Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  And then it’s too late for me to ask anything, too awkward. We drive the rest of the way in silence.

  · · ·

  The Y is a low, sprawling building, surprisingly large for a town the size of Sanderfield. We stop at the front desk, and a cheerful-faced woman greets Myrlie.

  “You were in a hurry to get here! I’ll fill out all the paperwork so you can go right in. I’ll just need your name…”

  She’s looking at me, so I say, “Bethany. Bethany Cole. C-o-l-e.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Myrlie’s head jerk back and her eyebrows squint together. It’s like she’s surprised to hear my last name, like she didn’t know what it was or she thought it was something different. But when I turn and look at her directly, she’s managed to iron out her expression.

  The woman at the desk has her head bent over the papers. She sees nothing.

  “Address?” she says.

  “It’s thirty-eight, fifty-two Tyler Av—” I start to reel out my Greenleaf, Pennsylvania, address, though it already seems nearly as far away and long ago as all the other houses my parents and I left behind.

  Myrlie interrupts.

  “Oh, just put down the same address as mine,” she says. “Six-oh-five Morning Street. It’s probably easier to have everything local, isn’t it?”

  “Um, I guess,” the woman says doubtfully.

  “And are you sure I can’t pay something?” Myrlie asks. “I’m perfectly willing—”

  The woman waves away the offer, the cheerful grin restored to her face.

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Wilker. After what you did for my little Ronald, believe me, this is the least I can do. I tell everyone I wasn’t sure he was even human until we moved here and I sent him off to kindergarten, and you turned him around. I’ll just put you down as my guest, and Bethany down as Ronald’s, and there’s no charge.”

  She beams at Myrlie and Myrlie thanks her, and we head for the locker room.

  I already put my bathing suit on under my clothes, so all I have to do is yank off my jeans and sweater, and toss them and my glasses and bag into a locker. After those few strange, awkward moments in the car and at the desk, I’m even more eager to immerse myself in chlorinated water, to think of nothing for the next hour but the pull of my strokes, the power of my kicks. There’s a kind of etiquette of locker rooms, anyhow, that even if you yourself haven’t stripped down to total nudity, you don’t look around too much in case someone else has. So I’m not paying attention to anything except the need to grab my goggles and towel, to shut my locker door.

  That makes it all the more jarring when I turn and come face to face with a strange woman who’s absolutely staring at me, her jaw agape, her eyes practically popping out of their sockets.

  “It can’t be…,” she murmurs.

  Behind her a little girl who’s maybe three or four shivers in a wet towel.

  “Mommy,” she complains. “I’m cold. Aren’t you going to help me get changed?”

  The woman doesn’t seem to hear, she’s so transfixed staring at me. The woman actually lifts her hand and brushes her fingers against my skin, as if to prove to herself that I’m not a hallucination.

  “I…,” she says, and seems to recover control of herself a little bit. “I’m sorry. You just look so much like someone I used to know. Years ago. When I was your age, and not middle-aged and loopy and …” She gestures toward her stomach. Squinting, I realize that her stomach sticks far out over the waistband of her workout pants. She’s pregnant.

  She’s also still blinking like she can’t believe her eyes.

  “This is just amazing,” she says. ‘Are you by any chance related to—?”

  “She’s related to me.” It’s Myrlie, coming up behind me from the bathroom on the other side of the locker room.

  The woman takes a step back, practically stepping on her daughter’s toes.

  “Oh. That makes sense, then, I guess,” she says. But she still sounds dazed, she’s still staring at me.

  “How have you been doing lately, Tammy?” Myrlie asks. “How’s Bryce adjusting to second grade?”

  “Oh, um, fine,” the woman says vaguely. She tears her gaze away from me. “Why aren’t you at school today, Mrs. Wilker? You aren’t sick, are you?”

  “No, no,” Myrlie says. “I just took a personal day. First one in more than twenty years. It’s kind of refreshing to see what the rest of the world does between eight and three.”

  She smiles, and under the cover of that smile I slip out of the locker room and into the pool area. Then I’m underwater, my arms flailing, my legs threshing. But no matter how furiously I swim, I can’t outpace my thoughts.

  That woman’s expression was straight out of a horror movie, I think, trying—and failing—to swim even faster. If I were a director, that’s just how Ãátell an actress to look.

  If she saw a ghost.

  SEVEN

  I swim until my legs are rubbery and my arms feel like so much limp spaghetti. I’ve had the kind of practice where, as Coach Dinkle puts it, I’ve left skid marks on the turn walls.

  But as I haul myself out of the lap lane, I still can’t convince myself that I’m wrong about the woman in the locker room. Tammy. I’ve tried every theory I can think of. My best two are that she’s crazy, or that I just misread her expression because I didn’t have my glasses on. But I’m not so nearsighted that I couldn’t see someone standing right in front of me. And she seemed perfectly sane, except for the little matter of acting like she’d seen a ghost.

  “Done?” Myrlie asks, handing me my towel.

  I’m not sure what she’s been doing for the past two hours, but she starts glancing around nervously as soon as I’m out of the water. She’s right behind me as we walk into the locker room. I feel like I have an escort. Maybe this is what it’s like to be the President, always surrounded by Secret Service officers.

  The locker room is empty—Tammy and her little girl must have left a long time ago. But Myrlie still peers around anxiously, as if another Tammy might pop up any minute.

  “I’ll grab a shower and change in there,” I say, because she’s creeping me out. I pull my clothes from the locker. I hide behind the vinyl curtain of the shower stall and let the water stream over my body.

  When I emerge, fully dressed and ready to go, I find that Myrlie has stationed herself right outside the stall. The way she’s standing, I’m tempted to ask, “Is the coast clear?” But it’s not a joking matter. And my last joke wasn’t exactly a big success.

  Myrlie hustles me out of the locker room and past the friendly woman at the front desk—Ronald’s mom—who barely gets a nod. Once we’re in the car, Myrlie throws the gearshift into reverse and exits the parking lot so quickly we’re spitting gravel. She drives back through town, silent and grim-faced.

  Then we’re back in her driveway. She turns off the ignition. Neither of us makes a move to open a door and get out. We just sit there.

  “Who?” I whisper, surprising myself. I clear my throat. I can make myself heard. I have to. “Who did she think I looked like?”

  EIGHT

  Myrlie’s expression reminds me of those speeded-up Doppler radar views on the Weather Channel, where violent storm systems spin and collide and zoom away, all in a matter of seconds. She looks surprised and relieved and angry and defensive and sad, very sad. Then resigned.

  “I can’t tell you,” she says. “I’m sorry. I promised your father I wouldn’t talk about … that.”

  Disappointment pours over me. I muscled up the courage to ask—don’t I deserve a better answer than that? A real answer?

  Myrlie is still watching me.

  Get out of the car, Myrlie, I think bitterly. Walk away. That’s how my parents deal with questions they don’t want to answer.

  My anger surprises me, because I’ve never quite counted up all the unanswered questions before. I have a whole lifetime’s worth.

  Where did you live when you were a little girl, Mommy?r />
  Why don’t I have a grandma and a grandpa like Gretchen and Emily and Tommy and Michael do?

  Why do we have to move again?

  Why is everyone else’s mommy and daddy younger than my mommy and daddy?

  Are you mad at me?

  How come everybody else in my class has a brother or a sister, and I don’t?

  Why are you crying, Mommy?

  Where are you going, Daddy? Why are you leaving me here?

  Where are you now?

  Tears rush into my eyes, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to be like my mother, weak and sniveling and frail. I am taller than her; I outgrew her. I do not cry. I am fierce and strong and I just swam two miles.

  And Myrlie is still watching me. She didn’t get out of the car and walk away.

  I take a deep breath, very deliberate. Steadying.

  “Is it Elizabeth?” I ask. “Do I look like Elizabeth?”

  Myrlie doesn’t have to say yes or no, because I see the answer in her eyes, her gentle, kind, not-good-at-lying eyes.

  “How did you find out about Elizabeth?” she asks.

  My mind races, searching for a lie that will free Myrlie from her promise to my dad. If I pretend to know everything already, she can’t get in trouble for telling. Can she?

  But I’m not good at lying, either. I don’t have any practice. My parents were always right there, watching me, so I never got a chance to make up alternate versions of my life that anyone would believe.

  “I don’t know about Elizabeth,” I admit. “I just heard the name. But … can’t you tell me now?”

  Myrlie looks heavenward, or at least toward the ceiling of her car. Then she looks back at me.

  “Bethany,” she says gently, “you have to understand. I’m a teacher. I’ve spent my life taking care of other people’s children—shaping them and molding them and trying to do my best to have them turn out right. After all these years, I’ve come to accept that there are limits to what I can do for somebody else’s child. Even when it breaks my heart. Even when I think the parents are wrong.”

  “You think I should know,” I choke out.

  “I do,” Myrlie agrees. “But I won’t tell you.”

  I’m shaking my head, angrier than ever.

  “That’s not fair!” I complain.

  Myrlie takes her hand off the steering wheel and lays it over mine.

  “Don’t think too badly of your parents,” Myrlie says, still in that infuriatingly calm voice. “They’re doing what they believe is best for you. And I have to say, I only raised one child of my own, but it was no easier supposedly having all the power, all the control.”

  I’m one step away from rolling my eyes—“morphing into a teenager,” as my friend Lucy calls it. She has three older brothers and sisters, and she had years of observing their obnoxious teenaged behavior. She claims to have done her first successful eye roll at age five. She’s a master at it.

  Here I am, almost thirteen, and I’ve never gotten a chance to perfect my technique. It’s hard to roll your eyes at someone who’s sobbing.

  “If …” Myrlie begins, then breaks off, listening.

  The phone is ringing inside her house.

  Both of us spring out of the car, bound up the stairs to the back door. It leads into a covered back porch, and then there’s another door into the kitchen. Myrlie fumbles with keys; I jerk on the doorknob even though I know the door is locked.

  Finally the door is open and we both spill in, then zoom across the kitchen floor. I reach the phone first.

  “Hello?” I shout into the receiver. “Daddy?”

  I hear a click, then a dial tone.

  “Hello?” I say again. “Hello?”

  “No one’s there,” Myrlie says, gently.

  “He hung up. He didn’t wait….” And even though I am fierce and strong and just swam two miles, I feel myself sinking toward despair. I slide down toward the floor.

  Myrlie catches me.

  “It might not have even been him,” she says. “If it was, he’ll call again.”

  “Don’t you have caller I.D.?” I ask. “Or can’t we do ‘dial-back’? It’s ‘star’ something, I think, sixty-nine or sixty-seven or…”

  I’m reaching back up toward the phone, maybe reaching for a phone book to look up the right number. But Myrlie’s shaking her head.

  “No,” she says apologetically. “My phone company charges extra fees for fancy stuff like that, and I never had either of those services installed. I’ve just never needed anything like that before. But don’t worry. He’ll call back.”

  I drop my arm, and Myrlie hugs me tighter.

  I picture the two of us in a movie scene, a grandmotherly type and a preteen girl clutching each other, slumped on the linoleum floor of an old-fashioned kitchen, the phone cord dangling above us. The scene is too stark for the kind of movies I’m used to seeing. Hollywood would have to add a sarcastic voice-over to lighten the mood, something like, “And then I learned that if you have to be abandoned by your parents in a thicket of mysteries, it’s not so bad to be left with someone like Myrlie, who’s used to comforting five-year-olds for a living. Just try to pick a Myrlie who also believes in caller I.D.”

  In real life, I’m too far gone to appreciate sarcasm. All I can do is clutch Myrlie and try not to cry.

  NINE

  Eventually we get up off the floor and fix lunch. It’s an odd transition: One minute I’m slumped over on the linoleum, lost in despair, the next, I’m standing with Myrlie in front of a cabinet, examining her collection of Campbell soups.

  “I’m sorry, I just don’t keep much food around,” she says. “I’m sure you’re used to better than this—Hillary’s such a great cook.”

  I don’t tell Myrlie that my dad and I have been living on Budget Gourmet and Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s for the past few months. Freezer to microwave to table in five minutes or less. It occurs to me now, standing in front of Myrlie’s cabinet, that I could have made more of an effort. Mom did teach me how to cook, back in the days before the constant sobbing. I could have at least boiled some water, thrown in some spaghetti, heated up some jarred sauce. Fed myself and my father.

  You don’t know what it was like, I want to protest to somebody—maybe Myrlie. Living with all that crying, it saps your spirit. Makes you feel like you don’t deserve anything better than Budget Gourmet.

  But Myrlie hasn’t accused me of anything, and some form of pride stops me from saying anything bad about my parents.

  In the end, we settle on tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.

  “Here’s a pan. Why don’t you heat up the soup while I make the sandwiches?” Myrlie says.

  It strikes me as incredibly quaint and old-fashioned—even touching—that Myrlie expects me to cook the soup on the stovetop instead of in the microwave.

  “I can go to the grocery this afternoon,” Myrlie says as she slices cheese. I’ll lay in some supplies, in case you’re here for a while.”

  How long? I want to ask. What’s ‘a while’ mean? But maybe Myrlie promised my dad not to tell me that either. And I’m worn out; it’s easier to keep our conversation on the level of tomato soup versus chicken with stars, and “Do you like lots of cheese on your sandwiches or just a thin layer?”

  Then I look over, and Myrlie’s biting her lip. Grimacing.

  “I remember, my daughter always hated going to the grocery store with me, once she got to be your age,” Myrlie says in a too-loud, too-careful, artificial voice. “You can stay here while I go. I could download some movies on the TV for you, if you like.”

  I stir milk into the soup and watch the whirls of white turn red. I don’t think Myrlie is really worried about my hating grocery shopping.

  She’s scared we’ll run into another Tammy. She doesn’t want me to be recognized again.

  But suspecting that—knowing that?—doesn’t do me any good. I’m not sure whether I should call Myrlie’s bluff or whether I should just play a
long. I’ve got no compass for navigating this situation.

  But it’s cozy in the kitchen, stirring soup, smelling grilled bread. It seems so normal. I crave normalcy, even if it’s just a facade.

  “All right,” I say.

  So Myrlie has me help her make a grocery list after we eat. Do I like chicken? Pasta? Tacos? Stir-fry?

  “Nothing with nuts, right?” she says, her pen flying across the page.

  “Absolutely,” I say.

  ‘And I bet you’re a big fan of blueberry muffins.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She’s already written it down. There’s a half-smile on her face.

  “Peaches-and-cream oatmeal?” she asks. She’s not even watching for me to nod my head.

  “Wait a minute. How did you know that?” Something like panic churns in my stomach.

  “Oh, just a guess.” Myrlie looks up now, jolted, the smile gone. “I just thought you might like it. Do you?”

  I do. I love it. I used to eat peaches-and-cream oatmeal for breakfast all the time, until I decided Froot Loops made me seem more like a normal kid.

  “No!” I say. “I hate peaches-and-cream oatmeal.”

  “Okay,” Myrlie says, shrugging as if we’re still just talking about food. “What would you like me to buy for your breakfasts?”

  And I swear her bottom lip starts to curl back under her top teeth, starts to make the first sounds of “Froot Loops.”

  “Corn Pops!” I say, too emphatically. “They’re my favorite!”

  “Okay,” Myrlie says, and she writes it down.

  But I think she knows I’m lying.

  TEN

  Before she leaves, Myrlie shows me how the TV works and how to download movies on her cable system. She looks up the number for the grocery store and writes it down in big, fat numbers on a pad of paper beside the phone. She apologizes for being “probably the last person in America who doesn’t have a cell phone.” She asks me at least six times, “Now, you’re sure you’ll be okay by yourself? If you need me for anything—anything at all—just call the grocery store and have me paged.”