“Children of clones haven’t had any more physiological problems than non-clones.”
“Well that will be a relief,” her voice rising as she stood up, “assuming Evelyn lives long enough to bear children!”
We both stood motionless. Evelyn came down the stairs.
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course, dear,” Hannah answered quickly. “We were just talking.”
***
My relationship with Hannah had become further strained, and Evelyn noticed. She didn’t need to ask why. Her mother had encouraged her to leave me for her safety and had even told her that she thought I was wrong for staying with her and putting her life in jeopardy. Evelyn sympathized with her mother’s feelings, but in spite of them the summer of 2059 brought us closer than ever.
After Evelyn’s show closed in mid-June, she had a lot of free time. A couple times a week the cast and crew got together and went over some changes Sondheim-2 was considering, but most of the work now was with the producers who were raising money and trying to secure a theatre on Broadway. They were hoping to open that winter.
My schooling was over, so I went to work full time at USCS. While I was engaged to Lily-2, I had imagined that this would mean the start of 80-hour workweeks as I focused on my career. But now I was going to try to have a successful career with a 40-hour week. I wanted to spend all other available time with Evelyn.
To make that possible, we moved her into my place over the long Fourth of July weekend. Our relationship became less about dating and more about simply being around each other and helping each other have as full a life as possible. With that in mind, Evelyn encouraged me to take up writing again. She’d kept a journal since second grade and had recently begun writing birthday letters to her clone. She wouldn’t let me read any of it, but she used her new prolificacy, and some pestering, to get me moving. It worked, and I loved it. I kicked myself for wasting so many years forgetting my passion.
The first thing I tried was a one-act play called Romeo and Rosalind. The tragicomedy plot followed the time traveler from H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine as he went back in literary time to save the lives of Romeo and Juliet, which he did by revealing to them their tragic fate and encouraging them to separate and marry others. They follow his advice, and Romeo marries Rosalind while Juliet ties the knot with Prince Paris. Fate contrives to bring them to a tragic end anyway and, in this case, a loveless one as well.
It was my first true writing attempt in almost twenty years except as required by school, and it was no work of art. Evelyn, however, was generous. She praised the concept and said that my writing style had a definite, unique flair to it. When I asked her if that meant she’d be willing to play the part of Juliet on the stage, she laughed and started rearranging the spice rack. It seemed her charity only went so far. But she did perform a melodramatic parody of the play with me in the privacy of our own home.
And so it was back to the drawing board. In August I began work on my next big project, a novel. The title was Hamlet Act VI: The Dreams That Come. Sort of a somber version of Lee Blessing’s Fortinbras, but focused only on the dead. If Hamlet’s murdered father had come back as a ghost, then why not everyone else? And if they did return as ghosts, how would it unfold when Hamlet’s father meets his wife and murdering brother? And what would happen among Hamlet, Ophelia, and Polonius – not to mention Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?
I didn’t realize until years later, while talking with Jack, that this was an attempt to deal with issues in my own life. I was trying to understand feuds that could continue past death. In my case, the feud continued in an afterlife as clones rather than as ghosts, within a family that was, as Hamlet would have put it, and as Jack did put it, “more than kin and less than kind.”
After describing to Evelyn my vision for the storyline, she was even more delighted about the concept and encouraged me to pursue it.
“But don’t tell me – instead of everyone dying at the end, in this one all the dead people come back to life, right?”
I shook my head at her bad joke. Then asked if she would consider starring as Ophelia in its stage form.
“Ummm…maybe!” she replied as she turned and began to fluff a throw pillow.
I hadn’t gotten very far on the new novel before the news came in mid-September that Evelyn would need to move back to New York. The theatre was all arranged, and the producers wanted the Broadway production to open on March 11 with previews beginning the second week of January. That was in four months, and the company wanted to spend the time preparing in New York. Evelyn would have to leave La Jolla on September 26.
I was looking forward to the move. Every time I drove up to the house, I half expected to see Lily sprawled on the porch. Especially after her last e-mail:
Dear Adam,
Hey, thank you for trying to comfort me and calling for help the other time. You’re a good man. Lyle’s my problem, not yours. He’s probably what I deserve. It was my fault Mommy drowned herself. Maybe I’m supposed to take her place.
Lyle says he’ll make sure I’m not alone. He’s started touching me when he comes into my room at night. I pretend to be asleep.
Okay, if you want to get together sometime, please let me know.
Love, Lily
I called and begged her to move, but she repeated that if I didn’t want her, she would stay with Lyle. Maybe my leaving to New York would be good for both of us. Maybe she would move on.
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I’d already arranged to do most of my work by telecommuting. But there was one more thing I wanted to arrange before we left. I hoped to marry Evelyn.
I told her that I wanted to go back to the Wild Animal Park before we left San Diego, and I took Wednesday, September 17 off from work for that purpose. We toured the nursery again, took the tram, and ended at the lookout tower in the middle of the savannah. We sat there for a long time, talking and gazing out at the vista. I chose that location for the proposal because it was the most romantic destination of our first dates and because she had said it was her favorite place in the world. The proposal, coming so early in our relationship (even if we’d technically known each other for eighteen years) was far from a sure thing, and I figured I could use all the help I could muster.
We got permission to stay a while after the park closed. After a peaceful hour or so of watching dusk settle on the giraffes and elephants, I felt my cell vibrate. It was time. But I suddenly felt stupid for doing it. It was too soon. I was putting her in a position that would mortify her. I tried to think of a way out of it, but I heard Jack’s footsteps. And so did Evelyn. She turned around.
“Jack?” she exclaimed, jumping up and greeting him with a hug. “What are you doing here?”
She was grinning as if this was truly a remarkable coincidence. Maybe something in Jack’s return grin, and a lack of immediate response, suggested to her otherwise. I stood up, and Evelyn looked back and forth between us.
I was supposed to say something, but I was still wrestling with whether this was a wise thing to do.
Evelyn’s grin transformed into a huge smile that made her cheekbones bulge out beautifully. She laughed. “Um…what’s going on here?”
While Evelyn was watching me, I saw Jack urge me on with a tip of his head. If he didn’t think this was too soon, then just maybe…
I decided to jump. “Jack will ask if you’re married,” I clumsily began my Winter Wonderland-inspired proposal while fumbling in my pocket for the ring while keeping my eyes on Evelyn, ready to stop if her eyes started flashing red stoplights at me. But she didn’t. Her eyes fixed on my fumbling hand. Which finally produced the ring. For a moment. I was trying to hold it out in my palm, but it fell to the wooden walkway. I dropped to my hands and knees, trying to stop it from rolling in between the planks to the savannah below.
Surprisingly, my fingers trapped it. I cautiously used the fingers of my sweaty left hand to pick up the ri
ng and place it in the palm of my sweaty right hand.
I met Evelyn’s eyes again, fearful of what I’d see. Her mouth was open wide.
“You’ll say?” I whispered.
She froze. The long pause soon left me certain of one thing – she was going to turn me down and was trying to think of a tender way of doing it. While I thought about feeding myself to the lions.
But finally she walked to me, her face brightening into a huge, flashy smile, and helped me stand up. She plucked the ring out of my palm and gave me a hug and a long kiss.
“Does that mean yes?” I asked in disbelief.
Evelyn’s eyes looked to the side, appearing to mull it over for a moment. “No, Jack.”
I stood stock still, trying to sort out the flippant response.
She nodded to Jack and then wagged her finger at him as she said, “But I guess he can tie the knot since he’s around.”
Jack let out a whoop and hugged us both as I was still trying to believe it all. We took a picture of the three of us, and another of me putting the ring on her finger, still dazed. Evelyn must have noticed. After Jack excused himself to let us be alone, she took my hands and made me meet her eyes.
“Are you sure about this?”
I nodded. “I just can’t believe you are.”
She kissed me and held me close. “I love you.”
We held each other for a long time as the dark of night settled on the park and the sounds of nocturnal Africa embraced us.
*
I already had an idea for the wedding time and place, and Evelyn agreed. We would hold it the day before we left for New York on the night of Thursday, September 25. The location would be the auditorium at Hill Creek Junior Academy – the location of our first marriage.
On Friday we began notifying everyone. Naturally, I asked Jack to reprise his role as our Parson Brown. Their twins, Edmund and Lucy, were our ring boy and flower girl. Aunt Louise took the place of my mother. Lily-2 and Lyle-2 weren’t invited. I was afraid of what Lyle would do at the ceremony, and I was afraid an invitation to Lily would be seen as cruel.
On the eve of our wedding, as we performed a dress rehearsal of the ceremony, I remembered thinking how perfectly full circle my life had come. Was it too perfect to be real? Perhaps it was all someone else’s dream, and I was like Ti Moune in Once On This Island or my characters in Romeo and Rosalind, moved about by the hands of the gods, predestined to meet some terrible end of which I couldn’t hope to control. Or could it all be my own dream? I’d read stories about people who, at their very moment of death, lived entire lives in their minds. When I had seen Lyle putting the gun to my head in my mother’s eyes, perhaps he had fired after all, and everything that had happened since that instant had merely been my death vision. Now that the circle was completing, reuniting me with my two friends from second grade – the last people I’d seen before Lyle picked me up from school on that terrible day – my visions were winding down to an end. Would our wedding conclude with me lying dead on the kitchen floor next to my mother?
Long after Evelyn went to sleep that night, I tossed and turned, wondering if I would ever wake again.
***
I did wake, and to Evelyn’s loving kiss. The morning of our wedding had arrived. We smiled at each other excessively but didn’t talk much as we got ready. And we talked even less after Hannah came over to help Evelyn prepare. Hannah scarcely offered me a glance, but she was pleasant with her daughter.
There wasn’t a great deal of glitz or glamour that evening at the Hill Creek auditorium. But the guest list was amazing, including many of the people who had been at the Farewell Dolly opening. We even tracked down our second grade teacher, Mrs. Slater. We were deeply touched by those who dropped everything to attend our wedding on such absurdly short notice. And to top it all off, there weren’t any protestors. A clear sign that I’d completely lost my former drawing power.
Fortunately for this wedding, I didn’t have to try to skip across the stage. The only thing skipping was my heart. But I did have to walk down the aisle. Evelyn and I had a small pre-wedding argument about that. I wanted to wait for her at the altar as in traditional weddings, feeling it was a sign of respect for the bride by putting all the attention on her approach. Evelyn wanted us to walk down the aisle together as equals, as we had entered in Winter Wonderland.
In the end, she won. When the wedding march music started, she smiled at me under the veil, and I felt like I was going to fall on my face whether I was skipping or not. But suddenly there we were, at the canopy-covered altar on the stage as we had been long ago. We held hands (so she could tug me back in case I forgot any lines). Reverend Jack Lewis asked who was giving her away, and with only a slight hesitation, Hannah said she was. She had tears in her eyes, but whether those were tears of sadness, joy, or fear, I couldn’t say. Before sitting back down, she nodded to me and made a feeble smile. I was grateful for that.
Before our vows were exchanged, Bernadette Peters-2, Evelyn’s bridesmaid, sang the ballad My Mothers from Farewell Dolly. Carly Simon-2 wanted to sing her c-mother’s depressing song about marriage called That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be but instead agreed to do Anticipation. Then the good reverend had us say our vows. Evelyn didn’t have to tug me back this time. When he asked if I’d marry her, I said, “I do.” Evelyn said the same. We made it official with the breaking of the glass and a kiss.
When our kiss ended, I half expected her and everything else to disappear and for me to collapse on the floor next to Mom with a hole through my head, but happily the visions continued. Those visions included a reception of food, drink, dancing, and more singing beginning with Barbra Streisand-2 initiating our first dance as a wedded couple with the song Evergreen. Olivia Newton-John-2 fulfilled my request by singing Magic, and Evelyn grinned at my sappiness when Olivia got to the line about catching someone who falls.
Those ballads were followed by some holy rocking and rolling by celebrated Elvis-impersonator Reverend Jack Lewis. Bernadette-2 cast amusingly disparaging looks at me while warning Evelyn that You Better Shop Around, just as she’d sung to her co-star in their national tour of The Island of Dr. Moreau-inspired musical comedy Muskrat Love Will Keep Us Together. Evelyn reprised her Waiting for Life to Begin number from second grade, changing it to “Waiting for Night to Begin,” and then surprised and embarrassed me by singing the sexy You Never Done It Like That from Muskrat Love, playfully beckoning me with her fingers and expressions as she had done in the tour. Still blushing and rather anxious to embark on our honeymoon, I did my long-awaited I’m My Own Grandpaw routine, and this time I’d written down the words.
Thus began our wedded life.
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September 26, 2059 was a perfect time to be in New York. Temperature and humidity were dropping, and the summer tourists had thinned out. More importantly, the World’s Fair had returned to New York. Evelyn was attending rehearsals throughout our “honeymoon,” but I took a couple weeks off and we spent whatever time Evelyn’s schedule allowed exploring the fair.
Much had changed since New York’s first World’s Fair in 1939, which had given people their initial glimpse of television, the coming interstate highway system, home air conditioning, and, surprisingly, the first robots. At the time, to a nation worn down by the Great Depression and on the cusp of World War II, those innovations were almost universally hailed as boons that would make the world better for all humanity. The World’s Fair of 2059 drew much more hostility from a society grappling with the effects of too much technology.
Some exhibits received general praise. That’s where Wallutions debuted, allowing homeowners and businesses to change the look of their walls, ceilings, floors, doors, and windows via voice or computer commands. There were thousands of preset images, or you could design your own. You could choose themes that would make it look like you owned an expensive home overlooking the beach or a cabin nestled within a forest, complete with
appropriate sounds and smells. Or you could make your walls clear so it looked like you were living out in the open, able to see your yard and your neighbors, while anyone looking at your home from the outside would see an opaque dwelling of your choosing. Your pictures could still hang on the wall, but they would only be holographic reproductions of those pictures. Wallutions built nearly all the stunning buildings at the fair, including the Trylon and Perisphere based on the icons of the 1939 World’s Fair. Evelyn and I spent a lot of time in one of their virtual booths designing our future home, which would include a view of the African savannah out the back and Central Park out the front.
Also for the home were the new, inexpensive solar cells that could generate enough electricity to power most homes and were available in a variety of forms like patio furniture, birdbaths, and clear or ornamental panels for your roof. The Transportation Zone featured new nanosensors and nanobots that could detect and repair car problems as well as nearly always keep your car out of an accident and, in the rare collision, help better protect the occupants. In decline for decades, car crashes would soon become freak events.
By far the most popular area was the Futurama, or Science and Technology Zone. Eye, ear, and neural implants had already eliminated nearly all deafness and blindness, and you could experience these artificial systems at the fair. You could also put on a featherweight jumpsuit with which you could control all of your limbs with your thoughts – a boon to paraplegics and those otherwise incapacitated.
But not all medical advances were so widely embraced. Especially those featured at the Ingeneuity/USCS exhibit. Our least controversial product was our artificial immune system that could by then quickly heal small cuts, keep arteries unclogged, automatically release antihistamines for allergy sufferers, dismantle a couple forms of cancerous tumors, and monitor your body to notify you on your homedic of any chemical/vitamin deficiencies, heart irregularities, microscopic tumors, and several other serious conditions that required medical attention. Over the next several years we were predicting the ability to stop most forms of cancer before they took hold, repair/replace major organs, heal broken bones, attack and kill most known viruses, and even pause your hair and fingernail growth. The only people who were strongly opposed to these advances were those who thought it unnatural to have tiny nanobots swimming about in their bodies or who felt our visions of longevity were nothing but hubris.