“That’s not like her,” Jeremiah told Brent, “to miss Thursday night. Where could she be?”
He knew exactly where she was.
“Maybe she had to work late?”
“That isn’t usually an option,” he said. “She’d never let me get away with it. Where the hell is she?”
Some romantic rendezvous with her secret lover.
“This is kind of a treat,” the clone said to Parker, “just the guys, having a manly dinner.”
Parker grunted and rolled his eyes. “It’s pizza, Dad,” he said. “We didn’t kill a wild boar.”
“So how is school going?”
“It’s going.”
“Any plans for the weekend?”
“Nope.”
“Maybe we should save a slice or two for your mother.”
“I doubt she’d want cold pizza. I have homework. Can I take this upstairs?”
“Isn’t that against the rules? Aren’t we supposed to talk or something?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I’d say this Family Dinner Night is pretty much a bust.”
“Hey, just because Mom’s not here doesn’t mean you and I can’t have a chat.”
“A chat? About what?”
“I don’t know,” the clone said. “What’s the latest in the gaming world?”
“There’s a new one coming out, but not for, like, a year. It’s called Infinite Frontiers. I was going to ask if I could get the beta next month. But I need to subscribe to this group.”
In the lab, Brent shot a grin at Jeremiah. “The kid is plugged in,” he said.
“And how much will that cost me?” the clone asked.
“Not much,” Parker said. “I think it’s, like, fifteen dollars a month.”
“That’s more than half your allowance. If you want to blow it on some game, it’s up to you. But I thought you were saving up for a new monitor.”
“I was kind of hoping the subscription could be, like, a birthday present or something. My birthday is next week.”
“He’s a good negotiator.” Brent smiled.
“That sounds reasonable,” the clone said. “I’ll spring for a one-year subscription. Get me the details.”
“Awesome! Can I go upstairs now, though? I want to finish my homework, so I get some game time in.”
“Has Louie had his medicine? If we want that stuff to calm him down, the vet said he has to take it at the same time every day.”
“I gave it to him,” Parker said. “But if you ask me, it’s just making him sleep too much.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes and hoped Brent didn’t notice. His dog was on downers?
“Okay,” the clone said. “Go ahead, then.”
As the clone set about clearing the table in silence, Jeremiah felt oddly as though he were invading on someone else’s awkward, private moment. He watched him sigh and wipe the crumbs off the table. The clone stood still for a moment as though he weren’t sure what he should do next, and finally went into the family room, sat down on the couch and switched on the TV. Jeremiah wondered vaguely what was going through his mind. Somewhere along the line he’d come to accept his clone as a person, at least in some sense of the word. There were moments, like this one, when he almost felt sorry for him.
He wanted to turn the monitor off. But he knew the viewing would keep going for the complete four hours, so he and Brent played crazy eights and gin rummy while the clone rotated through TV channels and finally fell asleep on the couch, snoring again, much to Jeremiah’s dismay. He was still there when Diana came home and shook him awake three hours later. At that point, the monitor switched off abruptly, the designated viewing time completed.
Brent and Jeremiah exchanged glances as the monitor went dark.
“That’s it?” Jeremiah asked. “Can’t we turn it back on? I want to see what happens.”
“No,” Brent told him. “There’s no way to do that. We’re just going to have to wait, I guess. What do you think was going to happen?”
“Well, I’d like to think she was about to explain where she was all this time. After all that and we don’t even get to see where she was?”
“Yeah, kind of a bummer,” Brent said through a yawn. “I’m exhausted. Let’s get these questions answered so we can have something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jeremiah told him.
“Oh, come on,” Brent said. “Watching them eat that pizza was torture. I’m starving. I’ll make that macaroni and cheese you said you liked.”
“I am too old to keep eating like this,” Jeremiah said. “But, yeah. I could go for that.”
“Displaced control issues” is the way Natalie Young described it during the next day’s session. Jeremiah disagreed.
“What control issues?” he asked. “I don’t have any control issues.”
“Not when you were actually in control, no, but right now, Jeremiah, you’re not really in control, are you?”
“Well, obviously,” he snapped.
“Are you feeling angry?”
“Yeah, you know what? I am feeling angry. I’m pissed off, but I think that’s pretty normal under the circumstances. I don’t think that amounts to ‘control issues’ or anything quite so dramatic as that. I get that this is in your job description and all, but everything doesn’t have to fit so neatly into your little psychobabble boxes.”
“Who are you angry with, Jeremiah? Are you angry at your wife for missing the dinner? Are you angry at the clone for not doing something about it?”
“Well, I’d just like to know what was so goddamn important she would miss the one thing she never allows anyone to skip! And she doesn’t get home until almost eleven? Where the hell was she all that time? She’s an aide in a lawyer’s office, for God’s sake. It’s a part-time job. She doesn’t do anything that crucial. And she never worked nights before. I feel like I’m out of the loop here!”
“And this frustrates you.”
“Yes, Natalie, it frustrates me!”
“Perhaps your clone discussed it with her after the monitoring was finished?”
“Well, if he did, I think I have the right to know what she said.”
“Do you feel your rights are being compromised, Jeremiah?”
“I feel like I don’t know where my wife was for half the night,” he said. “I mean, first she starts
