Three Black Swans (13 page)

*  *  *

Genevieve stood in the kitchen while the cereal softened in the milk and the orange juice grew warm.

There were no twins.

Nobody was identical.

Nobody was adopted.

Nobody was a long-lost anybody.

Sobs wracked her body.

She could not climb the stairs. She kept tripping on the long sweeping robe. She slid out of it and carried the puddled satin to her room, and couldn’t make it stick to its special velvet hanger.

A hoax.

She dressed slowly in the dullest clothing she had and then pulled a large plain gray sweatshirt over it all. She needed room in there for a pounding heart and shivering skin.

She ran a brush through her hair, shook her head, caught the hair in her fist, put it in a black elastic and was dissatisfied. She tugged her hair out and repeated the process until it was right. Not too tight, not too loose.

T
HE LOSS OF
her sisters was physically painful. Her first class hurt. Conversation hurt. Chairs hurt. The clothing on her body hurt. She had difficulty responding to greetings. “Headache,” Genevieve kept saying. “Migraine.” She had never had a migraine, but girls who used that excuse were always pitied.

After an assembly, Jimmy Fleming detached himself from a group of friends and trotted over. “What did they say when you called them?”

“I called Missy’s high school first. It was a hoax, Jimmy. Those two girls are cousins with a strong family resemblance. There are no twins. There are no triplets. The fact that I look a bit like them is accidental.”

“Get out!” said Jimmy. “They’re you, Gen. You’re them.”

She tried to be lighthearted. “It was fun, though. Being an identical triplet for a day.”

“No.” Jimmy was firm. “I’ve been studying that video. We were not hallucinating, Gen.”

“It’s a hoax,” she repeated.

Jimmy Fleming shook his head. “More likely, the hoax is a hoax.”

This sentence had no meaning. Genevieve was relieved when Jimmy walked on. Her friends clustered around, assuming that Jimmy was interested in her. “Jimmy Fleming?” they said excitedly. “He’s awesome!”

He wasn’t interested in Genevieve. He was interested in her circumstances. She shrugged. “He was asking about a research project we’re doing.”

Ellen frowned. “For what class?” Since Ellen was in all Genevieve’s classes, she knew that Jimmy Fleming was in none.

“High School Bowl.”

“Oh, that.”

The Bowl team rarely had a student audience. People who were interested joined.

I can fake conversations in school, thought Genevieve, but GeeGee will see through me. I don’t ever want her to know that I rejoiced at the thought of being adopted.

She phoned her great-grandmother. “I can’t stop by today after all, GeeGee. I’ve got so much to do. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll miss you, darling, but how lovely that you have lots to do. That’s what it is to be young. Now enjoy every minute, and since this is Friday, and I don’t always see you over the weekend, save up your stories and I’ll see you next week.”

“I’ll be over Saturday or Sunday.”

“Nonsense. I’m fine. You’re a teenager, not a nurse’s aide.”

In her next class, Genevieve was tempted to watch the video
on her cell. But what if a classmate or teacher asked what she was looking at? She played it in her head.

If it had been a joke or a hoax, then Claire had been acting. But in her mind’s eye, Genevieve saw no acting. Claire had been in a state of shock. When those tears spurted out, Claire hardly knew she was weeping; she seemed almost afraid. It was almost Allegra’s Dark Look. What was there to be afraid of?

And then Genevieve knew: Claire was afraid that Missy was telling the truth. The video captured the split second in which Claire Linnehan realized that she really was an identical twin. Whatever the school administration might think, what Claire learned was that she and Missy were not cousins after all.

Jimmy’s right, thought Genevieve. It’s the hoax that’s a hoax. We’re all three adopted.

Ray had given her the solution last night; she just hadn’t been paying attention. Facebook was the answer. She would friend Missy and Claire, and Facebook would simultaneously deliver the message to each girl. When they went to her page, they would stare at her picture the way she had stared at theirs. They would draw their own conclusions and take their own actions.

Or not.

Claiming a migraine again, Genevieve went to the girls’ room. From her Smartphone, she added Missy as a friend. A tiny space opened on the screen. It asked, “Do you want to add a personal message?”

She had to do this right. It was a matter of life and death.

No, a matter of life and birth.

Genevieve composed her message. Facebook informed her that Missy and Claire were now pending friends.

Wrong, thought Genevieve, giddy with joy and fear. They are pending sisters.

*  *  *

M
ISSY WAS YELLED
at by people who had not wanted that cute little identical twin reunion to be a hoax and yelled at by people who insisted that she and Claire were identical twins and that there was no hoax.

Jill and Hannah showed up with photographs of old birthday parties at Missy’s house. They handed around pictures of big tall Cousin Claire having cake alongside shrimpy little Missy. Missy imagined Jill and Hannah sitting down grimly with their mothers’ old-fashioned albums, flipping through every page, determined to unearth proof. “You shouldn’t play con games on your friends, Missy!” snapped Jill.

“I’m sorry,” said Missy.

The kids who didn’t yell teased her instead. “Is this Missy standing before me, or her evil twin Claire?”

In math, the teacher worked with a group having difficulties with a particular equation. Missy was not having difficulties. Her group was supposed to finish an advanced worksheet. Missy finished quickly and opened her phone. She had an
e-mail from Facebook. A Genevieve Candler had added her as a friend. Missy had never met a person named Genevieve.

“Melissa!” said her math teacher. “Put your phone away or give it to me.”

Missy jammed the phone into her pants pocket. “Sorry,” she said.

An hour and a half passed before she could check her phone again, and by then she had eleven texts and two voice messages waiting, all more tempting than an e-mail.

*  *  *

W
HENEVER A TWIN MOMENT
had arisen in the past, Claire found it easy to dismiss. It was fun, cute and meaningless. Aside from the fact that she did not have the same parents as her cousin, she was eight weeks older.

Now Claire swam in a vision of herself, too little to be born but big enough to elbow Missy out of the good space. She saw herself kicking away, getting limber and strong, while Missy was literally curled in fetal position, unable to exercise. She saw herself popping out first, getting a nice lungful of oxygen and opening her eyes to enjoy the world, while Missy emerged blue, with little folded-up lungs that barely inflated.

For Claire, the shock of school on Friday was that nobody knew she’d had a shock. School was ordinary, friends were ordinary, classes were ordinary.

So is my life, she told herself. Even if I am adopted, that’s still ordinary. No matter who my biological mother is, Mom is still my mother.

Usually the texture of a Friday was woven into the weekend. Friday classes seemed shorter, and the kids louder and less careful. On an ordinary Friday, Claire daydreamed of being with her cousin, the way a dieter might daydream of an ice cream sundae. She could feel the essential loneliness of the week ending, her heart opening up, ready to share … my soul, thought Claire. Do we share souls?

It was a terrifying thought. But identical twins definitely shared more than blood types, fingerprints and hair.

At lunch, Claire and her friends hurried to the cafeteria line, filled trays and dropped into chairs, acting as exhausted as marathon runners. Everybody whipped out cell phones at the same time, synchronized as dancers, and they were all talking, eating and laughing while they sent texts. The five girls with whom she sat had been close friends for years. Micayla, Carter, Steffie, Baillie and Elizabeth were all flutists in marching band, as was Claire. They all took advanced art. Baillie and Claire were in Math Club while the other three girls had attended tennis camp with Claire. She cherished their friendships. But they were incidental compared to Missy. Sometimes the depth of her friendship with Missy frightened Claire as much as it frightened her mother.

Now she thought, Missy has never been my friend. She has never been my cousin. She has always been my identical twin and my heart always knew and I always turned my back on it. On her.

Claire ran her eyes over the list of waiting text messages. The usual set from Missy, which she knew she must answer but couldn’t. The usual from various friends, including every girl sitting right at this table. She checked e-mail. Just one. A friend request from Facebook.

Claire loved her friend list and was always willing to expand it. But right now she just wanted to go home. She wanted to talk to her parents about construction jobs that weren’t there and Jazzercise classes that were too hard. She wanted to be part of her parents’ decisions and their worries. She did not want, now or ever, to be part of a deception begun at birth. Maybe before birth.

Her need for Missy battled with her fury at Missy.

After lunch came math. The teacher was demanding and there was rarely a moment to flake off. Perfect for today’s shuddery mood.

Claire always chose a desk close to the window. She loved light and sun. Today she didn’t even notice the sun. The unread messages from Missy preyed on her mind.

The math teacher began going up and down the aisles making sure everybody had written out the entire problem and its solution, not just the answer. Claire’s row was checked first, giving her a few minutes of freedom. She and everybody else on the window side opened their cell phones.

Claire’s pulse was racing. She felt as if her legs would begin to race too. Her body would take off, a human jet driven by Missy’s awful stunt. To put her mind on other things, she opened the Facebook e-mail asking her to confirm Genevieve
as a friend. Then she read the message sent by the unknown Genevieve Candler.

We have to talk. Here’s my cell number. It’s a matter of life and birth.

Didn’t you usually say “a matter of life and death”? Who would refer to a matter of life and birth? And who would write such a peculiar thing anyway?

A scream rose in Claire’s throat. She shut her phone fast and hard. She shoved her chair backward. It screeched against the floor. The teacher turned around. “Claire,” she said reprovingly.

“Spiders?” asked one of the boys.

“Claire, are you all right?” asked Steffie.

Genevieve Candler must be referring to the video. If Aiden had seen it, a million people had seen it. Only one would think that a video featuring long-lost identical twins was a matter of life and birth: the birth mother.

What awful words. A female who was the mother only in the moment of giving birth, like a reptile or a fish.

I don’t want a birth mother! I want
my
mother! If there is a birth mother, I don’t want to meet her, not even online. I don’t want an introduction, let alone a relationship. I hate her already. I hate Missy. I’m never doing a sleepover again.

“I’m fine, thanks, Steffie,” said Claire.

“You look as if you saw a ghost.”

Could that be what identical twins were? Ghosts of each other?

*  *  *

M
ISSY’S MOTHER HATED
to be asked what she did for a living. Even her husband and daughter hardly knew what she did. The shortest explanation put people in a coma.

Kitty Vianello had to break up her workday with little excursions, or she too would have been comatose. She would abandon her office to dart downstairs and check snail mail, boil potatoes for salad, do a load of laundry, fill the bird feeder or knit one row. She would coach herself out loud. “Come on, you can do it! You can work another half hour!”

Her job was to read vast amounts of material from regulatory committees in Congress and summarize it for an online newsletter: fifty pages of changes in OSHA regulations, and Kitty condensed it into two.

Before Missy was born, Kitty had taught fifth grade. Elementary schoolkids were delightful. In her memory, all her students had been brilliant and cooperative, all other teachers fun and interesting and all parents eager to help. But newborn Missy had been fragile, often sick and more than once back in the hospital, and Kitty had wanted to be with her baby girl twenty-four hours a day. She left teaching and went home to live with fear. She was afraid of every illness Missy suffered. There had been more than one night when she and Matt and Missy really had stood at death’s door.