Twins

  Her sister sighed. “Of course I do, MreeLee.” MreeLee was Madrigal’s baby nickname for Mary Lee. Madrigal kissed her, but it was a kiss of duty. A kiss because she had to.

  “Why?” cried Mary Lee. “What’s happened? I miss you so much! It’s so hard, Madrigal. At school most of the day and night I try to hear you, but I don’t get through! It’s like being anybody.”

  Madrigal would comfort her now. Because that had been their special pride, their special secret. We are not like anybody. We are us.

  “Life has changed,” said her sister briefly.

  Fear rose up like floodwater to drown Mary Lee. “But we haven’t changed!”

  Her sister’s eyes moved in an expression Mary Lee could not duplicate. Mouth curved with an emotion Mary Lee did not know. Two words came out of her sister’s mouth like spinning tops. “Jon Pear,” said Madrigal. “My boyfriend. Jon Pear.”

  Mary Lee was stunned.

  Boyfriend? What boyfriend?

  Had her identical twin mentioned Jon Pear in letters?

  No.

  Had Mother and Father mentioned that Madrigal had a boyfriend?

  No.

  Had Mary Lee felt that her sister had a man in her life?

  No.

  “I’d love to meet him,” she said shyly. How extraordinary, to be shy with her own twin!

  Madrigal shook her head firmly. “He knows I have a twin,” she said, “and I imagine people in school have told him we are identical. But I don’t want him to see you. I want him to think only of me. Not a set of me.”

  “You don’t want your boyfriend to meet me? I’m half of you!”

  Madrigal made a face. “Don’t be so melodramatic, MreeLee.”

  “But you’re keeping me offstage! Hidden away, like a family scandal!” Mary Lee found herself fussing with her hair, poking at her buttons, tugging on her earrings. Not once did her twin move with her. The simultaneous broadcast had ceased.

  “MreeLee,” said her sister, being patient, putting up with her. “Come on now. Your girls’ school has a companion boys’ school. Boys are stacked ten deep just across the street from you. A thousand of them! Pick one.”

  “Of course I want a boyfriend,” said Mary Lee, “but that has nothing to do with us. I want us.”

  Madrigal fixed her with a stare for which Mary Lee had no return. “I have a different us now, MreeLee,” she said. “You are not to interfere.”

  Mary Lee could not think about this Jon Pear, this different us. It was too huge and terrible. In only a few days she would be back at boarding school. She had to make Madrigal understand her desperation. “Madrigal, please visit me. Spend a long weekend with me. It would help if you came just for a little while.”

  “I’m busy,” said Madrigal. “I have Jon Pear now, MreeLee. You’ve got to adapt. You even share the same ski slope with the boys’ school. You ought to be able to meet someone cute. Trust me on this one. What you need is a boyfriend. Just pick one.”

  If she could pick, it would be Van. But she could not pick, for she did not go to the old high school, and would soon be shoved back on a plane and shipped away to boarding school. She could not pick there, either, where her uselessness hung around like negative ions.

  Madrigal lost interest in Mary Lee’s problems and left the house, and where she went, Mary Lee did not know, and could not feel; and when she came home, Madrigal did not tell.

  “I hope you’re happy,” sobbed Mary Lee to her parents. “We’re no longer identical. We’re no longer a mixture. We’re two instead of one.”

  “We aren’t happy,” said Father, “but we are right, Mary Lee.”

  A strange foggy sorrow seemed to envelope her parents. They hugged her, but distantly. It went way beyond giving her away, they acted as if they had sold her into another world. Made a pact, a deal, and she would never know the terms. “What is happening?” she said brokenly. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “We are doing this for you, sweetheart,” said her mother. “You must trust us.”

  Trust them? She actually laughed.

  Christmas vacation ended.

  Mary Lee was once again flying through gray skies with a gray heart.

  Jon Pear, she thought. What is he like? And if he loves Madrigal, would he not love me exactly the same? For are we not exactly the same?

  I wish, she said to the invisible stars behind the featureless clouds, I wish for Madrigal’s life.

  Chapter 2

  “I’M COMING,” CRIED MADRIGAL on the telephone. “We’ll go skiing! We’ll have a lovely lovely time. I’ll meet all your friends and gossip and we’ll show off and be us.”

  “Mother and Father said you could come? Mother and Father said you could telephone?” whispered Mary Lee.

  “No. They did not. But I love you, twin of mine, and you need me, and so I have arranged it in spite of them.”

  Oh, Madrigal! Mary Lee had given up hoping for a visit. Her heart had grown as cold as the February outdoors, and she had thought that only the arrival of summer vacation could end her loneliness.

  She began laughing, planning, hoping. She pirouetted around her dorm. “Mindy, guess what! My identical twin is coming!”

  Mindy had long since ceased to try with this annoying personality-free roomie. “Give me a break. You don’t have a twin.”

  “I do, I do! You’ll love her.” Mary Lee could not stop laughing. She felt thinner and lighter and giddier.

  “You remembered this twin in February, ML?” Mindy exchanged skeptical looks with the ceiling. “Right.”

  “Right!” laughed Mary Lee.

  The next day at meals, she assaulted tables and gatherings that she had ignored long enough that they now ignored her. “I’m an identical twin!” she cried. “And my twin is coming to visit for the three-day weekend!”

  The popular girls exchanged long looks.

  “It happens at this time of year,” said Marilyn with a shrug. “Too much winter. The useless ones get crazy. They start believing in identical twins.”

  Mary Lee flushed.

  The popular girls laughed, their mouths gaping. “So, Mary Lee,” said one of Bianca’s buddies, “if your supposed identical twin is really identical to you …” — A cruel smile flickered on the pretty round face — “like — who cares?”

  “Stop,” said Bianca, obeying the roommate rule. You stick up for your roommate even when she’s a dork. “Leave Mary Lee alone.” (A skill, of course, that everyone was now pretty good at.)

  Madrigal arrived.

  She stalked onto that campus, and it was hers. She was the Event Mary Lee had longed to be. She overwhelmed the girls in Mary Lee’s dorm and made them her own possessions. By the end of the very first evening, the twins were sitting at the very best table, among the most desirable girls. But it was Madrigal and Madrigal alone to whom they spoke.

  Maddy, they said affectionately, come to our room and listen to tapes. Maddy, sit with us. Ski with us tomorrow, Maddy. Have hot chocolate with us, Maddy.

  In spite of the identical look that had confused people for seventeen years at home, the girls on Third were able to tell Mary Lee and Madrigal apart. Mary Lee was shocked. Back home, she was always answering to Madrigal and Madrigal answering to Mary Lee. How could Bianca and Mindy and Merrill and Marilyn so easily know which dark skinned dark haired dark eyed beauty was Madrigal?

  Madrigal had personality.

  Mary Lee, whose school this was, remained wallpaper.

  This visit for which Mary Lee had had such high hopes was the most horrible weekend of her life. She was taught a terrible and unwanted truth: It is not the surface that matters. For the surfaces of the twins were identical. In five months of living with them, she had displayed nothing to these girls. Twenty-four hours with Madrigal, and they had a best friend.

  I am not identical. She is better. And everybody but me knew all along. It’s why I was the one sent to boarding school — Mother and Father knew — Madrigal is the worthy one.
I am nothing but an echo.

  She tried to twin-wave this dreadful thought to Madrigal, so Madrigal would sweep her up in hugs and love, understand completely and deeply. She needed Madrigal to deny it and prove the silly theory wrong.

  Madrigal, however, did not notice. The twin who should have instantly comprehended the situation was simply enjoying herself. Laughing away, having a good old time.

  And at night, in the dorm, Madrigal on a lumpy guest cot — she refused offers of bunks — Madrigal entertained them with stories of high school. Of handsome wonderful Jon Pear, and their exciting wild dates. Of Jon Pear’s romantic escapades and his crazy insane ideas.

  It didn’t even sound like home to Mary Lee. Mother and Father, who all but fingerprinted the kids their little girls played with, letting Madrigal go out at any hour of the day or night with this wild-acting Jon Pear? There seemed to be no curfews, no rules, no supervision.

  Supervision. She remembered that word. Mother had claimed to keep Madrigal at home for “supervision.”

  “Wow, you get to do anything, don’t you?” said Bianca enviously. She brushed Madrigal’s gorgeous fall of black hair, playing with it and fixing it, as if this were an incredible treat, as if Mary Lee, with the same hair, had not been around all year.

  Sunday was the final day of a too long and too lonely visit. Mary Lee said to her sister, “I’m not going to ski today. You go on with Bianca and Mindy. I’m going to work on my report.”

  They were fixing each other’s hair as they often had, a perfect reflection of the other without mirrors. Mary Lee stared at her lovely self; and at the self who was actually somebody else. Those hazel green eyes, so clear and true — so deep and unreadable. That rich olive skin, like a curtain between them. The long black lashes, finer than any mascara, dropping like a fringe to separate their lives. Each girl had caught her heavy black hair back twice, high on top of the head, and again low at the neck.

  Who are you? thought Mary Lee. I don’t even know you!

  “Of course you’re going to ski,” said Madrigal. “That’s what’s across the street. A ski slope. So you ski. Don’t be such a baby, MreeLee.”

  “I’m not as coordinated as you are,” said Mary Lee.

  Her sister poked her. “We are identical in leg muscles, too,” said Madrigal. “Now we’re going to ski. There are people out there I intend to impress. Two of us are more impressive than one of us.”

  Who is out there for you to impress? thought Mary Lee. You own them all already.

  It would happen, though. They would go out there, the two of them, and only one of them — Madrigal — would impress somebody.

  Madrigal’s ski outfit was stunning.

  Jacket and pants looked as if they had begun life as a taffeta Christmas ball gown: darkly striking crimson and green, plaid with black velvet trim and black boots. Madrigal was no oddity, but a trendsetter. Every other girl on the slopes was now out of date.

  Including Madrigal’s twin.

  For Mary Lee wore the same neon solids everyone else had that winter: Hers was turquoise. The color, which had seemed so splendid, which would hold its own against the lemon-yellow and hot-orange and lime-green of other skiers, was now pathetically out of style.

  She was ashamed of her turquoise. She felt obvious. She felt loud and lacking in taste.

  In fact, Mary Lee felt like an imposter. As if she and her sister had not started life as equally divided halves; as if Madrigal had drawn nine tenths of the personality, and Mary Lee the slight remaining fraction.

  They could both wear their hair in the same black cloud of excitement, paint their lips the same dark rose, throw back their heads to laugh the same laugh … but even identical, Madrigal was more.

  Despair overtook Mary Lee. She prayed that Madrigal was not reading her mind right now. What if Madrigal knew Mary Lee was eaten with jealousy over her own twin?

  She thought to herself: Okay, this is my fault, this loneliness at school. It was a decision I stupidly made, not to try my hardest, not to be my best. But how can I start over? How do I make friends where I shrugged them off before?

  Madrigal did not waver in her affection. Even now, during the mild argument that was the closest they had ever come to fighting, Madrigal tilted forward to touch her twin’s cheek with her lips.

  “Okay, okay,” said Mary Lee reluctantly, breaking down, “we’ll ski. But you’d better break your leg in the same place I break mine, Madrigal.”

  Madrigal laughed. “I have too much at stake to allow for hospital time.”

  She meant Jon Pear.

  Mary Lee’s cheeks grew hot. Unwanted jealousy whipped like an approaching blizzard through the snow of her heart.

  Perhaps that was the great difference that people saw or suspected. Perhaps having a boy in your life lifted your spirits so high that everyone else wanted to hang onto the edge of your soaring heart. Take a free ride to love.

  Mary Lee no longer knew what love was. Her twin had discarded her, her parents had shipped her away. If you could not trust the love of your family, could you trust the love of some unknown boy, or of anyone?

  The mountain on which they skied rose beyond the playing fields. Girls supposedly came to the school for the famous academics, but as far as Mary Lee could tell, they came for the nearby boys and the winter sports. The two schools shared an indoor skating rink, so figure skating and ice hockey could be practiced year round. Each ski team could be at the top of the mountain within minutes of the end of classes.

  So while there were several hundred girls that Mary Lee had failed to impress, there were also several hundred boys. Could Madrigal have her eyes on one of them? Why would somebody as deeply in love with a boy as Madrigal said she was with Jon Pear look at anyone else?

  What was Jon Pear like? What if she met a boy as wonderful as Jon Pear? For he must be wonderful, or Madrigal would not adore him so.

  “Do you and Jon Pear talk about me?” she said, wanting to be a necessary part of her sister’s conversation with Jon Pear.

  Madrigal turned away from the twin who looked exactly like her to look in the mirror instead. When she spoke, her generous lips played with the single word and lingered upon it. “No.”

  Madrigal smiled into the mirror and the mirror, of course, smiled back, equally satisfied. Madrigal’s lips moved, and Mary Lee read them: Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall, Who Is the Fairest of Them All?

  Mary Lee was chilled. The mirror cannot answer that question, she thought. We are equally fair.

  Another word from Mother’s lecture flickered in Mary Lee’s memory like a reminder on the calendar: unhealthy.

  “But Jon Pear must wonder what it’s like,” said Mary Lee quickly. “Everybody wants to know what it’s like to be identical twins.”

  “I’m sure he does,” said Madrigal, giving her twin a hard look, “but he has the good manners not to refer to it.”

  Mary Lee was cut to the bone.

  “I don’t think he actually believes that I could have an identical twin,” said Madrigal, laughing now. She seemed to flirt with her reflection. “He’s in love with me. He says, ‘Two of Madrigal? Impossible.’” Madrigal went on ahead, dancing out the dormitory door in her dashing glittering ski suit. She was greeted with cries of ecstasy and friendship from girls who had never bothered with Mary Lee.

  “Oh, Madrigal! This is such fun!”

  “How neat to be an identical twin!”

  “Tell us all about it. What’s it really like?”

  They did not ask Mary Lee what it was like.

  Mary Lee became part of the masses, blending in with ordinary skiers, while Madrigal was fascinating and special and An Identical Twin.

  The boarding school’s bus carried the skiers and their equipment the single mile to the lifts. Everybody got out, carefully maneuvering long skis and poles and making put-your-eye-out jokes.

  Madrigal scampered ahead of Mary Lee. Way ahead. Deep in a throng of new, but close, friends. Laughing and teasing
and thoroughly enjoying herself.

  Mary Lee pulled out an old ugly knit cap and stuffed her heavy hair beneath it. The cap was not a good match for the turquoise ski suit; it was royal blue: together the colors snarled. Mary Lee became plain. An inconvenient blue splat.

  She struggled even to trudge in her sister’s wake, her abandoned heart no longer pumping as it should.

  Halfway to the lifts, Madrigal paused. Around her, the crowd had expanded as if it were being multiplied by some geometric factor; as if some magic algebra class were using the creatures on this slope for their problematic equations, moving and multiplying what had once been human beings.

  Fear clogged Mary Lee’s arteries and thoughts.

  Mary Lee, came a pulsing wordless communication. Come.

  Madrigal was calling. The lovely unspoken words had returned.

  Madrigal just figured out how lonely and lost I am without her. So we’re back. Twins again, touching without speech again!

  Madrigal entered the immense lodge, and Mary Lee flew in the building, too, broken heart mending as she ran.

  “I knew you’d come.” They said it together, inflections on the same syllables, lips equally lingering on the m.

  Madrigal huffed out a breath of relief. “I was afraid we’d lost it, MreeLee.”

  “Me, too,” said Mary Lee, her eyes filling.

  The twins embraced. The joy was almost too much to bear.

  Madrigal pushed Mary Lee into a girls’ room. “I feel so bad because you have on that old rag of a ski suit and I’ve got such a beauty. Listen, MreeLee.”

  Mary Lee’s heart turned over with love for this twin who outshone her.

  “We’ll switch,” said Madrigal. “You be the star here. This is your school. I don’t know what’s the matter with me, trying to leap into your life as well as my own.”

  How she loved this sister, who would come through for her in the end. We’re still twins, Mary Lee thought, passionately relieved. “It’s okay,” she said. “You look perfect in it.”

  Madrigal giggled. “Then so would you, Miss Identical Twin.”

  They undressed with lightning speed, the way they had since they were toddlers. “You be Madrigal, MreeLee,” said her twin, zipping Mary Lee into the gleaming taffeta plaid.