Twins (6 page)

She saw Scarlett and Van among the mourners, and her heart leaped, wanting to be friends with them, wanting the ordinary delight of their company … but they did not come to speak to her. They filed out of the building and back onto the bus without a syllable of condolence.

Is this what memorial services are like? she thought. It can’t be! This is so unloving. They seem to be at a spectator sport, not a funeral.

A terrible benediction seemed to lie over the fate of Mary Lee.

Rest in peace
.
Nobody will miss you
.

Is it a crime, she thought, to use some one else’s funeral as your own? A crime to take over another’s room and closet and life and cassettes and telephone number?

There she was at night, in Madrigal’s bed, between Madrigal’s sheets, and by day, wearing Madrigal’s clothing and using Madrigal’s lipstick. She chose from Madrigal’s earrings, and stared across the bedroom at Madrigal’s choice of posters, and sat on Madrigal’s side of the dinner table, and answered questions Mother and Father put to Madrigal.

It was the ultimate trespass, and yet, at the same time, the ultimate identical twin-ness.

She hoped for a message, that a twin could talk from beyond death.

But if it was true for any twin, it was not true for them.

The days passed.

The nights ended.

The days returned.

Mother and Father hardly mentioned the dead twin. Mary Lee might never have existed. All sorrow was given to the living, breathing Madrigal. “Are you all right, dear?”

“Are you feeling more like yourself, dear?”

“Shall we go shopping tomorrow, dear, and find some new clothes?”

“Do you feel up to returning to school, dear?”

So she made up the message that her twin would send if she could send, and the message she decided on was this:
MreeLee
,
you be Madrigal
.
You be the popular one
,
who lives at home
,
and have Mother and Father
…
and Jon Pear
.

To have it all.

Everybody said they wanted it all.

But Mary Lee had it all now, and she did not want it. She wanted to share it with Madrigal, halve it, give it back.

Am I some sort of mental murderer, pushing my sister out of the ski lift with the hands of my hopes? Do I have it all because I asked Madrigal to give me her life?

“We think you need to go back to school in the morning, Madrigal,” said her mother.

School. Madrigal’s school. Madrigal’s boyfriend, of whom she had never even seen a photograph. Yet if Mother and Father had not known, how could Jon Pear?

I can do it, thought Mary Lee. I can have it all. “Yes, all right,” she said calmly. “I’ll go to school tomorrow.”

T
HE DRIVE TO THE
high school was not easy. She was not sure who held the wheel, who shifted the gears, whose eyes checked the rearview mirror and whose foot pressed the accelerator.

I am not dead, Mary Lee reminded herself. Even though I went to my funeral service, and even though the house is a forest of sad little cards about my loss, I am not dead.

She checked to be sure. She had chosen a white shirt, whose lacy front rose and fell as she breathed, and a nearly ankle-length black skirt. Romantic mourning. But over the shirt, a hot pink jacket, because she had gotten a great surprise going through Madrigal’s closet. Madrigal twinless — Madrigal on her own — was brilliant and loud. Madrigal had replaced her entire wardrobe. She had discarded the colors and styles of their togetherness.

She felt faintly sick studying this new closet, this gathering of clothes she must now wear. How quickly, how completely, how vividly, Madrigal had tossed off what they had shared for so long! Whereas Mary Lee had clung obstinately to everything, blocking herself from friendship and pleasure.

A tiny betrayed part of Mary Lee remembered how Madrigal had shrugged when Mary Lee was sent away. She put the memory away, on a mental shelf where she would never have to look at it again.

The Separation had made it all too clear which twin spoke and which one echoed, who strode and who imitated. I must not echo, she thought, for there is no one else to speak first. I must not imitate, for there is no example to follow. I am Madrigal now.

The radio blared. Mary Lee sang along for a few measures to be sure that she still had a voice, was still a person. She drove into the student parking lot only to realize that she did not know where Madrigal’s assigned slot was. Fear of being caught turned her hands and spine to cold jelly. She circled the lot and finally chose the Visitors Only slot. Appropriate. Rarely had a student so completely been a visitor.

It was a human fantasy to remain on earth after death. To see what it was like when you no longer existed. See how people had felt about you. Measure the space you left behind.

A thrill of guilt and fear made her breathe faster, less steadily.

She was also, she reminded herself, in love. With Jon Pear. How did a girl in love act? What if she acted wrong? Why on earth had Jon Pear not come to the service? How could he have chosen to stay away from the funeral of the identical twin of the girl he loved?

Were he to discover she was a trick, a substitute, a mere stand-in for the real thing, what would he do? Hate her? Hit her? Expose her? Stomp away from her?

The high school was immense. Its original brick building had graceful white columns and a center dome that glistened in the winter sun. It was now engulfed by several additions.

Engulfed
, she thought, and then she was. Drowning in running feet and panicked hearts and screaming silent voices. She shook them away from her, like a Labrador shaking away water.

She looked out the car’s windshield and calmed herself by studying the architecture of the school. Each addition was in the style of its time.
I
,
too
,
must be in style
, she thought.

Madrigal’s style had changed. Mary Lee must do it perfectly, and do it constantly, or her new life would dwindle away.

She tilted the visor down to check herself in the mirror glued to it. The sympathetic hazel eyes looked gently back, and the thick, questioning brows were black velvet against the dark skin.

She was stunning in an outfit meant to catch the eye and keep it.

That was the thing. To keep the eye.

If only she knew whose eye!

He would expect her to know everything, and she knew nothing.

These things she knew: Her stride must be longer; she must possess the halls and floors. Her chin must be higher, and her eyes not linger. Above all, she must never hesitate. Hesitation is weakness.

The moment she entered the first class, her nervousness would be visible to Madrigal’s classmates. If she hesitated, if she floundered, they would turn on her like feral dogs at bare ankles.

Even worse — what if nobody suspected, but she failed anyhow? What if she was such a faded copy of Madrigal that people lost interest?

I am Madrigal, she said to herself. And then out loud. “I am Madrigal. I own this school. And I own Jon Pear, whoever he may be. Once I walk the halls, it will be made clear to me.”

She was arriving at ten in the morning. School, of course, began at eight-thirty. But Madrigal would make an entrance, because Madrigal had remained an Event.

If I make mistakes, thought Mary Lee, I’ll dip my head, hide the tears behind my tumbling forward hair, explain that death has confused me.

It would not be a lie. Death, especially this death, was quite confusing.

She (whoever she was; at this instant she herself had no idea) held the car handle as she held her two selves. Carefully. Cautiously.

Jon Pear might be watching. It must begin now. Every motion and thought must be Madrigal. She slammed the car door shut at the same moment she took the first step toward the school. Madrigal had connected her Events, whipping from one to the next. Mary Lee stalked up wide marble stairs that led to the front hall, and entered the high school under the frosted glass of the central dome.

“Madrigal,” said the principal immediately, scurrying out of his office to take her hands. “Poor poor Madrigal.” He was in late middle age, and had lost most of his hair. That hair he had left was combed desperately around his baldness. “We had a Remembrance Service here at the school, of course,” said the principal, hanging onto her like a suitor.

A Remembrance Service, thought Mary Lee, almost pleased. I wonder what they said about me. I wonder who spoke. I wonder what poems and prayers they used.

“And the next day,” added the principal, “we had a Moment of Silence.”

A moment? Mary Lee had died and they gave her a moment? She pulled her hand out of his greasy clasp and wanted to wash with strong soap.

“You’re upset, Madrigal,” the principal said, putting the same hand on her shoulder, resting it on the hair that lay on her shoulder. Her hair could feel his sweaty palm; she had always had hair like that; hair with a sense of touch. “It is an unusual situation,” said the principal, “and none of us can possibly understand the depth of your emotions. I just want you to know that we understand.”

“You can hardly do both,” she pointed out. It was Madrigal’s voice speaking, for Mary Lee would never have ridiculed an adult. “Either you understand or you do not, and in this case, you do not.”

He flinched. “Of course,” he said quickly. “Of course, Madrigal.”

He was afraid of her. His smile stretched in a queer oval, like a rubber band around spread fingers.

“Walk me to my class,” she commanded.

He moved like a good little boy and walked nervously ahead, turning twice to be sure she was still there. The creases in his charcoal suit wrinkled with each kneebend.

The first hurdle was over. Because she did not know, of course, what nor where Madrigal’s class was.

She kept her stride long, but measured; setting the pace, allowing the principal to dictate nothing, and yet following him, because she had to. It was an art, and she was good at it. It came from twinship, she supposed, the constant struggle both to lead and to follow.

Struggle. A word she had never used. Had she and Madrigal been involved in a struggle, and only Madrigal had known?

Down the hall, so far away he seemed framed by openings, like a portrait with many mats, was Van. One hour, one dish of ice cream — did that a crush make?

She wanted to run to him, crying, Van, it’s me, Mary Lee! The one you flirted with that afternoon, before they told me I had to leave. Van, I don’t have Madrigal now, and I need somebody, because nobody can be alone! Please, Van, be mine.

But Van, who must have recognized her, simply stood there, his posture oddly hostile, feet spread, hands out, like a deputy in an old western, ready for the duel.

She caught herself. She was not Mary Lee. Van thought that he had buried Mary Lee. Besides, she was expecting Jon Pear. She must stay within her new life, lest her story dissolve.

The principal halted at an open classroom door, and Mary Lee stopped just before treading on his heels. She forgot Van in the face of so many new problems. For no teacher’s name was printed on the door. No subject title was given, no clues passed out.

They walked in. The room was unadorned with equipment. Therefore the subject was not science.

She glanced at a sea of faces, could focus on none of them, and desperately surveyed the front of the room instead. The blackboard was covered with French verbs.

New problems leaped up and assaulted her plans. How good had Madrigal been at French? Where had Madrigal sat? Had she acquired the correct accent? Did she do her homework? Did she get along with the French teacher? Did she come for extra help?

“Madrigal is back,” said the principal in a low voice.

“Ah, Madrigal,” said the French teacher, clasping her hands prayerfully in front of her flat bosom, “
Je suis tellement désolé
.”

How could you be desolate? thought Mary Lee. You didn’t even know me.

She remembered, as if she had had an entire hour to relive it, her hour with Van Maxsom.

Is Van
désolé
? Did he think sad thoughts of me during the Moment of Silence? Is he sorry that I am gone? That he cannot even visit my grave, because there is none?

Then why didn’t he come up at the service and tell me how sorry he is that my wonderful sister died? Why didn’t anybody speak to me? I mean, to Madrigal?

She could have responded to the teacher in French, but did not. “Thank you,” she said. There were empty desks. But with whom would Madrigal have sat? Who were her friends?

Not that she and Madrigal had had friends. They had needed no friends. They were each other.

The loss of it was suddenly so immense, so terrible, that she could not maintain control after all, neither of time nor space nor soul. She held everything in her body absolutely still, but it was not protection; the tears still came, soaking her cheeks.

Madrigal! Come back! Please be alive! I love you so!

My twin is cut away. I am severed. The stem without the blossom.

“Poor Maddy!” cried one of the girls. “We’re so sorry. What a blow it must have been! And you saw it happen. Poor, poor Maddy.”

The class chimed in, sounding rehearsed, each student flinging out a short consolation. “Madrigal, we’re so glad you’re back,” they chorused. “We’re so glad you’re all right.” They did not mention being sorry the dead girl was not all right.

I left no space, thought Mary Lee. Rest in Peace, Mary Lee. Nobody will miss you.

She walked to the back of the room where she sat alone. She wanted to break down on this old marred desk, rip her hair, wear it loose and messy, and scream at these people who could not be bothered to mention her name. She wanted to beat her fists on her chest, rend her clothing, and crash her car.

“
Continuez
,
Madame
,” she instructed the French teacher.

The French teacher did not call upon her.

Madrigal would have volunteered answers to establish that she was not rocked by catastrophe. But Madrigal’s replacement could not find the voice with which she had practiced in the car. And she did not even know for whom she felt the most grief: the dead girl or the living.
Doesn’t anybody miss me
,
too?