Page 38 of The Echo Wife
“Yes.”
“You’re sure you want the baby?”
She sighed. “Yes, Evelyn.” She sounded irritated, and something in me flared hopeful and defensive at the same time. “I want the baby.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. Ultimately, I said the thing that I couldn’t imaginenotsaying. “Why?”
Martine erupted with fury the like of which I’d never seenfrom her before. She whipped off her sunglasses—the oversized mirror shades Seyed had loaned her after our first visit to the lab—and threw them against the passenger-side dashboard. “Because I want it, okay? I want something that’s mine. I’m sorry if that’s stupid or simple or obvious or whatever you think I am, but I just want to be allowed towantsomething!”
She crossed her arms for a few seconds before folding awkwardly forward to pick up the sunglasses from the place where they’d landed, half-folded over the gearshift.
“Okay,” I said, slowly, softly. It took no effort at all to recall the way I’d spoken to Nathan during our fights, when his volume rose, when he began to throw things. I made myself into the most reasonable person in the world, someone who would never engage in anything resembling provocation. “I understand. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Oh, of course you didn’t mean toimply,” she snapped. Her voice held only the barest hint of venom. Her heart wasn’t in this fight, I suddenly realized—it was something that she was trying on. That was why she had thrown her sunglasses. She was imitating the anger she’d seen before, seeing if it fit the way she was feeling. “You didn’t mean to imply what you really think. You would never want me to knowthat.”
I couldn’t decide if the right thing to do would be to throw her over, forcing her to admit that she didn’t want the conflict, or if I should give her the chance to stretch her legs. “What is it that I really think?” I asked, keeping my voice reasonable.
“You think I’m…” She paused, her face turned to the window. Her voice dropped low again, soft, almost ashamed. “You think I shouldn’t. Want this baby, I mean.” I didn’t answer her, didn’t know how to. She wasn’t wrong. It felt more complicated than that, but she’d summarized things accurately enough. I didn’t think she should want the baby.
And was it more complicated than that, really? I told myself that it was a question of choice, of agency. A clone getting pregnant wasn’t just wrong because it felt strange. It was wrongbecause, no matter how much Martine developed her own personality and desires, she didn’t have a right to them. She was a made thing. She was a tool, and tools don’t have the right to decide how they’re used.
Nathan shaped Martine’s brain to make her think that she wanted a child, and then he used her accordingly. Legally, she couldn’t advocate against being used to incubate a child, regardless of what she thought she wanted—and she couldn’t advocateforit, either. Because of that simple fact, there was no ethical excuse for what Nathan had done. There was no way to square that circle and make it okay, even if Martine said she was happy with the life he’d given her.
I didn’t think she should want the baby. I didn’t think she should beableto want the baby.
“This should never have been an option for you,” I said at last. “Nathan made you into someone who wouldn’t say no to him, and he took advantage of you.”
“Is that what you think?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising. “You think he took advantage of me? Iwantthis, Evelyn. I’ve always wanted this. I’ve never been as happy as I was the day Nathan let me hear my baby’s heartbeat. I know you can’t understand that.”
I shook my head at her, braked a little harder than necessary. “You only felt happy that day because you were programmed to feel happy. You only want this because Nathan designed you to want it. I knowyoucan’t understandthat,because it’s part of the base we use to build a clone’s brain. You’re designed to not resent the way you’re made. It’s wrong that Nathan used you the way he did, but—”
Martine unbuckled her seat belt and told me to stop the car.
“What?” I glanced between her and the fast-moving traffic. “No, Martine, we’ll be home in a few minutes. Put your seat belt back on.”
“No,” she said, her voice shaky. “Let me out. Pull the car over and let meout.” In the same moment that she reached for thedoor handle, I activated the child-safety locks. She yanked at the handle over and over, making frantic animal sounds as she did.
“Put your fucking seat belt back on,” I said. My voice came out quiet and dangerous. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her go still. She buckled her seat belt again slowly, quietly, and stared at the dashboard for the rest of the ride home.
When we got to my house, I unlocked the door. She stayed where she was, her hands in her lap, until I told her that it was time to get out of the car.
“You don’t understand,” she whispered, still in the passenger seat. “This baby made it worth everything Nathan put me through. It’s—I could survive him, because I knew I had this.” She touched the rise of her belly with featherlight fingers. “I can get through all of it,” she whispered.
We sat in the car in silence, Martine staring down at her lap, me struggling to figure out a way to talk to her. Trying to decide if I was supposed to argue or apologize. When it felt like the oxygen in the car was depleting faster than I could bear, I opened my door. By the time I was on my own doorstep, Martine was behind me.
She spent the rest of the afternoon in the bedroom, folding laundry and putting it away. I checked on her twice—once to see where she had been, and once to tell her that the clinic had called.
“They said nothing seems wrong,” I said. “They said you should probably take it easy, and to come back in if there’s more bleeding. For now, though, everything seems fine.”
“I’m so glad,” Martine said, smiling at me as she slowly folded a shirt. Her hands moved smooth, rhythmically. She ran her palms across each fold, leaving a tidy crease.
When she had finished, she put the shirt onto a pile that seemed much too tall to have been that week’s laundry. Then, she reached into my dresser and pulled out a shirt I hadn’t worn in weeks. She shook it out, laid it flat, and began folding it again.
“I’m so glad,” she repeated, and she kept smiling, as she looked right through me.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
