IGMS Issue 8 (7 page)

The drive back to the house was quiet. John guided the car on manual, even though the route was preset. He needed the distraction. He stole glances at Paul in the rear view mirror. His son scowled the entire way, staring straight ahead with his arms crossed. John hated that look, the way it twisted Paul's angelic features into something unrecognizable. In such moments, Paul looked nothing like Steven.

"Did the other boy really call you Frankie, Paul?"

"They all do. All the time."

For what must have been the hundredth time, John wished he had never told Paul that he had been born of cloned cells. Paul had blurted out the fact on his first day of daycare. "Are you sure? Mrs. Simmons said she didn't hear anything."

"She's a liar."

"Paul, we've talked about this, haven't we? You can't just keep picking fights with the other kids."

"You never believe me."

A prolonged silence fell as John turned into their neighborhood. The streets wound past houses bedecked with holographic flying Santas and flashing icicle lights. Despite his best efforts, John couldn't stop thinking about Bonnie's words:
special needs
. His jaw, clamped tight since he had left the daycare center, ached. The woman had stigmatized his son -- as if the boy didn't have enough problems.

"Sometimes they don't have to say it," Paul said. "But I know they're thinking it. All the time."

John took a long look at Paul in the mirror, wondering at his small, tense form, his twisted scowl -- wondering how a four-year-old boy had become such an angry person. "How about if we read a little when we get home? Would you like --"

"I hate reading."

John's temper flared; he put it down quickly. "We've talked about that, too, remember? You haven't really given it a fair chance. You're not trying --"

"I don't want to try! I hate reading! I hate it, I hate it!"

John flinched.

Tears spilled from Paul's eyes. He wiped them away disgustedly.

"Paul --"

"I hate you, too."

John slammed on the brake. His harness locked. He turned in his seat. "That's enough, young man. You apologize right now, or you'll spend the rest of the day in your room. No toys. Understand? Apologize."

"I hate you! I hate you!"
Paul flailed, held in place by his own harness, too consumed with rage to even think about unbuckling it.

"Paul, stop it! Stop --"

"Hate hate hate hate . . ."

Shaking, John drove the rest of the way home as quickly as he could, working to ignore the shrieking thing in the back seat. When he finally got back to the house, he had to carry Paul inside, kicking and thrashing all the way. John could only imagine how it looked to the neighbors.

He deposited Paul on his bed and then carried his toy box out of the room, all the while being treated to a litany of hatred. No sooner had John closed the door behind him than he heard a familiar thumping and crashing. Paul was attacking his bookcase again. Soon every volume would be scattered about his room.

John shouted through the door. "You won't be allowed out until you pick them all up, do you understand me?"

The thumping and screaming continued unabated. John carried the toy box downstairs and set it in his office. He closed the door to muffle the din from Paul's room.

August 23, 2025

Today the pediatrician diagnosed Paul as having colic. Terrific.

I think
colic
is a doctor's way of saying that he has no clue what the problem is. Paul cries for hours at a time, for no reason Marie and I can fathom. It isn't hunger, it isn't diaper rash, he isn't sick, and he's too young to be teething. Yet he cries. Holding him helps sometimes, but it's a hit-and-miss proposition. And as much as you may want to, you just can't hold a child continually. Simple things, like answering the phone or heating up dinner, have become crisis situations. At first it was puzzling, then unnerving, then alarming, and finally exhausting. Marie handles it better than I.

Steven never had colic. He never cried like this, for hours on end, for no good reason. He was a very good-natured baby.

I suppose I should be grateful that colic is the worst of Paul's problems, considering how flawed his parents are. I'd been born with only one kidney; Marie's endometriosis had only worsened after Steven's birth, making any further natural conception impossible.

But of course Paul had been born healthy, just as Steven had been. Dr. Aiken hadn't been kidding about the identical twin analogy. He looks exactly like Steven had at that age. Exactly. So many times, looking at him, I've been rocked by powerful déjà vu. Marie tells me she's felt it, too.

So why is he so different?

It's not just the colic. Steven would always relax when I held him. He would sit peacefully on my lap for extended periods as I read to him from books of nursery rhymes. Paul wriggles and squirms, tense as coiled wire. Every time I try reading to him, he fusses and fidgets until I stop. Yet he'll fall asleep instantly if Marie rocks him. Steven was his father's child; Paul belongs to his mother. I don't understand it. Could the DNA we used -- extracted from saved clippings from Steven's first haircut -- somehow have been contaminated or tainted?

Oh, hell. I'm making too much of this. I think I'm more nervous and protective with Paul than I ever was with Steven. Understandable, I suppose, considering what happened. Still, I sometimes have to wonder if Paul likes me very much.

He spent hours at his desk, staring at the monitor, unable to concentrate. He got no work done the rest of the day.

Marie arrived home at six o'clock. She remained silent as John told her what happened, and stayed that way throughout dinner. She took a plateful of leftovers up to Paul's room afterward. John was too wrung out to argue.

He waited for her in the living room, seated in the easy chair, the lighting at its dimmest setting. The television hung dark and silent on the far wall. Above the set, a four-portrait frame system, arranged in a simple square, displayed an ever-rotating series of smiling individual and family stills at random intervals. The room felt oddly empty to John; he had meant to have the Christmas decorations up by now, but hadn't gotten around to it.

Marie entered and sat in the loveseat across from him. She was still dressed for work, in a stiff black business suit she favored when she had to give presentations to the board at International ComSys. Her makeup -- foundation to darken her pale flesh tone and simple black eyeliner -- appeared masklike in the soft light. She removed her earrings and set them on an end table next to the loveseat. She looked directly at him when she spoke. "I don't like this, John. I don't like what that woman at the daycare said about him."

"Neither do I."

"I think we need to look at our alternatives."

"Me, too." He steeled himself for what he had to say next: "I'd like to call Dr. Aiken."

She frowned. "What? Why?"

"We have to face it. Something is terribly wrong with Paul. He's emotionally disturbed. And we need to understand why."

"I think that's a little overstated."

"You didn't see the fit he had today."

"It was a temper tantrum. You act like you've never seen one before."

"I never saw this kind of behavior from Ste --"

Marie's features hardened into a glare. He swallowed his words.

"John," she said in a tone much lower than her normal speaking voice, "I thought I told you never to say anything like that again."

John rubbed his forehead. "Yes, you did. I'm sorry. I'm tired."

"Don't you ever let Paul hear you talk like that. He doesn't need to hear that his father thinks he's defective."

"Now who's overstating this issue? Damn it, he's my son. I love him and I'm concerned for him. I want to help him. We can't do that if we don't know what's wrong."

She sat back in the loveseat and crossed her arms. "You know, none of this would be an issue if Paul could stay home instead of going to daycare."

John tensed. "I've finally started a new novel, after years of being blocked. You know how important that is to me."

"Steven didn't require daycare. You wrote three novels with him in the house."

"Since you brought it up -- Steven didn't require constant supervision to keep him from getting into fights. Steven never displayed violent or neurotic tendencies."

"Fine." She stood. "We'll find Paul another daycare, one that's not so crowded. But we're not calling the clinic. That's final."

She left him alone in the living room and went upstairs. After a few minutes, the sounds of running water and the hum of her toothbrush filtered down to him.

He pulled his handheld from his pocket and opened it. He input his password, brought up his journal, and finally gave voice to the dark notion that had nagged at him all afternoon:

December 3, 2029

Dear God, what if we really have created a monster?

He logged the day's events while he waited for the sounds from upstairs to subside, for Marie to go to bed.

Paul's six-year stills arrived two weeks after he started the first grade. Following dinner, while Marie went downstairs to put a basketful of laundry in the washing machine, John took the disk into the living room to load it.

Paul was already there, curled up on the couch, working the controls of his handheld. Tinny tire squeals and explosions emanated from Paul's headphones.

Disk in hand, John stood watching him and thinking of the letter that had arrived the previous day. He still could not believe its contents. There had to be some mistake. For the life of him, he could not decide what he should do about it.

He pushed the thought away and turned to the portrait wall. He pressed a button recessed on the underside of the nearest frame, opening a slot. The parade of images went dark. He pulled the disk from its sleeve, inserted it, and stepped back to watch for error messages.

"What's
Special Ed
mean?"

John started at the sound of Paul's voice, so like Steven's. It was as if a ghost had spoken. He turned to his son.

Paul had doffed his headphones and set aside his handheld. A quizzical frown creased his forehead.

John said, "Where did you hear that? One of the other kids?"

"Mrs. Jordan said it to one of the other teachers. She said we were her Special Ed class."

Nothing wrong with his hearing, John noted. Mrs. Jordan would find that out soon enough. "It just means you're in a special class that . . . that will help you with school."

"Like I'm smarter than the other kids?"

"Not smarter. Just different."

"Like a retard?"

John winced. "Don't say that. It's not nice."

Paul pointed to the portrait wall. "Why do you keep his pictures?"

John, long used to Paul's sudden subject changes, glanced at the portraits. The new disk had finished loading and the system had resumed normal display mode. The first of Paul's new stills appeared at the top left, showing him in a pullover dress shirt, his blonde hair neatly combed and flattened by gel, his teeth bared with only a slight upturn of the mouth -- more like a grimace than a smile.