The Mirror Man, стр. 44
“If God doesn’t hear that,” she’d say, “then He just doesn’t have ears.”
Jeremiah never liked these Baptist visits. It seemed too disorderly to him, with everyone in the place erupting in an “Amen” or a “Hallelujah” at totally unpredictable moments. How were you supposed to follow that? How did anyone know what to do? At least in the Catholic church he could fake it, following the lead of the people around him to know when to kneel, when to stand and when to sit down again. He never knew where he should be with the Baptists.
It came as no great surprise that the clone had opted for a Catholic church funeral, but in the lab, in front of the monitor, Jeremiah found himself silently wishing for a full Baptist choir to sing her off, and everybody clapping and letting loose with an “Amen!” She would have liked that, he thought. But he knew the clone wouldn’t have entertained the idea for a moment, and neither would he have done at that point. It wouldn’t have seemed proper. He would have insisted on a certain decorum. He would have used words like dignity and reverence. Funny how he could picture himself throwing all that out the window right now. If it had been up to him, right this minute, he wouldn’t have cared what anybody thought, and everyone in that place would have been stuck shouting “Hallelujah” at the rafters, right up to God’s ears.
Brent, uncharacteristically respectful, sat beside him while he watched, dressed in a suit and tie, his lab coat in the closet and his laptop nowhere to be seen. They were silent as they watched a small procession of people enter the church. The clone, flanked by Diana and Parker, stood at the entrance and endured handshakes and tentative hugs. Both Brent and Jeremiah noted, but didn’t mention, the sparse turnout. All but the front few pews in the church were empty. They listened to a priest who had never met his mother talk about what it meant to live life well.
“Life is a gift,” he said. “As miraculous as it is brief. And we must use that gift to its fullest advantage, use our flicker of existence to make the world somehow better than it would have been without us. How do we do that? Is it through grandiose gestures of charity and service? Or rather the small acts of kindness we commit when we think no one is watching? Will we be remembered for the pomp and circumstance of our lives, those fleeting moments of greatness? Or rather for all the quiet moments when we are fully and truly present in the world and with those around us? Patricia Adams lived a quiet life. She was a mother, a sister, a friend. She did nothing that the whole world will remember her for. She will never be immortalized in poetry or song; no flags will fall to half-mast for her passing. The annals of history will not devote even a footnote to her life. But to those who knew her, Patricia made the world a better place, and she will be remembered. She will be missed. She lived fully, honestly, with a purpose and with passion. She lived not to impress, but she left an impression. She followed not the rules and obligations of the world, but the rules and obligations of her heart. She lived well.”
The words struck Jeremiah in a way he didn’t expect. Although the man didn’t know her, he spoke about her in words that rang true. Jeremiah’s mind went back to all the times his mother had tried to show him the world through her eyes, a world worth exploring, worth knowing, worth figuring out. When, he wondered, had he lost that? How had he come to be so timid and awkward in his life? As he listened to the priest, he began to look for his own quiet impact on the world. It bothered him, more than a little, that he couldn’t see it clearly. Where was the impression he’d leave? When the time came, would some priest he didn’t know stand in front of a half-empty church and talk about the cloning? The money he left behind? His big house? How he did what was expected of him, met all of his obligations? What if the best thing anyone could say of him, after everything was said and done, was that he toed the line?
The clone didn’t get up to speak at all, and Jeremiah knew it was because he just didn’t know what to say. But Jeremiah would have said something, given the chance. He would have talked about the things she sacrificed, the things she loved, the way she tried to make him a better person. He would have said he was glad she’d been his mother. He might have even taken a moment to say he was sorry he hadn’t been a better son.
For the next two hours, he and Brent watched uncomfortably as the clone attempted small talk with a smattering of distant relations he barely recognized and a few residents of the assisted living home who had come to pay their respects. Nurse Nichelle had come. She shook her head in that way she had and offered the clone a hug and whispered words of comfort that Jeremiah couldn’t hear over the monitor. For once, Jeremiah didn’t envy his clone. He looked somehow small, deflated—even on an six-foot wall. He almost wished he could help him. Finally, the clone thanked the priest for his eulogy and, sitting in that laboratory apartment, Jeremiah silently thanked him, as well, and tucked away his words for later.
A few minutes after it was over, Brent retrieved his laptop from the closet and posed to Jeremiah his usual