A Nearly Perfect Copy

A Nearly Perfect Copy - By Allison Amend


Part One


Spring 2007


Elm




Sometimes when she closed her eyes, Elm could see the wall of water moving toward her. The hissing of the wave’s retraction burned her eardrums, and she shivered as though pinned down again in the wet debris. These were the sensations she returned to, as if by default, the images repeating over and over again.

At three in the afternoon on a May Tuesday, Elm sat in a meeting with the other department heads of Tinsley’s. It was getting dark; the sun had slipped behind the building across the street and the sounds of traffic below were faint through the double-paned windows.

“Elm? Elm?” Ian tapped her shoulder.

“What? Sorry.” Elm sat up straighter and rifled the papers on the conference table before her.

“Quarterlies,” Ian reminded her softly.

“Right, well, as you know, the first fiscal quarter,” Elm began, buying time while she looked for her notes, which she’d put in the folder in front of her, she was sure of it. This is what comes from sticking an art history major in a corporate job, she thought; it’s like getting a horse to dance: it might happen, but it won’t be pretty.

And then her notes revealed themselves, on top, ready for her presentation. She cleared her throat. “The first fiscal quarter,” she repeated, “saw a drop in revenue from last year’s recorded earnings from the same period.” Colette, an associate specialist from the Paris branch of the auction house, was tapping her fountain pen against her paper, her pug nose wiggling in time.

“How is this possible in the biggest art boom of the century?” Greer asked.

Elm sat for a moment until she realized the question wasn’t rhetorical. “Well, it’s possible we’re seeing the downside of that boom. The energy crisis—”

“Yes, but we’re selling art, not pork bellies,” Greer said. “At least, that’s the theory.”

Greer Tinsley never let pass a chance to upbraid Elm in public, capitalizing on his position as CEO of the auction house, and Elm’s subordinate post as head of seventeenth- through nineteenth-century drawings and prints. They were both the heirs to the auction house that bore their great-grandfather’s name, but the shareholders were in charge now. Though Elm was, in Greer’s mind, one of the inferior cousins, she was a Tinsley, no doubt about it, the chestnut hair that would accept no dye, the birdlike nose that no rhinoplaster had ever successfully eradicated.

Elm let her hands fall to her sides. She had found that when being confronted by Greer, the best course of action was to take none.

“I mean, that is the theory, isn’t it?” Greer’s accent was affected, what some might call “Continental” and what Elm’s husband called “international queen.” He was the only man she knew who still wore an ascot, though there were plenty of employees of Tinsley’s who wore pocket squares to match their ties.

“Yes, it is the theory,” Elm said.

“I mean, we’re not a museum, are we? Collecting for our own personal edification?”

He seemed to expect an answer so Elm said, “No, no edification.”

Greer sighed heavily. “So what plans do we have for improving this trend?”

Ian stood up, coming to Elm’s rescue. “Well, Greer, we are ramping up our business-getting, which should permit us to move more volume. There are a couple of commissions that Elm has garnered …”

“Good.” Greer seemed uninterested when the objective was not Elm’s humiliation. “Numbers like this make my—our”—he gestured at Elm without looking at her—“great-grandfather turn over in his grave. Any other business? No?”

Elm breathed a sigh of relief and began to gather her papers. On his way out, Greer approached her. “Elm, I’d like to talk to you. Can you come to my office in a few?”

“Sure,” Elm answered, her heart contracting like she was a child in trouble for passing notes at school. She pretended to need to order her papers while she waited until everyone else exited the conference room. Ian was standing just outside.

He always managed to push the dress code envelope. Today he wore a pink and blue V-striped shirt under a definitely purple suit, though Elm thought it might be able to pass for an iridescent black that had been dry-cleaned too many times.

“Thanks, I owe you,” she said.

“I’ll put it on your tab,” he said, and Elm wasn’t sure if he was joking or annoyed. “Did you call that woman back?”

“Not yet,” Elm said. “Did we determine, is she an Attic?” Attic was their term for an old person, almost invariably a woman, who would insist that her grandfather had been Monet’s gardener and saved a masterpiece. It was up in the attic somewhere, if they could just send some nice young person to muck around in the cobwebs for a couple of days, effectively cleaning out the woman’s attic for her.

“Probably. Upper West Side.”

Elm shrugged. Though the really big sales were from major estates and collectors, it was not inconceivable that some rich widow on Central Park West owned a few minor Guardis or Valtats. Enough of those allowed for a comfortable base on which to search for larger commissions.

“You want me to do it for you?” Ian put his hands on his hips. His jacket neglected to bulge, like it was stapled to his shirt.

“Thank you, yet again,” Elm said. “You know you’re good with the ladies.”

“Right. Old ladies and pedigree dogs. Attractive, successful men my own age with a trust fund, not so much.”

“Where would I be without you?” Elm asked. “What’s more nowhere than nowhere?”

“The East Nineties?”

“Ha.” Elm lived on East Ninety-fifth Street.

Ian’s cell phone sounded. His ringtone was a trumpet calling for the start of a horse race. “Hello? Oh, hiiii,” he drawled, turning down the hall and waving good-bye.



Greer’s office had a magnificent view of the East River. Even on the grayest day it was suffused with light. Elm had learned to make afternoon appointments, as Greer sat with his back to the view, and the strong morning sun blinded those who sat across from him. His office was decorated in the traditional masculinity of dark wood—wainscoting, panels, built-ins—all of it shiny tobacco-brown oak. His grand desk was a nineteenth-century Chippendale masterpiece, Baroque and ornately carved. On its legs were faces, flowers, vines, and, of course, eagle feet gripping balls blunted on the floor. The top was so polished Elm could see her reflection when she leaned over it, and it was devoid of everything except a telephone and a computer—no pens, blotter, photos, in-box/out-box, nothing.

“Elmira,” he said, feigning surprise at her appearance. “There you are. Will you sit?”

“How’s Anne?”

“Connecticut,” he replied, answering a different question. “Putting up the rosebushes or something. Colin?” he asked. “Moira?”

“Great, both great.” Elm smiled. She knew he didn’t really want news; he was merely being polite. There was a short silence. Behind him, framed by the bay windows, a tugboat trudged down the East River, stacks of used tires on its bow.

“Elmira,” he said. “I’m concerned.”

“I know,” Elm said. “You mentioned in the meeting.”

“No, but I’m very concerned.” Greer sat back, placing his ankle on his knee. He was reminding her with his body language that he was the real Tinsley, she the interloper. There had been a scandal involving Elm’s grandmother’s marriage and since then her side of the family got the smallest cottage on the family compound and saw little of the estate’s large dividends. Elm’s father had made some money in real estate, of all things, which was only slightly better than cleaning toilets in the family’s estimation. But then the social order went by the wayside and the company went public and Greer’s insistence on family hierarchy was sheer snobbery.

“Elm, please understand you are a valued and respected part of this establishment—”

“And a Tinsley,” Elm interrupted.

Greer nodded, pained. “But I don’t think Great-grandfather would have wanted it to be run into the ground for the sake of family loyalty.”

“I don’t think Great-grandfather, as you call him, would have considered me a Tinsley.”

“Maybe not,” he said. Elm had found out from Greer’s brother, the sweet and affable, if prodigal, Will, who was now squandering his fortune on snow bunnies in Aspen, that Greer had objected to Elm’s hiring, and was overruled by then-chairman-of-the-board Greer Senior. Elm wasn’t sure now if Greer harbored the same set of prejudices that influenced his opposition to her ten years ago, or if he was nursing new ones. Similarly, she wasn’t sure what the grounds for objection were. The degree from the lesser undergraduate institution (lesser meaning, of course, not Yale or Harvard)? But surely he couldn’t argue with the graduate degree from Columbia. Or the fact that she was considered an expert in her field, the go-to person for a New York Times quote, the one who took big clients to dinner, a member of the board of trustees of two museums and the art consultant to a trendy, invited-members-only downtown social club. Maybe it was just the fact that she wasn’t close family—her blood diluted. It wasn’t worth thinking about. It was impossible to think rationally about irrational thoughts.

“Maybe, Elm, you want to take some time off.” Greer’s voice rose at the end of the sentence. He was trying to sound nonchalant, off the cuff.

“To heal?” she asked. She was attempting sarcasm, but she suspected he hadn’t heard.

“If you like.” Greer looked at his desk, desperate, Elm thought, for something to distract him. Finding nothing, he examined his fingernails. “You’ve barely taken any time since …” He let the sentence trail off.

“And prints and drawings?”

“We’ll get someone else to pitch in for a while.”

Elm stood. “If you want me to leave, then fire me. But stop this passive-aggressive looking-out-for-my-best-interests crap.”

“Keep your voice down,” Greer said sternly. “Get ahold of yourself.”

“Right,” Elm said. “The family creed. Do not show emotion. Do not embarrass the family. Grieve your dead son in silence.”

Now Greer was standing too, shocked by the mention of Ronan, her son. “What do you want from me?” he hiss-whispered; he didn’t want his secretary to overhear them.

“Nothing,” Elm said. Suddenly, the anger was gone, as though she’d been seized by a cramp and released. These bursts came and went, leaving her apologetic and defensive. “Sorry. I’ll focus. We’ll be back in the saddle by the fall season.”

“I hope so,” Greer said. “I certainly hope so.”



At home, Elm’s doorman informed her that Moira and Wania had beaten her home. As soon as she opened the door, Moira yelled, “Mommymommy Mommymommymommy,” and threw herself into Elm’s legs.

“Hi, bunny,” she said, shuffling forward.

Wania sat on the couch in front of the television rebraiding a long strand of hair. “Afternoon, Ms. Howells.” She was from Jamaica, and Elm understood approximately 30 percent of what she said. Once she told Elm that the “peenters” had come, and Elm asked, “What?” three times until she pretended to understand. It wasn’t until that evening, lying in bed, replaying the day, that she realized Wania had meant “painters.”

“How was school?”

“Fine,” they both answered automatically.

“Andrew was really funny today, mon.” Moira had picked up Wania’s Jamaican slang. It drove Colin crazy, but Elm found it amusing. “He made this noise in art class like this”—Moira blew a raspberry into her forearm—“and everybody really laughed. Even Mrs. Buchner.” Elm was half listening, flipping through the mail. Bill, bill, package of coupons, labels from the Children’s Aid Society, cable television offer, cable television offer, cable television offer. “And, Mom? It sounded like he farted,” Moira explained, in case Elm didn’t get the joke.

“Funny,” Elm said, placing her hand on Moira’s snarled hair, a continual struggle. She had practically come out of the womb with a mess of tangles, and no amount of conditioner would keep them from forming. Elm had given up on attempts to brush or braid it, and let Moira attend her tony private kindergarten wild-headed.

Seeing that her mother wasn’t interested, Moira danced around in circles for a moment, and then settled in front of the television.

“You know, Wania,” Elm said. “You can go, if you want.”

“Are you sure, Ms. H?” Wania perked up.

“Yeah. I’m not going to the gym or anything today. Is there dinner?” Elm lived the ultimate New York stereotype. She couldn’t cook, Colin couldn’t cook, and their housekeeper/nanny couldn’t cook. Instead, Wania bought prepared food at Citarella or Eli’s Vinegar Factory every day.

“Chicken fingers,” Wania said, pointing to Moira, “and spinach-stuffed chicken breast.”

“Perfect,” Elm said. “Thank you.”

Wania stood and went over to the closet. She put on her coat and took out her woven bag. “Is it rah-nig?” she asked.

Elm couldn’t understand her. “Rah-nig,” Wania repeated. Elm shook her head.

“Mo,” Wania called.

“Raining,” Moira said, head glued to the television set, where Dora the Explorer was skipping down the adventure path.

“Oh,” Elm said. “No, not yet.”

“See you Mahnday.” Wania stepped around the couch to plant a kiss on Moira’s head. Moira reached around and patted her shoulder without turning. “Bye,” Wania said softly, calling Moira an endearment that Elm heard as “beetle nut.” “Have a nice weekend, now.”

The door closed. It was quiet except for the overexcited television, but the volume was low enough for Elm to tune it out. She went into her room, and sat on the bed to take off her shoes. She put them away, then undressed completely, leaving her suit on her bed. Moira came in while she was in her underwear. “Mom? Will you play restaurant with me?”

“Sure. I’ll have the chicken cordon bleu and a Caesar salad.” Moira pretended to write this down on an imaginary pad of paper.

“And what do you want to drink?”

“You mean, What would you like to drink?”

“What would you like to drink?”

“Cherry soda, please.”

Moira ran into the living room to whip up the imaginary meal. Elm lay back on the bed, crooking her elbow over her eyes. She needed to get up and start reheating dinner and play with her daughter and figure out how to get her sales figures up and how not to be demoted to some honorary position in her family’s firm, and how to get over the paralysis that threatened to overtake her at every moment.

But for now it felt so good to close her eyes and let herself be empty. She wasn’t anything, not mom, not boss, not wife, not friend. She was driftwood, a cloud, and she gave herself three minutes of unconsciousness that wasn’t sleep but rather absence until the cordon bleu and cherry soda were ready and Elm flooded back into herself.



“Where’s Wania?” was the first thing Colin said when he walked through the door. Elm fought a frisson of jealousy.

“Sent her home,” she said, watching his face, suspicious.

“Oh,” he said. The little hair he had left, white blond, clung to his head like seaweed. His face was inscrutable. Elm realized he was just commenting on the scene, performing a “find the differences in the two pictures” exercise.

He popped a carrot stick in his mouth, and then tried to kiss Elm on the cheek clumsily. “Where’s Shrimp Salad?” he called.

Moira ran out of her room. “Daddy, I asked you not to be so silly,” she chided.

“Ya did, did ye? Be not remembering that, I wasn’t,” he said, putting on his Irish hillbilly accent. Moira loved it, copied it like a mynah bird. It was almost their secret language. Elm understood it, but was unable to reproduce the sounds or words. She knew she should find it sweet, but she felt left out.

He picked Moira up. “I’m silly? You’re a silly silleen gob, y’are so.” Colin let her slide down his body to the floor. He asked Elm in his “reg-lar” voice (as opposed to “Daddy” voice) when supper would be ready.

“Whenever,” she said. “I’m just chopping carrots for salad. I can warm the chicken up anytime.”

“I’m hungry now,” he said.

“Then we’ll eat. Moira, set the table, please.”

A silence set in while they ate. Dinners were always like this. Elm didn’t understand why the family was reminded particularly of Ronan during dinner. They had rarely eaten together before; this was a new phenomenon. But his absence was acutely felt, his memory respected by a silence they had all tacitly agreed on.

Moira took one bite from each end of the three chicken fingers on her plate. She liked the ends, with the extra breading. She would have to be coaxed to eat the middle. Elm didn’t have the energy to fight this battle again. She was so tired that even her toes felt fatigued, as heavy as doorknobs.

As if she knew what Elm was thinking, Moira said, “Mom, do I have to eat the middle part?”

“What do you think I’m going to say?” Elm asked.

Moira didn’t answer. She took a large bite and chewed it with snarled lips.

Colin shook his head, snapping out of a daydream. “Guess what,” he said to Elm.

“What?” Moira answered automatically, looking at the three chicken fingers intently, willing them inside her stomach.

“It looks like Moore is buying Omnard’s prescription brands.”

“It’s going through, then?” Elm decided there was too much salt in the ricotta stuffing of the chicken breast. She began the delicate process of unstuffing it.

“Inked today. As of tomorrow Maxisom, Norafran, and Extardol are all ours.”

“What’s that, Daddy?” Moira had gotten down to two chicken finger middles, the point at which her mother usually gave up trying to make her eat them.

“Medicine to make people feel better.”

“And what happens to their PR departments?” Elm asked.

“They get folded into ours, I suppose. We’ll have to see how it’ll shake down.”

“Shake out.”

“Excuse me?” Colin poured them each another glass of wine.

“Shake down is extortion. Shake out is seeing how something will turn out.”

“Right,” Colin said. “Are you going to eat those, Ballyreal?”

“No,” Moira answered seriously. “I don’t think I’ll be eating these.”

“Should we be worried?” Elm asked.

“About the chicken fingers?”

Elm narrowed her eyes. “About the shakeout.”

“What good would worrying do us now?” He balled up his napkin and threw it at Moira, who squealed and jumped off her chair to pick it up.

“No good at all, which doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.” Elm stood up to clear the dishes. “Do you want to give M her bath?”

“No bath!” Moira screamed. “I already took a bath.”

“No, you didn’t,” Elm said.

“But I don’t want to.”

“Yeah, well, we have to do a lot of things we don’t want to do in this life, don’t we?”

“Come on.” Colin picked Moira up. “We can sing the bath time songs.”

Immediately, Elm regretted speaking so harshly to her daughter. Sometimes the little girl’s spoiled nature irked her, but if it was anyone’s fault it was Elm’s. Nannies, lessons, only-child-hood—no wonder Moira felt put out by any request that went contrary to her wishes.

That night in bed, with the rain falling heavily again and the tires sloughing off water twelve floors below on the wet streets, Colin snuggled up against Elm, breathing into the hair on the back of her neck. “Y’all gonna give us some somethin’ somethin’?” he asked.

“Who’s that voice?” Elm asked. “You sound like a deaf frog.”

“Thanks.”

There was a silence. Colin ran his hand over her stomach slowly, polishing it.

“What are we going to do this year?” Elm asked the ceiling.

“About what?”

“Ronan’s birthday.”

Colin’s hand abruptly stopped. He pulled it back to himself as though she’d bitten it. “I don’t know.”

Elm said, “Maybe we should go away.”

Colin turned, giving her his back. He was angry, hurt, Elm didn’t know which. Why could she still not read his silences after ten-plus years of marriage? Was she not allowed to talk about Ronan? “Maybe.”

After a silence Elm spoke. “I was going to say that I think I want to have another baby,” she said. Until that moment, she didn’t realize that she’d been thinking about getting pregnant, wondering if having another child might somehow ameliorate her grief.

“Really?” Colin said. “Is this the right time, do you think?”

“I’m over forty now. I don’t know how long it’ll take,” Elm said. “And I don’t want to regret not having started sooner. Or having waited too long.”

“I don’t know, Elm. Things are just so up in the air right now.”

Elm looked at the headboard. The veneer was beginning to chip away, revealing the particleboard underneath. “I just feel like I’m ready.” She shrugged. “We’re ready.”

“Let’s see how things shake down at Moore first.”

“Meaning …?”

“Meaning you can let that worry you to sleep tonight.”

His tone may have been harsh, Elm wasn’t sure. Was he angry at her for wanting another child? Because she could explain to him that she wasn’t trying to replace Ronan. Rather, she wanted the distraction of a new baby, the joy of creating a life. She would let the idea sink in and they could revisit it another time when Colin wasn’t so worried about his job. She stared at the molding where the ceiling met the wall, slippery white painted wood like waves. She willed her mind still and concentrated, concentrated, until her gaze clouded over and she slipped among them.



That Thursday night Elm and Colin were supposed to go to a party. Elm didn’t know the people and didn’t want to go. All afternoon she grew more and more angry at Colin until she erupted while they were getting ready to go out.

“I don’t know these people. You don’t even really know these people. Budokon class at the gym does not count as a place to know people from.”

“Come on,” he’d returned. “You drag me to work events all the time.”

“Yes, but you’ve met those people.” Elm stopped straightening her hair and went out to the bedroom where he was picking a tie. “And, I don’t have a choice. It’s for work.”

Colin said nothing. He tried on a jacket, then took it off and threw it on the bed. He surveyed his closet again.

“And are we tallying now?” Elm refused to let it drop. “Because I think Christmases in Galway count for a lot more than weekends at Pine Lake.”

“Drop it, Elm. If you don’t want to come, don’t. I’ll go alone.”

Now Elm looked out the window of the taxi sulkily, imagining her face illuminated in the taxi’s window as it reflected the buildings of Midtown. Why was she being so petulant? Because she was tired, she told herself. And she was too old to meet new people. The point of getting married, she argued with herself, is that you don’t have to go to parties anymore if you don’t want to. And here she was being dragged downtown to someone’s TriBeCa loft. Any normal people would live on the Upper West or Upper East Side, unless they were artists or showoffs or fake bohemians. Elm went downtown only to see art openings and to shop, and, frankly, both were better above Fiftieth Street.

She realized when they exited the cab at Duane and Church that these gym friends of Colin’s were going to be fake bohemians. The door was covered with half-scraped stickers of businesses past. Inside, Elm could see a lobby no bigger than a phone booth (she was dating herself, she knew, referencing things that no longer existed), and a small elevator that would inevitably smell of urine. Then they would get off the elevator directly into someone’s multimillion-dollar apartment with spectacular views of what used to be the Twin Towers but was now a pair of missing teeth on the horizon and what would someday, maybe, be the Freedom Tower.

Colin was always doing this, making new friends. Part of it was his Irish accent. People thought he was friendly because he spoke with a lilt. It invited “Where are you from?” and then bred a false intimacy when they mentioned the time they’d traveled to Ireland and Colin feigned interest. And there was his smile, which, Elm admitted, was what attracted her to him in the first place. If she had to sum up Colin in one feature, it would be his mouth. A lopsided grin that made everyone else smile back, just the hint of teeth, like he was laughing because you were the funniest person on the planet. The mouth was so attractive that Elm hung out with it for weeks before she turned to him, outside a movie theater where they had seen a particularly sexy thriller, and said, “So are you going to kiss me ever?” and he looked somewhat stunned. Then he bent over to kiss her.

Ronan had inherited the same winning mouth. It made it nearly impossible for Elm to punish him, which he knew and exploited. He would smile goofily at her, and she would laugh, and his time-out would dissolve into giggles. He had a whole arsenal of expressions: the Puppy Dog, which always netted him ice cream; the Affected Pout, when he was exasperated by Elm; the Elvis, in which a curled lip meant he was humoring her attempts to cheer him; and the Toothless Glee, which, even when his teeth grew in, Elm always thought of as bare-gummed.

Elm had been wrong when she imagined that the elevator opened into the living room. Instead, there was a small mud room. They hung their coats on hooks and Colin rang the doorbell.

The door was opened by a man with a barrel chest so protuberant that Elm was reminded of a pin cushion, his arms and legs emanating like needles. His hair was long, though it only sparsely covered the putty-smooth crown of his scalp. He held a glass of champagne in his left hand. “Colin! Come in!” He swung the door wide and took a sip from his glass. Then he handed it to Colin and gestured for him to come in.

“You’re the wife,” he said.

“Elm,” she supplied her name. She held out her hand to shake, but the barrel-man leaned forward and kissed her on both cheeks quickly. Elm felt the color rise to her face.

“I’m Dick,” he said. Elm fought a juvenile urge to laugh.

Behind him, a large loft was fenced in by huge factory windows. On the walls hung several excellent pieces of modern art. Though Elm didn’t particularly care for any work completed after 1920, she had to admire the collection: Basquiat, Rothko, Dine, and a couple of artists she didn’t recognize. Guests posed on the various couches and chaises; they were universally attractive (though not prohibitively so), comfortable, well dressed.

“Ellen,” Dick called. “Colin and his wife are here.”

“Hello,” said a woman walking toward them. She was wearing black cigarette pants and a blouse made out of a sort of shimmery silk. “So glad you could come. We’ve heard so much about you.”

“Oh,” was all Elm could think of saying. Ellen’s hair was also long; it fell down her back in curls and waves. The temples were going gray. Elm disapproved of long hair on older women. So too the uncovered gray was a lie, the “I’m okay with my age” a mere front for the same insecure pore examination every woman over thirty performed every time she looked in a mirror. Anyone who pretended otherwise was a big phony.

Ellen drew Elm into the room while Dick poured Colin another drink. Elm met a few of the couples, who bore names that sounded like they’d made them up for the party: Kiki and Boris, Monique and Elvis, Geraine and Enjay. But, she reasoned, her name probably sounded ridiculous to those who didn’t know it was short for Elmira, a Tinsley family name that dated back to the seventeenth century. She felt Colin’s reassuring presence at her back and accepted the glass of red wine he proffered.

“You should see this man’s high kicks,” Dick said. “Watch out!” He swung his leg in the air, spilling some of his drink.

Elm forgave Colin immediately. She even inched toward him, as though they found themselves marooned in unexplored New Guinea being stared at by indigenous tribesmen. It reminded her of when they were first married, and right after Ronan died, when, for different reasons, they had clung to each other so tightly that the rest of the world seemed mere window dressing, incidental.

And yet Colin was in his element. He and Dick were laughing about their Budokon instructor, a muscle-bound lothario named Giorgio who would “crush ya as soon as look at ya.” Giorgio liked his class to find their “inna kick-ass” as well as their “levitational attitudes.” Originally from Queens, Giorgio was an inveterate name dropper; he had been trained by Billy Barken, who was some sort of guru, and Giorgio’s private clients included a nightclub impresario, several minor actors, and a reality television celebutante.

Elm sipped at her wine and smiled when it was appropriate. Exuberant people forced her into herself, to retreat back to her core. Colin expanded like a sponge. He did his Giorgio imitation, which Elm had never heard (had she?). All of Colin’s impressions were hilarious, if only because the accent was so ludicrous.

Elm looked over the shoulder of a short, curvy woman toward the Basquiat on the wall. It was one of his later works. Almost without realizing it, Elm left the circle, which had moved onto exercise trends of past and present—Fluidity, Jazzercise, aerobics, step aerobics, Tae Bo, Pilates—to examine it up close. It exuded a peculiar artificial lemon smell. Elm supposed it was from the cleaning supplies used in the house. Sometimes a canvas or a varnish will take on characteristics of its environment, the way people begin to look like their dogs. Elm followed a brushstroke while it dipped and whorled, then disappeared.

The curvy woman said, “Isn’t their art collection amazing? It would be easy to hate them, except they really love these paintings.”

“Well, then, I guess it’s money well spent.”

The woman extended her hand. Her nails were long and painted a bright shade of pink. “Relay,” she said.

Elm’s brow must have knit, because the woman added, “Seriously, that’s my name.”

“Elm.” The woman’s hand was warm.

“Well,” she said, as if to chide Elm for her equally preposterous name. “You want the tour?”

“Sure,” Elm said. “Are you? Do you …?”

“Art adviser.”

“Oh,” Elm said. She debated telling Relay what she did for a living. It inevitably changed the tone of the conversation. Art advisers relied on galleries for most of their purchases, since the clients were usually interested in contemporary art, but Elm’s auction house got occasional communications from those interested in the older works in which Tinsley’s specialized. If this woman knew that Elm was the specialist in Tinsley’s drawings department, she would probably butter her up in the hopes that Elm could tip her off if there was something undervalued hitting an auction, or a real find that was somehow underpublicized. Of course, this kind of insider trading was illegal but widely practiced. Elm made a habit of not consorting with the salesmen of the art world.

Relay took her into a long hallway with doors on one side. On the left was a large Pollock, an early work. She opened the last door and they entered the study. Across from a leather couch hung an enormous flat-screen television, and for a moment Elm wondered if that was the art she was supposed to see. Then Relay turned and pointed at an equally large charcoal drawing by Renoir, a study for Luncheon of the Boating Party. The table was more prominent in this sketch; it covered about 60 percent of the paper’s surface, and the “lens” was bigger, showing the table legs and feet wound around them, complete with two more Yorkshire terriers tearing at a piece of bread. A young woman who didn’t appear in the finished painting sat next to Aline Charigot, looking overwhelmed by the spectacle. In the back stood a boy whose features, blurred though they were by the wide swath of the charcoal, coalesced unmistakably into Ronan’s face. The same nose Elm had, Colin’s curly hair, the slight build, the insouciant posing. Elm gasped.

“I know,” Relay said. “It’s beautiful, right?”

Elm nodded her head and forced back the lump in her throat that threatened to explode into tears.

“This is really their best piece. Very few of his sketches are still in existence. I heard he liked to burn them once the painting was complete. He felt they took the mystery out of the final product.”

Relay took her into the bedroom and showed her the Joan Mitchell triptych and Chihuli vase that stood proudly in the corner, hovering near a pair of embroidered Louis XIV chairs. Elm made all the admiring sounds she knew were appropriate to the situation, but she was still thinking about the Renoir. She was always picking Ronan out of crowds, and Colin or Ian would tell her she was imagining things. Yes, it was a boy with curly brown hair, but, really, he looked nothing like Ronan. He was obviously part Asian, or his lips were too full. She persisted, though. It gave her comfort to imagine him walking down New York streets, or little parts of him finding their way into other children.

Relay opened another door, which revealed a marble bathroom. Between the his-and-hers mirrors was an oil portrait of a Rhodesian Ridgeback. The dog was sitting stiffly in front of the Chihuli in the bedroom, head tilted quizzically at the viewer. It was a very realistic portrait, and completely devoid of any artistry whatsoever. Representational, not imaginative.

Relay said, “So many of my clients are into pet portraits these days. I have this woman on the Upper East Side who can paint from photographs if she has to. She met Dishoo before he died, though. Isn’t he adorable?”

Elm opened her mouth to say something noncommittally positive. She wondered if Colin was looking for her. They’d been gone awhile. Her empty wineglass was warm in her hand.

“They loved this dog. In fact, I was talking to Ellen and they are thinking of having him cloned.”

“What?” asked Elm. She was tired. “Cloned, like in bronze?”

“No, actually cloned.”

“We’re looking into the possibility, Relay. Don’t tell tales out of school.” Ellen stood in the doorway, silhouetted in black against the frame like a cameo.

Relay didn’t look remotely embarrassed. “Devotion like yours to a pet is rare.”

“Dishoo was a special dog.” Ellen walked between the women to air-kiss the portrait. “So smart. Once, when the neighbor’s apartment was on fire, and for some reason the smoke alarm didn’t go off, he barked until we woke up and were able to call the fire department. On 9/11 I had to sneak past the barricades to get him out. We loved him so much.”

“Was he old?” Elm managed to ask.

“Heart gave out. We had him put to sleep. A kindness we can’t give humans, but at least Dish died painlessly in my arms. This portrait was painted a few years ago, when he was in his prime. And now, thanks to the miracles of modern science, we may have him back.”

“You can’t be serious,” Elm said. “Isn’t that illegal?”

“Not in Europe!” Ellen said brightly. Then her face hardened, and Elm could tell she was just remembering that someone had told her that Elm’s son had died. Elm knew this look on people’s faces, when they caught themselves either alluding to their own inconsequential troubles or reminding Elm of her dead son, as if she had forgotten, even for five minutes, as if she would ever forget. Ellen recovered quickly. “Has Relay shown you everything? The Renoir?” Ellen leaned over toward Relay and stage-whispered, “Elm’s at Tinsley’s, I hear, a specialist.”

“Drawings and prints,” Elm confirmed reluctantly, “seventeenth- to nineteenth-century.”

Relay looked impressed, though not astonished. Perhaps she didn’t have a surprise gene, or had she already known?

“We’ll have you back when Dishoo’s …” Ellen searched for the word. “Reincarnated, so to speak. You can compare the portrait to the real thing.”

Elm laughed, but the other women didn’t join in. She turned the laugh into a smile. “Could I trouble you for a refill?” she asked.

“Certainly!” Ellen replied. “Did you enjoy it? Dick and I love this vineyard and we bought up all the 2001’s.” Relay turned out the light before Elm could get a last glimpse of the silent dog.

In the living room, Colin was holding court, drinking a cocktail glass full of brown liquid. Scotch, most likely. He was on his way to getting drunk, which didn’t upset Elm. He was a hilarious drunk, laughing loudly and telling stories. His personality was amplified with liquor. It was a testament to his fundamental good nature that this temperament was kind and gentle, if a bit boisterous. Elm got quiet and sulky with liquor, so she made sure to limit her intake. Since she’d had the children she’d lost her tolerance, and after a couple of nights celebrating Moira’s weaning, lying in bed with the apartment building spinning around her precariously, a balloon of nausea attempting to climb her esophagus, she limited herself to a couple of glasses of wine. Thus, she was the designated driver, which, in New York, meant the designated cab finder.

When he saw her he extended his arm and spun her around so she fit against his shoulder. “Where’ve you been?” he asked her.

“Touring the art.”

“Big artsies, these ones.”

“They’re cloning their dog.”

“What?”

“I said, they’re cloning their dog. It died and they had a portrait painted of it, and now they’re going to have the dog cloned. In Europe.”

“Too much money, not enough sense,” Colin whispered. “But the scotch is excellent. Want a taste?” Elm shook her head.

After refilling her glass, Elm went to sit on the sofa. Another woman joined her and Elm discovered that the woman’s sister had also gone to Wesleyan, but she was older than Elm and Elm hadn’t known her. The woman asked how many children Elm had, and she paused before answering that she had just the one. They discussed private schools, then babysitters. A man joined them, the woman’s husband. Elm did her impression of Moira aping some teenage pop star, innocently changing the lyrics from “love me up” to “love me ’nuff” and “wanna crash your party” to “wanna crash your potty,” which always made her giggle.

The woman’s face was open, with wide-set eyes. The left was slightly bigger than the right, though she had tried to disguise this with makeup, painting a wider swatch of eyeliner on the bigger one. Someone had given her lessons, and from far away it worked. The man’s body was half youthful strength and half pot-bellied middle-ager. He had beautiful salt-and-pepper hair. Elm wondered if that’s how people saw her and Colin, a nice couple, well groomed, well suited. Or, she wondered, was their tragedy apparent? Had it aged them or matured them in a way that was perceptible, even to a stranger?

She felt Colin’s hand on her shoulder. She introduced the couple to him, and said that their daughter was born the same year as Moira, and was attending the school they had almost decided to send her to. It was superior to the one they ended up at, but they thought they wouldn’t have the energy to schlep all the way across the park and down fifteen blocks every morning for fourteen years. At least Moira was close to home.

“Almost ready?” Colin asked her. “It’s nearing midnight.”

“No,” Elm gasped in disbelief. Had she been forced to guess the time, she might have said ten p.m. “It was lovely to meet you,” she said to the couple. “We have to relieve the babysitter. She has science club in the morning or something.”

They said their good-byes, and this time both Dick and Ellen kissed Elm’s cheeks. Relay slipped her a card; Elm put it in her jacket pocket without looking at it. “You’ll come back and meet Dishoo, right?” Ellen called as the elevator door closed.

“Wouldn’t miss it!” Elm said.

“Who’s Dishoo?” Colin asked. The elevator gave a lurching start.

“The dog they’re cloning. Rhodesian Ridgeback, maybe?”

“Am I pissed or am I missing something? How are they cloning their dog?”

“I think you’re pissed and missing something,” Elm said. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Europe, maybe. I think it’s legal there?”

Colin shook his head. “Crazy as f*cking loons, the rich are.”