JOSEPH JR.

Joey and I are both thinkers, get lost planning these big ideas and schemes. When I was his age, fourteen, I was really into mechanics. I built a go-kart with a 6 horse engine, chrome wheels, even a little cup holder—all from junkyard scraps, not even a kit. I just knew how the parts went together. Joey’s got these skills, too. So I bought a couple of hobby magazines the other day so he could try building something. In the back of my head, I was thinking I could have been real good at this if my old man hadn’t called me a dummy whenever I showed a little enterprise. Maybe I could’ve even invented something.

But Joey wasn’t interested, kept shredding the waxplant and looking out the window behind my shoulder. “Pay attention,” I said. “You’re always spacing off.”

He gets all upset, saying it’s not his fault, how he’s been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. I think it’s one of those bullshit things the school came up with to explain his low grades. “I never had that,” I tell him. “When my pops locked me in the garage for an afternoon, I took apart his carburetor.”

“Too much concentrating is a sign of it, too. You probably weren’t taken to the right doctor.” He stands up, casting a shadow over the table, and I realize, shit, he’s already almost my height, although he’s scrawny through the chest, like a starving dog.

He says, “Building cars is stupid. That’s for dirtbags.” As if he lives in some glass-front mansion in Teaneck, not in our two-bedroom ranch bought with money fixing cars.

Back fifteen years ago, human cloning was illegal in the U.S. Korea was way ahead of the game, all secretive shit, and they were offering good money for cell donations. This was before I went to work at the shop where my old man worked, when I actually thought I could do something different with my life over there by importing shitty fake leather briefcases and Givenchy knockoff perfume. There was no way in hell the pregnancy was going to take—the chances were one in a gazillion. They needed at least 200 surrogates to get on the map, and they only had about thirty. They swabbed me, I went out and got drunk and then sort of forgot about the whole thing until I was back home.

My pops brings up Dolly, that sheep they cloned. “A sheep!” he says. “A damn farm animal! How the hell they do it?” Like an idiot, I decide to tell my story. I didn’t even get technical so the old man wouldn’t think my head got big. Tried to describe somatic cell nuclear transfer using only two-syllable words. But I wanted to let him know—they’d been working on human embryos way before that sheep.

He says, “Sounds like a load of bull crap to me. Why’d they want another one of you fuckin’ space wasters, wasting space?” He was sitting there in his wife-beater, didn’t even bother to put on a proper shirt for Thanksgiving dinner. I felt like telling him to fuck off and risking the belt across the mouth, but mom read my mind. She gave a tiny little shake with her head. She’d been sitting there real quiet, chewing her food and massaging her forehead where the migraines were.

Later she pulls me aside in the kitchen by those lacey, grease-splattered curtains and pumps me with questions. “If it’s so safe,” she says, “then how come these doctors aren’t doing it themselves?”

“They wanted an American,” I said. “It’d be easier to see the difference from the Korean surrogate.”

“Then what happens?”

“I’m sure it’s not even going to take. It’s a point one-percent chance.”

But she was real insistent. “I’m sure there must be people with lots of money who want it done. Why are they paying you for it?” She could be sharp like that. A year later both my parents were six feet under in the family plot in Jersey City without ever seeing the results.

“Both your grandparents died in a car accident before you were born,” I tell Joey.

“Technically, they were my parents,” he says back.

Lately, things have sucked. A few months ago, he stopped calling me Dad; he calls me “Joe” and he says it in the same voice he uses for a band he thinks is crappy. Sometimes at dinner or in front of the TV or whatever, I catch him sizing me up. Maybe he’s thinking about how I chew with my mouth open, or how the placemats are stained, or how the uptight bitch next door complained about us leaving the lawnmower out in the rain. Maybe he’s not even thinking that, maybe he’s just waiting for me to give him better options like a trip to Florida or something. At times I want to say something. I don’t want to be a dick about it like my old man was, but it bothers me. Makes me feel like I don’t have shit to offer.

Then he has Career Day at the school, and I think, great, now maybe he’ll get a little ambition. He comes home saying he’s going to be a journalist.

“Like for a newspaper?” I ask.

“Maybe. Or maybe online.”

“That seems like a worthy job to shoot for.” I’m trying to be encouraging, although it pisses me off.

“Shoot for? It’s what I’m going to do.”

“Pick your grades up, then. Journalists do well in school.”

He shrugs. “I got advantages other people don’t. I know how the whole reporting process works.”

If that were the criteria, then I could be a fucking reporter, too. “Well, you didn’t get this goal from me. I’d hate to have to interview people, get their life story, and then make up a bunch of shit with a gimmicky headline.” I stop from quoting one of these headlines, but it doesn’t matter, he gets my drift. He’s looking me dead in the face. He has this thick brown hair, same as mine, but instead of wearing it in a clean buzz cut, Joey lets his flop over his eyes like a girl’s.

He says, “You and me ain’t the same.”

I try not to make everything a one-on-one comparison, but you’ve got to work with your strengths, and like me, the boy is good at mechanics and low-level science. I wish someone had told me that when I was his age, then maybe I wouldn’t have felt the need to peddle that cheap shit all over Asia, searching for myself and wasting time. I could have owned my own shop by now.

He stands up to go. He’s always going somewhere, this kid. “I got basketball practice,” he says.

Terrific. Another thing we both suck at.

I don’t know where all this reporter stuff is coming from, but it has nothing to do with reporting. He doesn’t read the paper and he’s always turning off the news to watch MTV. He’s acting like he was born for this career when it’s so obvious it’s killing me. He calls me a dumbass when I fuck up something around the house, but I was wary from the beginning, before Bioethics got involved.

I decide to bring up my childhood trauma theory with him when he’s nice and relaxed, while we’re sitting in front of the TV.

“What are you talking about?” He’s looking at me like I’m the densest person on earth.

“Maybe being a reporter you see as your chance to set things right. From all the bad shit that happened when you were a kid.”

“I don’t even remember that.”

“You were doing all those interviews. You remember. They were following you, giving you Mars bars. You were around five then.”

“Maybe you remember, but I don’t. I got other things to think about.” He reaches for his Gatorade. I buy cases of it cause he says he needs it for his workouts and instead he takes a couple sips like a dainty old lady and leaves the rest of the bottle like garbage.

I let it go. Maybe he blocked it out or repressed it or something. This reporter thing is probably a phase—like that sissy haircut—so what am I getting all worked up for?

Then on Wednesday, I’m down at the shop, elbow deep in the dashboard of a Beamer, and Bernie tells me, “My kid’s crazy about your kid’s blog.”

“What?”

“Joey’s blog. What’s he call it? Mutant Man, or something like that. Mutant Man Speaks, Speaks to the Street. Real catchy.”

I feel like I’m gonna pass out.

“He’s a real celebrity. Last night I was up, must have been midnight, no, no, it was twelve-thirty, and I pass by little Nicky’s room—his light’s on, and I’m like, ‘what the hell you still doing up?’ and he tells me, ‘waiting for Joey to post.’ ‘Joey Costine?’ ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘he always posts at one—alien hour, he says. All the kids check it.’ So you may want to talk to that kid of yours, being up at that hour. He’s running the neighborhood. Mine can’t get up in the morning. Keeps hugging the pillow like it’s a woman.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” I feel like I’m going to hurl. I go over to the office and get Tony to give me a half day. I gotta get to a computer. The one we have is in Joey’s room, and it’s all locked up with passwords and shit, so I run down to the public library. I haven’t been in this place since I was a kid and it’s like time has stopped. There’s a bunch of old-timers hogging the monitors, and I put my name on a list. Just when I’m about to lose it, a space opens up, and I sit down and realize I don’t know anything about this. Blog? It’s like some electronic journal where everyone can read your personal shit. But how the hell do I find it? I call over the librarian who looks like she’s eighty, but somehow she knows this stuff. She starts pumping me. Is he a computer programmer or web designer? No, I don’t think so, but I also didn’t know the kid was writing a secret diary for the whole world to see. ‘He’s probably posting on one of the main hosting sites,’ she says, ‘we can run a search’. When I give the name Bernie gave me, I feel a little dirty, like I’m peeping through his closet or something. But then he pops up, and I’m so angry I can’t even get air. My heart is racing like I just ran forty miles. I start reading.

A few hours later, back at home, I’m sitting there at the kitchen table, kicking the chair rung, waiting for him. I’ve had two beers and some time to calm down, and I still feel steam coming out of my ears. The worst part was the self-experiments—I keep going over these in my head—one where he cuts himself to prove he has red blood—that’s some sick shit. I try and think it could’ve been worse. Most of it was teenage crap about the NBA fantasy league and Mr. Stephens Earth Science exam and other stuff, concerts, but it’s the clone thing that gets me. How he’d go announcing it like that. Didn’t he want to fit in? If not, then why the fuck had I been breaking my own neck to get attention off him so everyone would think he was normal?

I feel sorry for him, though, when he comes slouching in, scrawny arms and all, like it’s a regular day. His mouth drops open when he sees me, and I know he knows he’s fucked. I push out a chair with my foot. “Sit down.”

I was expecting him to get all bitchy and defensive, like he usually does, or accuse me of spying, but he actually looks embarrassed, like I caught him jerking off or something.

I try to give it to him in a way he’s going to understand. “I spent years trying to get rid of the fucking reporters. When you became old news was the best day of my life. I could stop hosing down the lawn. I could have a fucking telephone again. Now with this thing, anyone besides your high school buddies decide to click on it and we’re fucked.”

“More people read me than just kids at high school,” he says, real quiet.

“Great. Fantastic. Let me ask you something, Mutant Man. Why’re you exploiting yourself for other people to make fun of?”

“I need to brand myself. Get a platform. It’s what you gotta do so people will read you and your ratings go up.”

“But Jesus Christ, Joey. Where’s your self-respect? Calling yourself a freak. After all you been through.”

“But it’s me doing it. It’s different.”

“You dumbass. It’s the same damn word, isn’t it? How does is feel, freak?”

He turns tomato red and I can tell I really wounded him, and myself too because the minute I say it, I feel like I’m channeling my old man—my throat’s filled up, like I swallowed bricks.

He’s picking at a hole in his jeans. “I didn’t think you’d read it.”

Was he embarrassed because there was stuff about me in there? I mean what kid doesn’t have gripes—even if he did call me the biggest asshole in Jersey, at least he called me “Dad” a week later. There were pictures, too, from when he was little. One of them was from People. He remembers everything. The reporters from the magazines, the papers—the respectable and the shitty were all mixed up together—camped out on the lawn, watching thorough the windows, following us to kindergarten, ringing the phone at all hours, luring Joey with the most lowlife, scum of the earth tricks, and for what? So they could make up shit that wasn’t true, anyway—that he didn’t need sleep regular hours, that I beat him, that he was mentally retarded and had problems walking.

How could anyone do this to a little kid? How could normal people, not psychopaths or molesters, treat him worse than you’d treat a dog and not even feel sorry. How could people read the articles and make jokes about it, like this wasn’t a little kid who got so frightened when they rushed him, he’d wet his pants.

In this one story, which I remember the best, Joey is about eight, and I’m picking him up from school. He comes down the steps, little skinny thing with knobby knees, wearing this huge backpack. It had a popular cartoon of the time on it, of these ameoba superheroes that could self-replicate. I tried to talk him out of it at the store, but he really wanted it.

There are kids grouped around him, but they run off as I pull up, and I hear them yelling. He opens the door and gets in, and I follow the kids with my car. I want to hear what they’re saying. Joey starts screaming his head off at me, “Don’t! Don’t!” The kids had some song they’d made up. “Mutant man. Freak is banned,” was all I could get before we pulled away.

“It’s because of the backpack,” I say to him, driving home.

“It’s not the backpack!” He’s trying to burrow his face in the door. His crying bothers me, probably some bad shit left over from my old man. He wouldn’t talk to me the whole ride. Just sat there snuffling against the vinyl.

Turns out the kids were saying I was using him to grow body organs so that I could transplant them and live forever. There was a five-page story in one of the supermarket tabloids. Back at home, he shows me a couple pages, ripped from the magazine, and folded up all small, like a dirty picture. His photo is on the cover, dressed up for school, smiling, except with a weird greenish glob coming out of his neck. My head is floating above in one of those circles, doctored up to make it look like I got fangs. Until the organs got big enough, the story said, I had made him my slave. Since he wasn’t human, he wasn’t protected by law, and I owned him. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” I asked him.

“Because we gotta keep everything secret. You say that story’s not true, but you lied! I am a freak—not your son!”

He’s staring at his fists.

“But I explained it all to you. Like those twins in your class—what are their names, Timmy and Toddy or something?” I thought I’d done a good job. I’d been trying to get across how clones and twins are the same thing, DNA-wise.

He mumbles, “No one calls them freaks.”

“You’re not either,” I say. He’s punching his own leg now, and I really feel bad for him.

“Those other kids have dads,” he says to me. “You want to make me your slave.”

By now, I’m worn out with this, and I say, “So when do you think that your slavery is going to start, huh? So far, I do everything. You want to cook your own dinner?”

He doesn’t say anything, and I leave him there in front of the TV and go to bed. I can hear him crying himself to sleep, but I don’t go out there. It wasn’t his fault, but still, I resented it. I was trying to manage so much crap I thought my head was going to explode. The government investigation, the doctors, the reporters, the cost of everything to make pretend he was just my kid. Until I got the thing declared a hoax, I thought he was going to end up a lab rat in one of these pharmaceutical companies in the middle of the state. Even now with that idiot Hwang announcing he’s able to clone, I can’t sleep nights. I took it out on the kid sometimes, and I regret it.

But maybe it doesn’t matter. All that stuff I’d been feeling guilty and stressing about, Joey’s re-written it. In the blog version, I say to him, “Of course you’re my son. Who else out there is named Joe, Jr.?” And when he denies this, tells me it’s stupid, I say, “I love you even more than all those other dads love their sons ’cause you and me are carbon copies. We’re like the same.”

I’m suddenly dog tired sitting there. Jesus, only thirty-three years old, and it’s like I’ve lived six lifetimes—it’s a big fucking joke how little of this has anything to do with me and the things I wanted for myself. I get up, my knees cracking like an old lady’s. “Shut down the blog. If you like writing so much, I’ll give you some cash to go to one of those writing camps this summer. The secretary at the shop, her son went to one and liked it.”

He waits a moment and then says, “I’ll think about it.” He’s being all cagey, but I can tell he’s happy about it.

“Maybe you can write a book someday about your experiences. It’s your story.”

He looks up at me and says, “It is my story. No one else’s. And you watch—I’m gonna make it a bestseller.” He takes his Gatorade and goes off, locking himself in his room.

By Jessica Lott