He nodded and looked at us. “Division of labor, huh?” he asked us, smiling.
“Two halves make a whole,” Mother said. “Together they are my perfect daughter.”
“Haylee-Kaylee,” Haylee said.
“Kaylee-Haylee,” I said.
Darren actually looked frightened for a moment. He nodded and offered to pour the first glass of wine.
“Oh, no, Darren,” Mother said. “Haylee will pour the first glass, and Kaylee will pour the second. We’ve always done it that way ever since they were capable of doing it,” she explained.
Haylee rose and poured the first glass. When she sat, Mother lifted her glass first to make a toast.
“To my girls,” she said. “My raison d’etre.”
“To Mother,” we responded in unison. “Our raison d’etre.”
We drank.
Darren Paul sipped his wine and then coughed into his napkin. “Sorry,” he said.
“Shall we eat?” Mother said, sounding a little annoyed.
He did eat, but he looked as if he was having his last meal before his execution. Nevertheless, he raved about the food as much as Daddy would.
Mother told him we had made the cake, and afterward, Darren and Mother went into the living room to have an after-dinner cordial. We cleaned up. While we worked, we tried to listen to their conversation. They didn’t seem to be talking that much. When we entered, it seemed as if all the air had gone out of the room.
“I was just explaining to Darren how your father often made things difficult for us, especially when I was homeschooling you.”
We looked at him. Mother elaborated on some other things Daddy had done to make it harder for her to raise identical twins correctly. He listened, nodding and looking at us—to see if we were unhappy about it, I supposed. We wore our usual noncommittal faces, which I was sure he thought were almost ceramic. Afterward, he piled compliment after compliment on us all, but when he walked out and the door closed, it had a permanent sound.
I wondered if he would ever call Mother again. He had suggested that he was going to be very busy during the next few months with his business expansion. Mother didn’t seem terribly upset about it and rarely mentioned him during the days that followed. One night, after we had asked about him, she said, “It was just as I told you. You can tell about someone from the way he reacts to your children, and—although you girls have been quite discreet for my benefit—how your children react to him. I saw that you weren’t very impressed. You don’t realize how lucky I am to have you help me navigate the waters of dating after so long. I’ll not make another mistake,” she pledged.
I thought the experience might discourage Mother from having a social life again, but she had other dates. Girlfriends were always trying to find her a new husband. We met most of the men at dinners at our house or when they picked her up, but none of them had any staying power. Meanwhile, the divorce was consummated, and our distant relationship with Daddy was carved in cement.
Whether all of this affected our own social life didn’t seem to matter. We weren’t doing much. Haylee refused to get serious with any high school boy, even though many did try—mostly seniors, too. She didn’t even try to get me to go on double dates.
Like her, I avoided getting into a new relationship. She worried that it was her fault, but I assured her that I wasn’t pining over Matt anymore. Before the school year ended, Matt and I did have another serious conversation, but it was going to be our last—and not because I was still disturbed about what had happened. He surprised me with his news.
“My father has taken a new position in a hospital in New York City,” he said. “We’re moving. Our home is up for sale, and my mother’s been interviewing for bank positions in New York.”
He didn’t sound very upset about it. If anything, he sounded relieved.
When I asked him if he was upset, he thought a moment and said, “We’re just luggage. We’ll probably treat our own children the same way.”
I took that to mean that he was upset. He made a vague promise to stay in touch through emails, but it was as if he had left months ago and I was speaking to his shadow. I told Haylee, and she asked me if I was disappointed.
“I guess I am when I think deeply about him,” I confessed. “I still think he’s someone special and probably will be for someone else.”
“So you still hate me?”
“No,” I said. “I can’t hate you.”
“Because Mother wouldn’t permit it?” she said.
I laughed.
“You know she’s never going to find another man. As soon as they see how weird we are, th