Reborn

1

Jim awoke stiff, sore, and nauseated, feeling like Charlie Watts had been using the back of his head for a bass drum. He hadn't slept a wink Monday night. He'd tried—he'd curled up on the couch under a blanket and hoped he'd doze off so he could wake up later and find that all this had been a bad dream. But sleep hadn't come. And so he'd lain there in the dark, tense and rigid, his mind racing and his stomach twisted into a tight, heavy knot until dawn had crept in and Carol had called. Only exhaustion and a few shots of JD had let him sleep last night. But he didn't feel the least bit rested.

This was no good. He was going to have to get a grip. He loathed self-pity and could sense that he was turning into some sort of woeful basket case.

But he had a right to be a basket case, dammit! He'd gone searching for the identity of his parents and discovered that he didn't have any. Worse, his own identity was in question now.

I'm not really me—I'm a piece of somebody else!

The knowledge was a weight in his chest, pressing down on his stomach. Why? Why me? Why couldn't he have had a mother and a father like everybody else? Was that asking for so much?

This was all so damn unreal!

He squinted in the bright morning sun pouring through the window. The clock read a little after eight. Almost reflexively he reached for the journals.

They weren't there!

He could have sworn he'd left them right here by his side on the couch. He jumped up and lifted the cushions. He looked under the couch, even unfolded the hidden mattress. Gone!

His heart thudding in his throat, Jim hurried down the short hall and across the living room toward the master bedroom. The smell of fresh coffee stopped him.

"Carol?"

"In here, Jim."

What was Carol doing home? She wasn't off today. Then it struck him: She must have taken the journals! She must have read them! No!

He rushed into the kitchen.

"Carol, the books! Where are they?"

She put down her coffee cup and slipped her arms around his neck. Her long, sandy hair trailed over the shoulders of her robe. She looked beautiful.

"I love you, Jim."

Normally this would have stirred his desire, but there was room in his mind for only one thing.

"The journals—did you take them?"

She nodded. "And I read them."

Jim felt as if the floor were giving way beneath him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Carol. I didn't know, really I didn't. I never would have married you if I'd known."

"Known what? That you were cloned from Hanley?"

Her eyes were so soft, so loving, her voice gentle and soothing. How could she be so calm?

"Yes! I swear I didn't know!"

"What difference does it make, Jim?"

"What difference? How can you say that? I'm a freak! A scientific experiment!"

"No you're not. You're Jim Stevens. The man I married. The man I love."

"No! I'm a piece of Roderick Hanley!"

"You're Jim Stevens—Hanley's twin."

"I wish! He took a piece of himself and stuck it in that whore and grew me out like a goddamn cutting from one of our forsythia bushes. You know—snip it off, stick it in the ground, water it enough, and you've got a new bush."

"Don't talk like—"

"Or maybe I'm not a cutting. I'm more like a tumor. That's what I am—a fucking tumor!"

"Stop it!" she cried, showing strong emotion for the first time. "I won't have you talking about yourself like that!"

"Why not? Everybody else will!"

"No they won't. I'm the only other person who knows, and I don't feel that way."

"But you're different."

"Well, I'm it. Because nobody else will ever know unless you tell them. And even then, they won't believe you."

She said it with a tone of such finality that Jim was afraid to ask the next question.

"The journals! Where are they?"

"Where they belong—in the garbage."

"Oh, no!"

He spun and headed for the front door.

"Don't bother," he heard Carol say behind him. "The truck came by at six-thirty."

Suddenly he was angry. More than angry. He was enraged.

"You had no right! No goddamn right! Those journals were mine!"

"I'm not going to argue that with you. They were yours but I threw them out anyway. If they haven't been fed into the incinerator yet, they soon will be."

She was so cool, so composed, so utterly remorseless. Her attitude of fait accompli infuriated him.

"How could you?"

"You gave me no choice, Jim. You were letting those journals eat you alive. So I got rid of them. You were going to let what they said ruin your life. I couldn't stand by and watch that happen. But now it's over and done. They're gone, and so you're going to have to take what you learned from them and pick up the pieces and go on from here. You've got to admit that's going to be easier if you don't have those journals staring you in the face all the time, if you don't keep going back to them time after time, looking for some sort of flaw that will prove them wrong."

She was right. The cool logic of her words was worming its way past his anger, damping it but not dousing it. After all, they had been his journals. His legacy.

"Okay," he said. "They're gone. Okay… okay…"

He kept repeating the word, walking around the kitchen in small circles. His thoughts were all jumbled up with his emotions. He couldn't separate them. If this had been someone else's problem, he was sure he would be calm and cool and completely rational.

But this is me!

"I did it for you, Jim," Carol said.

He looked at her eyes and saw the love there.

"I know, Carol. I know." But what did he really know? What could he be sure of now? "I just… I need to sort this out. I need to take a walk."

"You're not going back to that mansion, are you?"

"No. Just a little walk. I won't even leave the yard. I'm not running away. I just need to be by myself a bit. I won't be long. I just…"

He opened the kitchen door and stepped out into the backyard. The air was cold outside, but he barely noticed. Besides, he couldn't bring himself to go back inside to get a jacket. Not just yet. As he strode around the side of the house, he noticed that the cover on the crawl space entry had fallen out. He fitted it back into place and kept on walking.