Stranger With My Face

  Of course, by then I had told Helen the entire story, not just the part about Gordon and Natalie.

  “I’ve been scared I might be going crazy,” I said, admitting that to myself for the first time. “The dreams—and that’s what I kept telling myself they were—were taking over my life.”

  “You’re not crazy,” Helen said firmly. “And that girl you call Lia isn’t any dream. Have you ever actually seen her?”

  “No, not really. As a shadow, maybe. As a reflection. Not as a real person.”

  “I saw her clearly,” Helen said. “Either I’m more attuned to things like that than you are, or else she’s getting stronger. If that’s the case, she’ll be able to appear anywhere soon, even in broad daylight.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked nervously. “You can’t be talking about—about that ‘astral projection’ thing. I told you. I can’t do that.”

  “But Lia can,” Helen said. “There is a Lia, Laurie. She’s not just somebody your mind has invented. If she were, I wouldn’t have seen her too. Somewhere in the world she exists, this girl who looks so exactly like you, and she has learned how to project herself.”

  “There can’t be somebody who looks that much like me,” I objected.

  “An identical twin would.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I don’t have a twin.”

  Helen regarded me thoughtfully. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” I said vehemently. “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No, but any other explanation would make more sense than that.”

  I would have given anything to have been able to discuss the subject with Gordon, but the one time I tried to broach it, he shut me down quickly.

  “When Helen slept over at my place—” I began.

  “I don’t want to talk about Helen,” Gordon interrupted. “You’re so wrapped up in that weirdo, people are starting to talk about it. Mary Beth says you don’t even eat at the table with the islanders anymore. You go off and sit with Helen in a corner.”

  “Why does that matter to you?” I asked him.

  “I just told you why—because people are saying stuff. You’ve got nice friends, and you act like you don’t want to hang out with them. It’s insulting.”

  “They’re your friends,” I said.

  “If they’re mine, they’re yours. At least, they’ve tried to be.” He regarded me worriedly. “What’s going on with you, Laurie? When we’re together I don’t feel like you’re really with me. It’s like your mind’s off somewhere else.”

  “I’m with you now,” I said, and kissed him to prove it.

  That always worked with Gordon. His mouth came down so hard on mine that I could feel my teeth cutting into my upper lip. I guess it was what you would call a passionate kiss, but in the middle of it I realized that he was right—my mind was detaching itself—moving away from the two of us as though it had business elsewhere. Somehow I seemed to be standing back, looking at this boy and girl kissing, thinking what a good-looking couple they made, like something out of a movie, perfectly cast, with the boy’s fair hair so nicely contrasting with the girl’s dark mane.

  This is how Lia must feel, I found myself thinking. She stands apart and watches.

  The thought was so terrifying that I shivered convulsively, and Gordon broke off the kiss to draw back and stare at me.

  “I must really turn you on! That’s good for the ego, you know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “You know it wasn’t that.”

  “Then what the hell was it? That’s what I mean—your mind’s never here anymore. I don’t know what your problem is, Laurie, but if you can’t get it together, we’re going to have to break up. Things can’t go on the way they are.”

  “No,” I agreed, “they can’t.”

  It wasn’t just our relationship that I was referring to. As important as it once was to me, it was overshadowed now by other issues. Helen’s suggestion had been absurd, but I would have to confront it in order to discard it. As she herself had said, I had no alternatives to offer. My parents might laugh at me, or be hurt and angry, or get worried and haul me over to the mainland to see a psychiatrist, but any of that would be better than worrying over the strange little lump of doubt that had been planted at the corner of my mind. If there was really a Lia, and if she was really my sister, I had to know.

  The next afternoon when I got home from school, I went up the stairs to Mom’s studio.

  I entered without knocking, which is what she prefers (“Banging on the door is the last thing you want to do when somebody has a brushful of paint in her hand,” she always said). The room was filled with the slanted, golden afternoon light which is so much mellower than the blue-white light of morning. Mom was seated at her easel with her back to me. On the canvas before her there was the first rough outline of beach and ocean and the figure of a child. I could tell by the lines of the sturdy body that it was Megan, bent forward, hands on knees, gazing intently at something that had been washed up by the tide. The sky was gray and foreboding, as though a storm were rising in the distance. Mom always painted her skies first and then worked her way into the foreground of her pictures.

  I drew a long breath and let her have the question.

  “Do I have a twin sister?”

  For a long moment Mom gave no sign of having heard me. She continued to sit motionless, the hand that was holding the brush frozen in midair a scant half-inch from the surface of the canvas. Then, slowly, she turned to face me.

  “Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “Because I need to know.”

  “You don’t come up with a question like that out of the blue. Something or somebody had to inspire you to ask it.”

  “Does that really matter?” The fact that she had not given an immediate denial was answer enough. I stared at her, incredulous. “What happened to her? Where is she? How could you never have told me?”

  “There didn’t seem to be any reason why you should know,” Mom said. Her face was very pale, and her eyes had the wide, startled look that Neal’s get when he’s confronted with something he doesn’t know how to handle. “The whole thing is so long behind us, and we had no choice. We couldn’t take both of you. We couldn’t even afford one baby, really, but we wanted you so desperately—”

  “You couldn’t take us!” I repeated. “Take us where?” A second possibility occurred to me, and I heard my voice rising in an unnatural squeak that sounded like someone in a soap opera. “Am I adopted?”

  “Oh, Lord, I’ve really messed things up now, haven’t I?” Mom shook her head miserably. “When you came in here asking about a twin, I thought that, if you’d discovered that much, then you already knew the circumstances. I never wanted to tell you like this. Let’s go get Dad. We’ll sit down together and talk it through, and he’ll explain—”

  “I am adopted, aren’t I? Tell me!”

  “Yes.” Mom started to get to her feet, her arms reaching out for me, but I motioned her back.

  “You’ve lied to me! For seventeen years, you’ve lied!”

  “That’s not true,” Mom said. “We never lied, we simply didn’t tell you. Why does it matter? You’re our child just as much as your brother and sister are. We couldn’t love you more if I’d carried you in my body. There never seemed to be any reason to make you wonder and worry over things that should have no bearing on your life.” She paused and then added pleadingly, “Let’s go downstairs now, Laurie. Your father can explain it all better than I can.”

  “You mean the man I’ve always thought of as my ‘father,’” I said cruelly, wanting to hurt her, to repay her for the terrible hurt she had just inflicted upon me. “He’s Neal’s and Megan’s father, not mine.”

  “He’s your father in every way that counts,” Mom said.

  And so we went down, and she got Dad out of his office, and we sat at the kitchen table, which is wh
ere talks in our family are always held, and he told me the story. He did not seem as shaken up as Mom. It was as though he had been anticipating this moment for a long time.

  “I always figured someday we’d have to go through this,” he said. “Someday something would come up—a need for a medical history, maybe—and you couldn’t keep thinking your genes were coming straight down the line from the Strattons and the Comptons. A lot of people are open about adoption. Still, that idea has always upset your mother.”

  “We have such a good life together, the five of us,” Mom said defensively. “I couldn’t bear to think of spoiling it. Whether everyone else is doing it or not, it can’t be a good thing to split a family into segments. You hear about all these young people discovering that they’re adopted and going off to find their ‘real parents,’ as though their adoptive parents were nothing more than babysitters.”

  “I want to know,” I said flatly. “I want to know everything.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” Dad said, “but first I want some wine.”

  He got up and got glasses for himself and Mom, and would have given me one, but I waved it away. Then he sat back down and poured for the two of them and raised his glass and took a swallow.

  “It’s simple,” he said. “We wanted a child, and we couldn’t have one. We tried for years. Doctors told us your mother’s ovaries weren’t functioning properly. They couldn’t pinpoint the reason, they just weren’t. We tried to adopt in New York State and got turned down, which wasn’t surprising; an aspiring writer married to an aspiring artist, with no money coming in, aren’t promising parent material.

  “But we wanted a kid; we were that selfish, I guess, and had that much faith in ourselves and in each other. We were sure the lean years were going to give way and one or both of us would eventually make it. What we were afraid of was that by the time that happened we’d be beyond the age to qualify. We heard that there were babies with mixed racial backgrounds available in the Southwest, so we went there. That was the trip we were talking about that night Helen was here.”

  “Mixed racial backgrounds,” I repeated numbly. “What exactly am I?”

  “Your biological father was white,” Dad said. “Your biological mother was full-blooded Navajo.”

  “I’m half Native American?” I whispered, stunned. “That’s why I look so different from you and the kids! My hair—my features—”

  “Your alien eyes.” Dad was trying to make a joke of it, but he couldn’t pull it off. He took a deep swig of wine and refilled his glass. “Come on, Laurie—lots of family members look different from each other, or have varying backgrounds. The roots of humanity are so meshed, we’re all blends and combinations.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “It’s not supposed to be. Honey—” He reached for my hand and looked hurt as I jerked it away. “Laurie, it’s not that big a deal. You’re the same person you always were. You’re our beloved daughter. You’re one of us, a Stratton. So what if the same wind that blew your brother and sister into our lives didn’t carry you? You got here. That’s what’s important.”

  “If you really felt that way you wouldn’t have hidden the truth from me,” I said coldly. “Now, I want to know about my twin.”

  “What’s there to know except that you had one?” Dad said. “Your father evidently walked out on your biological mother at some point during her pregnancy. She gave birth to two babies and knew she wouldn’t be able to raise them alone. It was a measure of her love for you that she wanted you to have a better life than she could give you.”

  “Did you see her?” I asked. “The other baby?”

  “Of course. You were there together in the same crib at the agency.”

  “Did she look exactly like me?”

  “You were identical.”

  “Then, why—” The question rose to my lips without my even realizing that I was going to ask it. “Why did you take me instead of her?”

  “We couldn’t raise both of you,” Dad said. “We were going out on a limb to take on even one dependent at that point in our lives.”

  “That’s not what I asked,” I said. “What I want to know is, why did you choose me over my sister?”

  There was a moment’s silence as my parents exchanged glances.

  Then Dad said slowly, “Your mother—your mother, well, she thought—”

  “I didn’t want her,” Mom said. Her normally gentle voice was strangely sharp. “I just didn’t want her. I wanted you.”

  “But if we looked exactly the same—”

  “You weren’t the same,” Mom said. “You looked just alike—both of you so beautiful with big, solemn eyes and all that thick, dark hair. The people at the agency wanted us to take you both, and despite what Dad says, I really think we might have done it. It seemed wrong to separate twin sisters. I picked you up and cuddled you, and I knew I never wanted to let you go. It was as though you were meant to be ours. Then I handed you to Dad to hold and picked up the other baby, and—and—”

  “And what?” I prodded.

  “I wanted to put her down.”

  “Why did you want to do that?” I asked.

  “That’s what your dad kept asking me. I couldn’t explain it to him then, and I can’t to you now. It was instinctive. She felt alien in my arms. I knew I would not be able to love her.”

  “Just like that? Without any reason?”

  “There was something strange about her. I can’t tell you what it was. I know it doesn’t make sense. I’m not a baby-lover by nature. There are women who are, you know—women who adore all babies, just because of their babyness—but I’ve always been selective about the people in my life, babies as well as adults. I even used to wonder, when I was pregnant with Neal, how I would feel about him after he was born, and whether I would be able to love him the way I did you. I picked you out. He was an unknown.” She smiled slightly. “Of course, that was a ridiculous worry. Neal and Megan were meant to be ours just the way you were.”

  “How could you have gotten pregnant later if your ovaries weren’t working?” I asked her, almost accusingly.

  “We don’t know,” Dad said, speaking for her. “The doctors couldn’t give us any explanation. Maybe they made a mistake in their diagnosis, or maybe there were hormonal changes in your mother’s body. Who knows? There again, what does it matter? We’re here—we’re a family. Now that you know your background, there’s nothing left for you to wonder about. Can’t we just file this away and go on with our normal lives?”

  “It’s not that easy,” I said. “I want to find my twin.”

  “This is just what I was afraid of!” Mom exclaimed. “It’s the reason I didn’t want you to know. You can’t just accept it, can you? Oh, no. You’ve got to want more; you have to find out about these people who aren’t anything to you.”

  “The girl is my sister.”

  “Megan is your sister!”

  “Meg is my adoptive sister,” I said bitterly, accentuating the word. “I want to know about my real, blood sister.”

  “You’re just trying to hurt us.” Mom’s voice was rising. “You’re trying to punish us for not telling you before.”

  “Easy now, Shelly,” Dad said soothingly, laying a restraining hand on her arm. “It’s natural for Laurie to react this way. It’s a shock to discover there’s a part of your past you weren’t aware of.”

  “But now she wants to throw out the people who’ve loved and raised her and go out hunting for perfect strangers!”

  “I want to know about my sister,” I repeated. How dare my mother put me on the defensive this way, when it was she and Dad who had created the situation?

  “Aren’t you even curious how I found out about her? It’s because she comes to me at night.”

  “Oh, Laurie—” Dad began.

  “You don’t believe me? You think I’m lying?”

  “I think you’re very upset,” Dad said.

  “Of course I am. I’m upset because the
two people I trusted most in the world have deceived me all my life, and I’m upset because this sister—this Lia—has been visiting me at night, stirring around my dreams, appearing places where people think she’s me. Remember, Dad, when you thought you saw me going up to my room, and I wasn’t even in the house? That was Lia. She went to my room. She looked through my things. She sat on my bed. When I entered the room later, I could feel her there. Then, when Helen spent the night—”

  “Make her stop, Jim,” Mom pleaded. “I can’t take any more of this. You see now how right I was, don’t you? We never should have told her.”

  “You wouldn’t have if I hadn’t forced you,” I reminded her. “If you don’t believe me about Lia’s visits, then how do you think I found out about her?”

  “Obviously, you must have gone through the file cabinet and found the adoption papers,” Dad said. “Get a grip on yourself, Laurie. Overdramatizing isn’t going to accomplish anything. Your mother and I feel bad enough about this already. So, you’re adopted. So, you’re angry because we didn’t tell you sooner. All right, then—you’re angry. Perhaps you have a right to be. But there’s one thing you’ll have to admit if you’re honest. It’s that we love you. Any mistakes we may have made were made for that reason. You don’t doubt that, do you?”

  I was silent for a moment. Then I had to answer, “No.”

  As furious as I was at them, I did not doubt that they loved me.

  And because of that—because they loved me, and I knew it, and they knew I knew it—we could not stay estranged. We were awkward with each other for a day or so, but it subsided. It was especially hard to remain aloof when the kids were around. I looked at Megan, bustling about in that funny, self-important way of hers, and found myself smiling as I always had. And when Neal sat, dreamy-eyed, over his drawings, his soft, pale hair fluffed forward over his forehead, I was filled with the same surge of overwhelming tenderness I had experienced when he was first brought home to Cliff House. They were my sister and my brother. Nothing could change that.