Gemini

by Geonn Cannon

  From the first day of pre-school on, Molly had treated the interlopers with a kind of wary acceptance. As far as she was concerned, everyone else was a freak. Everyone else was a half-person.

  April had taken the opposite approach. She was desperate to be accepted by the other kids. Where Molly would be aching to get home to the solitude of their backyard by the end of the day, April was more than willing to invite other kids to their house for after-school playing.

  Molly treated these guests like the invaders they were. She ignored them, played on the swings by herself, or sat on the porch with a book. The other kids didn’t mind; as long as April was willing to play, her freaky sister could do whatever she wanted.

  Over the years, Molly had grown up and grown to accept outsiders. She made friends, established relationships that had nothing to do with April. But every now and then, she would look at someone April knew, someone who had spent time with her sister and had exclusive information Molly would never know, and she hated them for it. She felt that somehow, knowing how April had spent some random Saturday somehow made them closer to April than she was.

  Now, she was faced with the first interloper in almost five years. The first person to make Molly’s blood boil, the first person who made her want to stamp her feet and pound the wall like a five-year-old. Robin Fray-zur. She was probably Canadian, would probably snap your head off if you slipped an extra ‘i’ into the name and pronounce it the American way. Stupid woman with her stupid oysters and...

  She looked up and noticed Shane was staring at her. “What?” she snapped.

  “You just chased Tatum out of the kitchen with a goddamn knife, Moll. Are you feeling all right?”

  Molly pushed away from the wall and stalked back to her station. “Guy deserved it.”

  “Be that as it may. Chased out of the kitchen. Goddamn knife. I’ll draw you a diagram, if you’d like.”

  Molly leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. Shane reached out and rubbed Molly’s back between her shoulder blades. “You lost someone important to you,” she said quietly. “Maybe you shouldn’t be back at work yet.”

  “Where should I be, Shane?” Molly asked. “Home alone? Staring at the walls? Just...” She sighed and realized Shane probably had a point. Hadn’t she just been leaning against the wall fuming about a woman for no reason other than she’d known her sister? Her temper, short at the best of times, had been beyond hair-trigger just now. She looked up and shrugged in defeat. “All right. You have a point. Keep me in check, all right?”

  Shane nodded reluctantly and dropped her hand from Molly’s back. “Lilly finished her order, so I put her on the grilled oysters.”

  “Good,” Molly said. “Good, that was...smart. Thank you.”

  “No problem. Now I’m going to go finish that tilapia before you come after me with a butcher knife.”

  Molly smiled and bumped her elbow against Shane’s. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and looked at the pass-through. Another green slip was hanging from the silver roundabout, so she snagged it, eyed the order, and set to work.

  She found herself in a groove, seconds replaced by rainbow trout and minutes supplanted by Dungeness crab. She hardly noticed when Lloyd appeared in the pass-through and said, “Molly. Yo, Molly. Someone wants to give their compliments to the chef.”

  “God,” Molly said. She finished what she was doing and said, “Hold on.” She wiped her hands on the apron tied around her waist and turned to see who wasn’t busy. “Lilly. Could you finish this shrimp scampi for me?”

  “Sure, babe,” Lilly said. She took Molly’s place as Molly headed for the door. She hated “compliments to the chef.” She had to stand there like a moron while some tourist complimented her on how well the lobster was cooked and how she was an artist. It got damned tiring, especially when she was in a groove like...

  Her mind ground to a halt when she pushed through the door and saw Robin Fraser standing in front of her. The other woman forced a smile and said, “Hi.”

  “I didn’t do yours,” Molly blurted. She reached down and toyed with the hem of her chef’s jacket as she waited for inspiration to strike her.

  “Oh. That’s, uh...that’s okay. I wasn’t really going to compliment you. Oh, I–I mean...it was good, don’t get me wrong.”

  “Lilly,” Molly said.

  “What? No, Robin. Robin Fraser.”

  Molly gestured over her shoulder. “No, Lilly is the one who made your oysters.”

  Robin glanced at the kitchen door, which was currently swinging closed. “Oh. Yeah. Well, they were very good. I really just wanted to talk to you.”

  “I...” She cleared her throat. “I thought we were supposed to set up a meeting or something later?”

  Robin shrugged. “I don’t even know if I’m staying on the island after tonight.”

  “Oh,” Molly said. She tried not to look too relieved. “Okay.”

  "But I would like to get to know you better. I knew your sister so well..."

  “You really don’t know anything about me.”

  Molly reached over and hugged her sister. “How can you say that?”

  April, with the sad eyes, had she been crying? “I know you better than anyone, Ape. Silly ape with the down-hair.” She tugged her sister’s curls, and they both laughed. But that sadness remained in April’s eyes. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I used to think,” April said, “that you were on my side.”

  “I am!” Molly, shocked at the accusation, sat up.

  “I know,” April shrugged and slipped out of the bed. They'd been “camping out,” like they used to, but Molly couldn’t help thinking they were getting a little too old to share a bed. She walked to the window seat and sat down. “But if I can’t tell you something, then how can I possibly tell anyone else? How can I tell Mom and Dad?”

  “Tell them what? You can tell me anything.”

  April turned her eyes to Molly’s. In the second before she spoke, Molly felt a fear she would remember for years. The fear she knew what April was about to say and an intense desire to keep her from saying it. Saying it out loud would make it real. “Ape–” she started, but it was too late.

  “I’m in love with someone.”

  “No, I don’t care...”

  “A girl.” She closed her eyes and turned back to the window. The bedroom was dark, the moon the only light they could see, and it felt like a vast chasm had just opened between the bed where Molly sat and the window seat where April was hugging her knees.

  “You should stay,” Molly said, surprising herself.

  Tiny wrinkles appeared between Robin’s eyebrows. “Uh...”

  “I want to talk to you about Ape. Ab–about my sister.”

  Robin face relaxed and she smiled. “Oh. Well...okay. I’d like that a lot.”

  Molly wasn’t quite so optimistic, but she forced a smile and nodded. “Give me a call. Tonight. We’ll...set something up tonight.”

  “When do you get off here?”

  “I get off at three. But... shit. Clifton wants me to interview potential replacements for Tatum. That’s going to take my afternoon, and I won’t be able to meet you until at least eleven.”

  “No, eleven is fine.” She smiled and shrugged. “April and I were kind of night-owls when we didn’t have to be up for school.”

  Don’t think about what that implies, Molly told herself. She crossed her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together in a tight smile.

  “I’ll call you,” Robin promised. “Tonight around eleven.”

  “Sounds good,” Molly lied. She watched Robin turn around and leave the restaurant. Robin paused at the bar to thank Clifton for the great meal and then headed out into the sunshine. Molly laced her fingers behind her neck and tugged forward, trying to loosen the tight muscles there as she returned to the kitchen to relieve Shane.

  As she walked into the kitchen, Shane was stretching across the counter to pass a plate to Lloyd. She saw Molly
coming and said, “The Bride returns.”

  Molly frowned.

  Shane nodded at the knife rack with her chin. “You know, the knife? You have blonde hair, so does Uma Thurman, Quentin Taranti–” She cut herself off with a wave of her hand. “Never mind. How was the love-fest?”

  “Not for me,” Molly said. She tapped Lilly on the shoulder and said, “The customer wanted you to know she loved the oysters.”

  Lilly smiled, and Molly slid into place next to Shane. Shane looked at her for a moment and said, “Are you okay?”

  Molly nodded and said, “Stop asking me that. What have we got here?”

  “Seared prawns,” Shane said.

  “Great. I’ll get started on the prawns; you take care of the black beans?”

  “Done, babe.”

  “Thanks, hon.” Molly said. She picked up a knife, a different blade than the one she’d used to chase down Tatum, and tried to get back into the groove.

  ##

  “You have a sister, right?”

  April’s smile faded a bit before she shrugged. If Robin hadn’t spent the past few months sharing a bed with her, she never would have noticed the quick expression of distaste. “Yeah,” April said. “But she’s miles away.”

  April’s English classes were doing family histories, taking those old stories the kids had heard a million times and turning them into something marvelous. April was sitting on the edge of her desk, and Robin, who had a free hour, was sitting in April’s chair with her feet up on the desk, watching her work with her students. Most of the kids in school accepted Robin and April were friends, and as far as they knew the rumors had never gone beyond that. Robin loved watching April with her students. From Shuffle, Shuffle, Boom to the family histories discussions, it was never dull in Ms. Page’s English class.

  “So forget about my sister,” April said. “Tell us about yours.”

  “Well, I was going to say, you know what I’m going through,” the student continued.

  Later that night in bed, Robin had kissed the back of April’s neck. They were spooned together under the blankets, naked and spent from their lovemaking. “You’ve never mentioned your sister.”

  “I don’t like talking about her.”

  “Rough memories?”

  April shrugged, and Robin kissed her shoulder.

  “It’s not like I hate her,” April said. “I still love her. We call each other, send cards at Christmas. But...well, we kind of had a big blow-out when I left. It’s going to take a lot for us to move beyond it.”

  “You’ll never move beyond it if you don’t take the first step.”

  April made a non-committal noise and drew Robin’s hand between her breasts. Robin curled her fingers and felt April’s heartbeat against her palm. “Can we not talk about it?”

  “Sure,” Robin whispered. She slid closer and bent her knees. “You wanna be the big spoon for a while?”

  “No,” April said. “Cuddle me.”

  “Sure,” Robin whispered. “Sure, baby.”

  Robin stood on the boardwalk outside of Gail’s and watched the water in the harbor. In the handful of conversations they’d had about April’s sister, she had gleaned only two facts: April was the older sister, and they were both blondes. Beyond that, April had been loath to tell her anything. “She’s not a part of my life,” April always said. “Can we just leave it at that?”

  “Did she do something?” Robin asked. “Did you do something?”

  April always took Robin’s hands and said, “Please, I don’t want to talk about her.”

  And then April kissed her knuckles, Robin kissed April’s lips, and they both forgot about sisters and hard conversations for a while longer. But now she knew the truth. Molly was a spitfire, beautiful and quick to temper, just like April (“The God’s-honest truth, and you know I love you, is that you’re weak, Robin.”). And a twin. A twin! How could April have neglected to mention that? Having a sister was one thing, having a twin was a whole different animal. To ignore your twin the way April had...she couldn’t image what kind of fallout they might have had.

  Of course, since they were both apparently obstinate and quick tempered, she could only imagine what might happen if they had a difference of opinion with one another.

  She pulled her coat tighter around herself and again wondered how wise it was to get closer to this mirror image of her lover. Former lover, she corrected herself. She closed her eyes. They’d barely said two words to one another, and even that had been almost physically painful. To look into eyes just like April’s, to hear a voice just like April’s, and see not a hint of recognition, not a whisper of the love they shared. It was like losing her all over again every time she looked into those beautiful green eyes.

  “I’m not going to survive this island,” she whispered with her eyes still closed.

  ##

  Molly leaned against the wooden staircase that led up to the restaurant’s second story. She held a cigarette between her fingers, a few steps away from the open kitchen door so she could rush in if there were any emergencies to contend with. She held the cigarette in front of her face, watching the embers burn and the smoke rise into the night. She closed her eyes and took a drag, shuffled her feet on the concrete.

  She had spent the afternoon, usually her free time to run errands, to interview chefs in a back booth of the restaurant. She didn’t know where Clifton had found so many applicants in so little time. Gail’s was a popular restaurant; maybe people had been lining up waiting for a spot to open.

  Molly tried to focus on the résumés she read, but it was a lost cause. All three interviews blurred together; there had been two white men and a black woman, and she couldn't remember who had said what. Her mind was filled with thoughts of Robin Fraser.

  After the last interview ended, she had just enough time for a cigarette before she had to start dinner prep. She could hear the sounds of Gail’s kitchen still rolling on behind her. To her left, she could hear kids from the high school laughing in Joe Lack’s. The smells of both restaurants mingled where she stood. Pizza plus seafood shouldn’t have been quite so complementary, but it was a comfort to her. Maybe because she had spent so many nights on this spot, smoking a cigarette and letting herself get so used to the smell that it was almost a balm. And tonight it was even more comforting. The smell, this spot, was something familiar after a week of having her world tilted on the axis.

  It was a nice, quiet night on the island, everything the same, everything calm. The heat of the day had faded, leaving only a gentle breeze coming in off the water. Everything was fine.

  “Hey,” Shane said from behind her.

  Molly turned and saw Shane was out of uniform, in a loose white blouse. Shane gestured at the cigarette. “Got another?”

  Molly reached into her pocket, withdrew the pack, and held it out. Shane took one of the cigarettes and nodded her thanks as she sat on the stairs behind Molly. She pulled a silver lighter from her pants pocket, lit the tip, and leaned back with a slow inhale. “Who’s watching the kitchen?” Molly asked.

  “Lilly’s in charge until you clock in. No new customers in the past ten minutes, so Clif let me skip out early. God, I sure needed it after today.”

  She took a drag and said, “Seriously, Molly, what the hell was that? Firing Jim in the middle of a rush?”

  “He deserved it.”

  “Yeah, granted, he’s kind of a flake. I don’t miss him. But Christ, Molly. You chased him out of the kitchen with a knife.”

  Molly took a drag on her cigarette and said, “I chased Jim Tatum out of the kitchen with a knife.” The corners of her mouth quaked slightly.

  Shane saw the smile trying to rise and snickered. “A filet knife.”

  “Chased him right out of there like Lizzie Borden.”

  Shane laughed out loud and covered her eyes.

  Molly sagged against the railing of the stairs and shook her head. “God. I must have looked like a madwoman.”

  Shane w
iped the back of her hand under her eyes. “Well, it was definitely a morale booster. Everyone was on their best behavior today. No burnt fish, no orders any later than absolutely necessary. Maybe you should have a breakdown every morning.”

  Molly’s smile wavered and then died.

  “God. Shit, Molly, I didn’t mean...”

  “Yeah, you did. You’re right, too. I’ve been moody lately. I haven’t been myself.”

  “Well, you have,” Shane said. “But like yourself on a bad day.”

  Molly was about to reply when someone started walking towards them. He angled towards the stairs instead of the entrance of Joe Lack’s, so Shane pulled her feet back so he could get by. “Evening,” Shane said.

  “Ladies,” Neil said. He smiled and continued up to his apartment.

  They waited until he had unlocked the apartment door and disappeared inside before Shane spoke. “Who is that guy?”

  “Neil Miser. Friend of Clifton,” Molly said. “When Clif’s father owned the place, he lived up there. Clif has his own house, so when he inherited the place, the apartment was sitting empty. New source of income.” She shrugged and finished her cigarette. She dropped it to the ground and smashed it with her foot. “I should go on in.”

  Shane stood but didn’t block Molly’s way into the kitchen. “I don’t have a sister, Molly, but I know enough to understand I’ll never know how you feel right now. You may not have had the best relationship with her, but she was part of you. And the fact that she’s gone now...it’s...you’ve gotta be hurting bad. I want you to know I’m here if you need anything. Just as a friend.”

  Molly embraced Shane and said, “Thanks.” She patted Shane’s back, smelled her subtle cologne under a day of fish smells. Before she quite realized what was happening, there were tears on the shoulder of Shane’s smock and she felt her knees beginning to fail.

  Shane guided her to the stairs, and they both sat. Shane’s hand made slow circles on Molly’s back, and she whispered, “It’s okay. You need to let it out.”