Here She Lies (12 page)

“I put in a dispute for every one of those charges, but it’s going to be weeks before we hear anything back,” he said.

“Well, one of us bought that stuff, Bobby, and it wasn’t me.”

“It wasn’t me either.” He stared at me as if trying to drive home a point I didn’t quite get. “Something’s really wrong here, Annie.”

I felt like laughing—no, not laughing,
crying.
We were back at the same old dead end: something was wrong but we couldn’t name it and he wouldn’t admit any responsibility.

“Just say it, Bobby.”

“I won’t lie just to end this stalemate.”

“She wrote you
love letters
.”

“Annie, those e-mails aren’t real.”

Oh, that was a good one! He didn’t think they were
real
. They looked real to me with their
Bobbybobs
and
Lovyluvs
and their accurate descriptions of his body when he made love. I felt like such an idiot sitting here listening to this nonsense.

“You know what, Bobby? Just forget it. It’s over. We can’t keep going through this.”

“Annie …”

That one tired word, my name, seemed to suck all the air out of the room. Suddenly we were ten thousand feet above the clouds in a world without atmosphere.

“I’m hiring an investigator,” Bobby said. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, his body alert, refusing to let me give up what I’d started. “He’s coming to the house Monday night. He’s some kind of computer specialist. He’s going to go over our files, our whole system, with a fine-tooth comb. If you need answers before you’ll come back home, Annie, I’m going to find them for you.”

He crossed the room, stroked Lexy’s hair and then took my hand. His palm felt dry, familiar. “Please, Annie, sweetheart, don’t give up on me. I’m going to do whatever it takes to solve this.”

I had to do it, give him another one-more-chance—

but slowly and carefully. He slept in the Pinecone Room that night while I lay alone in my pretty bed in the Yellow Room, comforted by the soft rhythm of Lexy’s breathing, until eventually I fell asleep.

I stayed in bed later than usual the next morning, taking my time nursing Lexy. When I went downstairs there were already breakfast dishes in the sink. I set about giving Lexy her “morning mush,” as we had come to call it, preparing the area surrounding her high chair for an onslaught of mucky mess. Halfway through her bowl of rice cereal—some of which assumedly made it into her stomach on its way onto her face, her bib, the high chair tray and the floor—I glanced out the window and saw Bobby and Julie appear together in the distance. They were nearing the house, returning, it seemed, from a walk down the road. I wondered how long they’d been out and what they were discussing. Lexy, of course. Zara, I imagined. Me.

Julie was wearing my pale green capris, rubber flip-flops that I suspected were also mine because they just weren’t her style and her tie-dyed Buddha sweatshirt.

She was dressed more like
me
than like her usual tidy self. There was something so weirdly familiar about seeing her with my husband because I was seeing
us
, Bobby and me, and yet it wasn’t us because it was
them
. Definitely them. To the naked eye they might have looked like “Annie and Bobby,” but they were not.
I
could see the difference. There was a solid two feet of space separating them, whereas when Bobby and I walked together our bodies always veered slop-pily toward each other, invading each other’s spaces, preventing solitude. Bobby and I shared something they lacked; invisible yet emotionally palpable, it was what made us a couple … or what used to make us a couple.

I thought of Lovyluv, the interloper, and how she had invaded and eroded our couplehood. I thought of Bobby, who had allowed a stranger to come between us and was so focused on the wrong version of events, the easy version in which supposedly nothing had happened, that he was failing to grasp what was most important as it slipped away. I thought of Julie, my beloved, amazing twin, and how much impact she had on me just by being alive and reflecting me back to myself in a way that intensified every experience. I thought of my mother, who had been gone so long it was hard to believe she had ever actually been alive or that I had once existed inside her body. I thought of my father, who had been ruthless enough to leave his family twice—once with divorce, once with death. I thought of my own daughter and how I felt her absorbed into every iota of my being. And then I thought about my
self
and realized that I had never been alone long enough to know what that really was.

Watching Julie and Bobby for those brief moments before they vanished beyond the scope of the window, I had the strangest thought that if I’d had a gun I could shoot directly through the empty space between them.

It was an alarming image; I didn’t know why I thought it. I scraped some mush off Lexy’s tray and spooned it into her mouth.

Then I remembered last fall when I was heavily pregnant with my baby and out on the prison’s shooting range with Bobby and a few others for our required annual training. We were all wearing protective ear-phones and goggles, emptying nine-millimeters at a black-and-white silhouette that was chewed up, full of holes from practice. Suddenly I imagined
my
silhouette, pregnant, and realized what a big target I would make. I looked at Bobby, wondering if he could distance his emotions and fears, his
imagination
, from our practice with guns; wondering if he kept thinking, as I did, about how ironic and absurd it was for physical therapists to hone our skills in the destruction of the body.
Fix ’em up, shoot ’em dead.
But Bobby didn’t notice me watching him. His attention was sharply focused, his trigger finger squeezing, his bullets hitting the figure with precision. He was performing a job and doing it well, which impressed me and yet made me feel peculiarly lonely.
Why
were we doing this? What
exactly
were our intentions for this day of rigorous practice? What were we
afraid
of? I really didn’t think that I, personally, could fend off a prison riot with a single gun and a few rounds of bullets. That was the moment I knew I wanted to leave the prison. My personal contributions there were relatively useless, weren’t they, if I had to learn to defend myself against my own patients? I didn’t like it there. I didn’t belong.

I was not cut out for the job.

That was the resonant feeling now, I realized: isolation. The memory of when I knew I could leave, before I ever learned about Lovyluv. I don’t know why the sight of Bobby and Julie briefly appearing together in the window so sharply recalled that feeling, but I realized I would never know what they were saying because I was separate from both of them, from my husband and from my twin. Not because there was window glass between us. We were just
separate
. I looked at Lexy’s lovely mush-covered face and knew that one day in the future even
our
connection would fade. It was an intolerable thought.

I cleared her bowl and spoon, cleaned her face with a wet paper towel and sponged the high chair and surrounding area, telling myself,
Snap out of it. Don’t
think about stuff so much.
There was a long day ahead with all kinds of complicated good-byes: husband, sister, baby. Tonight I would travel alone to Manhattan. I would be gone two days and nights, the longest I had ever been away from Lexy. Maybe
that
was why I felt so nervous.

Upstairs, I threw on some clothes, changed Lexy’s diaper and dressed her. I grabbed my camera and, back downstairs, settled Lexy into her stroller. I hoped Julie and Bobby were still out walking; I wanted to find them.

They were and I did, though they weren’t specifically walking anymore. They were sitting on a bench under a weeping willow in Julie’s expansive backyard.

The feathery branches ended five feet above the lawn, so I had a good view of them: Julie leaning back, her legs crossed at the knee; Bobby pivoted forward, elbows bent on spread knees, fisted hands supporting his chin. He was twisted so he could see her and they were talking intently about something. I was a hundred feet away from them and they didn’t seem to notice me. I crouched down, popped off my lens cap, zoomed in and focused. I was curious to see how they would translate as a camera-captured image free of personal references, though it was a stretch to think I’d be able to look at pictures of those two, alone or together, without nuance. Still, it seemed a worthy experiment, like giving myself a Rorschach to test my first reactions.

I had taken half a dozen shots before Lexy’s

“Dadadadada” drew their attention. Julie waved.

Bobby got up and came toward us. Standing, I quickly reviewed the pictures and felt a strange combination of disappointment and relief: there was
nothing
new for me here. Even in a photograph I could not see Julie as a reduction to physical image—to me, she did not look like
me
. And the sight of Bobby in any dimension still frizzled with unresolved feelings. The last one, though, showed me a moment that had escaped me while it was happening: as Bobby listened to Julie, an expression of displeasure had crossed his face.

Bobby pushed the stroller and I walked beside him into the house.

“What was Julie saying to you just now?” I asked him.

He shook his head and squeezed half a smile onto his face. From the dark swaths under his eyes I could tell he hadn’t slept well either. “I told her about the computer guy I’ve got coming over and she basically gave me an earful.”

“Of what?”

“I’m wasting our money. I’m wasting our time. I should either tell you ‘the truth’ or let you move on.

Not that it surprises me that she believes everything you believe. You two really are …” His words trailed off. He had always been appropriately reluctant to voice any strong opinions about me and Julie; after all, no two people as close as twins or couples ever welcomed commentary from outsiders. “I’m hiring the computer guy whether or not she approves. So, my plane’s in three hours; any chance I can bum another ride? Julie offered, but to be honest—”

“It’s okay. I’ll drive you.” I’d have plenty of time to pack later. I wasn’t planning to leave for New York until evening so I could spend as much time with Lexy as possible. I
hated
leaving her, even for two days.

In the end, we all went to the airport. Julie was either eager for any excuse to get out of the house or she was too annoyed with Bobby to let him drive her car, which we all knew he would, given the chance. She drove, I rode shotgun and Bobby sat in the back with Lexy. We listened quietly to radio jazz the entire way there.

At the airport, Julie hung back with the stroller when we reached Bobby’s gate. We hugged and, unable to resist the soft skin behind his ear, I kissed him.

He pressed his mouth into my hair. I
loved
him. But I couldn’t help whispering, “Tell me her name.” He sighed and lifted the handle of his rolling suitcase. “I’ll know more tomorrow night. If the guy doesn’t stay too late, I’ll call you. Otherwise I’ll call you Tuesday morning.”

“It would just help to
know
.” To know her name. He knew what I meant.

He chuckled, actually laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Good luck in New York.”

Leaving Bobby always felt like having my insides vacuumed out. Last time, alone in the Yellow Room, I had allowed myself to mourn, but not here in the airport. I sucked back my feelings of ripped-away loss and went to join Julie, who had pushed the stroller into a little bookstore that greeted you with all the latest magazines and a copious assortment of gum. Before I got all the way there, a familiar voice sailed up from the other side of a stand-alone bookshelf: “Hel-lo!

Fancy meeting you here! Did you ever find that wallet?”

“No, not yet, unfortunately,” Julie answered.

“Too bad. What a pain. I lost my wallet once and it took months to get everything straightened out.” I recognized the voice: it was the woman from Gatsby’s, the clerk who had sold me the matching sweatshirts and to whom I’d spoken on the phone about my wallet. Then the voice went high and syrupy.

“Not in the mood to match with Mommy today?” At first I felt confused, but then I got it. She had greeted Julie, who was wearing her new sweatshirt, and was now speaking directly to Lexy, who was not.

And she thought Julie was
me
. I gave it a minute because it was always fun to see how people who didn’t really know us reacted when the second twin appeared and they were caught in their error. “
Actually I’m not
Mommy.
” “
Of course you are!
” “
No, I’m Aunt Julie.

Mommy Annie is over there.
” But that was not what I heard.

Julie laughed. “My adorable daughter’s sweatshirt got covered in food and it’s in the wash today.”

“Oh? I’d worry the colors would fade with too much washing.”

“I should have thought of that, but you know how it is. Half your brain cells go out the window with child-birth.”

“Oh, I
know.
I have four children—all grown now.

In fact, I’m off to meet my very first grandchild and I don’t want to miss my plane.” The woman hurried past me on her way out of the bookstore, turning to do a double take as she rushed for her gate.

Julie and I had played many a trick on unwitting people over the years, pretending we were each other, but this was the first time I knew of that she had actually pretended to be my daughter’s mother. The second time, I reminded myself: when I came upon the malarm man in the yard, he’d thought he’d already met me with Lexy in the kitchen. The difference now was that I had witnessed Julie pretending and it bothered me. Yet I couldn’t begrudge her her deep love of my child; it was perfectly natural. I was leaving tonight for Manhattan and my sense of disquiet suddenly felt acute. But wasn’t it normal for a mother not to want to leave her child? Especially such a young baby? I took a deep breath and stopped the coil of anxiety, disciplin-ing myself to view this next couple of days alone with Lexy as my gift to Julie. And then it would be back to reality.