Three Black Swans (6 page)

Normally Missy would have found that a hoot. She would have been texting her cousin:
We’re twists, Clairedy
.

Mrs. Stancil stopped talking. Nobody spoke, moved, tapped a pencil or turned a page. They waited for Missy Vianello to talk.

Missy had assured Claire that nothing could go wrong in sixty seconds. She had forgotten that plenty could go wrong after that. She had wanted one consequence, but she was getting a dozen. Her smile wobbled. “That was my hoax. Claire is my cousin. We don’t even look that much alike. There’s just a strong family resemblance. You were expecting us to look
exactly alike because Rick fell for it, and you believed him, and so you believed me.”

For a moment the silence continued and the faces were still eager. Then they became furious.

“It was a scam?” said Carlotta, outraged.

“That was incredibly rude of you!” snapped Kelsey.

“I
believed
you, Missy. And all along you were a fake!” said Devlin, as if they had an ongoing relationship and she’d been deceiving him for months.

“I thought you’d be on talk shows and become a celebrity,” said Angela resentfully.

“Missy! You giggled at that TV camera and your cousin pretended to sob and all the time it was a joke?” demanded Emily.

It had not occurred to Missy that people who got duped would be angry when they found out. “It wasn’t a joke,” she protested. “It was our assignment. Remember? The hoax assignment?”

Mrs. Stancil, who always taught standing up, sat heavily on her desk. “Missy, how could you? I’ll have to tell the principal.”

“You wanted us to do it,” protested Missy.

Graham said in a belligerent voice, “Let’s run the video again. I believed it this morning, and I believe it now. You two are mirror images of each other, Missy.”

Carlotta corrected him. “Not mirror images. That would mean, for example, that if Missy’s hair parted on the right, then Claire’s would part on the left, and so forth. They are not mirror images. They are clones.”

“I am not a clone,” said Missy.

“That’s what identical twins are,” snapped Carlotta.

“Not precisely,” said Mrs. Stancil, picking up her cell phone. “Janet?” she said to the principal’s secretary. “See if I can have five minutes at the end of the period. Yes, the twin situation is exciting. It is also a hoax. They’re just cousins.”

“You’re in trouble now, Missy,” said Kelsey gladly. “The principal will call your parents.”

If Missy had had any exuberance left after her moment on live TV, it was over.

What
would
her parents do? What would anybody do if they found out their only child had stood in front of a TV screen and claimed to an audience of one thousand that she had been adopted?

Technically, Missy hadn’t claimed that. She had claimed to have found a lost twin. But every kid in high school instantly glommed on to the parent problem. Namely, who
are
the real parents? Not the ones Missy used to claim. And Rick had instantly assessed the other parent problem: Would Missy’s adoptive parents be okay with this revelation?

Who could be okay? Kitty and Matt Vianello had built their lives around Missy. No. They wouldn’t be okay.

Missy’s parents had home offices. They were tied to the house like dogs on leashes. Although their jobs were unrelated, if one of them had to go out, the other would answer both phones. The family had a total of three cell phones, a landline for the house, two business phones and two fax lines. Something was always ringing or humming or buzzing, as if a dozen people lived there instead of three.

It was an ordinary house. Her parents had the big bedroom with its own bath and walk-in closets, and Missy had the medium bedroom. The two tiny bedrooms were offices. All day long, her parents roved through the house, making coffee, working on the same crossword, reading the paper, jotting down lists. Against school rules, they texted Missy on and off all day. You were supposed to read messages at lunch or during passing periods, but Missy read them when they were sent, holding her cell phone under her desk.

At home, there was constant dialogue. The Vianellos were never silent. Missy would walk in the door after school to hear her father yelling downstairs to her mother, “I used up the last of the milk. Put that on the shopping list!”

“I’m not in the kitchen,” Mom would shriek. “Add it yourself when you’re down there.”

“Missy, did you just come in?” her father would holler. “Write milk on the shopping list.”

Unlike parents on TV talk shows or in women’s magazines, Matt and Kitty Vianello did not hold deep conversations. They held millions of trivial conversations. Nobody discussed truth or beauty. Nobody discussed politics or current events, except to say “Can you believe that?” or perhaps “I can’t stand it!” Missy did not use Twitter, but the word was perfect for her family—beautiful birds in a small cage, singing to each other, completely wrapped up in their twittery lives.

Other families discussed things over dinner, but the Vianellos did not even sit down for dinner. They rarely cooked. They were users of delicatessens, caterers, salad bars at supermarkets
and a slew of take-out restaurants. Groceries were delivered. They had a dining room, but used the table for packages and piles. Her parents could extend a meal for hours, nibbling at vegetables, picking at cheese, buttering a roll, returning an hour later to reheat an entrée in the microwave. Missy often filled a plate only to forget about it, wander back later and get something out of the freezer instead.

They had a cleaning lady one day a week, which was good, because otherwise they would live in squalor. The cleaning lady scrubbed the bathrooms, mopped, vacuumed and did laundry. She was not patient. She would yell at Missy’s parents, “Get out of the way! Pick up your junk! Bring your clothes to the washing machine, I’m not getting them off the floor.”

Claire’s house was a complete contrast. Uncle Phil and Aunt Frannie were excellent cooks. Dinners included a vegetable, salad and dessert along with the carefully considered main dish. Every dinner was eaten at a table, and the Linnehans had several: kitchen, dining room, sun porch, deck. Nobody watched television as they ate. Nobody interrupted a conversation; everybody waited patiently for one story to end before adding his or her own thoughts. They even chewed slowly. Missy always felt as if she were traveling between planets when she stayed over at Claire’s.

And yet their mothers were sisters. It was why Missy and Claire looked so much alike; they had half the same genes.

Or not, thought Missy.

Their dads had nothing in common. Claire’s dad was a huge
sports fan and followed beloved teams in several sports. He had all the T-shirts and read all the blogs. Missy’s father was largely unaware of sports and when forced into a conversation would say, “What a game!” which saved him from having to know whether they were talking about soccer or baseball. Uncle Phil was always outdoors coaching kids or else framing houses, but Missy’s father had no interest in fresh air and owned one tool—a screwdriver that was never the right type or size.

When the two families got together, it was difficult to believe anybody was related to anybody.

Missy did not think they were.

*  *  *

“Grace,” said the principal to Mrs. Stancil behind the closed doors of her office, “you actually gave your students an assignment to create a hoax?”

“The theory was that the kids would do serious research—dinosaur bones in Montana or peat bog burials in Denmark—and with that research, buttress a pretend discovery. I thought it would add a little spice and get everybody excited. We weren’t going to fake anything to the public.”

“I have already had phone calls from two school board members.”

Mrs. Stancil stared. “How could they know?”

“Grace! What century are you in? Rick put it on YouTube. Kids texted their parents! Our student test scores slid this year,
SATs are down and dropout percentages continue to swell. Now one of my teachers has abandoned the biology curriculum for a hoax assignment?”

“Missy didn’t do what I asked,” protested Mrs. Stancil. “She just pulled off a prank.”

“A prank that is your responsibility.”

Grace Stancil did not want responsibility. “I’ll withdraw the concept, and that will be that.”

“Grace, I cannot correct YouTube. The world is going to think that our school reunited lost identical twins. What’s more fun than that? What TV talk show wouldn’t want two beautiful, tearful girls who just found out they’re separated identical twins?” The principal stood up. “The parents have to be informed.”

Grace Stancil left the principal’s office. She would make Missy call. That would be easier, and blame would lie where it belonged.

Then she thought, Tomorrow is Friday. I can let it go over the weekend. It’ll fizzle out.

*  *  *

Shortly before the end of the school day, Mrs. Conway’s voice came over the public address system. “I’m sorry to break in, people. May I have your attention, please. This morning we saw on our in-house television what we thought was an emotional and stirring reunion between identical twins. In fact, Missy Vianello was perpetrating a hoax using her cousin.
Missy regrets having misled us and hopes you had a good laugh. The girls are not identical, they just have a strong family resemblance, and I’m asking students please not to spread rumors about identical twins.”

But Mrs. Conway, like Mrs. Stancil, was occupying another century. Rumors were no longer spread by word of mouth. Hours had gone by. Several hundred kids had already forwarded Rick’s video to everybody they knew.

M
RS
. C
ONWAY’S OFFICE
was large. Missy and Rick were seated at a distance from the vice principal, and from each other.

“Melissa,” said Mrs. Conway.

Nobody called her Melissa. She had always been Missy. Her parents often talked about the terrifying days and nights they’d spent in newborn intensive care, hanging over their sick little girl. It was the nurses who had begun to call the tiny baby Missy.

Claire’s right, thought Missy dully. Adoptive parents don’t visit NICU. I’ve made this all up. I relied on a stupid talk show, when I didn’t even hear the beginning or the ending of it, and it probably had nothing to do with me anyway, and now I have to pay the price.

“Melissa, what were you thinking?” demanded Mrs. Conway.

I was thinking, thought Missy, that Claire would weep from joy when she grasped that we are not cousins after all. Instead, Claire wept from horror. I was thinking that this television moment would corner my mom and dad, and Claire’s mom and dad, but most of all, Claire.

What was the point in proving you were identical twins if the other twin didn’t want to be one? Missy had known she might hurt somebody with this hoax, but she had not expected to get hurt herself. She had once read a remark made by an identical twin: “If you’re an identical twin, you’re never alone.” Wrong, thought Missy.

“Melissa, I am disappointed in you,” said Mrs. Conway. “Why on earth did you perpetrate this hoax?”

“It was not a hoax!” said Rick. “Those two girls are identical. Missy, stop denying it. Just look at this frame, Missy. I’ve paused it where you and Claire face each other.”

Even from Claire, with whom Missy supposedly shared everything, there were secrets. Missy had a hole at the bottom of her heart. The hole was a slit, as if left by a knife blade. Sometimes she could feel it when she breathed—a cold spot in her soul. At the dry cleaner’s, Missy had realized that the cold place was not a slot. It was a slice. Something had been cut away, as if her heart were a pie, and a fraction had been served to somebody else.

Claire was that fraction.

Claire was the deep member of the family. Claire read classics and booklist books of her own free will—from the difficult antique phrasing of
Robinson Crusoe
to the horrors of
The Gulag Archipelago
by Solzhenitsyn and
Man’s Search for Meaning
by Viktor Frankl.

Missy kept up with
People
magazine.

Claire’s books were about finding truth. Missy’s were about nontruth, about celebrity and scandal.

And yet it was Missy who was desperate for truth. Now she was humiliated by her fantasy. It was pitiful.

“Missy!” yelled Rick.

Missy had been there. She didn’t need to see the video. But she was trapped. She watched Rick’s video. Two utterly identical girls looked back at her.

“Melissa,” said Mrs. Conway, “the resemblance is certainly there, but what a cruel punch to your own family! And a low trick to play on your school. Furthermore, it’s now online. Melissa, do you understand what the Internet
is?”

“Yes, Mrs. Conway. I realize that Rick’s video is irretrievable.”

In their home offices, Missy’s parents sat at computers all day. It was possible that they had already come upon the video, or that it had been forwarded to them and they were only a click away from viewing it.