A Nearly Perfect Copy

by Allison Amend

“It’s very …” He looked around the apartment.

  “Beige,” Elm said. “It’s very beige. Apparently corporate wonks like beige apartments.”

  Greer managed a forced smile. “Wow, is that—” He pointed to the oil painting of Ronan.

  “Yes,” Elm said. She knew she was supposed to explain why there was an extremely ugly convention center art show portrait of her dead son, but she took a perverse pleasure in letting Greer puzzle out what he was missing.

  “Sit down?” Elm asked. “I’m afraid there’s nothing in the house. Do you want some water?”

  Greer shook his head. “Elm, do you know why I’m here to speak with you?”

  “Greer, this isn’t ninth grade. Spit it out.”

  “I’ve had a call from the FBI.”

  The scrunched and minuscule pouch that was Elm’s stomach lurched. She’d been waiting for this.

  Greer continued, “They’re concerned about several pieces that we, well, that your department put up for auction last fall.”

  Elm nodded, pretending that what he was saying was news to her.

  “And their connection to a certain Indira Schmitz.”

  “Schmidt,” Elm corrected him. What had they said? she wanted to ask him. Get to the point, man. Was Elm going to jail?

  “Since you’ve been … I asked Ian to look into it.”

  Elm breathed a sigh of relief. Ian must have covered for her.

  Wouldn’t he?

  “You are aware,” Greer said. He was reciting from a script. Maybe he was wearing a wire. At the very least, he had been to see his lawyer. This did not bode well for Elm. “You are aware that she has been implicated in an art forgery ring.”

  Elm nodded. “Good,” Greer said. “It’s good that you’re not denying it.”

  “I read the news,” Elm said.

  “Ian brought me the documentation of the authenticity investigations. It appears you did your due diligence.”

  “Of course, Greer.”

  Greer continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “But, Elm, I looked at the report. If this pastel turns out to be a misattribution, then the implications for Tinsley’s would be enormous.”

  “Look, Greer, I don’t think it’s misattributed,” Elm said, sitting on the sofa opposite him. “And if it proves to be, I mean, I made a mistake. It happens.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Greer said. “Not in my house.”

  Elm sucked her lips inside her teeth so she wouldn’t say anything.

  “Elm,” Greer said. “It’s come to my attention that there have been some other … dealings on your part. I recommend, I mean, my lawyer recommends, you say nothing.”

  Elm briefly thought about standing up and protesting this unfair treatment. He was acting on rumors and half-truths, and how dare he, etc. But she simply didn’t have it in her to defend a principle she’d violated. She sat there, mute.

  “We’ll leave it there if you agree to resign, effective immediately.”

  Elm nodded as the tears started flowing down her cheeks. These were silent tears, tears of regret, not anger. She could say nothing to defend herself. Greer was right, horribly right. She had put the entire auction house in jeopardy. Her great-grandfather was really rolling around in his grave. But how had Greer found out about the drawings she sold through Relay, if these were the dealings to which he was referring? Ian must have told him. He was the only one who knew about her relationship with Relay. But why would he do that to her?

  “I’ll try to protect you from the law,” Greer said, “but I want you to have nothing more to do with the auction house.”

  “Yes,” she said. What hurt most right now, besides her fear, was that Greer, after acting superior to her in every way for years, did occupy that space now. As vile as he was, as mean and as hypocritical and as condescending, he had the moral hegemony that Elm could only dream about, a rightness she would never, ever recover.

  “But, Elm,” Greer said as he stood to go, his face even redder now than it was when he walked in. “I don’t understand. Why?”

  Elm thought. “None of your fucking business,” she said.

  In May, Moira and Colin left for Ireland so Colin could start his new job. Elm moved back into their apartment. It had once felt so small—a two-bedroom with four people living in it, all sharing one bathroom and one small living room; now it was an empty mansion. Colin had packed quickly; in their closet errant socks and summer clothing sat where they’d fallen.

  Every morning Elm Skyped with Moira. “How’s Ireland, honey?”

  “I’ve been here before, ’member?”

  “I know, silly goose, but how do you like it there now?”

  “Good. When are you coming?”

  “As soon as the baby’s born and old enough to travel, pumpkin.” Actually, nothing had been worked out. Colin’s parents agreed to pick Moira up from school and take care of her while he worked. It was a perfect arrangement, and the fact that it didn’t include Elm broke her heart.

  Moira sighed, then got distracted by something away from the webcam. She skipped out of view for a minute, then came back, fiddling with one of her dolls whose miniature plastic clothes were always getting lost.

  “Have you made any friends at school?” Elm asked.

  “Yeah, there’s this girl, her name is Siobhan. She’s nice. She has really really blond hair.”

  “Good. I can’t wait to meet her.” Elm hoped that Moira would attribute the crack in her voice to the imperfect wireless connection.

  “She has a little brother too. And, Mom?”

  “Yes,” Elm said.

  “It’s raining here.”

  “It’s raining here too, sweetie.”

  “But not the same rain?”

  “No, sweetie. I think it’s different rain.”

  Colin came up behind her. He looked different on the webcam, elongated, disproportionate. “Go on and wash your teeth,” he said. Moira left without argument or good-bye.

  “Hi,” Colin said.

  “Hi,” Elm replied.

  “Rain here too,” Colin said.

  “It is Ireland.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nope. I still have two weeks until I’m even full-term.”

  There was a long silence. Colin looked at his shoes. Elm wished she could reach her own feet to rub them.

  “Elm?” Colin said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Me too,” Elm admitted. “I’m terrified.” She wasn’t sure they were speaking of the same fear, but Elm didn’t want to pry; she wanted to let this small moment of agreement last for as long as it could.

  Elm had thought Ian would come by with the contents of her office. Then she assumed he’d call to see how she was. She was upset at his silence, even as she didn’t really blame him.

  Finally, he came to see her bearing a large box of chocolates that sat uneaten on the coffee table between them. He was telling her some story that she wasn’t really trying to follow, about someone from facilities who took it upon himself to talk up some buyers on the floor last week.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, noticing her inattention. “The gossip will die down.”

  Elm smiled, a dissimulation so phony she didn’t even convince Ian. In the past few weeks she’d received letters from both charitable organizations she worked with thanking her for her help up to now and wishing her good luck in her future endeavors. The museum on whose board she sat suddenly reorganized its trustees. Elm was not on the new list. The gossip would never die down, Elm knew. Even if there was no criminal prosecution.

  “Did you tell Greer about Relay?”

  Ian shook his head. “No. Elm, how can you think that?”

  “I don’t know, sorry,” she said. “I’m just paranoid. Then who …” As soon as the words left her mouth she realized exactly who it was who ratted her out to Greer. How could she have been so clueless? Colette had brought her Klinman. She would have known all along. To think that El
m had been played by that—she didn’t even like to say the word in her own mind—cunt. Played was the correct word. Toyed with. Colette would take her job. Elm thought about confronting her, storming into Greer’s office to unveil the real Colette, maybe even telling the police about her. But that would do neither Elm nor Ian any good, and could have disastrous effects. Elm and Colette were mutually incriminated. As long as one didn’t speak the other one wouldn’t either.

  “Oh, Elm,” Ian said, sighing. He waited a long time before speaking, looking out her window. “Who’s going with you to the hospital?”

  “No one, I guess,” she said. She’d been thinking about it, but there was no one to ask. It wasn’t the kind of thing you asked casual friends, and really, that’s all she had in the world besides Colin, friends by convenience and lack of effort, not true friends. Ian would have been that friend if she hadn’t gambled him away.

  “Will they even let you do that?”

  “They’ll have to.” Elm shrugged. “I suppose it happens.…”

  “I just don’t understand how Colin could be that angry to leave you.”

  “It’s complicated,” she said. “I mean, yeah, he’s angry, but he also got a really great job, and Moira’s all settled. And it’s not like the Celtic Tiger waits for people to have their babies.”

  Ian gave a tiger growl. “That always sounds like a drag name to me. ‘Onstage next, the mistress of mischief, Miss Celtic Tiger.’ ”

  Elm laughed.

  “And then.” It was a statement.

  “Pardon?” she said.

  “And then you’re moving to Ireland.”

  “Yes.”

  Elm watched Ian’s face screw up into anger and then release into a prim-mouth unhappiness.

  “When will they announce your resignation?”

  “After the baby, I assume. I’ll stay home for more family time. I’m sorry, Ian. It’s not that I don’t, I mean, I want to, but I have to …”

  “I get it,” Ian said. “You know that without you I probably won’t stay long at Tinsley’s.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. I’ll write a letter before I leave.”

  “No offense, Elm, but that might hurt the cause. You’re not exactly persona grata there.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Elm said. Was she convincing herself or him?

  “I know I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m always fine.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Elm asked. “Stay here for your sake? Not go try to patch things up with my husband and raise our daughter and new baby? I should get rid of my family to make sure that you have a job?” Elm’s voice was rising. She was angry, but as she spoke it simply sounded whiny.

  “No,” Ian said. “Don’t be an idiot. I just wish that for once, just once in my life, I was someone’s biggest consideration.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elm said.

  “And not the object of someone’s pity.”

  “Besides your own, of course.”

  Ian smiled. “Besides my own. Elm, there’s something about you that makes everyone risk themselves to help you, a risk that you would never, ever even consider making in return.”

  “That’s a harsh thing to say,” Elm said. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  Ian shrugged, not taking it back. “Good luck. I hope …” He let the thought trail off.

  She waited until she was sure they were actual contractions and not just indigestion, and then she took a bath, asking her back to relax. In the tub she rubbed her belly, amazed that at some point in the near future she and Ronan would be two separate people again.

  She toweled off and sat on the toilet. When she stood, there was a plug of mucus and blood, shiny in the light. A calm settled over her. She felt clearly the air going in through her mouth, traveling through her lungs, and then back out. She would see him again, so soon, and it would be like letting go of a breath she’d held for years, the uncramping of a clenched muscle.

  Soon, she told herself. Soon she’d be looking into Ronan’s eyes; she’d have necromanced her son into rebirth. And in the face of that, compared with that eventuality, losing her job, her best friend, her husband, committing forgery, all that was inconsequential. It had to be. Please, she prayed, please let it have been worth it.

  Part Five

  Spring 2011

  Elm and Gabriel

  “Hurry up,” Moira whined.

  “Moira,” Elm said, “your brother has little legs. He can’t walk that fast.”

  “Can so,” Aiden said.

  Elm looked at Aiden’s gait, worried. He was still walking a little pigeon-toed.

  “But what if we miss it?”

  “You’re not going to miss it,” Elm said. “Mary is meeting us at the auction house and she’ll take you. The carnival is going on all afternoon.”

  “But we’re only in London for a week.”

  “Mama?” Aiden asked.

  “No, I can’t carry you,” Elm said. “You’re too much of a big boy.”

  “More like a big, slow turtle.”

  “That’s enough, Moira. Come here and hold my hand while we cross.”

  It was a hot day, and Moira’s annoyance was catching. Aiden continued to stare everywhere but in front of his feet, and Elm was dragging him. The back of Moira’s neck was red and irritated. She was getting sunburned, but it hadn’t occurred to Elm that one needed sun protection in rainy London.

  “Da coming?” Aiden asked for the umpteenth time.

  “Yes, baby, Daddy will meet us at the fair after his meeting.” Probably. Maybe. Nothing was certain with Colin.

  “After his meeting,” Aiden parroted.

  Aiden was meeting his developmental milestones; Elm waited for each one, sure that at some point his being a clone would manifest itself in a limitation, or a severe deficiency. She treated him carefully, and he was growing up timid and fearful, dependent. But so far they’d been lucky. Sometimes Elm forgot he was Ronan’s clone; he seemed so himself, so Aiden.

  Though Aiden looked just like his brother—his twin, really—with the long nose that Elm shared, Colin’s blond hair and gray eyes, there were differences between Ronan and Aiden. Elm wasn’t sure if this was some trick of memory or if Aiden really was taller than Ronan at this age (possible: foods were increasingly fortified; Elm was vigilant with his diet and had breast-fed him past one year). He was interested in music, which Ronan never was. And he was a ham, in the way of second children, forever competing for attention in a way that Ronan never had to.

  Occasionally, during a late-night feeding, or for a moment in the bathtub, Aiden stared at her with Ronan’s eyes and his genetics reminded her of her enormous loss, the grief that could only be salved, never cured. Though she would never admit it, those were the times when she regretted what she’d done. They were infrequent, but devastating, and flashes of hatred for this impostor were as strong and as fleeting as the impromptu feelings of recognition and adoration that same gaze could inspire. She would have to live with these contradictions. Always.

  But then he’d look up at her in such a way that it felt like Ronan was there, inside him, and when he began to talk it was as though Elm were getting to regain what she had lost. At those moments she didn’t care that she had sacrificed her career, her marriage, perhaps her happiness.

  They stopped at the crosswalk near Phillips de Pury, and Elm strained to look for Colin’s niece. She was supposed to meet them at the auction house and take the children for the afternoon, but Mary was notoriously unreliable. Yesterday she was an hour late returning home, bringing the children back full of sugar, having missed Aiden’s nap. Elm couldn’t explain to her how worried even a tardiness of fifteen minutes made her without seeming overprotective, crazy.

  “Mary!” Moira squealed. She broke from Elm’s hand and ran to hug her cousin. “Are we going to the carnival?”

  “What carnival?” Mary feigned ignorance. “I thought we’d tour Buckingham Palace.”

  “No!” Moira giggled.r />
  “Mary!” Aiden said. He knew better than to wriggle from Elm’s grasp, but she could feel his urge to run to Mary. Elm was jealous; her arrival never provoked such fanfare.

  “Hi, Mary,” Elm said. “Thanks for taking them.”

  “No trouble,” Mary said. She was wearing a long skirt woven with shiny threads that sparkled, her many bracelets providing an accompanying tinkling.

  “Why do I say yes to this thing?” asked a nearby man, echoing Elm’s thoughts. He was tall and thin, dark with a couple of days’ stubble that looked purposeful rather than neglectful.

  A young woman shushed him. “They’ll hear you.”

  “I don’t care.” His accent was foreign. Was this the man she was supposed to be interviewing—Marcel Connois’s great-great-grandson, himself some sort of artist? This was one of the auction house’s gimmicks in the great global market collapse, an added value, an enticement to come to an underattended auction: meet the artist’s descendant! What a change from three years ago, when people threw money at art as though they had it to burn.

  Elm could not have cared less about meeting someone’s relative (she of all people knew that blood ties were expendable), but the art rag she wrote for was interested in an interview. She considered approaching him now, but he opened his mouth and swore loudly, “Motherfuckers.”

  “Shhh,” his girlfriend said again.

  Moira gasped. “Mummy, who is that man?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He said ‘motherfucker.’ ”

  “Don’t, Moira, your brother will repeat it.”

  “Muddah-fakkah, muddah-fakkah,” Aiden said.

  “Stop it,” said Moira. “It’s a bad word.”

  “What is?” Aiden asked.

  A representative from the auction house approached the foreign man and his girlfriend. “Mr. Connois? Welcome. We’re very happy to see you. Come this way.”

  “Go ahead with Mary,” Elm said. She reached down to kiss and hug her children, a drawn-out ritual that they all respected, one that would seem from the outside to be excessive. By the time she’d hugged them and given Mary some money, Connois and his girlfriend had gone inside.