Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Myrlie turns back to the TV, but I don’t.

  “When did Mom say that?” I ask.

  “At Elizabeth’s funeral, probably. Or Tom’s? That time period is just such a blur in my mind…. I do remember thinking it must have had to do with them donating Elizabeth’s organs. They were able to keep her alive for a few hours after the accident, so someone else could benefit. Maybe that inspired Walter somehow.”

  “Really?” I say. This changes how I’ve been thinking about Elizabeth. It makes everything worse. Not only do I have a dead sister I never heard about before last night, but her heart and lungs and kidneys and other organs—her eyes?—are still alive in other people’s bodies. This is like one of those late-night horror movies Mom and Dad never let me watch.

  Myrlie punches a button on the remote control to turn off the TV.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Upset. That’s the same word Dad had used as an excuse for not telling me about Elizabeth.

  “I’m fine,” I lie.

  Myrlie’s still looking at me doubtfully.

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you were upset,” she says.

  I shrug, and Myrlie seems to get the message.

  “So Walter’s a money manager, now,” she says.

  “Yes. The past few years, he’s mostly worked from home. He’s semiretired.” I try to make it sound ordinary and dull. I want ordinary and dull rather desperately right now.

  “I’m sure Hillary appreciates that. You too,” Myrlie says. “I know that was one of Walter’s regrets, that he was away so much when Elizabeth was a child. He always said if he had it to do all over again …”

  Her voice trails off. I think about how my father is always there, waiting, when I get home from school. I think about how, when I was little, he and Mom both tucked me into bed every single night. I think about how he helped me with my homework, let me braid beads into his thinning hair, let me win at Candyland and Trouble.

  And I think about how he’s as good as vanished from the face of the Earth since the last time I talked to him.

  SEVENTEEN

  Somehow I manage to sleep through the night, survive into another day. At the breakfast table, Myrlie is fidgety.

  “Do you think …?” she begins. “I mean, if it’s all right with you …”

  “What?” I say, even though my mouth is full of coffee cake. Myrlie got up early and baked this morning.

  “I would like to go to church this morning,” Myrlie says. “I need to.”

  Going to church is something else my parents don’t do—like watching TV news or reading the newspaper. Or telling me about long-lost relatives I never knew I had.

  “Why?” I say. “Oh—because your daughter’s a minister and it would look bad if you skipped? Does she keep track of whether or not you go?” I’m a little amused at this notion. Myrlie laughs too.

  “It’s not like that,” she says. “It’s more that … this has been an emotionally wrenching couple of days for me, too. Church always makes me feel better. More focused on what really matters.”

  If my parents went to church, would that have prevented them from dumping me on Myrlie? Would it have prevented them from disappearing?

  “So, go,” I say brusquely.

  “Do you want to go with me?” Myrlie asks.

  I wince.

  “That woman from the Y—Tammy—does she go to your church?”

  Myrlie tilts her head to the side, her eyes full of compassion.

  “No,” she says.

  “Would there be anybody else there who would look at me and remember Elizabeth?”

  “I don’t know,” Myrlie says. “Elizabeth never had glasses like yours, so that kind of … hides the resemblance. Tammy saw you without them. And you’re a lot taller than Elizabeth was until right at the end, those last few months. I’m sure everyone remembers her as being a tiny little thing. It’s funny how she was always so petite, and then it was like her body suddenly decided, ‘Oops—I’m supposed to be taking after my six-feet-four father instead of my five-feet-one mother.’ She went from being the shortest on her gymnastics team to the tallest practically overnight.”

  I get chills as Myrlie chatters away, because she might as well be describing my own growth spurt. I went from being the shortest to the tallest in my age category on my swim team. Coach Dinkle changed my nickname on the team roster from “Water Bug” to “Giant Mermaid.”

  Elizabeth was your sister. It’s not surprising that you followed the same growth pattern, I tell myself.

  Myrlie clears her throat. I guess I’ve gone a long time without answering.

  “You know, it shouldn’t matter if people recognize you or not,” she says. “Now that you know about Elizabeth, I can introduce you as my niece. You can meet people who knew your parents when they were your age.”

  I shake my head, not even tempted.

  “I should stay here in case my dad calls,” I say.

  “He could leave a message,” she says. “Or call back. You shouldn’t feel … trapped here.”

  “I don’t,” I say, which is another lie.

  Myrlie doesn’t look like she believes me, but she bustles about changing her clothes, gathering together her coat and her purse and her Bible.

  The phone rings as soon as she’s gone.

  “Daddy, why didn’t you call yesterday?” I ask before I even say hello.

  Click.

  I feel my face get red. Obviously other people besides my father might have reason to call Myrlie. It just seems odd that whoever this was didn’t bother to say anything.

  I’ve just hung up the phone when it rings again.

  “Hello?”

  “Bethany?”

  This time it is my father.

  “Dad, I waited all day yesterday for you to call—”

  “We’ve had some … complications,” he says, his voice sounding strained and anxious. “I can’t talk for long, and I’m not sure when I’ll be able to call back again. Is Myrlie there?”

  I’m stung. He hasn’t seen me in two and a half days, and he’s barely bothered to say hello.

  “She went to church,” I say. “She’ll be back at eleven thirty.”

  “She left you alone?” he asks, sounding panicked.

  “Daddy, I’m twelve years old. Lots of kids my age stay by themselves for hours. Some even babysit.”

  “This is different,” he says. “Tell Myrlie she needs to keep you with her all the time.”

  “Mmm,” I say, because I’m not sure I’m going to tell her that or not. I change the subject. “Daddy, she told me about Elizabeth.” I’m a little angry with my parents right now, but, still, I wonder if I should offer some condolences, some sympathy.

  “I’m sorry,” my father says, as if I’m the one overcome with grief for this sister I never met. “It would have been better if you’d never had to know.”

  “Never?” I say, the anger rising again. How ignorant did he want me to be? Before Thursday night, had he ever thought about introducing me to Myrlie? Had he ever planned to show me Sanderfield, his and Mom’s hometown? How could he have kept such a huge chunk of their lives secret from me?

  And why had he wanted to?

  “Bethany,” he says. “There’s a lot you don’t understand. A lot you can’t understand. This isn’t the way I wanted everything to play out. I’m doing the best I can.”

  The pleading in his voice is so bald, I feel my anger ebb.

  “Okay,” I say, trying for steadiness. “But when are you coming back?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Everything has changed. Be strong.”

  That’s something my father has never asked of me. Before now, my parents just expected me to be cute and cuddly and entertaining. And happy. They wanted my happiness most of all.

  What changed?

  Everything …

  “Tell Myrlie I’ll call her back later,” my father is saying. “We need to talk abou
t arrangements for you and school. We can’t have you falling behind.”

  It’s only after we’ve both hung up that I realize what that means. If Dad’s worried about school, this isn’t just a two—or three-day jaunt, a minivacation from my typical life. This is long-term.

  “I bet they never did anything like this to Elizabeth,” I mutter into the silence of Myrlie’s house.

  EIGHTEEN

  When Myrlie comes home, she’s in a good mood. We have a quick lunch and then she scurries around getting ready for Joss’s visit. I tell her that Dad called and will call again, but I don’t say anything about school or her needing to keep me by her side at all times. Dad can tell her that himself, if he wants to so badly.

  “Okay, good. I’m glad you won’t have to keep worrying about him,” Myrlie says, but she’s concentrating on polishing the huge antique mirror in the hallway. “Can you hand me the Windex?”

  I pick up the bottle of blue liquid. She switches to cleaning the window in the front door.

  “Is Joss some kind of a neat freak?” I ask.

  Myrlie laughs.

  “No, but I used to be, and I always think Joss might expect to see everything the way it was when she was a kid.”

  “I thought you lived in a house around the corner.” It bothers me that there might have been some holes in Myrlie’s story. What if I can’t trust her either?

  “Joss and I moved here after the accident,” Myrlie says, still scrubbing. “We moved in with my mother.”

  “I have a grandmother?” I look around, almost as if I’m expecting some super-old granny to come popping out. Some other relative my parents hadn’t bothered telling me about.

  Myrlie lowers her Windex bottle.

  “Mom died the following winter,” she says. “That was really a horrible year for us.”

  “Did my parents come back for her funeral?” I ask.

  Myrlie hesitates, then shakes her head. No.

  “I suspect it was too hard for them, coming so soon after Elizabeth’s,” she says.

  “But you went, right?”

  “I did,” she says. “I wanted to. And Tom was supposed to be the executor of her estate—she’d never changed that in her will—so the job fell to me. I handled all the details. I was experienced by then. I was used to dealing with death.”

  I’m not sure what it means to be executor of an estate, but it sounds hard-edged and businesslike. Heartless. Doubly difficult for someone in mourning.

  And meanwhile my parents were AWOL, just like they were now.

  “Bethany,” Myrlie says softly. “All that happened a long time ago.” She goes back to scrubbing windows. “It is a shame that you never got to meet your grandmother, though. She doted on her grandchildren.”

  Joss and Elizabeth, I think. Not me.

  By the time Joss shows up, Myrlie has the house in perfect order, and, in spite of myself, I’m a little curious about what Joss will be like.

  If she looks like me too, I’m just going to scream, I think.

  But as Joss lets herself in the front door, calling out, “Hello? Anyone home?” I discover she’s a younger, thinner, darker, and more intense version of Myrlie, all sharp elbows and knees where Myrlie is padded and round. Joss is also wearing a sweatshirt with rolled-up sleeves and jeans with a hole in the knee, which really shatters my image of what a minister should look like.

  Myrlie rushes out of the kitchen, gives Joss a hug, and surrounds her in a flurry of questions. “Was there much traffic? How’d your sermon go this morning? Are you hungry?”

  Then they both seem to remember me.

  “Bethany?” Myrlie calls.

  I scramble up from the couch where I’ve been half-hiding, feeling awkward and out of place.

  “There you are,” Myrlie says, beaming. “Joss, this is Bethany. Bethany, this is Joss.”

  Joss looks at me and for a second I see the same mix of surprise and awe and shock and horror that showed up in Myrlie’s face when she first met me, and in Tammy’s face when she saw me at the Y. Then Joss smiles, hiding her first reaction.

  “Glad to meet you,” she says, and she sounds so sincere I want to believe her. She shakes my hand, and that almost makes me feel like a grown-up.

  Minutes later, we’re all back in the kitchen with Myrlie. I never knew preparing a meal for three people could take so much effort. I’m slicing onions and Myrlie is shredding cheese and Joss is talking about a member of her church who told her on the way out of the sanctuary today, “Well, you certainly, um, used a lot of words in your sermon today.”

  “What did he expect—hand signals? American Sign Language?” Joss asks indignantly as she tears lettuce for our salad.

  “He probably didn’t mean anything by it,” Myrlie says. “He just didn’t think. You don’t know what might be going on in his life right now.”

  “I know, I know, I should use his rudeness as an occasion to grow my own compassion,” Joss says, sighing. “I will—later. I just need to vent right now.”

  “You don’t want Bethany to get a bad impression of you,” Myrlie says.

  “Why not?” Joss says. “Better that she knows what I’m like right away. Here it is, Bethany, I’ll tell you now: I’m the black sheep of the family.”

  “I thought you were a minister,” I squeak out.

  Joss laughs.

  “Ah, but I’m in the wrong church, according to my mother. And the wrong city, because St. Louis is much, much too far away. And she probably would have been happier if I’d gotten married about ten years ago and cranked out two-point-three adorable grandchildren. And—”

  “Joss, stop!” Myrlie is laughing again. “You know I’m very proud of you.”

  Joss shrugs and rolls her eyes at me and I think it’s kind of nice, after all, having a cousin.

  “Why did you become a minister?” I ask, sliding my onions into the sauce Myrlie has bubbling on the stove.

  Joss stops tearing lettuce and glances quickly at her mother. Myrlie nods, almost imperceptibly.

  “The year I was thirteen,” Joss begins, “I spent a lot of time grappling with God and trying to understand life and death. After the accident, you know. And then it just seemed like it would have been a big waste not to put all that theological thought to use.”

  “Because you figured out all the answers?” I ask.

  “Hardly,” Joss says wryly. “I just figured out all the questions. I don’t think there was a single one I missed asking God.”

  She dumps her lettuce into a salad spinner and the next thing I know we’re talking about movies and books and TV shows—safe topics. As we finish cooking and sit down to eat, I can tell Myrlie and Joss are steering the conversation away from anything controversial. They’re trying to make me feel comfortable. I’m simultaneously touched and relieved and a little bit insulted.

  Don’t they think I can handle talking about anything important? I wonder. Anything that hits a little closer to home than the new remake of The Parent Trap?

  We eat Myrlie’s pasta and homemade bread and salad, and she clears away the dishes. Then there’s a lull in the conversation as she brings out the chocolate cake she made this afternoon. I turn to Joss and say, “What was it like growing up with Elizabeth?”

  Joss raises an eyebrow at me and glances at her mother again.

  “Go ahead,” Myrlie says quietly.

  Joss shifts in her chair.

  “You might as well ask me what it was like to grow up,” Joss says. “I can’t imagine what my childhood would have been like without Elizabeth.”

  “You were twelve when she died,” I say.

  “And as far as I’m concerned, that was the end of my childhood,” Joss says. She peers at me so intently it’s all I can do to keep from looking away. But I want her to see I’m not afraid of hearing about Elizabeth.

  “Elizabeth was a lot of fun,” Myrlie says, putting a slice of cake down in front of me. “Full of energy. Those two girls did nothing but giggle when they
were together.”

  Joss gives Myrlie a look I can’t quite read. She turns back to me.

  “Do you want to hear a eulogy?” she asks me. “One of those ‘We won’t speak ill of the dead—what a saint she was’ descriptions? Or do you want the warts-and-all version of Elizabeth’s life?”

  “Warts and all,” I say. I swallow hard. “Part of me really wants to hate Elizabeth. Because she belonged to my parents before I did. Because she …” I almost say, “ruined them,” but how can I blame Elizabeth for her own death? “Because she had them when they were younger and happier.”

  I’m a little surprised I’ve allowed myself to be so honest. But something about Joss’s gaze seems to make it safe.

  Joss gives me a sympathetic smile.

  “Part of me always wanted to hate Elizabeth too,” she says. “Especially after she died. Can’t miss someone you hate, right? But even before, when she was still alive … Elizabeth was always prettier and smarter than me. She was a better gymnast too. It was like she had a huge advantage, being born two months ahead of me. She walked before I did and talked before I did. She learned how to read before I did. She was better at everything.”

  “Joss!” Myrlie sounds scandalized. “You know that’s not true. Elizabeth wasn’t any prettier or smarter than you. And you were just as good at gymnastics. Even better sometimes, especially toward the end—”

  “I’m just saying how I felt at the time,” Joss interjects. “And it’s really not fair to compare our gymnastics abilities those last few months, after Elizabeth grew so quickly. It really threw her off, being so tall all of a sudden. I think she would have adjusted, if she’d had more time.”

  I decide I’m glad my sport is swimming, where height doesn’t matter. And then I remember something I hadn’t thought about in years. When I was in first or second grade, we’d done a gymnastics unit in school, and the teacher had been impressed at how quickly I’d picked it up. She said I had “a lot of natural ability”—a phrase that stuck with me because I thought it had to do with nature, and I kept imagining myself with vines and leaves growing all over me as I did somersaults. I can remember feeling proud when the teacher sent a note home with me recommending that I take gymnastics lessons. Maybe I was hoping to grow leaves, even though I had to have known that was childish and silly.