Page 62 of The Echo Wife
“Actually,” I said slowly, a plan coalescing in my mind like flesh in amnio, “I don’t think we should bury her. I think there might be a way to let Nathan live, but get you out of here.”
Her eyes didn’t brighten. She looked at me as though looking at me were a responsibility, just another item on an endless list of tasks, and she might as well check this one off now.
The cold satisfaction I’d felt at my victory curdled. It was rotten, all of it. All my callous resolve, all my stern determination, all the ends that I used to justify the means.
This was not a victory. There was no triumph in reminding a broken thing that it was broken.
I wanted more than anything in that moment to hide in my bedroom with the door locked. I wanted to hunch over a pile of brochures that promised an escape from the person who knew that I had my father in me. My mother, at least, had offered me that exit.
But there was no escape from this. I couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, couldn’t stay away over the holidays just in case. I couldn’t turn away from Martine.
I had done precisely the damage I set out to do. I’d wanted the advantage badly enough to let the monstrous seed of cruelty in me push up shoots, and now that I had that advantage, I needed to use it.
I could fix her later. When there was more time.
“We need to get her inside,” I said, tossing my shovel to the ground. Martine nodded, dull-eyed. She waited for me to move before she stepped toward the open grave. I forced myself to pay attention to the task at hand.Forward.“Get her ankles,” I instructed, looking only at the band of purple around Laila’s throat. “We don’t have much time.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
I was not unused to bathing lifeless specimens. It was a standard part of the autopsy process. In fairness, it was a task I most often left to my assistants—the work of rinsing congealed amniotic gel from the cooling skin of a corpse was never going to be the best use of my time—but I was familiar with the strange work of it, the gentle practicality required to move a limp body without breaking it in the process.
Having that experience made the process of washing Laila familiar. Once we finished maneuvering her into the tub, it was almost comforting, doing this work I already understood. We cut off her half-rotted clothes and tossed them into the sink to keep the dirt from scattering. I used the handheld showerhead extension to rinse her down, sluicing water over her skin until the water running down the drain between her feet was close to clear.
Martine helped me to lather Laila’s limbs with the same sweet-smelling vanilla soap I’d used to wash Nathan’s blood from my hands. I used a lot of it, sweeping my hands in tight circles over her skin, trying to lift the death away from her.
When I rinsed the soap away, she almost looked new. She hadn’t been conditioned any more than Martine had. Her skin was smooth and pale, unfreckled, unscarred. She didn’t even have calluses on her fingers.
I wondered how long she had lived before Nathan decided that she would not suffice.
I didn’t usually wash the hair of specimens who were readyfor autopsy; that, I think, was the strangest part. I was accustomed to rinsing their hair, usually before shaving it off, to make it easier to examine their skin and bones and brains. But I never washed it, never combed it out. I couldn’t remember ever having done that work for anyone, alive or not. It felt wrong, too intimate. Too close.
But Laila’s hair was matted with dirt, and the water simply wasn’t enough, so I had no choice but to figure it out. I clumsily lifted her head a few times, trying to figure out how to work shampoo into her hair. Her neck was loose and her skull was heavy and it was all too cumbersome. I dropped her, and her head hit the bottom of the tub with a resonantthunk.
“May I?” Martine asked softly. I moved aside to make room for her. She leaned into the tub and cradled the back of Laila’s head in both hands, letting her fingers tangle in the clone’s damp hair. She leaned down, and it looked for all the world like she was going to kiss the dead woman. Then she slid one of her hands down under Laila’s shoulders, using the other to support the head, and lifted her smoothly into a sitting position.
I remember thinking, irritably, that this wasn’t a solution. That I wouldn’t be able to reach around Martine to wash Laila’s hair. That she was solving the wrong problem.
But then, Martine climbed into the bathtub and sat down behind the woman who had come before her. The fabric of her skirt began to darken as it wicked up water from the bottom of the tub, from Laila’s skin. She splayed her legs on either side of Laila’s hips, used her palms to prop up the clone’s limp shoulders. “There,” she said. She didn’t look at me, just kept her eyes on the limp forward-sway of Laila’s head. “That should be easier.”
I swallowed hard before continuing. Martine was as tender with Laila’s body as she had been with Violet. I worked a palmful of shampoo into Laila’s hair—it was longer than Martine’s, and I remember making a mental note that we would need to trim it. Her chin rested on her chest, and the lather ran down into her face. I flinched when it flooded across the lids of her closed eyes,then shook my head at myself for reacting as though she might tear up at the sting of it.
Rinsing out her mouth was the hardest part.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask Martine to do it for me—couldn’t explain to her why it was so hard. So I didn’t ask. I just swallowed bile and panic, and I reached into Laila’s mouth with my fingers and scooped out soil from between her teeth. Her tongue was dry under my touch, as dry as the skin of her face. Dirt rained down into her lap, just as it had rained down from Martine’s palms in the garden. As it met the water that had beaded up on Laila’s legs, it turned to mud, and I scolded myself for not having done this part first.
But I could not have done it first.
When her mouth was empty at last, I used the showerhead to rinse her teeth and tongue. It wasn’t enough. There was dirt stuck to her gums, between her teeth. I kept rinsing and rinsing, but I knew that this was a waste of time, and after a few minutes of trying, I sat back on my heels.
Martine looked at me, waiting. Her eyes were still flat, but they sparked a little when I asked if she had a spare toothbrush.
When we were finished washing Laila, we toweled the body dry as gently as we could. Her skin wasn’t in nearly as good condition as Martine’s was, obviously, and her neck was awful. But her face had been preserved well by the plastic bag, and the rest of her was in excellent condition. That, of course, was when I decided that it was necessary to commit more time to studying the effects of telomere financing on decay. All the time we spent washing Laila’s body, as I combed conditioner through her wet hair and flooded her mouth with water so the toothpaste would foam on her teeth and patted her eyelids with the corner of a towel—I spent all that time mentally structuring the research grant I would write, outlining a proposal. I spent that time calculating how many assistants that project would need.
I did not spend that time thinking about the work that I was doing. I did not spend that time wondering how different fromLaila I would look if I had been in the ground for three years, my face protected only by a plastic bag. I thought about the research instead.
When we finished, we had two hours left to prepare.
