She said, “You don’t have any idea what the ’88 recall was, do you?”
It was better to be honest. I shook my head no.
She said, “You really are stupid, aren’t you?”
Already I could understand why Emily might have chosen to keep her distance. I felt so sorry for her, having a mother who would say something like that! Then I remembered that Emily had called me stupid that last time she’d called on the phone. Passing along the damage she’d sustained from her toxic mother. I’d so often blogged about people trying to make moms feel stupid. I was really sick and tired of being called stupid. Of being made to feel stupid. But I couldn’t afford to react.
If Emily’s mom thought I was stupid, if she doubted that I was really Emily’s friend, she would never tell me what I wanted to know. I had no idea what that was. I would know when I heard it.
I said, “Would you like to see pictures of Nicky?”
“Nicky?”
“Your grandson,” I said.
“Of course,” she said politely. “Where?”
I brought my phone over to her and stood beside her chair, flipping through my photos of Miles and Nicky. She seemed attentive. I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to stop.
Then she said, “Which one is . . . ?”
“Nicky,” I reminded her.
“Of course. Nicky.”
I pointed to her grandson.
“Adorable,” she said uncertainly.
I was relieved when she said, “That’s enough. He’s very cute.”
She looked at me and sat back and said, “I’ve seen this in a movie. You and I were in a movie I saw on TV. You wanted to look at childhood photos of Emily. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’d like that.”
Even as I said it, I realized it was true. That was exactly why I was there.
“Would you like some tea?” she said.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “I don’t think there is any. I’ll be right back.”
She rose and slowly shuffled out of the room. I heard murmuring. Mrs. Nelson and another woman. Her caretaker, I assumed.
I had a few minutes to look around. A grand piano draped with an embroidered Spanish shawl. Soft lighting. A mirrored credenza and a formal portrait of Emily’s mother in an evening gown, decades ago. Probably before Emily was born. It made no sense that this was where Emily grew up, though I realized I had no idea what kind of place that would be. She’d never talked about her childhood home.
There was a funny anger in the way Mrs. Nelson moved her head and thrust the album at me, or maybe she was just in a hurry to sit back down in her chair.
The album was like the albums in which people keep CDs. Each photo had its own clear slipcase that gave off a faint plasticky smell.
I turned several pages before I understood what I was seeing.
In every picture there were two Emilys. Identical little girls.
Two identical Emilys in a garden, on a beach, in the woods in front of a sign that said Yosemite National Park. Two girls with blond hair and dark eyes, two Emilys aging as I flipped the pages.
“What’s the matter?” said her mother. “You look terrible, dear. Are you all right?”
I thought of the Diane Arbus photo over Emily’s fireplace and remembered her telling me that it was the thing she loved most in her house.
Mrs. Nelson said, “Remind me which one is Emily. Was she the one with that odious birthmark under her eye? Lord, I positively begged her to have it removed. Though it was sometimes the only way I could tell them apart. Of course, later, when Evelyn was always drunk or high, that made it easier.”
I said, “I hadn’t known that Emily was a twin.”
She frowned. “How is that possible? Are you sure you’re a friend of my daughter’s? What do you really want here? I’m warning you. I’ve got security cameras everywhere.”
I looked around. There were no security cameras.
“It’s just strange,” I said. “She never mentioned—”
“Evelyn. Her sister.”
“Evelyn?” I said. “Where does she live?”
“Good question,” her mother said. “I never know. Evelyn has problems. She’s spent time in some extremely expensive rehab facilities that guess-who paid for. From time to time, I’ve lost track of her, and it turns out she’s been on the street. Emily tried to save her sister. Tried and tried. I think she gave up.”
How could Emily not have mentioned the fact that she was a twin? Why did she keep it a secret? For a moment, I couldn’t remember her face. Which of the twins was she?
Through my shut eyelids I heard Mrs. Nelson ask if I needed water.
“I’m fine. It’s a lot to take in.”
She said, “Emily blamed me for Evelyn’s problems. But I’m telling you—do you have children, by any chance?”
“My son is Nicky’s friend,” I reminded her.
“Then you understand. It wasn’t my fault. They’re born the way they are. There’s not much you can do to change that. Every parent knows that. I loved the girls the same. Mental health problems run in my family, though no one was ever allowed to say so. We weren’t supposed to notice that half our aunts and uncles were in the loony bin.
“Yes, the girls were identical. They have the same DNA! But I never mixed them up. Emily had the mole underneath her eye, and there was something funny about the top of Evelyn’s ear.”
I was listening hard and at the same time my attention was drifting. Mrs. Nelson was a mother. I didn’t know if she knew that one of her daughters was dead.
One of her daughters. It hit me again. They have the same DNA. The coroner might not have been able to tell the difference. The mole under the eye and the funny ear no longer mattered by the time they found the body in the lake.
My brain was working overtime, cranking out theories. Did Emily kill her sister and dump her body in the lake? Had she planned that all along? What a perfect way to fake her own death . . .
“Please get yourself some water,” Emily’s mother said. “You don’t look at all well.”
“That’s all right,” I told her. “I’m fine.”
She leaned forward and touched my knee, and in a suddenly conspiratorial tone said, “Want to hear something ridiculous? When my husband was alive and the girls were younger, I felt I had to hide my drinking. As if I were the child. And now I can relax at cocktail hour with a glass of gin, and there is nobody around to tell me I can’t do this perfectly appropriate thing that every adult should have the right to do. No one can tell me not to! Care to join me?”
It was two in the afternoon. “No, thank you,” I said. “It’s kind of you to offer.”
Only now did I notice a tray with a decanter and two glasses on the table beside her chair. She poured herself a full glass of clear liquid and drank it in steady, grateful sips.
“There. Much better. Where was I? Oh yes, the twins. Emily and Evelyn were absolutely just as bizarre as people say twins can be. For one thing, they were telepathic. Even as children, they just had to look at each other and they could communicate. Can you imagine raising children like that?
“Emily was the dominant one. She was born first. She was six ounces heavier. She gained weight faster and walked first. Evelyn was always . . . smaller and sadder. Less confident.
“They went through their teenage wild years at the exact same time. A double picnic for their mother, believe me! Their adolescent rebellion continued well into their twenties. I think they played dirty tricks on men, on their boyfriends. They were pretty and popular. Decorative. Which meant there was drinking and drugs. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a sip of this?” She offered me her glass of gin.
“Thank you, no. I’d love to, but I have to drive back to the airport.”
“All right, then. One thing I remember. They got into a terrible fight in front of me and their father. It was a holiday. Christmas? Thanksgiving? I can’t recall. We’d somehow managed to get all of us in the same room. This was a little before Evelyn really started to go down and Emily to go up.