Three Black Swans (27 page)

Genevieve looked dubious. “They’re not going to be like your
mothers and fathers. They’re not going to dance and sing for joy. But they’re civilized. They’ll be courteous.”

“Did they ever hold us?” asked Missy suddenly.

Genevieve withdrew. In some palpable way, she became a stranger. Genevieve had been places where Claire had never been and Claire did not envy her. “No,” said Genevieve finally. “They never held you.”

“Ugh,” said Claire. “I don’t want any part of them.” The whole story—those awful people—their awful decisions—well, maybe not
that
awful; after all, they didn’t have to have the babies. They could have gotten rid of them early on, and then Claire wouldn’t even exist—she had to give them credit for that—but not so much credit that she wanted to be part of this.

“You are part of them,” Genevieve pointed out.

“Technically. Biologically. Nothing else. If you’re going to meet them, Missy, I’ll wait at the train station.” She pointed to the intersection. “I get there by walking the rest of the way up this street, right? And cutting to the left about three blocks? And that will be the main street? And the station is there?”

Genevieve was frantic. “I can’t take just
one
of you to meet my parents. And it’s too soon to split up. We aren’t really sisters yet. We’ve hardly started.”

Claire looked at her watch. “Actually, we’ve been talking for ages.” All that time, she thought, that man and that woman have been hunkered down inside their house. Or maybe not. The rain has stopped. Maybe they went out. Errands to do. Could there be an errand more important than meeting your daughters?

Genevieve’s control was breaking. “Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to be apart.”

Genevieve has to go home to those people, thought Claire. She lives with them. They really
are
her parents. Am I going to abandon her to that? Is it abandonment if it’s your own parents?

My
own parents, she corrected herself, and wanted to run.

Missy put her hands on Claire’s shoulders. “I’ll do what you want, Clairedy. I’ll leave with you if that’s what you have to do. But if we don’t meet these people, they’ll haunt us.”

Genevieve flinched, jerking her hand up as if she’d just gotten a splinter.

If Missy and I leave together, thought Claire, then Genevieve is the leftover one. The one without a companion. Missy and I become twins, while she’s just an extra. “Don’t move,” she ordered Missy and Genevieve. “Just let me solidify.”

They didn’t laugh. They knew what she was feeling. They knew the time it would take. They knew.

“Okay,” said Claire. “We’re triplets. But you two go first. You do the talking. I don’t want to touch them or anything.”

*  *  *

Ned had fixed coffee. Allegra was not drinking it. She couldn’t pace, sit or think.

“They even look like black swans,” said Ned, watching the video for the hundredth time.

Allegra stared blankly at the screen.

“The
Journal
article. I showed it to you. It’s still on the counter.” He read it out loud again, but Allegra didn’t listen this time either. How had those girls gotten here? There was no car parked. The high school where the video had been made was in Connecticut. The girls must have taken the train.

Should she and Ned go after them? Where would Vivi take those girls? Vivi’s place and person of refuge was her great-grandmother. Vivi walked there all the time. Would she bring the girls to the nursing home? Or had they parked their car someplace else and Vivi was planning to go home with them?

Allegra just wanted this to end.

The front door opened.

Genevieve walked in. How beautiful she was. The black hair clouded around her, and strange soft excitement bloomed on her face. “Hello, Mother,” she said. “Hello, Dad. I’d like you to meet Claire Linnehan and Missy Vianello.”

And there they were.

Two more Genevieves.

One of them must be the tiny red spider who had come second. The other was the third baby, for whom Allegra had not even opened her eyes. Allegra closed her eyes now too. They’ll never leave, she thought. They’ll tell their parents, we’ll have to meet, Genevieve will want them to visit. We’ll have to get to know them.

She opened her eyes. One of the clones was smiling at her. Genevieve’s smile. It was too eerie. “It’s okay, Mrs. Candler,” said the girl. “It really is.”

The other one stayed back, looking sober, as if in judgment.
The smiling clone walked right up to Allegra, as if it wanted to be hugged, but Allegra could not reach out. “Don’t be upset,” said this apparition. Genevieve’s voice, but not Genevieve. Allegra gave herself points for realizing which one was her own daughter.

Then she thought, They’re all my own daughters.

“I have the best parents,” said the girl. “I have a great life. You were so generous to do what you did.” The stranger Genevieve went ahead and hugged her. Was it the Missy one or the Claire one? Who would name a child Missy? It wasn’t even a name, it was just stuff. And “Claire” was as stodgy as “Genevieve.” Allegra would never have named her daughter Genevieve, but Ned had thought it would clinch the inheritance. The nickname Vivi was perfect, but Genevieve herself never used it.

She glanced at her actual daughter and saw sadness etched on Vivi’s face. Every person I know is going to look at me like that. They all expected more of me.

The clones moved close together. It seemed to Allegra that they might merge and turn into one girl. Maybe they were an optical illusion anyway.

*  *  *

Ned Candler had spent his life shaking hands and greeting people, being friendly and sociable and remembering names. Laughing and chatting, asking after spouses and children, being warm and likeable. He called upon all those years of
experience now, but they didn’t help. The sight of three Genevieves was staggering. He knew his own daughter only because she stood slightly in front of the others, holding out her hand to guide him forward.

For Vivi, he told himself. Do everything now for Vivi. “I’m your father,” he began. The admission floored him. “I’m—” He couldn’t think. What was he? Other than worthless? “Stunned,” he finished. “I never knew.”

Of course he had known. He just hadn’t known that the three were identical. He walked toward them. It was too hard. He stopped at Vivi. “I’m sorry for all our mistakes, Vivi. I love you.” He was amazed, even honored, that his daughter hugged him. It gave him the courage to turn to the triplet on Genevieve’s left.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. Ned put out a hand, although it was hard to know the proper etiquette for meeting one’s own daughter.

She studied his hand.

He left it up in the air.

She took it, moved it fractionally upward and dropped it. Then she took her hand back, but kept it away from her body, as if it needed scrubbing.

“That was Claire,” Genevieve told him. “And this is Missy.”

How bizarre: his daughter’s smile on some other daughter’s face. Missy’s cell phone rang before he could attempt to shake hands with her. Ned was not surprised that even though she was meeting her real father for the first time, the teenager’s first priority was her phone. “It’s my mother,” said Missy, lifting the
cell phone to her ear. “Hi, Mom. Well, we’re kind of okay. We kind of decided to meet—I guess you’d say—Genevieve’s parents. Well, that’s not the actual positive truth. Actually, they’re the real ones. The parents. Genevieve’s mom and dad kind of thought that one kid was enough so—well—that’s where you came in.”

The Claire one was flapping her hands as if she’d touched a wall of spiderwebs. She backed into the little hall. She found the front door.

Ned knew he should go after her, offer comfort, but he didn’t know where to start and then Missy held out her phone. “My mother wants to talk to you.”

Ned was horrified.

The Claire one was out the front door and running down the steps.

Somehow he had Missy’s cell phone by his ear and he was saying, “Good afternoon.” Ned had seldom had a less good afternoon.

“Mr. Candler? Oh, my. What a situation we’ve found ourselves in. I’m thrilled and terrified. But first, let me thank you for our beautiful daughter. We love her more than life. We’re so grateful. But right now, we don’t want our daughters on their own. Did you know that middle-aged sisters adopted your two girls? Well, my sister and I and our husbands started driving into the city the minute we found out you’re on Long Island. We’re on the Long Island Expressway, but we actually haven’t the faintest idea where you are. Would you please give us directions to your house?”

*  *  *

Genevieve ran after Claire.

Genevieve was a good athlete. In fact, it looked as if she and Claire were exactly the same level of athlete. Genevieve figured they could run forever, with Claire fifty paces ahead. “Claire!” she shouted. “It’s okay. You don’t have to go back in. But this isn’t the way to the train station. Let me go with you. Let me be your sister.”

*  *  *

Missy was the only triplet still with the birth parents.

It was scary being alone with two people who had treated their babies like extra kitchen appliances. She could sneak a quick look and then had to look away. Her parents were a million times better than Genevieve’s. What if that doctor had not found Missy’s mother and father? What if she had had to grow up here instead of with Matt and Kitty Vianello?

Missy understood the phrases of adoption now. This man Ned was a biological parent, while Missy’s father was a father. This woman was a birth mother. It wasn’t such a bad phrase after all. It got the job done. And then the real mother and father could go on from there.

Missy had planned to demand that these two fill out adoption papers on the spot. Now she realized it wouldn’t be that easy. Besides, it mattered less. It was a legal thing, not a real thing. She was less interested in these parents than she had
expected, and far more unnerved. She could see herself in the woman’s features. She could see her own eyes in the father’s. She prayed she had not inherited their selfishness or coldness.

She found herself backing toward the door, just as Claire had. Is it a twin thing? she wondered. I mean, a triplet thing?

She didn’t want to turn her back on these two, as if they were dangerous. The danger was sixteen years ago, she thought. Now some lawyer can take it from here. “I’m glad we met,” she said, although she wasn’t sure if that was true. “I think the three of us will wait at the railroad station for my parents.”

“Wait!” said the father. “Your parents will be here in half an hour. You don’t want to sit at the railroad station all that time.”

Missy was already texting her mother. “We’ll be fine,” she told the father. “We have plenty to talk about.” She could not seem to smile at them. She waved instead, and her hand felt silly. The stare of the mother—the real, biological mother—was without welcome. Without depth.

Missy felt a bolt of fear so intense that she stumbled into the wall. She flailed around for the door handle. A nightmare sequence of being trapped, helpless in some sticky snare, filled the tiny hall. Missy tried to be rational but nothing mattered except getting out of here. She heard herself whimper. She found the knob, turned it, yanked the door open and ran.

*  *  *

Claire had known that when grown-up adopted children wanted to meet, birth parents often refused contact. She had not known what it would feel like to enter, without permission, the house of people who do not want you in their lives. In the eyes of that beautiful birth mother had been horror. Then the handsome birth father—younger-looking than her dad; better kept, somehow—offered his hand for her to shake. It had been a mistake to touch him. Claire had been seized by some primitive fear. Like a little girl in an ancient twisted tale, she knew that the evil woodsman would close the door behind the wandering child and imprison her.

Claire started to throw up. When she swallowed it down, the vomit seemed to enter her veins, and she felt its poison course through her body. She could taste the poison in her arms and legs and throat.

She reached the little park. It was serene and silent. She felt safe but unclean. At least she could stop running. She let Genevieve catch up. How strange to watch herself running toward herself.

All these years, she had not really seen much resemblance between herself and Missy. But between herself and Genevieve stood nothing. They were doubles. Claire flushed. “I’m sorry, Genevieve. I panicked. I know they’re your mother and father. I know you love them. But I had this awful sensation that if I stayed, I’d never get home.”

“Let’s not cry,” said Genevieve, crying. “I’m sorry about my parents. I wish they were different, but they aren’t.”

The girls walked on. They reached the train station. Signs said
DEPARTURES
and
ARRIVALS
. I’m both, thought Claire. I arrived at a truth I didn’t want; I’m departing with a sister I do want. She put her arms around Genevieve. “Thank you for running after me. Thank you for contacting us to start with. You said it was a matter of life and birth, but now that I’ve met you, I think maybe the real phrase fits. This really was a matter of life and death. We absolutely had to meet. Missy knew and I didn’t.”

“I want to keep meeting. But my parents are who they are, Claire.”

“Your parents gave me the best gift there is. I exist. And I ended up with the right parents for me. Missy has the right parents for her.” Claire did not pretend that Genevieve had the right parents. She was out of courteous closing statements. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to take a shower and wash those people away.

*  *  *

Ned sat down. Allegra sat down. They did not touch.

“What do you call baby swans?” said Ned softly. “I forget the word. Anyway, the girls grew up without us. They’re swimming fine without us. They just live on another lake.”

Allegra had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m not swimming. I’m drowning.”

“Drowning in what?” he asked.