Driving Blind

“Comb?”

“Your hair, your hair, it’s a bird’s nest.” The older put her delicate porcelain hands to her own coiffure which was like gold spun and molded to her regal head, not a plait ajar, not a strand afloat, not so much as a fleck of lint or a fragment of microscopic flesh in sight. She was so clean she smelled of alcohol burning in a brass bowl. “Here, let me fix it.” But Julia rose and left the room.

That afternoon another thread broke.

Julia went downtown alone.

People on the street did not recognize her. After all, you do not recognize one of a pair when for forty years you’ve seen only the two, like a couple of dainty shoes promenading in the downtown store-window reflections. People everywhere gave that little move of the head which meant they expected to shift their gaze from one image to its painstaking duplicate.

“Who’s there?” asked the druggist, as if he’d been wakened at midnight and was peering out the door. “I mean, is that you, Coral, or Julia? Is Julia or Coral sick, Julia? I mean—damn it!” He talked in a loud voice as if a phone connection was giving him trouble. “Well?”

“This is—” The younger twin had to stop and feel herself, and see herself in the gleaming side of the apothecary vat which held green mint-colored juice in it. “This is Julia,” she said, as if returning the call. “And I want, I want—”

“Is Coral dead, my God, how horrible, how terrible!” cried the druggist. “You poor child!”

“Oh, no, she’s home. I want, I want—” She moistened her lips and put out a hand like vapor on the air. “I want some red tint for my hair, the color of carrots or tomatoes, I guess, the color of wine, yes, wine; I think I’d like that better. Wine.”

“Two packages, of course.”

“What, what?”

“Two packages of tint. One for each of you?”

Julia looked as if she might fly off, so much milkweed, and then she said, “No. Only one package. It’s for me. It’s for Julia. It’s for Julia all by herself.”

“Julia!” screamed Coral at the front door as Julia came up the walk. “Where’ve you been? Running off, I thought you’d been killed by a car, or kidnapped or some horrible thing! Good God!” The older sister stopped and fell back against the side of the porch rail. “Your hair, your lovely golden hair, thirty-nine inches it was, one for every year almost, one for every year.” She stared at the woman who waltzed and curtsied and turned on the front lawn sidewalk, her eyes closed. “Julia, Julia, Julia!” she shrieked.

“It’s the color of wine,” said Julia. “And oh my it has gone to my head!”

“Julia, the sun, you went without your hat, and no lunch, you ate no lunch, it stands to reason. Here, let me help you in. We’ll go to the bathroom and wash out that terrible color. A clown for the circus, that’s what you are!”

“I’m Julia,” said the younger sister. “I’m Julia, and look—” She snatched open a parcel she carried beneath her arm. She held up a dress as bright as the grass of summer, green to complement her hair, green like the trees and green like the eyes of every cat on back to the pharaohs.

“You know I can’t wear green,” said Coral. “Wasting our heritage money, buying dresses like that.”

“One dress.”

“One dress?”

“One, one, one,” said Julia quietly, smiling. “One.” She went in to put it on, standing in the hall. “And one pair of new shoes.”

“With open toes! How ridiculous!”

“You can buy a pair just like them if you want.”

“I will not!”

“And a dress like this.”

“Ha!”

“And now,” said Julia, “it’s time for tea, we’re due at the Applemans’, remember? Come along.”

“You’re not serious!”

“Tea is so nice, and it’s a lovely day.”

“Not until you rinse your hair!”