“Are you going to be in the talent show?” she asked when the hospital was out of sight.
I was impressed by her omniscience and relieved she was talking again. “You know about that, too?”
She nodded wisely. “Of course.”
“Well, no way. I’m not getting up on stage.”
“You know what else I know?” she asked.
“Yeah, everything.”
Mom laughed, ruffled my hair. “That’s right. And I also know that Evelyn Green is going to be in the talent show.”
My mouth hung open. How did she know I liked Evelyn? Moms were spooky.
“If you did something,” she continued, “then maybe you guys could rehearse together.”
Moms were spooky, but they were smart too. The following Monday I got up the nerve to ask Evelyn if she would rehearse with me. She said yes.
Table of Contents
10
Evelyn was a musical theatre fan and had selected a song written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty who had penned such musicals as Ragtime, Seussical, and Once On This Island. The latter included a vibrant song called “Waiting for Life to Begin” sung by Ti Moune, a young girl who as a baby was miraculously saved during a flood. She believed the island gods saved her for a great reason, and the song is her prayer for that remarkable life to commence. The capricious gods hear her prayer, and decide to answer it by forcing her to choose between her love for a man and her love for life.
For myself, I practiced singing the 1940s comedy tune thought to be based on a Mark Twain anecdote – Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe’s I’m My Own Grandpaw. What else?
Like my c-father, but unlike Evelyn, I couldn’t carry a tune to save my life. Any of my lives. Fortunately this song would allow me to basically talk my way through it. All the teachers seemed amused and surprised that I was willing to go up on stage and sing a song that everyone would associate with my oddly branched family tree. Truth was, I just wanted to do it to give me more time with Evelyn, and I hoped she’d like me even more.
I was fine until our final dress rehearsal. Walking out alone onto that stage for the first time, reality dawned that I was actually going to have to do this. I told myself that somehow I’d get through it. But the next night, as all the students, parents, and faculty began filing into the school auditorium, I felt like I was going to throw up. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Evelyn was slated to go on a couple acts before me. She took the microphone from its stand with a confident smile and began belting out her song with the voice and charm she’d displayed in rehearsals. Her pleading to the gods for an extraordinary life was so real. Most of the kids had never heard the song before, but she landed the biggest ovation of the day. I was completely mesmerized, and somehow even more infatuated than before. She took her bow, and Mrs. Slater motioned for me to get ready.
I panicked. I couldn’t think of the lyrics to the song. Heck, I couldn’t think of the title to the song. Something about a grandpa…
I shook my head, tears beginning to fill my eyes. Mrs. Slater came over.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“I can’t remember the song!” I cried, sure that this would be the most embarrassing moment of my life. Not only would I not impress Evelyn, I’d disgrace myself to the entire school.
“Well, that’s okay. We’ll skip you for now and if you remember later, just come let me know.”
With a snap of her fingers, she ended the biggest crisis of my life since the Gabrielle Burns incident. I didn’t know what I’d say to Mom, especially since she had even invited Great-Grandpa Lyle to come. But my far greater fear was how embarrassed I’d be when Evelyn found out.
As Mrs. Slater walked away, Evelyn was standing there. She had overheard my admission about forgetting the lyrics. I felt myself blush as she sat down beside me on the backstage steps.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” she said. “I really liked it in rehearsals.”
I lit up in relief and adoration. “Well, you were amazing!”
She shook her head humbly but smiled and thanked me. I was sure at that moment we were destined to be married. It was no surprise that my future wife won the talent contest for the second grade class.
*
Evelyn’s smile was my reprieve. Lyle’s scowl was my punishment.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I approached them.
“Oh, it’s okay, honey,” Mom said as she gave me a hug. “I was the one who talked you into the whole thing.”
“What happened?” Lyle asked.
“I’m sorry,” I repeated. “I forgot the words.”
“Forgot the words? I thought you were smart. Maybe you just don’t like admitting that you are your own grandpa. Was that it?”
“Huh?” I didn’t know where that had come from. But he was angry, and I shrank against Mom’s leg.
“Grandpa, you’re being—” Mom started as Lyle continued.
“Part of being a proper husband for Lily will mean being a good provider. How are you going to be the next CEO of our company if you can’t even stand up on a stage?”
I glanced over at two-year-old Lily-2 who was looking at me sideways as she sucked on the edge of an auditorium chair.
“That’s enough,” Sarah said. She fixed Lyle with an angry stare as she took me by the hand. “Let’s go, Michael. Don’t worry about Great-Grandpa Lyle.”
“Stop babying him, Sarah. We need to raise a man for Lily, not some sissy.”
Mom led me out of the auditorium and to her car, letting me in before getting in herself and slamming the door. She started the car, drove a few feet, then lurched to a stop.
“I’m sorry about your great-grandfather,” she said as calmly as possible. “He’s a troubled man. The best thing to do with him is ignore his advice.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to smile for her.
She looked me in the eye and nodded, and managed to smile herself. “Good. Now have you remembered the lyrics yet?”
I thought about it. “I think so.”
“Can you sing it for me?” she whispered conspiratorially.
I laughed at her jesting secrecy, and because she was happy again. I sang the song over and over, loudly and badly, until we got home.
Table of Contents
11
A week later, as we milled around the door to Mrs. Slater’s room a couple minutes before class started, Evelyn was standing a few feet away talking to Dawn. Which meant I was talking to no one.
“How’s it goin’, Adam?” Jimmy Preston asked from behind me.
It startled me. “Fine,” I said, wondering what was coming next. Despite my hatred of him, I had such a strong desire to be accepted that I hoped he was truly being friendly.
“That’s cool,” he said. “Did ya finish the book report on Where the Wild Things Are?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Me too. Did you flip up any skirts at lunch?”
I laughed nervously. “Whaddya mean?”
“Oh, didn’t you know that today is Friday Flip-up Day?”
I shook my head.
“Sure! It means that if a girl wore a dress or skirt to school, we’re supposed to flip it up. All the girls know about it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. If you don’t, it means you don’t like them.”
It sounded both logical and official. And I did want Evelyn to know I liked her. I turned around to her, reached out and flipped up the hem of her skirt. I caught a glimpse of the laced edging of yellow panties against her pale legs. She spun around as she forced her skirt down with her fists.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded.
I immediately realized that I’d done something horribly wrong. “It’s Friday…” I began clumsily. Jimmy and his friends were howling behind me.
I felt far more humiliated than I had during my lapse at the talent show. Evelyn shot me a look of anger I hoped to never see again. She quickly tracked down Mrs. Slater
, who then pulled me aside, explained why it was wrong and had me apologize to Evelyn.
“I’m very sorry,” I mumbled, staring down at my shoes. “I didn’t realize how bad that was and I’ll never do it again.”
“It’s okay,” Evelyn said.
There was an uncomfortable pause. Was I supposed to say something else? I noticed that my shoelaces were loose and in need of retying.
“Adam?” Evelyn called, getting me to look up at her. “It’s okay,” she said with a sincere nod – a sincerity that made me feel closer to her and, yet, gave me a sense that I had no business getting closer to her. She was way out of my league.
And so for what seemed like forever, I stopped talking to her. We were no longer sitting in the same group during class. I didn’t chase her around or try to flirt. I did steal a glance every now and then, but to my dismay I never caught her glancing back. For all I knew, she had forgotten I existed, and I didn’t do anything to indicate that I missed her.
*
It was a cold November in La Jolla that year. Meaning that the mornings dipped down to fifty degrees. Mom had told me to wear long sleeves to school, but I still felt cold. And more alone than before I’d met Evelyn. During lunch recess, while everyone else played basketball, four-square, tag, and other games together, I stood by myself on the grass about ten yards from the basketball courts, focused on my handheld Clone Ranger game, trying to pretend that I’d rather be doing that than playing with the other kids.
“Are you busy?” asked a voice I didn’t place at first. Upon looking up, I saw Jack Lewis approaching.
“Sort of,” I lied as I paused the game.
“Maybe later?”
“No, what is it?” I asked impatiently. After the last Jimmy Preston conversation, I was suspicious of anyone who spoke to me.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to say I liked your Halloween story.”
“Oh,” I said, a little embarrassed I’d used a guy I hardly knew as a hero. “Thank you.”
“Yeah. And, um…well, I just wanted to tell you about a Christmas play I’ve written that we’re putting on at church, and I wanted to see if you’d be in it.”
I knew his father must have put him up to it, but I was touched anyway. He could have asked me in passing with his friends all around him. Instead he sought me out alone.
“I don’t know,” I said, my tone softening.
I expected him to shrug and walk away. He had done his duty. But instead he said, “It should be a lot of fun. It’s called We Three Kings, and they’re all based on old rock stars. They read the stars wrong and think they’re going to Bethlehem to find the Song of God instead of the Son of God.”
I smiled. “Well, could I have a part with no lines, like one of the animals?” I asked sheepishly, pun intended. My failure in the talent show still made me cringe every time I thought of it, and Jack would want me in a small role anyway. An easy out for both of us, I thought.
“Actually, I want you to be a wise man,” he said.
“Jack, I—” A sharp pain on the back of my head stopped me. I fell to my knees and grabbed my head, and Jack spun around in time to see a couple of the older kids jogging back into the recess crowd.
The physical injury was not great – a little bump with no blood. But whether true or not, there was no doubt in my mind that someone had thrown a rock at my head because I was the only clone in school. This was far more personal than the attack by Gabrielle Burns when I was four. This was an attack by my peers at school where everyone knew me. Friends of Jack? Had it all been a setup?
“Come on!” Jack called, trying to pull me to my feet. “Let’s go find them!”
I stood up shakily. “No, I think I’m okay. It’s no big.” I just wanted to go home. And not come back.
“No big?” he responded in disbelief – the most emotional I’d ever seen him. “They could have really hurt you! Let’s go!”
I scanned the basketball courts behind us, which were teeming with kids. “I didn’t see who did it.”
“I saw them a little. Let’s try to find them!”
I went along, although at a much slower pace than Jack. What were we going to do if we found them? Jack had an inner confidence that made me think he could handle himself in a fight. I didn’t have a great deal of inner or outer confidence, and had never been in a real fight before. I was scared, and I was praying we wouldn’t find them at all.
There were all kinds of games in progress on the basketball courts, and of course I had no idea who I was supposed to be looking for. As far as I knew, any one of them could have thrown it. All of them at least wanted to have thrown it. So I simply followed Jack, hanging my head and rubbing it tenderly as we went. Then he stopped.
“I think that’s them,” he said.
I followed his finger to a group of four teenagers. They were standing around laughing with each other. They looked like jerks to me, but perhaps at that time I’d have thought the same of anyone. They definitely looked like they would kick our asses if we said anything to them.
“What’s wrong, Adam?” asked a soft, familiar voice from behind.
My heart jumped. I knew it was Evelyn before I turned around. Both embarrassment and relief flooded into me at the same time – embarrassment that I’d have to tell her that I got picked on, relief that she still knew I was alive, and was even willing to talk to me.
“Somebody threw a rock at me,” I said with as little shaking in my voice as I could muster.
She seemed to have already deduced something along those lines, probably from the way I’d been rubbing my bump and how Jack was pointing toward some older kids.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay.”
“They did it?” She nodded toward the boys.
“I dunno, I didn’t see them.”
“I think so,” Jack answered, “but I only saw their backs.”
Evelyn didn’t need to hear anything else. Grabbing my hand, she led me to the nearest teacher’s aide. I couldn’t take my eyes off her hand. Nobody my age had ever held me by the hand before. I didn’t want her to let go.
And she didn’t. Somehow she managed to tell the aide what happened and point the boys out without letting go of me, perhaps gaining additional sympathy from the woman for her effort. The aide told us to follow her. As we drew near, the boys started walking away, but the aide ordered them to stop. They acted surprised, but were worse actors than even me.
“Did you throw a rock at this boy?”
The leader, a tall blond boy named Victor Marks whose father I later learned worked at U.S. Cloning Systems, looked down at me with disgust. “No, ma’am. We’ve just been talking,” he replied, not meeting her eyes.
“This boy thinks he saw you walking away after the rock was thrown,” she continued, motioning to Jack.
Victor shot a sharp look at Jack and shook his head while his friends grew fidgety. “I don’t know what to say. We’ve been standing here all recess.”
“That’s not true, I saw you do it!” Evelyn lied.
The blond leader sneered at her. “You weren’t there.”
Probably everybody but Victor realized he had fallen for a ploy even a second grader would have seen through. Evelyn beamed with satisfaction. Jack grinned, nodded to Evelyn, and slapped me on the back. I goggled at her with admiration. This time she did glance back and flashed me a smile that sent my head reeling farther than that little rock could have ever aspired.
Table of Contents
12
I was in a different world the rest of the day, and was taken aback when I got home and my mom seemed so concerned with what happened at school. Oh yeah – that “rock” thing. She sat on our couch, asked me to sit on the floor in front of her, and parted my hair around the bump.
“Does it hurt, sweetie?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Really?” She was quiet for a long time. “I’m sorry those bad guys did that. I guess there’s always going
to be someone like that. They just want to pick on someone else so they can think they’re superior, and they’ll find any reason they can. You know it’s not your fault, right?”
I nodded. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it made sense. Actually, I hadn’t thought about it at all, but it seemed important to Mom.
“It’s hard being first,” she continued, soothingly running her fingers through my hair after satisfying herself that the bump wasn’t serious. “You’re going to have to be very strong. Some people are going to want to hurt you, and others are going to try to tell you what to do, and there’s always going to be a lot of pressure on you. It’s not fair, but it’s true. And I’m very sorry about that.”
“It’s worth it!” I said, smiling up at my mom’s worried face.
She laughed and hugged me tightly. “You’re such a clever boy. You must have gotten that from my mitochondrial DNA.”
I sat down next to her. “Will you ever be a clone?”
She hesitated, pondering it as if for the first time. “I don’t think so, honey. But not because I think there’s anything wrong with it.”
“Why not?” I asked, suddenly fearful. Thinking of the day at the beach. “If you don’t, I’d never see you again.”
She frowned and was silent for a long time. It would be another eleven years before I knew what she was thinking about. The day Adam-1 asked her if she would raise his clone as her son. They both described that day in their writings.
In the spring of 2022, and Sarah had just graduated from UCLA where she’d completed her BA in child psychology. She had accepted a job as a counselor with Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Adam took a rare day off work to drive up the coast and help pack her belongings. And see if she’d be his mother.
There wasn’t much to pack. Mostly some dishes and a few furnishings, but they were furnishings my c-father knew well from his childhood. Sarah had declined his offer to buy her all new things for her first apartment, instead asking for the belongings that had been sitting in storage since Michael and Sarah’s deaths. These included the two novels Michael had written and his rare autographed copy of The Catcher in the Rye, some old records by Donna Summer, Roberta Flack, Lawrence Welk star Anacani and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, a 1970s paisley couch (which Sarah had reupholstered) and the oak dining table, upon which they were packing boxes.