The Mirror Sisters

  If I asked her if she was all right, she would quickly reply, “Yes, sure. Why not?”

  I didn’t want to say that she seemed upset, because that wasn’t exactly it. I knew when Haylee was upset, and she showed no signs of that. I wouldn’t even say she was troubled or worried. She was simply distant, like someone who had left her body and was wandering about somewhere else.

  Finally, one night after dinner, after we had watched some television with Mother and listened to her go on about something she had heard about Daddy and his “new bed pillow,” how they were already having trouble, we started up to our rooms. Haylee was more eager to get to hers. She said good night, but I stood in my doorway and watched her go into her room. Then I followed. She turned, surprised.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Have you been seeing Jimmy secretly?”

  “Are you kidding? Never. I don’t even waste a thought on him.”

  “Then what is it, Haylee? And don’t say ‘nothing.’ You know when something is on my mind, and you know I can tell the same thing about you. Well?”

  She was silent a moment, considering. “I think I’m in love with someone,” she said.

  “What?” I smiled. “How can that be? You haven’t gone on a date or hung out with anyone for weeks and weeks.”

  “There are other ways.”

  “What other ways?”

  She shifted to her right so I could see the computer.

  I could feel my eyes widen. “You met someone on the Internet?”

  “Yes. We’ve been talking and telling each other things for quite a while. I sent him pictures. Only of myself,” she emphasized.

  “Does he go to our school or one nearby?”

  “No, he’s older.”

  “How much older?”

  “Older.”

  “Haylee, I asked how much,” I said, insisting on an answer.

  “He’s in his mid-twenties. Maybe a little older.”

  “You mean he’s out of college?”

  “He never attended college. He’s a telephone repair man. His father died almost fifteen years ago. His mother died just recently, and he has no brothers or sisters. He’s very good-looking,” she added, “and very sweet and sensitive. We’ve been reading a book together.”

  “How?”

  “We read a chapter or two and then talk about it.”

  “What book?”

  “Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. Mrs. Kasofsky did me a special favor and ordered it for the library, but I’m the only one she’s given it to, and maybe I will be the only one. She likes us to read.”

  “She’s a librarian. Of course she likes us to read. How did you come to choose it?”

  “He told me about the book, and I got it,” she said, opening her desk drawer to show it to me. “He’s very good at analyzing the characters.”

  “How can you fall in love with someone from reading a book together?”

  “There’s more. We share a lot of likes and dislikes. We’re going to meet soon. If you tell Mother about any of this, I swear I’ll never talk to you again for the rest of your life.”

  “I won’t tell, but I’m not sure you should meet a man that old whom you’ve only met on the Internet, Haylee, and especially one so much older.”

  “Don’t start mothering me, Kaylee. I’m an adult, far more adult than anyone else in our class—in our school, for that matter. It’s not your chronological age that matters; it’s your mental and emotional age. There’s a character in Pnin who makes that clear.”

  “So that’s why he wants you to read it? He wants you to think like the character?”

  “It’s interesting. It’s interesting to talk to someone mature.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Long enough to know him well.”

  “But what if he’s lying about things?”

  “I can tell by the way he answers questions about himself. He’s told me about his weaknesses as well as his strengths, told me things that frighten him, that annoy him, told me things he didn’t like about his parents, too. When someone is that open, you can trust him.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, I do. Just forget about it now. It’s not your business. This is something involving just me for a change.”

  “I can’t help worrying about it,” I said.

  “Worry all you want. Just keep your mouth shut. Understood?”

  I nodded.

  “Thank you,” she said. “When I’m ready, when we’re ready, I’ll introduce you to him.”

  “But you haven’t even met him yet yourself.”

  “That’s why I said ‘when I’m ready.’ This means a lot to me, Kaylee.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I’ll let you see a picture of him,” she said, and turned to her computer.

  I approached slowly when she brought the picture up. “He looks older than mid-twenties,” I said.

  “It’s the lighting. He had someone take it with a cell-phone camera. You have to admit he’s very good-looking and has a sensitive face, don’t you?” She turned to look at me. “Don’t you?” she demanded.

  I didn’t like his eyes. They were beady, and who nowadays parted his hair in the middle? “Yes,” I said.

  “As sensitive-looking as Matt?” she asked with a little tease in her voice. “Someday you might forgive him.”

  “There’ll never be a someday. Matt’s leaving,” I said, and told her about his father finding another job.

  “Just as well,” she said, quickly changing her mood. “Spilt milk.” She smiled and looked at the computer again. “That’s why someone stable, mature, is so hard to find.” She went silent, just staring at the man.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Anthony.”

  “Anthony what?”

  She turned and looked up at me, smiling. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m not telling you his full name and then have you go do some search on the Internet and start trouble. You know what you need to know for now. Good night, sister dear. I like privacy when Anthony and I talk.”

  “You’re not talking. He hasn’t called you, right? Or Skyped you or something?”

  “I told him not to. This is fine,” she said. “For now. ’Night,” she said.

  I glanced once more at the picture on the screen and then left. I heard her close the door behind me.

  For the first time in a long time, I went to sleep with fear hovering around me.

  Perhaps it had always been there in my room, waiting for me to turn off the lights and think about my sister, who flitted about fire like a moth, intrigued enough to get too close and get its wings singed by the flames.

  Would the fire she brought to herself spread to me?

  13

  Of all the secrets we’d ever had, this was the hardest to keep. Every night, when Haylee retreated to her room, I worried that she was getting deeper into this strange Internet relationship. Sometimes, late at night, I would wake up with a suspicion and quietly step out of my room and see the glow of her computer screen leak out from under her door. When I mentioned this to her the first time, she said, “He contacts me on and off all night. He’s really a very lonely man. I help him go back to sleep.”

  “What about you?”

  “Oh, I feel good about it and fall right back to pleasant dreams,” she said.

  Now I actually hoped that Mother would walk in on Haylee while she was conversing with him. I almost broke my promise and suggested that Mother do that, but the fear of how hard Haylee would take it and what it would do to our relationship kept me back. As the school year was drawing to an end, I did think that we were closer than ever as sisters and even friends, despite her secret Internet relationship and how it hung there between us like a scream frozen in the air.

  Haylee and I did more together besides practicing piano and homework. What little social life we had we clung to t
ogether. We were no longer hanging out with different friends from each other in school, as most of Haylee’s friends had come to resent her lecturing them and ridiculing what they considered to be fun and exciting, something she had considered that way, too. On the other hand, Haylee seemed to be more tolerant of my friends, even Sarah Morgan.

  Sometimes I would wonder why my sister was trying so hard to please me. Was it simply to keep me quiet about what she was doing on her computer? She did her homework better and seriously studied for our finals. I didn’t want her even to think that I harbored any suspicion of her having ulterior motives. I was afraid to ask her if she had planned her rendezvous with Anthony. I didn’t wake up and go out into the hallway to check. It was easier for me to ignore that she was still having Internet conversations with a man who definitely looked older than she said he was.

  As if she knew that it would be better for me if we didn’t talk about him, she didn’t mention him again for some time. So much time had gone by since she had spoken about him, in fact, that I wondered if it had all ended. Perhaps his dallying with a girl as young as Haylee had lost its novelty for him. If he had brushed her off and she was too embarrassed to tell me, my bringing it up would only pour salt on the wound.

  But then one night, she called me into her room before we got ready to go to sleep. She closed the door softly after I entered. Mother was still downstairs, on the phone again with one of her friends, gossiping about the divorcée dating scene. She sounded younger on these phone calls, her conversation lightened with giggles and laughter.

  “Anthony and I have decided that it is finally time for us to meet,” Haylee said excitedly. “We have planned on where and when. It will be our first real date.”

  “You really are continuing with this, Haylee?”

  “Why shouldn’t I? Just to show you what he’s like,” she continued, “I was pushing to meet much sooner, but he kept holding off, telling me he wanted me to be absolutely sure I wanted this. Predators don’t give victims second and third chances. They pounce at the first opportunity.”

  “Maybe he’s just very clever, Haylee. He’s drawing you in deeper and deeper by deliberately not rushing you.”

  She shook her head at me. “Thanks. I was hoping you would be excited for me. I guess I expected too much.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “No, you’re not just saying,” she snapped back at me. “You won’t let me be happy, will you?” Her eyes brightened with a new suspicion. “You haven’t found anyone to replace Matt. Are you jealous? Is that it?”

  “No. Of course not. I’m just concerned.”

  “Well, you know I need you now to help with Mother,” she said.

  She was right. Despite how Mother had loosened her grip on us, she was still quite involved with everything we did, especially if it was during the evening. She insisted on first meeting whoever would drive us anywhere and, if not, then taking us there herself and picking us up. And we always had to have a specific destination and purpose. Just hanging out at a mall, like our friends often did, was forbidden. She told us it was the easiest way to get into trouble.

  “You must always have a purpose for whatever you do,” she explained. “Loitering, no matter how innocent it might seem, usually leads to something you later regret. There’s truth in some old sayings, like ‘Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.’ ”

  Now I asked Haylee, “How can I help?”

  “I actually got this idea from her. Remember when she was first going with Darren Paul and she volunteered to have him take us to a movie theater when they went to dinner and then pick us up?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s it. We’ll ask her to take us to a movie near where Anthony and I plan to rendezvous. We’ll both go into the movie theater when she drops us off. You’ll stay, of course, and watch the film. That way, if she asks questions about the movie, we’ll have the right answers. Okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This is still making me nervous.”

  She looked away, as though she had to count to ten before looking back at me.

  “You won’t even tell me his full name, Haylee,” I added.

  “I’ll tell you that night. I promise.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Next Saturday night,” she said.

  It was Sunday now. I would have almost a week to toss and turn over it.

  “Well? Are you going to help me or not? I think you’d have to agree that I’ve changed, become more mature, and I regret what I did with Jimmy that night, right? Right?” she hammered.

  “Yes, Haylee, right, right.”

  Could it all have been happening for the reason I feared, just to get me to cooperate with her Internet romance? What choice did I have now? I had let it go on this long without telling Mother.

  “Okay, then. We’ll wait until Tuesday to mention it. I’ll read up on the film that’s there, and we’ll talk about it in front of her, so she’ll believe we’re excited about seeing it. You’d better be just as enthusiastic.”

  My sister Haylee, I thought, still the conniver, the planner, cleverly constructing her deceit. I would never be as good at it, and maybe in this world that was a weakness after all.

  “What’s the movie?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t looked yet. It’s going to be at the Riverside.”

  “The Riverside? That’s almost fifteen miles away, Haylee. We’ve never been to that theater.”

  “It has to be that one.”

  “Why? Can’t he meet you somewhere closer? We don’t know that area.”

  “Stop asking so many questions,” she snapped. “There are reasons. We’ve been talking about it for weeks. You’ll have to trust me about it. You do this for me, and I’ll owe you big-time.”

  “I don’t need you to owe me, Haylee.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “Will you do it? Or will you keep asking questions until I go on social security?”

  “Very funny. Maybe I should go with you for this first meeting with him,” I suggested.

  She pulled back as if I had thrown hot soup in her face and grimaced. “Go with me? Meet him together so he can compare us?”

  “No.”

  “You never stop competing, do you?” she said. “Despite all Mother has done to prevent it, you’re always competing.”

  “It has nothing to do with competition, Haylee. I just thought you might feel safer if I was there with you. If it was the other way around, I’d want you there.”

  “Well, it’s not the other way around, and I don’t have any of those fears. I feel safe. Don’t you think I know when I know someone well enough to trust him? Are you the only one who can tell what’s important about people?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So?”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “You’ll go yourself, but you’d better tell me his full name.”

  “I said I would.”

  I thought a moment and then sat on her bed, hoping we could have one of the close sister-sister talks we used to have. Maybe I could still get her to change her mind.

  “Tell me more about him. Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend at his age?” I asked, stressing “age.” “Has he been married? Does he have children?”

  “No, he’s never been married, and of course he has no children. He’s had girlfriends on and off, but he says most of the girls he’s met turned out to be immature, self-absorbed airheads. He was devoted to his parents. When his father became seriously arthritic, he had to do more to take care of them and their property. He gave up a lot in his own social life to do it. That should tell you a lot about him.”

  “Maybe he’s too introverted for a social life. That’s a big reason for people who live on the Internet.”

  She stared at me.

  I shrugged. “It’s true.”

  “Maybe he is,” she said, “and maybe I bring him out of it. Maybe I’m the first girl who has. What’s wrong with that? Well?”
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  “Nothing.”

  “Matt was like that when you first met him, wasn’t he? He wouldn’t even join a sports team. Did I tell you to avoid him because he was so unsocial?”

  “No, but we know how that turned out.”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Where did he grow up?”

  “Here in Pennsylvania. He wants to travel more now, but he’s still keeping up the family property and hasn’t decided whether to sell it or not. He’s someone who cares about memories. He’s not flighty.” She smiled. “In the beginning, it was hard to get him to joke and not be serious, but I finally got him to lighten up.”

  “It doesn’t bother him that you’re in high school?”

  “He couldn’t believe it when I told him my age. He said he’s met many girls our age but none as centered as I am. I gave Mother credit for that,” she said. “He was surprised she had done so well, considering how we were practically fatherless.”

  “Are you expecting to introduce him to her one day?” I asked, wondering just how much of a dreamer she was. If she did, it would be like setting off a nuclear warhead in front of Mother for sure.

  “We’ll see. The way you do something like this is to take baby steps, Kaylee. It’s just as I advise girls in our class. Don’t overly commit to anyone too soon. See? I know what I’m doing. But,” she added, “I know I’m going to want to commit to him. I have this deep feeling for him. He makes me feel better about myself, too.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t change her mind. Maybe it was better to just let her work through it, make discoveries herself, and eventually tell me I had been right. I heard a beep on her computer.

  “That’s Anthony,” she said. “Do you mind?”

  I looked at the screen and then at her and got up. “Be sure, Haylee. Please. That’s all I ask.”

  “I will,” she said. She gave me a quick hug and kissed my cheek.

  I smiled.

  “’Night, Kaylee-Haylee. And thanks.”

  “’Night, Haylee-Kaylee.”

  I left her room. She closed the door softly behind me.

  When I entered my room, I realized I had been holding my breath and fighting with myself not to just run down the stairs and unload it all in Mother’s lap. If something happened, she would blame me. Envisioning that nightmare actually made me tremble. I had a very hard time falling asleep. Once or twice, I sat up and thought that maybe the way to handle this was to go to Daddy. He could keep a secret. I’d go along with it and have him follow Haylee and then confront this Anthony whoever and bring it to a quick end.