A Simple Favor

by Darcey Bell

  I was home. The lawn was lightly dusted with snow. How good it felt to walk up the front stairs. My feet knew the height of each step, measurements that Davis had spent hours of his too-short life figuring out. My hand knew how to turn the key in the lock, my shoulder knew how to hold the door open so I could get through even if I was holding packages, which I wasn’t. I’d come with nothing, like a refugee.

  I walked into the kitchen. How I’d missed it and how I longed to be here, cooking for Miles and me. I would talk to Sean. We could work out another arrangement that would let us be home more often.

  I drifted into the living room. It took me a moment to figure out what was different—what was so disturbing.

  I smelled Emily’s perfume. I should never have given her my keys.

  30

  Stephanie's Blog

  Wise Children

  Hi, moms!

  Here’s another story about how beautiful our kids are, how they know so much more than we give them credit for, sometimes more than we do.

  I was never good about birthdays. The only birth dates I ever remembered were those of my parents, my half brother, my husband, and Miles.

  So I was taken aback when, early in March, Nicky asked, “Are we going to celebrate my mom’s birthday this year?”

  I told Nicky, “Yes, of course.” We got a cake with a single candle.

  I let Nicky choose the cake. Chocolate with bright frosting flowers.

  We lit the candle and said a silent prayer. We didn’t sing “Happy Birthday.” I think Nicky was happy about it. It was one of those things kids do to help us heal.

  If you can read this, my dear friend Emily, wherever you are, happy birthday!

  We love you.

  Stephanie

  31

  Stephanie

  Someone remembered Emily’s birthday. A card arrived for her at Sean’s.

  That afternoon, in the mailbox, along with the bills and junk mail and fashion magazines that—now that Emily was gone—no one ever read, was an envelope addressed to Emily Nelson. Same handwriting, same brown ink as the ones in the manila folder I’d found in the vanity table.

  It was one of cards that Emily got from her mother every year. The sight of it gave me chills.

  Did Emily’s mother still think she was alive? Had her caretaker not gotten around to giving her the bad news? Had she decided that Emily’s mom wasn’t strong enough? Or was there something else? Did some lingering mom intuition tell the old woman that her daughter was still alive?

  That same night, I showed the card to Sean. He stared at it, clearly unnerved and upset, trying to look as if he had no idea what it was. He knew what it was.

  He said, “The poor old thing is so demented she forgot Em is dead. And Bernice can’t bring herself to keep reminding her. I think she’s letting Mrs. Nelson believe that her daughter is alive . . .”

  For just a moment, I wondered if he could be lying. He’d never called Emily “Em” before. Besides, Emily wasn’t dead. Did Sean know that? Were they playing some cruel joke on me? Was I the pawn in some evil plan they’d dreamed up together?

  That I didn’t know and couldn’t ask made me conscious of how little trust there was between Sean and me, though that didn’t seem to interfere with there being heat. Not every night, but often enough so that we were both willing to stick around for it. Sean wasn’t the cuddliest guy on the planet. I didn’t expect him to be. He was British. He was right with me when we were having sex, but afterward he’d grunt and turn away, as if he wanted me gone.

  Finally I said, “You have to tell me if this isn’t working out for you. If you’re having second thoughts. Tell me. Do you want me to leave?”

  He said, “What are you talking about, Stephanie?”

  It was worse than his saying yes.

  The postmark on the envelope was illegible, but I could make out the letters MI. Michigan. Could Emily have sent the card to herself? Was it part of her scheme to mess with my head? Was she somewhere outside, watching us celebrate her birthday with our candle and cake? Without her. What was she looking for? What was she planning?

  I asked Sean, “Can I open the card?”

  He said, “Sure. Go ahead.”

  In that same spidery brown ink, it said, as always, To Emily, and From Mother.

  Unless Emily had done a terrific job of forging her mother’s handwriting, she hadn’t sent it. And why would she send a birthday card to herself from Michigan and make it look as if it came from her mother?

  The only explanation was that her mother didn’t know that she was dead. That she was supposed to be dead. Or her mother knew something I didn’t.

  I couldn’t get the birthday card out of my mind. It became another obsession.

  Call it sixth sense or whatever, but I became convinced that I would understand everything if I could only meet Emily’s mother and ask her a few questions. It was more than the usual curiosity about where a person came from. I was sure that Emily’s mother could solve the mystery of where Emily had gone and why, of how she’d disappeared and why she seemed to have returned from the dead. Even if her mother didn’t know what happened, she might say something useful that would make everything clear. Was she as ill as Sean said? She, or someone, had remembered Emily’s birthday.

  I found the phone number on the internet. I felt a little breathless when it came up on my screen: Mr. and Mrs. Wendell Nelson in Bloomfield Hills.

  I called the number. Twice. The first time it rang and rang. The second time an old woman with a reedy voice answered.

  “Hello?” she said. I couldn’t speak. She said, “Is this those damn kids next door fooling around again? I told you I’m not home.”

  I hung up.

  The third time I said, “Mrs. Nelson, I’m Stephanie. I’m a friend of your daughter’s. A friend of Emily’s.” Under normal circumstances, I would have told her how sorry I was about Emily. But the circumstances were anything but normal.

  “She never mentioned a Stephanie,” the woman said. “I never heard anything about a Stephanie. Who did you say you were?”

  I said, “A friend of Emily’s. Your grandson Nicky is my son’s best friend.”

  “Oh,” she said wistfully. “That’s right. Nicky.”

  So this was one of her good days.

  “How old is he now?”

  “Five.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Dear God.”

  My heart went out to her. How long it had been since she’d seen him?

  I don’t know what possessed me to ask, “Do you think I could come visit you?”

  My whole body tensed as I waited for her to hang up or say no.

  “When,” she said.

  “Next weekend,” I said.

  “What day?” she said. “What time? Let me check my schedule.”

  I knew Sean wouldn’t want me to go. I invented an Aunt Kate, desperately ill in Chicago. I asked Sean if he could watch the boys, and he said yes. Neither of us had to mention how much time I’d spent alone with the kids.

  That I couldn’t tell Sean the truth reminded me that there was no one I could rely on. I was all alone. Still, I trusted him in the most important way—to take care of my son when I was away overnight.

  I was still sleeping with Sean. But I couldn’t tell him that Emily was calling me and taunting me with secrets only she knew. He would say I was making things worse. That I couldn’t face the truth. Maybe I’d lost touch . . .

  Was I losing my mind? Imagining things? Maybe I was still in shock from my friend’s disappearance and death. Maybe Sean was right. Maybe I was refusing to acknowledge the reality of Emily’s death and making things worse for everyone.

  Especially me.

  I flew to Detroit and rented a car. I found Emily’s mother’s house, a mansion with pillars and a portico, like the house from Gone with the Wind transplanted to the Midwest. There was a circular driveway and hummocks of overgrown shrubbery hiding a lawn covered with dead brown weeds.


  The old woman who answered was small and bent over, dressed in a cashmere sweater, stylish pleated pants, and expensive shoes with higher heels than I expected. Her white hair was pulled back neatly, her bright red lipstick expertly applied. She looked a little like Emily, but more like Grace Kelly if Grace Kelly had lived to be eighty.

  The air smelled of rose potpourri as she showed me into a large, grandmotherly living room full of good old furniture and dark paintings of shadowy figures in heavy frames.

  “Remind me who you are,” she said. “I’ve gotten a bit forgetful, I’m afraid.”

  “Stephanie,” I said. “Emily’s friend. My son is Nicky’s best friend.”

  “I see,” said Emily’s mother. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’m fine, really. I’m fine . . .” I was babbling.

  Mrs. Nelson perched on a chair covered in rose-colored velvet, and I sat on the edge of the couch. It was an uncomfortable couch but remarkable, in a way. Old-fashioned, faux French antique, with shiny silk embroidery. Deep pink-and-white candy striped. It was so unlike anything that Emily would ever have allowed in her house.

  “My husband is dead,” her mother said.

  At least she knew her husband was dead. This must be one of her really good days.

  “He worked in public relations for an auto company. Who would think Emily would also go into PR after having seen what the ’88 recall did to her father?”

  She pushed her glasses down her nose, leaned forward like a bird pecking at grain, and for the first time actually looked at me.

  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. A
s 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.

  “It was a vicious fight. I think about a boy. I can’t remember. I’m not sure I knew at the time. They slapped each other. That stopped the fight. Stopped it cold. They went off to their rooms.

  “The next day they went into Detroit and got those horrendous tattoos. Those vulgar barbed-wire bracelets. To remind them that this was the hand that slapped her sister. Or some baloney like that. It was a promise they’d never fight like that again. I don’t think they ever have. Not to this day.”