wear. I’ll pack a bag with some things for him to take with him. I think I may be sorry to see him go. I think I may want the extra day with him. Oh, well. Lose one Ray, you lose them all. I don’t feel quite so glib.
He slept through the night. He needed the sleep. Do clones dream? is a question we’ve asked. They do, of course. I have seen him dreaming. It is, when you think about it, a foolish question. It would be comforting if we could believe they didn’t dream. I can’t know anything about the nature of his dreams. I can say that last night he seemed clearly to be dreaming, and, given the noises he was making in his sleep, the dream I watched him have was not a happy one. Since he has been with me, my dreams have not been happy either.
I spent much of the day with him, walking around the house, showing him things, naming them. Whenever he’s awake now he wants to be on his feet. There is no way to keep him in bed. I sympathize. He’s been in bed too much. No way to keep him from getting up and wandering around the house and quite possibly hurting himself. Either inadvertently or intentionally, though he’s given me no reason to fear that. I can’t lock him in the room. The door locks from the inside. Even if there were a way to do it, he’s not a prisoner here. The only answer is not to let him out of my sight, as if he were a toddler, except when he is asleep, and then I have the intercom. So far he’s shown no desire to leave the house. I am thankful for this. He listens when I tell him what things are, but he does not repeat what I say. It is eerie being with someone who doesn’t talk, but not altogether unappealing. He seems content to be silent, and probably wishes I’d say less. It’s hard to tell what he’s seen before, what he’s familiar with. We watched a little television together at noon, a cooking show, while we had our lunch. I couldn’t tell if he’d watched television before. He seemed only mildly interested in it. I sliced an apple for him, which he ate. I stir-fried some green beans and onions and celery and carrots, but he wouldn’t eat the vegetables cooked. I gave him a whole peach and some raw beans and a peeled carrot and several celery stalks, and he ate these. He had several slices of bread and butter and drank a full mug of milk. For dessert I gave him a small bowl of chocolate chocolate-chip ice cream. He liked it, he really liked it, and I gave him a second helping. I had some myself. He was perfectly comfortable using a spoon. I am reluctant, still, to give him a fork or knife.
We’ve had some awkward moments. This morning, after I’d been to the store, after they’d called about the change of plans, I thought I’d grab a shower while he was still asleep. I left the bathroom door open so I could hear him if he cried out. I was out of the tub and had just had time to wrap my hair in a towel when he wandered in. I was naked. He wasn’t at all embarrassed. He stood fast and looked at me. I could tell he was especially interested in my breasts, which, at their best, were never very pretty, and are now, you’d have to say, unsightly. He also seemed taken aback by my genitals. I wonder if he’d been struck by my lack of a penis. He is of the first generation of clones, who we believe are not of women born or bred, so that he may well never have had contact with a woman before, or even seen one. Strangely, I wasn’t embarrassed to have him look at me, and I made no immediate move to cover myself. I’ve always been modest, to a fault. My body has always been big and clumsy. Even with my husband, with whom I was otherwise uninhibited, I was shy about letting him look at me. I pray it is not that I was free with the clone because, however unconsciously, I was able to think of him as something less than human.
When he woke up from his afternoon nap, he was soaked in sweat. He is still not through withdrawing. He agreed to let me give him a sponge bath. He submitted to it really, all the negotiation done without him saying a word or giving any sure indication he understood what I was talking about. It would have been easier for him to shower, but I couldn’t let him go in there alone, and I wasn’t going to go in with him. Even though he’d already seen all of me that he could see. I took off his pajama top, left the bottoms on. I spread a beach towel out on the bed and got him to lie down. I filled a mixing bowl with hot soapy water. I didn’t have a suitable sponge, so I used a washcloth. I washed his neck and arms and shoulders and chest and stomach. Then I washed his legs from the knees down. I washed his feet. Very biblical. I wanted him to flip over so I could do his back, but he wouldn’t. I sang to him while I washed him. I felt like something between a nurse and a geisha. I bent over him, dabbed his forehead with the cloth. He reached up and touched my breast. He put his whole hand over my breast. I was wearing a crew-neck pullover. I wasn’t showing any cleavage. That’s a laugh. I’d been careful not to rub against him. He’d already got a good long look at my breasts, and I suspect he wanted to see how they felt. There was nothing aggressive or overtly sexual in the way he touched me. He was tentative and gentle. I took it as a purely exploratory, investigative move. He was curious. It was sweet. I named it. I was wearing a bra. I let him keep his hand there a while.
Tuesday. July 21. 11:30 a.m.
I did something this morning I wish I hadn’t done. I’m fairly confident I meant well, but I feel creepy now. It is not something I will do again.
8:45 p.m.
The clone is gone. The same two men came and took him away. If they do not change the plans, I will see him again. I will not count on it. For all their preoccupation with system and protocol, they are capricious. I am furious with them. It was a terrible scene. They came at eight. The clone and I were in the kitchen waiting. I’d explained to him what was about to happen. He listened, but I don’t believe he understood. Before they arrived, he was calm, which seems to be his natural, unmedicated state. I’d packed him an assortment of toilet articles from the supply I’d laid in before he arrived, in an old leather dop kit of my husband’s. I put this in a nylon duffle bag, along with some of my husband’s warm-weather clothes—T-shirts, sport shirts, khakis, cotton socks. The shirts are short sleeve. I worry they will not let him wear them. All of it will be too big. I packed some food for him to take along in a brown paper shopping bag. Fruits and vegetables, as many as I could fit, and some oatmeal raisin cookies I’d baked for him that morning, which he seemed to like. They let him take the clothes. They would not let him take the food, not even the cookies. They wouldn’t say why. I had him ready to go by 7:30. He was cooperative with me, tranquil. I wanted to spend some unpressured time with him before they arrived. I’d like to think he was in pretty good shape. I felt I’d done well by him. He was certainly better off than when they’d brought him to me. He was clean and rested and reasonably at peace. The last couple of days he’d eaten well. If you factored in all he’d been through, and how bewildered he must still be, how frightened, wherever they’ve taken him, you�
��d have to say he was, at least towards the end of his stay with me, surprisingly happy. I don’t know if what I’m calling happiness had anything to do with his relief at being outside the Clearances. Maybe he was happy inside there, too. Maybe he didn’t want to be out. Maybe what I’m calling happiness was really a sort of shock-induced semi-stupor. He didn’t say a word. How can I be sure? I’d dressed him up a bit for his trip, gray seersucker slacks and a white knit polo shirt. I made sure his face and hands and fingernails were clean, and I combed his hair for him. He looked like a golfer. What was this impulse? Was I trying to impress these men with the quality of my care? When he saw the two of them come in, he became agitated. He was unconscious when they’d brought him; it’s not likely he recognized them. They were brusque, unfriendly. Gratuitously so, I thought, and I told them that. They did not bother to disagree.
The clone seemed unwilling to leave me. Maybe this is just what I want to believe. They were in a hurry to take him. I asked them to slow down, to go easy. I wanted time to tell them about how he was doing, about what he liked to eat. I wanted to tell them he knew how to use the toilet, that he was in dire need of a shower and some new clothes, that the clothes I’d packed didn’t fit him, that most of all he needed some underwear. They wouldn’t listen. I watched the clone getting more and more upset. I told them I was willing to keep him a little longer. I asked them, please, to give me one more day. They refused. I asked them to let me take him out to the car. They refused that, too. I was afraid he would not let himself be taken. I put myself between the men and the clone. The shorter, bearded one pushed by me. I said, Stop. Please stop. I pleaded with the other man, who seemed less of a brute. Please tell him to stop. He wouldn’t. The bearded man took the clone by the arm. Don’t you hurt him, I said. I could see the clone was frightened. I didn’t know what he might do. He did nothing. He did not resist. As they led him out, the clone did not look at me or make a single sound.
The Bradbury Report Page 12