I’ve even got proof: an old sepia-colored photograph of Alex and me as babies, being wheeled down the street by Mom as we sat side by side in our double stroller. My thick brown hair was tied up in crowd-pleasing pigtails with pink bows, and my arms and legs were soft and plump—the only time in my life when people have complimented me on that particular trait. I was a happy, easygoing baby who smiled a lot, even when the Greek grandma down the street pinched my rosy cheeks and turned them redder. Alex, on the other hand, was as scrawny and bald as a plucked chicken for the first twelve months of her life. She also had a bad case of baby acne, she was colicky and fearful of strangers, and her crying, as Dad says, still shuddering at the memory, “could drive bats insane.”
I have no memory of what it felt like to have people’s eyes drawn to me during that first year of my life, to have them coo and exclaim over my big eyes and pretty smile, to soak up their compliments while Alex wailed and spit up her breakfast. Because right around the time of our first birthday, our family photo album began telling a different story.
Alex outgrew her colic and acne and shyness, and though our eyes were a matching navy blue when we were born, mine darkened into a muddy brown while hers grew lighter and lighter, until they were the shade of a Caribbean sea with sunlight filtering through. She put on some much-needed weight, though she remained small-boned and delicate, and her hair began growing faster than Rapunzel’s, coming out in long fiery-gold spirals.
No matter where we went—the playground, the beach, the first day of preschool—one sentence always surrounded us, like the background music of our lives: “Ooh, that hair!”
People would smile at me, too, and maybe even say something nice, after they’d finished gushing over Alex and telling Mom she should be in commercials. At least the kind people did. I remember once when I was about five or six years old and my family was eating lunch at our neighborhood deli. Alex and I were sharing an order of French fries—the good, greasy, crinkle-cut kind—as a reward for going to the pediatrician’s office and enduring an immunization shot. Mom was just starting to divide up the fries on our plates, with Alex and me both watching to make sure the other one didn’t make off with a single extra fry, not even the charred brown one that had gone a few extra rounds in the deep fryer, when an old lady tottered by. She was so arthritic and bent over that she was almost at my eye level, and I couldn’t help staring because she looked just like the witch in my Snow White book. She was even dressed all in black. She didn’t smile or say hello; she just reached out with a hand that looked like a claw and touched my head, while I sat there, frozen in fear.
“Too bad this one doesn’t look like her sister,” she said in a raspy voice.
Mom tried to distract me by talking loudly about something else, but I could still feel the touch of that blue-veined hand,
and I could tell Mom knew. Then, when Alex wasn’t looking, Mom slipped me a few extra fries. That was what did it; that’s what caused a lump to form in my throat that made it hard for me to breathe. It was like Mom was trying to make up for me not being as special as Alex. Like she was conceding the point, too. I hadn’t cried at the doctor’s office, not even when the nurse jabbed a needle into the soft flesh of my upper arm, but as I sat there looking at the French fries I was no longer hungry for, it took all I had to hold back the tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Don’t get me wrong—my parents did the best they could. They tried for ten long years to have kids before Alex and I came along. On the day we were born, Mom, still woozy and weepy and holding a pink-wrapped bundle in each arm, asked the doctor for advice on raising twins.
He thought about it for a minute, then said, “They’re individuals. Treat them that way. Don’t dress them alike.”
Mom took his words to heart: Those pink hospital blankets were the last things Alex and I ever wore that matched. We had our own rooms and our own clothes and our own friends. We never had to take the same ballet class or get the same haircut. But Mom needn’t have worried. Left to our own devices, Alex and I would’ve carved out completely different paths all by ourselves. I can’t imagine my life without Alex, but not because she’s the only one who truly understands me, or because we have a psychic connection from the womb. It’s because I’ve spent my entire life pushing away from Alex, like a swimmer using the force of a concrete wall to do a flip turn and kick away in the opposite direction.
I learned early on that if I embraced the same things Alex did, like popularity and flirting and fun, I’d always come in such a distant second that everyone would’ve lost interest and gone home by the time I reached the finish line. Alex was cho
sen for the homecoming court during our freshman
and
senior years of high school; she got to skip school to model in junior fashion shows for Saks Fifth Avenue and Macy’s; she dumped the captain of the football team at the end of football season and started dating the captain of the basketball team just in time for their first game. As she flitted through the halls of our high school in the cheerleader’s skirt that swished around her long legs, it was obvious from the stares following her that every girl wanted to be her, and every guy was secretly in love with her.
So unless I wanted to go through life being invisible, I had to figure out another way to get noticed, one that didn’t require a perfect smile or long eyelashes or a size-four body. I learned that if I studied hard and brought home straight A’ s, the principal would call me up onto the stage at the end of the year to give me a certificate while my parents beamed in the audience. I learned that if I crammed four years of college into three and made the dean’s list every semester, employers would come recruiting me. I learned that if I took a job in New York and made six figures and worked until my head felt like it was about to explode and my body felt like it belonged to a woman twice my age, I could fill out the questionnaires for my high school reunions with updates about my life that were sure to impress my former classmates.
Sometimes when I lay awake in the middle of the night, thinking about everything I needed to get done the next day, my mind would race so quickly that I’d feel dizzy and panicky. I’d toss and turn, my silk sheets twisting around me like snakes. Nothing could soothe me—not a comedy on my wide-screen plasma TV or the softness of my cashmere throw pillows or the vivid colors of the original abstract painting I’d bought at a Soho gallery with my very first bonus.
During those dark, endless hours, as lists flew through my
mind and my heart pounded, I sometimes thought about what would have happened to me if I hadn’t had to fight so hard to carve out my own identity, one that would keep me from fading into a shadow when my twin sister was around. Would I be this driven, this fixated on success, if I’d been born into another family?
During those long, lonely nights when my body cried out for sleep but my mind refused to allow it, I sometimes wondered: If Alex wasn’t my sister, would I be a completely different person?
“Are you sleeping?”
Matt’s incredulous voice cut through my dream, a sweaty, fearful one in which I raced through an airport, trying to catch a plane that was about to take off, desperately running faster and faster even though I could see the gate agent close the door to the Jetway and stand in front of it with her arms crossed, shaking her head at me.
I lifted my head up off my desk and blinked groggily. Matt was standing in my office doorway, his preschool-teacher girlfriend by his side. A sheet of paper was stuck to my cheek, probably affixed with drool. A good first impression at all costs—that’s my motto.
“I thought you never slept,” Matt said.
“I was just resting for a second,” I said. God, I sounded exactly like my father. I pulled the sheet of paper off my cheek and prayed my lipstick wasn’t smeared across my face.
“Hi,” I said to Matt’s girlfriend. “I’m Lindsey, and I swear I’m usually more alert than this.”
“I’m Pammy,” she said, smiling sweetly. Pammy? I could forgive her for it, I decided. She was tiny and blond and looked perfect for Matt; his last girlfriend had been a moody vegetarian
who always made scenes in restaurants by grilling the waiter about ingredients in various dishes.
“You’re going to be late,” Matt said. “You’ve got five minutes to change. We’ll wait for you downstairs.”
It was like he’d thrown a bucket of ice water over me. I leapt up from my chair and snatched the hanging bag off the hook on the back of my door. How could I have forgotten what night it was? I looked at my watch: It was five-thirty, and I’d been asleep for two whole hours. This was impossible; I never napped. Why hadn’t my phones woken me up? Why hadn’t anyone come into my office? The answer came to me in a rush: Donna. Sure enough, the sheet of paper that had been stuck to my cheek was covered in her spidery scrawl: “I’m holding your calls and telling everyone you’re in a meeting. You need to rest or you’re going to make yourself sick.”
For the love of God, why couldn’t I be the boss in anything but name around here?
I had five minutes to get ready, five measly minutes to make myself look presentable for the announcement that could change my entire future. I could do this, though; I was used to pulling rabbits out of hats around here. I unzipped my garment bag and pulled out the black silk dress a personal shopper had picked for me at Saks. It was simple and conservative, but elegant, too, I hoped. I raced to the bathroom, changed, and slipped into the shoes the shopper had tucked in the bottom of the garment bag. They fit perfectly, the heels weren’t too high, and their style was classic. I made a mental note to use this shopper again; she could actually follow instructions, unlike the last one, who’d added holiday-themed sweaters to the clothes she sent over. I may not be a fashionista, but I know it’s a hanging offense to wear anything featuring Rudolph’s blinking red nose.
I rinsed out my mouth with cold water, splashed some
more on my cheeks, and spritzed on a little perfume. Then I leaned toward the mirror and studied my reflection. My hair was still twisted up and looked okay, but I really needed some concealer for the dark circles under my eyes and eye drops to get out the redness. The only makeup in my purse, however, was my Cherrybomb lipstick. I’d never liked makeup, probably because Alex kept telling me how much better I’d look with it. I slicked on a light coat of lipstick, just to give my face some color. Matt was right; I did look kind of pale, even with all that sleep.
I told myself I’d look better in the dim light of the party, especially because by then the crease marks on my face from sleeping on a wrinkled piece of paper would have faded. I popped a piece of cinnamon gum in my mouth and raced for the elevator.
“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Matt said as I stepped into the lobby. “C’mon, I’ve got a cab waiting.”
We hurried to the curb and smushed ourselves into the backseat of the taxi, with Matt in the middle. I moved my leg as far away from his as possible so Pammy wouldn’t feel jealous. The hairy-armpit vegetarian had hated me because she knew how close Matt and I were and it threatened her (my new suede purse hadn’t helped matters, either—but I swear I only got it because it was on sale). But she never had any reason to feel threatened; Matt was just a friend. My best friend, really. There was no way we’d ever get involved.
Sure, the thought had entered my mind, but I’d given it a swift kick in the rear so it didn’t get any funny ideas about my brain being a nice place to settle down in. Two years ago, Matt and I had both worked late one Saturday night, then caught dinner at this little Italian place with the best gnocchi ever. Two bottles of Chianti later, we’d ended up at Matt’s apartment watching
Casablanca
(yes, we’d covered every possible roman
tic stereotype that night). As we sat side by side on his love seat (see!), I realized just how easy it would be to snuggle closer to him, to send a signal and see if he’d scoop it up and run with it. I could lean my head to the right and rest it on his shoulder. Six inches of space was the only thing that prevented me from forever changing the tenor of our relationship. The three glasses of wine I’d consumed made it all seem so simple.
I turned to look at him, and discovered he was staring at me instead of the movie. Our faces were so close I could see tiny flecks of green in his brown eyes. I’d never felt any wild attraction for Matt before. He’s got a roundish face, curly dark hair, and he’s about five eight—he’s a teddy bear of a man, not a Harlequin hero who makes panties spontaneously combust. But in that moment, as I looked into his kind eyes with the smile creases at the corners, he was irresistible. So I leapt up and raced around his apartment, looking for my shoes and babbling about how tired I was. In retrospect, given that I was jumping around like someone who was repeatedly being mildly electrocuted, it probably wasn’t the most believable excuse. But I was terrified.
What if Matt and I did get together, then broke up? What if my perfectionist tendencies—fine, neuroses—drove him insane and I couldn’t live with his habit of leaving his toenail clippings in neat little piles in the bathroom? (I’m not sure why this is the hypothetical deal breaker I came up with, but it’s probably best not to dwell on what it says about my psyche.)
But in those frozen seconds as Matt and I stared at each other, I’d fast-forwarded through our relationship and leapt smack into the middle of our breakup, and I’d glimpsed what my future would look like without him. It was like looking into a dark, lonely abyss. If he and I ended up not liking each other, I’d have no one in New York who truly cared about me. I wouldn’t have a single real friend. Matt was the only person
I could complain to about work, the only person I knew who loved black-olive-and-mushroom late-night pizzas as much as I did, the only person who still liked me when I was tired and anal and insecure. I couldn’t risk losing him—the abyss was too scary to contemplate—so I fled his apartment and hurried to the safety of my own. We hadn’t been alone in his apartment since; I’d made sure of it.