Moira smiled suddenly. “You really don’t understand, do you? If I had told you before, you would have gotten upset and tried to talk me out of it, or acted as though I was planning something terribly wrong. So I tell you now, so you won’t have time to talk me out of it. I thought you were feeling better about things lately, I thought you were over your depression. But of course you’re going to act the same way anyway.”
“I want to be with you. Is that so wrong?” Jim swallowed, worried that he had whined the words. “I don’t like to be separated from you, that’s all,” he said in a lower tone.
“No, you’d rather be underfoot all the time. I can’t read in the library without you, I can’t visit any of my friends alone. I can’t even meet your brothers. Every time I mention that I might like to talk with them, you evade the whole thing. Why?”
He was silent. He could feel sweat forming on his face and under his beard.
“I guess,” she said, “you’re jealous of your own family too.”
He shrugged and tried to smile. “I guess it isn’t so bad,” he said. “You’ll be back in August, and we can…”
“No.” She stopped pacing and stood in front of him, arms folded across her chest. “No, Jim. I don’t know yet, I want to think about things. I don’t want to make any promises now, I’ll just have to see. Maybe that’s hard on you, but…”
She sighed, then walked over to the trees. She stood there, leaning against a trunk, her back to him.
“Moira.”
No answer.
“Moira.” She was gone again, having said what she had to say. He could stride over to her, grab her by the shoulders, shake the slender body while shouting at her, and she would only look at him with empty eyes.
Do I love you, Moira? Do I even know you? He stared at the girl’s back, stiff and unyielding under the soft yellow shirt. Was he too possessive, too demanding? Did he fear rejection so much that he required a total and unconditional committment? Or was she simply telling him in her own way that she couldn’t love him, that it might be as easy for her to love one of his brothers if she knew them?
Moira, look at me, try to understand, he wanted to shout. He walked over to her, afraid to touch her, afraid to reach out and hold her. She was lost in her own world and seemed unaware of his presence.
It was over this time. He was sure of that, in spite of Moira’s comments about waiting until August.
She turned around and looked at him, black eyes expressionless. “The fact is,” she said, “that you’re trying to use me to prove something to yourself, to show everyone that you are an individual, that I only love you, that I’m completely yours. Well, I’ve got better things to do than build up your ego.”
She still refused to speak. You could at least say what you mean, Jim thought as he looked at her back.
“Hey!” He turned and saw Walt Merton on the path leading into the woods. “Come on,” Walt said, “we’re getting the food out.”
“Yeah,” Jim replied. “We’ll be along in a minute.”
Walt looked from Jim to Moira. “Sure,” he said. His slender moustached face showed concern. He looked doubtfully at Jim, then turned and went back down the path.
“Let’s go,” Moira said suddenly. “I’m starving.” She smiled and took him by the hand. She was hiding behind cheerfulness now, nothing’s wrong, Jim, everything’s settled.
“Damn it,” he said harshly, “can’t we at least talk it over?”
She ignored his question. “Let’s go,” she said, still smiling, still holding his hand.
The rain had started as a summer shower but was now coming down steadily, forming puddles on the lawn. Jim sat on his front porch. The evening air was cooler and fresher than it had been for several days.
Farther down the narrow road before him, in front of a Spanish-style stucco house, a group of naked children danced in the rain. On the lawn, his brothers Al and Mike were throwing a football. Mike had dragged Al outside almost as soon as the rain began to fall.
Al’s thick brown hair was plastered against the back of his neck and shoulders and Mike’s moustache drooped on both sides of his mouth. “Whup,” Mike yelled as he drew his arm back and made a forward pass. As the ball left his arm, he slipped on the grass and landed on his buttocks, bare muddy feet poking high into the air. Al hooted and caught the ball. He began to run with it, laughing as Mike got up, with mud and wet grass on his shorts.
Jim watched his brothers. They had not insisted that he join them, understanding almost instinctively that he needed some solitude. He had gone to the university early that morning to ride with Moira to the train that would take her home.
The night before, he had tried once again to talk her out of leaving. “I can’t believe your mother needs your help with all those others around,” he had said. Moira’s mother lived with five other women. Moira herself had been raised communally by the group with three other children. She saw her father rarely. He had retreated to Nepal years before, emerging only occasionally to face a world that frightened him.
Moira shrugged. “She can still use some extra help.”
“Come on,” he shouted. “Stop being so evasive. At least be honest about why you’re really going.”
She was silent as she continued to pack her things. He had finally left her dormitory room, angrily telling her she could rent a car or take the shuttle from the university to the train station.
He had relented, of course, punching out his destination, riding onto the automated highway, leaning back in his seat as the highway took control. Then he had reached for Moira. She had watched him, her black eyes seemingly veiled.
She unfastened her blue sari and draped it over the back of the seat. Then she unzipped his shorts and crawled onto him, holding his penis firmly with one hand. He was suddenly inside her, clutching her, gazing up at her face. Her eyes were closed. The car buzzed softly, protesting Moira’s abandonment of her safety harness.
“Moira,” he whispered to her. “Moira.” He came quickly. She withdrew from him and moved back to her side of the seat.
He shivered in the air-conditioned car. As he zipped up his shorts he looked over at the dark-haired girl. She was fastening her sari while staring out the window at the blurred scenery. What was it, Moira, a formality because you’re leaving? A way of saying you still care? A way of saying goodbye, Jim, it’s the last time? She gave him no answer, not even a clue. Once again she had remained unresponsive, giving him no sign that she had taken pleasure in the act.
He grabbed her, pulling her sari from her, and pushed her against the seat. Her face was hidden from him. Her buttocks pointed up at his face. He crawled on top of her, pushing inside roughly. He pounded against her, waiting to hear her moans, waiting to see her abandon herself to him at last.
He continued to sit behind the wheel, still watching her. She had finished fastening her sari. She turned toward him, a tentative smile on her face, I’ve never reached you, Moira. At last he pulled her to him. She sat there, head on his shoulder, her body stiff, her muscles tight. He was alone once again.
Al stumbled onto the porch, picked up his towel from the chair next to Jim, and massaged his head and shoulders vigorously. “Am I out of shape,” Al said. “I’m going over to the gym tomorrow, I have to do some lab work anyway, so I might as well work out.”
“Yeah,” Jim said.
“Want to come along, we can play some handball.”
“No.” Jim looked up at his brother. “I don’t think so.” He looked away. Al was probably thinking: is it that girl, Jim? You’re been sitting around for months, no interest in much else, you haven’t even written for a while.
“Well, if you change your mind,” Al said. He turned and went inside the house, towel draped over his shoulders.
“Catch,” Mike shouted. He threw the football to Jim as he followed Al through the front door.
Jim tucked the football under his chair and continued to watch the rain. The thought of Moira su
ddenly saddened him all over again. He had been numb for most of the day. I would have been with her now, we would have been running through the rain together. He felt purposeless, empty, and alone.
A car was approaching along the road, a small green Lear model. It stopped in front of the house and he saw his sister and the short stocky figure of Hidehiko Takamura get out. The two raced through the downpour to the porch. Kira was laughing as she shook the water from her hair.
Jim wanted to disappear, but he sat there and nodded to Dr. Takamura.
“What a downpour!” Kira said. “Can I get you something, a beer maybe?”
“‘Better make it tea,” Dr. Takamura replied. “And I think I’ll sit out here, I’ve been inside all day.”
Kira looked at Jim. “I’ll have some too,” he said. She hurried into the house.
Jim looked over at Dr. Takamura as the older man seated himself. The man was still here at the university, still working at the same research center that had produced them. Jim shuddered. Of course the man did not have the authority he had once held; it was a wonder that the university had taken him back at all. Takamura had won the fame he probably thought his project would bring to him, but it was a fame of notoriety. Some thought he had made a serious error in judgment; others thought he was a criminal. The old man’s problems, however, had not diminished his air of decisiveness. Jim often felt intimidated by him.
“How’s everything, Jim?” The man still retained a youthful appearance and was active, in spite of his being almost seventy years old. His straight, collar-length black hair was only lightly sprinkled with gray. “I haven’t seen you for a while.”
“I haven’t been around the house much.”
“I have seen you from a distance, wandering around the campus with a very attractive young woman.”
“Oh, Moira.” Jim hesitated, thinking he should say more. “Moira Buono. I met her last winter. I was at home here, tuned in to a lit discussion, and we got into a debate. Then after the discussion was over we stayed on, just talking, so finally I asked her where she lived and went over to her dormitory. She’s gone home until August,” he finished lamely.
Kira returned and sat down next to Dr. Takamura. “Ed’ll bring the tea out.” She looked over at Jim, eyes inquisitive, everything all right? He tried to smile back at her.
“We were just discussing the young woman I’ve seen Jim with.” Kira appeared startled. She brushed some of the hair off her face and leaned forward. “You know,” Dr. Takamura went on, “she resembles a girl Paul was seeing when he was about your age when we were both at Chicago, Julia something, her name was, she left for Israel a couple of years later. He was very serious about her for a while.”
Jim began to feel uneasy. Kira sensed his mood. “It sure is raining,” she said. “Must be about two inches by now.”
Jim leaned toward Dr. Takamura. “What was she like?” he asked. His hands felt sweaty. Kira was still watching him.
“I didn’t really know her that well,” the older man replied. “She seemed, well, distant somehow. She was always friendly, some times very talkative, but she always seemed to be holding something back somehow, never really telling you anything about herself. Paul was always with her. He practically lived at her apartment and they were thinking of getting one of their own.”
The weather seemed to be colder. Kira coughed softly. “Certainly took me back,” Takamura said. “I haven’t thought about that whole business in years.”
“What happened,” Jim mumbled. “What happened,” he said more clearly.
Dr. Takamura was gazing out at the lawn. “She broke it off, I don’t think she ever told him why. Paul was pretty damned depressed for a while, apathetic about everything, but he pulled together. Jon Aschenbach and I managed to get him through his finals.”
Jim shivered. “That was a long time ago,” Dr. Takamura said.
Ed came out on the porch, carrying a tray with three mugs of tea. Jim took one of the mugs as his brother exchanged greetings with the biologist. Ed looked austere with his clean-shaven face and short hair, a monk who loved mathematics and music more than people.
Jim heard their voices but not their words. He saw Paul and Julia on the Chicago streets, Paul and Moira…he had thought Moira could not bring herself to accept him because he was a clone. Perhaps it was not that at all, but something else. That would change the way I feel, he thought.
No.
This was worse.
I’m living Paul’s life. He felt paralyzed. He saw himself as a puppet, walking through an ever-repeating cycle. I’ll go through it again, his mind murmured, I’ll go on feeling the way I do, acting the way I do, and I won’t have any choice. It’s all happened before and I have no way of changing it.
Moira was gone. He knew it. Moira was gone forever. Julia had not come back to Paul. Paul had eventually forgotten Julia and Jim supposed he would forget Moira too. The thought, instead of cheering him, simply sat there in his mind, cold and damp, with no power to move him at all.
The early July weather was hot. The grass was beginning to look scorched; the flowers were wilting. The sun glared down at the earth, only occasionally disappearing behind a cloud and then emerging once again to mock the stifled world below.
Jim sat on his heels, removing weeds that threatened the bushes alongside the house. His hair was tied back on his head. He had debated with himself about shaving his beard and decided against it, knowing he would regret it when winter returned. There was another reason for not shaving it, he knew. It was his way of differentiating himself from his brothers.
He put down his trowel, sat back and looked over at Kira. She was seated under one of the trees, reading a book. She held the small flat microfiche projector in her lap with one hand, turned a small knob on the projector with the other. Jim still preferred the feel of a book in his hands. He enjoyed turning the pages and liked the smell of print and old paper. He had insisted on keeping the books in Paul’s library, even though they took up more space than the tiny bits of tape he could have purchased to replace them.
He was like Paul in his attachment to old things. Paul had remained in this slightly run-down house. He had raised them in the peaceful, almost timeless atmosphere of the university, feeling that this would be best for them. He had wanted them to have a quiet place where they could discover themselves and gain intellectual tools. The university had been, in a sense, a retreat for them. Now Jim wondered if they might have become too easily adjusted to it and afraid to look beyond.
“Why don’t you go inside?” he asked Kira. “It’s a lot cooler there.”
“It’s too cool,” she replied. “I don’t think the regulator’s working, I shiver all the time and I had to put blankets on my bed last night. Mike said he’d check it later.”
Jim wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. He continued to watch Kira as she resumed reading. She was letting her hair grow longer and had pinned it up. She wore a sleeveless blue-green tunic that barely covered the tops of her thighs. She suggested a woodland sprite who at any moment might disappear among the trees.
In spite of the heat and some painful blisters on his hands, he felt content, more at peace than he had been for a long time. He and Kira had been busy since the day Moira had gone home, making repairs on the house, painting the kitchen, putting some new shingles on the roof. They had done most of the work themselves. Al was working at the university’s child care center, Ed. had voluntarily taken over daily chores such as cooking and cleaning, and Mike was busy with his studies, trying to get his degree as quickly as possible. Jim had buried himself in physical work, tiring himself so he could sleep soundly, hoping to keep the thought of Moira at a distance. Kira too had time on her hands. Takamura had gone to Kenya to advise its scientists, who wished to clone needed animals for wildlife preserves.
He and Kira had worked together, laughing and joking most of the time, exhausting themselves. One day Jim had realized that his sorrow had receded a
little, returning in force only during the night, just’ before his fatigue pushed him into deep sleep.
Yesterday had been different. They had been sitting with Ed on the front porch, talking about one of Jim’s poems, listening to Ed play the violin, discussing some of the work Kira had done with Dr. Takamura. They talked for a long time, their minds drawing together, communicating ideas, disagreements, and feelings with perfect understanding. Then Al and Mike had joined them. They sat there until very late, drinking beer, finally giving in reluctantly to sleepiness; and Jim realized, as he lay in bed, that he had not thought of Moira all day.
“Hey,” he said to Kira, “how about going up to the take for a swim? It’s too hot to do anything else.”
She looked up from her projector. “I’d love to, but you know there’ll be a mob there.” She put the projector down at her side. “I went up with Jonis Ettinger last month, you could hardly find a place to put a towel down. So we went over to the nude beach and it was worse there. And there were picnickers all over the woods, and empty containers just thrown all around.” Kira sighed and pulled up her legs, wrapping her arms around them. “They think the containers’ll just disappear, they don’t stop to think it takes whole months for them to dissolve completely, and they forget to put their glass bottles in the bins. Jonis said she heard that guys go up and take pot shots at the eagles and the other birds. They don’t care, After all, we can always clone more. It makes me so damned mad I sometimes wish they’d kept it closed after reclamation.”
We can always clone more. He suddenly felt sorry for the cloned birds. “We could drive to the park, it’s always pretty empty,” he said. “It’ll be cooler there than here, and we could take some supper along for later.”
“Great,” she said. “At least we’ll get away from the house for a while.” She stood up, brushed some grass from her tunic, picked up her projector and walked toward the house, tanned arms swinging loosely at her sides.
Jim watched her until she disappeared around the corner of the house.
Then he picked up his trowel and followed her inside.
Cloned Lives Page 14