The Opposite of Me

by Sarah Pekkanen

  May shook her head at me. “What I was going to say is, you could believe that you have unlimited potential, even more now than you had before. Look at where you got in life based on sheer hard work and willpower. What else could you do with your gifts? Where else could you go?”

  I looked at her in surprise. I had never thought about it that way.

  “Reinvent yourself again if you want to,” May said. “I think you can do anything you set your mind to.”

  “My parents still don’t know I was fired,” I said after a moment. “Can you believe that? I probably would’ve told them by now, but with everything going on with Alex . . .” My voice trailed off.

  “I don’t think you need to tell them,” May said. “Just tell them you were offered a job as a full partner in one of D.C.’s top dating services.”

  “Yeah, but . . . ,” I started. Then I stopped speaking and looked at May. “Full partner?”

  “Do you have any idea how badly I want to go to India?” she asked. She wrapped her arms around herself and gave herself a squeeze as her eyes grew dreamy. “I’ve been fantasizing about it for years. I want to see the Taj Mahal, and sleep in a tent under the stars. It’d be so nice to know the agency is in your hands while I’m gone. Besides, you deserve it. Do you know business is up more than thirty percent since you started working here?”

  “I don’t know what to say,” I said. To buy myself some time, I started picking crumbs of banana bread off the couch, which made Bonnie, the black Lab, who was trying frantically to lap them up, stare at me with wounded eyes. Suddenly panic engulfed me. I couldn’t look at May. If I did this—if I accepted the partnership—my life wouldn’t be the same, not ever. There would be no turning back; I’d be officially tossing my dreams into a bonfire. I’d never have a house in Aspen. I’d never have a car and driver, or an unlimited expense account. I’d be trading all that for a lifetime of dog hairs on my jeans, of laughing with clients in old diners, of babysitting and fixing chopped-off bangs. Of skipping out of work early on warm summer evenings. Of helping hope spring into people’s eyes.

  Jump, Matt’s voice said again.

  Matt’s voice was getting kind of bossy.

  “Lindsey? Are you okay?” May asked, pressing a tissue into my hand.

  “I’m . . .” I searched for the word and finally found it. “Happy,” I said. “I’m happy.” I put my arms around May and hugged her, and felt her solid, comforting warmth. “Thank you,” I whispered as I wiped the tears from my eyes. And I realized I’d spoken the truth. Mixed in with everything else—the confusion and worry and panic—there was happiness, too, growing up as straight and true as a flower.

  “What can I do?” Bradley ran both hands through his hair and paced his living room. “She won’t read my letters. She won’t answer the phone. She won’t see me. What can I do?”

  He’d called my cell phone that morning while I’d been at work. For just a second, before I remembered, my heart had leapt up when I saw his name flash on my caller ID. But that only meant my heart had further to crash back down. It’ll get easier, I reminded myself for the hundredth time, and I answered the phone.

  I’d never seen Bradley like this. He looked like he’d lost ten pounds overnight, and his face was seamed with worry.

  “It isn’t just you,” I told him. “Alex doesn’t want to see anyone.”

  “I just wish I could make her understand,” Bradley said. He sank down onto the couch beside me. “The way I feel about her has nothing to do with how she looks. Why can’t she understand that?”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m going to talk to her. I’ve been worried about upsetting her even more, but this has gone on long enough.”

  “Thanks,” Bradley said. He sighed and turned to me and seemed to truly focus on me for the first time since I’d been there. “God, is it weird that I called you? I just didn’t know who else to talk to.” He swallowed and looked away. “And I know we never finished talking—”

  “Bradley.” I cut him off firmly. “There isn’t anything to talk about. Everything’s fine.”

  “You mean it?” His face grew hopeful. Bradley hated to see anyone hurt, I remembered. It was one of the things I’d loved about him.

  “Of course,” I said. “Look, I was kind of confused when I moved back home and switched jobs and everything got muddled. You’re right; we’re much better off as friends.”

  Alex was right; I’d become a really good liar.

  Bradley let out a breath. “I’m so glad,” he said. “Good friends.” He reached over and hugged me. He still hugged the same way; tightly, and with both arms. I’d always loved the way he hugged, too. When would I stop counting the things about him I loved? I blinked hard and pushed away the thought.

  “Alex is going to need you,” I said briskly, pulling back. Pulling away from him. If he kept his arms around me for another second, I’d burst into tears. I clenched my hands behind my back, where Bradley couldn’t see, and dug my nails into my palms.

  “I’m going to talk to her,” I promised. “I’ll do everything I can. And if she still won’t see you . . . then we’ll figure something out. I promise.”

  Bradley nodded, and I saw tears glistening in his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said. In his face I could see gratitude and something more. Maybe even love. Just not the kind of love I’d wished for so desperately.

  But it would have to be enough. I’d forget about the longing I’d felt when his arms had closed around me and I’d inhaled his faintly woodsy smell and had to force away the sob welling up in my throat. He’d chosen my sister. This would have to be enough.

  Twenty-nine

  WHEN I GOT HOME that night, Alex was waiting for me.

  “I need a favor,” she said.

  I was so surprised to see her up and alert that I just nodded. “Of course,” I said. “Anything.”

  “I lost my driver’s license,” she said. “It was probably that night when I pulled out my credit cards before the MRI. I haven’t been able to find it since. And I got pulled over last night. Dad’s left headlight was out. The cop let me go, but if they catch me again I’m in trouble. So can you take me to the MVA?”

  “Right now?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “If I can’t get out of the house at night I don’t know what I’ll do,” she said. Her tone was soft, but desperation rang through it.

  “Then let’s go,” I said.

  “It closes in an hour,” she said. “I thought if we got there close to closing time. . . .” Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she was thinking. If we got there close to closing time, there wouldn’t be as many people around.

  “Sure,” I said. Maybe her getting pulled over was a blessing, I thought as I took my keys back out of my purse. Maybe it would force Alex to reenter the world, one baby step at a time. Today we’d go to the MVA, and maybe later this week Alex would let me take her out for coffee. Maybe this would finally give her the push she so desperately needed.

  take a number, the big sign above the MVA counter graciously instructed me. I grabbed one from the dispenser and rejoined Alex in the row of hard orange seats in the waiting area.

  “Shouldn’t be long,” I said. “They’re on eighty-one and we’re eighty-six.”

  “Which means it’ll be three hours,” Alex said. She sighed. “I can’t believe I’m going to have this damn picture on my license for the next ten years.” She finished filling out the clipboard full of paperwork and put it down on the empty seat beside her. Alex wasn’t wearing her wig after all, even though she’d started out wearing it in the car. The itching drove her crazy, especially around her incision, so she’d put on a big floppy hat with the sides pulled down low to disguise her lack of hair. I recognized the hat; Alex had been holding it in one hand on the cover of The Washingtonian, the one in which she’d worn the blue bikini. Now I wondered if the art director had instructed Alex to take off the hat during the shoot, so that it didn’t cover up her glorious hair.<
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  “Maybe you can come back and retake the picture later,” I said. I knew better than to bullshit Alex, to tell her that she still looked beautiful.

  For the first time I could remember, no one was staring at my sister. I hadn’t realized how accustomed I’d become to it: the furtive glances from men, the blatant double takes and whispers from people who recognized her, the constant cheesy come-ons from guys like the one who’d come up to Alex in a bar with a smarmy grin and said, “I have amnesia. Do I come here often?”

  What surprised me was how sad it made me. If Alex noticed—and she had to have noticed—she didn’t say a word.

  When Alex’s number was called, I walked with her over to the photo area. The woman operating the machine looked so bored she was practically in a trance. I didn’t blame her. The sum total of her job involved telling people to stare at a little red light, then pushing a button.

  “Stand on the blue line,” the woman instructed in a monotone.

  Alex started to comply, then she paused. “Just one second?”

  She pulled a compact out of her purse and looked into it as she dabbed on some shiny pink lip gloss. A year ago, I’d have been rolling my eyes at her vanity. But now I felt like crying. That little spark, that bit of pride—it was a glimpse of the old Alex. It was like she was slowly surfacing, through the scars and steroids and puffiness.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” Alex told the woman.

  “You need to lose the hat,” the woman said.

  “Sorry?” Alex asked.

  “Take off the hat,” the woman said. She wasn’t even looking at Alex; she was fiddling with something on the machine.

  “But I have to wear it,” Alex said. She grabbed it with both hands, like she was scared the woman was going to jump over the counter and tear it away.

  “No hats in the photos,” the woman said, sounding like she was rattling off MVA rule thirteen, subsection B, line four—the one right before line five, which decreed that no flattering pictures were allowed.

  “I have to have my hat!” Alex said. Her voice was panicked.

  What I should have done—what I didn’t think about doing until much later—was quietly step up to the woman and explain why Alex needed a hat. I should’ve figured out a way to fix it for Alex. But instead, I just stood there helplessly.

  “No hat or no picture,” the woman said. “You choose.”

  Alex stared at her, fear transforming into anger across her face.

  “We can come back later,” I said, starting to approach Alex. “Or let me talk to a manager.” I glared at the photo woman. “What’s the name of your supervisor?”

  “No,” Alex said. She closed her eyes and seemed to gather herself.

  “Alex, we can go home,” I said gently. “Come on.”

  But it was as though Alex didn’t even hear me. “No,” she whispered again, almost to herself. She hesitated for a moment, then she reached up and ripped off her hat.

  It was as though the MVA was suddenly transformed into a theater, and the curtain had come up to reveal Alex standing alone under a spotlight at center stage. A hush fell over the room. Everyone sitting in the rows of hard orange chairs—the middle-aged Hispanic woman bouncing a baby girl on her knee, the guy in camouflage pants, the giggling pack of young girls getting their learners’ permits—they all collectively froze as they stared at Alex.

  Alex stood in the middle of the cavernous room, letting everyone take a good, long look. A faint layer of reddish gold fuzz covered her scalp, but the area around her incision was still naked. Her angry-looking scar shone under the bright industrial lights.

  The woman operating the camera gaped at her. “You can put the hat back on,” she finally said in a subdued voice.

  Alex’s voice broke as she said, “Just take the damn picture.”

  Then Alex turned to face the camera, which was adorned with a little yellow happy-face sticker instructing her to “Say Cheese!” While everyone stared at her, Alex lifted her chin high and, as she’d done for so many years, posed while the camera clicked.

  * * *

  “I was losing my looks anyway,” Alex said.

  I turned to her in surprise. It was the first thing she’d said since we left the MVA twenty minutes earlier. She’d been sitting in the passenger’s seat of the car, staring straight ahead, cutting short my attempts at conversation. No, she didn’t want anything to eat, even from a drive-through. No, she didn’t need me to pick up anything for her. No, she wasn’t too hot. Or too cold, either.

  I’d wanted to keep her talking, to try to sort through what had just happened. Maybe it was her rock bottom, the worst thing she could imagine happening. Maybe now that she’d hit it, she’d slowly start coming back up, if only because there was no other way to go. When Alex had pulled off her hat and stared defiantly at the MVA woman, it seemed like she was finally ready to fight back, to reenter the world. But after we collected her new license and got into the car, as the long minutes passed and Alex kept staring out the window, I began to worry that maybe the opposite would happen instead. Maybe now Alex would never want to come out of her room again.

  That’s why I was so surprised when her voice suddenly cut through the darkness.

  “I got called for this modeling job a few months ago,” Alex said. She drummed her fingers against her knee. She was wearing the hat again now, even though it was dark out and no one could see what she looked like inside the car. “My agent told me they needed a young woman and her mother. We were doing a catalog for Chevy Chase Pavilion. And when I got to the studio, I saw this gorgeous kid—she was probably thirteen, and I swear she was all legs—sitting in the makeup chair. Suddenly it hit me: I was the mother.”

  She shook her head. “This is the part that kills me. That kid couldn’t smile with her teeth showing because she had braces. She kept doing this Mona Lisa smile all day.”

  “Little twerp,” I said. “I bet she came down with a violent case of acne the next day.”

  Alex smiled. At least I’d gotten a smile out of her. It felt like a minor victory.

  “The jobs were going to dry up anyway,” she said. “It just happened a little faster.”

  “Alex, come on,” I said. “You’re only twenty-nine.”

  “That’s ancient in my business,” she said. “The only reason I’m still working is because we’re in D.C. In New York it would’ve been over five years ago. Do you know what I’ve been doing the past few years at shoots? I put Preparation H under my eyes before I get in the makeup chair. It makes those little lines disappear. I was going to start Botox next year, too.”

  I cringed, thinking of the times I’d written off as pure vanity Alex’s facials and sessions with a personal trainer. She’d worked as hard as I did, even though she knew her career had already peaked. Maybe that knowledge had made her work even harder.

  “Did you ever think about doing anything besides modeling?” I asked her.

  Alex shrugged. “I like the TV stuff,” she said. “I always wondered if I could parlay it into something bigger, maybe show my reel around New York or L.A.”

  “You can still do that,” I said. “A few months from now . . .”

  “I guess,” Alex said, but she didn’t sound convinced. “Do you know how fierce the competition is for TV jobs? If you’re not young and gorgeous, producers won’t even look at you. And I’m not either. . . . Not anymore.”

  I pulled into our driveway and flicked off the headlights.

  “There’s something I want to show you,” I said.

  “Unless it’s a carton of Chunky Monkey, I’ll take a rain check,” Alex said. “I’m tired.”

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “It’ll only take a minute.”

  Alex sighed, but she didn’t protest any more. I unlocked the front door, and we went inside. It was eerily quiet—it took me a moment to realize that was because of the absence of blaring televisions—and I found a note taped to the hall mirror that said, “We’re picking up pizza for din
ner! Back soon!”

  “Thank God they left a note,” Alex said. “I was about to turn on COPS to see if they were on the lam.”

  The little jokes, that fleeting smile . . . it was like seeing pieces of the old Alex. I’d missed her humor, I realized. I missed talking to her, too. Funny, but I’d seen my sister more these past few weeks than I had in the past decade. So why was it only now that I was missing her?

  “Follow me,” I said. What I was about to do was a gamble, but something told me the timing was right. I pulled down the attic stairs and started climbing. I’d left the two piles I’d sorted out undisturbed up there.

  “What’s all this crap?” Alex said, climbing the stairs after me. “God, I’m surprised the ceiling hasn’t collapsed and killed us all. Hey, my old Barbie mobile. How much do you think I could get for that thing on eBay?”

  “I want to read you something,” I said. I rummaged through one of the piles until I found what I was looking for. I cleared my throat and began. “ ‘This student shows an unusual strength in spatial awareness’—Alex, stop taking the pants off that Ken doll and listen—‘and her capacity to reason is outstanding.’ ”

  I lowered the paper and Alex raised an eyebrow. “So?”

  “Let me read you one more,” I said. I turned the page: “This student is three standard deviations above the norm in terms of general intellect. She falls into the profoundly gifted category.”

  Alex yawned.

  “It’s you,” I said. I tossed the IQ results at her, and she automatically caught them. She looked down at the papers, then up at me.

  “You’re the smart one,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Alex said, frowning. “Are you joking? They were talking about you.”

  “Take a look around,” I said, indicating the pile behind me. “Trust me, you’re the smart sister. You always have been.”

  Alex lifted up a paper from the top of her pile—I recognized it as a report card from second grade—and she started to read. After a moment, she moved the card closer to her face.