Beautiful Lies (15 page)

“This time is different! I’m sure of it!” I say, my voice rising as I fight back tears. I feel worn through, exhausted all over again; it’s like the sleep I got last night never happened.

“What do you mean, Rachel?” My aunt narrows her eyes at me.

“You know what I mean. I can tell something’s happened. I can
feel
it. And my head—”

“Stop it,” she interrupts. “You hurt yourself somehow, but it has nothing to do with your sister. We’re not going to discuss this, not now. It’s nonsense.”

“I didn’t hurt myself! It just
happened
—it’s like somebody grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked as hard as they could. How do you explain that? How do you explain how I feel? She’s my twin. I know her better than anybody.” I pause, and then I add, “Better than you.”

My aunt stares at her hands in her lap. She’s quiet for a long moment. Finally, she says, “Rachel, what you’re talking about is impossible.”

“Why do you think so?” I glare at her. “Just because you’ve never felt that way? You know Alice feels things all the time. Grandma believes her. So did my mom. They both believed, because it’s happened to them too. What about you, Aunt Sharon? You and my mother were twins. You never felt like you could sense her? You never knew when she was in some kind of trouble?”

“No,” she says firmly. “Never.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s impossible,” I insist. “All it means is that you aren’t the same as us.”

My words make her flinch, and I know they’ve hurt her. But it’s true; she isn’t the same. She is concrete the same way we are intuitive. Instead of accepting the possibility that our feelings have meaning, that they come from somewhere beyond our own minds, she has convinced herself that we’re all delusional.

My aunt doesn’t respond for a while. Her shoulders slump within her heavy, shapeless robe. Finally, looking at me, she says, “I would expect this kind of thing from Alice. Not from you.”

“Why?” I demand. “Why would you expect it from her and not from me?”

She flinches again. Her mouth opens, then closes, like she wants to say something but thinks it might not be the best idea.

“What?” I ask. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You know exactly what I’m thinking, Rachel. You’re different from Alice, and you know it. Alice is so much like your mother it isn’t even funny. She’s irresponsible and flighty and too emotional for her own good.” She gives me a smile, like we’re sharing a secret. “You’re not like that. You’re more like me.”

The words feel like a slap. I blink at her a few times, trying to seem calm. “The police are looking,” I say. “Right?”

She nods. “Yes. They’re looking for Robin too.” She gives me what’s supposed to be a reassuring smile. “Please don’t misunderstand me, Rachel. I’m concerned about Alice, but I believe we’re going to find her soon. And when we do, we’re going to get her the help she needs. Things will get better. I promise.”

As we sit together on my sister’s bed, staring at each other, I can hear the sudden noise of my uncle’s alarm clock coming through the floor. The sound prompts a shift in my aunt’s demeanor. She stands up, as though there’s nothing more to discuss at the moment, and moves toward the stairs. “I told Sue Shields that you’d appreciate a ride to school,” she says, without turning to look at me. “Kimber will be here at seven thirty. Go clean that head wound. Then, if you really
want to, you can go back to sleep for a while. You have time. Maybe you’ll feel more up to facing the day if you get a little more rest.”

When I don’t say anything, she turns to look at me. I stare at the ceiling, aware of her gaze, refusing to meet it.

“Rachel.”

“Yes?”

“I love you very much. You know that.”

My sister’s bed is covered in her smell. Beneath the covers, I clutch her sheet tightly in my hands. I blink at the ceiling, with its odd, steep angles that follow the shape of the roof against the housetop. “I know you do,” I tell her. “I know you love me.”

Once she leaves my room, I crawl back underneath the covers and shut my eyes for a while, but it quickly becomes obvious that I’m not going to fall back asleep. My whole body aches, especially my arms—my wrists in particular.

I sit up. I’m wearing a gray sweatshirt; I push the sleeves back and see bright-red marks around the smallest part of my wrists; it’s like my skin has been rubbed away.

First it was my head. Then it was my face. Now this. I don’t care what my aunt thinks—or what anybody thinks, for that matter. What’s happening to me is real.

As I stare at my wounds, which are pulsing in pain now, I can hear my aunt talking to Charlie downstairs, the two of
them laughing about something like they don’t have a care in the world. I can forgive Charlie, who has no inkling of how concerned I am. My aunt is a different matter.

Things weren’t always so strained between the two of us. When I was younger, we got along just fine. But one day something happened, and I’ve never been able to let it go. The truth is, I don’t want to let it go.

Rachel and I were in tenth grade. We’d both been asked to homecoming that year; it was the first dance either of us had ever gone to. My aunt got us up early one Saturday morning and took us shopping for dresses. We drove all the way into Pittsburgh, to a fancy bridal shop that also sold semi-formal gowns, and my aunt told us to take our time picking out whatever we liked. Rachel and I spent over three hours trying on dresses, twirling in front of the three-way mirror to evaluate each outfit from every angle. The saleswoman brought us sparkling cider to sip from plastic champagne flutes. She and my aunt waited outside the dressing rooms as we changed, waiting for us to step out so they could offer their opinions. I was having so much fun. We all were.

Once we’d made our final selections, my aunt took our dresses to the register while Rachel and I got dressed. As we headed toward the front of the store to find our aunt, Rachel realized she’d left her purse in the dressing room and went back to get it.

As I approached the register, I could hear the saleswoman talking.

“Your daughters are so beautiful,” she said to my aunt.

I froze. Neither one of them realized I was standing just a few feet away, my body hidden behind a mannequin dressed in a strapless silk wedding gown. My mom had been in the back of my mind all morning, and now the saleswoman’s comment made it impossible for me to pretend we were just a normal family out for a day of shopping.

I couldn’t see my aunt’s expression; I could only hear her voice as she said, “Thank you. I think so too.”

“They look so much like you,” the saleswoman continued. “The resemblance is uncanny.”

My aunt signed the sales receipt and tucked it into her purse. Her voice was pleasant as she said, “Oh, I know. People tell me that all the time.” She laughed. “Although nobody has ever mistaken me for their sister, unfortunately.”

The saleswoman slid our dresses into plastic garment bags and passed them across the counter. “Do you have any other children?”

My aunt only paused for a second. “No,” she answered smoothly. “Just the twins.”

It all happened so quickly, in just a few seconds. Their exchange shook me so badly that I broke out into a sweat; I was clammy by the time Rachel returned with her purse. I’m not sure what upset me more, the fact that she claimed us as her own daughters or the way she seemed to forget she had a son. Maybe it was both lies, and the way she spoke them with such ease, like she was slipping into another person’s life—like she had any right to trade Charlie for us to portray a more perfect family.

I stayed quiet on the ride home. I could tell my aunt noticed the change in my mood, but she never asked me if anything was the matter. I don’t know if she realized that I overheard her conversation. I never confronted her about it, and I’ve never told anybody what she said that day; not even my sister. But I’ve never been able to forget either.

To look at the two of them in the kitchen together—my aunt and Charlie—you’d think it was an ordinary Monday morning. At seven, Charlie is already fully dressed, sitting at the kitchen table, working on the last few bites of his granola cereal. Still wearing her bathrobe, my aunt stands at the kitchen counter with her back to me as she assembles a lasagna for tonight’s dinner. She’s like that: organized, prepared, deliberate. Every other Sunday, she makes a trip to the grocery store with a list of ingredients that she’ll need to prepare our next two weeks’ worth of meals. I don’t remember a single evening, not in all the years I’ve lived here, when she hasn’t had a hot dinner ready for all five of us at six o’clock. You’d think the predictability of her routine—the way her life is organized into lists and sub-lists and straightforward objectives—would be comforting. It’s not. Instead, there is something sad and unsettling about her character. She has no patience for spontaneity. Everything is routine and order. It’s like she’s terrified of surprises.

This morning, for instance, my aunt has set a place for me at the kitchen table, across from Charlie. There’s a tall glass of orange juice and a plate of scrambled eggs and toast waiting for me. The eggs are still steaming, but my aunt has already washed the pan she used to cook them; it sits on a dish towel, drying alongside a spatula and a big metal bowl.

I’m starving. I barely touched my dinner last night, and before that, I hadn’t eaten in almost a full day. But I am Rachel today. Rachel never eats breakfast; it’s another one of our differences.

It’s like my aunt is reading my mind. “I don’t care if you’re not hungry, sweetie,” she says. She doesn’t look at me, and instead stays focused on her task of placing noodles atop a thick layer of ricotta cheese in the pan. “You need to eat something this morning.”

“Mom made you eggs, Rachel. They look good, and I don’t even like eggs. Hey. Did you know that kittens are blind when they’re born? They can’t see
anything
.”

I smile at Charlie. He’s dressed in a white button-down shirt and khaki pants, even though he doesn’t have to be at work for hours. A few days a week, he buses tables at the Yellow Moon during the lunch shift. He’s good at his job, and it makes him really happy to have a paycheck at the end of every week.

“How’s Linda McCartney this morning?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. She’s still pretty fat. All she does is lay around all the time.”

“Well, she just had her kittens yesterday morning. She’s probably tired.” I sit down and begin to eat, grateful for the mandate from my aunt.

“Did Alice come home?” Charlie is in the habit of abruptly changing the subject. He has a hard time following the details of a conversation.

My aunt turns around quickly. “I just told you,” she says to my cousin. “Alice isn’t back yet. You don’t need to ask Rachel.” She doesn’t say it in a mean way, not at all. Her tone is more weary than anything, even as she tries to be light and kind.

“Uh, I know what you told me,” he says to his mom, rolling his eyes at me when my aunt turns away. “I thought maybe Rachel saw her, that’s all.”

“Rachel.” My aunt’s voice is sharp. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Right now?” I ask, in between mouthfuls of eggs.

“As soon as you’re done eating.” She glances at the clock on the stove, which reads 7:04. “I have to be at the museum for an early meeting. Can you walk Charlie down to Sean’s?”

My aunt doesn’t like to leave Charlie unattended. Whenever she needs to leave the house for any length of time, she often sends him down the street to stay with our neighbor, Sean Morelli. He’s in his late thirties, unmarried, with no kids. He’s a good friend of my aunt and uncle’s. A few years ago, he volunteered to watch Charlie anytime my aunt needed the help. He’s become like a part of our family.

“I can go by myself.” Charlie studies his cuticles, embarrassed to be treated like such a child in front of me.

“No.” My aunt holds up a single index finger and shakes her head. “We aren’t going to have this argument right now.”

“I’m an
adult,
” he starts to insist, before my aunt cuts him off, saying, “You are
different
.”

There’s a long stretch of uncomfortable silence in the kitchen as Charlie glares at her. “I’m an adult,” he repeats, more softly.