The Other Half of Me (14 page)

TWENTY-THREE

“You can’t go,” Dad says with a mouthful of apple. Ever the health nut, he’s back from yet another jog in the neighborhood, and the endorphin-filled afterglow he’s experiencing doesn’t quell his need to control my actions.

“I have to finish the painting if I want a shot at the art show.” I rock back and forth on my feet, swaying with impatience. The reality of my time crunch has hit full force today, and I’m a ball of nerves. If I had a team practice, there’d be no question of my attending—Dad would probably even cheer from the bleachers. This gives me an idea, though. Mom had said I never asked anyone to come see my art. Maybe now’s the time to do just that.

“Dad? Do you want to drive me to the studios? Then, maybe, uh, you could come up and, um, take a look at my work.” I look at the floor. What kind of nervousness is this? It’s not like I’m asking him for permission to marry. But then I realize it’s the kind of nerves that rear their ugly head when you have a good shot at being turned down. Kind of like last night when the GT at Tate’s never materialized and I felt dumb for showing up there with Alexa.

Dad bites the apple again. “Now?” I nod. Dad chews and shakes his head. “Sorry, Jenny.”

And right when I’m about to insert a whine–slash–cold shoulder, Dad explains why. “The photographer’s due any minute. You need to go change.” Dad slips his sneakers off and points to a big cardboard box on the table. “This year we’re doing something different.” His eyes light up like he’s really got a surprise. “How do you feel about purple?”

A few minutes later I’m in my room trying on my standard-issue oversized cotton T-shirt. It’s easy to express how I feel about purple. Like crap. Not particularly eloquent, but I’m so annoyed. Every year we do a family portrait. The way some people congregate around the fireplace at the holidays and send cards emblazoned with reindeer and smiling faces, my parents believe in showing our “true colors.” This basically means we all wear the same boring shirt, huddle together, and crouch over in our khakis with our thumbs up or some other lame pose while a photographer blinds us with the flash of the camera.

The wall along the staircase is a veritable scrapbook of images—all of us as toddlers in red shirts, then the year when Sierra broke her arm and my parents had the ER docs make the cast match the orange T-shirts, and my personal nonfave, the tie-dye year. For that photo my parents thought it would be funny to have us all make the peace sign.

“Why don’t you just say no?” Alexa asks while she watches me groom myself. She wears a bathing suit under a strappy sundress and looks catalog-pretty with her damp hair and summer glow.

“I can’t totally opt out of it.” The brush sticks in my hair and I pull too hard, wincing as the tangle comes out. I check my watch. “I just have to change, deal with the picture-taking fiasco, and then book to the studios.” I look at Alexa’s face in the reflection of the mirror. We’re standing maybe a foot apart next to one another, and I can see clearly how someone could think we’re sisters or cousins, or something. But just as quickly I can see why they’d assume we’re not at all related. “I’ll be back after I finish, or at least make some progress.” I watch her reaction, which is hard to read. “I can pick you up later and we can go to a movie or something.”

“So I’m stuck here?” Alexa sighs. It annoys me more than it should. Why should she get to decide exactly how we spend our few days together? It’s my car, and I’m the one with a deadline. She can sunbathe here, but if I slack off I’ll never get into the show.

“This feels so gross,” I say when I pull the purple T-shirt on over my head. “It’s a polyester blend and it reeks of sports gear.”

Alexa shrugs. “It’s not so bad. It reminds me of my field hockey uniform.”

My mouth does an involuntary frown. “You play field hockey? In those polyester pleated skirts?” I stick out my tongue so it matches the silly smiley face she painted on my leg. Then I feel bad. “Sorry.”

Alexa seems unfazed. “No problem. I get that it’s not your thing.” She grabs her bag from off the bed, digs out her wallet, and pulls out a picture for me to see. “This was last season. I’m number twelve.” In the shot she’s midfield, stick down on the still-green grass, her crimson V-neck shirt shining in the autumnal light. Seeing her like that only makes me feel a bigger distance between us. This photo is only a reminder that Alexa is not my twin by any stretch of the imagination, and that this picture would fit better in my family’s albums than my recent photos do.

Alexa slicks her hair back into a ponytail and studies me. “Here. Let me do something.” She twists the bottom of the T-shirt into a knot that kind of looks like a rose. I look in the mirror. It doesn’t morph the outfit into anything glam, but it does make it look less like I shoved my head into a bright iris-colored pillowcase.

“It’s an improvement,” I say.

Of course, this improvement of sorts is taken as a direct rebellion when we’re all assembled in the backyard. The photographer has the lighting board out and the gear all set up, and my father arranges us on the short stone wall in order of height, which puts me in the center, with Russ and my Dad—looking toned and uniform in their purple tops—to my right, and my mom to my left, her shirt tucked neatly into her khaki shorts. Sierra and Sage clearly had access to the shirts a while ago and shrank them so they fit well.

“Undo the knot,” my dad says while smiling and looking forward. He glares at Alexa as though he knows she’s the one who did it.

“What?” I smile with my top and bottom teeth touching so we can bring this exercise in family fun to a close.
Snap!
Every two seconds the photographer clicks and motions with her hand for us to turn a bit to the side, or else runs over and moves my hand so it’s draped across my shoulder or linked through Russ’s arm. It’s all so artificial.

“Your shirt,” Dad says.
Snap!
“It’s not right. Everyone else’s is tucked in.”

“Mine’s basically tucked in.” I do a quick check of our lineup. “Alexa thought it would look good.”

Dad shoots Alexa another mean glare, then leans forward so he can make eye contact with me. “It doesn’t.”

I sigh and keep smiling.
Snap!
“It’s just not that different, Dad.” I feel like I have to defend her even though she’s been raising my suspicions with her mentions of Tate every two seconds, flicking her wet towel at Russ, and grabbing the twins from their room to dance to a song right when I was about to describe my paintings to them.

“Yeah, Dad, you should be thankful she’s wearing it,” Sierra says, her smile stretched hammock-wide.

Sage echoes, “And be thankful it’s not covered in paint.”

“Yet,” the twins say in unison.

I glance at Alexa and then back at the twins. That’s what I thought I’d have with her—the instinct of fitting together. An innate oneness.

“I think she looks great!” Alexa yells, her hands in megaphone position, from the back door. She stands watching the scene with her arms crossed over her chest. We may not have the oneness down pat, but at least she’s in my corner, for now.

“We have a system here,” Dad grumbles. The comment is definitely directed at Alexa. He holds up his hand and signals to the photographer to stop. Then he turns to me and says, “Jenny, just fix your shirt, okay?”

We all know this whole thing isn’t about my shirt, but no one says anything else until Russ shoots me a pleading look and whispers, “We’re going to be stuck here all day if you keep making an issue of it.”

“Russ, I want to get out of here, too. Mom?” I look to her for help.

Mom keeps smiling even though the photographer isn’t snapping. “She
is
wearing the shirt, Richard,” she says to my dad.

“But not the correct way,” he responds.

“I like what Alexa did.” My mom touches the shirt-knot. I’m so glad she’s on my team for once.

“Well, I like the shirt without it,” Dad says without breaking the huddle as he signals to the photographer to start up again.

“Maybe this shirt didn’t fit her well.” My mom leans on me, which makes me lean on Russ, which causes our whole lineup to bend.

“The shirts are one size fits all.” Dad raises his voice for Alexa’s benefit. “They don’t need any alterations.”

Alexa pipes up from the sidelines. “Did you know that ‘one size fits all’ is untrue? My mom argued that case in a court of law. It’s rejectionist. I mean, clearly not everything is going to fit everyone.”

Snap! Snap!

“I think we’re done here,” Dad says, and takes one last look at all of us in our purple shirts—mine just the slightest bit off—and heads to the side of the house to stare for the umpteenth time at his unfinished garden. Then the twins immediately launch into their dance routine, all limbs and flying hair. They call out not to me, but to Alexa.

“Hey, can you show Sage that double-shake thing you did yesterday?” Sierra says. Alexa takes one look at me as if to ask my permission, but she doesn’t wait for my response and joins the girls on the lawn.

I head for the driveway, determined to leap into the car and head toward paintville. The purple shirt will be a perfect apron. It will only improve with smears and stains.

“Jenny, hold up a minute,” my mom says when my hand is on the sun-heated car door handle.

“Hi, Mom.” I open the door to let the bottled-up heat disperse. I know when I get inside, the backs of my thighs will sting on the hot leather. My father always keeps a spare towel in his car for this purpose, but I never remember.

“Dad doesn’t mean to drive you crazy.” Mom smiles naturally this time. “He’s just…I think he’s a bit out of sorts with your whole…thing.” She makes a fist and then splays her fingers out like that explains the word
thing.

“Oh, right, the half
sibling
thing.” I overemphasize the sibling part. “Well, I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, it’s weird enough for me without having to contend with all of you and your reactions.” I sigh like I’m being graded on it, regretting the tone of my voice. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make it an us-and-them kind of situation.”

“I hope you don’t see it like that.” She pauses. “Then again, sometimes your father and I do put up barriers.” She shakes her head but doesn’t elaborate. “I know this is tough, Jen. I guess what I’m saying—not that well, of course—is that I understand. Or I’m trying to, anyway.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and turns me so I’m facing her. From the backyard I can hear Sierra and Sage laughing with Alexa, the giggles rising into the air like wasps. Mom glances in that direction and then looks at me. “You can’t control how people connect.”

“Or don’t,” I add. I hold my breath, picturing the air as a color, all of it housed in my lungs.

Mom nods. “Exactly. You just can’t predict it. And maybe Dad likes conformity because it’s—”

“Safe?” I suggest, my eyebrows raised. The thought of art is pulling me to the car, to the studios, but hearing Alexa with my family in the yard makes me jealous.

“You’re very perceptive.” She lets her eyes stay on mine until I look away. “When I decided to have you, I never considered the possibility of your having a sibling out there. Really. It just didn’t enter my mind.”

“It’s a pretty big thing,” I say. I mean it in terms of the global reaches of the Donor Sibling Registry, but it comes out as though I mean my life, here, now.

“I’m sure it is. But if you can just try not to force it…” She stops herself. “Maybe I should take my own advice.” She smiles. “You should go. I know you have work to do.”

“I’ll be back later to get Alexa.”

Mom nods. My father is situated way off near the bags of gravel. He looks over at us and waves. “He’s afraid, Jenny.”

“Dad? He’s, like, impenetrable,” I say. I think about him standing in the water at the lake, the blues and greens I never pointed out to him. Then I think about what I would have said about those colors, how they remind me of a river we’ve been in out in Montana. “Remember Montana? That river?” I recall the scene as clearly as if it’s unfolding now. “Dad’s the one who stopped me from being carried off in that strong current. When we went fly-fishing? Or, excuse me, when you guys fished and I painted on the riverbank.”

My mother wipes her brow where sweat has collected. “He was so worried that you were going to get swept away by the current. And now it’s sort of the same feeling. He thinks Alexa’s going to try to pull you further away.”

“Where? Like to the city?”

Mom’s mouth falls into a frown. “Did Alexa already talk to you about it?”

“Talk about what?” I ask, confused.

“She had a chat with us this morning, before you got up.” Mom’s voice is shaky.

“What about?”

“You should probably talk to Alexa first. Anyway, just know that your father loves you, no matter how it may seem.”

I think for a second about my dad grabbing me from the riptide that carried me away from everyone and how he pulled me back. I painted in watercolor then, and gave him a series of rectangular images on thick paper that I never saw again after that trip. That was nearly four months ago.

“We’re here for you, Jenny. Maybe we’re on the sidelines, but we’re here.”

I nod, slowly, still thinking about what Alexa might have said to my parents, and take out my keys. Then, when I’m in the car, she knocks on the window. I roll it down partway. “Yeah?”

Mom puts a palm on the glass. “Go team.”

Even though I’m not about to try out for JV anything, nor about to participate in a Fitz-style huddle, even with my purple shirt still knotted at my hip, I feel just a fragment of myself, a puzzle piece, fall into place for the very first time.

TWENTY-FOUR

I read somewhere that twins separated at birth end up giving their dogs the same name, or loving the same music, or painting their bedrooms identical shades of teal. As I drag my paint-laden brush across the canvas, I pause only to wonder if Alexa would choose the same deep shade of blue from the palette or if our semimatching genes have nothing to do with it.

“If you don’t overdo it, you just might have something there.”

Just as my paint-induced calm is about to emerge, Sid Sleethly’s unsettling presence makes my shoulders tighten. He is, after all, the person who could make or break this season’s show for me, as well as the spawn of Satan.

“I’m experimenting with wax,” I say. “You know, to slow the drying time down.” I wish I could retract my words. The guy’s a real artist. Of course he knows what wax does to paint.

“Thank you, Jenny Fitzgerald, for that illuminating explanation,” he says, and with a sneer he walks away.

I try not to torture myself about the art show. Either I’ll get in or I won’t, but it’s difficult not to try to control it. Or pretend to, as with those irrational games like “If Sid comes back in the next five minutes, then I’ll get in,” or “If I close my eyes and point to the center of the canvas, then I’ll get in, but if I’m too far off, I won’t.” None of this will solidify anything. And maybe that’s what my mother was talking about. There’s only so much you can
do.
Some things just happen.

So with that, I keep working on my paintings, moving from one to the next, filling some all the way out to their frame, the colors exploding and leaking off the squares. And in one painting, a small one, I only color the middle, leaving the edges unfinished like a thought.

“That works really well,” Jamaica Haas says to me when she glides by with an oversized coffee mug in her hand. “That one.” She points to the small canvas.

“Definitely,” the man with her says. He’s familiar to me, another artist who comes in sometimes and actually sells his pieces. “I’m Vergil Jenkins, by the way. We’ll leave you to it.”

Vergil Jenkins and Jamaica Haas—two artists who have permanent pieces at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and whose art now sells upward of a college tuition—liked my art. Well, not all of it, just the small one. I study it some more. What made me stop before the edges?

Then it hits me—it’s conformity and control. Who says paintings have to go all the way out, that they have to fill their spaces completely? I do another one, this time in yellow that merges into cream. I add twists of brown, curling the paint so it looks leaflike, mottling the canvas, but still I leave a section blank. I think about giving one of them to my dad. I think he’d like it. But then again, I gave him the watercolors from the river that day, and he did nothing with them, so maybe not.

By the time I look up from the three “uncompleted” paintings I’ve completed, the morning light has shifted to later afternoon. When I see the shadows creeping in the floor-to-ceiling windows, I get a chill. I can flip through the few remaining days of summer like a catalog.

My cell phone ring breaks through my thoughts, and I wipe my hands on a cloth before I reach for it. My purple shirt is not knotted, and the hem hits my thighs, making me look like I’m not wearing any shorts. The purple is no longer pristine. Now it’s blotched with paint. But at least it’s paint that makes me feel good. Even if the paintings don’t make it into the show, I’m happy with them.

Before I check the number on the phone, I think for a moment that maybe my parents are outside and want to come up and see my work—finally. Then I think maybe it’s Tate and he’s coming up the stairs, and he’ll kiss me hello and define what it is we’re doing together and what label we’ll end summer with. Friends? Boyfriend-girlfriend? Summer fling? Which one?

I flip the phone open and it’s not my parents or Tate, but Alexa.

“Hey, are you done yet?”

“I’m just finishing up. They turned out really well. I can’t wait to show you. It’s like I finally got it, you know?”

“That’s awesome!”

I can hear a flurry of noise in the background. “Do you have the TV on?” I ask, picturing her with the twins watching one of their dance show videos.

“No, I’m outside. It’s just noisy,” she says, and then laughs. “I’ll be right there!” she calls to someone on her end.

“Where are you?” I prop the paintings up on the wooden easels in my tiny area of the common room and decide against leaving a note for Sid. He knows they’re mine, and a note just seems too pleading, too much like I want to get his reaction (although I do). There’s power in letting go, I realize, so I leave my work there, untitled and unsigned, and hope Sid will pick one of them for the show.

Alexa laughs so hard I can’t tell what else she’s saying. “See you back at the house, okay?” Then she hangs up.

I stare at my baggy T-shirt. Who cares if it’s not the most fashionable of fabrics? For once, this shirt has decent associations for me. The day I wore this, I semi–stood up to being different in the face of team Fitz conformity, and most important, today is the day I found my voice, artistically speaking.

I wipe my hands one more time, trying to get the paint off my skin, and then open the back stairwell and go downstairs. I will meet Alexa back at the house, but I deserve a little fun, too, after my hard work. I smile and my heart races when I think about seeing Tate and having him all to myself before heading back home.

The stoplights switch from green to red at the intersection of Lexington Avenue and Rexford Road, better known as the meeting of Lex and Rex. County High is two blocks up on the right, and it blows my mind that we’ll all be back there so soon, crammed into the hallways, filtering in the wide front doors with stories of summer that already feel dated.

Driving around town makes me feel like a typical teenager, as if just getting behind the wheel makes me part of a pack. Then again, two of the most common activities of teenage life in this town involve sitting in someone’s parked car or sitting at Callahan’s. Both of these locations are semi-incidental. We all just need a place to sit and figure out what to do or where to go next.

Faye and I have spent many a night driving from one place to the next, only to avoid Callahan’s and go to the Shoreline Diner. Will it be different this year after what’s happened with Tate? And what about Alexa? Suddenly it dawns on me that I could visit her in the city, or she could come back. Then I flash to her laugh on the phone earlier and just how chummy she seems with Tate, and I wonder if maybe this visit is our one and only.

The light turns green and I press on the gas, driving through Lex and Rex and up the hill into the more residential area. When I turn onto Tate’s street, I’m more than a little surprised to see long rows of cars lining both sides of the road. The gleaming metal bodies of cars with their windows open, the slur of noise in the distance, and the masses making an artful row up to Tate’s house clue me in that he’s having a party. Maybe this was the GT Alexa mentioned and she had gotten the day wrong.

Now I’m at one of those jock-crowd fetes Faye and I make fun of. Music filters through speakers Tate or one of his teammates hoisted into the windows. I hear high-pitched laughter coming from a group of girls, the sound of drinks opening, and someone yelling “Bravo!” for a reason I’m not yet aware of.

Never in my imaginings of Alexa, even in my most paranoid state, did I think she’d be calling me on her phone from my boyfriend’s house. So when I see her right away, a jolt of panic makes my hands shake uncontrollably. I walk up the steep bluestone path and curve around the side of the house to the large yard in the back. It’s so odd to be back here under these circumstances. Tate’s house is where we first kissed, and where I first sat down in front of a screen that led me to Alexa, who stands in front of me now.

“Let’s go!” Alexa says to me, like it’s no big deal she knew about this party and said she’d meet me at home. She gives me the kind of hug that’s from the side. It feels like we’re about to do a three-legged race and stumble. She’s whipped her hair into a messy ponytail that makes her look even prettier than she did today while sunbathing. Alexa is not boring, standard pretty—she’s more sleepy and sexy, with cat-lidded eyes and a way of looking at you a little longer than normal, which you’d think would be weird but instead makes you feel special, like you’ve earned her attentive gaze.

I noticed her looking at Tate this way by the fountain and again at the lake when he did the drop-by at our family picnic. I wonder what kinds of looks I give, even though I know I’ll never find out; it’s impossible to look at yourself objectively, or maybe to know what effect a certain look has on someone.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were here?” I ask.

“Didn’t I?” Alexa looks distracted. “That’s the reason I called.”

“No,” I say. “You said to meet you at home. How’d you even get here?”

Alexa shrugs. “Don’t make it into a thing, Jenny,” she says. “Tate swung by and got me.”

I stand there in shock, hating that I can’t handle surprises but hating more that these two people I want to trust aren’t exactly making me comfortable. “You should’ve told me.”

“Sorry. Don’t be mad!” Alexa touches my back gently, as if she really means it, but then just as quickly adds, “Check it out!” Alexa claps her hands. “Slip ’n Slide! How retro cool is that?” The landscaped lawn has a steep incline that lends itself perfectly to the Wham-O Big Splash Slip ’n Slide. Two of them are set up side by side.

“It’s pretty standard fare, don’t you think?”

“Don’t sound so jaded,” she says. “In the city no one has yards, right? So hauling butt on a rubber mat outside isn’t going to happen.” I wonder if she’s been here long, what’s happened that I’ve missed. “Speaking of city life,” Alexa says, and pulls my arm so we’re headed directly for the backyard. “Did your parents talk to you?”

My mind flashes back to the conversation with my mother in the driveway.

“I spoke with them this morning,” Alexa says. I glance over her shoulder and see how the cheerleader queens are checking her out. They probably view her as competition. Then I realize I’m wearing my ultradorky purple shirt, which still looks like a lame minidress.

“Do the twisty thing, Alexa.”

Alexa understands what I mean right away and starts putting one end into a knot. “So, our chat didn’t go over that well.”

“Why?” I look down at my shirt, hoping to feel the powerful vibes of finishing my art and the inspiration that came with it, but the studio feels far removed from the suburban wash of tanned girls and guys in end-of-summer party mode. I try to look for Tate without drawing attention to my scanning.

“I guess your parents are not psyched about me.”

I look at Alexa, her bottom lip out in a pout. “It’s not that they don’t like you—”

“It’s not like I
have
to be liked or anything,” she interrupts, but I can tell from her voice that she isn’t telling the truth. Alexa is used to having swarms of kids, adults, even my gawky twin sisters admire her. So it must be really weird for her to come into my family—a family that’s kind of connected to hers—and find that my parents (mostly my dad) don’t want to accept her. “It’s just that they didn’t like my idea of you coming to stay with me and my moms in the city for a semester.”

“What?” I have to shade my eyes with my hand to see Alexa’s face. She’s serious. No wonder my dad’s even further deranged than before. “You talked with them about something like that without asking me?”

She puts her hand on my shoulder, squeezing firmly. “I’m only here for a couple more days.” She looks over to where Tate is and then back at me. “But wouldn’t it be great if we could have an extended visit and you stayed in New York for a few months? The high school art programs are topnotch, too.”

When I watch her gaze drifting out to the lawn at Tate, who’s surrounded by a group of his friends, I think maybe it’s a good thing she’s not a permanent fixture in my day-today life. But then again, maybe she’s right. Maybe an extended visit in New York would be amazing.

If I could just express my doubts to her it would be so much easier, and the weight would be lifted. But I can’t; somewhere in my mind, calling attention to an issue only cements the problem’s existence. “So, what exactly did you say to my parents?”

Alexa smiles and pulls me toward Tate. “Exactly what I just told you.” She blushes. “It was just an impulse. Once I get an idea stuck in my head, I can’t let it go.”

I yank her arm so she stops moving, and I raise my eyebrows. I wonder what other ideas she has in her head that she can’t drop. “But I’m happy where I am.”

“Are you really?” she asks as if she already knows the answer.

It’s amazing how just a few sentences can cause so much upheaval. No wonder my dad is scared, like my mom said. He probably thinks I’m going to beg and plead to live in the city, just because Alexa wants it to happen. Granted, that would have its pluses: seeing Alexa in her home court, getting to know her better, experiencing a life other than my own. Me in a whole new context. The museums and art opportunities would be incredible. But there would be one big thing missing—Tate.

“You haven’t even thought it through,” I say firmly.

“It was just a suggestion,” she says, her voice edged with cold.

“Well, I can’t even contemplate that right now,” I say.

Alexa tosses her ponytail and laughs. “Fine. Let’s just forget I said anything, have fun, and enjoy the end of summer, okay?”

“I guess.” I wish I had Alexa’s ability to forget things or jump into things, leaving caution behind.

At the top of the Slip ’n Slide, Tate is damp and shirtless—a combination that makes my normal reaction to him even more intense. He touches my shoulder as a hello and waves ripple in my stomach. Not sick waves, but like parts of me have spilled out and might be on display for everyone to see.

“Hey, Fitz, glad you could maaaaaake it!” Tate’s fingers leave my shoulder as one of his teammates pushes him and he slips and slides down the hill and nearly out of sight. His teammates look over, and I think I catch Dan Donovan, Tate’s best friend, raise his eyebrows in surprise. But maybe I’m just imagining things. I wish I were wearing anything other than my Fitz family T-shirt, which comes complete with a name and number on the back.