Chapter Text
By choice, Sally and Gene lived as off-the-grid as possible when they were out to sea, which meant no internet and no phone calls except for absolute emergencies, which came in through their emergency cell. They had been out for five weeks this time, keeping in visual contact with a colleague's boat and studying marine habitats off the California and Oregon coasts. The trip had its bittersweet moments, as Gene's health was declining and they weren't sure how many more trips they could take. Sally had emailed Cosima a year ago, telling her about Gene's prostate surgery and how the doctors wanted him to stay closer to land because his blood pressure wasn't great and they worried about his heart. Cosima hadn't responded.
She's probably busy, Sally thought. She remembered her own graduate days – the sleepless nights in the lab, the last minute runs to the copy/print center, the camaraderie with other graduate students and younger professors. Maybe she has a new girlfriend. If she did, Sally hoped she was a good one. She'd lost count of the number of girls Cosima had dated, and those were only the ones Sally knew about. While a part of her applauded her daughter's romantic success, in recent years she had developed an on-going refrain: Just find a nice girl, Cosima. Find a nice girl who makes you happy for more than a couple of months. Someone you can settle down with.
It wasn't even about grandchildren. Sally's sister Margaret had five grandchildren now, and her brother had ten, but Sally had never entertained much hope of having any herself. Cosima was wonderful with children, but Sally suspected her daughter didn't want any of her own. Sally just wanted Cosima to have someone to take care of her, to give her the kind of life-long happiness and support that she and Gene gave each other. She wasn't necessarily worried about her; she just wanted the best for her.
A few weeks after emailing her, she called Cosima's cell phone, only to hear that the number was disconnected. She emailed again, this time sending the message to Cosima's UMN account as well as her personal account. Still, there was no response. This was unusual. Sally and Gene were not always easy to get a hold of, but Cosima usually responded to emails and phone calls within a couple of days. She's just busy, Sally told herself. She was so excited to transfer to Minnesota, she doesn't need her mother bothering her. And then she and Gene were out to sea again, off the grid.
For Thanksgiving, she and Gene went up to Sacramento to visit her sister Margaret's family. All three of Margaret's children were there, with their spouses and children, and all of them asked after Cosima.
“Oh, she's just so busy,” Sally said.
“We invited her to come,” Gene said, “but she never got back to us. I think she must've gotten eaten by the lab up there.” He laughed, but Sally knew he was worried.
Margaret's son Josh frowned. “It's not like her not to reply, though.” He and Cosima were born only a few weeks apart, and often joked that they should have been siblings. Once he could separate himself from the family crowd long enough, he took out his cell phone. Over his shoulder, Sally saw him checking Facebook, and she was about to scold him until he turned to her and showed her the screen. “Did Cosima delete her Facebook?”
“Oh, I don't know. You know we don't do social media.”
“Yeah, but she does. Or she did. She's not listed in my friends anymore, and there are no search results for Cosima Niehaus. I checked a couple mutuals, and she's not listed in their friends, either.”
“Well, you know, a lot of people are getting off Facebook these days. It's not healthy, I think, to be on there too much anyway.”
That night, in their bed at the Best Western near Margaret's house, Sally and Gene stared up at the ceiling. “Don't worry too much about her,” Gene said. “She's young. She's allowed to go wandering once in a while without telling anyone.”
She wondered how much he was trying to convince himself. “She's thirty-two,” she reminded him. “She's not as young as she used to be.”
“Thirty-two is still young. And she's curious. Maybe she found a great project that took her around the world, and she just hasn't gotten the chance to tell us about it, yet? Remember when she went off to Iceland for a semester, and didn't tell us until she came back?”
Of course she remembered. “What if something's happened to her, though?”
“If something really bad had happened, the school would have called us. We're listed as her emergency contacts. No news is.... not necessarily bad news.”
That was in November. In March they'd sent Cosima a birthday card with a check for $200, but the post office returned it. Now it was late July and Sally sat in her favorite cafe in Fisherman's Wharf, sipping a chai latte and eating quiche as she sorted through the hundreds of emails that had accumulated during their voyage. Most were garbage. A few were from past students, asking for recommendations or research help, which she was happy to give. A few more were from colleagues, co-authors, academic journals, and assorted scientists invested in her work. She had just deleted a few dozen emails when she paused, cursor over the little trashcan, when she saw the subject on the next email. Hi Mom. Suddenly wide awake, she opened the message and read it a few times, surprised by the tears pricking her eyes.
Hi Mom,
I'm sorry it's been so long since I've been in touch. Things have been pretty crazy here. There's a lot that I want to catch you up on, but I'd rather do it in person. I'm in Latin America right now, on a research trip, but I'll be in Toronto for Christmas. I'd love it if you guys could come up to see me. There's some people I want you to meet, too.
I hope to see you soon.
Love,
Cosima
A research trip in Latin America. Well, that was a thousand times better than all of the horrible scenarios Sally had played in her mind over the past several months to explain Cosima's silence, but it didn't quite match with what she knew of Cosima's PhD studies in evolutionary biology. Or did it? Maybe she's in the Galapagos, she thought, looking at tortoises. Or studying the physiology of remote tribes in the Amazon.
She emailed back immediately, saying that they would love to see her in Toronto for Christmas, and could Cosima please tell them which dates to buy the plane tickets for. Normally they spent Christmas with Gene's family in Orange County, but after not hearing from her daughter for a year and a half, and not seeing her in person for a little longer, Sally Niehaus would happily fly to eastern Canada in December.
* * *
They only got Cosima's new phone number the day before they flew out to see her. For all the months prior, Cosima insisted on communicating by email only, and in those emails she'd said next to nothing about herself or what she was up to these days, except that she was doing well. Sally's questions about what she was doing in Latin America, or Toronto for that matter, went unanswered, but Cosima said she was sorry to hear about Gene's health problems and happy to hear about their recent sea trips. Cosima said she missed them and couldn't wait to see them again. Anything else, Sally supposed, would have to wait.
The trip to Toronto was predictably miserable. The Niehauses were boat people, not plane people, and the changes in air travel since they'd last flown in the 1990s did not improve their feelings towards it. If they were flying for any other reason, Gene would have griped the entire time, and Sally might have found a way out of it, but on the trip, they just looked at each other, squeezed each other's hands, and smiled.
At the airport, they had to contend with hordes of other people traveling for the holidays or winter break, and by the time they'd gotten their luggage and passed through the doors warning that one could not re-enter except through security, they were emotionally cooked.
And then, standing there amongst the people holding signs with names or bouquets of Welcome Home balloons, was Cosima.
She wore her red wool coat she'd had in Minnesota the one time they'd visited her there. She still had dreadlocks, bound up at the crown of her head, and thick-framed glasses, and when she saw her parents she still gave that big toothy smile that Sally would know anywhere. They hugged and Sally kissed her cheek and Cosima took their largest suitcase, and soon they were outside in the frigid Toronto winter. Cosima had a car, a light blue Toyota Yaris, that they piled into and which Cosima did not seem totally comfortable driving.
“It's a rental,” she explained. “We just got back two days ago, and we're only gonna be here for a month or two, so we're just renting whenever we need to, or taking Ubers.”
We. Sally did not miss the plural pronoun, and from the look in Gene's eye, neither did he. Instead of asking about that, though, she asked, “Are you going back to Latin America, then?”
“Um, no, actually. Probably Israel. Maybe Morocco. We haven't decided yet.”
“I see...” She did not see. “What kind of research are you doing, exactly, that takes you all over the world like this? I hope you're getting some kind of funding for it.”
“Oh, yeah, we have a, um, a pretty generous donor. Money's not really an object, thankfully.”
The first question, Sally noticed, went unanswered. Was this going to be a trend, then? Cosima hiding things, avoiding topics, being vague? “What brings you to Toronto, then?” she asked. “Does Minnesota have a program up here?”
“Oh,” Cosima said, “it's not through the university.”
“Who is it through, then?” Irritation threatened at the front of her brain, but she reminded herself to stay calm.
“We, um...” Cosima scratched her head. She was focused on the road, but Sally got the feeling that she wouldn't have made eye contact even if she weren't driving. “We have a nonprofit foundation that handles the finances and administrative aspects.”
“Mmhm.” Sally turned to look at her husband in the back seat. He was frowning, watching Cosima drive.
“You're being awfully vague, Cos,” he said, not unkindly. “Don't think we haven't noticed.”
Cosima navigated her way through a brief construction zone before answering him. “I know,” she said finally. “There's a lot. A lot that I need to tell you guys. I just want to do it face-to-face, okay? Like, when I'm not driving.”
“Okay.”
“Whatever it is,” Sally said, laying her hand on Cosima's shoulder, “I don't want you to be afraid to tell us. We'll always love you, you know that.”
Cosima half-smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. “I know. I love you, too.”
* *
Their hotel was near a residential section of Toronto, near a park that must be beautiful in the summer. Cosima helped them carry their luggage up and waited while they settled into the suite that she had reserved for them. The suite had a couch, coffee table, and arm chair. When Sally emerged from the bedroom, Cosima was staring out the window, fidgeting with one of her rings and frowning.
“Gene'll be out in a minute,” she said, standing beside her daughter. “Is there anything that you don't want him to know just yet?” She kept her voice low, just in case.
“No,” Cosima said. “I want to tell both of you.”
They made some tea in the little pot they found in the kitchenette, then sat around the coffee table in the living area. Cosima was nervous; Sally hadn't seen her this nervous since high school. She reached over and took Cosima's hand and squeezed it. “Why don't you tell us what's going on? You'll feel better after you do.”
After a deep breath, Cosima began. “Do you remember,” she said, “when you got pregnant with me?”
Pregnant? Sally's eyes widened, and she nodded, still holding her daughter's hand. “Of course I do.”
“You got in vitro because you couldn't get pregnant, and you had to try a couple different clinics, or doctors or whatever.”
“That's right.”
“And they talked you through the whole process, about how they combined your cells in the lab and implanted them into you, and that I was just as much yours as if you'd made me naturally.”
“Yes....” If Cosima was trying to tell them that she was pregnant, she was doing it in an awfully round-about way. But maybe that wasn't what she was trying to say at all. She remembered then one of her last conversations with Cosima, before Cosima vanished into the ether and stopped returning calls and emails. Cosima had asked for more information about the clinic her parents had used to conceive her. She'd gotten blood and hair samples from both of them, saying she was going to run a genetic test. Sally squeezed her hand again. “You are ours, sweetie, no matter how... scientific the process of getting you was. You know that better than anyone, I would think, considering your background.”
Cosima looked down at the coffee table and scratched her forehead, then her nose, then her ear. “Yeah, that's kinda what I want to talk about.”
There was another pause. “We've told you everything we can about all that,” Gene said. “We can tell you again, but there's nothing new.”
“I found out something.” Cosima looked back up at them now, her jaw set. “Just before I moved to Minnesota. I found out that, when they said they used your cells to make an embryo, to make me, they lied.” Now she looked directly at her mother. “Whatever they did with your cells, they didn't put them back inside you. They used you as an unknowing donor in an illegal science experiment, and I was the result of that.”
Out of all of the things Sally had expected Cosima to say, that wasn't close to any of them. “A science experiment?” she repeated.
“Yes.” Cosima took a deep, shuddering breath. “In human cloning.”
In the silence that followed, the heater turned itself on, filling the room with whirrs and clatters, and outside an emergency siren went by. Down the hall someone closed a door and called out to someone else. Cosima's parents just stared at her.
“I know it sounds weird,” Cosima said. “But it's true. I've seen all the evidence, I've run the tests myself, I've met the people who started the experiment and some of the ones who kept it going for years and years and years without making it public. I can prove it to you if you let me.”
Gene shifted on the couch, crossing and uncrossing his arms. “Human cloning? That's not possible. I've never seen any research that backs up that possibility. I mean, organs, maybe, but...”
“I know, and neither had I, because they kept it all under such tight wraps, but it was there. I've seen it.”
“So you're saying that you're a clone?” Sally asked.
“Yes.”
She took another moment to digest that. Whenever she imagined human clones, she pictured some science fiction android-type creatures who lacked everything that made humans, well, human. That, or she imagined that terrible Michael Keaton movie from the 90s.
“And there are... others?” Sally ventured. “Other... clones?”
“Yes. There are 274 of us still living, that we know of. Some of them live here in Toronto; that's why I'm here, actually. We're, uh... doing Christmas together.” She smiled at that, and Sally imagined a room full of Cosimas sitting around a tree, with identical dreadlocks and red coats.
“You'll have to forgive me, sweetie,” Sally said, “but that does seem a little farfetched.”
“I know, I know. It's totally crazy, but it's true.”
“How did you find out about all this?” Gene asked. “If it's some top secret illegal experiment?”
Cosima sat up straight and adjusted her glasses, preparing to launch into a spiel. “Well, one of the clones here in Toronto, Beth Childs, contacted me about two years ago. She'd been contacted by a German woman who thought we might all be clones, so Beth ran a facial-recognition test though the driver's license records in Canada and the US. She found me and another woman living close to Toronto, and she contacted both of us. Once we'd met, it became pretty obvious that we were at least related, and I ran some genetic tests that proved that we were identical.”
That's why she wanted our hair and blood. She never said a word about this, though... “Two years ago? That's when you changed your research focus.”
“Yes. And that's why. I did the scientific work to find out where we all came from, Beth did the detective work, and Alison provided the funds.”
Another silence followed, and Sally looked over to her husband. By the frown on his face, she could tell he wasn't buying it. She remembered the episode of This American Life she'd heard, about people with delusional disorders. “But Cosima,” she said, “you look like me. Everyone says so.”
“I know, but that's... that's just chance. They probably chose you as a donor because you matched the physical profile. Plus, there's all kind of epigenetic and environmental factors that influence how we look and how we perceive each other and ourselves, and social expectations definitely play a role, too. People want me to look like you because I'm your daughter, and they see what they want to see. You see what you want to see.”
Sally leaned forward and looked at Cosima's face. Their eyes and hair were the same color, and her cheeks were rounded in the same way Sally's were. Even when she tried, it was impossible not to see a child that Sally herself had created when she looked at Cosima. She shook her head. “It's too hard to believe. I'm sorry.”
Cosima nodded. Maybe she had expected that response. “I understand. Are you open to some convincing, though?”
“That depends,” Gene said, “what kind of convincing?”
“Well, I'd like for you to meet my sisters.”
Sisters. When Cosima was born, Sally had been in her late thirties, and she'd spent nearly a decade trying to have a child. They'd been over the moon to have Cosima, but could not put themselves through any more stress to try having another child. It had hurt knowing Cosima would never have siblings. “Your sisters,” Sally repeated.
“Yeah, that's what we call each other. We're genetic identicals, so it fits, and we've gotten pretty close over the past two years.”
“All 274 of you?” Gene asked.
“Oh, no, just the ones who live close by. I mean, we're all sisters, but I was referring to just a few.”
They leaned back and thought about it. Looking at her daughter's face, Sally was reminded of when Cosima came out of the closet, aged fourteen, and so desperately wanted her parents to support her. They had, of course; there had been no surprise in her coming out. Sally leaned over and again took the hands of her daughter, now aged thirty-two, and repeated what she'd told her then. “No matter what, you are still our daughter, and we love you more than anything in this world.”
That afternoon, Cosima drove them several blocks east, into an old neighborhood of brick duplexes shaded by oak trees. The contrast in Cosima's demeanor between now and earlier in the day was striking. Where she had been stiff and withdrawn before, now she was relaxed and chatty. “Normally we'd be at Alison's house,” she said. “But they had a pipe burst a couple days ago, so we're celebrating at Sarah's house instead. It's actually a lot more convenient. Well, for us anyways.”
Cosima parked behind red minivan and they all got out. As they approached the house, they heard music playing and people talking, and suddenly Sally was nervous. “It's okay,” Cosima said. “You'll like everybody.”
The woman who answered the door was not Cosima's look-alike, and yet she was. Her face was shaped the same as Cosima's, but her expression was different. Her eyes had the wide-eyed wonder of a child, underneath a mass of curly blonde hair. “Hello Doctor and Doctor Niehaus,” she said. “Welcome to Christmas.” She stood aside to let them all in.
Cosima put her hand on the woman's shoulder and introduced her. “Mom, Dad, this is my sister Helena.”
Sally and Gene shook her hand and allowed her to take their coats. Cosima was beaming, like Helena proved the clone theory. Sally did not tell her that, based on appearance, Helena was probably just her regular sister at best, taken from a separate embryo created during their IVF process and given to another mother, but not her clone. They were ushered into the living room, where two more Cosima-ish women waited. There was Alison, with purple streaked hair and a fleece jacket Cosima would never be caught dead in, and Sarah, who admittedly did look quite a bit like Cosima.
“Well, it's very nice to meet you all,” Sally managed. Gene nodded and muttered something that might've been agreement.
In a little playpen were two baby boys playing with stuffed animals, and Sally skirted the awkward meeting by going over to them while Gene complimented the Christmas tree. Outside, there seemed to be more children playing in the back yard. Behind her, one of them women said, “Cosima, your parents are handling this so well. You remember what my mother said, don't you?”
“No, actually. What did she say?”
“Well, first she didn't believe you're my clone. She still says we're half-sisters. Then she said you were mulatto.”
Cosima laughed at that, and Sally felt her face burn.
A door in the kitchen opened up to the backyard and an elementary-aged girl stepped inside just long enough to see Cosima and her parents. Then she turned back and yelled, “They're here!” Soon the population density of the house doubled, with four children, three men, and a tall blonde woman who definitely wasn't one of Cosima's clones. They were all flushed and bundled from playing outside, and for a moment chaos reigned as children were told to take off boots, hats, and coats, where to put them, and everyone figured out where to put themselves without being in the way. Sally was trying to figure out which children belonged to which adults when one of the girls unwrapped her scarf, removed her hat, and Sally almost had to sit down. Standing in this stranger's kitchen was Cosima, twenty years earlier. She even had pigtails.
“Yeah,” Cosima said, seeing her mother's face. “That's Charlotte. She's the youngest one of us.”
“She looks just like you. I mean, exactly like you.” She reached out to touch the girl, but caught herself in time. This child was not Cosima, but she could definitely be Cosima's clone.
More introductions followed, and relationships were clarified. Oscar and Gemma, and their father Donnie, went with Alison. The babies went with Helena. The bubbly little girl with curly hair was Kira, Sarah's daughter. There was Sarah's brother Felix and his boyfriend Colin.
“And this is Delphine,” Cosima said last, “my fiancée.”
Before Gene or Sally to react to that, Alison spun around. “What?!” she shouted. “What, when... were you planning on telling us?”
Delphine smiled at Cosima and draped an arm around her shoulders. “Well, we wanted to tell you the other day.”
“But you had enough drama of your own,” Cosima finished. She was still watching her parents, holding her breath.
Sally approached her first, smiling broadly. “Well, Delphine, it's lovely to meet you. Finally, it seems.”
“Yes,” Gene chimed in, shaking her hand. “I would say welcome to the family, but that seems to be the other way around at the moment.”
Over a light dinner of sandwiches, Sally and Gene found themselves the center of attention. Charlotte and Kira wanted to know about their life at sea, Sarah wanted to hear about life in California, and everyone wanted to hear about Cosima as a child.
"It must be difficult," Alison said at one point, "to learn that she's not the child you thought she was."
It was a blunt way to put it, and a couple people raised their eyebrows at her. Next to Gene, Cosima looked at both of her parents, the anxiety creeping back into her face. Gene draped his arm over her shoulders, like he used to do when they sat on the couch together, looking at books. "It's unexpected," he said. "It'll take some time to wrap our heads around it."
"I think I would be angry," Alison went on. "I mean, I was angry when I found out that I was a clone. But in your position, I think I would be just..." She shook her head and drank some more wine, left speechless by the prospect.
Sally leaned around Gene to pat her daughter's back. "I'm not angry. I could be angry that they never told us. I mean, there could've been genetic issues that we wouldn't have known about, and genetic issues that we worried about without reason. But I'm not angry." She directed her next sentence to Cosima. "They gave us you."
All three of them had tears in their eyes. The larger family around the table gave them a moment before Felix scooted his chair back. "Well, that's about as much sap as I can handle in such a short time span. Anyone else want some of those Mexican chocolates this wonder child brought back for us?"
* *
After midnight, Cosima and Delphine sat wrapped in a comforter on Sarah's back porch, clutching hot mugs of cocoa with peppermint schnapps added. Cosima's parents were back in their hotel, and they had plans to get lunch, just the four of them, the next day. The Hendrixes had gone, the girls were in bed upstairs, Helena was taking care of the babies in the living room, and the back porch was the only place they could have any privacy.
“Well, I think that went well,” Cosima said.
Delphine tucked her hand between Cosima's thighs. “Yes, I think so.”
“They totally didn't believe me at first. Even after they met Sarah and Helena and Alison, it didn't really click with them. Not until they saw Charlotte.”
“It does make more compelling evidence. It will be strange when I finally see pictures of you a child, though.”
Cosima cocked her head. “You've never seen pictures of me as a kid?”
“No. I probably could have when I was at Dyad, but I never did.”
“Huh.” She drank some more schnapps cocoa and snuggled closer to Delphine. “Alison about shit herself when I called you my fiancée, did you see that?”
Delphine giggled. “Yes. I wasn't sure you would tell everyone like that, actually. She was more angry at Sarah, though, than at you.”
“Yeah, well, Sarah was just keeping her promise to let me tell everyone myself. She keeps her mouth shut when she needs to.”
“Certainly.”
They sat together in comfortable silence, listening to the breeze rustle the few remaining dead leaves on the trees and distant traffic going by. Cosima loved being with her sisters and her parents, but nothing was as good as being alone with Delphine. She toyed with one of her rings. “Do you want me to change my name?” she asked Delphine.
“No? Why would I?”
“You know, when we get married. I could take your last name if you wanted me to.”
Laughter seasoned Delphine's words when she replied. “Do you want to have my last name?”
“I mean, I'd much rather have you, but I figured I'd put it out there.”
Delphine shook her head. “I want you to keep your name. Names are powerful, you know. They're a tremendous part of who we are.” After a pause, she asked, “Do you want me to change my name?”
“Nope. Then I couldn't call you Dr. Cormier anymore. Besides, there's already two doctor Niehauses, and if I finish my dissertaion, there will be one more. We don't really need a fourth one.”