“Yes,” I said. There was, as I just had seen, nothing as terrible as lying to Mother.
“Because you felt sorry for Haylee even though she tried to get you into trouble?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good, Kaylee. You cared about her despite what she had done. We have to make sure she behaves the same way toward you, has compassion for you, too, understand?”
“Yes, Mother,” I said, happy I wasn’t being put into detention, too.
“You go and let her out now, and tell her that I was so pleased with how much you felt sorry for her that I decided to reduce her punishment. She’ll see that it is important to care more for you and that by caring for you, she’s really caring for herself. Go,” she said.
When I opened the pantry door, Haylee, who was curled on the floor, slowly raised herself like a cobra. She had dried streaks of tears along her cheeks, and her hair was quite messy because she had been running her fingers through it nervously, something I would do, too.
“What do you want?” she said, spitting her words at me.
“Mother said that because I felt sorry for you and tried to comfort you even though you blamed me for something I didn’t do, you can come out now,” I said. “She said you should think about it, especially about caring more for me like I cared more for you.” I tried to recite it accurately as Mother had dictated it.
Haylee stood there in the pantry, strangely defiant even though she was being released. She folded her arms across her chest.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You can come out.”
“She tricked me,” she said. “That wasn’t fair. I shouldn’t have been put in detention alone.”
“It wasn’t a trick. Like she told you, it was a test. She’s only trying to help us help each other all the time, Haylee. Don’t you want her to let us go to school? She won’t if she doesn’t think we’re ready to protect each other. I just heard her tell Daddy that. You’ve told me so many times that you want to go to school, and I’ve told you the same thing. Don’t you see? We’ll never get there if we don’t listen.”
She nodded, lowered her head, and walked out. I closed the pantry door.
“You should go thank her,” I said.
“Thank her?”
“Thank her for helping you understand. She likes that.”
She narrowed her eyes in that angry and suspicious way again but then smiled. “Okay,” she said. “I will. I know just what to say. I’ll say what you would say.”
I followed her to the living room. Mother was sitting back on the settee, her arms spread over the top, waiting.
“Thank you, Mother,” Haylee said. “I’m sorry for what I did and what I said. I made a terrible mistake.” She looked at me. “Sorry, Kaylee.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.
Mother’s face brightened, making her look younger and even more beautiful. “That’s very good. Perfect, Haylee. You understand now? You understand why you must always protect each other?”
“Yes, Mother,” Haylee said. “I appreciate what you did for us.”
Mother’s smile deepened because Haylee said “us” rather than “me.” Haylee glanced at me, looking pleased with herself.
“Go wash up. We’re going to a restaurant for dinner,” Mother said. “You two can order your favorite pasta with meatballs.”
“Okay,” Haylee said.
I smiled. Haylee didn’t know it, but Mother was going to make Daddy happy, too, and no matter what happened, I always liked it most when everyone in our family was happy.
“And maybe we’ll all go for frozen yogurt for dessert afterward, and you two can get your favorite, blueberry,” Mother added.
Wow, she is pleased with us, I thought.
“I think I want chocolate tonight,” Haylee said, swinging her eyes toward me.
“Me, too,” I added quickly.
Mother nodded. “That’s fine. Go on, Kaylee. You get cleaned up, too. I’ll be up in a while to pick out your outfit and brush your hair.”
We started to turn.
“Wait!” she cried, and we looked at her. “What’s that on your right ring finger, Haylee?”
Haylee looked at it as if she had never known it was there. It was a piece of green ribbon. “Nothing. I was just pretending I had a ring,” she said.
“Get it off this instant. Never put anything on that Kaylee isn’t wearing. That includes make-believe jewelry. You know how I hate it when someone gives one of you something and not the other.”
Haylee ripped it off quickly.
“Okay, go on,” Mother said.
We walked out quickly. At the bottom of the stairway, Haylee turned to me and smiled. “You don’t really want chocolate more than you want blueberry, do you?” she asked.
“It’s all right.”
She widened her smile. “See? I can make you do anything I want,” she said, and laughed.
“I can do the same to you,” I countered, even though it was something I wouldn’t even think of doing.
She rushed ahead of me up the stairs. Daddy poked his head out of their bedroom when he heard our footsteps.
“Hey, what’s up?” he asked. He was in his robe and was rubbing a towel over his hair.
“We’re going to a restaurant after all,” I said. “And maybe for frozen yogurt for dessert.”
His face brightened. “Way to go, girls, whatever you did,” he said.
“We helped each other,” Haylee told him. “We will always do what’s better for both of us. We’ll never be selfish.”
She said it with such assurance that I actually believed her, until I saw her turn away and smile, and something about that smile sent a chill through me. It was so different from any smile I might make, even the impish smile she had flashed at the bottom of the stairway. Maybe she knew that, too, because she kept it off her face the rest of the night.
As usual, at the restaurant, people who knew Daddy would stop by and comment on how perfectly identical we were. Even strangers did it. One man paused to say, “I’m going to my optometrist. I’m seeing double again.” He laughed, but neither Haylee nor I did. We had heard that so many times that the humor had long since been washed away. However, Mother soaked up all the compliments like a flower absorbing sunlight. I saw the way she looked at Daddy each time, as if to say, See how well I’m doing with them? Never challenge me again.
He seemed to be in full retreat now anyway, and that moment of defiance I had seen in the great room earlier was a fading memory. He talked more about his business, his plans for the future, and some vacation ideas. Mother listened, but her eyes were always on us, especially noticing the way Haylee was fidgeting. This was something I didn’t do nearly as much as she did. Despite how good a student Haylee believed she was, she had a more limited attention span than mine. Instinctively, because I knew Mother was looking for it, whenever Haylee grew bored, I tried to look just as bored. I knew that if I didn’t, she would be angrier at Haylee than normal, and that could end with another punishment we’d both endure. We were supposed to protect each other even from boredom.
“Stop playing with your food,” she muttered. “Don’t swing your legs under the table. Wipe the food from your mouth. Don’t lean over your plate so much.”
These orders were always meant for us both, even though I didn’t do those things as much. She gave the commands while she listened to Daddy describe some new project he was working on. It was easy to see that her snapping at us in the restaurant bothered him, but criticizing her for criticizing one of us would only make things worse.
That night, however, I woke from what I thought was a bad dream. It was really the sound of our parents arguing. It was rare to hear Daddy raise his voice, especially this late in the evening, but that was what was happening. I looked at Haylee. She was in a deep sleep, so I rose and tiptoed to the slightly opened bedroom door to listen better. They were in their bedroom.
“Don’t you see?” Daddy said. “Haylee lied because she
wants you to like her more. It’s only natural. You don’t have to be a psychologist to figure it out, Keri.”
“No, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s unnatural. If she wants me to like her more, then she wants me to like Kaylee less. That’s harmful. She shouldn’t want to harm her sister, ever.”
“But isn’t it natural for them to be somewhat competitive? They have no other children to compete with as long as you keep them homeschooled. So they have to compete with each other. It’s human nature. I appreciate how you’re teaching them, how much they’ve learned, and how much further along they are, but they’ll have to compete with other students in many ways eventually. There are social hurdles, especially for kids today.”
“Exactly. I’m training them to be a team for just that reason. Don’t you see how careful I am to protect them, to be sure they have self-confidence? Since when do you question the way I’m bringing them up? You’re doing it more and more lately. Who’s been talking to you? I sensed it this afternoon when you heard what Haylee had done and learned about her punishment. Well? It’s that secretary of yours, that woman who looks like a chipmunk, isn’t it? I’ve seen the way she looks at me every time the girls and I visit you at your office. ‘They’re so exact,’ she says, as if that was a mistake. ‘You keep them so exact. I would never know who was who.’ Like that was something terrible. Well? Was it that woman?”
“Stop it,” he said. “Of course not. There’s no reason to call her ‘that woman.’ She’s been with me for five years. Her name is Nancy Brand.”
“Why isn’t she married with a family of her own so she doesn’t have to sniff like a chipmunk around ours?”
“I don’t get into the personal lives of our employees. And she doesn’t look like a chipmunk. Let’s just forget it. I’m tired,” Daddy said, his voice strained with defeat and frustration.
They were quiet. I waited, listening. I was just about to turn away when Mother said, “I’ll look into enrolling them in Betsy Ross. But not this semester. The next. It’s coming up very soon.”
“That’s good, Keri. It will give you a chance to spend more time with your friends, too. You should get out more.”
“Oh, that’s so shortsighted, Mason. It’s when your children begin school and start to socialize that you need to spend more time with them.”
“Whatever. Whatever you think’s best,” he said, sounding like he was waving a white flag.
I waited, but I heard nothing more and returned to bed. Haylee woke when I crawled back under the blanket.
“I just heard something important,” I said.
“What?”
“Mother is going to look into enrolling us in Betsy Ross next semester, and she said that was very soon.”
“Good. I’m tired of only looking at your ugly face.”
“It’s your face, too,” I said.
“You don’t see it because you don’t want to,” she said, raising herself on her elbows, “but our faces are not really exactly alike. I’m prettier. When we go to school, you’ll see I’m right. I’ll have more friends, especially more boyfriends.”
“Don’t let Mother hear you say that. You’ll be in the pantry for days, and I won’t come to keep you company through the door.”
She lay back again. I was so angry that I didn’t think I could fall asleep.
“Don’t worry about Mother,” she said. “Someday she’ll think I’m prettier and nicer, too.”
I didn’t think there was anything she could say that would hurt me more.
But we were still young.
She would have lots of opportunities to come up with worse ideas.
And she did.
4
During the days that followed, Haylee thought I had lied to her, because Mother didn’t come right out the next day and tell us she finally was going to enroll us in the Betsy Ross school. Although I had caught Haylee lying to me many times, I had never lied to her, and she knew it. Nevertheless, she turned on me one afternoon and with a hateful look said, “You lied to me about our going to school, Kaylee Blossom Fitzgerald. That was mean.”
“That’s silly, Haylee. Why would I lie to you about it?”
“You want to be more important than me,” she said. “Mother would never tell you something and not tell me.”
“I didn’t say she told me, Haylee. I said I overheard her talking to Daddy. You were asleep.”
She pursed her lips as she always did when she didn’t like something I had said. It was something else I rarely did, but somehow Mother never noticed. Maybe she didn’t think it was important. If she did see something one of us did differently, something that bothered her enough, like scowling or chewing the insides of our mouths when we were nervous, she would tell us to stop, or else “your sister will be doing it, too.” It was impossible to believe that one of us would do something that eventually the other wouldn’t. Mother had drummed that into our heads from the moment we could understand what she meant. However, I believed it more than Haylee did, I thought, which was why I was always frightened by some of the things Haylee did.
Haylee didn’t really care what was true and what wasn’t about what I had told her anyway.
“You just want to be more important,” she repeated. She was good at hearing what she wanted to hear and being deaf when something displeased her. Sometimes she could make me so angry and frustrated that I did feel like getting her into trouble, even if it meant I would be in trouble, too.
“You’ll see that I’m right and not lying,” I said, but now I wasn’t sure myself.
Mother had promised that she was going to do things for us in the past, especially things Daddy wanted her to do, and then she had never done them or had put them off so long that Daddy simply forgot about them. But us going to a real school was something Daddy often mentioned. I hoped he wouldn’t forget or give up. Being with others our age was something Haylee and I really wanted, although Haylee always told me she wanted it more, because I was more afraid of it than she was. She repeated that now.
“Why am I afraid of it?”
“You’re too shy,” she said. “I overheard Mother say that to Daddy. And that’s the real reason we’re not going yet, so it’s your fault.”
“Now who’s lying? Mother would never say that.”
She gave me that Haylee Blossom Fitzgerald shrug, widening her eyes. She would do that only when Mother wasn’t looking. It was something she did instead of laughing at me when she was teasing me, especially when she was caught in a “lie without clothes,” as Mother put it.
“Yes, she did, Kaylee.”
“No, she didn’t. I’m the one who talks about going all the time. You’re the shy one, the one who’s afraid to ask Mother questions,” I fired back at her.
It was true, and she knew it. As always, when she knew she’d been caught lying to me, she would just smile and go on to something else, leaving my frustration dangling in the air like a spider. My insides certainly felt as if spiders were crawling all over me. I hated letting her do this to me, but I was also frustrated about school.
The Betsy Ross private school was not far from where we lived. Every time we drove past it, Haylee and I would gaze at the redbrick building and the children outside with great curiosity and longing. They seemed so much happier than we were, so much more excited about everything as they called to one another and walked and ran over the beautiful grounds with the tall maple and oak trees. Sometimes we saw children on the ball field. If we had to stop at the traffic light in front of the school, their laughter rolled toward us in waves and drew us to lean a little out of the car windows, as if we were begging for a little of their social activity.
I often asked when we were going to attend Betsy Ross, and Mother would always say, “You’ll go when you’re ready.”
“But why are they ready and we’re not?” I had asked recently. “So many of them are younger than we are.”
“Are you wondering that, too?” Mother asked Haylee.
&
nbsp; “No,” she said, shaking her head, even though she was wondering even more than I was.
“I don’t know why I have to repeat this. I’ve told you so many times,” Mother said, looking more at me, “that you are special and very different from those children. When you are there eventually, you will see exactly what I mean, and you will thank me for making you stronger before you entered the school of . . . plain fish.”
I looked at Haylee. She was smiling. She loved it when Mother spoke to me as if I were dumber than she was. Nevertheless, my mind was full of challenging questions, like Why are they plain fish? And if they’re so plain, why are they in school and we’re not? We’re smart enough to attend classes and do well, right? You’ve said so many times.
Of course, I dared not ask those questions. I was quiet instead, and I would close my eyes and roll up the car window whenever we were driving past the Betsy Ross school now. I didn’t want to see or hear how happy the “plain fish” were. I felt like a poor, starving little girl who could only stare through restaurant windows at the wonderful and delicious things other children were eating. It was torture to look. However, because of what I had overheard Mother tell Daddy, I was far more interested in going to school now, and despite how she pretended otherwise, so was Haylee.
One day two weeks later, Mother finally told us. Daddy was home, and we had just sat down to have dinner. She said she had visited the grade school and had spoken with the principal, Mrs. Green.
“Since they are beginning a new marking period at Betsy Ross and you’ve both been doing so well in our home classroom, I’ve decided it is time to enroll you.”
I looked at Haylee to see if she would feel sorry for doubting me, but she didn’t show it if she did. Instead, she looked as surprised as she could and avoided looking at me.
“Betsy Ross is the best of all the private schools in our area,” Mother continued. “However, I’ve insisted on a number of things. You will be in the same classroom, of course, and sitting side by side. If your teacher finds one of you falling behind the other for any reason, I will be informed immediately so that I can help bring you up to your full capabilities.