Three Black Swans

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Was that the kind of birth certificate she had found in her parents’ room?

  It did not look as if any birth certificate would have a line at the bottom saying, “Multiple birth—check for siblings.”

  Because no matter how many multiples are born, she thought, the babies are separate people. They get their own identities. If I were adopted, though, there would be a court decree. I didn’t find that. On the other hand, to keep the adoption secret, you would not store proof in a drawer where the child would find it.

  Genevieve imagined her real mother as a young girl in high school, terrified, her future at risk. She imagined the girl sobbing as the social worker whisked away her babies.

  I could be older than my real mother was when I was born! That real mother could have been fourteen. What fourteen-year-old could do a good job with one baby, let alone three?

  Genevieve found herself weeping for her fourteen-year-old mother. She imagined the mother of this teenager—Genevieve’s biological grandmother—saying, “I might help you with one baby, but three? Give them up.”

  Genevieve didn’t like the grandmother.

  Maybe the biological mother was much older, in the middle of a spectacular career, already had two teenagers and could not disrupt her life for another kid, let alone three.

  Genevieve didn’t like them, either. They ought to have celebrated! Rearranged the house! Rejoiced in three new babies!

  What about the father? Was he just a kid himself? Or a stranger passing in the night, and the mother hadn’t even told him? Maybe she didn’t even know who he was so she could tell him.

  Maybe they were both druggies out on the street and Social Services collected the babies from some slummy room as the parents sat around in a stupor.

  Maybe the real mother was married but out of work, and her husband was a paraplegic and they’d lost their house in a fire and had no insurance on their car, which had broken down anyway, and they were using old bureau drawers for cribs, and it seemed kinder and better to let rich people be the parents.

  I’m inventing birth mothers like a movie director trying to find a good scene, she thought. And in Connecticut, Claire and Missy must be lying awake playing the same game.

  No—wait—they already had the answers! How had they found each other? What did they know?

  She watched the video again.

  In the maddening way of television, half the sixty seconds were spent on the announcer. This made Genevieve crazy in nature shows, when the camera cut away from the grizzly bear or the lioness to show the expert. She always wanted to telephone and say sternly, “Nobody cares about you. Get out of the picture.”

  But she did sort of care about Rick, with his unfortunate glasses and his cute face. He had brought Missy and Claire to her. If only he had given her more time with them.

  Enough of this, she decided. I’m wasting time. She texted Jimmy. I have to reach Ray Feingold.

  In a minute, Jimmy texted back with Ray’s cell number.

  Genevieve psyched herself up. Was anybody else in the entire United States asking how to get in touch with possible triplet sisters?

  Halfway through dialing Ray’s number, she stopped. Once she reached those girls, the truth—whatever it was—was going to exist in this room. It would exist in her life. In her conversations. In her future. Between her and her parents. Between her and GeeGee.

  I should sleep on it, she thought, knowing she wasn’t going to sleep tonight at all. She was going to be watching herself times two on video.

  Mom and Dad will be home before long, she reminded herself. I could be sitting here. I could point to the screen. “Got sixty seconds?” I could say.

  But Ned and Allegra’s reaction was beside the point. The two people who mattered now were Missy and Claire. Genevieve wanted to touch them and hear their voices and meet their eyes. The parents who had lied could be dealt with later. She completed her call to Ray Feingold. “This is Genevieve Candler,” she said, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.

  “Hey, it’s me, Ray. You saw that video, Genevieve?” His voice was loud with excitement.

  “I’ve been studying it for hours. Ray, I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what I’m seeing. I just know that I have to call those two girls up. I have to talk to them.”

  “I agree,” said Ray. “I knew you’d be in touch. My friend at Missy’s high school gave me Missy’s cell number but he didn’t have the other girl’s. Ready to write it down?”

  “I’m ready,” she said, although the hand holding the pencil was trembling. At least she didn’t have to choose which sister to call first. How could she possibly decide that one mattered more than the other? But what would she say to Missy? A person claiming to be an identical triplet was obviously a lunatic. Missy would hang up on her.

  “I did get Claire’s last name, though,” said Ray. “Linnehan.” He spelled it for her. “They’re both on Facebook,” he added.

  “Thanks, Ray.”

  “I hope thanks are in order,” he said seriously. “I’ll be thinking of you.”

  * * *

  CONNECTICUT

  Friday morning

  Before dawn

  CLAIRE LINNEHAN HAD had bad dreams. She woke up so wired that taking a shower seemed dangerous: she’d electrocute herself in the water.

  Claire weighed herself down with a heavy terry bathrobe.

  She remembered buying that robe. She and Missy had both spotted it across the lingerie department and had both lunged for the pale lemon yellow robe. Claire had pretended she really wanted the light blue.

  I knew back then, she thought. Normal cousins don’t share an understanding that even includes cut, color and texture.

  Claire hung the bathrobe back up. She closed the closet door on it.

  In the kitchen, shivering in her thin pajamas, she breathed in the comforting scent of brewed coffee. Her mother had left for the early Jazzercise class she taught. The last inch of strong black coffee was still hot in Mom’s favorite mug. Claire poured herself pink grapefruit juice. With her bare toe she knocked the pantry door open to gaze upon the cereal selection, and without thinking, she did what she always did first thing every morning. She phoned Missy.

  “Now I know you hate me,” said Missy groggily. “It isn’t even six yet.”

  Claire hadn’t looked at the clock. It was way early. “Sorry. Well, I do hate you, but only sort of.”

  “Oh, good. Sort-of hatred is the best kind.”

  They giggled.

  Claire was not a giggly girl. In school, she often didn’t get the jokes other girls laughed at. But with her cousin, everything was funny.

  “And?” asked Missy.

  “I was taking the twin thing seriously. I was up all night wondering which of us has a mother who didn’t want the extra one.” Claire rinsed out her juice glass. She opened the dishwasher and sighed. The dishes sparkled. Claire despised putting dishes away. She set the used glass on the counter and began emptying the dishwasher with one hand while she held her cell with the other. “I know it’s a hoax, Missy, but I also know it’s not a hoax.”

  For a long time they were silent.

  “You’re waiting for something,” said Claire.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me you’re glad.”

  Claire could not fathom that. How could either of them be glad that they were adopted?

  “It’s Friday,” said Missy finally. “We need a plan for the weekend. When do we play the video for our parents?”

  Claire wasn’t ready for the show, the showdown or the explanation. “The video isn’t the only thing going on. Guess what else?” Claire told Missy what Lilianne had said about her father having no work.

  “That’s so scary. Poor Uncle Phil. And just when Aunt Frannie wants to give up the Jazzercise franchise.”

  “What? What makes you think that? Mom hasn’t said anything to me.”

  “You’re kidding. She and my mom talk about it all the time. Your mom is exha
usted. She’s fifty, you know. That’s old old old for leading exercise classes, especially as many as she has.”

  “Missy, how come you didn’t tell me?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  One parent without work. One yearning to quit work. What’s the matter with us? thought Claire. Why don’t we know anything about each other?

  Claire dragged the kitchen footstool under a high cabinet that hung alone on a far wall like a mistake. There was no counter under it. No companion cabinets nestled up to it. Its lower shelf was messy with appliance manuals, receipts and out-of-town phone books. The middle shelf held cookbooks her mother liked owning but never used. On the top shelf was a large plastic container full of important documents. Claire took it down, popped the lid and began leafing through the papers. A paid-off car loan. The title to that car. Her father’s expired passport. His new one. A power of attorney for an elderly relative in Florida.

  Missy rambled on about running errands and picking up dry cleaning and talk radio. Claire interrupted. “I’m looking at my birth certificate. It’s normal. It names Philip and Frances Linnehan as my father and mother. The birth date is my birth date. So we know one thing, Missy. I am who I am. Go find your birth certificate. Birth certificates are absolute proof.”

  “I hunted for mine,” said Missy, “and I didn’t find it. Just listen to me, Claire. Here’s what I heard on the radio. It was a geneticist who specializes in studying twins reared apart. That’s what they call them: twins reared apart. It sounds like horses on their back legs, but it means growing up without each other. Separate houses. Separate lives. Are you listening, Claire?”

  Claire pressed her birth certificate against her cheek. I was not reared apart, she told herself.

  “This doctor had an explanation for why twins might not seem identical at birth but over the years might become identical in size and weight and shape. When the mother is having multiples, the babies don’t necessarily have equal space or nutrition in the womb. One might be born smaller and less strong. One might have more space, right from the beginning.”

  Claire was horrified. Before babies were even born, one would squish out the other? Grab more of the swimming pool, as it were? Really, nature was hideous.

  “That would explain why I was so much littler than you, Claire. You used more space, and I had less.”

  I was the twin who shoved? thought Claire.

  “Remember, I was in Newborn Intensive Care for a long time,” Missy was saying. “Mom and Dad christened me when I was still in the hospital. Maybe they dated my birth from the day they brought me home, and that’s why I have a birthday eight weeks later than you do. Not because I was born eight weeks later. Because they faked the eight weeks later.”

  “That’s crazy. No matter how long you spent in NICU, your parents would still use your real birth date. Even if they didn’t, the hospital would. Parents don’t fill out the birth certificate. Document people fill it out. Besides, why keep a baby’s real birthday a secret? There is no reason to fake a birthday.”

  “Unless it’s a deep dark secret that girls who are supposed to be cousins are actually twins.”

  “Our parents aren’t the deep dark type, Missy.” Claire put her birth certificate back in the plastic box, snapped the lid, slid the container back on the top shelf and closed the cabinet door. She put away the stool, sat at the kitchen computer and Googled “adoption law.”

  Missy said, “I agree. If you and I are adopted twins, and each adult sister got one of us, our parents would have let us in on it. So maybe even they didn’t know.”

  In the fascinating way of online searches, the results Claire brought up were a mishmash. She could not resist a story in which some woman had babies she then sold. Claire read the story out loud to Missy.

  “I don’t mind if Mom and Dad paid to get me,” said Missy. “I’m worth it.”

  “Ugh. Who wants to be the child of some creepy creature who offers twins to the highest bidder?”

  “Another thing, Clairedy,” said Missy. “Every time you and I do something alike, or want the same thing, or buy the same thing, or we’re good at the same thing, both your mother and my mother pretend it doesn’t mean anything and then—always—they separate us.”

  Claire was jolted by the sound of running water. She had forgotten how early it was; her father was still home. “Dad’s taking a shower,” she said to Missy. “Text me later.”

  She tiptoed to her room, shut her door and climbed back into bed. She did not want to talk to Dad. She wanted him to leave for work, pretend or real.

  The online story seemed almost possible. Her parents could have bought her, like an anniversary present. “Here’s a little thing I thought you might like, honey.”

  Stop it, Claire told herself. Adoptions are expensive. Besides, I’m not adopted. I’m the one with the birth certificate.

  She had a ghastly thought. If her own mother really was her own mother, and yet she and Missy were twins, then her mother was actually Missy’s mother too, having handed her leftover baby to her sister. Want the runt of the litter? she imagined her mom asking Aunt Kitty.

  * * *

  THE SAME FRIDAY MORNING

  Long Island

  LAST NIGHT HAD been a roller coaster for Genevieve. Her heart would race up the incline, staring at the sun and a future with sisters. The same heart would plunge down, nothing but cold wind, brutal metal and ghastly truth around its soft tissue.

  She snapped awake like a baseball bat breaking on an invisible fault line.

  The house was empty, of course. Allegra had to catch such an early train that Genevieve almost never saw her Monday through Friday mornings. Dad didn’t need to be in the office early, but he usually drove away the minute he was dressed to meet his coffee shop buddies. He’d yell up the stairs to be sure she was awake, tell her to have a good day and then slam the door behind him.

  She must have slept through that.

  There was no dormer in the long narrow poet’s attic. There was one window to the east, over her bed, and one to the west, in her bathroom. Genevieve paced back and forth, staring out into the dark predawn, tasting the names Missy and Claire. She had never known anybody with those names. She didn’t know anybody except her great-grandmother with the name Genevieve, either.

  Today she would call Missy. If she was really rattled, she’d write out the dialogue and read from a script.

  Who were we in the hospital? she wondered. Babies A, B and C? We knew each other once. In the womb. When I meet Missy and Claire for the first time, it will actually be a reunion.

  Genevieve slipped her arms into a filmy ivory-white robe that swished around her ankles and hid her boring pajamas. Feeling glamorous, she opened the attic door and descended the stairs regally. The stairs were straight and narrow. No large furniture could be brought up unless it was dismantled.

  Incredibly, both of her parents were sitting at the breakfast table.

  “Vivi, my word,” said her mother. “Do you usually dress up like a nineteen thirties movie star for breakfast?”

  Her mother was having cornflakes and her father was eating Special K. She would have said neither of them ever touched the cereal in this house.

  “You look gorgeous, Vivi,” said her father. “And so mature. Twenty-five or something. I’m weak thinking about the passage of years.”

  Genevieve looked at the kitchen clock. It was an hour and a half earlier than she usually got up. She’d been so grateful to escape bad dreams that she hadn’t even looked at the time.

  “If she looks twenty-five,” said Allegra Candler to her husband, “how old does that make me?”

  The kitchen computer was on. They had been checking their e-mail. But they did not act like parents who had just seen a video of their daughter’s clones.

  “Twenty-nine,” said Ned, blowing a kiss over the dry cereal.

  Genevieve slid carefully into a chair. Two meals in a row they were all at the same table? It was a record. S
he said lightly, “Were you talking about college visits?”

  “Are you already packed?” teased her father.

  Her mother poured her a glass of orange juice. This was amazing. Allegra was not the attentive kind of mother, who measured a daughter’s vitamin C intake. She was the casual kind, who figured that if Genevieve had not grasped the principles of good diet by now—oh, well. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Her mother really did look twenty-nine. Well, from a distance.

  Genevieve suddenly saw her mother as brave. Allegra’s career had never taken off. She had expected to be a star, but she was only a cog in a machine. She’s not going into the city every day for herself, thought Genevieve. It’s to provide a house and clothes and a cell phone and college for me.

  Her father tapped his newspaper. He loved the Wall Street Journal. “I was just reading aloud to your mother. This paragraph caught my imagination. Listen. ‘The future isn’t a hat full of little shredded pieces of the past. It is, instead, a whirlpool of uncertainty populated by what the trader and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls black swans—events that are hugely important, rare and unpredictable, and explicable only after the fact.’”

  “At this morning’s conference,” said her mother, “I might suggest a fragrance line called Black Swan.”

  “Black Swan sounds more like eye shadow,” said her father.

  They hugged her good-bye, which was such a treat on a weekday that Genevieve did not want to let go.

  When both cars had left, she called Connecticut information. A recording gave her the number for the high school whose name had appeared on the blown-up photograph on the wall behind Rick. She accepted the option to have it automatically dialed. The phone in Connecticut rang.

  A melodious recorded voice gave facts about the high school and extensions to dial. Genevieve kept count on her fingers. She didn’t need athletic schedules, the attendance clerk or driving directions to the school. She chose option six.

  “Good morning, principal’s office,” said a voice.