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“I made a mistake trusting you,” my mother says regretfully.
“I made a mistake thinking you were a scientist,” Tommy snaps.
“There’s a difference between Gregor Mendel and Doctor Frankenstein,” my mother says.
“Oh, of course,” Tommy sneers. “Go straight to Frankenstein. Your analogy is as feeble as your commitment to science.”
“Science is learning, Dr. Holyfield,” my mother says. “What you are doing is not about learning. It’s about money and power.”
“Aren’t you going to trot out the old chestnut about ‘playing God’?” Tommy asks.
He’s handling the gun casually, waving it as he gestures. Getting his nerve up. He’s arguing because he doesn’t yet have the nerve to shoot.
No. No.
I don’t want my mother to be shot. I don’t want anyone to hurt her.
I love her.
She may even love me.
And damn, is she cool. No wonder Tommy can’t pull the trigger. My mother is untouchable. She’s as cold and perfect—and yet beautiful—as one of my father’s sculptures.
My mother listens carefully to Tommy’s question. She nods, as if considering. Slowly, deliberately, she walks around the desk. She comes into full view and I win my little bet with myself: Her shoes are Prada.
She steps up to Tommy. They’re about the same height, but somehow my mother manages to seem like she’s a foot taller. Tommy waves the gun, but he’s not ready to shoot her. And he has to visibly restrain himself from stepping backward.
“You ridiculous, inadequate little man,” she says. “You want to know about playing God? I’ve played the part. Let me tell you about it. I had a daughter. She was near death. And I had the cure. I could wave my hand … well, inject a virus carrying a DNA modification … and I knew she would live. My husband and I—” Her voice cracks, but so minutely I doubt anyone else notices. “My husband and I asked ourselves whether it was right. Whether we could ‘play God’ and save her life with a treatment we knew was untested. A treatment that couldn’t be tested, yet, because I had broken some rules finding it.”
“Great autobiogra—” Tommy starts to say.
“Shut up,” my mother says. And he shuts up.
I’m looking at the fire extinguisher. I’m looking at my father’s sculptures. There’s the towering redwood tree reaching toward the ceiling. Near it, something that is most likely a hawk, but almost unrecognizable except as a
dramatic expression of speed and rapacity, hovers overhead, its beak twelve feet off the ground.
And just three feet away from that soaring beak is the gleaming steel and Plexiglas thunderbolt.
The end of the thunderbolt is pointed in a particularly vengeful-looking way at my mother’s head. Of course, if her head were to move, it would be pointed at Tommy’s head.
“So I used the treatment,” my mother continues. “And my partners”—she gives that word a cruel twist—“said okay, let us use it on our son as well. He was perfectly healthy, mind you. But they said, if you don’t, well, we’ll go public and destroy you. So I gave in. They thought they had me.” She manages a tight smile. “And I guess they did. I tolerated their blackmail. Which isn’t very God-like, is it?”
“They were doing science,” the little short guy blurts out.
“Oh, they were brilliant,” my mother allows. “Brilliant. And when they came up with a green pig I let it go, because they were on their way to great discoveries. But the more they worked, the more I began to wonder if maybe they were a little less brilliant than they thought they were.” She hesitates. “Then they created that sad abomination of a child. And I realized that’s what my God-playing had wrought.”
“Aww,” Tommy drawls. “Did the little mutant make you queasy? All your moral qualms didn’t stop you from decanting your daughter’s little science project, did they?”
“I had to do it,” my mother says. “He was a living human being, fully formed, capable of feeling.”
“Capable of luring your daughter back,” Tommy counters.
“That, too,” my mother concedes.
“Spare me. In the end, this whole thing made you rich.”
“No. It cost me a fortune, actually. No, Dr. Holyfield, I got rich off a simple patent for accelerating the production of flu vaccines. Every time a dose of flu vaccine is made, I get twenty-one cents. A billion doses a year, that adds up to real money.”
