Body by Blood

by Patrick Johnston

  He stretches a hand toward me. “Mr. Verity.”

  “Dr. Verity,” Morgan corrects him.

  He laughs like a bad actor. “Doctor it is.”

  I belatedly shake his outstretched hand.

  Morgan doesn’t stop praising Argentino for his handsome features, his diamond ear-studs, his waxed eyebrows, his classy clothes, his highlighted hair, his shiny beige shoes, his diamond-studded gold watch—all things vain and superficial. His teeth are equally flawless, though he would never smile broadly enough to let you admire them. He looks like a self-obsessed underwear model who must consume a thousand credits of cocaine and spend an hour and a half in front of the mirror before he can go out in public. That makes him and Morgan two peas in the same pod, with him the less manic of the two.

  If anyone in the terminal wasn’t already staring at my wife, as immodest as she is with her long brown legs under her black leather miniskirt and her low-cut, see-through, silky white blouse, certainly everyone was turning her direction with her shrill voice recklessly extolling a man she has never even met.

  We men are so predictable, so superficial, and such pathetic let-downs, more or less. A woman like my wife can draw you in like the smell of a candy factory would attract a starving man, the general lack of nourishment notwithstanding. But the pleasure dissipates with increasing familiarity and one day you’re left with a façade of a real woman who cannot satisfy herself, much less your deep-down hunger for love, any more than a breath-mint could strengthen a famished, withered body. Once the honeymoon wears off, a vain woman like my wife cannot keep you warm any more than a painting of the sun. She cannot gratify your insatiable addictions sufficiently to maintain your interest for the long haul. The very appetite that leads you to her leads you away from her. How I pity the shameless gawkers who are endlessly fascinated with my wife’s body! How I pity Morgan for her dependence on their worship and flirtations to maintain her self-esteem. Flesh-obsessed men who lack all love created this monster, and now she lives to feed off her makers. Could something truly great ever come out of the ornate treasure chest of marshmallows that is Morgan Verity?

  My mind retreats from this gavel. I don’t belong behind that bench. How can I give her what I don’t have? And how can I lavish judgment on her and hope for mercy for me? Isn’t her sin the fruit of my own? If anything, her transgressions are just one more burden on my own sinking ship.

  Morgan completely lacks all discretion with her ambitious hugs and relentless praise of Savannah’s hair and attire, and her intensifying admiration of Savannah’s boyfriend. He appears aloof to our presence with his constant attention to his handheld. Only occasionally is he distracted from whatever he’s reading to look at my wife’s bosom. He’s not even pretending to look at her face. He’s turning his handheld toward her, aiming it at her chest. Is he taking a picture of her? Pathetic.

  The blanket falls off the stroller and I see only a diaper bag in the stroller. “Wait.” I point. “Where’s Mary Nell?”

  “She’s, um, she’s coming.” She stops and looks back toward the jet. “She’s sleeping, like I said, but her nanny’s got her.”

  “Oh! I’m so glad you got a helper,” Morgan squeals. “Mine does everything for me . . . ”

  They start going ahead, but I hesitate.

  Morgan glances over her shoulder. “Ray?”

  “You go get the luggage. I’m waiting for Mary Nell.”

  At the end of a long line of disembarking passengers, I see a thin blond teenage girl with a diaper bag over one shoulder. Mary Nell clutches her nanny vigorously until she gets a glimpse of me and stretches her arms toward me.

  “Gwampa!”

  I run to her and she practically leaps out of the nanny’s arms into my own. I embrace her fully. Her innocence is refreshing, yet her detachment from her mother is grievous. She nudges her chin into the crook of my neck. “Wuv you, Gwampa.”

  “Ah, now that’s a hug. I wuv you too.” I turn to face my wife and daughter, hoping that they are enjoying our affectionate moment as much as I am, but they are nowhere to be seen. I carry Mary Nell into the terminal and find them leaving me behind, rolling their luggage to the car. It’s unlike them to not even wait for someone to carry their luggage.

  I ask her nanny, “Does Savannah spend any time with Mary Nell at all?”

  She shakes her head. “No. She insisted on sitting far apart from her on the plane. I do everything for Mary Nell now. I look forward to my week away.”

  “You’ve got a vacation?”

  She nods, appearing tired. Relieved. “Yes, a much needed one. Mary Nell requires a lot of attention.”

  I kiss my granddaughter on the cheek. “And worth every minute of it.”

  Mary Nell turns toward the exit to see Morgan leaving. “Mama?”

  “You’ll see your Mama soon.” Her nanny tries to comfort her, but it’s all in vain.

  “Mama? Mama weaving? Mama!”

  Savannah’s detaching, and Mary Nell is resisting. I embrace her tightly. “I’m not leaving, baby. I’ll take care of you.”

  The nanny’s eyelids rise. She smirks. “You’ll take care of her?”

  When the girl gets her luggage, we go our separate ways.

  In the hover-limo, Savannah sets Mary Nell in her lap, but only briefly. Mary Nell keeps trying to pull her close, and Savannah acts irritated. Finally, I distract Mary Nell from her mother with a gift of a new doll. Savannah is disinterested in Mary Nell’s new doll, appearing curt, tight-lipped, and as aloof as I’ve ever seen her. She crosses her arms over her bosom, even appearing unmoved by her mother’s giddy rambling. Her eyes intermittently fixate on me, as Mary Nell is perched enthusiastically on my lap, holding her doll tightly, expressing her childish admiration of even the most mundane of passing buildings, trees, and people on the sidewalk.

  Savannah’s boyfriend rudely shuts out even Morgan’s relentless prattle as he thumbs through his handheld computer.

  “When can we see my new girl?” Savannah finally speaks. “Today?”

  “Who’s dat?” Mary Nell perches up higher on my lap so she can touch the window in the roof.

  I’m amazed by how aware the little girl is.

  Morgan clears her throat loudly. “Oh, Mary Nell, look at that.”

  Morgan points out the window at some artful structure made of brass and colored glass on a street corner. “Look at that pretty thing, Mary Nell.”

  She’s trying to distract her, but it doesn’t work.

  “Who’s dat? Mama?” Mary Nell’s eyes are hopeful, as if she’s expecting a potential playmate or a pet. With her mother’s reluctance to answer the question, Mary Nell grows stiff, as if she suspects something uncomfortable is afoot.

  “No shot, Mommy. No shot . . . ”

  “You’re not getting a shot.”

  “She hates shots, huh?” Morgan comments with a feminine giggle.

  “What’s her name?” Mary Nell asks.

  Savannah sighs deeply. “Nellie. Nellie’s her name.”

  I try to comfort Mary Nell with a pat on her back. “You’re going to meet Nellie and be good friends.”

  “Raymond!” Morgan blurts out.

  “Oh, don’t make a big deal about it.”

  “They’ll let you do that?” Savannah asks. “Let them meet?”

  “It’s still my business.”

  “I thought it was the government’s business,” Morgan retorts. I think she means it as an insult to me, but her reassuring smile toward Savannah indicates that she’s motivated more by a desire to comfort my daughter. Savannah looks worried. She knows I object to the transfer and, it being my company, she fears I will put my foot down and intervene to protect Mary Nell.

  “Ray’s just the face of New Body now,” Morgan assures her. “He doesn’t really do much of the work.”

  Morgan turns to me. “Did you get permission to see the dupe early?”

  “She’s still my company’s asset until the transfer is made. I can take
my granddaughter to my office if I want to,” I insist. “Mary Nell? Would you like to see Grandpa’s office?”

  She may not understand what I’m offering, but hearing the tone in my voice and seeing the smile on my face, she begins to bounce and squeal as if a cartoon character had just handed her tickets to an amusement park. She rambles incoherent, child-like exclamations as if she was prattling away in a foreign language, oblivious to our lack of understanding.

  “Stop squealin’ gibberish!” Savannah scolds her.

  Mary Nell withdraws back into her shell, growing sullen and quiet.

  I call Mrs. Williamson on my nanophone and order her to set up the tour. “I’ll have Savannah, Mary Nell, and Morgan with me. And Savannah’s boyfriend Argentina.”

  “Argentino,” he corrects me.

  “I’m mistaken, it’s Argentino Sarsparello . . . ” Hopefully showing off that I’ve got the pronunciation of the last name right will make up that I missed the first name.

  “Sarsparelli,” he corrects me.

  “Mrs. Williamson,” I ask her over my nano, “will you get VIP IDs made up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  35

  “HAVE YOU GOTTEN TO KNOW little Mary Nell, Argentino?” I am careful to pronounce his name properly.

  He lowers his handheld computer and makes eye contact with me. “Excuse me?”

  “Mary Nell. Have you gotten to know her?”

  “Yes. Sweet girl. For all her deficiencies, quite extraordinary.” He talks to me as if she isn’t even present. We are walking into the private entrance at the New Body Research Center. I look down to admire her as she sits comfortably in her stroller, unrestrained in her playful gibberish as she points at the elevator entrance, appearing entertained by the mirror on the other side of the elevator and the reflection of the lit button panel.

  Savannah backhands Argentino’s hip. He clears his throat. “Nevertheless, I agree with the transfer.”

  He raises his tablet again, as if he’s hoping I’ll take the hint and stop interrupting his endless surfing. Savannah has co-opted him already.

  When we step into the elevator, a dozen scientists with lab coats enter the building, strangers I do not recognize. I prevent the elevator door from shutting in order to study the badges on their lapels. They are medical personnel from the World Health Organization. The ones in the rear are pushing wheeled computer systems and boxes of reagents and equipment into the building. Since the government took over management, medical specialists from all over the country have free reign of the place for all kinds of consultant opportunities, but this is atypical. There’s even a FEMA insignia on the lab coat of one of the strangers as she walks past, talking in quiet whispers on her nano as she looks at something on her handheld computer.

  I exit the elevator, telling Morgan, “Hold on.”

  I walk up to the nearest WHO personnel. “What’s this about?”

  The woman tries to ignore me but then recognizes me. “Just a precaution.”

  The pretty, young woman pushes a long machine on wheels into the building.

  I show her my badge. “What kind of precaution?”

  My ID is inadvertently upside down, but she brushes it aside. “I know who you are.”

  “It’s my building, my business. What kind of precaution?”

  “You’ll have to go through the proper chain of authority for information that I am forbidden to share.” She glances into the elevator. When her gaze settles on Mary Nell’s characteristic facial features, she scrunches up her nose in disgust. Thanks to the prenatal standard of care and “wrongful birth” lawsuits in which physicians have been sued for not providing prenatal diagnoses to allow the woman an opportunity to abort handicapped children, most Down Syndrome children are killed via abortion. They’re as rare as conjoined twins. But this WHO scientist studies my granddaughter not like a scientist fortunate to observe a rare genetic disease, but as a pest-controller would look at a termite—with disdain and contempt. Without another word, she turns and begins to wheel her cargo down the hall.

  “The New Body Research Center is my property. I want to know why you and your colleagues are here.”

  “Then it won’t be a problem for you to gain clearance,” she responds without looking.

  “Clearance from whom?”

  “Whomever answers to the President.” She banks toward the elevator that is dedicated solely to the Verity Wing.

  It’s hard to put your finger on who really is at the top of the totem pole in my company. All the federal agents who act like their authority transcends me are just nameless bureaucrats in acronyms of government agencies—the FBI, NIH, CDC, WHO, and the Department of HHS, as well as several others less familiar to me. They don’t even know the bounds of their own jurisdiction, and so of course cannot explain it to me. Maybe it is the President at the very top of this pyramid, throwing nosy and domineering agents from three dozen agencies around these four floors just to torment my managers and supervisors with a thousand irritating pecks.

  As we take the elevator to my penthouse office, Morgan jabbers about the success of our business and the perfection of our new bodies. This interests Argentino to no end. His personal computer is finally resting in his pocket, and he is asking her question after question. You’d think he would ask me questions, since I’m the one that pioneered the science and the first successful regeneration after cryo-sleep, but he appears much more interested with my wife’s answers, and she has no problem with rewarding him by drawing inside his personal space and showing off everything from her scalp scar to her freckle-free, tanned skin, to her lean abdominal muscles, to her cleavage when she bends down to act like she’s situating a poorly fitting sandal.

  He runs his fingers across the skin on her neck and shoulders as Morgan describes how she was covered with freckles from her original, un-doctored genome. Their mutual infatuation is nothing new between Morgan and her flesh-obsessed friends, but I’m still taken aback with their audacity to do this right in front of me. Even Savannah appears uncomfortable with their exchange. Morgan even has the courage to turn toward me and wink, as if she fancies a threesome, like the old days.

  We were so pathetic—at least I was, she is. No, thank you, I do not say. We were the rare couple back then, on the cutting edge of sexual liberation in an open marriage, but now it appears to be the cultural norm. Now, everyone is as pathetic as us. Argentino leans close to Morgan’s neck to enjoy some scent Morgan is tempting him with. I am tempted to intervene to break up their obsession with each other, but I am distracted when the elevator doors slide open and right in front of us is the new Mary Nell, grasping onto the hand of a staff member that works in the Verity Wing.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Verity.” The staff member, an atypically thin woman with a short haircut, displays a nervous grimace. “I intended to have her in your office on time, per Dr. Cranton’s orders, but you’re a few minutes—”

  “No,” I interrupt her. “Don’t trouble yourself, Sharon”—I read the name on her badge. “All is fine.”

  Dr. Cranton would have no problem checking a dupe out of the Verity Wing, whereas I would have. Thankfully, he honored my request, delivered through my secretary.

  I drop to one knee to introduce myself to the girl, who appears timid in the unchartered territory of the unlocked floors. Savannah steps up on one side of me, and Morgan the other. Mary Nell’s dupe—her genetically perfected, cloned replacement—is instantly recognizable. Morgan squats and begins to squeal about how she is such a pretty girl, but Savannah remains speechlessly amazed.

  “I am Dr. Verity,” I say to her. “We’re going to call you Nellie. Is that okay?”

  She looks up at Sharon, whose hand she still holds. The worker nods.

  “Yes, sir.”

  At hearing her first words, Savannah and Morgan both put their hands over their mouths, astounded.

  I motion to Morgan. “This is Morgan, my wife, and this is Savannah, my daughter.” I see little Mary N
ell stretching her neck around Savannah to try to see the strange girl who has so enraptured us.

  Nellie freezes for a moment, glancing worriedly up at the staff member.

  “Go ahead, shake hands,” Sharon tells her. “Be nice.” She motions toward us with a flick of her wrist, and Nellie shakes our hands.

  I glance at Savannah. She has tears in her eyes.

  “Amazing.” Argentino has broken out of the sophisticated playboy aura that characterizes him, appearing genuinely interested. His gaze darts back and forth between Mary Nell and her dupe Nellie. “Just amazing.”

  “Hey,” Mary Nell calls out to Nellie.

  I move aside so Mary Nell can see her more clearly.

  “Hey.” Nellie waves and gives her an embarrassed smile.

  I grab the bottom of Mary Nell’s stroller and pull her closer, hoping that they will interact.

  “No, no, uh, quit, Dad,” Savannah reaches for the stroller handles.

  “No, dear.” Morgan grabs Savannah by the arm.

  “We just got here.” Argentino draws closer to the two little girls.

  Argentino and Morgan apparently cannot comprehend why Savannah wants to leave, but I understand it fully. Seeing Mary Nell and Nellie interact like two normal children is like a bright light through the fog of sophistry Savannah has built up around her to justify the transfer and abate her natural affection for her own flesh and bone.

  I help Mary Nell out of her stroller and the two girls stand toe to toe. Nellie is several inches taller. “Say hi to Nellie, Mary Nell.”

  Instead of greeting her with words, Mary Nell leaps toward her and throws her arms around Nellie’s neck, giving her a hug.

  Nellie is reluctant to reciprocate at first, but eventually she lets go of Sharon’s hand and hugs her back.

  “Hi, Mary Nell,” Nellie mumbles.

  “Speak up,” the worker barks.

  “Hi, Mary Nell,” Nellie says with more robust enthusiasm, even as she tries to pull away from Mary Nell’s ambitious embrace.

  Mary Nell doesn’t answer, but looks to me. I wink at her.

  “You be my friend?”