A Nearly Perfect Copy

Elm




Mrs. Schmidt’s drawings returned authenticated. Several times, minor copies (or forgeries, it was impossible to know) crossed Elm’s desk. She could always tell—the lines lacked the natural progression, the logic of the artistic mind. Where an artist’s charcoal would fly across the paper, gathering speed in the weave and bumps of the pulp, the copyist’s was hesitant, looking back to check on its progress. The artist’s work was freer; those who followed in his footsteps were always a step behind.

Even though clear forgeries were often obvious, people still tried to sneak them into auctions. Their provenances were sketchy—they were discovered in an attic or behind an old painting or in a flea market—or even nonexistent. The perspective was off, or the material was wrong, or it contained other anachronisms. Elm once saw smoke rising from an industrial chimney in the background of a Blavoin, even though the artist worked before the industrial revolution and lived, famously, secluded in the provinces. Terrified of horses, he traveled only on foot, and therefore never left his township, nestled in the foothills of the Alps, far from any such smoke. This willful disregard for scholarship offended Elm, even as she laughed at it. It was insulting that someone would think her that stupid, though she knew specialists and departmental directors often were. She had seen obvious misattributions (the euphemism for fakes) fool good eyes and wind up in private collections.

Elm was not supposed to voice her suspicions. First of all, it was bad for business. Too many items pulled from auctions because of suspect authenticity gave houses a reputation they didn’t want. Second, it was bad to be the whistle-blower. Also, unless Elm had the opportunity to examine the drawing under the loupe, she really couldn’t be sure. And, of course, if the purchaser enjoyed his “Brueghel” or his “Delacroix,” who was she to rain on his parade? Still, pangs tugged at her heart when she saw small museums blow their acquisition budgets on inferior drawings. It was like watching the government build a bridge that she knew would fail.

Elm did a quick search in the Art Loss Registry. The database of stolen art was part of her due diligence, a hedge against liability if the pieces had been stolen. Nothing surfaced.

Elm wanted to meet the great Indira Schmidt, so she joined Ian and his croissants in a company car up to Columbia. Ian had described both the building and the woman perfectly. Mrs. Schmidt looked Elm up and down skeptically with rheumy eyes and let her into the apartment. Ian she kissed on the cheek, and as he straightened he winked at Elm.

The apartment was dark. The rays of sun that escaped from the velvet curtains blinded like spotlights instead of illuminating. The hallway carpet gave at each footstep. Elm noticed, as she walked slowly behind the old woman, that instead of family portraits, the pictures lining the entryway were all professional: Stieglitz, Leibovitz, Mann, Sherman. Not their controversial or iconic images, but recognizable nonetheless. In fact, Elm realized, there were no photos of family anywhere in the apartment.

Elm sat on a couch so low her knees were above her chin. She wondered if she’d be able to get out of it.

“That one’s broken,” Ian whispered at her, extending his hand to help her up. “Sit there.” He pointed to a thronelike carved wood chair.

“Mrs. Schmidt,” Elm began, “I’m a huge fan of your work. You know, I’m on the board of the New Jewish Institute, though I’m not myself Jewish. Your genius has—”

Mrs. Schmidt held up her hand in a “spare me” gesture. “This is not a case where the one I’m most fond of will get to sell my art, Mrs. Howells. When I am ready to part with it, the one who can offer me the most favorable terms will be my proxy, even if they are a one-armed ax murderer. You are here because I enjoy meeting new people. What can you tell me?”

“Beg your pardon?” Elm asked.

“I spent World War II in a hayloft in France,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “I walked into Texas from Mexico. I once met Elvis Presley.”

Elm began to say “Wow,” then realized these were examples, not actual experiences. The sound that emerged was “Whoa.”

“My family has land on this island off the coast of Connecticut,” Elm began. She very rarely parted with this information. She was never invited to the island now that her mother was dead, and she felt it gave people the wrong impression of her. They imagined a silver spoon. But all the silver had long since been hocked. “We used to go there in the summers when I was a child. Dinners were formal for the adults, but the children were served in a separate dining room, Tater Tots and miniature hamburgers. Paradise. The summer I turned twelve I was dying to be let into the adults’ room. The official age was thirteen, but I begged and begged, reminded them my birthday was coming up in October. Finally, on the last night, they let me. Mother gave me one of her old dresses to wear. It fit like a gunnysack. She put the necklace her mother had given her around my neck, an add-a-pearl necklace that no one ever added pearls to. She did my hair in a high bun and stuck a small sunflower into it, and I was convinced I was a grown-up.

“At dinner, we were served steak medallions and potatoes au gratin. I concentrated on not spilling. I had half a glass of wine. Then a nice man came around to shake hands and when he got to me I gave him the handshake my father had taught me, firm but not rough, look the person in the eyes. He had nice blue eyes, very bright, or maybe it was just the light in the lodge. He said to me, ‘Lovely to meet you. What grade are you in?’ I told him, ‘Sixth grade.’ Then I responded how my father always did. ‘And what do you do?’

“The man laughed and my father laughed, and my mother turned bright red and clutched me to her. The man said, ‘A little of this, a little of that. Nothing of any great importance.’ And then he walked away. Later I learned he was President Reagan.”

Mrs. Schmidt smiled, but Elm was unable to tell what the smile meant. Had she passed the test? Ian, who had heard the story many times before, nodded encouragingly. Without turning to him, Mrs. Schmidt said, “Young man, would you please run out and get some half-and-half? This milk that the woman brings me is too watery.”

“I think I saw some in the refrigerator,” Ian said. “I’ll check the expiration.”

“Young man,” Mrs. Schmidt sighed, “I’m trying to get rid of you. Be a dear and run to the deli and get us some half-and-half. And go to the Korean one, not the Pakistani one.”

Elm thought she saw Mrs. Schmidt wink at her. The woman was a web of tics; no wonder she was so thin. Ian shrugged and stood up. Elm could hear him as he banged into the piles of paper and bric-a-brac, beating his way to the front door.

Mrs. Schmidt lifted her teacup to her lips. It shook, but she managed a loud slurp before it spilled. The teacup banged loudly as it hit the saucer, and, before she knew what she was saying, Elm sputtered, “My son died.”

“Oh,” Mrs. Schmidt said.

“Do you remember the tsunami two years ago? We were on vacation in Thailand. He was next to me, and then he was gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Schmidt said. A different old lady might have petted her arm and called her “dear,” but Mrs. Schmidt just reached for a sugar cube and dropped it shakily into her tea.

Elm didn’t know why she told Mrs. Schmidt about Ronan. There was comfort, somehow, in meeting people who didn’t know about him. Elm was allowed to explain the story to them. She was allowed to say Ronan’s name. It was a taboo word elsewhere where she had used up people’s willingness to sit still for the story. Sometimes she felt like even Colin wanted to sweep him under the rug. Though he patiently reminisced with her, she could see the slight knit in his brow that meant he was annoyed. He missed Ronan as much as she did, but it brought him no relief to say Ronan’s name. It didn’t fester inside him the way it did in Elm.

But what if she had told Mrs. Schmidt merely to shock her? Had she said it to get the woman to like her? Elm was horrified that she’d used her son in this way. His death wasn’t like the Ronald Reagan story; it was a sacred subject, and she had sullied it. She felt ashamed and put her head down, blinking back tears. What kind of mother was she? Elm knew the answer: she was the kind of mother who let her child die.

Intellectually, Elm knew that what happened wasn’t her fault, that it was an act of God, whatever that meant. The phrase suggested a divine malevolence Elm wasn’t sure she was comfortable with. She wished she remembered better her last few moments with Ronan. She was lying on the beach, half reading a magazine, half watching Colin play catch with Ronan, and keepaway from Moira. Ronan still threw like a child, all jerky elbows and stiff hips. Moira ran back and forth between Colin and Ronan, screaming with frustration that the ball was above her head. Colin was laughing, but Elm could tell a tantrum was imminent.

Finally Ronan turned to her. “Mom, can you make her stop?” He knew that Elm was the disciplinarian in the family, and any grievances must be expressed to her. Elm remembered thinking that she just wanted to read the damn magazine. Couldn’t the three of them play together for fifteen minutes without her?

She shaded her eyes. Moira’s suit was riding up her bottom, while the top was completely askew. It had looked so cute on the rack, but now, with Moira wearing it, the bikini looked like an attempt to age her, even, possibly, to sexualize her. Tomorrow she would wear the one-piece.

“Moira!” she called. “Come fix your swimsuit.” Moira reluctantly trotted toward her.

“Thank God,” Ronan said. “Hey, Da!” and then Elm stopped paying attention. Why hadn’t she paused there, cementing the scene in her memory. Why hadn’t she called both her children to her? She fixed Moira’s suit and took her up the beach behind the dune to pee, the sand so blindingly white that everything was filtered, hazy. Elm recalled being surprised when the beach abruptly ended in a row of palm trees; what stretched behind was dirt, reminding her of the empty scenery of a movie studio backlot. That’s what had saved the two of them, the higher ground. Elm remembered screaming, covering her eyes as if watching a horror movie. Then, as the wall of water moved closer, she grabbed Moira.

She wasn’t sure if she had passed out or if she had blocked the memory. The next thing she could piece together was that Moira was crying, screaming, the cut on her leg angry and bleeding. The water that had carried them into the trees that lined the shore receded just as quickly. All around her people were yelling, in pain, in search of loved ones … And she registered the fact that Colin was not with her. She prayed that he had grabbed Ronan the way that she had grabbed Moira. Or, rather, she hoped he had. She forgot to think about God. The moment she most needed to believe in all her life, and she didn’t think about Him. And Ronan’s death was proof, she believed, that God didn’t exist. No God would take a child, just snatch him away with the claw of a wave.

The hospital was postapocalyptic—writhing bodies and shocked tourists, wailing Thais and overwhelmed hospital staff. Elm found gauze and peroxide and dressed Moira’s wound herself. She poured the liquid onto her leg and Moira was reduced to infancy, screaming wordlessly, face red with anger. When they got back to Bangkok, and for three months afterward, Moira returned to wearing diapers, though she was close to four years old. It was not surprising, said the psychiatrist they consulted, and she would regain her lost maturity.

Colin was rushing through the wings, peering into every bed to see if he recognized the wounded. He almost ran into Elm before he grabbed her by the arms and looked into her eyes. They both realized that Ronan was gone, and Elm moaned slightly, a foreign high-pitched whine.

Then she joined him in a frantic search. They hitched a ride to another hospital and looked there. Moira fell asleep and grew heavy in Colin’s arms. She woke up hungry at a third hospital, and Elm accepted God-knows-what that someone handed her to eat.

Bodies were piled up in a row alongside the elementary school. Elm refused to look. Colin let his eyes glaze over; he looked only at height until he saw someone about Ronan’s size. Then he would look at the hair. Only if it was sandy blond, a little too long in back, would he look at the face. He didn’t find Ronan.

Moira began to throw up and retched constantly all through the night. The next morning she looked pale and shrunken. Her skin was sagging and Elm could see she was dehydrated. Elm and Moira got in line for transport to Bangkok, a snake of dazed, disheveled tourists in bright sarongs. Most were barefoot; some wore a single sandal. All had mud in their hair, beneath their nails, streaked across their backs.

“I swear I will find him,” Colin said. It was the first sentence he’d uttered in three days that didn’t involve a description of Ronan or a directive to a stunned Elm. “I will bring him with me and we will meet you in Bangkok. Check in at the embassy and I’ll find you there.”

Inside the cargo plane, strangers huddled together for warmth. Moira had stopped throwing up, but now fluid was leaking from the other end in a consistency that reminded Elm of the meconium babies emit the first two days of their lives until their intestines are clean.

They were met by embassy officials and Elm slept for the first time in three nights, slumped in a chair with her head on Moira’s hospital bed. She had no word from Colin.

Moira was in the hospital for two days receiving intravenous fluids and antibiotics. There were many worse off than she was. People were missing limbs; people had lacerations to their torsos and organs; people were in comas after having hit their heads. In the hotel room the embassy arranged for Elm to stay in, she sat in the bathtub and cried, rocking back and forth. It was like an organ had been torn from her body, and she found herself cradling a nonexistent hole in her abdomen. There was no air in her lungs; she couldn’t breathe, and yet her heart kept beating, loudly, as if to mock her with its vitality.

During the day, Elm and Moira camped out in the waiting room at the embassy in Bangkok. There was coffee there, safe water, hard-boiled eggs, and Cheerios. Moira was eating solids again. Her face had regained its color and the pain in her leg was bothering her only intermittently.

One of the embassy officials had brought in his teenage daughter and her friends, who supervised the children, drawing and reading to them. The children, understanding the importance of the moment, were silent and obedient. So Elm was able to leave Moira, though the girl clung to her so desperately she had to pry Moira’s hands from around her thigh when she went to meet the embassy official to start a file.

There was a box of Kleenex on the table between the armchairs that served as a makeshift intake station, but Elm didn’t need it. She was too empty to cry, too anxious and worried. She felt continuously as though she were about to throw up, not nauseated, but as though her insides were going to revolt, to turn themselves inside out.

The man who interviewed her followed slavishly a sheet of questions, even when Elm had already answered them. Their conversation was taped. He was large for a Thai man, his hair cut close to his head, and Elm could see an old scar peeking through it from his scalp. His eyes were wrinkled from squinting into the sun.

He said that the fact that she’d heard nothing was because the Red Cross had only just arrived “on scene” and that “communication lines haven’t been established.” He gave her a list of items they would need in the event that they had to identify a body, and a pamphlet about surviving trauma. He handed her an application for a replacement passport. Then he directed her to the phone room, where she had fifteen minutes to call relatives in the States.

The list: copies of their passports, Social Security cards, dental records, hair for a DNA sample, a current photo, and a description of what the missing person was last seen wearing.

The only phone number she could remember was Ian’s, because it spelled out “I-ROCK-U-4.” She woke him up.

“Elm, thank God. You’ve no idea how worried—”

“He’s missing,” Elm said. Now the tears started to flow.

“Colin?”

“Ronan. He’s gone, and I’m in Bangkok with Moira, and Colin’s still looking …” Her words stuck in her mouth.

He calmed her down and promised to get copies of the passports she’d left in her files. He would scan the photo of the family on her desk and e-mail it. He would go to the apartment and make the super let him in and take Ronan’s brush and toothbrush and DHL them overnight. He said he would call their dentist, and repeated back to her the number the Thai man had said to fax the records to. He would do that first thing in the morning.

Next to her a white guy with dreadlocks and faded hemp clothing cried, “Mommy,” into the phone.

“Elm,” Ian said. “Elm, are you there? You’ll be okay, Elm. He’ll be okay. He’s probably with some Thai family in a village or something. There’s no phone service there, right? He’s probably fine.”

“Probably,” Elm said. She hung up.



In Indira’s 1920s bathroom, Elm turned on the old taps to splash her face. When she emerged from the bathroom Ian had returned with the half-and-half, and the two of them were smoking Kools at the kitchen table.

“My girl will be here soon,” Mrs. Schmidt said. “But if you want to poke around, I spend weekends at my studio on the island.”

She meant Fire Island, Elm knew. There had been a profile in The New Yorker that detailed the delightful mess of the old house, down the beach from Frank O’Hara’s, an easy row from Pollock and Krasner’s house. But that had been a different time, and her famous neighbors were dead. Now artists stay-cationed at their studio apartments in the Bronx, unable to afford any sort of weekend getaway.

“You still design?” Elm asked.

“Unbelievable, but true,” Mrs. Schmidt answered. She brought the cigarette to her lips and took a drag as it quivered. “I ask my assistant to draw a shape. He draws it in permanent marker on large paper, and I can see the outline. I make changes, then he makes a model. I can see it then with my hands. I can feel it. Is it sexy? Is it cool? Cool temperature, not the other.”

Elm thought she understood. From just a piece of Ronan she could conjure up his entire existence, the smallest down on his back, the curve of his heel, the roughness of his elbows in winter. A piece of clothing could do it, a drawing he made, even a sock fallen behind a radiator that was retrieved years later. The part invokes the whole; there was a literary term for that. When she learned the term in college, it struck her that it described a phenomenon that she had experienced but been unable to express. It explained how pictures were fine, but a single Lego discovered in the box of crayons was a placeholder for an entire world. How a small toy could cause a pain so deep it felt like a hand was squeezing her heart, so insistent that it was impossible to imagine that she’d ever recover.



In the car on the way back to the office, Ian stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I think I’m in love,” he said. “Don’t you want to be like that when you get old?”

“Lonely and palsied?”

“No, you pessimist. Direct, no bullshit. ‘I’m trying to get rid of you, young man.’ Classic.”

“I suppose,” Elm said.

“Oh, Elm,” Ian sighed. Elm could hear the slight note of irritation in his voice, even as he pretended he was only kidding. There was a silence. “We really should poke around in there.” Ian affected a Slavic accent and caressed an imaginary crystal ball. “I see many weekend days of sifting through unimportant newspaper clippings in our future.”

“Colin will love that.”

“Tell him you’re having an affair.”

“He wouldn’t believe me.”

“Marriage,” Ian scoffed. But, like the note of annoyance she heard earlier, she could see through to the underside of his statement, which admitted a certain envy.

Elm felt grateful that people envied her marriage. Elm even envied it a little; the marriage people thought she had, or the marriage she used to have. Colin was terrific: funny, fun-loving, loving. But she regretted the loss of their idealized existence. Ronan’s death had taken a toll on their marriage. It made sense to her that many couples split up after tragedy; it certainly hadn’t brought them closer together. Colin assumed the role of clown, desperately trying to cheer Elm up. She mourned for both of them. And then he would lash out at her when she didn’t expect it, his grief bubbling over like soda in a shaken can. They would stay together, she didn’t have doubts about that. But would they ever be close again? Elm felt like she was moving through a fog, that a vast misty plain separated her from everyone else. Ian’s comments only made her more aware of the emergent distance.

“Listen,” she said, changing the subject. “You would have loved the party we went to last week.” Elm described the apartment, the artwork. “And some dealer named Relay who was sucking up like I was a free milkshake practically forced her card on me.”

“I know her,” Ian said. “Do you know she’s Lacker’s daughter?”

“Wait, Tom Lacker?” Elm asked. Tom Lacker owned an influential gallery on Fifty-seventh Street. The hipper downtown branch was on Twenty-fifth Street, and the superhip cousin was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He had all his bases covered, in other words. He was not about to miss a chance to represent an artist. Supposedly, young artists complained that showing with Lacker was like selling your soul to the devil. He fronted you money for supplies, rent, etc., but then you owed him everything. For life. It would make sense that the woman she met was his daughter. In fact, now that Elm thought about it, she had the same nervous laugh, waiting until you joined in to really titter, to make sure you agreed that something was funny.

“Mephistopheles himself. She is your friends’ adviser?”

“I wouldn’t say they’re my friends,” Elm said. “They’re acquaintances of Colin’s from the gym. Oh, and here’s the really funny part. In the master bath, right over the Jacuzzi tub—pink marble, by the way—hangs this portrait of their dog, Dishy or something. Full oil, photo-realist. It’s hilarious.”

“Avec or sans bone?” Ian asked.

“And they’re planning on cloning him,” Elm said. “Some European company that clones people’s pets. Is that not the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”

“Right up there with assless chaps, and squeeze-bottle cheese. Can they really clone him?”

Elm shrugged.

“I went to college with Relay. We were good friends then. Do you still have her card?”

“Not sure,” Elm said. It had been her New Year’s resolution several years ago to ask if anyone knew the person before Elm got catty about someone. She never quite mastered it.

The cab stopped suddenly as a pedestrian buried in a guidebook failed to notice the red light. “F*cking tourists,” said the cabbie.

“Sometimes I hate New York,” Ian said, with uncharacteristic vitriol.



When she got back to her desk there was a voice mail from Colin. He was whispering into the phone, speaking in mock code. “Shit is about to hit fan. Repeat, shit is about to hit fan. Ring my cell.”

Elm dialed him. He picked up and said, “George! Grand, and you?”

“You’d make a terrible spy,” Elm said.

“Yes, of course, George,” he said. Elm wanted to let him know he was overplaying it, but let him continue. When he was out of his colleagues’ earshot, he said, “Christ, Elmtree, you can cut it with a knife in there.”

“What’s going on?”

“F*ck if I know,” he said. “Looks like the merger will keep most higher-ups, but provisionally, just until the FDA ruling. Look, Elm,” he said, concerned by her silence. “We’ll be fine, I promise. Don’t worry.”

“I won’t,” Elm said.

“Everything else okay?” he asked.

I don’t know how to answer that, she thought. Nothing’s okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. “Fine,” she said.

“I’ll give you details tonight. I’d best go back in. Love you.”

Elm put her face in her hands. Maybe her cousin Greer was right. She could use some time off. She hadn’t taken more than seven consecutive days since the month Ronan died, when she had started back at work, too soon by most people’s standards. They didn’t understand that home was unbearable, suffocating, each room a cubby of memories. If she was at work, there were eight hours a day she couldn’t be lying in bed, remembering, mourning. Maybe during five minutes of the day she’d forget to think about him, and then a flood of guilt would overtake her even as she savored the relief of it, the lifting of the iron weight.

She searched her desk and briefcase for Relay’s card to pass on to Ian. She was wearing the same trench coat she wore that night, but the pockets contained only gum wrappers and used tissues. Maybe she had put it in the pocket of the pants she was wearing? She’d sent them to the dry cleaner’s with a stain on the right knee from falling guacamole. She could call the hostess. She supposed she should probably call her anyway, to thank her for the evening.

To her surprise, Ellen picked up the phone after the second ring. “Hello?” she said, breathless. Elm wondered if she was expecting a call. Maybe from her lover. Elm always imagined that people were having clandestine affairs, but usually there was some mundane reason for the erratic behavior, like a stomach virus, or a broken refrigerator. Elm thanked her for the party.

“Oh, of course. We’re glad you could make it. Sorry, I’m waiting for a call from France. From the company that’s cloning Dishoo?”

“That’s really happening, huh?” Elm asked.

“That’s what they say. We’re paying for it anyway.”

“How did it even occur … How did you find them?” Elm asked.

“My holistic health healer heard about it somewhere. They have a website.”

Elm wrote down the URL, thinking that Colin would get a kick out of it. She remembered to ask for Relay’s information before she hung up.

She took the phone number over to Ian’s office before she lost it again. “You know, it occurs to me now, I thought she looked familiar,” Elm said, pausing at the entrance to Ian’s office. “Is it possible she’s been to an auction?”

“I haven’t seen her.” Ian continued to look at his computer screen. Elm couldn’t see what was requiring such rapt attention. “At school she was into modern dance, I think,” Ian said, still not looking at Elm.

Elm stared at him, his profile sharp, his neck tucked neatly into his collar, his hair gelled to obedience. The computer screen threw off light that reflected off his high forehead. Suddenly, such a wave of loneliness overcame Elm that she thought she might faint from despair. He was shutting her out.

This was a recurring paranoia she’d felt since Ronan had died. In therapy, she had discovered that she felt he had rejected her, as silly as it sounded. That he had somehow chosen to perish in order to get away from her. Her psychiatrist had teased this out of her one day after she related the dream she’d had a million times, so cliché she dismissed it as embarrassingly banal and mainstream: she was returning from a journey to her childhood house and no one recognized her.

Knowing that this fear of abandonment was irrational did nothing to dispel it. So Elm had learned to at least acknowledge that what she was feeling was probably in her head, and to try to assemble evidence to the contrary. One, Ian loved her and was fiercely loyal. Two, she had done nothing to incur his annoyance. Three, he wasn’t one to suffer in silence. When he was angry, you knew it. Ergo, whatever was bugging him was him, and not Elm.

“Well,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Bye,” he said, waving.