“You said schizophrenia?”
“There are complicated things happening to her right now, Mr. Fitzgerald. One of them is, naturally, her paranoia. She believes everyone, even people who don’t know her, knows what she has done and is out to harm her in some way. I was hoping that confronting Kaylee might ease that symptom.”
“Maybe it did,” my father said hopefully. He looked more like a parent concerned about his child now.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Fitzgerald. What I saw was a reinforcement of her deeply seated sibling rivalry. She was hoping to be stronger, prettier perhaps, considering what Kaylee has experienced, but instead, Haylee suffered some deeper disappointment. She was not prettier.”
“But she cut her own hair,” I said. “She didn’t want to be pretty.”
“Contradictions. Yes. She was punishing herself, but I think when she entered the room, she was anticipating you would still look worse. As I said . . . in her eyes, you were the one who had suffered.”
My father’s eyes narrowed for a moment. He glanced at me and then back at Dr. Alexander. “She doesn’t feel any guilt, then. Is that what you’re saying? We shouldn’t have come after all,” he said. “There was nothing good that could come of it.”
“Maybe not. I was, as I said, hoping for some retreat in these symptoms, especially the paranoia.”
She turned to me.
“You and your sister have had such an unusual relationship. It was and remains perhaps only you who can get to her. She wants that, but she resents it, too. Complicated,” she said again. It was beginning to annoy me. It seemed like an easy way out, an explanation for everything.
“What will happen to her now?” I asked.
“More intense therapy.” She leaned forward. “Did you know how your sister would react to your looking so pretty, Kaylee? You do know each other so well, better than most sisters know each other, right? Is that why you wore that obviously sexy dress and made up your face before you came? You wanted some sort of revenge?”
“Stop that!” my father snapped instantly, and he stood. “I won’t permit an iota of guilt to be placed at this girl’s feet after what her sister did to her. You read her psychiatrist’s report.”
“Did you really come here to see whether you and your sister could stop hating each other, Kaylee?” she pursued, ignoring my father.
“Yes,” I said. “I did. I’m sorry if everything’s become . . . more complicated now.”
My father reached for my hand so that I would stand, too. “That’s enough,” he said. “I’ll be in touch. Perhaps through my attorney.”
He almost physically turned me toward the door.
“It’s important that you and I talk again, Kaylee,” Dr. Alexander called to me, totally ignoring my father. “When you’re ready.”
“Go,” my father ordered, opening the door.
I didn’t look back. He closed the door behind us.
“Psychiatry is a form of voodoo,” he muttered as we walked back to the lobby.
He was walking so quickly now that we almost didn’t stop for the guard at the front entrance. Apparently, he had to take back our visitor passes and check to be sure an inmate wasn’t being smuggled out. He wanted to see my license again and look at me, but I could have told him that it wouldn’t do him much good.
We were identical in too many ways.
I had the odd feeling that in a sense, I was being left back there and Haylee was the one walking out with my father.
Neither of us spoke until we were off the grounds and well on our way home.
“Under no circumstances do I want you returning here to see that woman,” he said. “These people can screw with your mind so much they can turn you into mental cripples. They’re always looking for ways to excuse the guilty, especially here. They should call the place Palace Equivocation or Palace Excuse Abuse,” he said. He was so angry that he was talking through clenched teeth.
“And did you hear the way she gave me that little dig about not visiting enough?” he added, turning to me. “Like I don’t have enough on my hands visiting your mother and having consultations with her doctor and making sure you’re going to be all right while trying to hold on to my business. Who put Haylee in that place? Certainly not me. She put herself there with her deceitful, evil actions.”
He went into his silent thoughts a while and then seemed to calm. After taking a few deep breaths, he turned to me. “I’m sorry. I should be worrying about how you are, not how she is.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to see her. Maybe you were right. Maybe it was too soon.”
“Sure, I was right. I don’t care what Dr. Alexander says. And I told you I wasn’t going to let her hurt you anymore. I’m sorry. You just put it out of your mind for now. We’ll concentrate on what’s best for you and not spend any more time worrying about her.”
“I’m all right, Daddy.”
“Sure. You’re strong. You’re the strong one after all.” He took another deep breath. “I have to see your mother’s doctor tomorrow. We might be bringing her home.”
“Really?” This was a surprise. He hadn’t hinted at it. Maybe he was waiting to see the results of this visit first.
“We’ll see. I want you to think about that prep school now, Kaylee. I want you out of this whole thing as soon as possible. Okay?”
“Okay, Daddy,” I said.
He shook his head and then smiled. “What say you and I have some of that Thai food you love tonight? We’ll go to that place in Philly, okay?”
“Okay.”
He sat back. “You’ll be fine,” he said, nodding. “You’ll be just fine, Kaylee. Once you start somewhere new, you’ll do just fine.”
Would I? I wondered. Maybe.
But was Dr. Alexander right to ask if I had really gone there to see if Haylee and I would stop hating each other? Did she allow me to come so she could observe me almost as much as Haylee? Was she smarter than my father thought?
I couldn’t say I was unhappy that he didn’t want me to return to see her.
The truth was, I was afraid to see her anymore.
I was even afraid to look at myself in a mirror right now.
If I did, I was sure I wouldn’t see any regrets or any sadness about Haylee going into catatonic states. I felt good about it, actually. I felt as good as Haylee would surely feel if the roles were reversed, as Mother once proposed.
Thai food sounded very good. In fact, my new future sounded very good.
For the first time, I thought I might be able to have a future without thinking about Haylee every day.
I might not think of her at all once I was gone.
I remembered years ago one of Mother’s friends saying we were so like conjoined twins that it would take an operation to separate us.
Maybe that just happened, I thought . . . I hoped. A mental operation, but one just as effective.
It was something I felt my father obviously wanted for me, too. When we got home, he did some work, and I went to my room to rest and change into something I thought was more appropriate to wear to dinner with him. I wasn’t sure I would ever wear the sexy dress again. It would bring back the memory of what I had just experienced or, perhaps more accurately, what I had just done.
I chose a simple black dress and wore only lipstick. I saw that he was pleased. It was as if I had put away my anger, locked it in some drawer to forget it. On our way to Philly, he began to talk about some of his business ventures. It was almost like old times before he had divorced Mother, back when we were something of a happy little family.
He was behaving as if he had gotten a weight off his back, too. I hadn’t seen him so up since I had returned from the hospital.
Once we were in the restaurant and had ordered our food, my father sat back, looking thoughtful again. I thought perhaps he had received darker news about Mother than he had anticipated and she wasn’t coming home after all, but as it turned out, he had other things on his mind
.
“The thing about unexpected events that can impact your life is just that, they’re unexpected,” he began. I imagined he was going to start talking again about how what Haylee had done had taken him by such surprise, but he surprised me by smiling. “Sometimes those can be good things.”
The waiter brought his drink and my Arnold Palmer. I was happy that I wasn’t on any medications anymore, but it wasn’t so I could sneak some of my father’s alcohol to drink like Haylee and I occasionally used to do. He sipped his drink and leaned forward, as if we had to be sure no one could overhear our conversation. What great secret was he about to tell me?
“I’ve met someone new,” he said. “I’ve held back telling you until I was more confident in your recuperation.”
“Someone new?”
“Actually, she’s been working for us in accounting. We hit it off immediately. Her name is Dana Cartwell. She’s not a divorcée,” he quickly added, as if he thought I believed that was the only sort of woman he could date. “She was engaged once but, as she says, woke up before it was too late. She has a great sense of humor. I think you’re going to like her.”
“If you do, I’m sure I will, Daddy,” I said.
He smiled, took another sip of his drink, and sat back.
I imagined he was holding his breath the whole time. It struck me how much of an emotional minefield we were all living in now. I was sure he was afraid I would think he was deserting me just when I needed him the most. How could he spend his emotions on anyone new, especially at this critical time? Most children of divorced couples resented it when one or both of their parents started new relationships. After all, how much love was there to go around? This was especially true for me under these terrible circumstances.
However, deep in my heart, I knew things couldn’t last the way they were. Mother was going to come home; he would leave to live in his own apartment again. He would be more active in his work, and as soon as the prep school was all set up for me, I would leave as well. At this moment, of course, I didn’t know what condition Mother would be in and how she could get along with everyone out of the house.
“Nothing will change between us,” he promised. “I’ll pay so much attention to you that you’ll have me reported for stalking.”
I laughed. It suddenly occurred to me that I really hadn’t done much laughing lately. I also wished now that I had something stronger than an Arnold Palmer to drink and might ask to sneak a little of his vodka and tonic.
“Does Dana know all about us?”
I realized that knowing all about us took in quite a lot. How could anyone digest it and still want to be with him?
“Pretty much,” he said. “You can’t work for our company and not know the horror we’ve endured. She wasn’t nosy or anything like that. I just felt comfortable talking to her about it. That’s how you know you’re with someone special, when you don’t feel you have to disguise things or tell half-truths.”
Our food began arriving.
“And all that didn’t scare her away?”
“Not yet,” he said. There was a lot more he had to tell her, obviously. “She’s a pretty centered woman—and pretty, too, on the inside as well as the outside.”
I forced a smile.
How do you tell your father that you’re happy he’s found someone to love other than your mother? No matter how open-minded and mature you think you are, it’s still a strange feeling when you do congratulate him. You can’t help thinking you’re betraying your mother, and you hate the idea of another female taking your father’s attention and devotion from you, but if you love him, you also can’t help but be happy he’s found some happiness, too.
“I look forward to meeting her, Daddy,” I said.
“And she feels the same about meeting you. You’ll like her, I’m sure. So let’s eat,” he said, and began dishing out the food we had ordered.
A couple of hours later, we were on our way home, both of us quiet now, settling into our own thoughts.
Later, in my room, I couldn’t help it.
I sat in front of my mirror and tried to be catatonic. I was close to what I saw Haylee do but not perfectly the same.
It was real, I thought. She wasn’t putting on any act.
She was locking herself up in herself.
And in a way, she was finally escaping.
But to what?
4
My father left the day my mother was sent home, and almost immediately, there were shadows within shadows in our house. Lights were often not turned on or were kept dim for most of the day. Mother felt safer and happier in the darkness. She wrapped it around herself the way someone would snuggle in a warm blanket on cold evenings, and she was not eager to have her curtains drawn open in the morning. She knew she would be shocked by the reality that came pouring in on the back of the sunlight, a reality she’d rather not face: none of it was simply a bad dream.
When Haylee and I were little and still shared a room and a bed, Mother was always up ahead of us and eager to sing us the “Good Morning Song,” telling us how nice it was to have us there with her each day. Many times she said she wished she could freeze time so we would never grow older and nothing would ever change. She would kiss us each twice and stroke our hair twice before dressing us in the duplicate outfits she had chosen for us the night before. Afterward, when we were standing for her inspection so she could make sure that everything about us was the same, she would clap her hands and say, “You are like the sunshine warming my heart.”
We were often compared to the sunshine in one way or another. Our faces lit up her day. One look at us wiped away the dark clouds that came from whatever worry or problem she had at the time. Like a planet, she was held in orbit around us. Neither Haylee nor I could deny that the exaggerated and happy way she described us made us feel extra special, even though the odds of having twins were far greater than for any other type of multiple births and the odds of having identical twins were about the same for every couple wherever they lived in the world. Because the reason one fertilized egg, or zygote, would split into two was still a mystery, Mother believed it was something spiritual and extraordinary.
Perhaps Haylee soaked up all the praise more, and more deeply, than I did, but because of the way Mother displayed us in public and talked about us, we believed that anyone looking at us would surely think, There go two diamond-studded little girls, dazzling whomever they meet.
Now, however, the early sunlight didn’t tiptoe softly into our house and gently wake the sleeping walls the way Mother surely remembered. Like a clumsy bull in a shop of fragile antiques, it pushed its way through the rooms and hallways, up the stairway, and to our bedrooms, smashing aside the contents of any obscure, dark corner in which Mother might hover to find relief from her haunting dreams.
For hours after the sun went down, she would avoid turning on the lights or asking Irene Granford—her forty-two-year-old live-in nurse and caretaker, someone her therapist, Dr. Jaffe, believed she still needed, at least for the immediate future—or me, when I was home, to turn them on. A mere table lamp had become a powerful spotlight forcing her to face blinding reality. It made it more difficult for her to escape behind the fortress of her memories, where she could see and hear Haylee and me the way she wanted, even now, as two identical and perfect little girls, with dark brown hair so light and fluffy that it seemed woven from clouds, two identical and perfect little girls with our mother’s amber eyes, who loved each other as much as they could love themselves, two identical and perfect little girls who had the same thoughts, had the same tastes and feelings, and dreamed the same dreams.
Whenever Mother did sit in a well-lit room, she spent most of her time thumbing slowly through albums filled with pictures of us from birth up to the year before my abduction. There were also many videos of us that my father had taken before our parents divorced. In every picture and in every video, we wore the exact same clothes and had our hair trimmed and brushed in the same sty
le, not a strand on either of us longer than on the other. When I stood in the background and watched Mother looking at those pictures or saw her watching the videos with her face frozen in that nostalgic and sad expression, I felt as though Haylee and I were long dead and gone. In her mind, we might very well be, at least the two daughters she had once cherished. The girls who existed now were practically strangers, invaders trespassing in the bodies of her precious, perfect children.
I could see it in the way she looked at me whenever I came into a room. Gone was that deep familiarity and love, that obsessive attachment to every movement in my face and body, to every word I said, and to every breath I took. It always had been the same whenever she had turned or looked up to see Haylee enter. Now, after all that had happened, there was coolness, indifference, her kisses sitting on plastic lips, her touch almost always accidental.
In the past, whenever she would see one of us without the other, the first thing she would ask was “Where is your sister?” Regardless of the time of day or the circumstance, whenever one of us appeared without the other, her eyes would flame with fear. We could never claim that we didn’t know. She had us believing we’d feel each other’s heartbeats in another room, even outside the house. It was as if she had a premonition from the day we were born, a vision of us separated, one of us lost forever. And of course, there was that deep-seated belief that one of us couldn’t exist without the other. That idea was embedded in her so firmly that accepting any alternative was not only impossible but, to her, practically murder.
During the days that followed her return, I could easily read the desperate thoughts in her eyes. This current situation we were all swimming in frantically couldn’t last; it was only a temporary hiccup. All that had happened would be wiped away, vacuumed into the bag of things forgotten forever and ever. How she could look at me and have any thought similar to that was incredible, but this was the hope that sustained her. It was now the only dream she had left, in a house where dreams had once swum as gracefully as so many goldfish in a bowl.