A Nearly Perfect Copy

by Allison Amend

  “I don’t know what I have or had lying around here. My memory isn’t what it was.”

  Elm felt her rage expand. She stood up, clenching her fists. She wanted to hit an octogenarian genius ceramicist, and she didn’t feel bad about it. She wanted to slap Indira’s wrinkled smile, stub the joint out into her neck. “How dare you?” she sputtered.

  Indira said nothing.

  “This jeopardizes my career. Not to mention … if anyone suspects I knew, I could go to jail. You play this ‘little old lady’ routine, but you’re smart and you’re wily and you don’t care who gets hurt.”

  Indira continued to stare out the window.

  Elm said, “I’m turning you in. I’m leaving here right now and going to the police, or the FBI or whoever. Someone at Tinsley’s will know whom to contact. I can’t believe I trusted you. I told you about Ronan, for chrissakes.” At the mention of his name, Elm began to cry, angry sobs of frustration.

  Indira waited until Elm calmed down, passing her a box of tissues. “The police are not an option,” Indira said, finally. “And you know that. You know that because you too have done what I did.”

  “I never knowingly—”

  “Stop,” Indira said. “I don’t say this to criticize, only to make clear to you what happens when the truth comes out. During the war, my parents, it is not so surprising, they were taken to the camps and because they were old they were killed. My brother was put to work digging graves. He was strong; he survived the war, long enough to send a letter to our home, which I received years later. But he never made it back home. Did he die? Was he killed? Did he kill himself? It is not known. My sister-in-law I saw for the last time in a propaganda film. She was pregnant, not before the war, but during, which means that the father was most likely not my brother. In the film she is drawing at an arts-and-crafts table. The camera pans quickly, but you can see on the paper her drawing of a house. Only, it’s not just a house, it’s a Shin, the twenty-second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The filmmakers wouldn’t have known; that’s how it slipped through, this symbol of resistance. Her name was on a manifest of the gassed. I don’t know if she ever gave birth. My cousins, my twin aunts, uncles, all taken. How do we get back what was taken from us? Some things are irreplaceable. Others are not. You, of all people, know the difference. I can see from your body that you do.”

  Elm felt a knot of worry. Could she know about Ronan? Impossible.

  “Your friend Klinman has sent you drawings that I’m told wouldn’t fool an old blind woman. You, in turn, have given them to a dealer, who has placed them prominently in the city. She will not be happy to discover that these are fakes.”

  Elm sat; her legs weren’t strong enough to support her. A prickling rose up her neck, an eerie feeling of slowly being electrocuted.

  How could she not have seen this coming? It was too good to be true, the drawings arriving just as she needed them. Too good to be true always meant its opposite: not true, not good.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t decide what to say. She wanted to smack the joint from the woman’s mouth, and the violence of the urge scared her; it seemed so unlike her, so unlike who she used to be. Instead, she grabbed the antimacassar on the arm of the chair and squeezed it.

  “Were you? Did you … think of this?”

  “No, dear.” Indira chuckled. “At this stage, my mind gets fuzzy if I think more than two steps ahead. I make tea and by the time I’ve gotten the milk out I forget what I wanted. It’s a blessing, honestly. The future is always the present.”

  “But who involved me?” Elm asked. “Who got me into this?”

  Indira took another long puff on her joint, looking like nothing so much as the caterpillar from Moira’s Alice in Wonderland DVD. “You did.”

  During the cab ride home from Indira’s, Elm rubbed her belly and tried not to cry. She made it to the elevator in her building before putting her head to the mirrored wall to sob, her breath made shorter by Ronan’s constriction of her lungs. What the fuck had she done?

  It was still early, and Wania hadn’t yet picked up Moira from school. She had ballet this afternoon and wouldn’t get home until after six. Colin wouldn’t be back until seven or eight. That gave Elm three hours to get herself together.

  She lay on her bed. There must be a way she could salvage this. What if she said nothing, stayed on at Tinsley’s? The auction house was sure to come under scrutiny during an investigation. Auction houses always claimed that any illegal behavior was simply one bad seed, acting alone. At best, the house would receive bad press, a hit they could not afford in this climate. Elm would be thrown under the bus.

  She would resign. Admit herself duped and clear out her desk. Ian would probably never speak to her again, but he’d be all right. He’d ingratiate himself to her successor the same way he charmed everyone else.

  And that successor would probably be Colette. Why hadn’t she seen it? Colette had brought her to Klinman. She was probably part of the whole thing. Hell, maybe she even orchestrated it. And she was seemingly blameless—nothing linked Colette to Klinman to Tinsley’s. The only link there was Elm.

  What had made Elm think she was capable of this kind of scheming? Elm couldn’t even play tic-tac-toe, and she had fashioned herself a role as a duplicitous con artist. Someone should have stopped her. If she had confided in anyone. Why hadn’t she told her husband? She didn’t trust him anymore, she realized. Their grieving had taken different directions, made them peer at each other through new eyes as the other took a course that the partner disapproved of. She had forgiven him for losing their son as much as she’d forgiven herself, but she still wondered: What if he had grabbed Ronan when the wave hit? What if he had reacted faster, had more presence of mind? It was different from blame, it was disappointment, and she knew he could sense it.

  She would just have to tell him about Indira. But then she would have to tell him about Relay. And then about Ronan. Was there a way to leave that out? The secret was a cluster of tin cans strapped to a fender, banging and clanging wherever she went. Not telling had become a full-time job. The literature from the clinic should have warned her about this. Colin would never forgive her if she told him. He would leave her, whether for the deceit or the cloning or both. She knew him well enough to know this about him.

  What if they proved she knew the drawings were fake? Would she go to jail? She was fucked. Fucked fucked fucked. But at least she had Ronan, and in a few months he’d be with her again, and she could be in jail or in hell, for all she cared, as long as she got to hold him in her arms again.

  “Ian,” Elm called as he was leaving the break room, a mug in his hands.

  “Hello, dahling,” he said. “Exciting plans for Presidents’ Day?”

  “I have to talk to you,” she said. Her voice cracked, even as she tried to keep her face neutral.

  Ian paled. “Are you okay? Is the baby …?”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s about work,” she said. She felt a flood of relief. No one was hurt. No one was sick. Her baby was fine. The rest was all inconvenience. “Let’s go to the Cockroach.”

  “Okay …” Ian dragged the word out. “Can you give me a preview?”

  Elm shook her head. “Meet you there in five minutes. No, ten. I have to pee, for a change.”

  The Cockroach was their name for The Coach House diner around the corner. It was disgusting, but it had the advantage of good acoustics and the fact that no one from Tinsley’s would be caught dead there.

  She found him in “their” booth, pushing his spoon around a bowl of oatmeal with raisins.

  “This is gross,” he said.

  “I’ll eat it.” He pushed it across the table to her. She took a bite. It was gross, but food was fuel to her now; she was simply refilling the gas tank.

  “I’m dying here,” Ian said. He tried to cross his leg under the table but was too tall. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Okay,” Elm said. “Promise you won�
��t be angry.”

  “I don’t promise beforehand,” Ian said. “I’ve been hurt too many times.”

  “Then promise to try not to be angry.”

  “Okay, fine, get on with it.”

  “I, uh, think that Indira Schmidt gave us forged pieces.”

  “What? That’s impossible. We had them authenticated.”

  Elm shrugged.

  Ian said, “But it’s not your fault. Fakes get put through all the time.”

  “But ethically, they shouldn’t.”

  “Ethically,” he echoed. They sat in silence for a moment. “What else?” Ian asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what else is there for you to tell me?”

  “That’s it.” Elm held her palms open to show that there was nothing up her sleeve.

  “Uh-uh.” Ian shook his head. “I don’t believe you. You don’t look empty.”

  “I don’t look what? Look, Ian, I already told you that I think I may be in trouble, possibly even with the police, and definitely with my job, at a time when my husband’s about to lose his and I’m pregnant.”

  Ian drummed his fingers on the table, impatient. His other hand played with a package of Sweet’N Low.

  “What about Relay? I mean—” Ian leaned across the table closer to her. For the first time since she’d known him, Ian seemed angry, even menacing. “What about the drawings you sold through Relay?”

  “What?” Elm said.

  “We reconnected at the auction and we’ve had dinner a few times. She’s actually grown into a really nice person. She said you’d given her drawings to sell, which seemed strange to me. First, because you never said anything, at least not to me, which, by the way, I’m hurt about.”

  “Sorry,” Elm said. “With everything on my mind I’ve just—”

  “Why in the world would you give her drawings to sell instead of putting them up for auction at Tinsley’s? Relay said she didn’t know. And she hadn’t thought to ask. Intelligence, not necessarily one of her most attractive traits.”

  Actually, Elm thought, claiming ignorance was a sign of acumen that Elm neglected to demonstrate.

  “So I say to myself, ‘Self,’ I say, ‘why is Elm pimping out drawings and not telling me?’ Either she doesn’t think they’re worthy of the auction house, and in that case it’s shitty to be foisting them on Relay, even though she doesn’t know any better. Or she needs the money. Either way, it seems like something Greer would not be thrilled about, or it’s potentially illegal. What are you involved in, Elm, and why didn’t you tell me?”

  Elm began to cry but she didn’t avert her glance. “I need the money. Colin’s going to lose his job; he has to testify in court. And yes, Relay’s drawings were probably fakes. But they were convincing, and enjoyable, and, for all I know, possibly real. And it was helping out these Jews whose art was lost in the …” She trailed off. This was Klinman’s line, his bullshit story. Suddenly, she understood Indira’s attitude. Elm didn’t care. She didn’t care who got hurt as long as she could have Ronan. There were so many steps between Relay and Elm and Klinman, and the forger.… It was a gulf that stretched too wide to imagine, a snarling, rough sea. And it had swallowed her up and carried her out.

  Her tears dried as she finally put the pieces together. But here was Ian, waiting for her to speak, to explain herself, to save their friendship, her job, and his.

  “I didn’t know,” she said. “I didn’t think it would get so huge. Indira’s art looked authentic. We ran it through the paces.”

  “Yes, but to prove it was original, not to prove it was fake. It’s different.”

  “What the fuck do I do now, Ian?” Elm looked up at him. His gaze was stern, like a father’s. The disappointment radiated out from his forehead, wrinkled in dismay.

  “Look, Relay won’t say anything. And I’m not going to say anything. We never even had this conversation. Maybe the media attention will die down.”

  “An Englishman using the world’s most famous ceramicist as a shill to sell fake art through one of the world’s most venerated auction houses? Yeah, no one will want to hear about that,” Elm said. She tried to catch the waitress’s eye. She was famished. She wanted a grilled cheese sandwich so badly her knuckles ached. “Shit, shit, shit. Why didn’t I just stay out of it?”

  “More like, why did you drag me in?” Ian saved her by saying, “Excuse me,” to the passing waitress.

  “Grilled cheese, no tomato, please.” Elm looked at Ian, who shook his head.

  “How can you eat?”

  “I’m not eating. The parasite is. What do you think I should do?”

  “Lie low,” Ian said. “Get lots of doctors’ appointments. Can you get put on bed rest?”

  “I don’t know,” said Elm. “I think I’m done with deception,” she said, even as she realized that her deception ran so deep she would never be done.

  Elm and Colin both took the day off before the long weekend. Moira ran around the living room singing at the top of her lungs, so excited was she to have vacation, and both parents home. Elm knew how little time she and Colin had spent together recently. She was also aware that though she had been living in the apartment, participating in family dinners and arranging pickups and drop-offs, playdates and meals, she had been with her family only in body. In spirit she had been … in a clinic, in France, getting impregnated with her dead child. Or on a beach in Thailand, watching as the wave came in to lay waste to her life.

  Elm was making a dinner shopping list, which so far consisted of chicken and ice cream. She rubbed her lower back with her left hand, then felt Colin’s hands on her shoulders, kneading the flesh there.

  “We have to talk, Elmtree,” he said.

  Something in his voice, his touch, suggested sex. She was not in the mood, but she let herself be led to the bedroom after putting on a television show for Moira.

  In the room, he sat her on the bed, and she could see he was no more interested in sex than she was. He began to pace, chewing on his hangnails as he did when he was nervous, so that she had trouble understanding what he said.

  She asked him to repeat himself.

  “It’s over, Elm,” he said.

  There was a moment when she couldn’t breathe. How had he found out about Ronan? Or had he done something else? Had he fallen in love while she wasn’t looking? He wouldn’t leave her six months pregnant, would he? He was so loyal; only the colossal lie of her pregnancy could make him leave her.

  “I’m out,” he said. “Don’t look so scared; you’re fairly pale. Do you need to lie down?”

  Elm shook her head.

  “I’ll get another job, Elm. It’s not like it’s impossible. And I can stay home with the baby if nothing else pans up.”

  Elm deflated. He was leaving his job. Not her.

  “Pans out,” she corrected. “What happened?”

  “HR scheduled a meeting on Tuesday. I brought home all the interesting files yesterday.”

  “And …” Elm still felt out of breath. Her heart was racing; she couldn’t completely fill her lungs.

  “They’re not pursuing legal action. They are just going to shove it all under the rug and sweep away any crumbs. I’m a crumb. It’s for the best, really. It’s time to move on.”

  Elm nodded.

  “It’ll be okay, sweetheart. You’re working. We have savings. It’ll be all right.”

  “I, uh—” Elm held up her finger while she swallowed. Colin brought her the glass of water from the nightstand. Elm took a long swallow.

  “Things aren’t looking so great at Tinsley’s right now. I have to … I wasn’t—” Elm began to sob, then dry-heave. Colin, concerned, sat next to her on the bed, holding her while she made noises that hadn’t come out of her since the days after Ronan’s death, guttural grunts and wails. Moira knocked at the door.

  “Not now, gobeen,” Colin called. “Everything’s grand. Go back to the television.”

  “I’m okay, go to her
,” Elm said.

  “No,” Colin said. “I’m here. Tell me. It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “It can,” Elm said, calming.

  “Mommy, I’m hungry,” Moira called from behind the closed door.

  “Wait a minute, sweetie,” Elm said.

  She took a deep breath. She would tell him. She could tell him and then this would all be over. She would tell him, he’d be angry, then he’d forgive her. He’d see that she had done the best thing for all of them. She put her hand on her belly.

  “There was all this pressure. From Greer, and then your job thing, so I—”

  “Elm, you’re not making sense.” Colin shook his head.

  “Mommy, will you fix me lunch?”

  “In a minute,” they both chimed.

  “Get a yogurt drink from the fridge,” Elm called. “Okay,” she said to Colin. “The beginning was before the auction, and Greer kept threatening me if I didn’t get some good commissions. And then, suddenly, these two things came up. First, there was Indira Schmidt. Remember the ceramicist I told you about? The one who survived the Holocaust? She was profiled in The New Yorker a few years back?”

  “All right …” Colin clearly didn’t remember.

  “She had this amazing collection of drawings, and this one Connois pastel that she said Blatzenger gave her when he went to France. They were having an affair. For years, apparently.”

  “From Nixon’s administration?”

  “It was, it is, a beautiful piece, and the story behind it is incredible. The poor lady, she’s nearly blind. So I sent everything off to be authenticated, or rather, Ian did, and it went up for auction, which was a great success, remember?”

  “Aye,” Colin said.

  “Okay, hold that in your mind while I tell you the rest of the story.”

  “I’ll try,” Colin said, his clipped tones betraying his confusion.

  “Colette told me to call this Klinman guy in France.”

  “The reason you went to Paris, I remember,” Colin said.

  Elm felt a poke of guilt behind her ribs. The baby flipped inside her. “That, and … But initially, I didn’t call him, because of Colette, right?”