by Ann Beattie
I have come back to that moment many times over the years. In fact, it is a recurrent nightmare. I realized simultaneously that a trigger-happy hunter might have shot at Dara, and I took the sound of quarters falling into the jukebox to be shots, looked at my own hands, and realized that I was capable of murder. I dropped my hands to my sides. Only Dara’s arms were extended as she continued the last few paces of her slow walk toward me. Though there was absolute numbness in my arms—nothing, in that second, could have allowed me to lift them—it was not that I wanted to return her embrace. But that she touched me, when I could not touch her—that I registered her touch, but could experience only heaviness—made me feel totally helpless. And then she had whispered to me, “Oh, sweetie, now you know all my secrets.”
But of course I didn’t. I didn’t know anything more than I’d ever known, except that she existed in duplicate. What did it mean? That everything she’d told me was a mishmash of her life and her twin’s? Was I about to find out the truth about who’d run away, and who’d been hospitalized at McLean? Who’d had the baby—if either of them had? Was I now about to get full disclosure from someone I had decided, before coming to Provincetown, would no longer be a part of my life?
The other people at the Atlantic House were regulars. No one there was surprised to see Dara and her sister. Those who still looked our way were wondering about me: why I was gawking at the two of them; why I was standing like a martinet; what it was I couldn’t seem to recover from. The sight of twins was not exactly the most remarkable sight in the world.
“Darcy,” her sister said, “how about an introduction?” She had gotten her zipper unstuck. She seemed at once outgoing and shy—or it might have been reluctance. She could not have known what to expect either. Would she have any idea who I was, even if she heard my name?
“I’m Jean Warner,” I said, extending my hand. I saw that my hand was trembling. Inside, I could feel my heart keeping time with my shaky hand. Of course, she shook it. She gave no sign of recognition, but neither did she seem confused. “I’m Franny Feldstone,” she said. “What brings you to P’Town?”
“Do you know anything about me?” I said. If I couldn’t find out anything from Dara, at least I might find out something from her sister.
“You’re Darcy’s friend from Dell,” she said. “What do you mean?”
I could see her wariness. What I had wanted to ask was whether she knew about my life. If there was any possibility that I occupied a position in Dara’s life similar to what Dara’s position had been in mine. I wanted to find out if she had any idea how much—or whether—I mattered to Dara.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Franny said.
“Sweetie, she knows that you are my dearest friend,” Dara said.
She might have been speaking simply, and she might have been cueing Franny. I had no way of knowing, because Franny’s expression remained neutral. Even her nod was neutral.
“Two Bloody Marys?” the bartender said. He had gotten up from his table almost as soon as they came in. He had been standing behind the bar, watching us, sensing that whatever we were saying to each other should not be interrupted right away.
“Henry, darling, you have read my mind,” Dara said. “Though perhaps three will be necessary.”
She looked at me. I didn’t say anything. The bartender set to work.
“Dara,” I said, “do you have any idea how shocking this is?”
Franny had walked away. She draped her parka over the back of a chair, then walked to the jukebox and stood far across the room, leaning forward to look at the selection, her back to us. The bartender began to pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker. Everything happening could have seemed ordinary, except for the fact that yet again Dara had fooled me, and every time she did, it seemed the world became a stranger, more unpredictable place.
“What would the difference have been if I’d told you?” Dara said. “Can’t you believe that when I put together a life for myself, I wanted to be totally unique? It wasn’t easy being a twin. When you’re younger, you can’t get used to the stares. Then you pretend to get used to them. It didn’t make me think I was special. What it made me think was that I had to get away from her.” Dara’s face clouded over. “But I never can,” she said. “We’re always living vicariously through each other. When I’m down, she’s up. She’s down, I’m up. And I am very down, right now, sweetie. You saw me on one of the most embarrassing nights of my life.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think the way you embarrassed yourself with Liam was worse.”
She started to say something, then stopped. She sat at the table, still in her parka, sitting on Franny’s chair, Franny’s parka draped behind her.
“So I’m foolish,” she said.
“You really are,” I said. “I was your friend, and you did that. You won’t stop at anything, will you?”
“Don’t be angry,” she said. “I was drunk. Nothing was going right in my life.”
“You know who else got drunk recently and did something irreversible?” I said. It was cruel, but I couldn’t resist. I was sure that if she hadn’t said anything in all the time we’d been in the bar, it was because she didn’t know. “Frank,” I said. “Frank got drunk and drove into a stationary crane inside a construction area on I-95. Frank’s dead.”
She put her fingertips to her eyebrows, then slowly lowered her hands. I had made an impression on her. Something I’d said had surprised her as much as she’d surprised me. She was obviously stunned, but unlike me she wouldn’t have to wonder whether she was hearing all the story, or if it really happened the way I said.
But much more must have happened. He was asleep in their bed. Asleep next to Janey. And then there was a head-on crash, on I-95, and he was dead. The image of Frank standing on the beach on Barbara’s birthday came back to me: his holding the carp kite, as its big mouth swallowed air, heading toward the clouds. I had once stood beside Frank at the beach. The realization that I never would again made tears come to my eyes. Dara was already crying.
“His wife,” she said. “All those little babies.”
The bartender set two Bloody Marys in front of us and walked away. Franny was sitting at another table, talking to the man who had been reading a newspaper.
“Oh,” Dara said, reaching for my hand, “now you see. Now you know that he was suicidal. It was never me. It was Frank.”
“You know,” I said, “I can’t believe anything you say. That might be true, and it might not.”
“You do believe I loved him, don’t you?” she said, suddenly, brushing her hair off her cheek. “Because you did, too. We both loved him.”
I didn’t even think to ask what she meant. I looked at her for a long time, widening my eyes and slowly lowering them, trying as best I could to suggest an unphrased question. Some underlying question that existed between us, that would have to remain enigmatic, because it would be too painful, too powerful, to ever articulate. I couldn’t see myself in a mirror, but I could sense that I’d learned well from her; I thought that I was doing a good job. And I was doing it just to do it. I was doing it—and therefore I wondered if Dara had ever done it—just for the hell of it.
The bartender took Franny her drink, but Franny never came back to the table. Dara seemed—but then all I could say was that she seemed—heartbroken and dejected. She tried again to take my hand, but I withdrew it. Neither did I meet her own wide-eyed stare. The days when I would fall under her spell were over. I had done what I’d set out to accomplish. When I stood, I put a five-dollar bill on the table, leaving Dara and the untouched drink behind. Though I would see her again, it wouldn’t be for a very long time. And then when I did see her, I would always have the knowledge that that night in Provincetown I had effectively turned the tables. As much as if I had actually toppled the table—which for a little while I had been angry enough to do—I felt that the few things I said, and the way I refused to be drawn into her melodramas anymore, h
ad finally registered, and altered the dynamic between us for all time.
It didn’t occur to me until I went outside that I hadn’t asked the bartender where I might spend the night. It was dark, and cold, and I was suddenly exhausted. When I got back to the car, I was grateful that the dog moved into the driver’s seat and put his paws on me, and licked my face. For the sake of the dog, I would find a place to stay. Unlike Dara, I thought, I was a responsible person.
It would be difficult to explain why Dara and I went on to have a kind of friendship. It was a friendship—“relationship” is probably a better word, since the word “relationship” can mean almost anything, from people’s fondness for their dogs to their over-the-counter chitchat with the butcher—in which I listened in a desultory fashion and trusted absolutely nothing she said, and in which I considered anything involving Dara that transpired in front of my eyes to be entirely inconclusive.
You never really recover when a person’s death comes as a total shock. I don’t mean that the pain is less when you lose someone after a lingering illness—just that a startlingly unexpected death takes a different toll. I did believe Dara was horrified that Frank died. Whether she was right about Frank’s having a death wish, I’ll never know. But there were those few minutes in which I clearly had the upper hand, being the one to tell her about Frank’s death, and her acknowledgment of that—her own vulnerability—sealed something between us. I knew then what Liam must have meant about the closed bathroom door. If you didn’t know better—if you didn’t know that Dara herself was always Pandora’s box—the temptation would be simply to reach out and embrace her. I fought that urge in the bar, knowing by then that even letting her hold my hand, I could be subsumed in her cat’s cradle of lies and deceptions and half-truths, all so very well acted that, in the moment, you would believe whatever she wanted you to believe. You were never really on equal footing with Dara in any situation; though it might have seemed that you had volition, or even power, ultimately you remained at her mercy. She was the most manipulative person I have ever met.
I decided, that night in the Atlantic House, that I would never know the truth about her background, and neither would I ever know the truth about the present. I had fallen into a peculiar trap. I had been drawn in by her, persuaded that we were really talking, simply because we did so much of it—though most of it was one-way talk, and time and again, all I had done was listen. The more we talked, the more she dissembled. Finally, I doubted that it mattered whether certain things were real, or only real to Dara. When she cast them so that they had an impact on your life—and she was very, very good at tailoring stories for different recipients—the impact retained all of its power, even if you later found out you had been deceived; it was irrelevant whether something had been based on fact or fiction. Though she seemed open to possibilities, and though she solicited your views, and certainly your sympathy, and though she turned her attention equally to you, and your life, and your problems, actually there was no openness to anything on her part. I think she always had the whole script in her head, memorized; whatever you came up with would only be an improvisation—a harmless digression, something amusing for her to consider. The closer the bond you felt with her, the freer she became. But she stayed around, pretending devotion. Letting you think that you were wise, kind, necessary. Dara never really cared about anyone but Dara—and even there, I wonder if that wasn’t her most compelling role: to remain fixated on herself, when there was every chance she didn’t know any more than the rest of us what she truly believed. At the same time, she was a delicate creature; though paradoxically, she was also a creature who could not be tampered with. However carefully you steam open a sealed envelope, it will still appear puckered when you reseal it; pour an inch of water into a bottle you’ve taken a secret nip from, and the connoisseur will immediately taste the dilution. Children, who think adults have supernatural powers, are reluctant to learn that lesson, but eventually they do. Unless you’re very, very lucky—which, as everyone knows, we so rarely are when we really, truly need luck—those things we’ve done wrong will inevitably boomerang. With Dara, you could end up looking like the one who was unkind. Like the one who was the aggressor.
That night, in Provincetown, sitting at the bar before Dara and Dara came in, I had been wondering if Dara’s attempt to seduce Liam might in any way have been retribution for something I had done. In some baroque, cosmic way, might Dara have done it because I had steamed open letters from Derek to see if he had anything new to say, and then resealed and returned them? Had I done something, way back when, to deserve Dara? Had I put out signals that I was a sad orphan, an easy mark, a vulnerable person she could subsume, gathering strength from another person’s waning power? I had been so cautious about doing something that might offend my husband that the day I took the flask to Corolli’s bakery, I had watered the rum, though missing liquor was clearly nothing Bob would ever have noticed, or cared about. But I had been so taken with my own adventurousness that I had imagined he would become furious. We all have our little fictions about people. We guess at their sex lives, become titillated by their friends’ gossip about them, imagine what they look like doing something humbling, like puking out the night’s alcohol. For a long time, I’d tried to do just what I’d done all through my childhood; I’d tried to do what Bob’s family expected. But the people I’d selected had been the sort who would never accept me for who I really was. I’d selected people who’d retreated to their niche as quickly as animals in a zoo, burrowing into their phony caves, ducking behind their plastic foliage—people who were unadventurous, uncommunicative, unwilling. They weren’t bad people. They were just trapped, small-town people. And we could only live harmoniously as long as I believed what they believed.
I’d tried, for a while. I registered the fact that the triangular sign with the emblem of the leaping deer was most certainly an indication that a deer might cross the road in that place. More personal signs? The greeting cards they sent certainly must mean that they cared for me as much as the card, with its store-bought sentiment, said they cared. But I couldn’t sustain it. I couldn’t settle for so little. It wasn’t because of Dara that I stopped being willing to compromise; regardless of what Janey maintained, I had considered leaving before I met her. I had begun to feel constricted in my clothes. Isolated in bed, even if Bob and I had just made love. In fact, ironic as it would have been, that first day I met Tom Van Sant, I had considered flirting in return; taking him up on what he was offering. Letting the bushes sit there by the side of the road. Going off with someone just because he offered the possibility of excitement, just as Liam had thought about having sex with Dara because she offered the same possibility. Hearing about how that possibility nearly materialized, with Dara, hadn’t been easy. It had made me wonder if I would ever partake of anything as exciting as scattering flower seeds and falling to the ground to make love, passionately, impulsively, unwisely. It was in my mind when I made the stupid mistake of having sex with Derek—the idea that I could catch up with something I’d missed.
Because that was the way I thought of my life. My life was the form of my days, not the content. My life was one in which I took my lead from other people: I followed after them; I stifled my personality, trying to absorb their ideas, their enthusiasms. I have a clear image of myself as a little girl, trailing after my aunt Elizabeth like a human pull toy. I became her shadow, bumping along behind her. Which was the same thing I had done when I fixated on Bob in college. I didn’t need Bob the way I had been genuinely needy, as all children are, but I sensed that because I’d suffered such a blow, I had only so much energy in reserve—that time was running out, and that I should commit myself to someone and let him know I had by staying at his side. Bob had been flattered. He had thought I was a little too demonstrative, a bit excessive, but no woman before me had ever been so devoted. No one had ever professed great passion for Bob. It was a passionless family.
When Dara courted me, I underest
imated how disturbed she was, but I eventually realized that in deciding on me, she was doing a random thing. I wasn’t so silly as to be flattered, though I admit there were times I faltered, when I thought she might have genuinely understood the things I kept hidden, the things I repressed, the energy I forced myself to hold back. But she didn’t, because the life I was living was my own masquerade, and she was too busy with her own performance. I was never really a compliant, conservative, good girl. I had carried that over from my timid childhood, marrying Bob because he wouldn’t have the ability to see through me. I would have protective coloration forever. Those times I was almost persuaded to think that we might be soul mates, she and I, she always went too far. In my private conception of myself, I was wild but virtuous; in her private conception of herself, she knew that she was only desperate. It was desperation, and the best twist she could put on it was to make it appear to be devotion. I knew all about that. It was the way I had survived as a child. It was the path that had led me to Bob, and to Dell.
My mistake—and I flatter myself that it is not a mistake I would make as an older person—was in assuming I could have fun with Dara, learn from Dara, let Dara show them how women who believed in their talent and who felt a justifiable sense of entitlement acted, but still draw the line. There’s no such thing as drawing the line with a person who is really crazy. That person will take the line and lift it up and use it as a whip. She’ll laugh as she points out that your line was drawn with disappearing ink.
But my time with Dara wasn’t wasted. It wasn’t wasted because for the first time in my life, it made me think about what I wanted. If Janey thought that that resulted in the end of my marriage, then so be it. Like so many people, I had said many times what I didn’t want, but until I met her, I had thought the best I could do would be to hide who I really was; to live on the defensive. What I learned from Dara was that you could go some distance by not being any one clearly defined person. That if people thought they understood you, it was time to move on. Because if you didn’t move on, you would become a statue. You would stand in a park, and pigeons would shit on your head, and all the while the pigeons would be looking for new places to roost.
