Jessica Chiarella - And Again

My hands look small, their joints thin and supple, and I move them experimentally, testing to make sure my synapses fire with the same precision as before the transfer. They are foreign objects now, like the pale, delicate petals of a lily. These hands have endured none of the years I spent scribbling on sketchpads or being sliced up carving linoleum in a printmaking class or trying and failing to learn the piano. I wonder if I can hold a pencil. Or a paintbrush.

I flex my feet, stretching my legs under the bedspread, then fumble a hand under my hospital gown, taking care not to detach any of the EKG leads fixed to my skin. I laugh a little to myself when I find the soft dent of scar tissue in the middle of my stomach, testing it with my fingertip, wondering at the thrill of familiarity in provokes within my chest.

“What?” Sam says as he reenters, noting my reverie.

“For a second I was afraid I wouldn’t have a…” I motion to the middle of my stomach. “I mean, does a clone need an umbilical cord?”

“I guess there were one or two things we didn’t think to ask, huh?” he says, leaning close as I tuck the hospital blanket around my waist and draw up my gown, revealing the pallid skin of my stomach, with the little knot of my navel in the center. “Looks the same to me,” he says. I smile.

“What did Penny say?”

“She called me a very nasty name for not updating her sooner,” he replies. The thought of Penny’s famously quick temper hits me in a tender spot somewhere in my chest. I turn my head as Sam settles back into his chair, so he won’t see that I’m on the edge of tears again. I feel as if I have no skin, as if every emotion that wells up inside me will immediately spill out. I can hold nothing back, not in this new body; I can’t control it like the body I remember.

“I told her that they can come by as soon as visiting hours start. And, of course, she ignored me and said they’re coming over now. I didn’t see any real point in trying to argue with her.”

“Smart man,” I say, though I’m grateful that my oldest friend is dragging her boyfriend into their car and heading toward me, probably at blinding speeds. I need Penny’s eyes, and her honesty, to tell me if I’m the same as I was before. Sam has been so wrapped up in the mechanics of my disease, and the day-in, day-out of my life at the hospital, that I’m not sure he’d be able to tell. Maybe I’m afraid that he doesn’t remember what I was like before I was sick, even though it’s only been a handful of months since I was diagnosed. Or maybe, despite his righteous honesty, the journalistic ethics that have seeped into every bit of his life, I’m still afraid he’d lie to me.

Penny breezes in like a wash of winter air, crisp and bracing, the tiny dark ropes of her braids animating around her as if caught in a wind that belongs to her alone. She strides over and clasps my face in her hands, the silver of her rings cool against my skin. She studies me, her heavy eyebrows furrowed above the dark scrutiny of her eyes. I hold still, feeling very much like I’m showing her one of my paintings, watching her eyes scan with passionless appraisal. I’m about to interrupt her concentration and demand a response, when she breaks into that lovely smile of hers.

“There you are,” she says and kisses both of my cheeks, releasing me.

“Am I?” I ask, still internally bracing myself. I don’t doubt Penny’s judgment; I’m just unaccustomed to walking away unscathed by it.

“You look pretty decent, actually,” she replies. I grin, because to Penny, decent is just this side of tremendous. She turns to Sam, who is sitting by the window reading something on his laptop. He’s been on a leave of absence from the Chicago Tribune, where he covers national politics, though it hasn’t stopped him from working during every spare moment. I wonder what it’s costing him, these weeks away from his job, and wish I could signal to Penny to lay off him, at least for today. But I’m already out of luck. “You, however, look dreadful,” she says.

“Thanks, Pen,” Sam replies, barely glancing up from his work. Penny’s friendly dislike of Sam is nothing new, and he’s as familiar as I am with the smooth clarity of her whims and the depth of her candor.

“Connor’ll be up in a minute. He stopped downstairs to get coffee,” she says, flopping down into the seat next to my bed. Every time she moves there’s a dull clatter of bangles and beads. I’m sure I look bare and unformed next to Penny’s intricate, well-curated beauty. “So how do you feel?”

“Good. And really strange. A bit naked.” I roll up the thin cotton sleeves of my hospital gown and show her the pristine skin underneath. My arms are spindle-thin, broken only by the joints of my elbows like dense knots in sapling branches. They are as unmarked as porcelain.

“A waste of good artwork,” she replies, and sends another pointed glance in Sam’s direction. “Better for the country club though, I guess. Finally smoothing out all of those pesky rough edges, aren’t we?” Sam isn’t listening, or he’s choosing to ignore her. Either way, changing the subject is best.

“I keep feeling like I should have my glasses on.” My battered frames sit on the table next to me. I grabbed them out of habit a few minutes ago, sliding them on and recoiling at the warped blur that clouded my vision.

“What happened here?” she says, motioning to my bandaged hand.

“Pulled out my IV,” I reply. “Accidentally.”

“See,” she says, making a soft tsk-ing sound in mock reproach, “this is why we can’t have nice things.”

“Do you have a mirror?”

Penny goes fishing in her bag, an old gray corduroy satchel that seems to hold a good portion of her worldly possessions at any given time. I’ve seen paintbrushes, lace underwear, antacids, spools of thread, condoms, even bottles of perfume produced from that bag at a moment’s notice. And yet somehow, magically, Penny is always the first one to dig out her ID when we go to bars together. She hands me a tortoise-shell compact with a circular mirror inside.

“You haven’t seen yourself yet?”

“They won’t let me out of bed,” I reply, peering at my right eye, which is huge and bright and the color of coffee under a shapeless, overgrown eyebrow. I move the mirror down, trying to glimpse more, to get a sense of my face as a whole. But it’s too small, that scrap of reflection. I can only see one feature at a time.

The freckles on my nose and cheeks are gone. My skin is poreless, scrubbed of its ruddiness and even the barest hints of sun damage, like a doll’s face. The small dent of an old piercing is gone from the right side of my nose. The mirror reveals hollow cheeks, a chin that is more pointed than it was before. I am all bone structure, a skull that has been dipped in wax. My upper lip sports dark fluff, a shadowy contrast against the muted pallor of my face. I’m a bit mortified by this discovery. I think of Sam and the waxing strips I hide behind a bottle of lotion in our medicine cabinet. Such petty dishonesties that have always existed between us, where our bodies are concerned. How piteous it is that they linger still, even through the worst of circumstances. I snap the mirror closed, handing it back to Penny. It’s too close, too fragmented an image to satisfy me.

“So here’s a question,” Penny says, dropping the mirror into her purse and sitting back. “I know they supposedly have the genetic side of this all figured out. But what happens if you take up smoking? All bets are off?”

I shrug. “I guess. They can’t do much about environmental risk factors.”