Silent Partner

“Thank you so much for coming, Alex. It really means a lot to me.”

“I’m glad.”

She took my hand. Hers was shaking.

I said, “Go on. You were talking about how similar the two of you were.”

“Carbon copies,” she said. “And inseparable. We loved each other with a gut intensity. Lived for each other, did everything together, cried hysterically when anyone tried to separate us, until finally no one tried. We were more than sisters- more than twins. Partners. Psychic partners- sharing a consciousness. As if each of us could only be whole in the presence of the other. We had our own languages, two of them: a spoken one, and one based on gestures and secret looks. We never stopped communicating- even in our sleep we’d reach out and touch each other. And we shared the same intuitions, the same perceptions.”

She stopped. “This probably sounds strange to you. It’s hard to explain to someone who’s never had a twin, Alex, but believe me, all those stories you hear about synchrony of sensation are true. They were certainly true for us. Even now, sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night with an ache in my belly or a cramp in my arm. I’ll call Elmo and find out Shirlee had a rough night.”

“It doesn’t sound strange. I’ve heard it before.”

“Thanks for saying that.” She kissed my cheek. Tugged her earlobe. “When we were little, we had a wonderful life together. Mummy and Daddy, the big apartment on Park Avenue- all those rooms and cupboards and walk-in closets. We loved to hide- loved to hide from the world. But our favorite place was the summer house in Southampton. The property had been in our family for generations. Acres of grass and sand. A big old white-shingled monstrosity with creaky floors, wicker furniture that was coming apart, dusty old hooked rugs, a stone fireplace. It sat on top of a bluff that overlooked the ocean and sloped down to the water in a couple of places. Nothing elegant- just a few tortured old pines and tarry dunes. The beach hooked around in a crescent shape, all wide and wet and full of clam spouts. There was a dock with rowboats moored to it- it danced in the waves, slapped against all that warped wood. It scared us, but in a nice way- we loved to be scared, Shirl and me.

“In autumn, the sky was always this wonderful shade of gray with silvery-yellow spots where the sun broke through. And the beach was full of horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs and jellyfish and strings of seaweed that would wash up in huge tangles. We’d throw ourselves into the tangles, wrap ourselves in it, all slimy, and pretend we were two little mermaid princesses in silken gowns and pearl necklaces.”

She stopped, bit her lip, said, “Off to the south side of the property was a swimming pool. Big, rectangular, blue tiles, sea horses painted on the bottom. Mummy and Daddy never really decided whether they wanted an indoor or outdoor pool, so they compromised and built a pool house over it- white lattice with a retractable roof and devil ivy running through the lattice. We used it a lot during the summer, getting all salty in the ocean, then washing it off in fresh water. Daddy taught us to swim when we were two and we learned quickly- took to it like little tadpoles, he used to say.”

Another pause to catch her breath. A long stretch of silence that made me wonder if she’d finished. When she spoke again, her voice was weaker.

“When summer was over, no one paid much attention to the pool. The caretakers didn’t always clean it properly and the water would get all green with algae, give off a stench. Shirl and I were forbidden to go there, but that only made it more appealing. The moment we were free we’d run straight there, peek through the lattice, see all that gooky water and imagine it was a lagoon full of monsters. Hideous monsters who could rise from the muck and attack us at any moment. We decided the smell was monsters filling the water with their excretions- monster poop.” She smiled, shook her head. “Pretty repulsive, huh? But exactly the kind of fantasies children get into, in order to master their fears, right?”

I nodded.

“The only problem, Alex, was that our monsters materialized.”

She wiped her eyes, stuck her head out the window and breathed deeply.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. I promised myself I’d maintain.” More deep breathing. “It was a cold day. A gray Saturday. Late autumn. We were three years old, wore matching wool dresses with thick, knitted leggings and brand-new patent-leather shoes that we’d pleaded with Mummy to let us wear on condition that we wouldn’t scratch them on the sand. It was our last weekend on the Island until spring. We’d stayed longer than we should have- the house had poor heating and the chill was seeping right up from the ocean, that kind of sharp East Coast chill that gets right into your bones and stays there. The sky was so clogged with rain clouds it was almost black- had that old-penny smell a coastal sky gives off before a storm.

“Our driver had gone into town to fill the car with gas and have it tuned before the drive back to the city. The rest of the help was busy closing up the house. Mummy and Daddy were sitting in the sun-room, wrapped in shawls, having a last martini. Shirl and I were off gallivanting from room to room, unpacking what had been packed, unfastening what had been fastened, giggling and teasing and just getting generally underfoot. Our mischief level was especially high because we knew we wouldn’t be back for a while and were determined to squeeze every bit of fun out of the day. Finally, the help and Mummy had enough of us. They bundled us in heavy coats and put galoshes over our new shoes and sent us with a nanny to collect shells.

“We ran down to the beach, but the tide was rising and it had washed away all the shells, and the seaweed was too cold to play with. The nanny started flirting with one of the gardeners. We snuck away, headed straight for the pool house.

“The gate was closed but not locked- the lock lay on the ground. One of the caretakers had begun to drain and clean the pool- there were brushes and nets and chemicals and clumps of algae all around the deck- but he wasn’t there. He’d forgotten to lock it. We snuck in. It was dark inside- only squares of black sky coming in through the lattice. The filthy water was being suctioned through a garden hose that ran out to a gravel sump. About three quarters of it remained- acid-green and bubbling, and stinking worse than it ever had, sulfur gas mixed in with all the chemicals the caretaker had dumped in. Our eyes started burning. We began to cough, then broke out into laughter. This was really monstrous- we loved it!

“We began pretending the monsters were rising from the gook, started chasing each other around the pool, shrieking and giggling, making monster faces, going faster and faster and working ourselves up into a frenzy- a hypnotic state. Everything blurred- we saw only each other.

“The concrete decking was slippery from all the algae and the suds from the chemicals. Our galoshes were slick and we started skidding all over the place. We loved that, too, pretended we were at an ice rink, tried deliberately to skid. We were having a great time, lost in the moment, focused on our inner selves- as if we were one self. Round and round we went, hooting and slipping and sliding. Then all at once I saw Shirl take a big skid and keep skidding, saw a terrible look come on her face as she threw up her arms for balance. She called out for help. I knew this was no game and ran to grab her, but I fell on my butt and landed just as she let out a horrible scream and plunged, feet-first, into the pool.

“I got up, saw her hand sticking out, her fingers flexing, unflexing, threw myself at her, couldn’t reach her, started crying and screaming for help. I stumbled again, went down on my butt again, finally got to my feet and ran to the edge. The hand was gone. I screamed her name- it brought the nanny. How she’d looked- the surprise, the terror as she’d gone under- stayed with me and I kept screaming as the nanny asked me where she was. I couldn’t answer. I’d absorbed her, become her. I knew she was drowning, could feel myself choking and suffocating, taste the putrid water clogging my nose and my mouth and my lungs!

“The nanny was shaking me, slapping my face. I was hyperventilating, but somehow I managed to point to the pool.

“Then Mummy was there and Daddy, some of the help. The nanny jumped in. Mummy was screaming ‘My baby, oh, my baby!’ and biting her fingers- they bled all over her clothes. The nanny was thrashing around, coming up gasping, covered with muck. Daddy kicked off his shoes, tore off his jacket, and dove in. A graceful dive. A moment later he surfaced with Shirlee in his arms. She was limp, all covered with filth, pale and dead-looking. Daddy tried to give her artificial respiration. Mummy was still panting- her fingers were running with blood. The nanny was lying on the ground, looking dead herself. The maids were sobbing. The caretakers were staring. At me, I thought. They were blaming me! I started to howl and claw at