Three Black Swans (18 page)

“I’m not in an egg mood,” she said to her father.

“What’s going on?” demanded her father. “You lost your rhythm or something?”

I’ve lost my twin.

I’ve lost my triplet.

I’ve lost my mind.

You two are liars. You’re not even related to me.

My triplet is stalking me.

My cousin-twin and the triplet are becoming best friends while I sit here watching fried eggs get cold.

Claire would test whether a high-pitched scream really could break a window. That was probably true for old-fashioned, single-pane windows, not the energy-efficient layered windows in this house. She could probably scream all day and the windows would just stare reflectively back. “Nothing’s wrong.”

“You’re not acting normal,” said her father.

And separating triplets is normal? Taking one third of a
triplet set is normal? Never telling your daughter she’s adopted is normal?

Claire pretended to study cereal boxes on the shelf. Mostly she was just turning her back on her father. Who wasn’t a father.

She chose the dullest cereal: shredded wheat. A cereal that truly had nothing going for it. Not even looks. She opened the little interior pack with the three cereal slabs and crushed one into a bowl.
That
was what it had going for it. You got to crush something.

“Dad’s working today, Clairedy,” said her mother. “Do you want to do something special when I get home? Maybe drive up to Clinton and Westbrook to the discount malls and buy clothes?”

“No.”

“We could call Missy and see if she can come too.”

“No. I’m doing a project with Wanda and Annabel.”

Frannie had never heard of Wanda or Annabel. For years she had pushed Claire to develop other friendships and spend less time with Missy. But was it wise after all? What was wise, in their situation?

What
was
their situation? The dark fear that could still envelop Frannie after all these years invaded the room. Now, she thought. I should tell Claire the truth now.

But now was impossible, just as it had been impossible a thousand other times. Phil was grabbing his Carhartt jacket and his keys. Claire was pouring juice.

Frannie wrapped her toast around the egg and bacon to make a sandwich and rushed to the car to eat as she drove.

*  *  *

Allegra Candler liked to sleep in on Saturday mornings, but the pounding rain woke her. I’ll fall asleep again, she told herself, snuggling back down.

But sleep did not return. She felt as drowned by her problems as the backyard was by rain. Back when she was young and it didn’t matter whether she wore it, she had loved makeup. Now she had to wear it. She had to color her hair. She had to search carefully for fashions that did not date her. She had to deny herself all desirable food. She was surrounded by young women who were beautiful, thin and ambitious. They expected to overtake Allegra easily. She expected it, too.

On the train every day, going into and out of the city, she was forced to listen to dozens of cell phone conversations. There were three topics: work and gossip, which she could filter out, and parents checking on their children, which she could not. “Hi, Jacob. Did you get your homework done?” “How was your piano lesson, Max?” “Go ahead and defrost the burgers, Emily.” “I don’t
think
so, Devon. In a million years, you’re not getting permission.”

Allegra rarely checked on Genevieve, who seemed to lead a life that did not require parents, just a house. Vivi had been a grown-up from the start, a sturdy, reliable child who needed little attention. And this was a good thing, because the mother with the twelve-hour day and the father with the evening and weekend commitments had little to spare.

Small children were cute and sweet and they loved Mommy
and Daddy and were busy learning to ride a bike or else read. They all looked alike to Allegra. On the rare occasions when she showed up for a school activity, she couldn’t tell the other children apart. Mostly she was grateful that she didn’t have a fat one.

The teenagers looked alike too. The girls had long hair, usually flat and shiny and caught up in a ponytail. They dressed alike, they talked alike. Vivi was exceptional. Even her hair had personality—thick, wafting black hair that took up space and could not be tamed like the hair of other girls. Her decisions were astonishing. By the time Vivi was a junior, she had chosen an academic sport as well as athletic sports and had even taken over the nursing home water aerobics class.

Who
was
this girl?

And sometimes, Allegra would think … Who were the others?

The decision, which Allegra hardly thought of when Genevieve was small, and which she could tuck away for months or even years, now smacked her in the face every day. When Allegra checked the back of her mind, where the decision lay, she saw how immense it was. A river she could not recross.

Yet the decision had been easy to make. Allegra could no longer imagine how this could have been the case. Surely she and Ned had wept and clung to each other and made lists of pros and cons?

No. They had just done it. And since they had never told anybody to start with, nobody had asked.

The rain pounded relentlessly, as if it planned on coming in the house.

Allegra considered various robes. Her favorites were satin and lace, but the day was damp and chilly. She settled on a chrysanthemum-print fleece. She didn’t usually care for fleece, which quickly looked ratty, but the robe was cozy. She fixed her hair, put on some makeup—because she never appeared anywhere without makeup, even her own kitchen—and slid her toes into small woolly slippers.

Their little house had two bedrooms: she and Ned were downstairs in a charming space without enough closets while Vivi was upstairs under the eaves, a funny little suite with low ceilings and small slanted closets. Allegra rarely went up there. Vivi did her own cleaning, changed her own bed and carried her own laundry down to the cellar, where the washer and dryer were hooked up.

At this hour on a Saturday, Vivi would be asleep upstairs.

Allegra Candler smelled coffee. She smiled happily. Ned’s golf game would be canceled. Maybe they could go shopping. She loved shopping. Vivi would be busy; she was always busy. It was one of her most attractive features.

*  *  *

Kitty Vianello managed to find the correct one-way entrance to Stamford station. She was proud. She glanced at her daughter.

Gripping the handles of her purse so hard her knuckles were
white, Missy was staring at the station as if expecting a rock star to get off a train. Her eyes burned feverishly. Her teeth were actually chattering. When Missy leaned over to kiss her mother good-bye, the lips that touched Kitty’s cheek were cold.

“Sweetheart, are you feeling all right? You’re not coming down with something, are you?”

“I’m fine, Mom.” Missy vaulted out of the car. “See you later.” She slammed the door, ran across the sidewalk, hauled open the glass door and darted up the stairs to the station.

Somebody was honking. Cars were piling up behind her. Kitty drove away.

I should be proud, she thought. I brought up a daughter who can sashay into the city without a backward glance.

But Missy had been glad to get away from her mother.

Kitty felt herself being drawn into the unfinished scrapbook. The shoeboxes of photographs that still sat on the high closet shelf. The truth.

A past she could not change and a future she could not predict.

*  *  *

It’s Saturday morning! thought Genevieve, coming up off the bed as if catapulted. And I have sisters!

She hugged herself and darted to her sleeping computer. She brought up the precious video and watched it twice.

What to wear?

She stared in the mirror at a body exactly like the bodies
occupied by two other girls. Those identical bodies had slept last night, would shower this morning, put on clothing and swallow juice. She would believe this if she saw herself across the room at Grand Central.

I’ll call Claire now, she thought. We need to be all three of us, not two minus one. But Missy told me not to call.

Genevieve had forgotten to ask anything important. Do you know who our parents really are? Did you know you were adopted? Do you like Chinese food? Do you hate sandals where the strap divides your toes?

She and Missy had simply talked, as if they had known each other all along. As if they were sisters.

Genevieve had to wrap herself in a towel for a while, and dry her thoughts out as well as her hair. She was too wired to face her parents. Even the least involved mother and father in New York State might notice her excitement. But Saturday mornings, from early spring to late fall, her father had breakfast with golf buddies. As for Allegra, Saturday mornings were a precious chance to loll around, and she rarely rose before eleven.

Genevieve did not need permission to go into the city. Her parents expected her to make her own decisions. Still and all, they liked to know where she was. She decided to leave a note on the kitchen counter. Later she would text, to be sure they had read the note.

What to write? It must be impossible to check, and yet reasonable, so they wouldn’t worry. Not that Ned and Allegra were worriers. “We trust Vivi completely,” her parents liked to
say, and other parents were cowed, because they didn’t trust their kids an inch. But trust was not involved. Her parents simply didn’t think about Genevieve that much.

Which would she rather have—two new sisters or parents who cared?

It isn’t a choice, she reminded herself. My sisters exist. I have them whether we meet or not. As for my parents—they are who they are. And they’re not actually mine.

I’m adopted.

The shiver of rejoicing was followed by a shudder of shame. It would be her lifelong secret—that when she realized Ned and Allegra were not her father and mother, her heart had leaped with joy. She would not even tell Missy or Claire, assuming the girls became close. It was a black mark next to her soul.

She brushed her hair, thinking of the identical hair of Missy and Claire. Her analysis didn’t feel right. Why would Ned and Allegra, whose interest in parenting was low, have bothered to keep adoption a secret? In fact, why would they have adopted?

Ned and Allegra were not attracted to children. They didn’t volunteer in school, help with a club or assist a coach. They barely knew the names and faces of Genevieve’s classmates, whereas her friends’ parents tracked Genevieve along with their own kids.

Genevieve could not picture Ned and Allegra at the moment of her adoption, clasping their new baby to their hearts, crying, “At last! We have our own child!”

Had adoption been trendy that year? Were all their friends having babies? Was Genevieve just a way to keep up?

Genevieve watched the video again. She had forgotten to ask Missy why the girls had even done that interview. What had they known, or guessed, to make them throw their situation into the air like that?

She found an umbrella. She could walk to the train station as easily as she walked to GeeGee’s nursing home or high school. She planned to go early. She would wait inside the station, out of the rain.

How would she and Missy greet one another? Would they scream? Weep? Laugh? Would they know each other, bone to bone, soul to soul, the way identical twins supposedly did?

What would they do about Claire?

*  *  *

Claire Linnehan stood alone in the kitchen. What was she going to do all day? Why did it have to be raining? How was Claire going to survive college if she couldn’t even get through a weekend without Missy?

If she’s my cousin, and I need her like a blood transfusion, it’s warped. But if she’s my identical twin, and I need her, all of a sudden it’s normal.

I will not go on a crying jag, she told herself. I will get busy and do interesting things.

Compared to a long-lost identical triplet, not much was interesting.

Her cell rang. It was Missy’s ring. Grief choked her: fear over who she was or wasn’t; pain over what Missy had done, or was doing now.

Claire let Missy’s call go to voice mail.

*  *  *

Ned Candler looked up from his newspaper.

His daughter walked into the kitchen, looking beautiful in long pressed pants, a long gauzy shirt and a long wafting jacket with a tiny trendy vest over it. “You look terrific, Vivi. What’s up?”

She seemed rattled by the sight of him. “You don’t have a golf game?”

He pointed out the window at the rain.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. Um.”

He had to smile. Vivi was still just a kid.

“A bunch of us are going into the city,” she told him. “Metropolitan Museum. Some kids have an art assignment. The rest of us are tagging along.”

Ned couldn’t stand museums. He was bored before he paid the entry fee. Five minutes of walking through those halls and his legs were tired. They should have golf carts in museums. You’d purr past the dull parts. Which would be most of it.

“Can you drive me to the station, Dad? Since it’s raining?”

“Sure.” Ned went to the computer and scrolled through his e-mails, deleting some, reading a few, postponing most. There
was a message from Boyd in Connecticut. Boyd had been best man at his and Allegra’s wedding twenty-five years ago. Could Ned and Allegra really have been married for twenty-five years? Had he missed their anniversary? No, because he’d be dead.

He counted. They’d been married in December. A white velvet, green holly, red berry wedding—the most beautiful he’d ever been in or been to. He still remembered it with pleasure. He still had the most beautiful bride. Good thing he’d thought of that, because their twenty-fifth
was
coming up. We have to do something special, he thought.

Of course, “special” meant expensive.

Vivi said, “Dad? I have to go.”

He clicked on Boyd’s e-mail. The message was brief.
DID YOU SEE THIS YET??????!!!!
There was a link. Boyd was always sending something, as if Ned cared about dancing parrots or abandoned towns in the Northern Plains trying to coax people to live there, or some weirdo who had spent his life reinventing algebra. Ned had long since ceased to open the attachments. He wrote back,
Wow!