The Mirror Sisters

  Then would come that familiar answer. “You’re not ready.”

  It was Daddy who nagged her about it more than either of us, because if we complained, it would seem that we didn’t want to be with each other, and Mother wouldn’t tolerate that.

  “How can they not be ready, Keri? They’re becoming young women, aren’t they? They need their privacy.”

  “They are not young women yet, Mason. It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t know that.”

  He especially didn’t argue when she referred to anything feminine. It wasn’t until we were nearly thirteen that Mother finally gave in to our having separate bedrooms.

  However, in order to make things as perfect as she wanted, she had our original bedroom redone with the exact same flooring materials, fixtures, and paint for the walls to perfectly match the second bedroom. All our old furniture was given away, and doubles of everything were ordered and installed. We even had the same number of closet hangers. Why wouldn’t we? We had the same exact clothes, the same amount of underwear and socks, the same number of shoes, hats, and belts.

  Daddy complained about the waste of good furniture. “This is too much,” he said, looking at the work being completed. She had ordered everything new while he was on a business trip. “Why does it all have to be exactly alike? Don’t they have to feel like something’s their own?”

  “Not yet,” she declared. “I know what I’m doing. One might think the other has better furniture.”

  “They could pick out their own, Keri.”

  “It would still happen, Mason. I’ve explained it to you many times. No child is more susceptible to inferiority and other complexes than an identical twin,” she recited. “It’s a vulnerability clearly recognized in the psychological community.”

  She made sure we also had the same television sets and the same computers. Mother didn’t permit us to have our own phones when other kids our age were getting theirs. She didn’t actually come out and say it, but I don’t think she wanted either of us to have separate friends for as long as possible. If someone wanted to be friends with me, he or she had to be friends with Haylee, and vice versa. And in that case, we didn’t need two separate phones. One of us could talk for the other. We were rarely anywhere alone anyway.

  When she finally permitted us to have separate phones, we could speak to different classmates. We were both in high school by then, freshmen, and some things had begun to change. It was clear that each of us was trying harder to be her own person. Haylee wanted to wear different clothes and do different things with her hair, but that was still something Mother resisted.

  “Why do you want to do that?” she’d ask with a pained look on her face. “You should be very proud of who you both are. You’re both remarkable. What parent wouldn’t want to double up on so much beauty and intelligence? Both your father and I feel very lucky to have you. Don’t be so eager to change anything about yourselves. You’ll always be happier if you don’t.”

  Whenever she told us that, I would look at Haylee to see if she was comforted by it or if it would change her behavior. She nodded just like I did, but I didn’t think she was convinced or at all happy about the idea. She was good at hiding her true feelings, much better at it than I was, actually. I was sure in my heart that if Haylee could find something very different from me about herself, she would pounce on it and treasure it.

  Sometimes when Haylee looked at me, I could almost see her imagining us being separated in an operation like the one to detach conjoined twins, something we had watched a show about on the science channel. When the documentary was over, I saw the way she was staring at me. We weren’t physically conjoined, of course, but I could see that if we were, she would want that operation, even if the operation meant I would die.

  This wasn’t something I knew for a long time, but when I finally did believe it, it was too late, for I was practically naked and alone in the darkness, waiting in vain for her to rescue me.

  3

  Until we were eight years old and Mother had decided we were ready to enter the third grade, she homeschooled us. When Daddy first heard her plan, he disagreed, and they had another argument, something that was happening more and more frequently by then.

  “They’re not having much contact with other children as it is, Keri,” he said. “You won’t even let them play with the neighbor girls.”

  Of course, both Haylee and I were hoping he would win the argument, but Mother was determined to give us the “special preparation” we needed, and that required isolation.

  “I’ve told you time and time again how important their development is during these formative years, Mason. They have to be groomed carefully.”

  “Groomed carefully? Sometimes you make it sound like they’re not special, like they’re handicapped,” Daddy replied, almost casually, which resulted in the worst outburst Mother had ever had until then. It was even worse than the times she would pound her own leg in frustration.

  Haylee and I were having our lunch at the kitchenette. It was a Saturday, and Daddy had invited some of the men who worked with him to play tennis doubles. Fortunately, none of them had arrived yet.

  She began by slamming a dish so hard on the kitchen counter that it shattered into dozens of pieces. Daddy stepped back, his eyes wide. Mother didn’t seem to realize what she had done at first. She started to talk slowly and very low. I felt very frightened, and when I looked at Haylee, I saw that her eyes were as full of fear as mine.

  “Handicapped? You accuse me of thinking they are handicapped? The most perfect twins in all of Pennsylvania, perhaps the country? And why, because I have the foresight to envision how other children will treat them, not only other children but their teachers, and what damage that could do to them?”

  She stepped toward him, a piece of the broken dish still in her hand.

  “Do you have any idea what a curiosity they will be, and do you even know how vicious and mean children can be to one another? Do you?” she repeated, raising her voice.

  Daddy stood there, frozen. He was shocked at what he saw in her face. He started to shake his head.

  “And what I’ve been trying to prepare them for and build them up to be strong against all these years?” Her face was so red, the veins in her neck so visible under her skin, that she looked like she might pop out of her body.

  “Okay, okay,” Daddy said, putting his hands up. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

  She stared at him so hard I thought she might burn a hole in his cheek, but after a moment of silence that seemed to make our ears ring, she relaxed her body and began to clean up the broken dish.

  Daddy moved forward to help.

  “Leave it!” she snapped. “Get ready for your playmates.”

  Daddy looked at us, and he seemed more frightened by the expressions on our faces than by any look of Mother’s. He backed up to the doorway. “Sorry, Keri,” he repeated. “I’m sure you’re right. Sorry.” He left, looking like someone happy to get away with his skin still on his body.

  It wasn’t until he had left that I realized Haylee had seized my hand, and we were squeezing each other tightly. She released mine first. Mother said nothing. She cleaned off the counter and then vacuumed the kitchen floor while we finished eating. When we were done, as we always did, we brought our dishes and silverware to the sink. Both of us were afraid we had done something wrong, too, but she surprised us by smiling and changing her voice into her loving, soft, almost melodic tone.

  “What your father doesn’t realize,” she said, “is that I’ve been homeschooling you since the day you were born. That’s how unaware he is about what is happening here. We’re simply going to get more formal about it now. I’ve studied up on homeschooling, and I know exactly what has to be done. Don’t be surprised. Daddies are oblivious to their own families more often than not. It’s the way men are built. They never stop thinking about toys and games. It’s why most of them are surprised one day to learn their daughters have
become little women. When you finally do attend a school outside of this house, you will see very quickly who is handicapped and who isn’t.” She widened her smile and then hugged us. “I’ll let you know soon when we’ll start the official first day of homeschool.”

  She turned back to the sink, and I took Haylee’s hand and led her out of the kitchen. Our hearts were still doing flip-flops. I could feel Haylee’s body trembling, and I was sure she could feel mine. Neither of us said anything until we heard Daddy’s friends arriving. Then we decided to go out and watch them play. One of Daddy’s coworkers, Bryce Krammer, was always amused by the sight of us. He called us the Mirror Sisters and asked us to tell him which one was which.

  “Does your daddy ever make a mistake when he talks to you?” he asked.

  “Sometimes,” Haylee said, and all the men laughed.

  “But Mother never does,” I added.

  Daddy quickly got them all into the tennis, and the argument about homeschooling was forgotten.

  Mother decided to add one other thing to our education: piano lessons. What shocked Daddy was that she insisted on each of us having her own piano.

  “Why can’t they just take turns with the instructor?” he asked.

  “That won’t work,” she insisted. “Eventually, they’ll be teaching each other this way. It’s natural to identical twins. One always mimics the other. I call it the shadow syndrome, which is a good thing.”

  He was still against it, but she went ahead and bought two pianos anyway. Our first piano teacher, Joe LaRuffa, a former high school music teacher, was quite impressed with us having our own pianos, but he was also impressed with how quickly we learned and how much Mother made us practice.

  So music instruction became part of our homeschooling, something Mother told us was being sacrificed in public schools. “Which is another reason I want you homeschooled first. Your father knows nothing about any of this.”

  We had as much of a structured day as any school-age child. Every day, even on weekends sometimes, we sat in the den that she had converted into a classroom, blackboard and all. We even had actual school desks that Mother had found at an antiques shop. One had the initials BB carved deeply into it, so rather than grind them out, she carved the same initials into the second desk exactly where they were on the first.

  We watched her work in the garage. Daddy wasn’t home at the time. He was on another business trip. I was fascinated with how she bore down on the desk without the initials and carved them into the wood. Her expression was so intent that I thought she was angry about it. She worked carefully and paused every few moments to be sure they would be exactly the same when she had finished. She wouldn’t let either of us touch the desks until she had completed the carving. Then she shellacked both the desks and the chairs and placed the exact same number of pencils and pens in the holders.

  When Daddy got home, he was amazed and asked about the initials. “How did you find two with the same initials carved in them and in the exact same place?”

  “Maybe it was the name of the school,” she said, “or maybe it was the initials of a boy two girls had crushes on.”

  He shook his head and stood there smiling like someone waiting to hear the end of a story or the punch line of a joke. I thought she would say she was kidding and tell him what she had done, but she never did, and neither Haylee nor I ever told him what we saw her do. Instinctively, we knew it would upset her. It was always a question of us being more loyal to her than to him, even though we weren’t sure why she would have to lie to him about it.

  Later, when Daddy wasn’t there, she complimented us for not saying anything. “Your father would not understand,” she said. “You sensed that, I know. You are so amazing.”

  I looked at Haylee. I was sure she didn’t have that idea. I certainly didn’t. I was simply afraid that Mother would be angry, but I had no real thought about why. Maybe we were amazing.

  When we began what she called our formal homeschooling, Mother spent most of her time continuing to teach us to read. Once she felt we had achieved a certain level, she had our school day divided into subjects: English, math, science, and social studies, with thirty minutes for each. Our music instruction was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In order for us to get used to the idea of separate classes, she had a clock timed to ring after thirty minutes. We had our lunch period, but even that was like a class, because she taught us proper dining etiquette, including how to softly dab at our lips with our napkins. If I did it one more time than Haylee did or if she did it one more time than I did, Mother pointed it out so we would do it exactly the same. After all the subjects were done, we had to spend another half hour in what she called a study session, during which we would mostly read. I read faster than Haylee, but I knew that if I finished too soon, Mother would make me start again until Haylee caught up.

  “You might have missed something,” she would say.

  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we also had what she called physical education class, even if it was raining or snowing. We would go out back and do exercises, and then we were allowed to kick a ball or just run in circles. I could beat Haylee in a race, but the first time I did it, she started to cry, and Mother looked very upset. She made us race again, and this time, I deliberately lost, something I often saw Daddy do when he played tennis with Mother.

  Exercise was usually the end of school on those days. Of course, we had homework to do before we could watch television or play a game. Mother compared our handwriting and pointed out that Haylee wasn’t finishing her Qs as well as I was. She made her practice just writing Qs until she did it the same way I did. After we were seven, she decided to add French, because she spoke French well. Once, when Haylee couldn’t remember how to ask in French to go to the bathroom, Mother made her stand in the middle of the room and hold it in until she got it right.

  “You’ll thank me later,” she assured both of us. “They won’t teach you a language in grade school, even at the private school we’ve been considering for you when I think you’re ready to attend. Forget the public school. A good education is a luxury here in this country and not a necessity. Even after you begin at the private school, we’ll continue our work here at home, especially with French. I want you to always be miles ahead of your classmates.”

  She smiled. “They’ll think you’re special simply because you’re perfect twins, and they’ll expect you to be superior, perfect in everything. That’s fine. You know why? Because you will be,” she said. “You’ll be so far ahead when you do enter school that your teachers will not know what to do with you. Why, I expect that on graduation day, you’ll be so close in your averages that you’ll make the speech together. Wouldn’t that be something? You’ll alternate lines. There’ll be enough applause to make everyone deaf for a few moments.”

  I was the first to realize that Mother tried her best to avoid referring to us as two. She wouldn’t say “the two of you.” It was always just “you.”

  When I realized this, I told Haylee. Mother was right. We were already way ahead of children our age when it came to the study of English grammar, so I pointed out the use of the pronoun. “She’s using the plural you whenever she refers to either of us. It’s almost like she sees double.” That was something many people joked about when they first saw us.

  Haylee shrugged, but then she thought about it again, and despite what Mother believed about our simultaneous habitual gestures, Haylee narrowed her eyelids into slits of suspicion and showed a touch of anger. I never did that with my eyes. I didn’t think I ever looked as mean as Haylee could look.

  “I don’t care about the plural you. You’re just trying to show off. She looks mainly at me anyway,” Haylee said, “and she means me anyway when she says ‘you.’ She can’t help it, no matter what she says. I’m the better student, so I understand everything faster. She knows.”

  How could she say that? I wondered. Mother never gave her a higher grade on a test than she had given me. In fact, neither
of us ever had a different grade, higher or lower, on anything. Contrary to what Haylee claimed, I was usually the one who came up with the answers to Mother’s questions first.

  I was about to disagree with her when Mother entered our bedroom, and I practically glued my lips together so none of my protest would escape, because that would have caused a furious argument right in front of Mother.

  If Haylee and I got into an argument about something, no matter what it was, she always blamed us both and punished us equally. Neither of us could ever be right or wrong. In fact, both of us had to be a little wrong if we disagreed. If Daddy made a comment that favored one or the other of us in an argument, Mother practically clawed him to death. There was one thing she stressed above all else. I was surprised she had never had it on a plaque above our bedroom door: Never blame your sister for anything; never make her look foolish or stupid, or you will look foolish and stupid, too.

  Once, when we were only six, she brought us down to the living room after Haylee had shouted at me for spoiling her drawing of our house that she was going to show Mother and Daddy. I had added the porch light by the front door. She had forgotten it, and I was just trying to help. Mother could hear Haylee scream and came rushing in.

  “What is it? Why is only one of you screaming?”

  “She ruined my picture! She ruined my picture!” Haylee cried, pointing her finger at me and pumping the air as if she could poke out my eyes.

  “Stop!” Mother shouted, so loudly her voice seemed to bounce off the walls. Her eyes looked like they were about to burst like egg yolks.

  She rushed forward, took hold of us by our earlobes, and marched us out to the stairs, ordering us down to the great room.

  “Sit,” she commanded, and we did. Despite her exclamations of double love for us, she could get as angry at us as she got at Daddy. A cloud of red rage hovered over her, threatening to drown us in cold, hard rain. Haylee kept her head down, and I lowered mine. Although Mother never hit us, we couldn’t help anticipating that she might—and as hard as she hit herself.