Chapter Eleven

"Damn it all to pieces!!!!" Miriam paced back and forth across her living room wearing a deep tread in the already well-worn carpet. She was awaiting another call from Dr. Lin with results on Saul's biopsy. Though she was not terribly self-aware, Miriam had learned that she was one of those people who was a wide angle worrier. Some people get bad news and they obsess about that particular event or situation. They look at it from each direction and dissect it as if trying to deconstruct it to its cellular level. Miriam, on the other hand, took the thing she was worried about and then broadened her gaze, as if she were looking at her world through a wide angle lens. Suddenly, everything was fair game; Saul's illness made her think of her own health and that lead to a whole host of other concerns that bothered her. Because she was a problem solver rather than a problem dweller, she kept track of each and every concern, from the life-threatening to the trivial, in order to eventually combat or resolve it. This is the way her current list looked:

1. Waiting for results of Saul's biopsy.
2. Made her think of her own health concerns...a colonoscopy that needed to be scheduled. A mammogram due soon. A new arthritis pill that made her stomach hurt. An odd sensation in her left elbow.....
3. This made her think about being alone as she aged....
4. Which lead to her obsession about dying alone and being found days later as a smelly rotting corpse. You would think that someone who had spent her career in the medical field would not be so squeamish about natural bodily decay, but it freaked Miriam out terribly.
5. Her dying alone made her think about loneliness which inevitably made her think of Sarah and how unlucky she had been in love. "I wish," she thought for the thousandth time," that I could find a good man for her myself"  Enough of this silly internet dating that felt risky and unrewarding. Surely, she should be capable of figuring out a better solution. Just then, her pacing lead her right into Saul who was curled up in his usual spot near the tassel-like fringes at the end of the rug. Today, Saul was much too tired to mess up the tassels. Today, he simply seemed content to keep an eye on them.
6. Seeing Saul brought Miriam's attention back to issue #1, the state of Saul's health. This made her think about her work in the lab and the cloning process that she had begun. She knew that it was a long-shot but she was amazed by the advances that had occurred in that area and confident (perhaps a bit over-confident) in her ability to replicate the work that had been done in other labs around the world.
7. Somehow, in Miriam's odd little mind, cloning Saul merged with the worries about Sarah into a radical and revolutionary question: "Why couldn't I make a man for Sarah?"

The idea took Miriam so completely by surprise that  her legs literally crumbled beneath her and she collapsed, next to a startled Saul, on the tasseled rug. It wasn't the worst idea she'd ever had, she thought. Of course it was risky and wild but most great moments in her life had begun that way. It was risky and wild for a woman to go to medical school when she had, and yet that had turned out well for her. Miriam tried to think of the kind of man she would construct for Sarah. Physical characteristics came into her mind first. He would need to be:
Handsome not pretty. And not so handsome that people would find him unsympathetic.
Tall. Not gigantic but at least 6'2".
He should have Semitic qualities but she would compromise on the nose. No need for a killer size schnoz on this guy.
Dark wavy hair, the kind that looked like you had good genes not like you were wearing a toupee.
Large hands because well Miriam believed the old adage about finger length matching other body parts in proportion and she was still of the school that believed that size mattered.
With the physical attributes out of the way, Miriam began to consider the character of this man. After all, he would be her son-in-law and she would want him to be gracious and respectful and loyal and solicitous  But she had no patience for sissies or sycophants and knew that any man she made would have one hell of a backbone.
Miriam had spent about forty minutes compiling a list of traits before the following question pushed its way into her consciousness: What would Sarah want?
First of all, Sarah would want Miriam to stay far away from her love life. That was a given. So Miriam moved beyond that, as she moved beyond most givens in her life. Sarah would want him to be smart, both book and street, and she would want him to be a foodie and a democrat and heterosexual..very, very heterosexual!
Miriam thought she would also want him to like dogs more than cats, books more than television, wine more than liquor, casual more than formal, beaches more than mountains, good works more than good thoughts, sex more than sleep.
For a moment an odd word popped into Miriam's brain, a word she had spent very little time thinking about during her entire life. The word was SOUL. As a scientist, she had spent her life focusing on things that could be seen, things that could be taken apart, things that could be explained. A soul was part of that other world, the world that Miriam felt less interested in. Or, maybe she just felt less comfortable with that world. She was a fixer of problems, a fixer of bodies, and four-letter words like LOVE and SOUL had remained mysteries to her.
 "Every damn thing is available on the internet these days," she thought with a grin on her face, "maybe I should try www. souls.com!"
The phone rang, jolting her out of her reverie, and Miriam braced herself to learn Saul's fate. While she was still enormously concerned for her beloved feline's welfare, her thoughts were only partially consumed with Saul. "Whatever happens," she thought, "I have a plan."