Impulsively, I pulled out my cell phone and called up the menu for Dwight’s number. It rang twice, then a recording informed me that “The wireless customer you have called is not available. Please try your call later.”
I could call his pager, of course, but what was the point? Just to tell him I’d arrived safely? Or to ask him his hat size?
It wasn’t as if we’d be murmuring sweet nothings in each other’s ear, and he’d think I was crazy if I said the only reason I’d called was because the moon was making me lonesome for the sound of his voice.
When Dwight suggested that we get married, we had sensibly decided that long-standing friendship and newfound sex were all that we needed for a stable marriage. I told myself it would be childish and greedy if I started whining now because we didn’t have stardust and moonglow, too. Nevertheless, as I gathered my bags and trudged on up the steps, I couldn’t help sighing for all those times I’d been so deeply, desperately, insanely in love that I didn’t care whether or not the guy thought I was crazy for calling.
The minute I opened the condo door, I realized someone had been there in the two hours I was gone. Lights were on in every room.
“June?” I called. “May?”
No answer.
It seemed to me that there were now fewer jeans in the stacks piled atop the couch and chairs. Two more pairs of heels graced the cabinet that held the television and DVD player, and the empty hangers hooked over a floor lamp now held long black skirts and white blouses with ruffles around the neck and cuffs. It was as if the twins had come home from some dressy occasion, changed into play clothes, and gone off again.
On the dining table was a note:
Twelve? It was now only eight-thirty.
In my bedroom, a red light on the answering machine blinked for attention. “Would whoever gets this tell May or June to call Carla?”
I finished unpacking, took a long shower, then got into bed with a book, intending to read until they returned.
I think I lasted all of three pages.
The sound of the front door closing woke me. There was a moment of disorientation, and before I could clear my head, the bed was full of arms and legs, bear hugs and bounces.
“Welcome to the High Country!”
“You should’ve let us know.”
“We’d’ve straightened the place up.”
“Mom said—”
“We heard—”
“Are you really?”
One of them grabbed my left hand.
“Oh my God! It’s true!”
“Look at the size of that rock!”
“Mom said Christmas?”
“Can we be in the wedding?”
“Please?”
Laughing, I disentangled myself and sat up. And did an immediate double take.
All their lives, the twins had been so identical that even their own brother had trouble telling them apart. When they were five, though, May fell on a piece of broken glass and wound up with a tiny half-moon scar in front of her right earlobe that was so faint outsiders almost never noticed it. Family members were immensely grateful.
Their faces were still photocopies of each other, but their shoulder-length dark hair had undergone radical changes since last I saw them. Both heads were now covered in short curls. One was the color of a new penny, the other was a deep dark purple, almost the same shade as an eggplant.
They looked at each other and laughed at my reaction.
“We’ll dye it back if you let us be in the wedding,” Eggplant said with a grin.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I was having too much fun picturing Doris or Nadine’s reaction to vaguely punk bridesmaids. On a one-to-ten scale for mild acts of rebellion, with green or fuchsia Mohawks, three facial piercings, and two visible tattoos as a ten, this barely qualified as a one, but my prissy sisters-in-law would see it as the first banana peel down that slippery slope to depravity.
“You look darling,” I said, thinking again how the word “cute” must have been coined with these two in mind: small, compact bodies, upturned noses, the bubbly personality of cheerleaders, which indeed they’d been throughout high school. “Has y’all’s mother seen you yet?”
“No, and don’t tell her. Please? We want to surprise them when she and Dad come up next month.”
“Oh, they’ll be surprised, all right.” I looked at Copper Top. “May, right?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Although,” said June, “we’re not really sure. I could be May for all we know.”
