“So that’s that,” Charles says.
“That’s that,” Julie says. “Except—”
“Except?”
“Well, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. My room is so cramped, your apartment is so small … we should clean out your parents’ house, Charles. It’s just going to waste right now and if we’re going to have a family together, we’re going to need space. Not to mention how nice it would be to still live so close to my mother.”
“Oh.”
“Oh?”
“I just, I don’t know. I don’t know.” Charles stands up. He feels his chest closing in.
“Charles, I can be patient. We can take it really slow. We have time to figure this out,” Julie says. “Come on, sit down. Take a deep breath.”
Charles lets Julie guide him back down to the bench. He breathes in and out, trying to push away the panicked feeling.
“I haven’t been back since the funeral,” Charles admits. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You’re going to have to face it eventually, though,” Julie says quietly.
“I know it doesn’t seem rational. But the last time I went, it just felt like the house was toxic, like every object, every photo, every piece of furniture triggered some sort of terrible memory. I told myself I never wanted to feel like that again.”
“I understand, Charles. You have to trust me on this.”
Charles hangs his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can.”
“You know, everyone assumes that my mother has always been alone, that she was never married, that my father was never around,” Julie says. “They don’t know that my parents were happy together, that my father had cancer and died when I was five. I started having panic attacks right around the time he died. I had no idea what they were at first. I was convinced I was dying too. I would have stomachaches and headaches, and it felt like my chest was caving in on itself. At a certain point, my mother figured out that they were always triggered by the objects I associated with my father—his old razor sitting on the bathroom counter, his pants hanging in the closet, his paintings on the living room walls.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I don’t know how I didn’t—”
“Because I didn’t tell you. I don’t tell anybody.”
“I’m sorry,” Charles says again. Then, “What was his name?”
“Rolf. He was half German, half British, with long, lanky limbs and hair blonder than anybody else I’d ever seen before.”
Charles takes Julie’s hand in his. He gives it a warm squeeze. “And what was he like?”
“My mother says he was quiet and contemplative, an honest person. He didn’t know any other way to be but genuine. He was a painter. He would paint in our living room, just in his jeans. He liked to work with his shirt off. He liked the feeling of getting splattered with paint and having to scrub it off in the shower at night. I thought he was invincible. He was the tallest, strongest man I knew.”
“What else do you remember?”
“He always read to me at night, and my favorite book was an old, worn copy of Peter Pan. At that time, my greatest fear was that I wouldn’t be able to be a child forever. One day my father took me in his lap and said he had a secret to tell me, a secret I must not tell anybody else. He told me that even if he looked like a grown-up, he was really a child at heart, and that these sorts of things tended to run in families so I really had nothing to worry about. And I believed him. I used to believe that.”
“Do you miss him? Uh, sorry, that’s a dumb question. Of course you do.”
“I think about what my life would’ve been like if he were around. My mother started hosting the artists’ colony at our house the year after he died. She couldn’t stand to be alone so she tried to surround herself with as many people as possible. And I loved the company, really, I did. It’s just that sometimes I wished I could have been enough for her.”
“I know the feeling,” Charles says. The wind has struck up again but the sun feels warm against his face.
“What about you?” Julie says. “Do you miss your parents?”
“I have nightmares about them all the time. I’ll have the same one over and over again, or at least the same type. I find out, after the funeral, that they’re still alive. But they’re injured or ill, and I know that they’re going to die again soon. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to tell people. I just don’t.”
Julie scoots in closer to Charles. He pulls his thick wool coat around her to block out the wind. Julie takes Charles’s hand and guides it to her abdomen. He places his gloved fingers against the cotton of her shirt. She puts her hand on top of his.
“Julie, sometimes I think I don’t remember everything from the accident. That there’s something important, something I blocked out.”
“Forever is composed of nows,” she says. “Nothing is going to replace your loss. But love and life and fate have enabled us to create a life together. There’s something extraordinary in that, something miraculous. All you need to remember is that.”
“I MEAN, IT’S CRAZY, I KEEP SEEING THAT SMALL, translucent jellyfish, floating around the tank, fully formed, fully functioning, one hundred percent alive. And I can’t help thinking—I’ve done it! I’ve unlocked the secret, the process by which all adult cells can be transformed into stem cells and then cultivated to become whatever we’d like. The implications are just extraordinary. We could create new tissue from small samples of existing human cells. Patients would no longer have to waste away waiting on transplant lists—they would be able to use their own tissue to grow new, healthy organs using three-dimensional printing. And that’s only the beginning. I could revolutionize the potential of cloning, and if my hunch is correct, the boundaries of life and death themselves. Because this jellyfish that I created—it’s not just a heart or an eye or a tentacle. I was able to combine the tissues in such a way that they are able to function together as an entirely new, viable life. This is a step beyond Dolly, beyond the embryonic cloning practices of the past. Using just a few cells with intact DNA, I can replicate an organism so that the copy is at the same level of physical and mental maturity as its original predecessor. Don’t you see? The myths of science fiction are becoming a reality. A four-year-old jellyfish would spawn a clone that was four years old as well. And perhaps someday a forty-year-old human could do the same.”
I pause to catch my breath, gulping down a glass of tap water from the countertop. I’m in Iris’s kitchen, pacing back and forth as she places a chocolate Bundt cake into the oven. My hair’s sticking up in sweaty tufts, and I can feel my cheeks glowing hot and red under the kitchen lights. Iris gazes up at me, biting her lower lip. She has a concerned expression on her face, as a mother might for a delusional child.
“Charles, are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”
“I can’t, because, you know, here’s the thing—since the genome was first discovered, scientists have wondered why it is that some sequences of DNA code for the production of proteins that are absolutely vital to keeping the body alive, while other sequences of DNA seem to have no function, to be entire wastelands of unutilized adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. But as it turns out, this isn’t the case. While I’m not yet sure of the mechanism by which it happens, my observations have indicated that these sites are actually repositories for memory. Somehow our memories get transcribed on these sequences, meaning if an organism were replicated, the copy would be physically identical but could also potentially have the same memories as the original. Which, if perfected in human beings, would mean that cloning could enable a person’s deceased loved ones to come back to life. Not literally, of course, it wouldn’t be the exact originals, but maybe these clones, these replacements could yield people just as good.”
Iris sets the timer on the oven and then comes over to me, placing her hand on my wrist. “Charles, please, sit down.” She leads me to the dining room table and takes a seat across from
me. Ava coos and cackles from the other room, engrossed in her own imagined universe.
“Look, I know what I’m saying might sound crazy, but trust me, it isn’t. This could end up being one of the greatest discoveries of the twenty-first century … what is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Iris frowns. “Charles, it’s just—this isn’t the first time you’ve said things like this.”
“What do you mean, ‘things like this’?”
“I mean, these exact ‘discoveries,’ Charles. About the cells and the new tissues. How the DNA sequences somehow have our memories in them. How we could clone people and bring them back to life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“About six months, just before you disappeared or went away or whatever happened, I don’t remember every single word you said, but I swear, you came in one night and you were saying almost exactly the same things you’re saying now. And after that, you started becoming more distant. Ava and I hardly saw you anymore.”
“Oh.” There’s a sinking feeling in my stomach, a heaviness right at the base of my ribcage. “Well, I guess the news isn’t as exciting as I thought.”
Iris turns to me. “Be excited, Charles. Be as excited as you want. But be careful. I don’t want to lose you again.”
I DON’T GET HOME UNTIL JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT. THE wind whips through the trees, possessed, the phone wires crackling in response. I shut the door quietly and peel off my jacket, not wanting to disturb the old man, wherever he may be sleeping. I try to be careful, but a moment later, my foot catches on a dining room chair that’s been left in the entryway. I stumble forward and almost fall face first. The chair thuds against the hardwood floor. I wonder why there’s a chair in the middle of the room. I flip the light switch by the living room and then jump back with a start. The old man has been sitting in the entryway this entire time, his back straight like a plank against the wall, gazing catatonically into the distance. He doesn’t move as I approach him, although I can tell by the gentle rise and fall of his chest that he’s not dead. I notice a line of red rope burn around his neck. The skin is rubbed almost raw in some places. I look up and see several of the marionette strings hanging in a loop in the rafters above.
The old man suddenly opens his eyes, thick black pupils looking up at me.
“Talk to me,” I say. “How can I help you if I don’t even know who you are?”
He remains silent.
“I know what you tried to do,” I continue. “Please, just talk to me.”
The old man pauses. He licks his crusty lips. There’s some sort of white dust settled on his shoulders, like paint or crumbled drywall. “They were staring at me. The marionettes. I just couldn’t stand them staring at me anymore.”
“Then we should get rid of them. They’re not doing either of us any good.”
The old man shakes his head no.
“Is it because they were Julie’s?” I ask him.
“They have the answers,” he says, speaking to nobody. “I know they do. I just need to figure out the right questions.”
PART III
The weeks pass by unintentionally, rapidly but without substance, like a film montage. My conversations at work feel artificial, rehearsed, and after my strange encounter with Iris, I wonder if everything I’m doing now is just recycled material. But then why wouldn’t Peter say something? Why wouldn’t he tell me that I’m conducting research I’ve already done, that I’m making discoveries I’ve already made? I want to trust Steve, to imagine that he’s on my side, but all I’ve been able to get out of him is small talk. We talk about the weather, about petri dishes and multiplying cells, about mundane weekend plans involving sleeping in and grocery shopping. Whenever I try to draw out information from him about the past, like someone so delicately trying to extricate a single thread from a piece of fabric, he closes down and walks away, claiming to be busy with some sort of experiment.
In fact, the only person I feel like I can be honest with is Katie. There’s an innocence to her demeanor, a sense of genuineness, and I get the feeling that she truly cares about what I have to say. Every time I see her, my heart gives a slight twinge, and I realize that there’s something of Julie in her, that I see shadows of my wife in her smile, her gestures.
One morning I knock on the door to Katie’s office for our appointment. Silence. I try knocking again. Usually she opens the door before I even knock, as if she has some intuitive knowledge of my presence. But today she’s five, ten, fifteen minutes late. I pace back and forth, fiddling with a paperclip in my lab coat pocket. Finally I twist the knob. The door is unlocked.
“Hello?” I call out as I enter. I don’t want to disturb Katie’s privacy. I expect the office to be empty, or for Katie to be listening to music on her iPod, nodding her head, having lost track of time. Instead, I discover her sitting at her desk, biting her nails. The overhead lights are off and the curtains are drawn.
Katie looks like an apparition of her former self. Her face is empty of color, her mascara smudged around her eyes. Her sweater is unevenly buttoned and her hair is flat and drab against her ears. The room has been torn apart, all of the degrees pulled off the walls, all the potted plants turned over. Katie looks up at me bewildered.
“Charles …”
“It’s ten o’clock.”
“I know,” Katie replies vacantly.
“What’s wrong?”
Katie doesn’t say anything. I make my way toward the desk. Katie slumps in her chair. I crouch down, and very gently, I wrap my arms around Katie. Her eyes dart back and forth, and then she leans in close to me, her lips against my ear.
“Charles, I’m not who you think I am,” she whispers, so quietly I can barely hear.
I open my mouth to speak. She puts her hand up over my face, like she’s afraid someone might read my lips. “What are you talking about?”
Katie lets out a deep breath, takes another one in. “I’m not a therapist,” she says, still in a whisper.
“What?”
“I’m not a therapist. I didn’t study psychology. I’m a research assistant.”
“A research assistant? For who? What do you mean?”
“Peter hired me. To observe you. To study you.”
I sit down on the carpet, shaking my head. “Peter? Why would he want to do that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why, he didn’t tell me anything more than he thought I needed to know. He said it was for research, for his research. I don’t know what that means.”
“Research? Research on what? On me?”
“I don’t know.” She massages her temples. “I’m just a college student. There was a flier on the bulletin board in the Bio Department. And when I heard that you were going to be involved, that I would get to work one-on-one with such a famous scientist …”
“A college student? Look, Katie, what exactly did Peter tell you? What did he want?”
“I was supposed to pretend to be a psychologist. He was interested in your memory. He has hidden video cameras set up around the room. I tried to disable them all, but I’m not sure … well, I’m done. I’m out.” She looks up at me with a mournful expression. “He has your lab rigged too. One of the jellyfish tanks has a one-way mirror. I don’t know which. And I’m pretty sure your house as well … I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have ever—he promised me a job at a major research institution when I finished. He said he had connections at Stanford and Harvard.”
“What about the degrees on the walls?”
“It was all fake, Charles. All of it.”
I pull Katie closer, my lips against her ear. “Why are you telling me all of this? Why now?”
“Because I like you. And because I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m in over my head.” She packs up the last of her belongings into her purse.
“Please, if there’s anything else—”
“I’m sorry, I have to go.” And with that, Katie is out the door before I can say another
word. I try to follow her, I push myself forward, but my head is spinning, a kaleidoscope of colors and images whirling before me.
June 13, 2006
Age Twenty-Eight
Charles arrives at the beige building an hour early. He checks his watch, paces back and forth. His shirt is freshly ironed, his slim tie hanging just below his navel. He knows that it’s perhaps inappropriate to have shown up this early for his first day of work, but he can’t help himself. He’s excited, ecstatic. He can’t believe he’s been given such an amazing opportunity. Charles has spent the past six years ricocheting between research positions— nonprofit start-ups that have gone instantly broke, university labs corrupted by campus politics, biomedical giants overrun by bureaucracy and ethical corruption. But this could be it. He feels it throughout his body. This could be the beginning of the rest of his career.
It’s a small lab called Genutech staffed by only a dozen scientists, funded by a group of highly wealthy investors committed to supporting the most cutting-edge biogenetic research. The philosophical ideology behind the company is that autonomy and purpose are the cornerstones of innovation, innovation that will benefit both society as a whole and the investors. Employees are thus given total free reign over their own projects, with the only stipulations being that they present their findings every two months and that each project is pursued with the underlying intent of giving back to the community and/or improving conditions for humankind. Moreover, the chief researcher at the lab is Peter Schiff, a kingpin in the field of biotechnology. Charles can’t imagine a more perfect way to provide for his family, for Julie and Jess, Julie who has spoken about having another child and Jess who is about to start preschool.
Charles attempts to delay his arrival—he feigns interest in a newspaper left in the lobby, goes to the bathroom, takes a long swig from the drinking fountain—but after fifteen minutes or so, he can’t help but take the elevator up to the lab. He tries his keycard once and then twice. The magnetic strip seems to have no effect. Just as he’s about to attempt it a third time, somebody opens the door, a short, round man with circular glasses and a flustered expression.
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