Page 10 of The Echo Wife
After that, Nathan and I never really argued over whether or not to have children. We stopped arguing all together; arguing would have required me to engage in conversation beyond the word “no.”
He started agitating anew for a baby shortly before he got tenure, and I told him that I didn’t intend to put my career aside just because he was bored by his, and that was the end of that. It never came up again.
We had agreed.
Or at least, that’s what I thought, until that day in the tea shop.
I waited until Martine was out of sight before allowing myself to collapse into a parenthesis. But I only gave myself a few seconds to slump in my chair before straightening; it wouldn’t do to have Martine see me in a posture of defeat.
It wasn’t possible.
Martine was pregnant. Notverypregnant, but definitely, absolutely pregnant. Impossible, completely impossible, therewas simply no way—but it was right there in the soft swell of her belly.
Martine couldn’t be pregnant.
Martine was pregnant.
Later, I would kick myself for losing my composure. I should have kept it together. But when Martine came back and sat down, it was still the first thing I said.
“This is impossible.”
She offered me an opportunity to repair the moment, acting as though I hadn’t said anything, trying to pick up the conversation where we had left off.
“As I said—”
But I cut her off. “It isn’tpossible,” I repeated. I knew that I was speaking too loudly, but I couldn’t stop myself. I leaned across the table, gripped by feral disbelief. “You can’t get pregnant, you can’t, it’s not—” I cut myself off midsentence, lost in my own indignation.
Martine’s cheeks lifted into a Mona Lisa smile as she rested a palm on her solar plexus. “I am. So, I suppose that I can.”
I shook my head, staring openly at Martine’s midsection. “It’s impossible,” I whispered. “It’s impossible.” I ran numbers in my head, reviewed data, tried to find the place where I’d failed, but I couldn’t find the hole that had let this through. How? How?How?
Martine’s face didn’t harden, not exactly. It set, though, just like an egg yolk firming from easy to medium. She was still open, still welcoming, but I was spending her goodwill at a rapid pace, and it showed.
“I wanted to ask you some questions,” she started again, but I held up a hand. I couldn’t do questions. I couldn’t do anything until I figured out how this had happened—where my work had unraveled. How she had undermined it so thoroughly.
“You don’t understand,” I said, trying to buy time.
“I understand perfectly,” Martine said, her voice one degree above cool.
“No,” I snapped, as impatient with her as I ever got with theincompetent assistants I’d run through before Seyed. “You don’t understand. Nathan could go to prison.Icould go to prison. This is—this ishighlyunethical, this isillegal,this is—”
“A miracle,” Martine said. Her smile was beatific. She was glowing. I wanted to incinerate her.
“No,” I hissed, looking around the room. “You can’t be pregnant. Clones can’tgetpregnant.”
Martine smoothed her blouse over her belly again. “It would seem,” she said, her smile fading, “that we can.”
CHAPTER
SEVEN
The remainder of my tea date with Martine had not gone well. I’ve never liked the idea of “needing” a drink—it made me feel too much like my father—but if there was any time that felt like the right time to bend to “needing” a drink, it was now.
I jabbed a pair of scissors into the packing tape sealing a cardboard box, three layers of it. The scissors sank through the packing tape and into the tissue paper inside with a satisfying finality. There was something absolute in the sensation of driving the blade into the box, something primal and honest. I sliced through the tape, then yanked at the cardboard, tearing some of it with the strength of my grip. All around me, other boxes labeledKITCHENwere half-dissected, paper and bubble wrap streaming out of their open tops.
When it became clear that Nathan was going to stay with Martine, I had hired a service to pack up my things. The service was cheap, but it had labeled the boxes by room, which was useful. The movers hadn’t made any small talk, hadn’t asked any questions; they’d just come in and wrapped everything I owned in gray paper, sealed up the boxes with what seemed like too much tape, and taken a check from me without any fanfare at all.
I plunged my arm down into the nest of packing paper and felt the thrill of victory as my fingers met with cool, thick glass.Finally.I withdrew my arm, my fist clasped tight around the neck of a dark-green wine bottle. I twisted my elbow to read the label. It wasn’t a special bottle of wine, wasn’t one I’d been saving for any kind of occasion. It was just the first one I found in themountain of still-packed kitchen things, which meant that it was perfect. Another dive into the same box surfaced a corkscrew with a folding knife attached to cut through the foil on the neck of the bottle, and I uncorked the wine with savage urgency.
