Damn it, of all the luck. I applied only yesterday.
Ethan checking Amira’s email was nothing new. Some battles weren’t worth fighting.
“Elona’s been in school for almost a month now. I thought I’d try to find some part-time work. Like I said, use that journalism degree I have.” And some battles are.
“Why do you insist on disobeying me? We have discussed this idea at least twice before and I told you that you will not work outside this house! I am the husband, I decide how this house is run! I am deleting your email account!”
Delete my account, like I can’t make another? A secret one. But I’m not hiding this from you. I’m not your slave. The ball of anger grew in Amira’s chest. Down the hall, Elona peered around the corner. Amira sensed her and looked to her right. Their eyes met. Amira could see the dread on her child’s face of another argument brewing. If it was about anything else she’d let it go, if only to save Elona from having to hear another one. To save the weekend and next week from having to watch Ethan brood about, silent and sulking. The anger in Ethan’s eyes was as blatant as the sadness and fear in Elona’s. But she was determined to stand her ground over this. Ethan and his threats had gone too far.
“Elona, go to your room and shut the door, please.” Amira’s voice was calm but forced. Elona stood silent and still. She dropped her eyes to the floor. Amira knew what she was contemplating: If I don’t go to my room, the fight won’t happen. “Now! Elona.”
The child ran to her room.
The door shut.
Amira turned to glare at Ethan. The ball grew. How dare you make me have to speak to Elona like that?
John opened the door to Amira, red-eyed, red-nosed, clutching her purse and a tissue.
“It must be bad for you to drive here in the pouring rain. What happened?”
“Ethan took her.” Amira came inside and sat on the couch.
“Elona?”
“Yes.”
“Where?” John sat beside her.
“He didn’t say, but I’d expect to his parents’ apartment in New York. She doesn’t even have a change of clothes.”
“What was this fight over?”
“The job I applied for… and he threatened to delete my email account.” Amira held her head in her hands. “There was a lot of yelling and screaming and him quoting scripture… I told him he could go fuck himself in the ass with that book.”
John smirked.
“I don’t know where that came from… I swore I’d quit talking like that.”
“It’s never too late to start again.”
“It’s not funny. I don’t want every time Elona hears the F-word for it to have come from her mother.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, God, I hope Elona didn’t hear that… I was just so… so angry.” Amira sighed and sat up straight. “He stormed out of the study to Elona’s room and picked her up and headed for the door. I tried to stop him and he pushed me.”
“He pushed you?”
“Yes… twice. Once inside the apartment and once in the hallway. Elona was crying. I was crying. I tried to stop him from getting on the elevator, and he pushed me to the floor. The neighbors came out. I was so embarrassed. The elevator opened and he was gone with her. I just sat there and cried.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, just my pride… and dignity. I don’t know how I’ll be able to look my neighbors in the eye again.”
“I wouldn’t worry about them. And if he’s heading to the grandparents’ place, I wouldn’t worry about Elona either. At least not about being clothed, fed, bathed, and teeth brushed. From the stories you tell me, she has both sets of grandparents wrapped around her finger. And she knows it. They’ll get her to feeling better and probably have her call you as soon as they understand what happened.”
“You’re right.”
John wrapped an arm around her. She let out another deep breath and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Want to watch TV?”
Amira shook her head.
“Would you like to go to my lab and see my new baby monkeys?”
Amira had been hoping for weeks to see the new arrivals. She sat back to see his face.
“That’s unfair for you to ask me that now; you’ve been putting me off all this time and now you’re just using it as a ploy to get me to feel better.”
“Nobody ever told me I had to be fair.”
The slightest smile came to her lips.
When they entered the lab, the overhead lights came on. Cold air met Amira’s face. The whirl of fans inside the rack of computers filled the space with an annoying hum. Amira gazed around in amazement. In the middle of the room, a large machine sat on top of a table. A bundle of multicolored wires came out of the gray metal housing and ran along the underside of a robotic arm. The arm extended out over the table to a work area with a large black metal cylinder that stood to the ceiling. A panel of switches, LED lights, and a flat-panel computer screen were mounted to the side, at the base of the cylinder. Underneath the screen, on the tabletop, sat a keyboard and a mouse. Amira looked at the computer monitor and could see a live video feed of the end of the robotic arm inside the cylinder. A mechanical hand, with a delicate gold needle-like tool extending from the center, showed on the screen. Amira looked back at the arm, where it came out of the cylinder, and followed it back to its base. She noticed the rack of four blank computer screens and a keyboard.
“This must be your miracle. The accumulation of all those IQ points bouncing around in that mind of yours. Your masterpiece.”
“I’ve worked on it the last four years. It’s the device that enables me to extract the nucleus from the donor cell and replace it with the nucleus of the clone cell in just the right way to get the key proteins in place. It constructs the internal working of the cell so that it’s perfect, of course, using those computers on the wall behind you and software developed by yours truly. It stimulates the nucleus of the donor egg to begin cell division and building of the embryo. It begins there inside that cylinder.”
Amira looked to the left of the table and saw a separate device. A table at one end and a vertical long, hollow cylinder at the other. She paused for a moment. “That is a CAT scan machine, right?”
“I use it to study the development of the brain in the cloned monkeys. I’ve a few ideas I’m researching. If you look at the computer screen behind the table, you can see the images. The software I created is making a detailed analysis. It takes a while, so I let it run pretty much twenty-four hours a day.”
John opened a drawer in the desk next to him and removed a bag of almonds. He opened the bag and placed half a handful into his right pants pocket. He held some out for Amira. “Put these in your pocket.” She did. He placed the bag back in the drawer and closed it. John pointed to the far end of the room past the CAT scan. “It’s through that door at the end; the monkeys are waiting.”
From behind the Plexiglas, the monkeys screeched their excitement at having visitors. Petri ran to the platform in front of the door, her