Three Black Swans (2 page)

“There is a strong family resemblance,” agreed Claire. “But I’d need plastic surgery to be a perfect match, even if I
wanted
to look exactly like you. I think
you
should have the surgery and look exactly like me instead.”

“There isn’t time for surgery,” said Missy. “The project is due.”

A phone call with Missy was relaxing. Claire wouldn’t even know she was tense until she heard Missy’s voice, felt her body soften. She could get so relaxed that if she was sprawled on the bed, she’d fall asleep, and Missy would yell into the phone, “Hey! Clairedy! Wake up!”

“Identical twins have to be identical,” Claire pointed out.
“There’s the problem that I am a year ahead of you in school, an A student, in six activities, on two teams, and planning to be a doctor, whereas you—I’m sorry to put this so bluntly—are an average student with no activities except communicating and shopping.”

They laughed. In fact the cousins were pretty similar. But with one cousin a sophomore and the other a junior, and living in different states with different curricula and exams—Missy was in Connecticut while Claire was in New York—comparisons were iffy.

“You can dumb down, Claire,” said Missy cheerfully. “Here’s my plan. I go to school tomorrow sobbing and trembling and tell everybody that my missing identical twin has just shown up.”

“Meaning me? Finding me makes you cry?”

“Okay, I’ll clap my hands and dance in little circles.”

“Better,” said Claire. “Now, where will you do this? Biology lab?”

“No, no. Our school—being superior to yours—has an in-house television broadcast. I happen to be friends with the morning announcer. His sister is in my Language Arts class and I was over at their house once. I’ll call Rick and regale him with my astonishing news, and arrange for him to interview me.”

“They do interviews during your school announcements?”

“They never have before, but they’ve never had a long-lost identical twin before. I can talk Rick into it. It’s quite a story, you know. He’ll be all over it. The thing is, Claire, I can’t use
photographs of my identical twin. Anybody can show up with two photographs of herself and pretend that the picture on the left is her twin. You will be my living, breathing proof that I have an identical twin. You and I are going to have an identical twin debut.”

With Missy, either in person or on the phone, Claire felt safer. The sensation was always present, and Claire could never quite get hold of it. Safer from what? But now the safe feeling drained away. “I don’t think so, Missy.”

Missy was not deflected, which was typical; she was a pit bull. “I saw a TV show once,” said Missy, “where they found identical twins who had been separated at birth. The show brought them together for the first time when they were in their thirties. Can you imagine? These two men showed up wearing the same shirt, and here they had the same bowling score, and had gotten married the same month of the same year, and had even married women with the same first name. But they didn’t know the other one existed. That’s how bonded identical twins are.”

Claire could not work up any interest in thirty-year-old men with identical bowling scores. “Missy, get real. I can’t show up at your school in the morning. I have school of my own. I live twenty miles away. And I don’t drive.” Her parents had finally agreed that next spring she could get her driver’s license. Sometimes Claire couldn’t eat or read from the excitement of picturing herself in her own car, driving to her own destinations, the little plastic ID window in her wallet holding a license and a credit card for gas in the opposite slot.

But the thought of driving did not excite her this time. She sat down on her bed and pulled her feet up, as if nightmares under the bed might yank her down by the ankles.

Missy, who usually picked up any mood of her cousin’s over the phone, did not notice anything. “Your father can drive you, Claire. Uncle Phil is always obedient to your wishes. School announcements are nice and early. They’re over by seven fifty-five so the first class can start at eight, but since your school starts at eight-thirty, you’ll almost be back in time. Tell Uncle Phil I need help for one minute on a biology project. Come on, Clairedy. How many people get to be identical twins for a day?”

Becoming an identical twin sounded like quite a step to Claire. Like marriage, only more so.

What was an identical twin, anyway? At conception, it was a single, which then split in two. At birth, the babies had separate bodies and souls, yet they had once shared the exact same body. Or egg; Claire was a little vague. “Do fraternal twins instead,” she suggested. “If your hoax is about fraternal twins, you can use anybody. Remember how in your kindergarten there were two sets of fraternal twins and nobody even believed they were related?”

“It wouldn’t be fun with just anybody, Clairedy. It’ll only be fun with you. And how exciting are fraternal twins, anyhow? People daydream of being identical twins.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Claire, whose daydreams involved Aiden, a wide assortment of other cute boys, and of course cars. “Anyway, there are flaws in your plan. What about your friends
who know me? I’m always at your sleepovers and I’ve gone to lots of school games with you.”

“That was middle school. That was years ago. I haven’t given a party in ages. Literally a thousand kids at my high school have never seen or heard of you. And back when they were coming to my parties, you and I didn’t look this much alike.”

That was true. Missy’s low birth weight had resulted in years of illness and slow growth. But by ninth and now tenth grade, the puny cousin had caught up.

“You and I will wear exactly the same stuff for the interview,” said Missy. “I’m thinking the pale pink cashmere sweaters we both got for our birthdays. Our hair is the same length now, and we’ll wear the same color ponytail holders, and the pink and silver bead earrings we got at the mall a few weeks ago. When I instruct people to see identical twins, they will. That’s the essence of a hoax. Obedience to the hoax master.”

Claire felt unsettled. Missy seemed too enthusiastic. “Are you sure you understood the assignment, Missy? You’re in high school biology, not summer camp.”

“I admit I’m not following the guidelines. Mrs. Stancil wants us to be very scientific. Like if you’re pretending your lamb bone is actually the shin of a pterodactyl—assuming pterodactyls have shins, which I don’t happen to know—you need the right dimensions and bone porosity and all that. We’re supposed to do our hoax in groups, but I got assigned to Carlotta’s and I don’t want to make pretend alternative fuels out of pond scum.”

Claire couldn’t laugh. The hoax disturbed her. But there was
an easy way out. “What do your mom and dad think of your plan?” she asked.

Claire adored her aunt and uncle. They were totally fun people. Former elementary school teachers, they lived in a welter of projects. Even now, when their daughter was sixteen, there was always some family project going on, like making bookmarks or birdhouses or even bricks. A visit to Uncle Matt and Aunt Kitty’s was like changing planets. Claire’s parents shared stuff like cooking and cleaning—“Let’s vacuum!” her mom and dad would say to each other—but Missy’s parents would say, “Let’s weld our own garden sculpture!”

Missy lowered her voice. “I wasn’t going to bring my parents into this.”

“When identical twins are first revealed,” said Claire, “viewers want to see how thrilled the parents are that their long-lost daughter is found.” Claire was confused by her own statement. Under what circumstances could a daughter be lost?

“Why would the parents be thrilled?” countered Missy. “Obviously they didn’t want you. If they had wanted you, they would have kept you. And here you are, like a lemon of a car, back from the garage again.”

If twins were separated, Claire reasoned, then one of them had been adopted. Claire pictured a teen mother surrendering her babies. Perhaps with so many would-be parents in the world, the social worker had divided these pretend twins in order to satisfy two families instead of just one.

Claire imagined a heavy middle-aged woman, a Department of Social Services name tag pinned lopsidedly to her ill-fitting
shirt, holding a blanket-wrapped newborn in each arm, tossing one baby in one direction and the other baby in the opposite direction. “Good luck!” she called, making a quick entry in her handheld computer.

That would be the end of twins. Babies who had been conceived with a life companion—an in-house best friend, as it were—would grow up alone.

Would they feel the loss?

How could they? Those thirty-year-old men Missy had seen on television hadn’t known they had an identical sibling. And yet their bodies and lives had gone on behaving like twins, even to the point of bowling scores. Spooky.

Claire’s mother and Missy’s mom were sisters. The two families were close. Just about every Friday night either Claire stayed at Missy’s house or Missy went to Claire’s. Claire and her cousin were more intensely connected than most sisters she knew.

It was something she didn’t talk about with her other friends. At age six or ten or twelve, it was okay for your cousin to show up now and then for a sleepover. But Claire Linnehan was nearly seventeen. At seventeen you did not look forward with longing to spending your Friday night with your cousin. A seventeen-year-old wanted parties and boys, movies and gangs of friends. Claire had those, but not on Fridays, which were Missy time.

For years, both sets of parents had been trying to dull the excessive friendship between the cousins. You don’t need to show up weekly, they would say. How about once a month instead?

Claire could get clammy hands thinking about lasting four weeks without Missy. Maybe their parents were right. Maybe the degree of friendship they shared was a little off. Normal teenage girls did not consider a cousin’s visit the most important event of the week. If Claire pretended to an entire high school that she was actually Missy’s identical twin, it would be off the charts.

It was also the ultimate don’t-we-look-alike? fantasy. Claire was attracted to that. And if Missy and I were identical twins, thought Claire, nobody would say it’s weird that we need each other. They would say it’s a biological imperative.

“Parents do pose a hoax problem,” Missy admitted. “But I don’t need to bother with details, Claire. People just have to believe me for a little while. They don’t have to believe me forever. Biology is third period, so my hoax only has to last until ten-thirty.”

“Short hoaxes are probably the best kind,” agreed Claire. It could be fun—just the kind of crazy thing she and her cousin would do. “Okay. Call me back if Rick says yes, and I’ll work on Dad for a ride.”

*  *  *

Missy never postponed a task. She was a full-speed person, which was the main reason her parents were not allowing her to drive any time soon. Missy did not slow down for corners.

She called Rick, who was startled to hear from her: he was a standout senior and she was an ordinary sophomore. They
were in no classes together. They knew each other because one day she was at his house doing homework with his younger sister Alaina and Rick had gotten Missy a soda out of his refrigerator. That was exaggerating. He had been getting himself a soda, and when Missy said she was thirsty, he silently delivered a can.

“Rick, you won’t believe it!” cried Missy now. She ran her sentences together to give him less time to think. “The most amazing thing has happened! Oh, Rick, I’m so excited I’m ricocheting off the walls. I have the best news in the whole wide world and I have to share it with everybody. I think the way I want to announce this is, I want to be on TV with you in the morning.”

“I don’t have live guests, Missy. Or dead ones. I sit there and read announcements.”

“This will boost your ratings.”

“My ratings are one hundred percent. I’m on the air in every classroom every day.”

Missy lowered her voice. She gasped for breath. “Rick, a girl got in touch with me. She found out that she was adopted.
She’s my twin.”
Missy let herself sob. “And what’s truly unbelievable, and shocking, and I don’t even know how to think about it yet—we are
identical
. When we met—oh, Rick!—it was like seeing
myself
walk toward me. She’s me. I’m her.”

“You are a separated twin?” said Rick. “I can’t even picture that. Missy, you’re so beautiful. There are
two
of you? What did your mother and father say? I mean, if your twin is adopted, you must be adopted, too.”

Missy was derailed by the news that Rick thought she was beautiful. The hoax did not have its previous appeal. She wanted to discuss Rick’s feelings and go to a movie with him, instead of sit in a high school TV studio pretending to be a twin. But it was imperative not to let Rick dwell on details like who was adopted by whom. Missy hurried on. “Rick, she’s coming to school with me tomorrow. My twin. She’s going to attend class with me so we can start getting to know each other.”

“Wow,” said Rick. “Are your mother and father okay with this?”

Missy found it annoying that the only person she knew with a broadcast position was giving her a hard time rather than seizing on this incredible scoop. “Rick, here’s the truth,” she said, preparing her biggest lie. “This is scary. I’m so thrilled I can’t sleep, but the thing is”—she whispered, as if her identical twin might overhear—“I’m a tiny bit skeptical.
I
can’t compare how we look.
I
can’t inspect both of us. But if we’re on TV, even for thirty seconds, the viewers will see immediately whether or not we are identical. If we’re not—if she’s just some girl with the same hair and eyes—the whole school will tell me so. This is my test.”

“I think you should go with DNA,” said Rick. “And they do specific blood tests for identical twins. They analyze more than a dozen aspects of blood chemistry. We learned that in anatomy and physiology. Identical twins have to be identical right down to—”

Missy burst into tears without even trying. “Rick, please!
She’ll be here tomorrow! I want the ice broken. I need you to introduce us at the beginning of the day so I don’t have to make explanations every single minute. I need you, Rick. I’m not brave enough to do this alone.”