The Mirror Sisters

  Both of us did have some sense of difference simmering inside, though, and it grew stronger, of course, as we got older, despite Mother’s efforts to smother it. It was destined to boil over, but in Haylee before me. Mother seemed unable to imagine that. She was so confident that she was right about how we would grow up and treat each other.

  I was convinced that she truly believed that Haylee and I had the same thoughts simultaneously. If one of us asked her a question, she would immediately look at the other’s face to see if the same question was on her mind. Whether it was or not, she assumed it was. Daddy never did, but she was quick to point out how we both laughed at the same things on television and looked sad at the same sad things and wondered about the same things.

  “Remarkable,” she would say in a loud whisper.

  She often surprised us like that, commenting on some ordinary thing we had done together and giving us the feeling that it wasn’t ordinary after all. Daddy would look at us again to see what she saw. Sometimes he would nod, but most of the time, he’d shrug and say, “It’s not unusual, Keri. Kids are kids,” and he’d go on reading or doing whatever he had been doing. More than once, I caught Mother smirking at him with great displeasure when he did that.

  I often wondered why Daddy didn’t think we were as special as Mother thought we were. Did that mean he loved us less? Why wasn’t he as afraid of any differences we might show? In fact, whenever he could, especially when Mother wasn’t watching or listening, he encouraged them, and because of that, Haylee loved him more. But I never believed he loved her more than he loved me, which was what she often claimed.

  It wasn’t easy for him to applaud our differences. Keeping us similar was so important to Mother that we were hardly ever alone when we were very young. It seemed she was always there hovering over us, watching carefully, eager to pounce as soon as one of us began to do something different from the other. If I reached for a cracker and she saw me do it, she would hold the box out to Haylee, too.

  “I don’t want one,” Haylee would say.

  “You will in a moment,” Mother would tell her, as if only she could know what either of us really wanted. It didn’t matter if Haylee wanted one just then or not. She was getting one because Mother insisted.

  If Daddy was present, he would say something like “Why don’t you just let them eat when they’re hungry, Keri?”

  “She’s hungry,” Mother would reply. “I know when she’s hungry, Mason. Do you cook for them? Do you know what they like and don’t like?”

  He’d put up his hands like a soldier surrendering.

  The same rule applied to me if Haylee reached for something or wanted something, but I saved trouble by reaching for it, too. As soon as I did, Mother would smile at me, her worried face opening like clouds parting for the sunshine.

  “See?” she would say if Daddy was there.

  Haylee often noticed how pleased Mother was with me and looked upset. It was as though she was keeping track of how many times our mother smiled at each of us, adding up the points we earned to prove whom Mother would eventually love more. I tried to impress her with how important it was to Mother so she wouldn’t think I was doing it to make her look bad or to make myself look better, but Haylee never believed me.

  “You want her to love you more, Kaylee. Don’t say you don’t,” she told me.

  Maybe I did, but I knew Mother wouldn’t let herself do that. She was too strict about how she interacted with us.

  I claimed I remembered Mother changing my diaper whenever she had to change Haylee’s and her doing the same for Haylee whenever she had to change mine. Maybe it was something Daddy had told us, but the images were very vivid. It still seemed to be true as we grew out of diapers. Neither of us could wear anything fresh and clean if the other didn’t. If Haylee ripped something of hers and Mother was going to throw it out, she’d throw out mine along with it. Haylee often got her clothes and shoes dirtier than I got mine, but mine were always washed along with hers anyway.

  How many times did Haylee have to eat when I was hungry, and how many times did I have to eat when she was hungry? It got so we would check with each other in little ways before crying out, reaching out, or even walking in one direction or another. If Haylee wasn’t ready to go or to do something, I didn’t, and the same was true for her. We both knew instinctively that it was the only way we could protect ourselves from doing things we didn’t want to do.

  Mother didn’t realize that we were doing this deliberately or why. Instead, she would always point out our mutual requests and actions to Daddy to prove her theory that we were unusually alike.

  “Don’t you see? Can’t you see how remarkable they are?” she would ask, frustrated at how calmly he took it all in. He’d shrug or just say, “Yes, remarkable,” but I could see he wasn’t as convinced about it as she was. Maybe he saw how she was often causing us to do things simultaneously, but he hesitated to question her about it, even though I could see him scrunch his face in disapproval. Sometimes he tried to be humorous about it and say something like “Hey, Keri, guess what? They only need one shadow.” He’d laugh after he had said something like that, but she never laughed at his jokes about us and soon he stopped trying.

  He never really stopped complaining, though. I remember Daddy claiming that I was able to stand and walk long before Haylee could but that Mother wouldn’t let me. He said he suspected she would push me down to crawl until Haylee took her first steps. Then, and only then, would she announce our progress to him.

  Once, when they were arguing about us, I overheard him tell her that he had seen her breastfeeding many times, one of us at each breast and stopping if one was satisfied, no matter how the other cried.

  “It has nothing to do with hunger. You don’t know anything when it comes to that sort of thing, Mason. You’re just like any other man.”

  But from the way he kept questioning her about things she had done with us, I could tell he was growing more skeptical. None of that mattered to Mother, though. She would act as if she didn’t hear what he was saying. Once he dramatically turned to the wall and complained, but she ignored him and didn’t laugh at all. For Daddy, it was like being on a boat that was sailing toward a storm in the distance but being unable to change direction.

  There were just too many things Mother would do with us that annoyed him. Eventually, he complained more vigorously about things that he thought were more serious. If Haylee or I had a cold, she always gave cough medicine to both of us. Daddy objected loudly to that, but Mother assured him that whichever of us seemed fine would soon catch the same cold. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Mother declared.

  Often, Haylee would begin to cough when I did, but I couldn’t help suspecting that she was just imitating me to make Mother happy and earn those love-me-more points.

  “Don’t you see what a wonder they are?” Mother would say to Daddy when he didn’t react enough to please her after she had told him about something we had done together. Nothing seemed to frustrate her more.

  “They’re a wonder to me no matter what,” he would say, but she would shake her head as if he was too thick to understand.

  Sometimes he would try to seem more excited just to please her. Then he would reach to hug us. I saw how he always looked to Mother first so she would see that he was going to lift us both, hold us for the same amount of time, and not favor one of us over the other with his kisses and hugs. That pleased her. She would smile and nod as if he had passed some sort of test. Keeping the peace was obviously the most important thing to him, even more important than standing up for Haylee or me if either of us did something different, something original.

  When I was old enough to understand him more, I realized that he wanted his home to be a true sanctuary, a place he could come to in order to escape the pressures and conflicts he had to endure in his work. Sometimes when he came home and I was there to see him first without him knowing, I would see him close his eyes and take a
deep breath, as if he had finally reached fresh air. No wonder he let Mother get away with as much as she did when we were younger.

  Of course, we had been too young to know what they said about us when they were alone, but later, when we were older, I understood that right from the beginning, Mother often instructed Daddy about how we were to be treated, especially how he was to talk to us, hold us, walk with us—in short, love us. Loving your children was supposed to be something that came naturally to a father or a mother. It wasn’t something that had to be taught. I knew he thought this, but he never came out and said it, at least not in our presence.

  Daddy never stopped trying to get Mother to loosen up when it came to us. For our first birthday and every one thereafter, Mother made us each a cake so we would have the same number of candles and one of us wouldn’t blow out more candles than the other.

  “Don’t you think you’re carrying this too far?” Daddy would ask from time to time, especially about the birthday cakes. That could set her off like a firecracker and threaten to ruin our birthday celebrations. Those hands of surrender would go up, and he would step back like someone asked to step off the stage and become simply an observer, maybe a student in a class on how to treat special twins.

  In fact, when we were old enough to understand some of what she was telling him, we would also listen at the dinner table or in the living room when she was reading to Daddy from books about bringing up identical twins. She did sound like a teacher speaking to a student. It wasn’t as clear to us when we were very young that she was talking about us, of course. Sometimes, even after we realized it, it still felt as if she was talking about other children. We would sit there listening and when she paused, Daddy would look at us closely as if to confirm that we were the girls she was describing.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised at how accommodating Daddy was when it came to her instructions regarding us. It wasn’t easy for anyone to challenge her. Mother was an A-plus student in high school and college. Like Daddy, she had graduated with honors. When they first met, he was majoring in business, and she was heading to law school. Daddy admitted that no one could research anything better than our mother. That’s why she would be a very good lawyer. In those early days of our upbringing, she simply overwhelmed him with facts, statistics, and psychological studies of children. She’d hand him the books or the articles she had culled and tell him to read them for himself.

  “That’s all right, Keri,” he would say. “I’ll take your word for it. I’ve got plenty to read as it is.”

  Even so, I caught him gazing at articles from time to time, reading the sentences Mother had underlined. She left them around the house deliberately, I thought, especially near where he sat. When I was older, I tried to read them, too, but Haylee thought they were boring. After all, they didn’t have her name in them. Mother knew Daddy was glancing at them at least and would make references to them when he started to question something she was doing. It was enough to stop him, even in mid-sentence.

  However, they weren’t always arguing about us. No matter what Daddy really thought about how she was raising us, both Haylee and I were always impressed with how much Daddy respected Mother and how much she admired him, at least when we were younger. When she wasn’t angry at him for something, she treated him as if he were a movie star who just happened to be living in our house. He was a handsome, light-brown-haired, athletic six-foot-one-inch man with what Mother called “jewel-quality crystal-blue eyes, eyes that help his smile stop clocks.”

  I didn’t understand what that meant, and when I didn’t understand something, Haylee certainly didn’t, either, although most of the time she would pretend she did just to make Mother happy and pile up those love-me-more points.

  “How could a smile stop a clock?” I asked.

  “Yes, how could his smile stop a clock?” Haylee quickly repeated. She didn’t like me being first with anything, especially questions.

  “It means he is so stunning that even time itself has to pause to appreciate him,” she explained, but we both still had puzzled expressions on our faces.

  Haylee looked at me, worried that this had helped me understand but not her. It hadn’t. We were too young yet, but Mother didn’t elaborate any further, except to say, “That’s why I fell in love with him. I was always very particular about boyfriends.” She laughed and kissed us and said, “Don’t worry. Someday you’ll know exactly what I’m saying. Both of you will have lightbulbs go off in your heads simultaneously.”

  That was her big word for us, simultaneous.

  Everything we did had to be done at the same time, and she literally meant the exact same moment. She was so positive about this and made it so important to us that we both worried that we were doing something terribly wrong if one of us did something without the other, even when she wasn’t watching us.

  “I’m warm,” I might say, and indicate that I was going to take off my sweater. I could see Haylee thinking about it. Even if she wasn’t warm, too, she would nod and start to take off hers. And the same was true for me whenever she began to do something I hadn’t thought of doing. If Mother happened to see this, she would smile and kiss us as if we had done something wonderful.

  “My girls,” she would say. “My perfect twins. Haylee-Kaylee, Kaylee-Haylee.”

  Were we really perfect? In the beginning, Haylee liked to believe it, but gradually, as we grew older, Mother let go of “my perfect twins” and replaced it with “my perfect daughter,” which made it sound as if we were halves of the same girl.

  It was reasonable to accept that every young girl would want her mother to believe that she was perfect. What Haylee never understood was that it was true for every mother except ours. Ours didn’t see one of us as perfect without the other.

  How sad and troubling was the realization that substituting one word, daughter for twins, would bring about so much pain and unhappiness for Haylee and me.

  And eventually, even for Mother herself.

  But by then, it was far too late.

  2

  Whether it was for our love-me-more points or not, it was always very important to both of us that we please Mother and win her approval of everything we did. She never stopped telling us that she loved us both equally and that everyone who knew us did as well. However, both of us knew in our hearts that someday someone, maybe many people, would love one of us more than the other. I believed Mother when she told Daddy that was going to be the most painful thing of all for us. In fact, because of the way she described it, it frightened me a little.

  Would Haylee hate me if I was eventually more popular than she was? Would I hate her? Was envy more deadly in identical twins than it was in anyone else, as Mother believed? From the way Mother brought us up and the things she told us about ourselves, it was easy for us to believe our emotions were different from those of other girls our age. We supposedly felt everything more deeply because we shared so much in our hearts. Therefore, our emotions were doubly strong.

  “No one could ever be as sad or as happy for a sister or a brother as you are, and this will be so forever and ever. The things you do to and for each other will always be unusual compared with others your age. But don’t ever let the others make you feel weird. Most of the time, they’ll wish they had inside them what you have.

  “When you are older and someone favors one of you more, perhaps falls in love with you, it will be a deep cut that will mend only when the other one finds the same affection,” she predicted.

  I wondered if I would be afraid to fall in love first. I didn’t think Haylee would fear it. Actually, I didn’t think Haylee believed half the things Mother told us.

  Although Daddy was obviously unhappy with how Mother was raising us and what she was teaching us about ourselves and how others viewed us, I couldn’t help thinking she was only trying to make us stronger so we could deal with the things that were going to happen to us simply because of who and what we were. If we didn’t listen to her and obey her
, our lives would be full of pain and disappointment, just as she predicted.

  Maybe that was why Mother was so careful about where she took us and whom we would meet. We didn’t have any real friends until we were in our private grade school. If other mothers suggested having us to their homes to play with their children or bringing their children over to play with us, Mother would simply say, “Thank you, but they’re not ready yet.”

  Daddy overheard Mother say that on the phone one night to Laura Demarco, who lived about a half mile away on our street. Her daughter, Candace, was our age. We had met her and her mother a few times at the mall. Both Haylee and I would have loved to go to her house. We were very curious about other children. There was so much about the “outside world,” as Mother called it, that we longed to know.

  “What do you mean, ‘they’re not ready’?” Daddy asked Mother as soon as she had hung up. “It would be good for them to mix with other kids before they enter school, don’t you think, Keri?”

  “There’ll be time for them to pick up other kids’ bad habits,” she replied dryly.

  “What bad habits? They’re too little to have bad habits.”

  “Oh, you’re so ignorant when it comes to children, Mason. I know what I’m doing. These are the formative years for any child, especially ours. It’s best not to confuse them.”

  “Confuse them? With what?” he asked more emphatically. He glanced at us. By now, I could see he didn’t like to be reprimanded or disrespected in front of us. We were old enough to understand, and I thought it embarrassed him.

  We both sat entranced, waiting for Mother’s response. How could playing with another girl our age ruin us?

  “With their identity, for one,” she said. “And all the good habits I’m inculcating.”

  Daddy grimaced. “Their identity?”

  “Their special identity,” she corrected. “Other children won’t understand how important it is to keep them balanced.”