“I mean, we don’t have to roll over and play dead because of what he’s doing, do we, Mother?”
“Absolutely not.”
“We’ve talked it over, Kaylee and I. We won’t permit our classmates and others to pity us. We intend to be happy, maybe even happier. Just like you,” she added, like someone sealing a deal.
“That’s very, very wise of you both. Yes, that’s what we’ll do.” She smiled. “My girls,” she said, and hugged us both. “We’ll all be just fine.”
Haylee glanced at me with that look of self-satisfaction, a look that often made me feel sick inside.
It was as if something ugly was being born within my very being, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
10
I let Haylee take the lead to persuade Mother to let us have a small party at our house while she was at the Clarks’ dinner party. I wanted to be with Matt very much, so much, in fact, that I didn’t stop Haylee from telling lies about our party plans. Perhaps that was my biggest mistake, because once Haylee saw how easily she could get me to tolerate her little deceptions, it led to bigger and bigger ones and, eventually, the most tragic one.
So in a real way, I had no one to blame more than myself for what she did. I made it possible by being so tolerant.
Haylee went right to work setting the foundation for her deceits about our party. She talked Melanie Rosen and Toby Sue Daniels into lying to their parents about attending a party at our house. Of course, Haylee wanted no one but Jimmy and Matt to come, but she knew Mother would be suspicious of that. She had warned us about getting too serious with one boy too soon. Haylee presented it as a general party for a group of our mutual best friends. I wasn’t sure what Haylee was promising them, but both girls were excited and happy to participate in Haylee’s ruse. They assured us that they would have dates themselves and be out of their homes so that if Mother ever did check up, she’d be told by their parents that they had gone to our party.
I told Matt the truth and saw that he wasn’t comfortable with it.
“Why is it necessary?” he asked me at school on Wednesday, after Haylee had confirmed her plans. “Why couldn’t you two just have a party with us?”
For me, it now became a question of how deeply I would go into our lives, into our relationship with our mother, her beliefs about us because we were identical twins, and how bitter she was about her and our father’s divorce. I wanted to be as truthful as I could be, but there were alarm bells sounding, too. I could easily frighten him off from having any sort of relationship with me, I thought. No one outside of our home had any idea of Mother’s theories about how we should be brought up and how we should conduct ourselves. How much could I tell him?
“Right now, our mother is very sensitive to the idea of either of us having any sort of special boyfriend or relationship. She’s very sour about what’s happened between her and my father,” I offered as a rationale. “So unfortunately, we have to pretend we’re not with anyone special.”
“Yeah. My aunt Wilma, my mother’s older sister, became that way right after her divorce.” He smiled. “I’m glad you said you have to pretend you’re not with anyone special.”
“Very hard for me to do,” I said, and his smile deepened.
“Friday can’t come fast enough.”
With mixed feelings, I left him and went to class. I liked him too much not to feel bad about not telling the full truth about our mother and us. Perhaps I was wrong to worry and pay more attention to all that than Haylee did. She was better at ignoring things and absolutely happier because of it. Every once in a while, she would be on me again about being a worrywart.
“Stop looking like you lost your two front teeth. You’re moping around too much. You’ll make Mother suspicious, and then we’ll really have trouble,” she said. Then she smiled and changed the topic. “I got a few others who will say they’ll be at our house. I’m telling her we have ten now.”
“Ten? You’re involving too many people, Haylee. Someone’s sure to blab. Daddy used to say that two can keep a secret if one is dead.”
“Right. And worrying brings wrinkles. You’re going to get gray hair before I do.” There was no stopping her now.
The closer we got to Friday, the more excited she became. Now it was my turn to issue warnings about how to behave in front of Mother. I cautioned Haylee not to be too excited about the party, because that might make Mother suspicious more than any nervous look on my face would. She thought about it and agreed. Then she did a very clever thing—too clever, I thought. She was reaching into a well of darkness that I never knew she had access to.
She began to pretend that she wasn’t sure we should have the party at all. I couldn’t believe it, but I was thinking that she might have gotten this clever tactic from our class reading of Othello. Right from the first pages, she was intrigued with Iago, the character who deceives and destroys Othello and his wife, Desdemona. He never comes right out and accuses anyone of anything, but he plants the seeds of Desdemona’s supposed adultery and lets Othello destroy himself worrying about it.
Haylee began at breakfast Thursday morning. Mother had gone to her beauty salon and had her hair trimmed and styled. She really looked more beautiful than she had in a long time. The medium to long layers played around her shoulders and her face. The center part added long, flippy bangs. She was so happy with her look that she wouldn’t step out of her bedroom without wearing one of her nicer dresses or outfits coordinated with rings, bracelets, and necklaces and, just as we remembered her when we were younger, not without makeup, either.
She told us once that she perfected her appearance not for the people she knew she would see but for the ones who surprised her. They would be more impressed and would talk about how together and organized a person she was even when caught completely unawares. “A beautiful woman is always on a stage,” she said, and assured us that we were beautiful.
“We don’t know if we should go through with this party,” Haylee began. She hadn’t told me she would say anything like that, so I was surprised, but I knew not to look it.
“What? Why?” Mother asked quickly. “Did your father hear of it and tell you that?”
“Oh, no,” Haylee said quickly. “We wouldn’t tell him, either.”
“So?”
“It just seems wrong for us to be having fun while you’re going through so much. We’ve decided we can wait.”