Three Black Swans (15 page)

W
HEN SCHOOL ENDED
, Missy had to take evasive action to get away from Rick; Mr. Shemtov, the excited fraternal-twin physics teacher; and Mrs. Conway, who was even more irked today, having fielded questions from national media.

Missy didn’t go near the buses. She didn’t go near the student parking lot. She slid through the cafeteria and exited onto the loading dock. She passed trucks, a little tractor and some dollies to emerge on the maintenance road, and sneaked off the school grounds.

I expected it to be like confetti, she thought. A parade. Welcome home, identical twins! But I opened the gate and now Genevieve Candler wants to come in.

This time when Missy phoned, Claire answered. “Yes?”

“Are you coming over tonight?”

“Melissa, I told you. I’m ending that. It’s twisted us. We’re entertaining sick thoughts. Have a nice weekend.”

“Wait! Did a Genevieve Candler want to friend you? Did you read the message?”

“Yes, I read the message. No, I’m not going to be the woman’s friend. Who can she be, Missy, except the birth mother? I don’t want one. What are you trying to do—destroy our lives?” Claire hung up.

I wanted to be twins, thought Missy. Instead, I’ve lost my best friend.

Missy was home. She unlocked the front door. From the top of the stairs, her father shouted, “Miss?”

Missy usually liked her nickname. She was the only Missy in the entire school system. Her mother always called out “Mih-see” on two different pitches, but her father often shortened it to “Miss,” as if she were a saleswoman and he was trying to get her attention: “Oh, miss, can you tell me the price of this jacket?”

“Miss” was what you called a stranger.

Am I a stranger in this family?

Her parents clattered down the stairs from their offices, happy for an excuse to take a break.

“Uncle Phil called,” said her mother. “He wants to know which direction you girls are going tonight.”

Uncle Phil was the biggest man Missy knew. He could still pick Missy up as if she were a toddler and toss her in the air. Missy had always wanted to be a cheerleader who got thrown into the air and caught by adorable boys in front of great crowds in the gym, but she had never made the squad. Sometimes when her uncle tossed her into the air, her skull would barely miss the ceiling and Mom would yell, “You give my daughter a concussion and you’re history!” and Uncle Phil would yell back, “I am history. I’m legend. I am lore.”

He’ll still be my legend and lore, Missy told herself. Even if we’re not related.

She was shocked by this thought. If she wasn’t related to her parents, she wasn’t related to anybody else, either. Not Uncle Phil and not Aunt Frannie. Not her aunts and uncles on her father’s side, not her cousins in Ohio. Not her grandparents in Florida and not her grandparents in Ohio.

“Am I driving you to Claire’s?” asked her father. “Kitty, did we get the oil changed in the car?”

“I don’t know, but do you want some decaf, Matt?”

“I’m having a Coke. Miss, you want a Coke?”

“Missy,” said her mother, “you didn’t happen to see my yellow
purse, did you? The one I bought on sale that time and it’s too small but I love the color?”

“How about a brownie?” said her father. “Your mother and I had a domestic attack. We used a mix and even remembered to set the timer.”

“First we had to find the timer,” said her mother.

Missy set her book bag down and headed into the kitchen for a brownie. “No sleepover tonight,” she called back.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“You’ve been begging us to spread our wings and find other weekend activities,” said Missy. “Ta-da! It begins tonight.”

Her father followed her into the kitchen and had another brownie. “What’s Claire doing instead?”

“I didn’t ask,” said Missy.

“I don’t believe that,” said her mother. “You always know every single thing Claire does every single second. You send a hundred texts a day.”

“We’re going cold turkey. Sort of like cigarette addiction. We’re going to de-cousin for a weekend and see how we do. If we go into spasms of agony from withdrawal, there’s always Saturday.”

Her father was laughing. “Miss, I’m tickled pink. What shall we do as a family, then, just the three of us on a Friday night?”

The correct answer was watch a video, but Missy didn’t suggest it. She had dragged Claire into Rick’s studio to expose the secret. Now she wanted the secret back.

C
LAIRE DID NOT
turn on the lights in her bedroom. She stood in front of her full-length mirror staring at her shadowy reflection.

Claire could imagine Missy in Mrs. Stancil’s class deciding to use the hoax idea. What Claire could not see was the benefit. Wouldn’t it have been better to wait for the weekend when the two families were together?

But parents who kept secrets all these years might not yield. Missy’s dad might roll his eyes. “Come on, Missy,” he might say. Claire’s own father might say “Huh?” while he helped himself to more food. Her mother might say, “Missy, don’t be annoying. There are enough annoying people in my exercise classes. I don’t need it from you.” Missy’s own mother would not have been listening. “Do you like this salad dressing? I don’t usually use lemon juice, I usually use vinegar, but I was out of vinegar and I saw this once on TV and I thought, it’ll be mild, but maybe people will like it.”

And what would she, Claire, the identical twin in question, have said when Missy presented her theory?

It wasn’t our parents Missy needed to convince, she thought. It was me.

Okay, Missy. You did it. I’m convinced.

Claire reached for her cell phone.

Missy answered instantly. “Thank God you phoned! I missed you so much. Don’t call me Melissa again. I don’t even know who she is.”

“I don’t know who she is either, Missy. Okay, two things. First, I lied. I knew the instant I left your high school foyer and turned right and looked down that long dim hallway and saw that pale pink blur. I knew who you were. I knew who I was. I just couldn’t admit it. I can be a twin instead of a cousin, I guess, but I can’t be adopted. Not yet. Maybe tomorrow.”

They didn’t giggle. But there was a softness in the silence.

“And the other thing?” asked Missy.

“The Genevieve person. I’ve decided that it’s some Internet junkie trying to invade our lives. But it’s making me nervous. Let’s look at her page together. We’ll have a good laugh and go to sleep friends.” Claire knew Missy wanted to go to sleep identical twins. But Missy let it go. “Let’s get our laptops,” she said. “I feel the need for a large screen.”

Claire put on her bed light. She got her laptop and arranged herself comfortably in bed. She plumped the pillows. Balanced the laptop on her knees. Tilted the lamp so it didn’t glare on the screen.

“Ready?” said Missy.

“Ready,” said Claire.

But of course she was not ready.

Who could be ready for this?

Genevieve Candler’s Facebook page featured album after album of little square pictures to click and enlarge.

There was Missy standing on white-painted steps leading to a red front door. Claire had never even seen white-painted steps. How did you keep them white?

There was Missy admiring a Christmas tree decorated with mauve and violet silk flowers. Their families celebrated Christmas in green and red. Where were these places? Who had Missy visited? Had this Genevieve person been stalking Missy, secretly taking pictures the way somebody took pictures of every house and road in the nation for Google Maps?

Claire had never met anybody named Genevieve. Did this girl pronounce it French:
Zhan-vee-ev?
Or American:
Jenna-veev?

She clicked photograph after photograph. Who were those people gathered around Missy, their smiles proud and happy? And where were they? There was no wallpaper in Missy’s house, let alone with striped pink roses. Missy had never sat in a golf cart, waving a club at the photographer. Missy had never celebrated a High School Bowl victory.

The cell phone fell out of Claire Linnehan’s fingers, making a tiny thud on the thick carpet of her room.

These were not pictures of Missy. These were not pictures of Claire, either.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don’t want this.

She shifted her laptop to the blanket. Without taking her eyes from the screen, Claire reached down with one hand and
felt around on the floor for her phone. If she slid off the bed, she would be in water over her head. She would drown. Claire hauled herself back to safety. She put the cell close to her mouth but could not summon speech.

Missy was whispering into the phone. “Clairedy.”

“I’m here,” she whispered back.

“There are three of us. We’re all three identical.”

Claire was not going there. “It’s some video trick. Three people cannot be identical. She downloaded our pictures from the video. From our own Facebook pages. She manipulated them with some program.”

“Check out her earlobes. You and I each have one pierced earring hole. She’s got three. She isn’t us.”

Claire gagged.

“Do you think somebody cloned us?” asked Missy. “Do you think we’re a set? Did we come in a box? Or a tube?”

“Clone” was a hideous word. It sounded like sheep and laboratories and things forbidden by law.
I
can’t be a clone, thought Claire.

“So now we know,” said Missy. “You and I are not cousins. We’re not identical twins, either. We are identical triplets.”

Had Claire ever used the word “triplet”? Did you ever need that word? If three people played instruments, they were a trio. If three people went somewhere, they were a threesome. If something happened three times in a row in a sport, you might have a three-peat.

Only musical notation had triplets: three notes forced into
the space of the usual two. It was a good definition. Genevieve Candler was forcing herself into the space of the usual two.

No, said Claire to herself. I won’t have it. She’s not getting into my life.

Missy’s voice ballooned with excitement. “Clairedy, there are three of us! We have another sister. We’re a three-per. We’re triplets!”

If Missy was right, this girl Genevieve had been alive for the exact same number of years, months and days as Claire. She had been brushing the same hair, putting polish on the same fingernails, choosing a bathing suit for the same body.

Claire Linnehan was exactly the same as this stranger on the screen.

Not that separated triplets were precisely strangers.

I knew her once, thought Claire. I touched her once.

“Whoever we are,” cried Missy—and Claire knew that Missy was dancing, because that was what Missy did when she was excited; she leaped and spun—“whoever we are, we have the same parents!” Missy sounded thrilled, as if she did not realize this meant that the parents they’d lived with all their lives were fakes.

Claire knew adopted kids. Their parents loved to talk about how they had lined up and begged and pleaded and gotten interviewed and waited for years, all for the privilege of having this particular child. But if Claire was one of three identical babies, she was not a particular child. She was a group. You might as well say you wanted the orange on the left instead of the orange in the middle. Who could tell? Who even cared?

How simple and pleasant her earlier guesses seemed. As adopted identical twins, they would just reset the same group of six: Claire and her wonderful parents plus Missy and her wonderful parents. Oh, sure, they would have to sort things out and admit stuff and wonder about biological whatevers, but they would still be who they’d always been.

Wrong.

There was a third person.

In Language Arts, you learned about “person.” There was first person, as in the sentence “I am loved.” There was second person, as in the sentence “You are loved.” First person and second person were always standing right there. You were them or you could see them.

But third person was somebody else, as in “She is a stranger.”

There was now a third person. And a third family.

“Let’s call her up!” said Missy. “She gave us her cell number! Let’s call right now! She practically says it’s a matter of life and death! I can’t wait to hear her voice!”

Claire would have screamed, but she did not want to wake her parents. “Are you nuts, Missy?”

Her father would call this a can of worms. It was one of his favorite phrases, used to describe everything from failed economies to political scandals.

In fact, Claire’s family ate very little out of cans. They certainly didn’t buy cans of worms. When were worms canned? Perhaps you saved your empty baked bean can and used it for the worms you caught for your fishing trip. Claire pictured the worms as fat and gelatinous and wriggling. Piled on each
other, suffocating each other, each little squirmy head trying to get free. She pictured the can falling over and the worms slithering out.

“Genevieve will be awake, I know she will,” said Missy confidently, as if she and Genevieve had known each other for years.