Somebody's Daughter

by Rochelle B. Weinstein

  Lily enters the bedroom with a gold sarong around her hips. “I can hear you guys from down the hall,” she says. Everything about her is crisp and alert. Her eyes match the bright blue of her bikini, her hair frames her face, and her legs are toned and tanned from lacrosse.

  Seeing her twin sister makes Zoe erupt in a fresh bout of hysterics. “Look at her,” she cries. “Look at how perfect she is. Everyone loves her. They’re only friends with me because I’m her sister, or they’re mixing us up,” she shouts, pushing past us. “I hate all of you!”

  I grab a pair of sweatpants from my drawer, but it’s too late. By the time I reach her, the elevator chimes, and she’s gone.

  Lily turns to me and asks, “What did I do?”

  Bobby slips between us, dressed for the office.

  “Thanks a lot,” I say.

  “I told you I had a meeting with STK. Drew’s interest has them on their toes.”

  I am a pot about to boil over. “They’re here? In Miami?” I stomp my foot on the floor like Zoe did moments ago. “What the hell, Bobby? It’s Sunday. When were you going to tell me?”

  Lily’s eyes are confused. She shifts from one leg to the next in a pattern of worry.

  I block Bobby from walking out of the room. “Please go to her. Tell her. Tell her that’s not what we think of her.”

  His voice rises. “I have a meeting, Emma.”

  “There’s always a meeting!”

  He turns to Lily with a scowl on his face. “Where are you going, and where are the rest of your clothes?”

  She shifts her eyes and pulls her sarong up over her chest. “To Grace’s pool. I thought Zoe was coming with. And why are you being so mean to her?”

  He grabs his briefcase and leaves us. I circle back to Lily, who’s as perplexed as me. “Why are you guys so mad at each other?” she asks. “You’re starting to scare me.” It’s then I notice an overwhelming smell that assaults my nose and makes me nauseous.

  “You don’t need so much perfume!” I say.

  “Mom, are you and Daddy okay?”

  Heat colors my cheeks. “We’re fine,” I say. “It’s been a tough week.”

  It’s convincing, and she returns her attention to her phone.

  “Lily,” I begin, knowing it’s a crap shoot whether or not I can get my daughter to have a conversation before ten in the morning. “Is it true? Is it true what Zoe said about her friends?”

  Today’s my lucky day. I get the attentive, put-my-phone-in-my-beach-bag Lily. It’s like winning the teenage lottery. She plays with the knot on her wrap when she faces me. “She’s upset. We’re all friends. She and I are a package.”

  “That’s the problem, I think.”

  Lily stammers at first, “Mom, really, people like Zoe. She’s being sensitive.” She pauses and then continues with a little more vigor. “We get compared. All siblings do. Especially twins. When you look so much like someone else, kids need to find that one thing that makes you different. It doesn’t mean you’re better or worse. It gives them a point of reference. Kids need that kind of stuff. I don’t know.”

  “And what makes Zoe different from you?”

  Lily picks at her face when she’s uncomfortable. She’s vigorously picking again. I swat her fingers away until she faces me. “She’s quiet. Nothing earth-shattering. Just different from when she debates. I think the kids expect her to be that way in person.”

  How well I knew about hiding behind the guise of scripts and lines. Acting provided a platform to say and feel without having to think about what came next. There was a manual, a set of guidelines that told me what to wear, how to be, who to love. Only this mastery didn’t trickle into real life.

  Lily’s phone vibrates, signaling the girls are downstairs. I use the extra minutes waiting for the elevator to let her know I appreciate the way she supports her sister. “Tell Zoe we’ll be at Grace’s if she wants to come,” she says, stepping inside the elevator. “And Mom, they better find the person who did this. I don’t like seeing what this has done to her. I miss my sister.”

  “I miss her, too.”

  Like me, Zoe finds solace on the sand behind our hotel. I see her from our balcony, pacing the shoreline, and I get myself dressed to meet her. As I pass through the rear lobby doors, I spot Bobby and a group of men walking the grounds. I pick up speed and hide my face in the hopes they won’t notice me pass. I’m not fast enough.

  “Gentlemen,” he announces to the trio of expensive suits and extends his hand in my direction, “meet my better half, Emma.” I slink to his side, and the STK group appraises me. I’m seething, forcing a smile on my face as he introduces me. Reluctantly, I offer my hand.

  “You have a stunning hotel here,” says one of the men, short and overweight, a nasty cigar dripping from his lips. “Tell me about the purple flowers,” he says, leering at me a little too long, smacking his mouth around the vile smoke.

  When I’m asked about the bougainvillea, I’m usually happy to engage.

  “Tell them, Emma,” Bobby urges.

  Sucking in my breath and blistering rage, I steady my gaze on the pudgy cheeks of the man who goes by the name of Frederick. “The elder Mrs. Ross cherished her vines. They’re not actually flowers, Mister . . .”

  I stop myself until he says, “Summer. Like the season.”

  “Mr. Summer,” I repeat, displeased with the insult to such a glorious time of the year. I walk toward the spidery vines, and the group of men follow. The last thing I want to do is give the men who are about to take my hotel a lecture on botany, but there are some duties I can’t avoid.

  I grasp one of the vines, and the group gathers around for a closer look. Bobby enjoys watching. For a second, I see a familiar kindness in his eyes, but it’s not enough to erase the recent divide.

  “See here,” I begin again, holding up the vine. “Most people are confused about the flower.” I point at the vibrant color spilling off the stems. “The pink is actually the leaf.” I carefully peel the colorful petals away to reveal my find. “The bougainvillea flower is the small, white circle.” I hold it out for them to see. I’m being polite so they don’t notice how I am patronizing their ignorance. “These vines have been here for generations.” And I stare at Bobby hard when I say, “They meant everything to Mrs. Ross.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Summer says. Then he turns to his lackey, a string bean of a man who’s swiping an iPad and recording whatever Frederick Summer says. “The vines are collateral damage, folks. We’ll be sending in a team of landscapers to spruce this place up.”

  I don’t know what’s worse. His breath on my face, or his blatant disregard for our home.

  Bobby abruptly turns his cheek, afraid to meet my gaze. He’s leading the group back inside, but he’s not quick enough. I’m in his face, and guests are strolling past us. The words are jammed between my teeth, masked by a gritty smile. “While you attend to your business of ruining our hotel, I’ll be out back with Zoe . . . our daughter.”

  He stops me with his eyes. “Not now.” But I’m stormy mad and don’t care who hears. And as I’m about to lay into him some more, Zoe’s thin, narrow frame heads in our direction.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” I say between clenched teeth.

  “Who are they?” Zoe asks as we walk back through the pool area and down the steps to the beach. I’m irritated and short when I tell her, “Nobody.” My brain is shouting, Assholes.

  The sun is strong, and the fresh air feels good. I roll up my sweatpants and let my legs breathe. Jen Ross, the well-known mommy blogger and no relation to the hotel Rosses, objects to sweatpants for any woman, but I’m convinced she’d make an exception for me.

  We approach one of our private beachside cabanas with Ross towels thrown across the quilted cushions. Zoe’s side is covered in magazines and the book she’s reading, Joshua: A Brooklyn Tale. The quote on her towel reads, Feels like Home. Mine says, Sink Your Feet into the Sand. At once, Kinsley approaches and asks if we need
anything. His blond hair is pulled off his face in a man bun. I’d like to tell him we need lots of things, none of which he can give, and instead ask for a pitcher of water and some fruit.

  When enough time passes between Zoe flipping the pages and closing me out, I know to push harder. “I’m sorry you had to hear Daddy and me arguing. What I said, you took it out of context.” Zoe keeps reading, or pretending to read. “Talk to me,” I plead.

  She sets down the faces of Orlando Bloom and whomever he’s dating at the moment. The beach begins to fill up with chairs and umbrellas. Locals walk along the shore, and a handful of guests test the cool water. The winds pick up, and our thoughts are carried through the breeze. Something about the water slapping the sand and the crackling of the crispy white foam relaxes me.

  Kinsley returns with the fruit and a basket of chocolate croissants. He knows the girls’ favorite snacks and always tries to please them. He sets the tray down and tells me how excited his mother is for the upcoming wedding. I politely listen, asking about her health, while Zoe makes her way to the beach.

  “I’m sorry.” He searches the sand. “What you and Mr. Ross must be going through.”

  I catch his eyes as they travel from the ground to Zoe’s back. The sun glistens on his hair, the strands a bright golden hue. It’s been a week since we learned of Zoe’s tryst. It was bound to make it around the hotel. He recognizes my quiet and his mistake. “I’m sorry. It’s wrong for me to go on about the wedding.”

  He walks away from me, embarrassed. “Wait,” I call out.

  He stops and turns around.

  “Don’t be sorry, Kinsley. I know how much you love the girls. This is tough for all of us.”

  “There must be some way to straighten it all out,” he says.

  “I wish there was.” I pause. “Knowing you care means a lot. Especially to Zoe.”

  “She’s like my baby sister. I watched her grow up.”

  “Thank you for caring, Kinsley.”

  He holds on to my eyes before turning again and marching away.

  I return to watching Zoe. When she reaches the slushy sand, she buries her toes in the shallow water. It fans out around her, and the waves crackle with laughter. I don’t immediately follow her. I let her think this through, find her center, as I try to sort through mine.

  Soon I’m off the chair. Love and devotion carry me in Zoe’s direction. She looks up as I approach. “Let’s walk.” Shoulder to shoulder we shuffle along the sand. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Everyone likes her more than they like me. She’s perfect. And she’s prettier.”

  The girls are identical twins, genetically wired to be clones of one another. And because of that, I’m genuinely concerned with my daughter’s perception of perfect, a superficial assessment based on external miscues.

  “You’re down on yourself. None of what you’re saying is true.”

  “We’re always compared,” she says. “It’s nothing new. One of us is friendlier, so the other is a bitch. One has better grades, and the other one is dumb. Even if the difference is so slight. People make it more than it is. Now everyone has that thing to tell us apart.”

  “You both have wonderful qualities. You’re different and the same in many ways. Watch each other. Take the best qualities and learn from the not-so-good ones. Do you have any idea of the relationship the two of you are creating? How it will take you long and far into your futures? There’s no friend in the world who can provide you with as much love and understanding as your sister. Even I can never come close to sharing what the two of you have.”

  “She’s always been more popular. Boys have always wanted to be her friend.”

  “I don’t believe that,” I say. “You never know what people are thinking. Everyone has their stuff. Boys will always be there. I promise you. When the time is right. Don’t rush it.”

  Zoe’s body follows even when her mind resists. I don’t even have to look at her to know she’s torn. I feel it in her limp fingers. When she opens her mouth, it’s an unrecognizable voice. “Why did this happen to me?” she asks.

  I stop and rest my hands on her shoulders. We are face-to-face. It’s unbearable to read the sadness in her cheeks. “I don’t know, Zoe. But I know we don’t give up. It sucks, and it hurts, but we keep fighting back.”

  I force her to keep moving. If we keep moving, we’ll reach the end of this mess. The air will buoy us; the water will soften the blow. Zoe half walks, half drags herself through the brash waves. Her limbs carry her, though I’m the propeller that guides her forward.

  “Something like this would never happen to you.”

  I stop and force her to look in my eyes. “Is that what you think?”

  She searches the sand below. Her toes draw lines and shapes, things that don’t make sense.

  “You’re wrong,” I continue. “It can happen to anybody. And it does.”

  This gets Zoe’s attention. She looks up, and her eyes fill with questions. A wave bursts into us and soaks our legs. We don’t move; we stand there. Drops of ocean speckle our feet.

  “Have you ever wanted to be someone else?” she cries. Her shoulders slump forward, and in one fluid movement we collide into one. “I was somebody else that night.”

  I hold her harder than I’ve ever held on before. I hold her to break the pain away, to hurl it out to sea piece by piece. If I hold her hard enough and long enough, the bad stuff will disappear into the cloudless sky while the wind takes it far, far away.

  “I understand, Zoe,” I whisper in her ear.

  “I liked being somebody else,” she cries. “I liked kissing him . . . I liked . . .”

  “Until it stopped feeling good,” I finish for her. I let that pierce her skin before she continues. She backs away and leads us south along the beach. She makes sure I’m by her side and not trailing behind.

  “You felt free,” I say. “Maybe you were a little curious.”

  She doesn’t refute anything I’m saying. Tears slowly drip from her eyes, the kind that are governed by relief, not pain. They make her look defenseless and small.

  “And you did something out of character,” I continue. “Something you would’ve answered, had you ever been asked, ‘I’d never do something like that.’”

  She tries to hide her face.

  We stop just before our chairs, and I raise her chin to me. “Listen to me, Zoe.” The desperate need to repair this hinges on my next sentence. “I understand.”

  “You can’t,” she replies, her eyes narrowing in disbelief, yanking herself away from me. “No one gets it unless they’ve lived it.”

  I am bursting inside. My own brokenness about to break through.

  We fall against the cabana’s cushions; the canopy hides us from view. Zoe shifts awkwardly on the lounge. “It happens, Zoe . . . all the time . . . to people just like me and you.”

  “Not to you, Mom,” she responds, in that lofty voice that teenagers have perfected. “You would never be so stupid.”

  My mind races through scenarios, closing in on the one that I could best convey to her. The truth has been tucked inside me for too long, but Zoe needs to understand she wasn’t the only one who got caught up. She needs to know that we are all capable. Holding it in for this long has had one result: it has fueled my shame, stunted my growth. I’ll tell shame who’s boss. Lift the lid. Set it free.

  “Zoe.” This time louder and with more might. She turns from the honeydew she’s about to toss in her mouth because she hears it, too, and the confession trickles out of me. “I was someone else.”

  Her silence hushes the entire beach. The breeze seems to disappear; the waves file out to sea. Even the children’s laughter ceases to skip through the air. She releases her fork, falls back into the chair, and drapes the towel around her shoulders. “I wasn’t quite your age,” I begin. “I was older, in college.”

  I snap my fingers. “That’s how quickly everything changed. One minute I was drinking, a lot, and the next I w
as doing something I’d never thought I’d do, with someone I didn’t even care about.” The admission knocks the breath out of me. She stares at me strangely. I can’t tell if she’s disgusted or if our souls have just found each other.

  “Granted, I was older, but the feelings . . . my God, I stuffed them away. They’re the same. And they grew too big for me to handle. You were called names. So was I. But no one criticized me more than I did. The self-loathing affected my whole life. I quit acting, something I loved. And I blamed my behavior on outside influences. I made mistakes. Trust me. Big ones.”

  She’s quiet. Too quiet. She gazes up from the towel she’s studying. “I’m not ashamed of what I did with Price, Mom. I’m ashamed of the video. Not what I did.”

  A breeze sweeps into us, and I wipe sand from her lip. A simple gesture before the big reveal. “I know.”

  She looks at me funny, not understanding.

  “I couldn’t see it at first. Maybe I didn’t want to. I should’ve. I made it about me. And my experience. You see, Zoe, you’re stronger than I ever was. I lived with a lot of self-loathing for many, many years. I still wish you had waited until you were a little older to experiment, but I’m glad you don’t feel what I felt.”

  “I don’t. I promise.” Her face is lighter, like a load has been lifted. Her voice is less strained.

  She pulls the towel tighter around her. The folds cover the quote, and all that’s staring out is Feels. “This is kinda weird,” she says, turning toward the water and away from my face. Our parallels collide. Sure it’s weird. But I feel us joining together in a way I hadn’t felt in weeks.

  “You need to trust that you’re not alone. Things happen to each of us that not everyone understands. You think you won’t make it through, but you will.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not on the Internet.”

  “No, I’m not on the Internet,” I say, thankful my indiscretions had never been broadcast to the world, “but Zoe, I respect you for getting up every day and going to school and for taking ownership of what you’ve done.”

  This gives her satisfaction.