A Nearly Perfect Copy Read Online Free Page B

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