Double Identity

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Anyhow, my parents had said no, absolutely not. No gymnastics for me.

  That was because of Elizabeth, I realize now. At the time I hadn’t cared that much, because when they refused to let me do gymnastics, they let me join a swim team instead. I probably started daydreaming about growing fins, not leaves. But now I think, Natural ability? That’s practically the same term Myrlie had used to describe Joss and Elizabeth’s gymnastics talents. Naturals, people said …

  “Apart from their little rivalries—which, I admit, Hillary and I probably didn’t help—Joss and Elizabeth were best friends,” Myrlie says, and I’m grateful for the distraction.

  “Sure. Worst of enemies and best of friends all rolled into one,” Joss says, taking a bite of her cake. “Ever see those athlete personality profiles they do during the Olympics? Elizabeth and I spent hours figuring out how ours would sound.” She lowers her voice and imitates a self-important sports announcer: “‘In a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, Illinois, not one but two talented young gymnasts harbored Olympic dreams. Cousins Jocelyn Wilker and Elizabeth Krull’—we were always debating about whose name should come first. I always said it should be by age, youngest to oldest, and Elizabeth always said it should be alphabetical, Krull before Wilker—”

  “Wait a minute. Krull?” I say. “Not ‘Cole’?”

  Joss looks over at her mother.

  “Oops,” she says.

  NINETEEN

  I look from my cousin to my aunt—that is, assuming they really are my cousin and my aunt, assuming I can believe anything I’ve been told since I left Pennsylvania three days ago.

  “Joss, you weren’t supposed to say anything about that,” Myrlie says. “Not until I have a chance to ask Walter—”

  “What, you have to get his permission to talk?” Joss asks.

  “I promised I’d protect Bethany,” Myrlie says. “She’s only twelve.”

  “The same age I was when I lost my entire family,” Joss says.

  “You still had me,” Myrlie says.

  “I might as well have lost you, too, that first year or so.”

  “I know. I was kind of … emotionally absent. I’m sorry.”

  They have a strange way of arguing, their voices getting softer and slower instead of louder and angrier, their points of view getting closer together instead of farther apart. But it’s like they’ve forgotten I’m even there.

  “What are you protecting me from?” I demand.

  Myrlie and Joss look at one another and Myrlie shrugs.

  “I don’t know,” Myrlie says apologetically. “Your dad said to keep you safe, and Thursday night I thought that just meant the basics. Food and shelter and compassion while your mother was…”

  “Having a breakdown,” I say. “Going crazy.”

  Myrlie frowns, but she doesn’t correct me.

  “Why was Elizabeth’s last name different from mine?” I persist.

  “She had the same last name as her parents,” Myrlie says. “Elizabeth Krull, Walter and Hillary Krull—”

  “Their name is Cole,” I say stubbornly. “Cole. You heard me say that on the phone Thursday night.”

  “It didn’t register then,” Myrlie says. “Cole and Krull sound so much alike, and I was feeling a little… overwhelmed. I didn’t know you had a different last name until Friday at the Y when you spelled it for Ronald Boesdorfer’s mom. I wanted to ask your dad about it before I said anything to you. Just in case. But I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to Walter. So I was going to be …”—she glares at Joss—“discreet.”

  Joss ignores the glare and leans forward.

  “Why would Aunt Hillary and Uncle Walter change their name?” she asks. “Bethany, as far as you know, has your last name always been Cole?”

  “Yeah,” I say, but suddenly I’m not so sure. I squint, trying to focus on a vague memory of being a little kid sitting in a too-large, too-stiff chair in front of a too-cheerful man in some official place—a bank or an insurance office, maybe a car dealership. The man’s handing my dad a stack of papers, saying, “I think that will be everything, Mr. and Mrs….” Had he said “Cole”? Or had it been “Burns” or “Stern” or something like that? “I think,” I tell Myrlie and Joss.

  “Uncle Walter and Aunt Hillary using an alias—it’s kind of hard to imagine,” Joss says.

  I turn to Myrlie.

  “Don’t try to protect me,” I say. “Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth is, I haven’t understood anything about Walter and Hillary since June 13, 1991,” Myrlie says. She holds her hands out, palms up, a gesture of innocence. “I’m as puzzled as you are.”

  It’s impossible not to believe Myrlie. It’s impossible to look at her kind, troubled, sympathetic face and not feel a little comforted. Even if I do feel like I’ve been zapped into the Twilight Zone.

  A name’s a pretty basic thing, Mom and Dad, I think. Why wouldn’t you even tell me about that?

  “Well,” Joss says, because we’ve all fallen silent, staring bleakly at the cake we no longer have any appetite for. “Where’s Uncle Walter’s phone number? I’m going to call him right now, clear this all up.”

  “He didn’t leave a number,” Myrlie says. “Bethany and I are just supposed to wait for his calls.”

  Joss lets out an exasperated snort.

  “Come on, Mom,” she says. “You were a lawyer’s wife. Weren’t you worried about liability issues? At the church, we have to have people sign all sorts of legal forms just to leave their kids with us for a couple hours of preschool twice a week. Uncle Walter gave you Bethany for who knows how long and he didn’t leave you a phone number? If there was an emergency, you wouldn’t even be allowed to authorize medical treatment for her.”

  “You know me,” Myrlie says. “I wasn’t thinking about liability. I was worried about Hillary and Walter. And Bethany.”

  Myrlie reaches out and puts her hand on my shoulder, draws me toward her.

  She is my aunt. Joss is my cousin. I’m sure of it. But the longer I’m in Sanderfield, the less I know about my parents.

  TWENTY

  Myrlie releases me from her hug. She and Joss carry off plates and glasses, scrape our half-eaten cake slices into the trash. They stand at the sink washing and drying dishes.

  I don’t move. I am frozen in place at the table.

  Joss comes and sits across from me. She lowers her head so her eyes peer directly into mine.

  “What can we do?” she asks. “How can we help?”

  Find my parents, I want to say. Make them act normal. Make them tell me the truth. The whole truth. Give me answers.

  I remember that Joss claims to know more about questions than answers. I swallow hard.

  “Tell me the rest of your story,” I say. “About you and Elizabeth making up your personality profiles for the Olympics.”

  Joss looks relieved that I’m asking for something she can deliver. Or maybe she’s just happy that I’m still capable of talking.

  “I can do better than that,” Joss says. “I can show you the profiles we acted out. We begged and begged and forced Dad and Uncle Walter to tape them—I’m sure Mom has some of those tapes around here somewhere.” A shadow of something like doubt crosses her face. “That is, if you want to see those tapes.”

  “I do,” I say, with more certainty than I feel. Ever since Myrlie told me about Elizabeth, I’ve avoided asking to see so much as a picture of her, even though I’m sure Myrlie has some of those lying around her house somewhere too. And now I’m agreeing to watch video of her walking and talking—fully alive?

  Be strong, I tell myself, and it bothers me that those are the same words my father used.

  The videotapes, it turns out, are in the closet of an unused bedroom upstairs. It takes all three of us to shift around the dusty boxes, dig in past the fraying cardboard flaps. While we’re looking for the tapes, we find one whole box full of Joss’s old gymnastics trophies and ribbons.

  “You were such a
star,” Myrlie says wistfully, a touch of awe in her voice as she stares down at the still-shiny statuettes. “You could have gone to the Olympics.”

  “It didn’t matter to me after the accident,” Joss says impatiently. “It wasn’t worth it without Elizabeth.”

  I feel like I’m hearing a replay of an old argument.

  Elizabeth must have had a box of trophies like this, too, I think. Wonder what Mom and Dad did with them? I think about our many moves. We had boxes that just traveled from the attic in one house to the basement of another. Were some of those boxes full of Elizabeth’s belongings? Would I have found out about Elizabeth all by myself, back home, if I’d just showed a bit more curiosity, nosed around a little?

  No, I think bitterly. Mom or Dad would never have let me out of their sight long enough to discover anything on my own.

  Still, I suppress a shiver, that I might have been so close to everything Elizabeth left behind, just one floor away my entire life.

  Joss pulls on a box that promptly tears apart in her hands, spilling out old-fashioned videotapes. She barely manages to catch a monstrous, old-style camcorder that slides out of the top of the box.

  “Good grief, Mom”, Joss says in exaggerated disgust. “Didn’t you ever read the passage in the Bible about not storing up your treasures where dust and moth can consume them?”

  “Yeah, Ms. Smartmouth Preacher, and I know the point of that passage is about aiming toward heaven, not spending a fortune at the Container Store,” Myrlie says, giving Joss a playful swat on the shoulder.

  “But this is my childhood, disintegrating before my eyes,” Joss says, still in a tone of mock disgust.

  “I’m glad you can joke about these things now,” Myrlie says softly, turning toward Joss. Their eyes lock, and I feel like an outsider again for a moment. I can only guess at the undercurrent of emotion beneath their banter. If I’d had a childhood like Joss’s—with the same tragic end—would I want to keep all the mementos?

  Joss glances my way, then back at her mother.

  “Seriously, Mom, you should think about transferring all these tapes to DVD, before they completely fall apart,” she says.

  “You’re welcome to take on that chore,” Myrlie says.

  “Ah, I’m too busy feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, preaching to the nonbelievers,” Joss says. “Especially Mr. You Used a Lot of Words Today.”

  “And I’ve got my hands full right now trying to teach Anthony Doulin the alphabet,” Myrlie says, grinning.

  “Maybe I could make the DVDs for you,” I say, and the other two turn to me in surprise. I swallow hard. “I mean, if I’m here very long, I could. I’m actually pretty good with electronics.”

  And then I prove my boast by being the only one who can figure how to hook up the camcorder to the unwieldy old VCR that Myrlie also has to dig out of a closet. It makes me feel smart and capable and in control for the first time since I left home.

  “Ah, the wisdom of the younger generation,” Joss jokes. “Born with a remote control in each hand—what would we do without you?”

  “We couldn’t watch these videotapes, that’s what,” Myrlie says, settling into a corner of the couch.

  “You could have just asked one of your kindergarteners to come over and set up everything for you. Offered them extra credit,” Joss says.

  “And have them find out how stupid I am?” Myrlie says. “No way.”

  The joking stops as soon as I cue up the tape we’ve plucked out of the box labeled 1990. Myrlie inhales sharply, and Joss clutches her hand.

  Behind the flashing block showing the date and time—2:04 P.M., August 5, 1990—there’s a man on the screen. He’s a few inches too short to be the proverbial tall, dark, and handsome, but he’s nice-looking in a middle-aged kind of way. He’s sitting on a couch reading a newspaper. The Sanderfield Reporter, I notice.

  “Dad,” Joss explains, unnecessarily.

  Tom Wilker doesn’t seem to know he’s being taped. He turns a page of the newspaper.

  “Here we are,” a girl’s voice whispers from out of range of the camera, in the manner of nature documentaries. “Stalking that rare creature, Mayorus Sanderfieldus in his native habitat.”

  The sound is so distorted, I can’t tell if the voice is Joss’s or not. Do people sound the same at eleven or twelve as they do as adults?

  “You doofus!” Another voice says. “He’s not in his native habitat. We’re at Grandma’s. And he’s not just rare. He’s unique. One of a kind. He’s the only sitting mayor of Sanderfield. All the others would be Mayorus Sanderfieldus Emeritus.”

  Somehow I know this is Elizabeth. Her voice even sounds a little like mine, when I’m being smart-alecky.

  “Would that change if he stood up? Get it? Sitting mayor? Standing up?” Is that Joss—standing up to Elizabeth?

  Both girls crack up, their laughter providing a kind of soundtrack as Tom lowers his newspaper and smiles toward the camera.

  “Hi, girls. What are you up to?” he asks lazily, a man who doesn’t know he’s got less than a year to live.

  “Since all you adults are too busy to tape us, we decided we’d tape you,” Joss says on the video.

  “I was such a brat,” the adult Joss says beside me. “How’d you guys put up with me?”

  “We loved you,” Myrlie says.

  “Yeah, but why was I a brat on tape?” Joss asked. “This might ruin my chances of ever being elevated to Pope.”

  “You’re not Catholic,” Myrlie says, laughing.

  I guess they’ve gotten over the shock of seeing their deceased husband/father on the TV screen. I don’t know how they can joke around like that. And I’ve missed some of the conversation on the tape.

  “Yes, this is manipulation and blackmail of a public official,” Elizabeth is saying now. “What are you going to do—arrest us?”

  “No! I’m going to …”—Tom lunges toward the camera, his face suddenly eerily large; then the view swings around wildly, showing first the wood panels of the floor, then the maroon walls and the white ceiling—“steal the camera from you and film the best darn Olympic profile ever!”

  The screen goes black.

  “He fell for it,” Joss says. She has tears in her eyes. “He always was a soft touch.”

  “For you,” Myrlie agrees.

  A picture reappears on the TV screen. This time it’s two girls in red, white, and blue leotards standing on their hands in a huge expanse of grass. Joss and Elizabeth, one dark-haired, one blond. I can’t see their faces because they have their backs to the camera, but I can tell how muscular their arms and legs are. They’re perfectly matched and perfectly still, like statues, their toes pointed to the sky.

  “I’m supposed to read this?” Tom’s voice comes from behind the camera. One of them must have said yes, because he clears his throat and launches into, “In tiny Sanderfield, Illinois, population eighty-five hundred—hey, girls, you should make that eighty-five hundred and one, because Jody Smuckers had her baby last night and—”

  “Daddy!” The voice is dim, but the outrage is clear.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll just go on.” He makes his voice sound pompous, like a TV newscaster. “Two girls, cousins and best of friends, showed athletic promise at a very young age. Elizabeth Krull turned somersaults in her crib. Jocelyn Wilker began practicing cartwheels at age three. And now, after years of hard work and dedication, they’re fulfilling that early promise at the Olympics.”

  The two statues/gymnasts explode into motions, turning the handstands into back walkovers, round-offs, leaps, and spins.

  “Aren’t they amazing, folks?” Tom Wilker asks.

  The screen goes dark again, and then the scene changes. The camera is moving toward a house—the very house I’m sitting in now, I realize. But the house looks different because it’s summertime on the screen, and everything is green and lush. A riot of petunias and marigolds and pansies and geraniums line the sidewalk and spill out from hanging baskets on the
porch. The two girls are in shorts and T-shirts now, and they’re sitting on a wicker porch swing hanging near the front door. I feel a pang, remembering how that first night I’d imagined the porch as a setting for an early-1900s happy-family movie. It had been the scene of happy times, but it’d been in the late 1900s, and the happy family had been Joss and Elizabeth, Myrlie and Tom, Mom and Dad.

  “We caught up with the two girls recently at their grandmother’s house to talk to them about their brilliant careers,” Tom narrates as he walks the camera up the porch steps and toward the girls. “Hi, girls!”

  “Hi,” they both say, and there’s a scraping noise that must be Tom pulling up a chair. The camera zooms in and goes temporarily fuzzy.

  “How’d the two of you get interested in gymnastics?” Tom asks.

  “Well, we always liked being active.” It’s Elizabeth’s voice. The camera zooms in closer, swinging even further out of focus. “Our moms started us in dance lessons when we were three years old. But that was so … sedentary.” I hear Joss giggling in the background, on-screen. Elizabeth pauses to glare at her cousin, then goes on. “Then in 1984…”

  I don’t hear the rest of what Elizabeth is saying, because the camera is finally in focus. Elizabeth’s face fills the whole TV screen, and I can see every freckle, every light hair of her eyelashes and eyebrows. And the freckles are just like mine, a light smattering across the bridge of her nose, a few more on the right check than the left. The eyelashes and eyebrows are just like mine, wispy and hard to see. The nose and eyes and mouth and heart-shaped face structure are the same too. The only way I can tell I’m not just looking in a mirror is that Elizabeth isn’t wearing glasses, and she has braces on her teeth.

  I got my braces off last year.

  I gasp. Myrlie reaches over and takes my hand.