“Sure. Later,” he said bitterly, and walked off quickly.
I turned and saw that Haylee had been watching us and waiting for me.
“What did he say?” she asked as we entered the classroom.
“He blamed it on our perfume,” I replied.
She laughed, and we took our seats. Despite how strong we both appeared to our friends because of how easily we were tossing away boyfriends, I knew she was on shaky ground just as much as I was. Something deeply significant had happened this past weekend. I believed that now, during every day for at least these high school years, it would seem that our lives were constantly changing. We would continually be asking ourselves who we were, what we were becoming. Although that might be true for everyone our age moving from adolescence to young adulthood, it was especially so for Haylee and me. Perhaps what had happened this weekend was a real wake-up call. We had to work harder at being individuals, even if some of the things we did displeased Mother. Neither Haylee nor I felt like a little girl anymore, and so much of what Mother had designed and hoped for us was framed in a little girls’ world. I felt I had to do more about it than Haylee did, that I would have to help my sister find herself in a more sensible way. I could hope that she realized that some of what she had thought important was not. Time would soon tell.
Jimmy Jackson was not as indifferent to her dismissal of him as he had pretended in the hallway. He didn’t like being made a fool of in front of our classmates. Some had already spread the story about how casually Haylee had brushed him off. As we suspected he would, he began to tell stories about us and ridiculed Matt. Haylee was better at countering it and turning it back on him, telling girls that Jimmy was inadequate as a lover and was just trying to cover up for it by making up lies about us.
That afternoon, Matt and Jimmy did get into a fight. Mr. Allen, the physical education teacher, broke it up before it got too serious, and like two lions who knew they would only tear each other apart, they chose to avoid each other for the remainder of the day. Jimmy lost interest in it all and drifted back to his old friends and girlfriends.
Matt and I continued to circle each other all that day and the next, trying to find ways to mend the tear in our budding relationship. Haylee stayed away from him as she had promised, and if he began to approach me while we were together, she would quickly walk off. It didn’t really matter. Every time I looked at him, I saw the guilt in his face. Every word he spoke had a tentative sound to it, as if he thought I wouldn’t believe anything he said now. Some of that surely came from me, from the way I looked at him and responded to him.
He didn’t call Monday night or Tuesday night. Although we talked to each other a little in school during the remainder of the week, we sounded more like two people who knew very little about each other. He spent most of his free time with the few friends he had and slowly began to drift back into that private world he had once occupied. To keep from thinking about it, I dove deeper into our schoolwork. Haylee surprised me by following my lead. Her conversation now was peppered with references to herself, how much she had learned, especially about our maturity in comparison with our classmates and even the girls in classes ahead of us.
If I had been wiser, I would have noticed some warning signs and perhaps paid more attention to her, but I thought my sister was simply going through another phase. Right now, she was acting the role of the sophisticate. During lunch hour every day, she was holding court, repeating Mother’s diatribes against men, sometimes word for word, and ridiculing every other girl’s romance with a high school boy. Before the week ended, however, I began to see that the girls she thought were feeding off her as if she was the queen bee began to drift away. Some sat with other girls and boys, and those who remained were constantly changing the subject. Even Melanie Rosen and Toby Sue Daniels, who had been the closest thing to best friends for her, retreated. The girls who remained with us were girls who probably wouldn’t have a high school romance anyway. I had always thought that one of them, Denise James, was gay. She was shadowing Haylee more now and repeating some of her phrases as if they were biblical.
“I think Denise is falling in love with you because of what you’re saying these days about men, Haylee,” I told her. “You’re giving her hope.”
“Hope?”
“I don’t think she ever liked boys or will ever like men. Be careful.”
She started to laugh and then stopped, looked back at Denise in the hallway, and said, “Let her fall in love with me. I’ll break her heart as easily as I’d break Jimmy Jackson’s.”
My sister’s on a roll, I thought. There’s no stopping her now. It amused me for a while and kept me from thinking about Matt. Our contact with each other was falling back into only occasional glances and nods. The air between us felt as if a funeral procession had just passed through. I guessed the more I blamed Matt, the less I had to blame Haylee.
I looked for other things to capture my attention. We began to help Mother plan her dinner for Darren Paul. She had three recipe books out on the table on Wednesday and Thursday night and read from them as if they were bedtime stories, putting extra emphasis on certain ingredients or spices.
“There’s much to be said about the way to a man’s heart being through his stomach,” she told us. “All of these women I know who have maids preparing their dinners every night have such thin relationships with their husbands. When they go into their dining rooms, it’s the same as going into a restaurant. Half of them don’t know how to scramble eggs. They become just another knickknack in the home. Whenever I see them out with their husbands, they look more like escorts than wives.”
“But you always cooked and baked for Daddy,” Haylee pointed out. “It didn’t work for you two.”
I wondered if Mother was going to be angry that Haylee had said that or if she was thinking about it deeply herself.
“That,” she said after another moment, “is how you can tell how self-centered he is. He wanted everything to be solely for him, or at least first for him and then the rest of us. Be sure,” she said, waving her finger at us, “that the man you fall in love with worships you, and I mean worships everything you believe and do and not just your pretty face and body. That’s the difference between a mature man and a boy. Just because a male reaches thirty or forty doesn’t mean he’s not still a boy,” she declared, and slammed her recipe book closed like a preacher shutting a Bible after a fire-and-brimstone sermon.
“Lemon roasted chicken with arugula salad and dilled orzo,” she declared. “For dessert, marble angel-food cake with strawberry topping. You girls are in charge of making the dessert. End of story,” she said, and stood up.
“Wow,” Haylee said when we went up to our rooms. “Mother is really going for the jugular with this guy. Maybe she hears wedding bells.”
“Does she really want that, or is she out to prove something to her girlfriends and Daddy?” I said.
Haylee shrugged. “What’s the difference in the end?” she said, and went to her room.
Depends on what you think of as the end, I thought.
That night, we found out that Toby Sue Daniels was having a party on Saturday, but we weren’t invited. Haylee thought the main reason was that Jimmy Jackson was invited, but Sarah Morgan, who was never invited to anything, told me she had overheard Toby Sue tell some other girls that Haylee was too negative about boys now, and she knew she couldn’t invite me without inviting her. Haylee’s reaction should have worried me more. Her indifference about it was so uncharacteristic.
“We wouldn’t have much to say to them anyway,” she told me. “Especially the boys.”
She also surprised me by wanting to practice our piano duet every day so we could play for Darren Paul and make Mother happy. Haylee didn’t put up any argument or even look upset at the thought of us wearing the same dress. Mother stood by, watching and listening to us play, a broad smile on her face. With the dinner she was making and the way we were contributing, she was happier than I
had seen her for some time.
On Friday, Darren arrived with two bottles of wine and another bouquet, this time bigger and with mixed roses.
“I wasn’t sure of the menu, so I brought a white and a red,” he said.
“Like a good Boy Scout,” Mother said. “Always prepared.”
Haylee laughed. Darren looked like he wasn’t sure it was a compliment, but Mother didn’t add anything more.
She handed the wine and flowers to us. Haylee and I had set the table with our best dishes and silverware, water and wine glasses, and linen napkins. We put the bouquet Darren had brought in the middle. When they had their cocktails, Mother permitted us to have a taste of the martinis she had mixed for herself and Darren, and for the first few minutes, we sat and listened to him talk about his jewelry-store expansion. I was surprised at how interested Mother appeared to be. She was never this interested in Daddy’s business details.
Both Haylee and I were polite, but after a while, we were quite bored, because he was going into his business and accounting details as if they were the most exciting things in his life. Either he was nervous, or he just liked the sound of his own voice. Both of us were happy when Mother finally interrupted to tell him we had prepared a piano duet just for him.
We went to the pianos. As if he hadn’t noticed it before, he commented on the fact that there were two pianos.
“Unusual,” he said. “I mean, I’m sure they could have alternated lesson days, right?”
“Of course not,” Mother said a little sharply. “Whatever they’ve done in their lives, they’ve done together.”
“But two pianos . . .” he said, almost stuttering.
“There is two of everything they own,” she said.
“Everything?”
“Down to their socks,” Mother declared proudly.
He looked at us as if seeing us for the first time, his gaze moving from Haylee to me and back to Haylee.
“Do they always dress alike, too?”
“Generally, yes,” she said. “My girls are unique.”
“That’s for sure.”
“If you should ever think of bringing them something, be sure it’s the exact same thing for each,” she added.
He looked at her with a slight smile frozen on his lips, like someone who was waiting for a joke’s punch line.
“Girls,” Mother said, nodding toward the pianos.
We sat and began the duet. When we finished, Darren and Mother clapped.
“Very impressive,” he said. “They seemed to be equally proficient.”
“Of course they are,” Mother said.
“You make it sound as if that’s true for everything, but I’m sure each of you has something special,” he said to us.
I looked quickly at Mother. Her eyes seemed to harden. “What’s special about them is that they are identical,” Mother said, pronouncing each word clearly through clenched teeth. “They have the same talents and interests and do equally well in school. They even have the same friends.”
He nodded and cemented his lips. He wasn’t going to say another word about it. Mother broke the deep silence by declaring that it was time for dinner. He tried very hard to win back her favor by complimenting everything, down to the way the napkins were folded.
“They do that,” Mother said when we served the salad. “Each one did two.”
He nodded and looked at us. “Division of labor, huh?” he asked us, smiling.
“Two halves make a whole,” Mother said. “Together they are my perfect daughter.”
“Haylee-Kaylee,” Haylee said.
“Kaylee-Haylee,” I said.
Darren actually looked frightened for a moment. He nodded and offered to pour the first glass of wine.
“Oh, no, Darren,” Mother said. “Haylee will pour the first glass, and Kaylee will pour the second. We’ve always done it that way ever since they were capable of doing it,” she explained.
Haylee rose and poured the first glass. When she sat, Mother lifted her glass first to make a toast.
“To my girls,” she said. “My raison d’etre.”
“To Mother,” we responded in unison. “Our raison d’etre.”
We drank.
Darren Paul sipped his wine and then coughed into his napkin. “Sorry,” he said.
“Shall we eat?” Mother said, sounding a little annoyed.
He did eat, but he looked as if he was having his last meal before his execution. Nevertheless, he raved about the food as much as Daddy would.
Mother told him we had made the cake, and afterward, Darren and Mother went into the living room to have an after-dinner cordial. We cleaned up. While we worked, we tried to listen to their conversation. They didn’t seem to be talking that much. When we entered, it seemed as if all the air had gone out of the room.
“I was just explaining to Darren how your father often made things difficult for us, especially when I was homeschooling you.”
We looked at him. Mother elaborated on some other things Daddy had done to make it harder for her to raise identical twins correctly. He listened, nodding and looking at us—to see if we were unhappy about it, I supposed. We wore our usual noncommittal faces, which I was sure he thought were almost ceramic. Afterward, he piled compliment after compliment on us all, but when he walked out and the door closed, it had a permanent sound.
I wondered if he would ever call Mother again. He had suggested that he was going to be very busy during the next few months with his business expansion. Mother didn’t seem terribly upset about it and rarely mentioned him during the days that followed. One night, after we had asked about him, she said, “It was just as I told you. You can tell about someone from the way he reacts to your children, and—although you girls have been quite discreet for my benefit—how your children react to him. I saw that you weren’t very impressed. You don’t realize how lucky I am to have you help me navigate the waters of dating after so long. I’ll not make another mistake,” she pledged.
I thought the experience might discourage Mother from having a social life again, but she had other dates. Girlfriends were always trying to find her a new husband. We met most of the men at dinners at our house or when they picked her up, but none of them had any staying power. Meanwhile, the divorce was consummated, and our distant relationship with Daddy was carved in cement.
Whether all of this affected our own social life didn’t seem to matter. We weren’t doing much. Haylee refused to get serious with any high school boy, even though many did try—mostly seniors, too. She didn’t even try to get me to go on double dates.
Like her, I avoided getting into a new relationship. She worried that it was her fault, but I assured her that I wasn’t pining over Matt anymore. Before the school year ended, Matt and I did have another serious conversation, but it was going to be our last—and not because I was still disturbed about what had happened. He surprised me with his news.
“My father has taken a new position in a hospital in New York City,” he said. “We’re moving. Our home is up for sale, and my mother’s been interviewing for bank positions in New York.”
He didn’t sound very upset about it. If anything, he sounded relieved.
When I asked him if he was upset, he thought a moment and said, “We’re just luggage. We’ll probably treat our own children the same way.”
I took that to mean that he was upset. He made a vague promise to stay in touch through emails, but it was as if he had left months ago and I was speaking to his shadow. I told Haylee, and she asked me if I was disappointed.
“I guess I am when I think deeply about him,” I confessed. “I still think he’s someone special and probably will be for someone else.”
“So you still hate me?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t hate you.”
“Because Mother wouldn’t permit it?” she said.
I laughed.
“You know she’s never going to find another man. As soon as they see how weird we are, th
ey all run for the hills. And we are weird,” she insisted. “That’s why I’m afraid to start a romance with any other boy in our school. I’ll never have a real boyfriend until we’re separated, and neither will you.”
“That’s silly,” I said.
“No, it’s not. And after we find our boyfriends, our lovers, our husbands, it will be better if we don’t live too close to each other,” she declared. She sounded as if she had been thinking hard about this for some time.
Maybe she was right, I thought.
As if she had decided that she should prepare herself for us separating, she spent more and more time alone in her room, often on her computer. We were still doing homework and studying for tests together from time to time as the last school quarter approached its end. We also played the piano almost daily, which pleased Mother. Just as we had done for Darren Paul, we performed for any other men she invited to our house. That usually led to comments similar to the ones she had made to Darren, and those comments either shocked or disturbed her dates enough to keep them from coming back.
Although it was very subtle at first, we both sensed that Mother was becoming more distracted with her own effort to find satisfaction in her new situation and identity as a divorcée, but one who wouldn’t look depressed or defeated. When Haylee began wearing different clothes from me, doing her hair differently, and even spending time with other girls without me, Mother didn’t pounce the way she would have in the past. Neither of us was unhappy about it.
However, I began to sense more of a distance between Haylee and myself. It was never easy for us to keep secrets from each other. Whether there was any scientific proof for it or not, I believed we possessed mental telepathy between us. Perhaps it had come from how we had tried to have the same feelings about things so Mother would be pleased. Whatever, I sensed something different was happening. It was as if she had constructed a little wall around a part of herself, her thoughts and feelings. I would often sense her drifting away from whatever conversation we were having with others in school and even with Mother at home. She looked like she was anticipating something, waiting for something.