If you'd like to read Double Billing from the beginning, Click Here
Note to Gerbil: South 44th Street it is, I was thinking near Pine/ Spruce. Thanks for catching that.
Chapter 10
John Stellar had been sexually abused as a child. Repeatedly, over the course of years, by the parish priest he respected and loved, and it left him feeling like permanently damaged goods. The Catholic Archdiocese paid for his psychiatric treatment, twice a week, every week, for however long it took. Reparations they called it, though such a word implied that damage done could simply be repaired with enough something—time, money, medications, psychotherapy. It didn’t allow that some injuries are irreparable and the shadows they cast become a part of the person.
At his first appointment with me two years before, Mr. Stellar had told me about his history of being molested. He talked readily about the sexual acts he’d been made to perform and those that had been acted upon him. It was a matter-of-fact telling of the stomach-turning sadistic abuse of a young boy, and he could have been reciting the names of the state capitals in alphabetic order. While it was easy enough for him to talk about what had occurred, it took Mr. Stellar many months to tell me the perpetrator had been a priest, and that revelation had come with a torrent of emotion even though, intellectually, he was aware I’d known this all along. He had sobbed violently.
“You feel very betrayed,” I said. The abuse was in the past but the feelings remained.
“It changed my life,” he admitted. “I’d never be here if it hadn’t happened.”
“This,” I said, meaning the need to see a psychiatrist or have psychotherapy, “is a sign of weakness?”
“I just wouldn’t need it. I’m not the type.” He resented me and all that I stood for, and that was obvious. Mr. Stellar wanted me to agree with him: he was strong.
“You’re a different person because of the awful things you’ve endured,” I agreed. He sighed and I went on to ad, “You know, even with what you’ve been through, you’re strong. It takes courage to survive and move on and you’re doing that. And it takes courage to get help. You’re doing a good job.”
He shifted in his seat and looked away, perhaps a bit embarrased, but no longer on edge.
“How do you feel now about the man who molested you?” I asked the question quietly enough that he could pretend not to hear, if he wanted. I asked because I wanted to know and I didn’t want to guess; I especially didn’t want to guess wrong. He could have a whole host of feelings, though I imagined he might feel some combination of fear and murderous rage. Father Thomas Malloy, the priest who had initially contacted me to arrange for Mr. Stellar’s treatment, had said a number of boys were involved over a long period of time and the perpetrator was serving a lengthy prison term.
“He’s a source of shame to all of us,” Father Thomas had said, “and we’re doing our best to do right by the victims.” He’d had a gentle, seductive voice which I found almost irresistible over the phone; I’d wondered if the priest who’d violated the boys shared this hypnotic quality.
“I’m supposed to be angry,” Mr. Stellar had said with surprising calm, “I tell that to myself and I try. It’s just not there. It’s like I have this open wound that seeps, that nothing will stem and yet it doesn’t hurt doesn’t hurt and doesn’t even sting, it simply seeps. Mostly, I feel numb.”
That Monday, the Monday after I came back from Philadelphia, Mr. Stellar talked about his ex-wife. The marriage had ended because she couldn’t stand his jealousy and his constant need to control her. He couldn’t see how he was so hard to live with and he repeatedly talked about what an attentive husband and father he’d been, and how she had left him even though he’d sacrificed everything for her and their children. He felt victimized and betrayed, and there were on-going issues related to custody and parenting that he frequently talked about in treatment.
“Every Friday, and I mean every single Friday, I came home with a gift for her. Usually it was just flowers, but sometimes it was a piece of jewelry, once in a while chocolate—she loves chocolate but Susan’s always watching her weight and sometimes she’d be thrilled to have it, other times she’d get pissy. She has a great body and I’d just tell her to enjoy it and stop worrying, but you know women and their weight. So mostly I’d just stop and get flowers. How many guys do you know who do that, every single Friday? I never missed one. Even after we separated, I’d send her something, a card, or a little gift I’d leave in her mailbox.”
The gifts, the romance, they all came with a price and Mr. Stellar just didn’t see that. The ones that continued after they split—I assumed they were unwanted, his way of trying to woo her back, to court her, to remind her of what she was giving up, and to gain control in a pathetic, begging sort of way.
“Did Susan like the gifts?”
“Sure, she loved them. She said I was the most romantic guy she’d ever met. We fought a lot even before we were married, and the gifts, the flowers, they always softened her. Later, though, if we were fighting, she’d throw the stuff at me or make a show of depositing them in the garbage.”
“This made you angry,” I said.
“Hell, yes.”
Toward the end of the session, he said he needed to tell me about something that had happened over the weekend.
“John Junior pitched in a little league game.”
He went on to tell me that Susan was also there. Mr. Stellar was an avid and excitable fan and he’d gotten wrapped up in the game and cheered Johnny on from the sidelines. On a crucial pitch, the umpire made a bad call and Mr. Stellar went over to the plate and yelled at him.
“Susan made this federal case out of it. She insisted I embarrassed myself and embarrassed John Junior. It was an awful call—it should have been strike three, he’s out, and instead this fucking ump calls ball four and sends the runt to first base.”
“It sound like Susan wasn’t as concerned with the game as she was with your behavior,” I commented.
“If she wasn’t such a bitch…” he said, leaving his sentence unfinished.
Sometimes therapy was hard for Mr. Stellar and sometimes his therapy was hard for me. He’d come from a world with no boundaries, one where the person you trust most—the person you’re told is a messenger of God, someone you follow unfailingly without question-- might violate you in unspeakable ways. When Mr. Stellar intruded on my world, commented on the things that should be off-limits and were completely irrelevant to his treatment, it left me feeling exposed and resentful. His world had no boundaries, but in a venture as intimate as psychotherapy gets, I could have used a few.
“You look tired, Dr. Glassman.”
“You’d rather talk about how I look than about how you behaved yesterday,” I said.
“You really look tired. There are circles under your eyes.”
I was tired. I’d been back from Denmark for two weeks and still hadn’t unpacked. I’d returned from Philadelphia late the night before after learning my twin had cancer. I was tired. What should I have said to Mr. Stellar? It would be fine with me if he didn’t point out the bags under my eyes; I’d be happy to pretend they weren’t noticeable to the rest of the world.
“I’m a little tired,” I said. It was a bit like yelling uncle.
“Late night out?”
I struggled not to be offended. I was feeling too vulnerable to be my sharpest, to keep my best therapeutic and objective cool. And then, of course, I felt guilty for being angry. This patient was the victim of horrible abuse, he needed and deserved my compassion, not my resentment.
“Are you worried about me?” I asked.
“Should I be?”
“No.”
Mr. Stellar looked me straight in the eyes. “Maybe I should be worried about you, Doc,” he said, then deflected his gaze.
* * *
I remained exhausted, despite what felt like many many hours of deep sleep. I had this sense that I couldn’t catch up, and that if I just got enough sleep, deep enough for long enough, I’d go back to being myself. It was an effort to get to work, to make it through the day.
“Do you think I’m depressed?” I asked Jules. He’d commented several times that I hadn’t been the same since I returned from Denmark. I tried not to think about all that had transpired there, even if it was destroying me.
“Over Emily’s cancer?” He asked.
Well, that and other things, I thought.
By Friday afternoon, I had to admit I was late. I stopped at Duane Reed on the way home from the office. Jules was still at work and Zoey, who was eager to go for a walk, clamored outside the bathroom door. I’d done this many times before, always hopeful and always disappointed. That Friday, for the first time, I prayed it would be negative. My urine ricocheted off the strip, it’s deflected stream splattered onto my hand. I flushed and waited, too anxious to get off the toilet seat. I sat there staring at the little blue plus sign that popped up to announce I was pregnant.
* * *
“Congratulations!” Dr. Bornamen was genuinely thrilled. He burst into his office where I was already sitting, the confirmatory test results in his hands. “Everything looks perfect, your levels are right where they should be and in a few weeks we can do a sonogram.”
His white shirt was stained beneath his lab coat and he hadn’t shaved that morning—perhaps because he’d been attending a birth—but his face radiated joy. We’d graduated medical school the same year so I’d always assumed we were the same age, though on that particular day he felt a little older, and perhaps a little wiser. Or maybe, I just needed him to be.
I burst into tears. I hoped he’d think they were tears of happiness or relief-- after all, I’d been trying so desperately to get pregnant. And suddenly, I had just what I wanted without the help of modern medicine and I was sobbing.
The joy drained from his face.
He sat down across from me and simply said, “Tell me.”
“Jules isn’t the father.”
He uncrossed his legs, leaned in towards me just a bit, and waited. So I continued, telling him things I had never intended to disclose and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that he’d take the time to listen and care.
I told him about my trip to Denmark, about Steen and the power of the moment. About how I felt too guilty to have sex with Jules when I first got back, too tired after that. I didn’t tell him about Emily, I guess because it just didn’t seem relevant, except perhaps to explain why I was in Denmark in the first place, but that wasn’t what I was crying about and there was so much more to deal with.
Dr. Bornamen listened. I talked. He didn’t say much.
Finally, he asked, “What are your thoughts about the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It felt like a catastrophe. I’d come to see him, but I hadn’t taken it further, hadn’t thought about an endpoint.
“Do you think I should terminate it?” I asked. It felt funny to hear myself say the word aloud. “Terminate.” It sounded so final, but not like anything that had to do with a baby. You terminate contracts, not people.
“Not if you want to have a child,” he said gently. “Emily, I’m a fertility specialist. I help people get pregnant and I’ve been unable to help you. Maybe there was something about this affair.” There, he’d used the word I didn’t even want to think: affair. “Maybe,” he continued, “there’s some incompatibility between your eggs and Jules’ sperm. The two of you have been trying for years, first alone and then with intervention, and it hasn’t happened, and really, it isn’t likely to ever happen. As I mentioned when we met in January, having failed invitro, your best bet from here would be to get pregnant with artificial insemination by a sperm donor. I know you and Jules ruled that out, but it’s essentially what your one-time event with this man abroad was, if you don’t plan to see him again, that is. Or, you might consider a surrogate to carry a child for you—a complicated deal, I might add—or adoption. So, no, from my point of view, this is a blessing and you shouldn’t terminate the pregnancy. I realize there are other factors going on here, but you asked me.”
“What do I tell Jules?” I asked.
“That one I can’t answer for you,” he said. Dr. Bornamen looked sad, and I was sorry I hadn’t left him joyful. He was angry, as well, I assumed, though he was kind enough to hide that from me. I stopped crying and he stood up to leave.
“You’ll let me know what you decide? And in the meantime, prenatal vitamins with folate. No tobacco, no alcohol, no medications, no street drugs, no downhill skiing.” The obvious.
“Yes, of course.”
“If you’re….” Dr. Bornamen hesitated. He wasn’t used to talking about elective abortion and he was searching for the right words. “… going the course, come back in one month.” He didn’t tell me what to do if I wasn’t going the course and I was left to assume I should go elsewhere.
I was swept with sadness and decided to walk the forty blocks home. It would give me a chance to think through my options and at least I’d have an excuse for my exhaustion.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” Jules was home when I got there. Zoey greeted me at the door and sniffed my crotch.
“No, Zoey, come here,” Jules said. He found her crotch-sniffing habit offensive and often would scold her. I leaned down and kissed her, then scratched hard behind her ears, the way she liked.
“You’re the best little crotch-sniffer,” I whispered. She wanted me to scratch longer and she followed me around the apartment. Finally, I settled into a chair and held her head in my lap.
“Why are you home?”
It was early, I didn’t expect Jules to be home for at least an hour or two and I was looking forward to a little solitude. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting me so early either; I hadn’t mentioned my doctor’s appointment.
“I took the afternoon off. I did the grocery shopping and ran a few errands. I wanted to surprise you with dinner, but you’re home early, too.” He was clearly disappointed.
I went in the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea. There were grocery bags on the floor and food on the table in various stages of being put away. I grabbed a couple of yogurts and put them in the refrigerator. It was then I noticed the flowers resting on the table. Roses. Jules saw me looking at them.
“These are for you,” he said, as he reached for the bouquet, then presented them to me with a slight, dramatically gallant bow. “I would have cut the stems and put them in a vase, but I just got in.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, ticking through a mental calendar that came up blank.
“I wanted to do something nice for you, to cheer you up. You’ve been so upset since...” Jules hesitated, “since your trip, or maybe since Emily.”
All I could think of was how I’d destroyed us when I’d slept with another man. It was all I could do to smile at his gesture and later, to get some of the dinner down.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Chapter 9
If you'd like to read Double Billing from the beginning, click Here.
Chapter 9
I took Amtrak to 30th Street Station and from there I got a cab to Emily’s place on West 44th Street. I was only going for the afternoon, but still I brought a bag of stuff with me. I carried both a hardcover novel and the most recent issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. I had a CD player, and some tampons and Motrin, just in case. My period was due the day before and I assumed I’d have to deal with this sometime during the afternoon though I’d been warned that the hormone treatments might cause symptoms and changes in my cycle for many months to come. Stress, too, sometimes caused an interruption in my cycle and I certainly felt anxious.
It was just supposed to be a social visit to see my twin; I didn’t need any more surprises.
Emily’s apartment was a mess of indescribable proportions. In the entryway, there were piles of mail, months worth of catalogs, dirty socks, unpaired shoes, clothing strewn about. The living room had a couch and a large television set. A coffee table was piled with dirty dishes, a box of crackers, crayons, newspapers, and the remnants of Abigail’s art projects. What didn’t fit on the table landed on the floor. Every surface was piled with empty glasses, toys, used napkins—the place was an extensive array of garbage and clutter. An abandoned jacket lay dead center in the middle of the floor, a pair of roller blades not far from it.
Emily ushered me in, oblivious to the mess. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked that she lived this way or that she hadn’t bothered to clean up for my visit; it wasn’t like I’d dropped in unexpectedly. It’s not that I’m obsessively neat, but her apartment was downright dirty. I know she owned a vacuum cleaner because it was standing out in the dining room still plugged in. It was a wonder no one tripped over the cord. PoetInCrisis05, I remembered, and wondered if this was the crisis.
“Where do you write?” I asked. I didn’t want to sound judgmental, but I didn’t see a computer, or a space where someone could even sit down with a pad and pen. There was no order to the chaos, no assignment of purpose, the rent bill rested next to Abigail’s homework assignment, sat beside a new birthday card waiting to be signed and sent to a designated celebrant.
“I have an office at the newspaper, and I use a laptop here wherever I can find space,” Emily said, so I guess she was aware that it was cluttered. “Richard and I used to have the second bedroom set up as a workspace, but when Abigail was born that room became hers. Even with just the two of us, we could use more space,” she said as her only nod to the fact of the pigsty.
Abigail was with her father for the afternoon and Emily suggested we go out for lunch. I was glad to be out of her dusty apartment and loved the little café she chose. I silently wondered if she had an agenda. I didn’t ask-- didn’t want to imply that there was anything wrong with her just wanting to see me, if that was the case. We both ordered the same salad, sparking a discussion of how we both loved goat cheese.
“My dad absolutely hated goat cheese,” she said. “He called it cream cheese for snobs.”
Well, I thought, he doesn’t have our genes.
* * *
Emily stopped by the barber shop on her way home from school. She was wearing a white blouse and short plaid skirt, blue knee socks, and brown shoes—her school uniform. Her hair had grown long and she wore it in a pony tail tied high on her head. Her father was in the middle of shaving a man who was tipped back in the chair and covered with lather. He moved the razor quickly but cautiously and Emily stood a few feet away, knowing not to distract him while the blade was on the man’s neck.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mike said, without glancing up. She stopped by on her way home from school everyday, he looked forward to her visit. “How was school? Got a lot of homework?”
“Good, Daddy. I have a history test tomorrow.”
She wanted to ask if she could go to a party on Saturday night, with a boy, but something stopped her. He would probably allow it, but it suddenly felt like a betrayal and she didn’t ask.
“Better go study then,” he said, rinsing the lather from the razor. Finally he looked at her and the hint of a smile came to his face just before he returned to his customer.
“I’ll get us a pizza for dinner.”
I loved the stories from her childhood, loved hearing about her father the barber, even though they left me wondering.
* * *
“You think she did it twice,” Emily said as she picked up a roll. She tossed it in the air, just a millimeter or two, and caught it in a barely perceptible motion. She sliced the bread and buttered it, paying too much attention to what she was doing. Emily was anxious and obviously not very hungry.
“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I believed that Betsy White, or whoever this person who had given birth to us was, had abandoned two babies in two different places. I didn’t have a timeline, I didn’t think about whether she left one of us and then the other, but when I really considered it, she’d shown up with me at a Chicago emergency room and there was no mention of another baby in the story, so I guess I thought she abandoned my sister first. But it was all speculation and I wondered what Emily was getting at.
“I wasn’t adopted,” Emily said. “I may have been abandoned by my mother, but I wasn’t adopted. It never occurred to me to question if my father was my father, our father. It’s because he was.”
“He didn’t like goat cheese,” I blurted out, without thinking and instantly I realized how ridiculous and petty I sounded. I wished I could inhale the words. Emily put down her roll and knife and stared at me.
“I’m sorry, what a ridiculous thing to say,” I said. “You caught me off guard. I’m just trying to make sense of this. You have to be adopted, there’s just no way to make this story work otherwise. You just happened to bump into an identical twin who was given away by an otherwise intact family?” I didn’t give her time to respond, I was ranting or something close to it.
Emily tensed a little, but waited without saying anything. I was relieved when the waiter came to refill my iced tea; I asked for a clean lemon wedge. The waiter’s nose and eyebrow were pierced, his arms had colorful tattoos running up and down them.
“So,” I said at last, “You think he was my father, too?” I was tossing all sorts of ideas around in my head, trying to figure out what Emily was thinking.
“Yes.”
I suppose that was obvious. As identical twins, we had to have the same parents.
“And do you think your mother, Sandra Klee Mason, was really our mother?” I felt like I was playing twenty questions and wished Emily would just spit out her theory already. Even if I didn’t necessarily want to hear it. I’d come to some peace with this idea of joint abandonment; I’m not sure I wanted another option added to the possibility of my past.
“My father was my biological father and yours too,” Emily said. She looked upset and said nothing more. I sensed she knew something I didn’t, but still, I couldn’t think of what, and I hated being so out of control.
My lemon came with our salads. I waited for the tattooed server to finish and considered if I really wanted to squeeze it into my drink. Why not, go for it, I thought.
“Why would she—either Sandra Mason Klee or some other mystery mom—leave me and keep you?”
“Because I’m cuter,” Emily said with a poker face. She fished a walnut out from a pile of greens and balanced it on her fork. It was the first glimpse I had of her sense of humor, we’d both kept it pretty serious. My life, I realized, had been devoid of humor since the moment I walked through the door at Empire T’s. There certainly weren’t many ha ha’s on my recent shuttle to and from Denmark.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Maybe they only wanted one kid. Maybe they could only afford one kid; my father wasn’t on the big buck circuit. Maybe you were colicky or just didn’t laugh at her jokes.”
“Maybe,” I countered, “Betsy White dropped you on a church doorstep and me on an ER gurney. Then Mike and Sandra adopted you, and Sandra skipped town when she realized she really didn’t want to be anyone’s mother.” I was still stuck on the original theory. I have to say, I liked it best or at least it was the one I’d gotten used to. It came out sounding mean, though, and I felt badly. Emily wasn’t taking this well, she looked anxious.
We both ordered dessert and coffee. We’d cleared the air with our theories and even if I didn’t like Emily’s, I couldn’t be angry. She had other thoughts, something more was going on-- I could tell-- but she wasn’t sharing them with me. Maybe she was worried her ideas were too convoluted to be considered, that I would dismiss them.
The more time we spent together, the more I was forced to look at how different we actually were. I realized, somewhere in the middle of a bite of key lime pie, that I liked Emily. It wasn’t just that she was my twin, or that we shared an uncertain but clearly linked past, I simply liked her.
Maybe it was the mess in her apartment. It made her human, vulnerable, something other than my reflection in a stranger’s clothes.
“Emily,” Emily said. She picked up her napkin and started twisting it, wringing it actually. “There’s something you need to know.”
I thought she was on the verge of telling me something about our history. I wasn’t at all prepared for what would come next.
“ I have cancer.”
I put my fork down, I said nothing, looked to Emily, then to the wall. I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve only just found you, I thought.
“Many cancers are curable,” I told Emily when I could locate some words.
“There was an initial response to chemotherapy,” Emily said. She had a good feel for the medical lingo. “The tumor metastasized before it was discovered,” she continued, “and the chemotherapy just bought me time. I have small tumors in my lymph nodes and lungs. They’ve stopped growing for now, but at some point, they’ll grow again. The long-term prognosis is grim.”
“That’s what they said? Grim?” What kind of oncologist would tell a patient her prognosis was grim?
“No, he didn’t say it in quite those words. He wrote it. I read my chart when the doctor stepped out of the room.”
Oh. She wasn’t supposed to do that, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out.
“So how much time?” I asked, at last. Really, I wanted to scream: How can you leave me?
Emily shrugged her shoulders. “No one says. In a way, I wish they would, at least I could plan. For now, all I know is I’m here. I’m tired a lot, but I’m able to work and I’m able to take care of Abigail. When I’ve asked, I been told no one can give me a time frame.”
Abigail, I thought, and was overwhelmed with horror. I felt stricken that Emily would die and leave me; what about her little girl? The trajedy of it was paralyzing.
What could I do? Nothing, Emily said, but I wondered. She had summoned me to Philadelphia that day to tell me about her cancer. It had been treated the summer before, in 2004, and she hadn’t mentioned it the first night we’d met or the next night in my apartment, or in any of her emails or phone calls. She was telling me for a reason and I wondered what it was. I thought of Philip Howard.
“I met this man in Denmark, an oncologist who studies bone marrow transplants in identical twins with breast cancer. He’s at the University of California in San Diego. I could track him down,” I offered.
No one was certain where Emily’s cancer had originated. By the time it was discovered, it was all through her and the point of origin couldn’t be ascertained.
“They don’t do bone marrow transplants for this kind of cancer,” Emily said. She looked at me strangely, as though I should have known. Was she hoping I had a miracle up my sleeve, or knew someone who did, because I was a physician?
“You could get a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. One of my friends from medical school is a pulmonologist there and I could ask her for help.”
Emily nodded. She was being treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania—she called it HUP, with the familiarity of a good friend, one she knew way too well, and she felt confident every possible treatment was being considered. When she was first diagnosed, she’d gone to Johns Hopkins for a consultation, and the doctors there agreed with her doctors at HUP.
Emily had finished chemotherapy and she was waiting. Waiting to get sick then die, at some undetermined date, maybe months or even years in the future. It was a formidable burden to know her time was limited even if perhaps she was better off than some unsuspecting person who dies before her in a terrorist attack, a car accident, or even just keels over from a heart attack with no prior warning.
We had walked back to Emily’s apartment after lunch, after key lime pie, after tipping the tatooed young waiter. The sun was out; it was warmer than I’d expected, and I was hot in my jacket. I took it off and tied the arms around my waist, the way the kids do. We were both quiet on the walk back and I found myself noticing the weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks, soda bottles thrown carelessly around the curb, the dog poop that no one had bothered to bag and cart off. A bus screeched to a stop and sirens wailed in the distance. With every breath, I inhaled car the smells of stagnant garbage. Not so different from New York, I thought, but on my own turf, I blocked out all the unpleasant sensory input and here it rushed at me.
Emily’s apartment was one of three in a row house. She had the second floor, and the first and third floors were both occupied by dental students. The first floor apartment housed a young couple, and I wondered if, after graduation, they’d open a husband-wife practice together where their names would be painted on a big, white, tooth-shaped sign.
We reached the building and Abigail was sitting on the steps with another, younger, little girl. They were playing with a doll and Abigail was clearly in charge. She looked more solid, less tentative, then I remembered her being. The younger child was maybe two-and-a-half or three years old and chubby, with soft brown curly hair that framed her. She looked like something out of a commercial and my heart hurt. The little girl reached for the doll; her arms were so round, it seemed she had no wrists or elbows. Their play was gentle and loving; this must be Abby’s half-sister, I thought. I was pleased to see Abby and I felt a horrible pang of pity for the child who would be left without a mother.
Abigail stiffened when she saw me approach. The other little girl grew bubblier.
“Abby, look it’s your mommy. Look, it’s two of your mommies!” I thought she would burst.
“That’s my mom’s twin,” Abby said. I could tell from the change in her posture that she didn’t like this situation. It threatened everything she knew.
A man stood up, appearing from the shadows of the stairs. He was tall and balding, wearing jeans and a sweater that hung loose over his shoulders. He smiled at Emily, and reached out his hand to shake mine.
“This is Richard, Abigail’s father,” Emily said, then turned toward me. “My sister, Emily.” She said nothing more, so I assumed he knew the story of how we’d met.
“Abby told me about you,” Richard said. “Wow!” He looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match. He settled his gaze on Emily and he said, “Two of you. What a thought!”
Richard bent down and kissed Abigail good-bye. He hoisted the little curly-haired girl onto his hip and clicked his remote to unlock the Toyota at the curb. The little girl wailed as he put her into a car seat. She screamed to her sister in desperation, and the three of us looked on silently as Richard and the unhappy toddler drove off. Abigail also looked forlorn. Emily rubbed her back very lightly and quickly.
“Daddy will be back soon, honey.”
“I know,” she answered with a wisdom that struck me as tragic. Who offered more solace to whom, I wondered.
I had a train to catch, so Emily and Abigail walked me to Penn Station. Somehow, the walk back seemed shorter than the cab ride coming. I kissed them both good-bye. Abigail let me squeeze her and it felt right.
“Emily?” I asked as an afterthought. She was at the edge of earshot and stopped to see if I had really called her name. She looked at me, now hand-in-hand with her daughter.
“Before the chemo, how long was your hair?”
“About as long as yours,” Emily answered.
I thought so.
Chapter 9
I took Amtrak to 30th Street Station and from there I got a cab to Emily’s place on West 44th Street. I was only going for the afternoon, but still I brought a bag of stuff with me. I carried both a hardcover novel and the most recent issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. I had a CD player, and some tampons and Motrin, just in case. My period was due the day before and I assumed I’d have to deal with this sometime during the afternoon though I’d been warned that the hormone treatments might cause symptoms and changes in my cycle for many months to come. Stress, too, sometimes caused an interruption in my cycle and I certainly felt anxious.
It was just supposed to be a social visit to see my twin; I didn’t need any more surprises.
Emily’s apartment was a mess of indescribable proportions. In the entryway, there were piles of mail, months worth of catalogs, dirty socks, unpaired shoes, clothing strewn about. The living room had a couch and a large television set. A coffee table was piled with dirty dishes, a box of crackers, crayons, newspapers, and the remnants of Abigail’s art projects. What didn’t fit on the table landed on the floor. Every surface was piled with empty glasses, toys, used napkins—the place was an extensive array of garbage and clutter. An abandoned jacket lay dead center in the middle of the floor, a pair of roller blades not far from it.
Emily ushered me in, oblivious to the mess. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked that she lived this way or that she hadn’t bothered to clean up for my visit; it wasn’t like I’d dropped in unexpectedly. It’s not that I’m obsessively neat, but her apartment was downright dirty. I know she owned a vacuum cleaner because it was standing out in the dining room still plugged in. It was a wonder no one tripped over the cord. PoetInCrisis05, I remembered, and wondered if this was the crisis.
“Where do you write?” I asked. I didn’t want to sound judgmental, but I didn’t see a computer, or a space where someone could even sit down with a pad and pen. There was no order to the chaos, no assignment of purpose, the rent bill rested next to Abigail’s homework assignment, sat beside a new birthday card waiting to be signed and sent to a designated celebrant.
“I have an office at the newspaper, and I use a laptop here wherever I can find space,” Emily said, so I guess she was aware that it was cluttered. “Richard and I used to have the second bedroom set up as a workspace, but when Abigail was born that room became hers. Even with just the two of us, we could use more space,” she said as her only nod to the fact of the pigsty.
Abigail was with her father for the afternoon and Emily suggested we go out for lunch. I was glad to be out of her dusty apartment and loved the little café she chose. I silently wondered if she had an agenda. I didn’t ask-- didn’t want to imply that there was anything wrong with her just wanting to see me, if that was the case. We both ordered the same salad, sparking a discussion of how we both loved goat cheese.
“My dad absolutely hated goat cheese,” she said. “He called it cream cheese for snobs.”
Well, I thought, he doesn’t have our genes.
* * *
Emily stopped by the barber shop on her way home from school. She was wearing a white blouse and short plaid skirt, blue knee socks, and brown shoes—her school uniform. Her hair had grown long and she wore it in a pony tail tied high on her head. Her father was in the middle of shaving a man who was tipped back in the chair and covered with lather. He moved the razor quickly but cautiously and Emily stood a few feet away, knowing not to distract him while the blade was on the man’s neck.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mike said, without glancing up. She stopped by on her way home from school everyday, he looked forward to her visit. “How was school? Got a lot of homework?”
“Good, Daddy. I have a history test tomorrow.”
She wanted to ask if she could go to a party on Saturday night, with a boy, but something stopped her. He would probably allow it, but it suddenly felt like a betrayal and she didn’t ask.
“Better go study then,” he said, rinsing the lather from the razor. Finally he looked at her and the hint of a smile came to his face just before he returned to his customer.
“I’ll get us a pizza for dinner.”
I loved the stories from her childhood, loved hearing about her father the barber, even though they left me wondering.
* * *
“You think she did it twice,” Emily said as she picked up a roll. She tossed it in the air, just a millimeter or two, and caught it in a barely perceptible motion. She sliced the bread and buttered it, paying too much attention to what she was doing. Emily was anxious and obviously not very hungry.
“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I believed that Betsy White, or whoever this person who had given birth to us was, had abandoned two babies in two different places. I didn’t have a timeline, I didn’t think about whether she left one of us and then the other, but when I really considered it, she’d shown up with me at a Chicago emergency room and there was no mention of another baby in the story, so I guess I thought she abandoned my sister first. But it was all speculation and I wondered what Emily was getting at.
“I wasn’t adopted,” Emily said. “I may have been abandoned by my mother, but I wasn’t adopted. It never occurred to me to question if my father was my father, our father. It’s because he was.”
“He didn’t like goat cheese,” I blurted out, without thinking and instantly I realized how ridiculous and petty I sounded. I wished I could inhale the words. Emily put down her roll and knife and stared at me.
“I’m sorry, what a ridiculous thing to say,” I said. “You caught me off guard. I’m just trying to make sense of this. You have to be adopted, there’s just no way to make this story work otherwise. You just happened to bump into an identical twin who was given away by an otherwise intact family?” I didn’t give her time to respond, I was ranting or something close to it.
Emily tensed a little, but waited without saying anything. I was relieved when the waiter came to refill my iced tea; I asked for a clean lemon wedge. The waiter’s nose and eyebrow were pierced, his arms had colorful tattoos running up and down them.
“So,” I said at last, “You think he was my father, too?” I was tossing all sorts of ideas around in my head, trying to figure out what Emily was thinking.
“Yes.”
I suppose that was obvious. As identical twins, we had to have the same parents.
“And do you think your mother, Sandra Klee Mason, was really our mother?” I felt like I was playing twenty questions and wished Emily would just spit out her theory already. Even if I didn’t necessarily want to hear it. I’d come to some peace with this idea of joint abandonment; I’m not sure I wanted another option added to the possibility of my past.
“My father was my biological father and yours too,” Emily said. She looked upset and said nothing more. I sensed she knew something I didn’t, but still, I couldn’t think of what, and I hated being so out of control.
My lemon came with our salads. I waited for the tattooed server to finish and considered if I really wanted to squeeze it into my drink. Why not, go for it, I thought.
“Why would she—either Sandra Mason Klee or some other mystery mom—leave me and keep you?”
“Because I’m cuter,” Emily said with a poker face. She fished a walnut out from a pile of greens and balanced it on her fork. It was the first glimpse I had of her sense of humor, we’d both kept it pretty serious. My life, I realized, had been devoid of humor since the moment I walked through the door at Empire T’s. There certainly weren’t many ha ha’s on my recent shuttle to and from Denmark.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Maybe they only wanted one kid. Maybe they could only afford one kid; my father wasn’t on the big buck circuit. Maybe you were colicky or just didn’t laugh at her jokes.”
“Maybe,” I countered, “Betsy White dropped you on a church doorstep and me on an ER gurney. Then Mike and Sandra adopted you, and Sandra skipped town when she realized she really didn’t want to be anyone’s mother.” I was still stuck on the original theory. I have to say, I liked it best or at least it was the one I’d gotten used to. It came out sounding mean, though, and I felt badly. Emily wasn’t taking this well, she looked anxious.
We both ordered dessert and coffee. We’d cleared the air with our theories and even if I didn’t like Emily’s, I couldn’t be angry. She had other thoughts, something more was going on-- I could tell-- but she wasn’t sharing them with me. Maybe she was worried her ideas were too convoluted to be considered, that I would dismiss them.
The more time we spent together, the more I was forced to look at how different we actually were. I realized, somewhere in the middle of a bite of key lime pie, that I liked Emily. It wasn’t just that she was my twin, or that we shared an uncertain but clearly linked past, I simply liked her.
Maybe it was the mess in her apartment. It made her human, vulnerable, something other than my reflection in a stranger’s clothes.
“Emily,” Emily said. She picked up her napkin and started twisting it, wringing it actually. “There’s something you need to know.”
I thought she was on the verge of telling me something about our history. I wasn’t at all prepared for what would come next.
“ I have cancer.”
I put my fork down, I said nothing, looked to Emily, then to the wall. I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve only just found you, I thought.
“Many cancers are curable,” I told Emily when I could locate some words.
“There was an initial response to chemotherapy,” Emily said. She had a good feel for the medical lingo. “The tumor metastasized before it was discovered,” she continued, “and the chemotherapy just bought me time. I have small tumors in my lymph nodes and lungs. They’ve stopped growing for now, but at some point, they’ll grow again. The long-term prognosis is grim.”
“That’s what they said? Grim?” What kind of oncologist would tell a patient her prognosis was grim?
“No, he didn’t say it in quite those words. He wrote it. I read my chart when the doctor stepped out of the room.”
Oh. She wasn’t supposed to do that, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out.
“So how much time?” I asked, at last. Really, I wanted to scream: How can you leave me?
Emily shrugged her shoulders. “No one says. In a way, I wish they would, at least I could plan. For now, all I know is I’m here. I’m tired a lot, but I’m able to work and I’m able to take care of Abigail. When I’ve asked, I been told no one can give me a time frame.”
Abigail, I thought, and was overwhelmed with horror. I felt stricken that Emily would die and leave me; what about her little girl? The trajedy of it was paralyzing.
What could I do? Nothing, Emily said, but I wondered. She had summoned me to Philadelphia that day to tell me about her cancer. It had been treated the summer before, in 2004, and she hadn’t mentioned it the first night we’d met or the next night in my apartment, or in any of her emails or phone calls. She was telling me for a reason and I wondered what it was. I thought of Philip Howard.
“I met this man in Denmark, an oncologist who studies bone marrow transplants in identical twins with breast cancer. He’s at the University of California in San Diego. I could track him down,” I offered.
No one was certain where Emily’s cancer had originated. By the time it was discovered, it was all through her and the point of origin couldn’t be ascertained.
“They don’t do bone marrow transplants for this kind of cancer,” Emily said. She looked at me strangely, as though I should have known. Was she hoping I had a miracle up my sleeve, or knew someone who did, because I was a physician?
“You could get a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. One of my friends from medical school is a pulmonologist there and I could ask her for help.”
Emily nodded. She was being treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania—she called it HUP, with the familiarity of a good friend, one she knew way too well, and she felt confident every possible treatment was being considered. When she was first diagnosed, she’d gone to Johns Hopkins for a consultation, and the doctors there agreed with her doctors at HUP.
Emily had finished chemotherapy and she was waiting. Waiting to get sick then die, at some undetermined date, maybe months or even years in the future. It was a formidable burden to know her time was limited even if perhaps she was better off than some unsuspecting person who dies before her in a terrorist attack, a car accident, or even just keels over from a heart attack with no prior warning.
We had walked back to Emily’s apartment after lunch, after key lime pie, after tipping the tatooed young waiter. The sun was out; it was warmer than I’d expected, and I was hot in my jacket. I took it off and tied the arms around my waist, the way the kids do. We were both quiet on the walk back and I found myself noticing the weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks, soda bottles thrown carelessly around the curb, the dog poop that no one had bothered to bag and cart off. A bus screeched to a stop and sirens wailed in the distance. With every breath, I inhaled car the smells of stagnant garbage. Not so different from New York, I thought, but on my own turf, I blocked out all the unpleasant sensory input and here it rushed at me.
Emily’s apartment was one of three in a row house. She had the second floor, and the first and third floors were both occupied by dental students. The first floor apartment housed a young couple, and I wondered if, after graduation, they’d open a husband-wife practice together where their names would be painted on a big, white, tooth-shaped sign.
We reached the building and Abigail was sitting on the steps with another, younger, little girl. They were playing with a doll and Abigail was clearly in charge. She looked more solid, less tentative, then I remembered her being. The younger child was maybe two-and-a-half or three years old and chubby, with soft brown curly hair that framed her. She looked like something out of a commercial and my heart hurt. The little girl reached for the doll; her arms were so round, it seemed she had no wrists or elbows. Their play was gentle and loving; this must be Abby’s half-sister, I thought. I was pleased to see Abby and I felt a horrible pang of pity for the child who would be left without a mother.
Abigail stiffened when she saw me approach. The other little girl grew bubblier.
“Abby, look it’s your mommy. Look, it’s two of your mommies!” I thought she would burst.
“That’s my mom’s twin,” Abby said. I could tell from the change in her posture that she didn’t like this situation. It threatened everything she knew.
A man stood up, appearing from the shadows of the stairs. He was tall and balding, wearing jeans and a sweater that hung loose over his shoulders. He smiled at Emily, and reached out his hand to shake mine.
“This is Richard, Abigail’s father,” Emily said, then turned toward me. “My sister, Emily.” She said nothing more, so I assumed he knew the story of how we’d met.
“Abby told me about you,” Richard said. “Wow!” He looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match. He settled his gaze on Emily and he said, “Two of you. What a thought!”
Richard bent down and kissed Abigail good-bye. He hoisted the little curly-haired girl onto his hip and clicked his remote to unlock the Toyota at the curb. The little girl wailed as he put her into a car seat. She screamed to her sister in desperation, and the three of us looked on silently as Richard and the unhappy toddler drove off. Abigail also looked forlorn. Emily rubbed her back very lightly and quickly.
“Daddy will be back soon, honey.”
“I know,” she answered with a wisdom that struck me as tragic. Who offered more solace to whom, I wondered.
I had a train to catch, so Emily and Abigail walked me to Penn Station. Somehow, the walk back seemed shorter than the cab ride coming. I kissed them both good-bye. Abigail let me squeeze her and it felt right.
“Emily?” I asked as an afterthought. She was at the edge of earshot and stopped to see if I had really called her name. She looked at me, now hand-in-hand with her daughter.
“Before the chemo, how long was your hair?”
“About as long as yours,” Emily answered.
I thought so.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
All of Chapter 8
If you'd like to read Double Billing from the beginning, CLICK HERE -- note that this takes you to the Chapters that were revised with your suggestions.
The end of chapter 8 is in red.
Chapter 8
I first met Jules Glassman in junior high school when we were in the same Hebrew school class. He was quiet and studious and pretty much did as he was told. I sat with my girlfriends and we were more interested in giggling and passing notes than we were in memorizing vocabulary words or learning prayers. We were constantly being moved to opposite sides of the room, or even out into the hallway, and it was the louder boys who got our attention.
I met Jules again when I was in medical school while I was rotating through the emergency room. He came in on a stretcher after he’d been hit in the head and rendered unconscious during a rugby match in Central Park. It was a head-on collision with an opponent and Jules had gone limp on the field. The other guy didn’t pass out, but he had a huge hematoma on the side of his head and looked like he’d been hit by a bat. Jules was breathing on his own and had regained consciousness in the ambulance just as the paramedics got the IV line inserted. He said he was fine and wanted to leave, but the attending physician in the ER insisted on a scan of his brain. The ER was crowded and Jules was left sitting on a stretcher in the middle of the hall.
“Emily. Emily Weitz,” he said. I was on my way to the lab with a urine specimen.
“Jules from Hebrew class,” I said. I recognized him right away. I passed the specimen from my right hand to my left. “You’re bigger.” He was still very slim and studious-looking. I would have guessed ping-pong, not rugby. We talked briefly. I mumbled a few words in Hebrew and he smiled. He was in law school, on his way to becoming a tax attorney, and was a back on a men’s rugby team.
“Fly-half,” Jules said, referring to his position, “is mostly about speed and strategy. You always think the guys in the scrum will get hurt, they’re the ones on top of each other. I guess I should look where I’m running.” His head still hurt, and I could tell he was forcing a grin for me.
“Who would have thought you’d be a doctor?” he said. “ I would have pegged you for a party planner. You were a social little teeny bopper back in the day. Funny how things turn out.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. He was handsome and there was something compelling about his link to my past.
Nick Green, the ER resident I was working with, approached me on his way to his next case. He glanced at Jules, as if to say ‘This isn’t your patient.’ I might have introduced them, but Nick handed me a container-- a pass-off on the run-- another urine specimen.
While you’re headed to the lab, take this one, too,” and he disappeared behind a curtain.
I stood there in my white short white lab coat. It wore the spewing substances of that day: blood, diet coke, some guiac reagent, a little scrubbed off vomit, as well as unbleachable residue from weeks of body fluids. A rubber touniquet weaved through my button hole, a palm pilot, reflex hammer and pens weighted down my pockets, a stethoscope rested on my shoulders. Jules and I talked about the fates of our Hebrew School classmates while I balanced a urine specimen in each hand.
Nick stuck his head out from the curtained area.
“Emily, I’m getting ready to do an LP on the fever and headache in curtain six. You want to do it?”
It was my cue to get back to work.
“It was good to bump into you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “the only good thing to come of getting knocked out on the rugby field.”
I wished him well and walked away.
“Emily,” Jules called after me and I stopped and turned back. “Can I get your phone number?”
We had dinner the next night and we married a year later.
The relationship was, from the start, fueled by sex. It was surprisingly electric and we assumed that with such passion, well of course we’d make magnificent babies. When it didn’t happen, we were both surprised. I was disappointed, Jules was devastated.
Jules was an only child and he ached for a family. His parents divorced when he was seven and he’d spent his childhood being shuttled around the Connecticut suburbs from one parent’s home to the other, like an object in the way at which ever house it happened to land. With either parent, he felt like he hampered their careers, their social lives, their happiness, and there wasn’t so much as a goldfish to keep him company.
Charles Glassman was a wealthy man, having inherited the rewards of his own father’s wise investments. A bank vice-president, he achieved success of his own accord, but his passion was for competitive tennis and real estate investments.
Lorraine Glassman loved men and loved to shop. She was an impeccable dresser, coordinated so tediously well that she would have looked plastic had it not been for the warmth of her infectious, ever-present laugh that drew the world in and charmed everyone in a room. Her affection, however, stopped at her laugh, and under all the charisma was an insecure woman who needed to amass as many admirers and as much stuff as possible to continually reaffirm her worth to the world. Jules was the family child—for Lorraine certainly had to have one of what every other woman had, children being in a category close to a diamond ring or regular facials—and he managed to fill his roles as both an acquisition and an admiring minion.
Charles had been raised to be a frugal man and he was naturally jealous and controlling. Always mindful of the next impending disaster, he and Lorraine fought endlessly about questions of her fidelity and her spending.
After they divorced and the battling stopped, Jules would hear them quarrel over whose weekend it was to be stuck with him, who needed to hire a sitter, and he withdrew into himself hoping, perhaps, that if he was good enough, someone might want him.
Things changed when Jules was seventeen. His father died suddenly and unexpectedly and, as the only child, he was the sole heir to a considerable sum of money. His mother, who’d always felt she’d gotten the short end of the divorce settlement, warmed to Jules. She became nicer to him and Jules, in his generosity tinged with a desperate need for her love, attributed this to her sympathy for his grief. Seventeen is a difficult age for a boy to lose his father.
“She never asked me for money,” he explained. He was very defensive of Lorraine, blind always to her motives and shortcomings. Maybe I was too cynical; my work sometimes showed me the darker side of human nature.
The power shifted in a way that wasn’t healthy for Jules. They’d go on vacations to Europe, at his expense, and he bought his mother a beach house as an investment. Finally, Jules felt wanted and needed; no one was negotiating where he would be and who had to take him to Hebrew School or tennis lessons.
Jules figured if a family was big enough, there’d be someone in it for everyone and he was thrilled when we’d started off with Zoey. He fussed over her, talked to her, took her to the groomer and arranged for new and interesting poodle-do creations. He bought her toys. gem-studded collars. and endless treats. I worried he’d spoil our kids.
“Of course I will!” he laughed. “I’ll spoil all six of them. Why have kids if you’re not going to
spoil them?”
“I’m a doctor, I can’t have six kids,” I said.
“Then what about eight?” It was a joke, but certainly we wanted two or three children. “To keep the dog company,” Jules would say.
My body went through tests and more tests; I was poked and prodded in the most humiliating of ways. Men I wouldn’t dream of giving the time of day to ordered me to scoot lower on the table, to let my legs fall wider apart. My uterus was filled with dye and imaged, my veins sucked dry of tube after tube of blood to be sent to special labs across the country for levels and hormones and God only knows what else.
“Emily,” Dr. Bornamen had said, thoughtfully, and I’d wanted to strangle him for not addressing me as Dr. Glassman while I sat there in a paper gown I struggled to hold closed. Why can’t you talk to me after I’ve changed into street clothes? Why can’t you introduce yourself as Jim, rather than Doctor, Bornamen? Where do you come off assuming I want you to call me--the me with the half-exposed naked breasts and the too-tightly crossed bare legs and feet—Emily? It was my fourth or fifth meeting with Dr. Bornamen—the latest greatest fertility doctor-- and I had to stop myself from hating him. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t making babies. He had no clue that I either wanted to call him Jim, or wanted him to call me Dr. Glassman, that I needed some token of equality in what was an otherwise wholly unequal experience. I was just one more patient waiting in line. There was no malice on his part and I knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending; instead I felt guilty for all my displaced anger.
“The tests are all negative. I don’t know why you’re not getting pregnant. This is often the case, but you might want to consider in vitro fertilization as a next step.”
I’d had patients in therapy with me during their fertility treatments. The hormones made them crazy and the organization of it all made sex mechanical, scheduled, on-demand. I expected the worst and while the treatments did make me moody, sex remained great, even if the baby making was going on in a petrie dish.
Perhaps it was six months, maybe a little longer, after our final failed attempt at a test tube baby when Emily, my twin, and Abigail, her daughter, stumbled into our lives.
“You know,” Jules had said, “genetically she’s you.”
“You know,” I’d answered, “she’s not me.”
Maybe, I thought, Jules found Emily as sexually attractive as he found me. Maybe, I thought, there’d be all the passion we shared, plus the bonus that her body makes babies. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and at the same time, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be jealous and I didn’t want to be mad at the world because I was infertile.
All of this history existed before I met Emily. All of it was there when I left for Denmark and all of it was festering when I returned to New York only days later.
* * *
Emily and I exchanged e-mails and talked on the phone. I never did figure out how to Instant Message; I downloaded the program, but I couldn’t seem to get a valid screen name, and when I thought I finally had it figured out, I sat there with nothing to do.
“Put me on your buddy list,” Emily, aka PoetInCrisis05, directed.
“I don’t have a buddy list. How do I get one?” I asked. I wondered what her crisis was and why 05? Were there four other poets in crisis before she’d chosen the screen name? Eventually, even Emily gave up and I felt hopeless.
“People our age don’t IM,” Jules reassured me.
“Emily does,” I said.
I had told her I was going to Denmark for work, but hadn’t mentioned the Danish Twin Registry or it’s Early Separation Research Unit and Emily hadn’t asked for any details. I didn’t know how to explain the trip to myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have known what to tell my twin. Somehow, our conversations remained close to the surface and this surprised me.
“Abigail is really getting into ice skating,” she reported.
“Is she taking lessons?” I asked.
“Yes, with a group. I’m thinking of maybe getting her some individual lessons. People say it helps a lot with technique, but it’s expensive.”
I could have been talking to any parent about any kid.
“The vet isn’t too concerned about Zoey’s scratching,” I’d tell her. She was less interested in my dog than I was in her child, but that was true of everyone else I knew as well.
“What do you think of getting together again?” Emily finally asked.
“That would be great,” I said. Would it? “Will you be in New York soon?”
I thought maybe she was coming to visit her friend on Staten Island. She hesitated, and I knew she was embarrassed.
“No, actually, I just wanted to see you again. I was thinking maybe you could come to Philadelphia.”
The end of chapter 8 is in red.
Chapter 8
I first met Jules Glassman in junior high school when we were in the same Hebrew school class. He was quiet and studious and pretty much did as he was told. I sat with my girlfriends and we were more interested in giggling and passing notes than we were in memorizing vocabulary words or learning prayers. We were constantly being moved to opposite sides of the room, or even out into the hallway, and it was the louder boys who got our attention.
I met Jules again when I was in medical school while I was rotating through the emergency room. He came in on a stretcher after he’d been hit in the head and rendered unconscious during a rugby match in Central Park. It was a head-on collision with an opponent and Jules had gone limp on the field. The other guy didn’t pass out, but he had a huge hematoma on the side of his head and looked like he’d been hit by a bat. Jules was breathing on his own and had regained consciousness in the ambulance just as the paramedics got the IV line inserted. He said he was fine and wanted to leave, but the attending physician in the ER insisted on a scan of his brain. The ER was crowded and Jules was left sitting on a stretcher in the middle of the hall.
“Emily. Emily Weitz,” he said. I was on my way to the lab with a urine specimen.
“Jules from Hebrew class,” I said. I recognized him right away. I passed the specimen from my right hand to my left. “You’re bigger.” He was still very slim and studious-looking. I would have guessed ping-pong, not rugby. We talked briefly. I mumbled a few words in Hebrew and he smiled. He was in law school, on his way to becoming a tax attorney, and was a back on a men’s rugby team.
“Fly-half,” Jules said, referring to his position, “is mostly about speed and strategy. You always think the guys in the scrum will get hurt, they’re the ones on top of each other. I guess I should look where I’m running.” His head still hurt, and I could tell he was forcing a grin for me.
“Who would have thought you’d be a doctor?” he said. “ I would have pegged you for a party planner. You were a social little teeny bopper back in the day. Funny how things turn out.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. He was handsome and there was something compelling about his link to my past.
Nick Green, the ER resident I was working with, approached me on his way to his next case. He glanced at Jules, as if to say ‘This isn’t your patient.’ I might have introduced them, but Nick handed me a container-- a pass-off on the run-- another urine specimen.
While you’re headed to the lab, take this one, too,” and he disappeared behind a curtain.
I stood there in my white short white lab coat. It wore the spewing substances of that day: blood, diet coke, some guiac reagent, a little scrubbed off vomit, as well as unbleachable residue from weeks of body fluids. A rubber touniquet weaved through my button hole, a palm pilot, reflex hammer and pens weighted down my pockets, a stethoscope rested on my shoulders. Jules and I talked about the fates of our Hebrew School classmates while I balanced a urine specimen in each hand.
Nick stuck his head out from the curtained area.
“Emily, I’m getting ready to do an LP on the fever and headache in curtain six. You want to do it?”
It was my cue to get back to work.
“It was good to bump into you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “the only good thing to come of getting knocked out on the rugby field.”
I wished him well and walked away.
“Emily,” Jules called after me and I stopped and turned back. “Can I get your phone number?”
We had dinner the next night and we married a year later.
The relationship was, from the start, fueled by sex. It was surprisingly electric and we assumed that with such passion, well of course we’d make magnificent babies. When it didn’t happen, we were both surprised. I was disappointed, Jules was devastated.
Jules was an only child and he ached for a family. His parents divorced when he was seven and he’d spent his childhood being shuttled around the Connecticut suburbs from one parent’s home to the other, like an object in the way at which ever house it happened to land. With either parent, he felt like he hampered their careers, their social lives, their happiness, and there wasn’t so much as a goldfish to keep him company.
Charles Glassman was a wealthy man, having inherited the rewards of his own father’s wise investments. A bank vice-president, he achieved success of his own accord, but his passion was for competitive tennis and real estate investments.
Lorraine Glassman loved men and loved to shop. She was an impeccable dresser, coordinated so tediously well that she would have looked plastic had it not been for the warmth of her infectious, ever-present laugh that drew the world in and charmed everyone in a room. Her affection, however, stopped at her laugh, and under all the charisma was an insecure woman who needed to amass as many admirers and as much stuff as possible to continually reaffirm her worth to the world. Jules was the family child—for Lorraine certainly had to have one of what every other woman had, children being in a category close to a diamond ring or regular facials—and he managed to fill his roles as both an acquisition and an admiring minion.
Charles had been raised to be a frugal man and he was naturally jealous and controlling. Always mindful of the next impending disaster, he and Lorraine fought endlessly about questions of her fidelity and her spending.
After they divorced and the battling stopped, Jules would hear them quarrel over whose weekend it was to be stuck with him, who needed to hire a sitter, and he withdrew into himself hoping, perhaps, that if he was good enough, someone might want him.
Things changed when Jules was seventeen. His father died suddenly and unexpectedly and, as the only child, he was the sole heir to a considerable sum of money. His mother, who’d always felt she’d gotten the short end of the divorce settlement, warmed to Jules. She became nicer to him and Jules, in his generosity tinged with a desperate need for her love, attributed this to her sympathy for his grief. Seventeen is a difficult age for a boy to lose his father.
“She never asked me for money,” he explained. He was very defensive of Lorraine, blind always to her motives and shortcomings. Maybe I was too cynical; my work sometimes showed me the darker side of human nature.
The power shifted in a way that wasn’t healthy for Jules. They’d go on vacations to Europe, at his expense, and he bought his mother a beach house as an investment. Finally, Jules felt wanted and needed; no one was negotiating where he would be and who had to take him to Hebrew School or tennis lessons.
Jules figured if a family was big enough, there’d be someone in it for everyone and he was thrilled when we’d started off with Zoey. He fussed over her, talked to her, took her to the groomer and arranged for new and interesting poodle-do creations. He bought her toys. gem-studded collars. and endless treats. I worried he’d spoil our kids.
“Of course I will!” he laughed. “I’ll spoil all six of them. Why have kids if you’re not going to
spoil them?”
“I’m a doctor, I can’t have six kids,” I said.
“Then what about eight?” It was a joke, but certainly we wanted two or three children. “To keep the dog company,” Jules would say.
My body went through tests and more tests; I was poked and prodded in the most humiliating of ways. Men I wouldn’t dream of giving the time of day to ordered me to scoot lower on the table, to let my legs fall wider apart. My uterus was filled with dye and imaged, my veins sucked dry of tube after tube of blood to be sent to special labs across the country for levels and hormones and God only knows what else.
“Emily,” Dr. Bornamen had said, thoughtfully, and I’d wanted to strangle him for not addressing me as Dr. Glassman while I sat there in a paper gown I struggled to hold closed. Why can’t you talk to me after I’ve changed into street clothes? Why can’t you introduce yourself as Jim, rather than Doctor, Bornamen? Where do you come off assuming I want you to call me--the me with the half-exposed naked breasts and the too-tightly crossed bare legs and feet—Emily? It was my fourth or fifth meeting with Dr. Bornamen—the latest greatest fertility doctor-- and I had to stop myself from hating him. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t making babies. He had no clue that I either wanted to call him Jim, or wanted him to call me Dr. Glassman, that I needed some token of equality in what was an otherwise wholly unequal experience. I was just one more patient waiting in line. There was no malice on his part and I knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending; instead I felt guilty for all my displaced anger.
“The tests are all negative. I don’t know why you’re not getting pregnant. This is often the case, but you might want to consider in vitro fertilization as a next step.”
I’d had patients in therapy with me during their fertility treatments. The hormones made them crazy and the organization of it all made sex mechanical, scheduled, on-demand. I expected the worst and while the treatments did make me moody, sex remained great, even if the baby making was going on in a petrie dish.
Perhaps it was six months, maybe a little longer, after our final failed attempt at a test tube baby when Emily, my twin, and Abigail, her daughter, stumbled into our lives.
“You know,” Jules had said, “genetically she’s you.”
“You know,” I’d answered, “she’s not me.”
Maybe, I thought, Jules found Emily as sexually attractive as he found me. Maybe, I thought, there’d be all the passion we shared, plus the bonus that her body makes babies. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and at the same time, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be jealous and I didn’t want to be mad at the world because I was infertile.
All of this history existed before I met Emily. All of it was there when I left for Denmark and all of it was festering when I returned to New York only days later.
* * *
Emily and I exchanged e-mails and talked on the phone. I never did figure out how to Instant Message; I downloaded the program, but I couldn’t seem to get a valid screen name, and when I thought I finally had it figured out, I sat there with nothing to do.
“Put me on your buddy list,” Emily, aka PoetInCrisis05, directed.
“I don’t have a buddy list. How do I get one?” I asked. I wondered what her crisis was and why 05? Were there four other poets in crisis before she’d chosen the screen name? Eventually, even Emily gave up and I felt hopeless.
“People our age don’t IM,” Jules reassured me.
“Emily does,” I said.
I had told her I was going to Denmark for work, but hadn’t mentioned the Danish Twin Registry or it’s Early Separation Research Unit and Emily hadn’t asked for any details. I didn’t know how to explain the trip to myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have known what to tell my twin. Somehow, our conversations remained close to the surface and this surprised me.
“Abigail is really getting into ice skating,” she reported.
“Is she taking lessons?” I asked.
“Yes, with a group. I’m thinking of maybe getting her some individual lessons. People say it helps a lot with technique, but it’s expensive.”
I could have been talking to any parent about any kid.
“The vet isn’t too concerned about Zoey’s scratching,” I’d tell her. She was less interested in my dog than I was in her child, but that was true of everyone else I knew as well.
“What do you think of getting together again?” Emily finally asked.
“That would be great,” I said. Would it? “Will you be in New York soon?”
I thought maybe she was coming to visit her friend on Staten Island. She hesitated, and I knew she was embarrassed.
“No, actually, I just wanted to see you again. I was thinking maybe you could come to Philadelphia.”
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Chapters 1 to 7 revised, Chapters 8 to 10
Chapter One
My sister was a person with little history and few anchors. Her mother left when she was three and her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence. My sister grew up as the only child of an only child. Her father died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily was visiting New York City. She’d spent the afternoon seeing The Gates in Central Park, the spectacular display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of monuments erected to line the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with a saffron-colored curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and Emily felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled.
Here and there in the northern, quieter areas of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the fluttering orange canvases.Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark and the wind was brutal. A stranger to New York City, Emily was a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she had started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She made her way to Third Avenue, all the while looking for just the right place to duck into. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and finally she spotted the perfect diner. She entered Empire T’s and was happy to be somewhere warm and light.
“Emily,” a man said.
She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but he was not at all familiar to her. Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. The man was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half of the table.
There was no hostess and Emily searched for a clean table. The ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent and she struggled to ignore him.
She spotted a table set for four. The restaurant was mostly empty so she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. That way she’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs. Still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table and I ordered a drink for you.”
My sister was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily.
Before she could speak, the man's expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
In that quickest instant, my whole life changed. On that otherwise unremarkable cold February evening, my identical twin sister met my husband, Jules, just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived for what I thought would be just another dinner.
Chapter 2
Everything went wrong the day I discovered my twin. Like a series of mistakes all calculated to make the equation work anyway, it put me serendipitously in a given place at a given time. Like any day that capsizes your life, I’ve played the mundane events over and over in my head like a line from a song that just won’t stop.
On the morning of that same February day in 2005, I’d taken chicken out of the freezer. I was planning to make a curry-- something rich, heavy, and bright yellow to off-set the winter’s gray. I checked our refrigerator and the nearly-empty pantry for ingredients. We needed cream. The half-pint in there was rancid. I like to throw pineapple and peanuts into my curry, so I reminded myself to pick those up on the way home. I even called my cell phone and left myself a voicemail.
It turned out to be one of those days, though, where nothing went quite as scheduled. I spent my lunch hour phoning in prescriptions and haggling with insurance companies, and then I got a call from a patient who was in crisis.
“Dr. Glassman,” Nancy whispered, “I’m hearing voices again.”
“What are they saying?” I asked. Nancy had been doing well and I hated hearing that she was psychotic again. I wondered if she had stopped taking her medications.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is that because they’re telling you not to talk to me?” I ventured a guess.
“Yes.”
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure Nancy. “I think it will be okay if you tell me what they’re saying.”
“I can’t,” she insisted, “Not on the phone.”
Perhaps I should have told Nancy go to the Emergency Room, but I knew from past episodes that she’d hang up and never go. Instead I instructed her to come right in, which left me to reschedule two patients for later in the day.Nancy arrived fifteen minutes late. She was both paranoid and suicidal and it took me a while to calm her and then to negotiate her hospital admission. By the time I finished seeing patients, hours later than I’d originally scheduled, the last thing I felt like doing was grocery shopping and cooking dinner.
I called Jules.
“Rough day,” I said, “I’m wiped.”
He couldn’t hear me, we had a bad connection and I had to repeat myself. I finally ended up yelling loudly enough that people at the bus stop glared at me.
“Anything I can do?” He asked.
“Put the chicken back in the refrigerator. I’ll make curry tomorrow.”
We agreed to meet at Empire T’s, the diner down the street from our apartment. It was no place fancy, but it’s fast and the food’s edible, so it was our standby for weeknights when things didn’t go exactly as scheduled. An older Greek cashier—he may have been the owner-- knew my name from my credit card and would often greet me with a nod, then quietly say, “Evening, Dr. Glassman.” I didn’t know his name, but I always smiled and returned his greeting.
At the last minute, I ran up to the apartment to see Zoey, our standard poodle. If Jules had still been there, perhaps we’d have decided to stay home and order a pizza or just make do with cereal. If he’d been there, perhaps my whole life would have continued along its usual trajectory.
Jules had come and gone already, but the dog was excited to see me and wagged her tail so hard I thought it would send her airborne. I nuzzled my face in her black curls, hugged her tightly and told her I needed a quick doggy fix.
“You’re a good puppy,” I said and gave her a few too many treats before I hurried off to meet Jules at Empire T’s.
I saw my husband’s belongings on a table by the door. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of a chair and two beers, still cold and foaming, had already been served and were waiting for us. The men’s room, I assumed and headed to the seat across from his. I started to sit, but then I spotted Jules talking to a woman a few tables away. She was sitting and he was standing, they both had their backs to me. Should I interrupt, I wondered? I waited just a moment; their conversation looked animated, maybe even heated, and not at all like one he be having if he’d bumped into a client.
“Emily,” he said, looking up at me when I approached.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said.
He looked drained and confused and I was about to ask if something was wrong when he cut me off.
“Emily, this is Emily Mason,” he said, pointing to the woman who turned her head to greet me.
The world and everything in it froze. I could have been looking in a mirror. Emily Mason looked up at me and I saw myself, my wavy light brown hair parted just to the left of center, a few inches shorter, the right side tucked back behind the ear, and my own black eyes pierced straight through me. The expression of surprise – shock, really—that Emily Mason wore, was my own. Only the clothing and jewelry were different. The long pink scarf, the grey wool cardigan, the jeans and hiking shoes—these were not mine. Long dangling earrings flowed from her lobes; pearl studs sat in mine. I saw myself and I knew instantly, without hesitation or question, that this was my identical twin. Perhaps I’d known all along that she existed because there was no question about coincidence, no thought that we might be unrelated strangers who looked alike or even simply blood relations. The image I took in was fully my own and there was no room for any other explanation. I knew too, in an instant that blurred my emotions into this jumbled mix of excitement, fear, and perhaps even anger, that my whole life had changed and would never be the same again.It felt like I was standing on the scaffolding outside the building of my life, quietly looking in, when suddenly and unexpectedly everything dropped, leaving me in mid-air, a cartoon character doomed to splatter on the ground below. It didn’t feel good and the air was vacuumed from my lungs while my heart waited to slow.
“Emily,” she said, softly, and I felt tears spilling from my eyes. She stood up and there we were, side by side.
“Holy shit,” Jules said, also quite softly.
Holy shit is right, I thought. Without asking, he took my coat off me and rested it on the chair, over my twin’s coat. She was thinner than I but the exact same height. She had the same nervous cough, the same tears now pouring forth. Jules guided me around the table to the chair across from Emily’s.I never asked, I just sat down and joined her. Emily put her head on the table and buried it in her arms. I would have wanted to do the same. The truth is, it was a moment I’d never rehearsed for. One might imagine what they’d do if they ran into their unknown identical twin, but that would be a fantasy and this was an event I was simply not prepared for. I didn’t know what to say or what to ask. I just cried. Emily, too, was overwhelmed.
Jules got our drinks, his coat and keys and gloves and unread mail, and we both settled in across from her as uninvited guests at Emily’s table.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter interrupted our silence, directing his question at Jules. The young man’s eyes bounced from one of us to the other and back again. He smiled a little, as if let in on the secret. Twins--even as adults, they make people smile.
Jules took charge and placed an order. To the waiter’s delight, Jules said, “My wife will have what…” and he tripped over the words here, as we all would countless times that night, finally settling on, “…her sister is having,” and the same bowls of soup appeared before us soon after.
The smell and the steam that rose from it were good. I could not eat a bite.
“Do you live in the neighborhood?” Jules asked.
“No, no. I live in Philadelphia,” Emily said. She was as anxious as I was, as much at a loss for what to do next. “I’m staying with a friend and her family in Brooklyn. We went to college together. She had to work today.”
Emily stuck her tongue in her cheek, a funny little gesture I’d never seen anyone make before.
“I took the subway in. I came…” she stopped mid-sentence for just a second, a brief pause before she finished her thought, “…to see The Gates.”
“Emily does that.” Jules caught himself in his confusion and started over. “My wife does that,” he said and I looked at him.
“Does what?” Emily and I asked the question in unison.
He didn’t know who to turn to while he answered. “She puffs her cheek out like that with her tongue,” he said.
“I do?” I was surprised.
“You do.”
I suppose there was a lot we could have talked about that night in Empire T’s. We could have compared notes on our likes and dislikes, our thoughts and fears, our bodies, our habits, our health. The list was virtually endless and it settled on a story from my sister’s past.
* * *
“Where’s mommy?” the little, blond-haired, black-eyed Emily asked her father.
“She went away,” her father said.
“When is she coming back?”
“Don’t know,” he answered.“I want my hair in braids. Mommy does my hair in braids.”
Mike Mason considered the request. He was a barber, fairly new to the profession, and he cut only men’s hair. He’d looked at Emily’s hair, had the three-year-old turn in a circle, and finally he’d said, “I can do pigtails or a pony tail, or you can wear it loose. Daddies don’t make braids.”
Emily chose pigtails that day. He took her to work with him and sat her in a corner with a coloring book. She’d listened while his stream of clients came in, chatting away about their jobs, their golf games, their families. One man offered Mike suggestions on the stock market. This went on for days, until finally he’d found a neighbor to baby-sit while he worked.
“When is mommy coming back?” Emily had asked.
“Don’t know,” he’d answered.
“I want Mommy to come back,” Emily said. “I don’t like pigtails and pony tails. I want braids.”
She started to sob.
“Stop crying,” her father ordered. “There’s nothing I can do.” His tone was uncharacteristically harsh.
When she didn’t stop, he left the room, and finally the apartment. He came back, hours later, to the little girl he’d left alone. Emily, at first scared, then hungry, then finally tired, had fallen asleep on the sofa. Their cat, Pepper, sat next to her clawing at the material on the already shabby piece of furniture. The room was cool, no one had turned on the heat.
Her father gently lifted her up, then carried her into the kitchen where he sat her on the counter, draped a huge nylon cutting cape around her, and cut her hair with his barber shears. She sat very still, barely awake, shivering, afraid to move or to cry, and he trimmed the length to the middle of her ears, leaving Emily with a pixie cut.
“There,” he said quietly, and lifted her in his arms so she could see herself in the bathroom mirror, “now you don’t have to worry about braids.”
“Amazing,” Jules said. “If Emily…” he stopped himself, once again confused by the duality of our names, “If you,” he said directly to me, “weren’t sitting here, or if my eyes were closed, I’d swear it was you talking.”
He turned to my twin. “Your voices are the same, but it’s more than that, the inflection, the rhythm, where you take breaths, it’s just too weird.”
“Let her go on,” I said. Emily was a talented story teller. I saw myself in Emily’s gestures—it was weird-- but mostly I wanted to listen. I wanted to go back in time to a place when everything made sense. I must have guessed that would be a long journey.
Emily told us she’d stopped asking about her mother, but she never stopped waiting for her return. She and her father moved from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C. before Emily started school. She quietly worried that her mother wouldn’t know where to find them. And she had no answers to the questions posed at school: Where is your mother? What does she do? Why isn’t she with you?
Emily’s father was a diligent man, but he remained emotionally distant. He never said, “Don’t ask questions.” He never had to. He was, she later concluded, heartbroken if not devastated.
There was more to the story that Emily didn’t offer up and I had no way of knowing what she might be withholding.
“He didn’t date other women?” I asked.
“No,” she said and she took a sip of her water. The ice had long ago melted. “Dad went to work and he took care of me.”
“It sounds like a stoic life,” I said. I didn’t want to analyze her dead father, but he sounded depressed at best, or perhaps personality disordered. Schizoid or avoidant. I kept the diagnoses to myself; there were times when it really wasn’t helpful to be a psychiatrist. And, of course it hit me, her dead father might well be my father and with that unnerving insight, I really didn’t want to diagnose him.
“Yes.” she said thoughtfully, “Stoic is a good word to describe Dad. He kept it all bottled in, then one day when I was 19, he had a heart attack and died.”
The waiter appeared and refilled Emily’s water glass. She took a long sip and waited for him to leave.
“Would you like some dessert or coffee?” he asked.
“Just the bill,” Jules answered.
Everyone was tired and he knew I wouldn’t want anything else, he assumed Emily didn’t as well.
“Wait,” Jules said to the young man. He turned to my twin, “I didn’t mean to make assumptions. Did you want coffee or dessert?”
“No. I’m fine,” she said, and with that the waiter left.
“I went through his belongings after he died,” she continued. “I found the divorce decree, his bank statements, old tax returns, a social security card, not much else. The only sentimental things he hung on to were related to me—photos, a tap dance program from a recital I was in when I was eight, my high school awards, and two letters I wrote to him my freshman year at college. It was strange to see those letters; he died less than a year later, yet I didn’t remember writing or sending them. They were the only letters I’d ever written to Dad and they were bland and formulaic. ‘Dear Dad, How are you? I’m good. I like my classes and I’ve met some good friends. Hope you’re well.’ There was nothing more interesting to share with my father. When I went through his things doing his last call on housekeeping, I was looking for something. Something to hold on to, or perhaps something to explain this strange, disenfranchised life we’d had. I wished he’d kept a journal or held on to some old love letters. Something that would have given me some posthumous insight into who he was besides my father and a good barber.”
I thought for a moment.
“What was your mother’s name?” I asked.
“Sandra Klee Mason. It’s funny, but I’d always just thought of her as Mommy, right as she was when she left.” Emily abruptly stopped talking.
“No one ever talked about your mother?” I asked.
How could that be? Weren’t there other family members? People who had known them as a couple?
“We moved when I was five,” Emily said, “to a place where no one knew us. My father was an only child and his parents were both dead. He was a loner, except at work where he chatted away with the customers, but mostly he listened to stories about their lives. When he talked, he talked about sports. He certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to anyone that his wife had walked out on him.”
“There weren’t any adoption papers? I was adopted as a baby.”
“No.” Emily considered this, but she was certain she was raised by her biological father.
Something about Emily’s delivery left me wanting and I wondered if she knew more than she let on. Her presentation didn’t invite questions. There was a guardedness that I pushed against. It was too new and too unreal for the questions to fully form, for the story to make sense, and Emily asked me nothing about my adoption. She didn’t so much as flinch.
“There was no marriage certificate, so I’m guessing she took that. Or Dad shredded it. It wouldn’t be unlike him to simply destroy any thing he didn’t want to be. Like giving life a haircut so short it can’t be braided.”
The diner was empty now. It was a late weekday evening and Empire T’s was one of the few diners around that wasn’t open twenty-four hours. The older Greek cashier delivered the check to our table and he looked from me to Emily and back to me. Finally, he handed the bill to Jules.
“Two Dr. Glassmans.” He nodded to himself and walked away. Perhaps he wondered if he’d been dealing with two of us for years.
The evening had to end and I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say.
“Are you going back to Brooklyn tonight?” I asked. Should I invite her to stay with us? We had an extra room, a rarity in the city but we’d taken the apartment with plans to start a family. Emily was a stranger and she was here visiting a friend.
“I am,” she said. “I should be going.”
“Then you’ll come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow,” Jules said. It was a statement, more a command than an invitation.
“Yes,” I said, “we’d love to have you.”
It would give me a chance to think and to figure out what else I wanted to know. And what else I wanted to share.
"I’d love to come,” Emily said.
Jules wrote out our address on a napkin. The three of us stood up to gather our belongings and suddenly, without warning, I started to sob. I suppose I was relieved that I would see my twin again or perhaps I was just overwhelmed at the shock of it all. I surprised myself and I surprised the both of them. If anyone else was there, it would have created a scene.
I sat back down and Jules flagged the waiter to bring water. Emily looked confused, and then she too folded onto her chair and started to weep. We leaned into each other and I found myself holding this stranger close to me, as if we were any pair of twin sisters in need of comfort during that particular February evening.
Chapter 3
Obviously, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t find a comfortable position and the bedroom was too hot. I kicked off the blankets, rolled around, then got cold and pulled them back on. Jules seemed to dream peacefully beside me and I wished I had the energy to get up and do something useful. I took the remote control from the bed stand and turned on the TV. Worried I’d wake Jules, I muted it while I channel surfed. The room flicked in electric blue as I clicked from station to station, but nothing captured my attention enough to distracted me from my edginess. I hit the off button and, frustrated, set down the control. I tried to go back to sleep, but again I was hot, then cold. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom.
My thoughts circled around in my head. I thought about the moment when I first saw Emily. In the space of that moment, I became my own scientific experiment. What becomes of identical twins raised apart? Do they have similar personalities? Do they like the same movies? Cringe at the same insects? Find the same men sexy? Do the same things make them angry, tearful, guilty, or regretful? Do they get the same illnesses, die the same deaths? In the space of that moment my whole past changed. I didn’t consider it then, of course, but my whole future changed as well.
The winter of 2005 was mostly a good time. Mostly. My career was going well and I’d achieved some degree of success. I had my own private practice on the Upper West Side and a teaching appointment at Bellevue. It was at Bellevue, in the outpatient center, where one afternoon a month I ran a clinic for indigent women with Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder, known in non-psychiatric circles as Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS. I’d gotten a reputation as an expert in the field.
In the middle of what felt like a cold, drab January, I was asked to appear on The Today Show, along with Harvard’s Hilda Druesen and several women who suffered from severe PMS. I was on television. I sat on Katie Couric’s left, caked in makeup and doused in hot stage lights.
“There are several medications that are FDA-approved,” I said, “but when those don’t work, we sometimes use medications ‘off-label.’ This means the medicines have been tested and approved for other disorders, and that they’re safe. So we might find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents, while not specifically tested for PMS, can be helpful.”
The women chosen to appear on the show suffered from the most extreme of symptoms, of course. They’d been picked because they told their stories with force and they evoked sympathy from the audience. One girl hurled wine glasses against the wall every month, exactly two days before her period started. She’d gone through six boxes in less than a year, including an entire set of Reidel stemware. Another young woman had been arrested fourteen times, only premenstrually, for getting into fist fights. Once she’d whacked the plumber with his own plunger.
“He was two hours late,” she said, “and then he didn’t finish and said he’d have to come back the next day.”
The police hauled her off with the toilet still clogged.
Both women were so appalled by their own behavior that their remorse and bewilderment made them the perfect talk show guests. The third patient had bright orange hair that stood nearly as high as it reached long. She wasn’t violent, but she was plagued by episodes of profound sleepiness—narcoleptic attacks, actually—which kept her from driving or working for five days out of every month. All three women had been transformed by psychiatric treatment, though none were my patients. I wasn’t sure where they’d been recruited from, perhaps the actors’ guild.
Jules was excited, my family was thrilled, the phone at my already over-filled private practice didn’t let up. The day after the show aired, a stranger approached me when I stopped at Duane Reade to purchase toothpaste.
“You’re the doctor who was on The Today Show!” she announced. From the noise she made, you would have thought I was George Clooney arriving for a blind date. I was flattered and ate up the attention.
The fuss was short-lived, my so-called fifteen minutes of fame. Still, it gave my ego a boost, one that I relished after seasons of unsuccessful fertility treatment that had left my body almost as bruised and battered as it had left my emotions. The baby-making issue was the only kink in our marriage, a marriage that was otherwise smooth and loving.
Finally, I got out of bed. I went into the kitchen and poured myself some Diet Coke. I was already so agitated that I didn’t think a little caffeine would make any difference. I sat down at the kitchen table and I dialed my parents’ number.
It was 3:45 in the morning and I had never, ever, phoned them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been aware of this odd, misplaced sense of anger when I first saw Emily, and I realized that someone, somewhere, must have known about us. Identical twins separated during infancy couldn’t easily be hidden. My past, as I’d been told it, must have been a lie and I was angry at this betrayal.
Zoey padded into to the kitchen and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her while the phone rang. Her hair felt matted, she needed to be groomed. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough and settled herself on the floor under the table. I swallowed the final sip of soda and was still thirsty.
My mother’s voice was sleepy, but her “hello” had a sense of urgency to it. A hint of the panic one feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night and explodes what was a restful slumber, mixed with the hope that it is what it usually is at that hour: a wrong number and not news of a tragedy.
“Mom, it’s Emily. Nothing’s wrong.”
Nothing’s wrong. I’m not calling to tell you that someone is dead or injured or needing to be bailed out of jail. This really could have waited until the morning. How would I explain that while it could wait, I couldn’t? I wanted to pet Zoey, but she was out of my reach and it didn’t seem fair to ask so much of the dog. I hugged my knees instead.
“Emily.” She said nothing more, just waited.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll call you in the morning. This can wait.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m awake now.” Of course she was. My mother was always there for her children, she wouldn’t have it any other way. It remained, always, an integral part of her identity to be the always-available mother.
I heard her tell my father to go back to sleep. It’s Emily, but nothing is wrong. Certainly, they were both sitting upright, wondering why I’d called. I didn’t know if they’d turned on a light or if my father had gotten out of bed. People have rituals for such things.
I told my mother about meeting Emily in Empire T’s. This woman who looked just like me. She had not only the same name, the same face, the same body, and the same mannerisms, but also the exact same voice. She did that same funny thing: sticking her tongue in her cheek to puff it out.
“Her name is Emily?” My mother was perplexed. It seemed like an odd thing to focus on.
“A coincidence, I’m sure. Or maybe we both looked like Emilys as babies.”
“We didn’t name you Emily because of how you looked. You were named after your father’s aunt Esther. We would have named you Emily even if you’d looked like a Mildred.”
Jews name their children after dead relatives. It’s the Hebrew name that matters, so often the English version just has the same first letter. Esther. Emily. It was all decided before I got there.
“So, it’s a coincidence,” I said. This seemed like a trivial part of the story.
I waited while she told my father. I got some pretzel sticks from the cabinet and set the bag down on the kitchen table. I ate one. It was stale and so I put a few on the Formica table top and made patterns with them while my parents conferred. My mother’s hand was over the mouthpiece and all I heard was the muffled sound of undecipherable voices.
I spelled out ‘Emily.’ It took a lot of pretzel sticks and the letters were uneven, the ‘m’ being the shortest and the ‘e’ and ‘y’ being much taller.
“We don’t know anything about a twin,” my mother said. “Are you sure? Sometimes people just look alike.” My mother sounded anxious, edgy even, the way she sounded when she felt out of control.
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. It wasn’t the conversation I’d wanted and I let her go back to sleep. I put down the receiver and felt selfish that I hadn’t waited until morning. And I felt angry that I’d been dismissed.
“What?” Jules asked when I finally got back into bed.
“Nothing,” I said. I wondered just briefly if he’d want to make love. My thoughts were a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. There was sex and there was the baby issue. And now I was a twin.
“Where were you?” Jules asked. He was awake now.“In the kitchen. I called my mother.”
“Did she know about the other Emily?”
“No.” I answered. “Someone must have known, right? Do you think she was with me in the orphanage? Do you think they said to my parents, ‘Here, we have two, pick one.’”
“I don’t know what to think, Em.”
We lay there together with our thoughts. Jules reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“Do that some more,” I said and he did. “Rub the other one, too.” I turned away from him so he could reach both my shoulders. He dug his thumbs hard into the muscle, hurting me as he pressed out the tension. I wanted to tell Jules to stop, but I didn’t. He’d taught me that if I tolerated the pain, my muscles would eventually relax.
When he felt me go limp, Jules put his hands under my T-shirt and rubbed my skin softly. His palms circled over and over on my shoulders and back, and then he stopped. His lips found me and followed the curve of my hips. Finally, we made love. It was quiet and wordless and my breath caught with that final quiver. As he rolled off me, I caught myself wondering if Jules would like to make love to my twin.
I never did fall asleep. The night wore on and I started to anticipate the upcoming day and all that it would bring. I thought about my patients and wondered if I would be distracted. I thought about Emily and worried about dinner. Would it be difficult to make conversation? Would it be harder to say good-bye? Would I learn things that would please me or make me shudder? Finally, the alarm pierced the February darkness, sounding its unwelcome series of escalating beeps to usher in my sense of dread.
Chapter 4
I always knew I was adopted. My parents were open about such things and the story of my arrival was a part of our family history. It was, however, my story alone with no mention of an identical twin.
Robert and Diana Weitz had tried for years to conceive a child before they finally adopted me. No sooner had I arrived in their eager home, loved and welcomed and delivered to a decorated nursery, when my mother became pregnant, again, and again, and again. I grew up the oldest of four in a middle class Jewish household. If they loved me less, or expected anything different from me because I was not their biological child, then they hid it well.
The fact is that I could have been theirs. Sure, with four kids, I could have picked it apart -- there are ways we were alike and ways we weren’t. None of it created an equation where the other five members of my family were obviously related and I was not. So, I was less artistic than Sam and Matthew and my hair was lighter than Lisa’s. I was a better student than the others, especially at math and science, a fact that was chalked up to my role as the oldest and never to a quirk of genetics.
My mother was a broad-boned woman with brown eyes and poker straight hair she kept cropped close. She had olive skin that tanned deeply with the first touch of sun. Her hair was silver, but when I was little it was a shade just shy of rust. My father was a slight, pale man, who sported a full head of light curly hair and hazel eyes. Pretty much anyone of any size or shape could have been the off-spring of these two people. Strangers who didn’t know I was adopted often commented that I looked a bit like my father. I have his slim build, though I am nearly two inches taller, and my light brown hair has some wave to it. Like him, I am fair-skinned, though my eyes are uniquely my own. I have big black eyes that are spaced too widely apart, a feature I’ve been told makes me look like a creature of prey.
“What do you think your real parents are like?” Matthew asked at dinner one night when I was in seventh grade. He liked to ask questions, to pose the never-ending series of what ifs.
“We are Emily’s real parents,” my father said, and he reached over me to get the ketchup. “And you are Emily’s real brother.” He didn’t object to the conversation, just the issue of “real.”
“I know,” Matthew said, “but what about the parents who gave her up to us?”
“Her birth parents,” my mother said. She had finished eating and was gathering the remnants of the meal from the table. “Are you done with that, Rob?” she asked, snatching the ketchup as my father set it down.
“I suppose I am now,” he said.
“Okay, so what do you think your birth parents are like?” Matthew continued.“Obviously,” I said, “they are stupid.”
Matthew, being a younger brother, was delighted. “You’re a dope so they must be dopes too!” He could have been singing.
“Matthew!” our parents scolded simultaneously.
“If they gave me up, they must have been pretty dumb,” I said, self-satisfied.
“What if your real mom is a princess or a movie star?” Lisa blurted out. She giggled, but I could tell she actually did wonder if this could be true. I, of course, had always assumed my birth mother was royalty and loved hearing Lisa ask the question. Why had she given me up and was she looking to find me and make me heir to her throne? Like my little sister, I wanted it all to be glamorous.
“Mommy, tell about how we got Emily!” Lisa, who was six at the time, lingered over the story of my adoption. Sometimes I thought she was jealous that I was the adopted one.
“Emily needs to work on her haphtarah portion,” my mother said. My Bat Mitzvah was only weeks away and much of my mother’s energy was focused on directing my studying.
“Please!” Lisa insisted. She noticed my father standing in front of the open freezer, and knowing his intent, yelled, “I want ice cream, too, Daddy!”
“Me, too,” said Sam, the third in line and the quietest child. “Chocolate!”
The chorus continued and all six of us ended up back at the dinner table with bowls of ice cream. Lisa managed to dip one of her long braids into the ice cream and my mother was briefly occupied getting a wet washcloth to clean off Lisa’s hair. I was spared Bat Mitzvah study for a few more minutes and I stretched the time by softening my ice cream with the back of my spoon and making it into a soupy mixture.
My mother settled with her bowl of half-strawberry, half-chocolate, and re-told the tale of me. Emily Weitz.
I was brought to a hospital emergency room in Chicago by a woman, presumably my mother, when I was three months old. I was sick, she’d told the nurse who registered me. She checked me in under the name of Sally White, born on March 20, 1968 and she gave her own name as Betsy White. The nurse brought us back to the pediatrics section of the emergency room and when the doctor came to examine me, Betsy White was gone, having left me in a pile of blankets on the floor.
I was healthy with no signs of illness or trauma and there was no trace anywhere of a Betsy White, or even an Elizabeth White, who’d given birth in Chicago to a baby girl three months earlier.
I was placed in an orphanage, then adopted four months later by my parents, the Weitz’s of Connecticut. I was re-anointed Emily, and at seven months of age, my official history—documented in baby books, on photographs, slides, and reel-to-reel home movies—began.
I crawled at the time of purchase, walked at thirteen months. I spoke words at eleven months, sentences at eighteen months, paragraphs before two. I was a good daughter and everyone was excited about my upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I would stay a good daughter and make everyone proud when I became a doctor. It never crossed my mind to be anyone other than who they wanted me to be.
“Why did her mother leave her there?” Lisa wanted to know. The story was always fresh to her and the questions she asked were variants of the same themes, asked over and over. They weren’t so different from the questions I had asked when I was six.
“Emily’s mother loved her, but she couldn’t take care of her. She took Emily to the hospital because she knew the doctors would find her the perfect family.”
Lisa was satisfied. At thirteen, I was starting to realize that the story might have missing parts. Maybe Betsy White was a drug addict or a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t my mother at all. Maybe she had kidnapped me from my real family, from people who had really wanted me. My fantasies varied with my mood.
“Time to go study,” my mother said, clearing my bowl.
“My real mother was a chocolate queen,” I whispered into Lisa’s ear as I slipped a piece of candy from my pocket to her hand.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said and I loved that her little face brightened as she snatched the gift.
I had a story I could live with and I was told the agency that arranged my adoption had no other information. My parents couldn’t help me search for my birth parents because there were no leads, nothing to go on. I could wonder all I wanted and I could wallow in my royal fantasies, but the story stopped there.
At least I had a story, one that explained me and gave my life context. It wasn’t until I lost it that I realized just how important it was.
Chapter 5.
John Stellar was a huge man both in measure of his height and weight, but also in terms of the presence he bore. His voice was loud, his laugh filled the room-- his tears even more so—and sometimes I felt crowded out. His perceptiveness was, at times, both uncanny and intrusive and he noticed details no one else would ever see or think to comment upon. If a new pillow appeared on the couch, he’d notice. Even a new magazine subscription in the waiting room would catch his attention. If I dropped a few pounds or wore a new outfit, those were up for comment as well. I made an effort to keep track of what I wore on the days we met because I knew he’d notice if I wore the same dress two sessions in a row. He chose, without fail, the seat closest to mine and some days I wished for a little more distance.
Mr. Stellar was my first patient on the morning after Emily and I had discovered one another. I was, to say the least, anxious and tired from my sleepless night. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to settle myself to the plane I needed to be on to do psychotherapy all day and I secretly hoped he’d cancel his appointment that morning.
He used the session to talk about a problem he was having at work.
“And the son-of-a-bitch has the nerve to say I offended one of the clients. Offended, can you believe that, after I spent weeks getting this guy’s mess straightened out?” He was angry.
I was tempted to mirror that feeling back to him, but in the past he either insisted he wasn’t angry, or screamed, “Of course I’m angry, wouldn’t you be angry?” While it should have been a helpful insight, for Mr. Stellar it was not. His anger narrowed his options and effectively ruined his life, but he was too invested in justifying it to consider other ways.
“You feel he didn’t appreciate your efforts,” I said.
I was soft-stepping it. My personal goal for the session was to survive it, and I instantly felt guilty: Mr. Stellar deserved more from me than mere survival-- my own at that! I could simply agree that the client was a son-of-a-bitch. It was the easiest tactic for that day and it would have given him some momentary relief, but it was counter-therapeutic in the long run to collude with this patient’s basic belief that everyone else in the world was an asshole and the point of therapy was to blow off steam about how they were all shitting on him (his language, not mine). Most days, I still held out for an ideal where he might gain a more tempered view of his role in these uncomfortable dynamics. With insight, I hoped, he would change-- a cautious destination on my part, but one worth retaining as an ideal.
“Of course he didn’t appreciate my efforts. I told you, I spent weeks working on his miserable little numbers and then all he did was piss on it.”
I waited. There was nothing that called for my reply. Without one, my patient appeared to have exhausted the subject. He glanced over at my desk, then settled his eyes on me.
“You change your hair, Dr. Glassman?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“You look different. Are you sure it’s not lighter?”
I forced a smile but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t changed my hair color, I’d simply discovered that my whole life had been misconstrued.
“Something wrong? You seem kind of quiet.” Of course John Stellar would pick up on my distraction. It made me mad.
“I’m fine. Go on with your story,” I said.
He stood up and for a moment, I felt tense. Scared even. There was something intimidating about Mr. Stellar even though he had no history of physical violence and his questions about me were always caged in caring tones. He was brash, but he was respectful, though that too was contrived and purposeful.
He walked towards the window, away from me, and I felt a sense of relief. It made me aware of just how fragile I was feeling.
“This is a great view,” he said.
My office is a small room off a shared waiting area on the sixth floor. The window overlooks Central Park West. It’s high enough to afford a view of the Park, but low enough to allow for some people-watching. I wondered what he was looking at. I didn’t want to get up—it would feel too intimate to join him—but I asked.
“Oh, there’s a couple kissing, and a guy walking his golden retriever who’s peeing on a bench leg—the golden, not the guy-- and some bikers and roller bladers weaving through The Gates. Kind of icy out there for those guys. Next week they begin to dismantle them.”
He stopped for a moment to take it all in.
“Hard to believe the scale of that project, all those years it took in the planning. Making the materials, erecting thousands of them-- each measured to the width of the footpath where it rests-- and you look at it and say, art? This is art? I like them, it’s just hard to see each individual one as much of anything, but the thousands of them together really are kind of spectacular.”
I thought about Emily and imagined her walking though Central Park, taking it all in.
“You know, Jeanne-Claude and Christo are married to each other,” Mr. Stellar said, referring to the artists who designed, constructed, and financed The Gates.
“I did know that,” I said.
“Did you know they were born in the same hour of the same day?”
A shiver went down my spine. The Gates had brought my identical twin to New York City. It all seemed like too much coincidence.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely. He was born in Bulgaria and she was born in Morocco. 1935. I don’t remember the exact date, but sometime in June. They’re both Geminis.”
The sign of the twins.
“That’s okay,” I said, not really thinking.
“All that planning,” Mr. Stellar continued, “and all those tens of millions of dollars for materials and they’re up for just two weeks, only to be taken down. You’d think they could leave it for a while or bring it to other parks—Golden Gate, or Hyde, or somewhere so more people could see it. There’s something frustrating about having it be so transient.”
He spoke calmly and thoughtfully. No bluster, no anger, no obscenities. I remembered he has a master’s degree. He was often so invested in projecting a rough, stay-back image, one that betrayed his gentler and more vulnerable self, and when his guard went down, his sensitivity came through. I remember that I liked him and I felt silly about how only moments before I’d felt frightened of him. What was that about?
Mr. Stellar continued to consider the world outside. He wondered if it would snow again and commented on the bareness of the trees against the bright saffron Gates.
“You’re worried The Gates won’t be adequately appreciated,” I said after a bit, linking his observation to his earlier distress about his boss and the offended client.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly.
“You’re good, Doc.”
* * *
Jules called at 1:55. He always called at five of the hour, hoping to catch me between sessions.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight for…” he hesitated, “Emily?” Had he started to say “your sister” or “your twin?” This was a new idea for him as well. An unanticipated someone inserted into our lives.
I thought about the chicken in the refrigerator and wondered if Emily would like my curry. Or would it be better to order out and not be preoccupied with cooking? I’m prone to obsession and I wondered if the other Emily was as well.
“Jules,” I said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I asked her to have DNA testing?”
He hesitated.
“It’s only dinner,” he said, implying that yes, it would be offensive. “What are you thinking?”
There was a lot I could be thinking about the stranger with my shared gene pool. A lot he could be thinking.
“My mother suggested that maybe it’s just coincidence that we look alike,” I answered.
“It would be an awful lot of coincidence. Your mother wasn’t there. Trust me, you don’t need DNA testing.”
There was so much to consider. I hadn’t asked Emily her birth date. During my training to be a psychiatrist, I’d been in psychotherapy and I’d had to confront how uncomfortable I was with all the uncertainties of my early life. There was the issue of my unknown genetics, and of this sense that my life had begun when I was seven months old and swallowed into the Weitz family. Everything before my adoption by the parents who then served as the observing historians to my childhood was this odd sort of blankness, as though I’d been sucked free from a Black Hole. There were no photographs from that time, no baby books documenting my first roll-over or spoonful of rice cereal. Every genetic disease I learned about in medical school left me with an aching vulnerability: could I be a carrier of the Huntington’s gene? Was I prone to diabetes? Was I at risk for schizophrenia? I presumed there must be some mental illness in my biological family. What sane person would abandon her baby? Or babies?
Suddenly, I had a partner in this unknown Black Hole. Jules was positive we were identical twins. Certainly, sisters can look very much alike and even I couldn’t dispute that this other Emily had to be a blood relative of mine. Did it matter if we were monozygotic twins cast from the same ovum, dizygotic twins sharing a womb but not identical genetic material, or simply sisters?
Yes.
Should I have felt embarrassed, or apologetic, that I wanted to know and that somehow it mattered to me? Would Emily mind? Would she also want to know or was this like asking a potential lover to have an AIDS test, thereby conveying something short of total trust? And was I even ready to admit that there was something other than a sister, a twin, that I might want from this stranger?
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but still, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily said. She looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction but there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said,
“Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled and was proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of what other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him.
Finally, Jules said, “It would be nice to invite everyone in.”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our apartment. The foyer is a narrow space, just barely wider than a corrider, and it gets further closed in by the clutter of a coat rack, a side table to deposit the mail on, and a line up of shoes. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. The dog loved children but the child was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we had a little one, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. The drapes were too heavy for the room, leftovers from the last tenants and they limited the light and created a closed in, formal feel.
I brought out drinks and appetizers. I searched the pantry for some juice and crackers and added them to the offerings. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules watched her daughter. I could feel him pining for parenthood, or maybe I was simply projecting my own emotions.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot. She knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl’s head.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, but with that they found one another.We made small talk. It was stiff and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated radiators and they churn out the heat. The pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in-- at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
“Do you like Chinese food?” Jules asked Abigail. She nodded. “We’re going to order. The place right down the street has the best dumplings. Do you like dumplings?” Abby nodded again.
“She calls them Monkey Dumplings,” Emily said.
“Monkey Dumplings! Do you think they’re filled with monkey meat?”
“No.”
“She just started calling them that when she was three, and it’s stuck,” her mother explained.
“And do you like your monkey dumplings, steamed or pan-fried?” Jules asked. He finished getting everyone’s order and went to call it in.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with its mismatched chairs, metal table, and dog bowls on the floor. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I assumed she had shared, my history and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at focusing on the details, even as he twirled sesame noodles inelegantly on the fork and didn’t quite get them all into his mouth.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter.
“Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school and we were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet-- we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. We have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing tree-hugging vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“After we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource they’re all clamoring for when there’s not enough to go around."
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“How’re those monkey dumplings?” Jules whispered to Abigail. “Best you’ve ever had, right?”
Abigail smiled and said they were pretty good. She played with the chopsticks and poked at a wonton, chasing it around in the bowl of soup.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
Richard’s family was clearly a source of tension in their lives. Perhaps Emily was jealous that her ex had found a new love, one he’d married this time. Maybe she was angry that he’d had another child, leaving her daughter as the castoff. Fractured families were complicated and I heard story after story at work. They were always other peoples’ problems, and suddenly I had a sister and a niece who lived this struggle.
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person. We might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems and it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
We opened our fortune cookies. The restaurant had sent five and we gave the extra one to Abigail.
“You will conquer many things,” Jules read aloud. That’s interesting, I thought.
“You are quiet and wise,” Emily’s fortune said.
“You will look long and hard,” I read.
“For what?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Read yours.”
She cracked one of the cookies, pulled out the long white paper and read, “Remember the things that are important.” Abby crinkled her nose. “That’s silly,” she said. She took a bite of the cookie.
“Read the other one,” her mother said.
“I don’t want to.”
What kind of kid doesn’t love fortune cookies? I suppose someone else could have taken the cookie and assumed ownership of its contents, but no one did.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating our cashew chicken, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name. I didn’t know how to send Instant Messages.“You’ll learn,” she insisted.I was profoundly disappointed and I hugged them both a little too long.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I whispered to my twin. It was the truth, but it left me feeling so vulnerable. I felt such relief when she squeezed me a bit tighter and said, “Me, too.” She was brave enough to say it at full volume.
We got to the door and I didn’t know what to do about Abigail.
“Can I hug you?” I asked. “Or would you rather just shake hands?”
She surprised me with her answer.
“You can hug me,” Abby said, “but first I want to say good-bye to Zoey.”
“You won’t be afraid?”
“No.” She pointed to Jules. I didn’t know if she’d forgotten his name or if she just didn’t want to call a stranger ‘uncle.’ “He can hold the dog.” It was a more a question, though it was phrased like a statement.
“Absolutely,” Jules said, and he freed the cloistered poodle then led her to the front door by her collar.
Abby said good bye and, when she saw how calm Zoey was, she petted her on the head as if it was the most natural of things to do. “Good dog,” she said gently, as if she was trying to convince us all. She came to me and offered a hug, one I accepted with pleasure. I wanted to squeeze, but I didn’t.
“I loved meeting you,” I told my niece.
“It’s really weird that you look like my mommy,” she said, and with that we all laughed.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I walked the dog. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
“I opened the last fortune cookie,” he said.
“And?”
“It said ‘Strangers will lead you to unexpected places.”
“Really?” That seemed like a funny coincidence.
“No. It said ‘You will have a long and prosperous life.’ I think they recycle the same six sayings. I’ve never figured out what the string of numbers on the back means.”
I didn’t want to think about fortune cookies. Instead, I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, nieces, nephews, and parents. Would I ever see Emily again? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d shared with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind his magazine.“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. And that night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I would soon be compelled to look for one.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived on the water in Nyborg and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark, where Steen worked, is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing off him the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards. It has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978 and Steen was the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer. It was a quirk of flight availability that let me to Denmark rather than Sweden.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of fraternal versus identical twinship is crucial to how they differ from other collections of data. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal twins are no more genetically alike than regular siblings, though it is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into identical and fraternal pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. As young children, they were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became ill), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen said, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket. Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him and it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.”
Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.”
The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask.
I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I. His white hair was deceptively aging.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.”
But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction.
“Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered.
There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard.
The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. Every surface was piled with something. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I moved some throw pillows and settled on the sofa. Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were
here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English.
He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger. Or even a friend. Something about Steen felt deceptively safe. Perhaps the fact that I believed I’d never see him again.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage. There was my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness and my sudden dissatisfaction with our life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father. Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas. In the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, could have opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. He whispered to me that I was beautiful, special, and told me I was a wonderful lover. I like to think it all happened so quickly-- that there was no foreplay, no time to consider, no time to turn back. My memory has done that. If it was anything but quick, then I won’t let myself remember those details. Soon, he was inside of me. One of the few things I do recall is that I had an orgasm, and this sinks me in guilt.
It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been. Did he feel something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or was it just about the conquest? It wasn’t until later-- when I sat by myself in a restaurant booth, staring at a menu in a language I couldn’t understand, looking at food I didn’t even want-- when I finally felt repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit, to Steen Biorn and a country full of separated twins who were searching or not.
I packed my suitcase with crumpled clothes and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
Chapter 8
I first met Jules Glassman in junior high school when we were in the same Hebrew school class. He was quiet and studious and pretty much did as he was told. I sat with my girlfriends and we were more interested in giggling and passing notes than we were in memorizing vocabulary words or learning prayers. We were constantly being moved to opposite sides of the room, or even out into the hallway, and it was the louder boys who got our attention.
I met Jules again when I was in medical school while I was rotating through the emergency room. He came in on a stretcher after he’d been hit in the head and rendered unconscious during a rugby match in Central Park. It was a head-on collision with an opponent and Jules had gone limp on the field. The other guy didn’t pass out, but he had a huge hematoma on the side of his head and looked like he’d been hit by a bat. Jules was breathing on his own and had regained consciousness in the ambulance just as the paramedics got the IV line inserted. He said he was fine and wanted to leave, but the attending physician in the ER insisted on a scan of his brain. The ER was crowded and Jules was left sitting on a stretcher in the middle of the hall.
“Emily. Emily Weitz,” he said. I was on my way to the lab with a urine specimen.
“Jules from Hebrew class,” I said. I recognized him right away. I passed the specimen from my right hand to my left. “You’re bigger.” He was still very slim and studious-looking. I would have guessed ping-pong, not rugby. We talked briefly. I mumbled a few words in Hebrew and he smiled. He was in law school, on his way to becoming a tax attorney, and was a back on a men’s rugby team.
“Fly-half,” Jules said, referring to his position, “is mostly about speed and strategy. You always think the guys in the scrum will get hurt, they’re the ones on top of each other. I guess I should look where I’m running.” His head still hurt, and I could tell he was forcing a grin for me.
“Who would have thought you’d be a doctor?” he said. “ I would have pegged you for a party planner. You were a social little teeny bopper back in the day. Funny how things turn out.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. He was handsome and there was something compelling about his link to my past.
Nick Green, the ER resident I was working with, approached me on his way to his next case. He glanced at Jules, as if to say ‘This isn’t your patient.’ I might have introduced them, but Nick handed me a container-- a pass-off on the run-- another urine specimen.
While you’re headed to the lab, take this one, too,” and he disappeared behind a curtain.
I stood there in my white short white lab coat. It wore the spewing substances of that day: blood, diet coke, some guiac reagent, a little scrubbed off vomit, as well as unbleachable residue from weeks of body fluids. A rubber touniquet weaved through my button hole, a palm pilot, reflex hammer and pens weighted down my pockets, a stethoscope rested on my shoulders. Jules and I talked about the fates of our Hebrew School classmates while I balanced a urine specimen in each hand.
Nick stuck his head out from the curtained area.
“Emily, I’m getting ready to do an LP on the fever and headache in curtain six. You want to do it?”
It was my cue to get back to work.
“It was good to bump into you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “the only good thing to come of getting knocked out on the rugby field.”
I wished him well and walked away.
“Emily,” Jules called after me and I stopped and turned back. “Can I get your phone number?”
We had dinner the next night and we married a year later.
The relationship was, from the start, fueled by sex. It was surprisingly electric and we assumed that with such passion, well of course we’d make magnificent babies. When it didn’t happen, we were both surprised. I was disappointed, Jules was devastated.
Jules was an only child and he ached for a family. His parents divorced when he was seven and he’d spent his childhood being shuttled around the Connecticut suburbs from one parent’s home to the other, like an object in the way at which ever house it happened to land. With either parent, he felt like he hampered their careers, their social lives, their happiness, and there wasn’t so much as a goldfish to keep him company.
Charles Glassman was a wealthy man, having inherited the rewards of his own father’s wise investments. A bank vice-president, he achieved success of his own accord, but his passion was for competitive tennis and real estate investments.
Lorraine Glassman loved men and loved to shop. She was an impeccable dresser, coordinated so tediously well that she would have looked plastic had it not been for the warmth of her infectious, ever-present laugh that drew the world in and charmed everyone in a room. Her affection, however, stopped at her laugh, and under all the charisma was an insecure woman who needed to amass as many admirers and as much stuff as possible to continually reaffirm her worth to the world. Jules was the family child—for Lorraine certainly had to have one of what every other woman had, children being in a category close to a diamond ring or regular facials—and he managed to fill his roles as both an acquisition and an admiring minion.
Charles had been raised to be a frugal man and he was naturally jealous and controlling. Always mindful of the next impending disaster, he and Lorraine fought endlessly about questions of her fidelity and her spending.
After they divorced and the battling stopped, Jules would hear them quarrel over whose weekend it was to be stuck with him, who needed to hire a sitter, and he withdrew into himself hoping, perhaps, that if he was good enough, someone might want him.
Things changed when Jules was seventeen. His father died suddenly and unexpectedly and, as the only child, he was the sole heir to a considerable sum of money. His mother, who’d always felt she’d gotten the short end of the divorce settlement, warmed to Jules. She became nicer to him and Jules, in his generosity tinged with a desperate need for her love, attributed this to her sympathy for his grief. Seventeen is a difficult age for a boy to lose his father.
“She never asked me for money,” he explained. He was very defensive of Lorraine, blind always to her motives and shortcomings. Maybe I was too cynical; my work sometimes showed me the darker side of human nature.
The power shifted in a way that wasn’t healthy for Jules. They’d go on vacations to Europe, at his expense, and he bought his mother a beach house as an investment. Finally, Jules felt wanted and needed; no one was negotiating where he would be and who had to take him to Hebrew School or tennis lessons.
Jules figured if a family was big enough, there’d be someone in it for everyone and he was thrilled when we’d started off with Zoey. He fussed over her, talked to her, took her to the groomer and arranged for new and interesting poodle-do creations. He bought her toys. gem-studded collars. and endless treats. I worried he’d spoil our kids.
“Of course I will!” he laughed. “I’ll spoil all six of them. Why have kids if you’re not going to spoil them?”
“I’m a doctor, I can’t have six kids,” I said.
“Then what about eight?” It was a joke, but certainly we wanted two or three children. “To keep the dog company,” Jules would say.
My body went through tests and more tests; I was poked and prodded in the most humiliating of ways. Men I wouldn’t dream of giving the time of day to ordered me to scoot lower on the table, to let my legs fall wider apart. My uterus was filled with dye and imaged, my veins sucked dry of tube after tube of blood to be sent to special labs across the country for levels and hormones and God only knows what else.
“Emily,” Dr. Bornamen had said, thoughtfully, and I’d wanted to strangle him for not addressing me as Dr. Glassman while I sat there in a paper gown I struggled to hold closed. Why can’t you talk to me after I’ve changed into street clothes? Why can’t you introduce yourself as Jim, rather than Doctor, Bornamen? Where do you come off assuming I want you to call me--the me with the half-exposed naked breasts and the too-tightly crossed bare legs and feet—Emily? It was my fourth or fifth meeting with Dr. Bornamen—the latest greatest fertility doctor-- and I had to stop myself from hating him. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t making babies. He had no clue that I either wanted to call him Jim, or wanted him to call me Dr. Glassman, that I needed some token of equality in what was an otherwise wholly unequal experience. I was just one more patient waiting in line. There was no malice on his part and I knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending; instead I felt guilty for all my displaced anger.
“The tests are all negative. I don’t know why you’re not getting pregnant. This is often the case, but you might want to consider in vitro fertilization as a next step.”
I’d had patients in therapy with me during their fertility treatments. The hormones made them crazy and the organization of it all made sex mechanical, scheduled, on-demand. I expected the worst and while the treatments did make me moody, sex remained great, even if the baby making was going on in a petrie dish.
Perhaps it was six months, maybe a little longer, after our final failed attempt at a test tube baby when Emily, my twin, and Abigail, her daughter, stumbled into our lives.
“You know,” Jules had said, “genetically she’s you.”
“You know,” I’d answered, “she’s not me.”
Maybe, I thought, Jules found Emily as sexually attractive as he found me. Maybe, I thought, there’d be all the passion we shared, plus the bonus that her body makes babies. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and at the same time, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be jealous and I didn’t want to be mad at the world because I was infertile.
All of this history existed before I met Emily. All of it was there when I left for Denmark and all of it was festering when I returned to New York only days later.
* * *
Emily and I exchanged e-mails and talked on the phone. I never did figure out how to Instant Message; I downloaded the program, but I couldn’t seem to get a valid screen name, and when I thought I finally had it figured out, I sat there with nothing to do.
“Put me on your buddy list,” Emily, aka PoetInCrisis05, directed.
“I don’t have a buddy list. How do I get one?” I asked. I wondered what her crisis was and why 05? Were there four other poets in crisis before she’d chosen the screen name? Eventually, even Emily gave up and I felt hopeless.
“People our age don’t IM,” Jules reassured me.
“Emily does,” I said.
I had told her I was going to Denmark for work, but hadn’t mentioned the Danish Twin Registry or it’s Early Separation Research Unit and Emily hadn’t asked for any details. I didn’t know how to explain the trip to myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have known what to tell my twin. Somehow, our conversations remained close to the surface and this surprised me.
“Abigail is really getting into ice skating,” she reported.
“Is she taking lessons?” I asked.
“Yes, with a group. I’m thinking of maybe getting her some individual lessons. People say it helps a lot with technique, but it’s expensive.”
I could have been talking to any parent about any kid.
“The vet isn’t too concerned about Zoey’s scratching,” I’d tell her. She was less interested in my dog than I was in her child, but that was true of everyone else I knew as well.
“What do you think of getting together again?” Emily finally asked.
“That would be great,” I said. Would it? “Will you be in New York soon?”
I thought maybe she was coming to visit her friend on Staten Island. She hesitated, and I knew she was embarrassed.
“No, actually, I just wanted to see you again. I was thinking maybe you could come to Philadelphia.”
Chapter 9
I took Amtrak to 30th Street Station and from there I got a cab to Emily’s place on South 44th Street. I was only going for the afternoon, but still I brought a bag of stuff with me. I carried both a hardcover novel and the most recent issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. I had a CD player, and some tampons and Motrin, just in case. My period was due the day before and I assumed I’d have to deal with this sometime during the afternoon though I’d been warned that the hormone treatments might cause symptoms and changes in my cycle for many months to come. Stress, too, sometimes caused an interruption in my cycle and I certainly felt anxious.
It was just supposed to be a social visit to see my twin; I didn’t need any more surprises.
Emily’s apartment was a mess of indescribable proportions. In the entryway, there were piles of mail, months worth of catalogs, dirty socks, unpaired shoes, clothing strewn about. The living room had a couch and a large television set. A coffee table was piled with dirty dishes, a box of crackers, crayons, newspapers, and the remnants of Abigail’s art projects. What didn’t fit on the table landed on the floor. Every surface was piled with empty glasses, toys, used napkins—the place was an extensive array of garbage and clutter. An abandoned jacket lay dead center in the middle of the floor, a pair of roller blades not far from it.
Emily ushered me in, oblivious to the mess. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked that she lived this way or that she hadn’t bothered to clean up for my visit; it wasn’t like I’d dropped in unexpectedly. It’s not that I’m obsessively neat, but her apartment was downright dirty. I know she owned a vacuum cleaner because it was standing out in the dining room still plugged in. It was a wonder no one tripped over the cord. PoetInCrisis05, I remembered, and wondered if this was the crisis.
“Where do you write?” I asked.
I didn’t want to sound judgmental, but I didn’t see a computer, or a space where someone could even sit down with a pad and pen. There was no order to the chaos, no assignment of purpose, the rent bill rested next to Abigail’s homework assignment, sat beside a new birthday card waiting to be signed and sent to a designated celebrant.
“I have an office at the newspaper, and I use a laptop here wherever I can find space,” Emily said, so I guess she was aware that it was cluttered. “Richard and I used to have the second bedroom set up as a workspace, but when Abigail was born that room became hers. Even with just the two of us, we could use more space,” she said as her only nod to the fact of the pigsty.
Abigail was with her father for the afternoon and Emily suggested we go out for lunch. I was glad to be out of her dusty apartment and loved the little café she chose. I silently wondered if she had an agenda. I didn’t ask-- didn’t want to imply that there was anything wrong with her just wanting to see me, if that was the case. We both ordered the same salad, sparking a discussion of how we both loved goat cheese.
“My dad absolutely hated goat cheese,” she said. “He called it cream cheese for snobs.”
Well, I thought, he doesn’t have our genes.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Mike said, without glancing up.
She stopped by on her way home from school everyday, he looked forward to her visit.
“How was school? Got a lot of homework?”
“Good, Daddy. I have a history test tomorrow.”
She wanted to ask if she could go to a party on Saturday night, with a boy, but something stopped her. He would probably allow it, but it suddenly felt like a betrayal and she didn’t ask.
“Better go study then,” he said, rinsing the lather from the razor. Finally he looked at her and the hint of a smile came to his face just before he returned to his customer.“I’ll get us a pizza for dinner.”
I loved the stories from her childhood, loved hearing about her father the barber, even though they left me wondering.
* * *
“You think she did it twice,” Emily said as she picked up a roll. She tossed it in the air, just a millimeter or two, and caught it in a barely perceptible motion. She sliced the bread and buttered it, paying too much attention to what she was doing. Emily was anxious and obviously not very hungry.
“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I believed that Betsy White, or whoever this person who had given birth to us was, had abandoned two babies in two different places. I didn’t have a timeline, I didn’t think about whether she left one of us and then the other, but when I really considered it, she’d shown up with me at a Chicago emergency room and there was no mention of another baby in the story, so I guess I thought she abandoned my sister first. But it was all speculation and I wondered what Emily was getting at.
“I wasn’t adopted,” Emily said. “I may have been abandoned by my mother, but I wasn’t adopted. It never occurred to me to question if my father was my father, our father. It’s because he was.”
“He didn’t like goat cheese,” I blurted out, without thinking and instantly I realized how ridiculous and petty I sounded. I wished I could inhale the words. Emily put down her roll and knife and stared at me.
“I’m sorry, what a ridiculous thing to say,” I said. “You caught me off guard. I’m just trying to make sense of this. You have to be adopted, there’s just no way to make this story work otherwise. You just happened to bump into an identical twin who was given away by an otherwise intact family?”
I didn’t give her time to respond, I was ranting or something close to it.Emily tensed a little, but waited without saying anything. I was relieved when the waiter came to refill my iced tea; I asked for a clean lemon wedge. The waiter’s nose and eyebrow were pierced, his arms had colorful tattoos running up and down them.
“So,” I said at last, “You think he was my father, too?” I was tossing all sorts of ideas around in my head, trying to figure out what Emily was thinking.
“Yes.”
I suppose that was obvious. As identical twins, we had to have the same parents.
“And do you think your mother, Sandra Klee Mason, was really our mother?” I felt like I was playing twenty questions and wished Emily would just spit out her theory already. Even if I didn’t necessarily want to hear it. I’d come to some peace with this idea of joint abandonment; I’m not sure I wanted another option added to the possibility of my past.
“My father was my biological father and yours too,” Emily said. She looked upset and said nothing more. I sensed she knew something I didn’t, but still, I couldn’t think of what, and I hated being so out of control.
My lemon came with our salads. I waited for the tattooed server to finish and considered if I really wanted to squeeze it into my drink. Why not, go for it, I thought.
“Why would she—either Sandra Mason Klee or some other mystery mom—leave me and keep you?”
“Because I’m cuter,” Emily said with a poker face. She fished a walnut out from a pile of greens and balanced it on her fork. It was the first glimpse I had of her sense of humor, we’d both kept it pretty serious. My life, I realized, had been devoid of humor since the moment I walked through the door at Empire T’s. There certainly weren’t many ha ha’s on my recent shuttle to and from Denmark.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Maybe they only wanted one kid. Maybe they could only afford one kid; my father wasn’t on the big buck circuit. Maybe you were colicky or just didn’t laugh at her jokes.”
“Maybe,” I countered, “Betsy White dropped you on a church doorstep and me on an ER gurney. Then Mike and Sandra adopted you, and Sandra skipped town when she realized she really didn’t want to be anyone’s mother.”
I was still stuck on the original theory. I have to say, I liked it best or at least it was the one I’d gotten used to. It came out sounding mean, though, and I felt badly. Emily wasn’t taking this well, she looked anxious.We both ordered dessert and coffee. We’d cleared the air with our theories and even if I didn’t like Emily’s, I couldn’t be angry. She had other thoughts, something more was going on-- I could tell-- but she wasn’t sharing them with me. Maybe she was worried her ideas were too convoluted to be considered, that I would dismiss them.
The more time we spent together, the more I was forced to look at how different we actually were. I realized, somewhere in the middle of a bite of key lime pie, that I liked Emily. It wasn’t just that she was my twin, or that we shared an uncertain but clearly linked past, I simply liked her.
Maybe it was the mess in her apartment. It made her human, vulnerable, something other than my reflection in a stranger’s clothes.
“Emily,” Emily said. She picked up her napkin and started twisting it, wringing it actually. “There’s something you need to know.”
I thought she was on the verge of telling me something about our history. I wasn’t at all prepared for what would come next.
“ I have cancer.”I put my fork down, I said nothing, looked to Emily, then to the wall. I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve only just found you, I thought.
“Many cancers are curable,” I told Emily when I could locate some words.
“There was an initial response to chemotherapy,” Emily said. She had a good feel for the medical lingo. “The tumor metastasized before it was discovered,” she continued, “and the chemotherapy just bought me time. I have small tumors in my lymph nodes and lungs. They’ve stopped growing for now, but at some point, they’ll grow again. The long-term prognosis is grim.”
“That’s what they said? Grim?” What kind of oncologist would tell a patient her prognosis was grim?
“No, he didn’t say it in quite those words. He wrote it. I read my chart when the doctor stepped out of the room.”
Oh. She wasn’t supposed to do that, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out.
“So how much time?” I asked, at last. Really, I wanted to scream: How can you leave me?
Emily shrugged her shoulders.
“No one says. In a way, I wish they would, at least I could plan. For now, all I know is I’m here. I’m tired a lot, but I’m able to work and I’m able to take care of Abigail. When I’ve asked, I been told no one can give me a time frame.”
Abigail, I thought, and was overwhelmed with horror. I felt stricken that Emily would die and leave me; what about her little girl? The trajedy of it was paralyzing.
What could I do? Nothing, Emily said, but I wondered. She had summoned me to Philadelphia that day to tell me about her cancer. It had been treated the summer before, in 2004, and she hadn’t mentioned it the first night we’d met or the next night in my apartment, or in any of her emails or phone calls. She was telling me for a reason and I wondered what it was. I thought of Philip Howard.
“I met this man in Denmark, an oncologist who studies bone marrow transplants in identical twins with breast cancer. He’s at the University of California in San Diego. I could track him down,” I offered.
No one was certain where Emily’s cancer had originated. By the time it was discovered, it was all through her and the point of origin couldn’t be ascertained.
“They don’t do bone marrow transplants for this kind of cancer,” Emily said. She looked at me strangely, as though I should have known. Was she hoping I had a miracle up my sleeve, or knew someone who did, because I was a physician?
“You could get a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. One of my friends from medical school is a pulmonologist there and I could ask her for help.”
Emily nodded. She was being treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania—she called it HUP, with the familiarity of a good friend, one she knew way too well, and she felt confident every possible treatment was being considered. When she was first diagnosed, she’d gone to Johns Hopkins for a consultation, and the doctors there agreed with her doctors at HUP.Emily had finished chemotherapy and she was waiting. Waiting to get sick then die, at some undetermined date, maybe months or even years in the future. It was a formidable burden to know her time was limited even if perhaps she was better off than some unsuspecting person who dies before her in a terrorist attack, a car accident, or even just keels over from a heart attack with no prior warning.
We had walked back to Emily’s apartment after lunch, after key lime pie, after tipping the tatooed young waiter. The sun was out; it was warmer than I’d expected, and I was hot in my jacket. I took it off and tied the arms around my waist, the way the kids do. We were both quiet on the walk back and I found myself noticing the weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks, soda bottles thrown carelessly around the curb, the dog poop that no one had bothered to bag and cart off. A bus screeched to a stop and sirens wailed in the distance. With every breath, I inhaled car the smells of stagnant garbage. Not so different from New York, I thought, but on my own turf, I blocked out all the unpleasant sensory input and here it rushed at me.
Emily’s apartment was one of three in a row house. She had the second floor, and the first and third floors were both occupied by dental students. The first floor apartment housed a young couple, and I wondered if, after graduation, they’d open a husband-wife practice together where their names would be painted on a big, white, tooth-shaped sign.
We reached the building and Abigail was sitting on the steps with another, younger, little girl. They were playing with a doll and Abigail was clearly in charge. She looked more solid, less tentative, then I remembered her being. The younger child was maybe two-and-a-half or three years old and chubby, with soft brown curly hair that framed her. She looked like something out of a commercial and my heart hurt. The little girl reached for the doll; her arms were so round, it seemed she had no wrists or elbows. Their play was gentle and loving; this must be Abby’s half-sister, I thought. I was pleased to see Abby and I felt a horrible pang of pity for the child who would be left without a mother.
Abigail stiffened when she saw me approach. The other little girl grew bubblier.“
Abby, look it’s your mommy. Look, it’s two of your mommies!”
I thought she would burst.
“That’s my mom’s twin,” Abby said. I could tell from the change in her posture that she didn’t like this situation. It threatened everything she knew.
A man stood up, appearing from the shadows of the stairs. He was tall and balding, wearing jeans and a sweater that hung loose over his shoulders. He smiled at Emily, and reached out his hand to shake mine.
“This is Richard, Abigail’s father,” Emily said, then turned toward me. “My sister, Emily.”
She said nothing more, so I assumed he knew the story of how we’d met.
“Abby told me about you,” Richard said. “Wow!” He looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match. He settled his gaze on Emily and he said, “Two of you. What a thought!”
Richard bent down and kissed Abigail good-bye. He hoisted the little curly-haired girl onto his hip and clicked his remote to unlock the Toyota at the curb. The little girl wailed as he put her into a car seat. She screamed to her sister in desperation, and the three of us looked on silently as Richard and the unhappy toddler drove off. Abigail also looked forlorn. Emily rubbed her back very lightly and quickly.
“Daddy will be back soon, honey.”“I know,” she answered with a wisdom that struck me as tragic. Who offered more solace to whom, I wondered.
I had a train to catch, so Emily and Abigail walked me to Penn Station. Somehow, the walk back seemed shorter than the cab ride coming. I kissed them both good-bye. Abigail let me squeeze her and it felt right.
“Emily?” I asked as an afterthought. She was at the edge of earshot and stopped to see if I had really called her name. She looked at me, now hand-in-hand with her daughter. “Before the chemo, how long was your hair?”
“About as long as yours,” Emily answered.
I thought so.
Chapter 10
John Stellar had been sexually abused as a child. Repeatedly, over the course of years, by the parish priest he respected and loved, and it left him feeling like permanently damaged goods. The Catholic Archdiocese paid for his psychiatric treatment, twice a week, every week, for however long it took. Reparations they called it, though such a word implied that damage done could simply be repaired with enough something—time, money, medications, psychotherapy. It didn’t allow that some injuries are irreparable and the shadows they cast become a part of the person.
At his first appointment with me two years before, Mr. Stellar had told me about his history of being molested. He talked readily about the sexual acts he’d been made to perform and those that had been acted upon him. It was a matter-of-fact telling of the stomach-turning sadistic abuse of a young boy, and he could have been reciting the names of the state capitals in alphabetic order. While it was easy enough for him to talk about what had occurred, it took Mr. Stellar many months to tell me the perpetrator had been a priest, and that revelation had come with a torrent of emotion even though, intellectually, he was aware I’d known this all along. He had sobbed violently.
“You feel very betrayed,” I said. The abuse was in the past but the feelings remained.
“It changed my life,” he admitted. “I’d never be here if it hadn’t happened.”
“This,” I said, meaning the need to see a psychiatrist or have psychotherapy, “is a sign of weakness?”
“I just wouldn’t need it. I’m not the type.” He resented me and all that I stood for, and that was obvious. Mr. Stellar wanted me to agree with him: he was strong.
“You’re a different person because of the awful things you’ve endured,” I agreed. He sighed and I went on to ad, “You know, even with what you’ve been through, you’re strong. It takes courage to survive and move on and you’re doing that. And it takes courage to get help. You’re doing a good job.”
He shifted in his seat and looked away, perhaps a bit embarrased, but no longer on edge.
“How do you feel now about the man who molested you?” I asked the question quietly enough that he could pretend not to hear, if he wanted. I asked because I wanted to know and I didn’t want to guess; I especially didn’t want to guess wrong. He could have a whole host of feelings, though I imagined he might feel some combination of fear and murderous rage. Father Thomas Malloy, the priest who had initially contacted me to arrange for Mr. Stellar’s treatment, had said a number of boys were involved over a long period of time and the perpetrator was serving a lengthy prison term.
“He’s a source of shame to all of us,” Father Thomas had said, “and we’re doing our best to do right by the victims.” He’d had a gentle, seductive voice which I found almost irresistible over the phone; I’d wondered if the priest who’d violated the boys shared this hypnotic quality.
“I’m supposed to be angry,” Mr. Stellar had said with surprising calm, “I tell that to myself and I try. It’s just not there. It’s like I have this open wound that seeps, that nothing will stem and yet it doesn’t hurt doesn’t hurt and doesn’t even sting, it simply seeps. Mostly, I feel numb.”
That Monday, the Monday after I came back from Philadelphia, Mr. Stellar talked about his ex-wife. The marriage had ended because she couldn’t stand his jealousy and his constant need to control her. He couldn’t see how he was so hard to live with and he repeatedly talked about what an attentive husband and father he’d been, and how she had left him even though he’d sacrificed everything for her and their children. He felt victimized and betrayed, and there were on-going issues related to custody and parenting that he frequently talked about in treatment.
“Every Friday, and I mean every single Friday, I came home with a gift for her. Usually it was just flowers, but sometimes it was a piece of jewelry, once in a while chocolate—she loves chocolate but Susan’s always watching her weight and sometimes she’d be thrilled to have it, other times she’d get pissy. She has a great body and I’d just tell her to enjoy it and stop worrying, but you know women and their weight. So mostly I’d just stop and get flowers. How many guys do you know who do that, every single Friday? I never missed one. Even after we separated, I’d send her something, a card, or a little gift I’d leave in her mailbox.”
The gifts, the romance, they all came with a price and Mr. Stellar just didn’t see that. The ones that continued after they split—I assumed they were unwanted, his way of trying to woo her back, to court her, to remind her of what she was giving up, and to gain control in a pathetic, begging sort of way.
“Did Susan like the gifts?”
“Sure, she loved them. She said I was the most romantic guy she’d ever met. We fought a lot even before we were married, and the gifts, the flowers, they always softened her. Later, though, if we were fighting, she’d throw the stuff at me or make a show of depositing them in the garbage.”
“This made you angry,” I said.
“Hell, yes.”
Toward the end of the session, he said he needed to tell me about something that had happened over the weekend.
“John Junior pitched in a little league game.”
He went on to tell me that Susan was also there. Mr. Stellar was an avid and excitable fan and he’d gotten wrapped up in the game and cheered Johnny on from the sidelines. On a crucial pitch, the umpire made a bad call and Mr. Stellar went over to the plate and yelled at him.
“Susan made this federal case out of it. She insisted I embarrassed myself and embarrassed John Junior. It was an awful call—it should have been strike three, he’s out, and instead this fucking ump calls ball four and sends the runt to first base.”
“It sound like Susan wasn’t as concerned with the game as she was with your behavior,” I commented.
“If she wasn’t such a bitch…” he said, leaving his sentence unfinished.
Sometimes therapy was hard for Mr. Stellar and sometimes his therapy was hard for me. He’d come from a world with no boundaries, one where the person you trust most—the person you’re told is a messenger of God, someone you follow unfailingly without question-- might violate you in unspeakable ways. When Mr. Stellar intruded on my world, commented on the things that should be off-limits and were completely irrelevant to his treatment, it left me feeling exposed and resentful. His world had no boundaries, but in a venture as intimate as psychotherapy gets, I could have used a few.
“You look tired, Dr. Glassman.”
“You’d rather talk about how I look than about how you behaved yesterday,” I said.
“You really look tired. There are circles under your eyes.”
I was tired. I’d been back from Denmark for two weeks and still hadn’t unpacked. I’d returned from Philadelphia late the night before after learning my twin had cancer. I was tired. What should I have said to Mr. Stellar? It would be fine with me if he didn’t point out the bags under my eyes; I’d be happy to pretend they weren’t noticeable to the rest of the world.
“I’m a little tired,” I said. It was a bit like yelling uncle.
“Late night out?”
I struggled not to be offended. I was feeling too vulnerable to be my sharpest, to keep my best therapeutic and objective cool. And then, of course, I felt guilty for being angry. This patient was the victim of horrible abuse, he needed and deserved my compassion, not my resentment.
“Are you worried about me?” I asked.
“Should I be?”
“No.”
Mr. Stellar looked me straight in the eyes. “Maybe I should be worried about you, Doc,” he said, then deflected his gaze.
* * *
I remained exhausted, despite what felt like many many hours of deep sleep. I had this sense that I couldn’t catch up, and that if I just got enough sleep, deep enough for long enough, I’d go back to being myself. It was an effort to get to work, to make it through the day.
“Do you think I’m depressed?” I asked Jules. He’d commented several times that I hadn’t been the same since I returned from Denmark. I tried not to think about all that had transpired there, even if it was destroying me.
“Over Emily’s cancer?” He asked.
Well, that and other things, I thought.
By Friday afternoon, I had to admit I was late. I stopped at Duane Reed on the way home from the office. Jules was still at work and Zoey, who was eager to go for a walk, clamored outside the bathroom door. I’d done this many times before, always hopeful and always disappointed. That Friday, for the first time, I prayed it would be negative. My urine ricocheted off the strip, it’s deflected stream splattered onto my hand. I flushed and waited, too anxious to get off the toilet seat. I sat there staring at the little blue plus sign that popped up to announce I was pregnant.
* * *
“Congratulations!” Dr. Bornamen was genuinely thrilled. He burst into his office where I was already sitting, the confirmatory test results in his hands. “Everything looks perfect, your levels are right where they should be and in a few weeks we can do a sonogram.”
His white shirt was stained beneath his lab coat and he hadn’t shaved that morning—perhaps because he’d been attending a birth—but his face radiated joy. We’d graduated medical school the same year so I’d always assumed we were the same age, though on that particular day he felt a little older, and perhaps a little wiser. Or maybe, I just needed him to be.
I burst into tears. I hoped he’d think they were tears of happiness or relief-- after all, I’d been trying so desperately to get pregnant. And suddenly, I had just what I wanted without the help of modern medicine and I was sobbing.
The joy drained from his face.
He sat down across from me and simply said, “Tell me.”
“Jules isn’t the father.”
He uncrossed his legs, leaned in towards me just a bit, and waited. So I continued, telling him things I had never intended to disclose and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that he’d take the time to listen and care.
I told him about my trip to Denmark, about Steen and the power of the moment. About how I felt too guilty to have sex with Jules when I first got back, too tired after that. I didn’t tell him about Emily, I guess because it just didn’t seem relevant, except perhaps to explain why I was in Denmark in the first place, but that wasn’t what I was crying about and there was so much more to deal with.
Dr. Bornamen listened. I talked. He didn’t say much.
Finally, he asked, “What are your thoughts about the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It felt like a catastrophe. I’d come to see him, but I hadn’t taken it further, hadn’t thought about an endpoint.
“Do you think I should terminate it?” I asked. It felt funny to hear myself say the word aloud. “Terminate.” It sounded so final, but not like anything that had to do with a baby. You terminate contracts, not people.
“Not if you want to have a child,” he said gently. “Emily, I’m a fertility specialist. I help people get pregnant and I’ve been unable to help you. Maybe there was something about this affair.” There, he’d used the word I didn’t even want to think: affair. “Maybe,” he continued, “there’s some incompatibility between your eggs and Jules’ sperm. The two of you have been trying for years, first alone and then with intervention, and it hasn’t happened, and really, it isn’t likely to ever happen. As I mentioned when we met in January, having failed invitro, your best bet from here would be to get pregnant with artificial insemination by a sperm donor. I know you and Jules ruled that out, but it’s essentially what your one-time event with this man abroad was, if you don’t plan to see him again, that is. Or, you might consider a surrogate to carry a child for you—a complicated deal, I might add—or adoption. So, no, from my point of view, this is a blessing and you shouldn’t terminate the pregnancy. I realize there are other factors going on here, but you asked me.”
“What do I tell Jules?” I asked.
“That one I can’t answer for you,” he said. Dr. Bornamen looked sad, and I was sorry I hadn’t left him joyful. He was angry, as well, I assumed, though he was kind enough to hide that from me. I stopped crying and he stood up to leave.
“You’ll let me know what you decide? And in the meantime, prenatal vitamins with folate. No tobacco, no alcohol, no medications, no street drugs, no downhill skiing.” The obvious.
“Yes, of course.”
“If you’re….” Dr. Bornamen hesitated. He wasn’t used to talking about elective abortion and he was searching for the right words. “… going the course, come back in one month.” He didn’t tell me what to do if I wasn’t going the course and I was left to assume I should go elsewhere.
I was swept with sadness and decided to walk the forty blocks home. It would give me a chance to think through my options and at least I’d have an excuse for my exhaustion.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” Jules was home when I got there. Zoey greeted me at the door and sniffed my crotch.
“No, Zoey, come here,” Jules said. He found her crotch-sniffing habit offensive and often would scold her. I leaned down and kissed her, then scratched hard behind her ears, the way she liked.
“You’re the best little crotch-sniffer,” I whispered. She wanted me to scratch longer and she followed me around the apartment. Finally, I settled into a chair and held her head in my lap.
“Why are you home?”
It was early, I didn’t expect Jules to be home for at least an hour or two and I was looking forward to a little solitude. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting me so early either; I hadn’t mentioned my doctor’s appointment.
“I took the afternoon off. I did the grocery shopping and ran a few errands. I wanted to surprise you with dinner, but you’re home early, too.” He was clearly disappointed.
I went in the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea. There were grocery bags on the floor and food on the table in various stages of being put away. I grabbed a couple of yogurts and put them in the refrigerator. It was then I noticed the flowers resting on the table. Roses. Jules saw me looking at them.
“These are for you,” he said, as he reached for the bouquet, then presented them to me with a slight, dramatically gallant bow. “I would have cut the stems and put them in a vase, but I just got in.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, ticking through a mental calendar that came up blank.
“I wanted to do something nice for you, to cheer you up. You’ve been so upset since...” Jules hesitated, “since your trip, or maybe since Emily.”
All I could think of was how I’d destroyed us when I’d slept with another man. It was all I could do to smile at his gesture and later, to get some of the dinner down.
My sister was a person with little history and few anchors. Her mother left when she was three and her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence. My sister grew up as the only child of an only child. Her father died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily was visiting New York City. She’d spent the afternoon seeing The Gates in Central Park, the spectacular display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of monuments erected to line the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with a saffron-colored curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and Emily felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled.
Here and there in the northern, quieter areas of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the fluttering orange canvases.Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark and the wind was brutal. A stranger to New York City, Emily was a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she had started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She made her way to Third Avenue, all the while looking for just the right place to duck into. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and finally she spotted the perfect diner. She entered Empire T’s and was happy to be somewhere warm and light.
“Emily,” a man said.
She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but he was not at all familiar to her. Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. The man was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half of the table.
There was no hostess and Emily searched for a clean table. The ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent and she struggled to ignore him.
She spotted a table set for four. The restaurant was mostly empty so she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. That way she’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs. Still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table and I ordered a drink for you.”
My sister was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily.
Before she could speak, the man's expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
In that quickest instant, my whole life changed. On that otherwise unremarkable cold February evening, my identical twin sister met my husband, Jules, just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived for what I thought would be just another dinner.
Chapter 2
Everything went wrong the day I discovered my twin. Like a series of mistakes all calculated to make the equation work anyway, it put me serendipitously in a given place at a given time. Like any day that capsizes your life, I’ve played the mundane events over and over in my head like a line from a song that just won’t stop.
On the morning of that same February day in 2005, I’d taken chicken out of the freezer. I was planning to make a curry-- something rich, heavy, and bright yellow to off-set the winter’s gray. I checked our refrigerator and the nearly-empty pantry for ingredients. We needed cream. The half-pint in there was rancid. I like to throw pineapple and peanuts into my curry, so I reminded myself to pick those up on the way home. I even called my cell phone and left myself a voicemail.
It turned out to be one of those days, though, where nothing went quite as scheduled. I spent my lunch hour phoning in prescriptions and haggling with insurance companies, and then I got a call from a patient who was in crisis.
“Dr. Glassman,” Nancy whispered, “I’m hearing voices again.”
“What are they saying?” I asked. Nancy had been doing well and I hated hearing that she was psychotic again. I wondered if she had stopped taking her medications.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is that because they’re telling you not to talk to me?” I ventured a guess.
“Yes.”
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure Nancy. “I think it will be okay if you tell me what they’re saying.”
“I can’t,” she insisted, “Not on the phone.”
Perhaps I should have told Nancy go to the Emergency Room, but I knew from past episodes that she’d hang up and never go. Instead I instructed her to come right in, which left me to reschedule two patients for later in the day.Nancy arrived fifteen minutes late. She was both paranoid and suicidal and it took me a while to calm her and then to negotiate her hospital admission. By the time I finished seeing patients, hours later than I’d originally scheduled, the last thing I felt like doing was grocery shopping and cooking dinner.
I called Jules.
“Rough day,” I said, “I’m wiped.”
He couldn’t hear me, we had a bad connection and I had to repeat myself. I finally ended up yelling loudly enough that people at the bus stop glared at me.
“Anything I can do?” He asked.
“Put the chicken back in the refrigerator. I’ll make curry tomorrow.”
We agreed to meet at Empire T’s, the diner down the street from our apartment. It was no place fancy, but it’s fast and the food’s edible, so it was our standby for weeknights when things didn’t go exactly as scheduled. An older Greek cashier—he may have been the owner-- knew my name from my credit card and would often greet me with a nod, then quietly say, “Evening, Dr. Glassman.” I didn’t know his name, but I always smiled and returned his greeting.
At the last minute, I ran up to the apartment to see Zoey, our standard poodle. If Jules had still been there, perhaps we’d have decided to stay home and order a pizza or just make do with cereal. If he’d been there, perhaps my whole life would have continued along its usual trajectory.
Jules had come and gone already, but the dog was excited to see me and wagged her tail so hard I thought it would send her airborne. I nuzzled my face in her black curls, hugged her tightly and told her I needed a quick doggy fix.
“You’re a good puppy,” I said and gave her a few too many treats before I hurried off to meet Jules at Empire T’s.
I saw my husband’s belongings on a table by the door. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of a chair and two beers, still cold and foaming, had already been served and were waiting for us. The men’s room, I assumed and headed to the seat across from his. I started to sit, but then I spotted Jules talking to a woman a few tables away. She was sitting and he was standing, they both had their backs to me. Should I interrupt, I wondered? I waited just a moment; their conversation looked animated, maybe even heated, and not at all like one he be having if he’d bumped into a client.
“Emily,” he said, looking up at me when I approached.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said.
He looked drained and confused and I was about to ask if something was wrong when he cut me off.
“Emily, this is Emily Mason,” he said, pointing to the woman who turned her head to greet me.
The world and everything in it froze. I could have been looking in a mirror. Emily Mason looked up at me and I saw myself, my wavy light brown hair parted just to the left of center, a few inches shorter, the right side tucked back behind the ear, and my own black eyes pierced straight through me. The expression of surprise – shock, really—that Emily Mason wore, was my own. Only the clothing and jewelry were different. The long pink scarf, the grey wool cardigan, the jeans and hiking shoes—these were not mine. Long dangling earrings flowed from her lobes; pearl studs sat in mine. I saw myself and I knew instantly, without hesitation or question, that this was my identical twin. Perhaps I’d known all along that she existed because there was no question about coincidence, no thought that we might be unrelated strangers who looked alike or even simply blood relations. The image I took in was fully my own and there was no room for any other explanation. I knew too, in an instant that blurred my emotions into this jumbled mix of excitement, fear, and perhaps even anger, that my whole life had changed and would never be the same again.It felt like I was standing on the scaffolding outside the building of my life, quietly looking in, when suddenly and unexpectedly everything dropped, leaving me in mid-air, a cartoon character doomed to splatter on the ground below. It didn’t feel good and the air was vacuumed from my lungs while my heart waited to slow.
“Emily,” she said, softly, and I felt tears spilling from my eyes. She stood up and there we were, side by side.
“Holy shit,” Jules said, also quite softly.
Holy shit is right, I thought. Without asking, he took my coat off me and rested it on the chair, over my twin’s coat. She was thinner than I but the exact same height. She had the same nervous cough, the same tears now pouring forth. Jules guided me around the table to the chair across from Emily’s.I never asked, I just sat down and joined her. Emily put her head on the table and buried it in her arms. I would have wanted to do the same. The truth is, it was a moment I’d never rehearsed for. One might imagine what they’d do if they ran into their unknown identical twin, but that would be a fantasy and this was an event I was simply not prepared for. I didn’t know what to say or what to ask. I just cried. Emily, too, was overwhelmed.
Jules got our drinks, his coat and keys and gloves and unread mail, and we both settled in across from her as uninvited guests at Emily’s table.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter interrupted our silence, directing his question at Jules. The young man’s eyes bounced from one of us to the other and back again. He smiled a little, as if let in on the secret. Twins--even as adults, they make people smile.
Jules took charge and placed an order. To the waiter’s delight, Jules said, “My wife will have what…” and he tripped over the words here, as we all would countless times that night, finally settling on, “…her sister is having,” and the same bowls of soup appeared before us soon after.
The smell and the steam that rose from it were good. I could not eat a bite.
“Do you live in the neighborhood?” Jules asked.
“No, no. I live in Philadelphia,” Emily said. She was as anxious as I was, as much at a loss for what to do next. “I’m staying with a friend and her family in Brooklyn. We went to college together. She had to work today.”
Emily stuck her tongue in her cheek, a funny little gesture I’d never seen anyone make before.
“I took the subway in. I came…” she stopped mid-sentence for just a second, a brief pause before she finished her thought, “…to see The Gates.”
“Emily does that.” Jules caught himself in his confusion and started over. “My wife does that,” he said and I looked at him.
“Does what?” Emily and I asked the question in unison.
He didn’t know who to turn to while he answered. “She puffs her cheek out like that with her tongue,” he said.
“I do?” I was surprised.
“You do.”
I suppose there was a lot we could have talked about that night in Empire T’s. We could have compared notes on our likes and dislikes, our thoughts and fears, our bodies, our habits, our health. The list was virtually endless and it settled on a story from my sister’s past.
* * *
“Where’s mommy?” the little, blond-haired, black-eyed Emily asked her father.
“She went away,” her father said.
“When is she coming back?”
“Don’t know,” he answered.“I want my hair in braids. Mommy does my hair in braids.”
Mike Mason considered the request. He was a barber, fairly new to the profession, and he cut only men’s hair. He’d looked at Emily’s hair, had the three-year-old turn in a circle, and finally he’d said, “I can do pigtails or a pony tail, or you can wear it loose. Daddies don’t make braids.”
Emily chose pigtails that day. He took her to work with him and sat her in a corner with a coloring book. She’d listened while his stream of clients came in, chatting away about their jobs, their golf games, their families. One man offered Mike suggestions on the stock market. This went on for days, until finally he’d found a neighbor to baby-sit while he worked.
“When is mommy coming back?” Emily had asked.
“Don’t know,” he’d answered.
“I want Mommy to come back,” Emily said. “I don’t like pigtails and pony tails. I want braids.”
She started to sob.
“Stop crying,” her father ordered. “There’s nothing I can do.” His tone was uncharacteristically harsh.
When she didn’t stop, he left the room, and finally the apartment. He came back, hours later, to the little girl he’d left alone. Emily, at first scared, then hungry, then finally tired, had fallen asleep on the sofa. Their cat, Pepper, sat next to her clawing at the material on the already shabby piece of furniture. The room was cool, no one had turned on the heat.
Her father gently lifted her up, then carried her into the kitchen where he sat her on the counter, draped a huge nylon cutting cape around her, and cut her hair with his barber shears. She sat very still, barely awake, shivering, afraid to move or to cry, and he trimmed the length to the middle of her ears, leaving Emily with a pixie cut.
“There,” he said quietly, and lifted her in his arms so she could see herself in the bathroom mirror, “now you don’t have to worry about braids.”
“Amazing,” Jules said. “If Emily…” he stopped himself, once again confused by the duality of our names, “If you,” he said directly to me, “weren’t sitting here, or if my eyes were closed, I’d swear it was you talking.”
He turned to my twin. “Your voices are the same, but it’s more than that, the inflection, the rhythm, where you take breaths, it’s just too weird.”
“Let her go on,” I said. Emily was a talented story teller. I saw myself in Emily’s gestures—it was weird-- but mostly I wanted to listen. I wanted to go back in time to a place when everything made sense. I must have guessed that would be a long journey.
Emily told us she’d stopped asking about her mother, but she never stopped waiting for her return. She and her father moved from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C. before Emily started school. She quietly worried that her mother wouldn’t know where to find them. And she had no answers to the questions posed at school: Where is your mother? What does she do? Why isn’t she with you?
Emily’s father was a diligent man, but he remained emotionally distant. He never said, “Don’t ask questions.” He never had to. He was, she later concluded, heartbroken if not devastated.
There was more to the story that Emily didn’t offer up and I had no way of knowing what she might be withholding.
“He didn’t date other women?” I asked.
“No,” she said and she took a sip of her water. The ice had long ago melted. “Dad went to work and he took care of me.”
“It sounds like a stoic life,” I said. I didn’t want to analyze her dead father, but he sounded depressed at best, or perhaps personality disordered. Schizoid or avoidant. I kept the diagnoses to myself; there were times when it really wasn’t helpful to be a psychiatrist. And, of course it hit me, her dead father might well be my father and with that unnerving insight, I really didn’t want to diagnose him.
“Yes.” she said thoughtfully, “Stoic is a good word to describe Dad. He kept it all bottled in, then one day when I was 19, he had a heart attack and died.”
The waiter appeared and refilled Emily’s water glass. She took a long sip and waited for him to leave.
“Would you like some dessert or coffee?” he asked.
“Just the bill,” Jules answered.
Everyone was tired and he knew I wouldn’t want anything else, he assumed Emily didn’t as well.
“Wait,” Jules said to the young man. He turned to my twin, “I didn’t mean to make assumptions. Did you want coffee or dessert?”
“No. I’m fine,” she said, and with that the waiter left.
“I went through his belongings after he died,” she continued. “I found the divorce decree, his bank statements, old tax returns, a social security card, not much else. The only sentimental things he hung on to were related to me—photos, a tap dance program from a recital I was in when I was eight, my high school awards, and two letters I wrote to him my freshman year at college. It was strange to see those letters; he died less than a year later, yet I didn’t remember writing or sending them. They were the only letters I’d ever written to Dad and they were bland and formulaic. ‘Dear Dad, How are you? I’m good. I like my classes and I’ve met some good friends. Hope you’re well.’ There was nothing more interesting to share with my father. When I went through his things doing his last call on housekeeping, I was looking for something. Something to hold on to, or perhaps something to explain this strange, disenfranchised life we’d had. I wished he’d kept a journal or held on to some old love letters. Something that would have given me some posthumous insight into who he was besides my father and a good barber.”
I thought for a moment.
“What was your mother’s name?” I asked.
“Sandra Klee Mason. It’s funny, but I’d always just thought of her as Mommy, right as she was when she left.” Emily abruptly stopped talking.
“No one ever talked about your mother?” I asked.
How could that be? Weren’t there other family members? People who had known them as a couple?
“We moved when I was five,” Emily said, “to a place where no one knew us. My father was an only child and his parents were both dead. He was a loner, except at work where he chatted away with the customers, but mostly he listened to stories about their lives. When he talked, he talked about sports. He certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to anyone that his wife had walked out on him.”
“There weren’t any adoption papers? I was adopted as a baby.”
“No.” Emily considered this, but she was certain she was raised by her biological father.
Something about Emily’s delivery left me wanting and I wondered if she knew more than she let on. Her presentation didn’t invite questions. There was a guardedness that I pushed against. It was too new and too unreal for the questions to fully form, for the story to make sense, and Emily asked me nothing about my adoption. She didn’t so much as flinch.
“There was no marriage certificate, so I’m guessing she took that. Or Dad shredded it. It wouldn’t be unlike him to simply destroy any thing he didn’t want to be. Like giving life a haircut so short it can’t be braided.”
The diner was empty now. It was a late weekday evening and Empire T’s was one of the few diners around that wasn’t open twenty-four hours. The older Greek cashier delivered the check to our table and he looked from me to Emily and back to me. Finally, he handed the bill to Jules.
“Two Dr. Glassmans.” He nodded to himself and walked away. Perhaps he wondered if he’d been dealing with two of us for years.
The evening had to end and I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say.
“Are you going back to Brooklyn tonight?” I asked. Should I invite her to stay with us? We had an extra room, a rarity in the city but we’d taken the apartment with plans to start a family. Emily was a stranger and she was here visiting a friend.
“I am,” she said. “I should be going.”
“Then you’ll come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow,” Jules said. It was a statement, more a command than an invitation.
“Yes,” I said, “we’d love to have you.”
It would give me a chance to think and to figure out what else I wanted to know. And what else I wanted to share.
"I’d love to come,” Emily said.
Jules wrote out our address on a napkin. The three of us stood up to gather our belongings and suddenly, without warning, I started to sob. I suppose I was relieved that I would see my twin again or perhaps I was just overwhelmed at the shock of it all. I surprised myself and I surprised the both of them. If anyone else was there, it would have created a scene.
I sat back down and Jules flagged the waiter to bring water. Emily looked confused, and then she too folded onto her chair and started to weep. We leaned into each other and I found myself holding this stranger close to me, as if we were any pair of twin sisters in need of comfort during that particular February evening.
Chapter 3
Obviously, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t find a comfortable position and the bedroom was too hot. I kicked off the blankets, rolled around, then got cold and pulled them back on. Jules seemed to dream peacefully beside me and I wished I had the energy to get up and do something useful. I took the remote control from the bed stand and turned on the TV. Worried I’d wake Jules, I muted it while I channel surfed. The room flicked in electric blue as I clicked from station to station, but nothing captured my attention enough to distracted me from my edginess. I hit the off button and, frustrated, set down the control. I tried to go back to sleep, but again I was hot, then cold. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom.
My thoughts circled around in my head. I thought about the moment when I first saw Emily. In the space of that moment, I became my own scientific experiment. What becomes of identical twins raised apart? Do they have similar personalities? Do they like the same movies? Cringe at the same insects? Find the same men sexy? Do the same things make them angry, tearful, guilty, or regretful? Do they get the same illnesses, die the same deaths? In the space of that moment my whole past changed. I didn’t consider it then, of course, but my whole future changed as well.
The winter of 2005 was mostly a good time. Mostly. My career was going well and I’d achieved some degree of success. I had my own private practice on the Upper West Side and a teaching appointment at Bellevue. It was at Bellevue, in the outpatient center, where one afternoon a month I ran a clinic for indigent women with Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder, known in non-psychiatric circles as Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS. I’d gotten a reputation as an expert in the field.
In the middle of what felt like a cold, drab January, I was asked to appear on The Today Show, along with Harvard’s Hilda Druesen and several women who suffered from severe PMS. I was on television. I sat on Katie Couric’s left, caked in makeup and doused in hot stage lights.
“There are several medications that are FDA-approved,” I said, “but when those don’t work, we sometimes use medications ‘off-label.’ This means the medicines have been tested and approved for other disorders, and that they’re safe. So we might find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents, while not specifically tested for PMS, can be helpful.”
The women chosen to appear on the show suffered from the most extreme of symptoms, of course. They’d been picked because they told their stories with force and they evoked sympathy from the audience. One girl hurled wine glasses against the wall every month, exactly two days before her period started. She’d gone through six boxes in less than a year, including an entire set of Reidel stemware. Another young woman had been arrested fourteen times, only premenstrually, for getting into fist fights. Once she’d whacked the plumber with his own plunger.
“He was two hours late,” she said, “and then he didn’t finish and said he’d have to come back the next day.”
The police hauled her off with the toilet still clogged.
Both women were so appalled by their own behavior that their remorse and bewilderment made them the perfect talk show guests. The third patient had bright orange hair that stood nearly as high as it reached long. She wasn’t violent, but she was plagued by episodes of profound sleepiness—narcoleptic attacks, actually—which kept her from driving or working for five days out of every month. All three women had been transformed by psychiatric treatment, though none were my patients. I wasn’t sure where they’d been recruited from, perhaps the actors’ guild.
Jules was excited, my family was thrilled, the phone at my already over-filled private practice didn’t let up. The day after the show aired, a stranger approached me when I stopped at Duane Reade to purchase toothpaste.
“You’re the doctor who was on The Today Show!” she announced. From the noise she made, you would have thought I was George Clooney arriving for a blind date. I was flattered and ate up the attention.
The fuss was short-lived, my so-called fifteen minutes of fame. Still, it gave my ego a boost, one that I relished after seasons of unsuccessful fertility treatment that had left my body almost as bruised and battered as it had left my emotions. The baby-making issue was the only kink in our marriage, a marriage that was otherwise smooth and loving.
Finally, I got out of bed. I went into the kitchen and poured myself some Diet Coke. I was already so agitated that I didn’t think a little caffeine would make any difference. I sat down at the kitchen table and I dialed my parents’ number.
It was 3:45 in the morning and I had never, ever, phoned them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been aware of this odd, misplaced sense of anger when I first saw Emily, and I realized that someone, somewhere, must have known about us. Identical twins separated during infancy couldn’t easily be hidden. My past, as I’d been told it, must have been a lie and I was angry at this betrayal.
Zoey padded into to the kitchen and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her while the phone rang. Her hair felt matted, she needed to be groomed. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough and settled herself on the floor under the table. I swallowed the final sip of soda and was still thirsty.
My mother’s voice was sleepy, but her “hello” had a sense of urgency to it. A hint of the panic one feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night and explodes what was a restful slumber, mixed with the hope that it is what it usually is at that hour: a wrong number and not news of a tragedy.
“Mom, it’s Emily. Nothing’s wrong.”
Nothing’s wrong. I’m not calling to tell you that someone is dead or injured or needing to be bailed out of jail. This really could have waited until the morning. How would I explain that while it could wait, I couldn’t? I wanted to pet Zoey, but she was out of my reach and it didn’t seem fair to ask so much of the dog. I hugged my knees instead.
“Emily.” She said nothing more, just waited.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll call you in the morning. This can wait.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m awake now.” Of course she was. My mother was always there for her children, she wouldn’t have it any other way. It remained, always, an integral part of her identity to be the always-available mother.
I heard her tell my father to go back to sleep. It’s Emily, but nothing is wrong. Certainly, they were both sitting upright, wondering why I’d called. I didn’t know if they’d turned on a light or if my father had gotten out of bed. People have rituals for such things.
I told my mother about meeting Emily in Empire T’s. This woman who looked just like me. She had not only the same name, the same face, the same body, and the same mannerisms, but also the exact same voice. She did that same funny thing: sticking her tongue in her cheek to puff it out.
“Her name is Emily?” My mother was perplexed. It seemed like an odd thing to focus on.
“A coincidence, I’m sure. Or maybe we both looked like Emilys as babies.”
“We didn’t name you Emily because of how you looked. You were named after your father’s aunt Esther. We would have named you Emily even if you’d looked like a Mildred.”
Jews name their children after dead relatives. It’s the Hebrew name that matters, so often the English version just has the same first letter. Esther. Emily. It was all decided before I got there.
“So, it’s a coincidence,” I said. This seemed like a trivial part of the story.
I waited while she told my father. I got some pretzel sticks from the cabinet and set the bag down on the kitchen table. I ate one. It was stale and so I put a few on the Formica table top and made patterns with them while my parents conferred. My mother’s hand was over the mouthpiece and all I heard was the muffled sound of undecipherable voices.
I spelled out ‘Emily.’ It took a lot of pretzel sticks and the letters were uneven, the ‘m’ being the shortest and the ‘e’ and ‘y’ being much taller.
“We don’t know anything about a twin,” my mother said. “Are you sure? Sometimes people just look alike.” My mother sounded anxious, edgy even, the way she sounded when she felt out of control.
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. It wasn’t the conversation I’d wanted and I let her go back to sleep. I put down the receiver and felt selfish that I hadn’t waited until morning. And I felt angry that I’d been dismissed.
“What?” Jules asked when I finally got back into bed.
“Nothing,” I said. I wondered just briefly if he’d want to make love. My thoughts were a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. There was sex and there was the baby issue. And now I was a twin.
“Where were you?” Jules asked. He was awake now.“In the kitchen. I called my mother.”
“Did she know about the other Emily?”
“No.” I answered. “Someone must have known, right? Do you think she was with me in the orphanage? Do you think they said to my parents, ‘Here, we have two, pick one.’”
“I don’t know what to think, Em.”
We lay there together with our thoughts. Jules reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“Do that some more,” I said and he did. “Rub the other one, too.” I turned away from him so he could reach both my shoulders. He dug his thumbs hard into the muscle, hurting me as he pressed out the tension. I wanted to tell Jules to stop, but I didn’t. He’d taught me that if I tolerated the pain, my muscles would eventually relax.
When he felt me go limp, Jules put his hands under my T-shirt and rubbed my skin softly. His palms circled over and over on my shoulders and back, and then he stopped. His lips found me and followed the curve of my hips. Finally, we made love. It was quiet and wordless and my breath caught with that final quiver. As he rolled off me, I caught myself wondering if Jules would like to make love to my twin.
I never did fall asleep. The night wore on and I started to anticipate the upcoming day and all that it would bring. I thought about my patients and wondered if I would be distracted. I thought about Emily and worried about dinner. Would it be difficult to make conversation? Would it be harder to say good-bye? Would I learn things that would please me or make me shudder? Finally, the alarm pierced the February darkness, sounding its unwelcome series of escalating beeps to usher in my sense of dread.
Chapter 4
I always knew I was adopted. My parents were open about such things and the story of my arrival was a part of our family history. It was, however, my story alone with no mention of an identical twin.
Robert and Diana Weitz had tried for years to conceive a child before they finally adopted me. No sooner had I arrived in their eager home, loved and welcomed and delivered to a decorated nursery, when my mother became pregnant, again, and again, and again. I grew up the oldest of four in a middle class Jewish household. If they loved me less, or expected anything different from me because I was not their biological child, then they hid it well.
The fact is that I could have been theirs. Sure, with four kids, I could have picked it apart -- there are ways we were alike and ways we weren’t. None of it created an equation where the other five members of my family were obviously related and I was not. So, I was less artistic than Sam and Matthew and my hair was lighter than Lisa’s. I was a better student than the others, especially at math and science, a fact that was chalked up to my role as the oldest and never to a quirk of genetics.
My mother was a broad-boned woman with brown eyes and poker straight hair she kept cropped close. She had olive skin that tanned deeply with the first touch of sun. Her hair was silver, but when I was little it was a shade just shy of rust. My father was a slight, pale man, who sported a full head of light curly hair and hazel eyes. Pretty much anyone of any size or shape could have been the off-spring of these two people. Strangers who didn’t know I was adopted often commented that I looked a bit like my father. I have his slim build, though I am nearly two inches taller, and my light brown hair has some wave to it. Like him, I am fair-skinned, though my eyes are uniquely my own. I have big black eyes that are spaced too widely apart, a feature I’ve been told makes me look like a creature of prey.
“What do you think your real parents are like?” Matthew asked at dinner one night when I was in seventh grade. He liked to ask questions, to pose the never-ending series of what ifs.
“We are Emily’s real parents,” my father said, and he reached over me to get the ketchup. “And you are Emily’s real brother.” He didn’t object to the conversation, just the issue of “real.”
“I know,” Matthew said, “but what about the parents who gave her up to us?”
“Her birth parents,” my mother said. She had finished eating and was gathering the remnants of the meal from the table. “Are you done with that, Rob?” she asked, snatching the ketchup as my father set it down.
“I suppose I am now,” he said.
“Okay, so what do you think your birth parents are like?” Matthew continued.“Obviously,” I said, “they are stupid.”
Matthew, being a younger brother, was delighted. “You’re a dope so they must be dopes too!” He could have been singing.
“Matthew!” our parents scolded simultaneously.
“If they gave me up, they must have been pretty dumb,” I said, self-satisfied.
“What if your real mom is a princess or a movie star?” Lisa blurted out. She giggled, but I could tell she actually did wonder if this could be true. I, of course, had always assumed my birth mother was royalty and loved hearing Lisa ask the question. Why had she given me up and was she looking to find me and make me heir to her throne? Like my little sister, I wanted it all to be glamorous.
“Mommy, tell about how we got Emily!” Lisa, who was six at the time, lingered over the story of my adoption. Sometimes I thought she was jealous that I was the adopted one.
“Emily needs to work on her haphtarah portion,” my mother said. My Bat Mitzvah was only weeks away and much of my mother’s energy was focused on directing my studying.
“Please!” Lisa insisted. She noticed my father standing in front of the open freezer, and knowing his intent, yelled, “I want ice cream, too, Daddy!”
“Me, too,” said Sam, the third in line and the quietest child. “Chocolate!”
The chorus continued and all six of us ended up back at the dinner table with bowls of ice cream. Lisa managed to dip one of her long braids into the ice cream and my mother was briefly occupied getting a wet washcloth to clean off Lisa’s hair. I was spared Bat Mitzvah study for a few more minutes and I stretched the time by softening my ice cream with the back of my spoon and making it into a soupy mixture.
My mother settled with her bowl of half-strawberry, half-chocolate, and re-told the tale of me. Emily Weitz.
I was brought to a hospital emergency room in Chicago by a woman, presumably my mother, when I was three months old. I was sick, she’d told the nurse who registered me. She checked me in under the name of Sally White, born on March 20, 1968 and she gave her own name as Betsy White. The nurse brought us back to the pediatrics section of the emergency room and when the doctor came to examine me, Betsy White was gone, having left me in a pile of blankets on the floor.
I was healthy with no signs of illness or trauma and there was no trace anywhere of a Betsy White, or even an Elizabeth White, who’d given birth in Chicago to a baby girl three months earlier.
I was placed in an orphanage, then adopted four months later by my parents, the Weitz’s of Connecticut. I was re-anointed Emily, and at seven months of age, my official history—documented in baby books, on photographs, slides, and reel-to-reel home movies—began.
I crawled at the time of purchase, walked at thirteen months. I spoke words at eleven months, sentences at eighteen months, paragraphs before two. I was a good daughter and everyone was excited about my upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I would stay a good daughter and make everyone proud when I became a doctor. It never crossed my mind to be anyone other than who they wanted me to be.
“Why did her mother leave her there?” Lisa wanted to know. The story was always fresh to her and the questions she asked were variants of the same themes, asked over and over. They weren’t so different from the questions I had asked when I was six.
“Emily’s mother loved her, but she couldn’t take care of her. She took Emily to the hospital because she knew the doctors would find her the perfect family.”
Lisa was satisfied. At thirteen, I was starting to realize that the story might have missing parts. Maybe Betsy White was a drug addict or a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t my mother at all. Maybe she had kidnapped me from my real family, from people who had really wanted me. My fantasies varied with my mood.
“Time to go study,” my mother said, clearing my bowl.
“My real mother was a chocolate queen,” I whispered into Lisa’s ear as I slipped a piece of candy from my pocket to her hand.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said and I loved that her little face brightened as she snatched the gift.
I had a story I could live with and I was told the agency that arranged my adoption had no other information. My parents couldn’t help me search for my birth parents because there were no leads, nothing to go on. I could wonder all I wanted and I could wallow in my royal fantasies, but the story stopped there.
At least I had a story, one that explained me and gave my life context. It wasn’t until I lost it that I realized just how important it was.
Chapter 5.
John Stellar was a huge man both in measure of his height and weight, but also in terms of the presence he bore. His voice was loud, his laugh filled the room-- his tears even more so—and sometimes I felt crowded out. His perceptiveness was, at times, both uncanny and intrusive and he noticed details no one else would ever see or think to comment upon. If a new pillow appeared on the couch, he’d notice. Even a new magazine subscription in the waiting room would catch his attention. If I dropped a few pounds or wore a new outfit, those were up for comment as well. I made an effort to keep track of what I wore on the days we met because I knew he’d notice if I wore the same dress two sessions in a row. He chose, without fail, the seat closest to mine and some days I wished for a little more distance.
Mr. Stellar was my first patient on the morning after Emily and I had discovered one another. I was, to say the least, anxious and tired from my sleepless night. I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to settle myself to the plane I needed to be on to do psychotherapy all day and I secretly hoped he’d cancel his appointment that morning.
He used the session to talk about a problem he was having at work.
“And the son-of-a-bitch has the nerve to say I offended one of the clients. Offended, can you believe that, after I spent weeks getting this guy’s mess straightened out?” He was angry.
I was tempted to mirror that feeling back to him, but in the past he either insisted he wasn’t angry, or screamed, “Of course I’m angry, wouldn’t you be angry?” While it should have been a helpful insight, for Mr. Stellar it was not. His anger narrowed his options and effectively ruined his life, but he was too invested in justifying it to consider other ways.
“You feel he didn’t appreciate your efforts,” I said.
I was soft-stepping it. My personal goal for the session was to survive it, and I instantly felt guilty: Mr. Stellar deserved more from me than mere survival-- my own at that! I could simply agree that the client was a son-of-a-bitch. It was the easiest tactic for that day and it would have given him some momentary relief, but it was counter-therapeutic in the long run to collude with this patient’s basic belief that everyone else in the world was an asshole and the point of therapy was to blow off steam about how they were all shitting on him (his language, not mine). Most days, I still held out for an ideal where he might gain a more tempered view of his role in these uncomfortable dynamics. With insight, I hoped, he would change-- a cautious destination on my part, but one worth retaining as an ideal.
“Of course he didn’t appreciate my efforts. I told you, I spent weeks working on his miserable little numbers and then all he did was piss on it.”
I waited. There was nothing that called for my reply. Without one, my patient appeared to have exhausted the subject. He glanced over at my desk, then settled his eyes on me.
“You change your hair, Dr. Glassman?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“You look different. Are you sure it’s not lighter?”
I forced a smile but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t changed my hair color, I’d simply discovered that my whole life had been misconstrued.
“Something wrong? You seem kind of quiet.” Of course John Stellar would pick up on my distraction. It made me mad.
“I’m fine. Go on with your story,” I said.
He stood up and for a moment, I felt tense. Scared even. There was something intimidating about Mr. Stellar even though he had no history of physical violence and his questions about me were always caged in caring tones. He was brash, but he was respectful, though that too was contrived and purposeful.
He walked towards the window, away from me, and I felt a sense of relief. It made me aware of just how fragile I was feeling.
“This is a great view,” he said.
My office is a small room off a shared waiting area on the sixth floor. The window overlooks Central Park West. It’s high enough to afford a view of the Park, but low enough to allow for some people-watching. I wondered what he was looking at. I didn’t want to get up—it would feel too intimate to join him—but I asked.
“Oh, there’s a couple kissing, and a guy walking his golden retriever who’s peeing on a bench leg—the golden, not the guy-- and some bikers and roller bladers weaving through The Gates. Kind of icy out there for those guys. Next week they begin to dismantle them.”
He stopped for a moment to take it all in.
“Hard to believe the scale of that project, all those years it took in the planning. Making the materials, erecting thousands of them-- each measured to the width of the footpath where it rests-- and you look at it and say, art? This is art? I like them, it’s just hard to see each individual one as much of anything, but the thousands of them together really are kind of spectacular.”
I thought about Emily and imagined her walking though Central Park, taking it all in.
“You know, Jeanne-Claude and Christo are married to each other,” Mr. Stellar said, referring to the artists who designed, constructed, and financed The Gates.
“I did know that,” I said.
“Did you know they were born in the same hour of the same day?”
A shiver went down my spine. The Gates had brought my identical twin to New York City. It all seemed like too much coincidence.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely. He was born in Bulgaria and she was born in Morocco. 1935. I don’t remember the exact date, but sometime in June. They’re both Geminis.”
The sign of the twins.
“That’s okay,” I said, not really thinking.
“All that planning,” Mr. Stellar continued, “and all those tens of millions of dollars for materials and they’re up for just two weeks, only to be taken down. You’d think they could leave it for a while or bring it to other parks—Golden Gate, or Hyde, or somewhere so more people could see it. There’s something frustrating about having it be so transient.”
He spoke calmly and thoughtfully. No bluster, no anger, no obscenities. I remembered he has a master’s degree. He was often so invested in projecting a rough, stay-back image, one that betrayed his gentler and more vulnerable self, and when his guard went down, his sensitivity came through. I remember that I liked him and I felt silly about how only moments before I’d felt frightened of him. What was that about?
Mr. Stellar continued to consider the world outside. He wondered if it would snow again and commented on the bareness of the trees against the bright saffron Gates.
“You’re worried The Gates won’t be adequately appreciated,” I said after a bit, linking his observation to his earlier distress about his boss and the offended client.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly.
“You’re good, Doc.”
* * *
Jules called at 1:55. He always called at five of the hour, hoping to catch me between sessions.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight for…” he hesitated, “Emily?” Had he started to say “your sister” or “your twin?” This was a new idea for him as well. An unanticipated someone inserted into our lives.
I thought about the chicken in the refrigerator and wondered if Emily would like my curry. Or would it be better to order out and not be preoccupied with cooking? I’m prone to obsession and I wondered if the other Emily was as well.
“Jules,” I said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I asked her to have DNA testing?”
He hesitated.
“It’s only dinner,” he said, implying that yes, it would be offensive. “What are you thinking?”
There was a lot I could be thinking about the stranger with my shared gene pool. A lot he could be thinking.
“My mother suggested that maybe it’s just coincidence that we look alike,” I answered.
“It would be an awful lot of coincidence. Your mother wasn’t there. Trust me, you don’t need DNA testing.”
There was so much to consider. I hadn’t asked Emily her birth date. During my training to be a psychiatrist, I’d been in psychotherapy and I’d had to confront how uncomfortable I was with all the uncertainties of my early life. There was the issue of my unknown genetics, and of this sense that my life had begun when I was seven months old and swallowed into the Weitz family. Everything before my adoption by the parents who then served as the observing historians to my childhood was this odd sort of blankness, as though I’d been sucked free from a Black Hole. There were no photographs from that time, no baby books documenting my first roll-over or spoonful of rice cereal. Every genetic disease I learned about in medical school left me with an aching vulnerability: could I be a carrier of the Huntington’s gene? Was I prone to diabetes? Was I at risk for schizophrenia? I presumed there must be some mental illness in my biological family. What sane person would abandon her baby? Or babies?
Suddenly, I had a partner in this unknown Black Hole. Jules was positive we were identical twins. Certainly, sisters can look very much alike and even I couldn’t dispute that this other Emily had to be a blood relative of mine. Did it matter if we were monozygotic twins cast from the same ovum, dizygotic twins sharing a womb but not identical genetic material, or simply sisters?
Yes.
Should I have felt embarrassed, or apologetic, that I wanted to know and that somehow it mattered to me? Would Emily mind? Would she also want to know or was this like asking a potential lover to have an AIDS test, thereby conveying something short of total trust? And was I even ready to admit that there was something other than a sister, a twin, that I might want from this stranger?
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but still, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily said. She looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction but there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said,
“Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled and was proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of what other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him.
Finally, Jules said, “It would be nice to invite everyone in.”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our apartment. The foyer is a narrow space, just barely wider than a corrider, and it gets further closed in by the clutter of a coat rack, a side table to deposit the mail on, and a line up of shoes. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. The dog loved children but the child was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we had a little one, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. The drapes were too heavy for the room, leftovers from the last tenants and they limited the light and created a closed in, formal feel.
I brought out drinks and appetizers. I searched the pantry for some juice and crackers and added them to the offerings. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules watched her daughter. I could feel him pining for parenthood, or maybe I was simply projecting my own emotions.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot. She knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl’s head.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, but with that they found one another.We made small talk. It was stiff and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated radiators and they churn out the heat. The pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in-- at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
“Do you like Chinese food?” Jules asked Abigail. She nodded. “We’re going to order. The place right down the street has the best dumplings. Do you like dumplings?” Abby nodded again.
“She calls them Monkey Dumplings,” Emily said.
“Monkey Dumplings! Do you think they’re filled with monkey meat?”
“No.”
“She just started calling them that when she was three, and it’s stuck,” her mother explained.
“And do you like your monkey dumplings, steamed or pan-fried?” Jules asked. He finished getting everyone’s order and went to call it in.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with its mismatched chairs, metal table, and dog bowls on the floor. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I assumed she had shared, my history and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at focusing on the details, even as he twirled sesame noodles inelegantly on the fork and didn’t quite get them all into his mouth.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter.
“Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school and we were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet-- we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. We have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing tree-hugging vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“After we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource they’re all clamoring for when there’s not enough to go around."
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“How’re those monkey dumplings?” Jules whispered to Abigail. “Best you’ve ever had, right?”
Abigail smiled and said they were pretty good. She played with the chopsticks and poked at a wonton, chasing it around in the bowl of soup.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
Richard’s family was clearly a source of tension in their lives. Perhaps Emily was jealous that her ex had found a new love, one he’d married this time. Maybe she was angry that he’d had another child, leaving her daughter as the castoff. Fractured families were complicated and I heard story after story at work. They were always other peoples’ problems, and suddenly I had a sister and a niece who lived this struggle.
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person. We might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems and it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
We opened our fortune cookies. The restaurant had sent five and we gave the extra one to Abigail.
“You will conquer many things,” Jules read aloud. That’s interesting, I thought.
“You are quiet and wise,” Emily’s fortune said.
“You will look long and hard,” I read.
“For what?” Abby asked.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “Read yours.”
She cracked one of the cookies, pulled out the long white paper and read, “Remember the things that are important.” Abby crinkled her nose. “That’s silly,” she said. She took a bite of the cookie.
“Read the other one,” her mother said.
“I don’t want to.”
What kind of kid doesn’t love fortune cookies? I suppose someone else could have taken the cookie and assumed ownership of its contents, but no one did.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating our cashew chicken, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name. I didn’t know how to send Instant Messages.“You’ll learn,” she insisted.I was profoundly disappointed and I hugged them both a little too long.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” I whispered to my twin. It was the truth, but it left me feeling so vulnerable. I felt such relief when she squeezed me a bit tighter and said, “Me, too.” She was brave enough to say it at full volume.
We got to the door and I didn’t know what to do about Abigail.
“Can I hug you?” I asked. “Or would you rather just shake hands?”
She surprised me with her answer.
“You can hug me,” Abby said, “but first I want to say good-bye to Zoey.”
“You won’t be afraid?”
“No.” She pointed to Jules. I didn’t know if she’d forgotten his name or if she just didn’t want to call a stranger ‘uncle.’ “He can hold the dog.” It was a more a question, though it was phrased like a statement.
“Absolutely,” Jules said, and he freed the cloistered poodle then led her to the front door by her collar.
Abby said good bye and, when she saw how calm Zoey was, she petted her on the head as if it was the most natural of things to do. “Good dog,” she said gently, as if she was trying to convince us all. She came to me and offered a hug, one I accepted with pleasure. I wanted to squeeze, but I didn’t.
“I loved meeting you,” I told my niece.
“It’s really weird that you look like my mommy,” she said, and with that we all laughed.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I walked the dog. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
“I opened the last fortune cookie,” he said.
“And?”
“It said ‘Strangers will lead you to unexpected places.”
“Really?” That seemed like a funny coincidence.
“No. It said ‘You will have a long and prosperous life.’ I think they recycle the same six sayings. I’ve never figured out what the string of numbers on the back means.”
I didn’t want to think about fortune cookies. Instead, I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, nieces, nephews, and parents. Would I ever see Emily again? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d shared with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind his magazine.“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. And that night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I would soon be compelled to look for one.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived on the water in Nyborg and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark, where Steen worked, is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing off him the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards. It has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978 and Steen was the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer. It was a quirk of flight availability that let me to Denmark rather than Sweden.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of fraternal versus identical twinship is crucial to how they differ from other collections of data. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal twins are no more genetically alike than regular siblings, though it is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into identical and fraternal pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. As young children, they were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became ill), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen said, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket. Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him and it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.”
Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.”
The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask.
I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I. His white hair was deceptively aging.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.”
But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction.
“Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered.
There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard.
The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. Every surface was piled with something. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I moved some throw pillows and settled on the sofa. Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were
here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English.
He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger. Or even a friend. Something about Steen felt deceptively safe. Perhaps the fact that I believed I’d never see him again.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage. There was my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness and my sudden dissatisfaction with our life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father. Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas. In the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, could have opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. He whispered to me that I was beautiful, special, and told me I was a wonderful lover. I like to think it all happened so quickly-- that there was no foreplay, no time to consider, no time to turn back. My memory has done that. If it was anything but quick, then I won’t let myself remember those details. Soon, he was inside of me. One of the few things I do recall is that I had an orgasm, and this sinks me in guilt.
It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been. Did he feel something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or was it just about the conquest? It wasn’t until later-- when I sat by myself in a restaurant booth, staring at a menu in a language I couldn’t understand, looking at food I didn’t even want-- when I finally felt repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit, to Steen Biorn and a country full of separated twins who were searching or not.
I packed my suitcase with crumpled clothes and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
Chapter 8
I first met Jules Glassman in junior high school when we were in the same Hebrew school class. He was quiet and studious and pretty much did as he was told. I sat with my girlfriends and we were more interested in giggling and passing notes than we were in memorizing vocabulary words or learning prayers. We were constantly being moved to opposite sides of the room, or even out into the hallway, and it was the louder boys who got our attention.
I met Jules again when I was in medical school while I was rotating through the emergency room. He came in on a stretcher after he’d been hit in the head and rendered unconscious during a rugby match in Central Park. It was a head-on collision with an opponent and Jules had gone limp on the field. The other guy didn’t pass out, but he had a huge hematoma on the side of his head and looked like he’d been hit by a bat. Jules was breathing on his own and had regained consciousness in the ambulance just as the paramedics got the IV line inserted. He said he was fine and wanted to leave, but the attending physician in the ER insisted on a scan of his brain. The ER was crowded and Jules was left sitting on a stretcher in the middle of the hall.
“Emily. Emily Weitz,” he said. I was on my way to the lab with a urine specimen.
“Jules from Hebrew class,” I said. I recognized him right away. I passed the specimen from my right hand to my left. “You’re bigger.” He was still very slim and studious-looking. I would have guessed ping-pong, not rugby. We talked briefly. I mumbled a few words in Hebrew and he smiled. He was in law school, on his way to becoming a tax attorney, and was a back on a men’s rugby team.
“Fly-half,” Jules said, referring to his position, “is mostly about speed and strategy. You always think the guys in the scrum will get hurt, they’re the ones on top of each other. I guess I should look where I’m running.” His head still hurt, and I could tell he was forcing a grin for me.
“Who would have thought you’d be a doctor?” he said. “ I would have pegged you for a party planner. You were a social little teeny bopper back in the day. Funny how things turn out.”
I didn’t know quite what to say. He was handsome and there was something compelling about his link to my past.
Nick Green, the ER resident I was working with, approached me on his way to his next case. He glanced at Jules, as if to say ‘This isn’t your patient.’ I might have introduced them, but Nick handed me a container-- a pass-off on the run-- another urine specimen.
While you’re headed to the lab, take this one, too,” and he disappeared behind a curtain.
I stood there in my white short white lab coat. It wore the spewing substances of that day: blood, diet coke, some guiac reagent, a little scrubbed off vomit, as well as unbleachable residue from weeks of body fluids. A rubber touniquet weaved through my button hole, a palm pilot, reflex hammer and pens weighted down my pockets, a stethoscope rested on my shoulders. Jules and I talked about the fates of our Hebrew School classmates while I balanced a urine specimen in each hand.
Nick stuck his head out from the curtained area.
“Emily, I’m getting ready to do an LP on the fever and headache in curtain six. You want to do it?”
It was my cue to get back to work.
“It was good to bump into you,” I said.
“Yes,” he said, “the only good thing to come of getting knocked out on the rugby field.”
I wished him well and walked away.
“Emily,” Jules called after me and I stopped and turned back. “Can I get your phone number?”
We had dinner the next night and we married a year later.
The relationship was, from the start, fueled by sex. It was surprisingly electric and we assumed that with such passion, well of course we’d make magnificent babies. When it didn’t happen, we were both surprised. I was disappointed, Jules was devastated.
Jules was an only child and he ached for a family. His parents divorced when he was seven and he’d spent his childhood being shuttled around the Connecticut suburbs from one parent’s home to the other, like an object in the way at which ever house it happened to land. With either parent, he felt like he hampered their careers, their social lives, their happiness, and there wasn’t so much as a goldfish to keep him company.
Charles Glassman was a wealthy man, having inherited the rewards of his own father’s wise investments. A bank vice-president, he achieved success of his own accord, but his passion was for competitive tennis and real estate investments.
Lorraine Glassman loved men and loved to shop. She was an impeccable dresser, coordinated so tediously well that she would have looked plastic had it not been for the warmth of her infectious, ever-present laugh that drew the world in and charmed everyone in a room. Her affection, however, stopped at her laugh, and under all the charisma was an insecure woman who needed to amass as many admirers and as much stuff as possible to continually reaffirm her worth to the world. Jules was the family child—for Lorraine certainly had to have one of what every other woman had, children being in a category close to a diamond ring or regular facials—and he managed to fill his roles as both an acquisition and an admiring minion.
Charles had been raised to be a frugal man and he was naturally jealous and controlling. Always mindful of the next impending disaster, he and Lorraine fought endlessly about questions of her fidelity and her spending.
After they divorced and the battling stopped, Jules would hear them quarrel over whose weekend it was to be stuck with him, who needed to hire a sitter, and he withdrew into himself hoping, perhaps, that if he was good enough, someone might want him.
Things changed when Jules was seventeen. His father died suddenly and unexpectedly and, as the only child, he was the sole heir to a considerable sum of money. His mother, who’d always felt she’d gotten the short end of the divorce settlement, warmed to Jules. She became nicer to him and Jules, in his generosity tinged with a desperate need for her love, attributed this to her sympathy for his grief. Seventeen is a difficult age for a boy to lose his father.
“She never asked me for money,” he explained. He was very defensive of Lorraine, blind always to her motives and shortcomings. Maybe I was too cynical; my work sometimes showed me the darker side of human nature.
The power shifted in a way that wasn’t healthy for Jules. They’d go on vacations to Europe, at his expense, and he bought his mother a beach house as an investment. Finally, Jules felt wanted and needed; no one was negotiating where he would be and who had to take him to Hebrew School or tennis lessons.
Jules figured if a family was big enough, there’d be someone in it for everyone and he was thrilled when we’d started off with Zoey. He fussed over her, talked to her, took her to the groomer and arranged for new and interesting poodle-do creations. He bought her toys. gem-studded collars. and endless treats. I worried he’d spoil our kids.
“Of course I will!” he laughed. “I’ll spoil all six of them. Why have kids if you’re not going to spoil them?”
“I’m a doctor, I can’t have six kids,” I said.
“Then what about eight?” It was a joke, but certainly we wanted two or three children. “To keep the dog company,” Jules would say.
My body went through tests and more tests; I was poked and prodded in the most humiliating of ways. Men I wouldn’t dream of giving the time of day to ordered me to scoot lower on the table, to let my legs fall wider apart. My uterus was filled with dye and imaged, my veins sucked dry of tube after tube of blood to be sent to special labs across the country for levels and hormones and God only knows what else.
“Emily,” Dr. Bornamen had said, thoughtfully, and I’d wanted to strangle him for not addressing me as Dr. Glassman while I sat there in a paper gown I struggled to hold closed. Why can’t you talk to me after I’ve changed into street clothes? Why can’t you introduce yourself as Jim, rather than Doctor, Bornamen? Where do you come off assuming I want you to call me--the me with the half-exposed naked breasts and the too-tightly crossed bare legs and feet—Emily? It was my fourth or fifth meeting with Dr. Bornamen—the latest greatest fertility doctor-- and I had to stop myself from hating him. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t making babies. He had no clue that I either wanted to call him Jim, or wanted him to call me Dr. Glassman, that I needed some token of equality in what was an otherwise wholly unequal experience. I was just one more patient waiting in line. There was no malice on his part and I knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending; instead I felt guilty for all my displaced anger.
“The tests are all negative. I don’t know why you’re not getting pregnant. This is often the case, but you might want to consider in vitro fertilization as a next step.”
I’d had patients in therapy with me during their fertility treatments. The hormones made them crazy and the organization of it all made sex mechanical, scheduled, on-demand. I expected the worst and while the treatments did make me moody, sex remained great, even if the baby making was going on in a petrie dish.
Perhaps it was six months, maybe a little longer, after our final failed attempt at a test tube baby when Emily, my twin, and Abigail, her daughter, stumbled into our lives.
“You know,” Jules had said, “genetically she’s you.”
“You know,” I’d answered, “she’s not me.”
Maybe, I thought, Jules found Emily as sexually attractive as he found me. Maybe, I thought, there’d be all the passion we shared, plus the bonus that her body makes babies. I wanted to know what he was thinking, and at the same time, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be jealous and I didn’t want to be mad at the world because I was infertile.
All of this history existed before I met Emily. All of it was there when I left for Denmark and all of it was festering when I returned to New York only days later.
* * *
Emily and I exchanged e-mails and talked on the phone. I never did figure out how to Instant Message; I downloaded the program, but I couldn’t seem to get a valid screen name, and when I thought I finally had it figured out, I sat there with nothing to do.
“Put me on your buddy list,” Emily, aka PoetInCrisis05, directed.
“I don’t have a buddy list. How do I get one?” I asked. I wondered what her crisis was and why 05? Were there four other poets in crisis before she’d chosen the screen name? Eventually, even Emily gave up and I felt hopeless.
“People our age don’t IM,” Jules reassured me.
“Emily does,” I said.
I had told her I was going to Denmark for work, but hadn’t mentioned the Danish Twin Registry or it’s Early Separation Research Unit and Emily hadn’t asked for any details. I didn’t know how to explain the trip to myself, so I certainly wouldn’t have known what to tell my twin. Somehow, our conversations remained close to the surface and this surprised me.
“Abigail is really getting into ice skating,” she reported.
“Is she taking lessons?” I asked.
“Yes, with a group. I’m thinking of maybe getting her some individual lessons. People say it helps a lot with technique, but it’s expensive.”
I could have been talking to any parent about any kid.
“The vet isn’t too concerned about Zoey’s scratching,” I’d tell her. She was less interested in my dog than I was in her child, but that was true of everyone else I knew as well.
“What do you think of getting together again?” Emily finally asked.
“That would be great,” I said. Would it? “Will you be in New York soon?”
I thought maybe she was coming to visit her friend on Staten Island. She hesitated, and I knew she was embarrassed.
“No, actually, I just wanted to see you again. I was thinking maybe you could come to Philadelphia.”
Chapter 9
I took Amtrak to 30th Street Station and from there I got a cab to Emily’s place on South 44th Street. I was only going for the afternoon, but still I brought a bag of stuff with me. I carried both a hardcover novel and the most recent issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. I had a CD player, and some tampons and Motrin, just in case. My period was due the day before and I assumed I’d have to deal with this sometime during the afternoon though I’d been warned that the hormone treatments might cause symptoms and changes in my cycle for many months to come. Stress, too, sometimes caused an interruption in my cycle and I certainly felt anxious.
It was just supposed to be a social visit to see my twin; I didn’t need any more surprises.
Emily’s apartment was a mess of indescribable proportions. In the entryway, there were piles of mail, months worth of catalogs, dirty socks, unpaired shoes, clothing strewn about. The living room had a couch and a large television set. A coffee table was piled with dirty dishes, a box of crackers, crayons, newspapers, and the remnants of Abigail’s art projects. What didn’t fit on the table landed on the floor. Every surface was piled with empty glasses, toys, used napkins—the place was an extensive array of garbage and clutter. An abandoned jacket lay dead center in the middle of the floor, a pair of roller blades not far from it.
Emily ushered me in, oblivious to the mess. I wasn’t sure if I was more shocked that she lived this way or that she hadn’t bothered to clean up for my visit; it wasn’t like I’d dropped in unexpectedly. It’s not that I’m obsessively neat, but her apartment was downright dirty. I know she owned a vacuum cleaner because it was standing out in the dining room still plugged in. It was a wonder no one tripped over the cord. PoetInCrisis05, I remembered, and wondered if this was the crisis.
“Where do you write?” I asked.
I didn’t want to sound judgmental, but I didn’t see a computer, or a space where someone could even sit down with a pad and pen. There was no order to the chaos, no assignment of purpose, the rent bill rested next to Abigail’s homework assignment, sat beside a new birthday card waiting to be signed and sent to a designated celebrant.
“I have an office at the newspaper, and I use a laptop here wherever I can find space,” Emily said, so I guess she was aware that it was cluttered. “Richard and I used to have the second bedroom set up as a workspace, but when Abigail was born that room became hers. Even with just the two of us, we could use more space,” she said as her only nod to the fact of the pigsty.
Abigail was with her father for the afternoon and Emily suggested we go out for lunch. I was glad to be out of her dusty apartment and loved the little café she chose. I silently wondered if she had an agenda. I didn’t ask-- didn’t want to imply that there was anything wrong with her just wanting to see me, if that was the case. We both ordered the same salad, sparking a discussion of how we both loved goat cheese.
“My dad absolutely hated goat cheese,” she said. “He called it cream cheese for snobs.”
Well, I thought, he doesn’t have our genes.
* * *
Emily stopped by the barber shop on her way home from school. She was wearing a white blouse and short plaid skirt, blue knee socks, and brown shoes—her school uniform. Her hair had grown long and she wore it in a pony tail tied high on her head. Her father was in the middle of shaving a man who was tipped back in the chair and covered with lather. He moved the razor quickly but cautiously and Emily stood a few feet away, knowing not to distract him while the blade was on the man’s neck.“Hi, sweetheart,” Mike said, without glancing up.
She stopped by on her way home from school everyday, he looked forward to her visit.
“How was school? Got a lot of homework?”
“Good, Daddy. I have a history test tomorrow.”
She wanted to ask if she could go to a party on Saturday night, with a boy, but something stopped her. He would probably allow it, but it suddenly felt like a betrayal and she didn’t ask.
“Better go study then,” he said, rinsing the lather from the razor. Finally he looked at her and the hint of a smile came to his face just before he returned to his customer.“I’ll get us a pizza for dinner.”
I loved the stories from her childhood, loved hearing about her father the barber, even though they left me wondering.
* * *
“You think she did it twice,” Emily said as she picked up a roll. She tossed it in the air, just a millimeter or two, and caught it in a barely perceptible motion. She sliced the bread and buttered it, paying too much attention to what she was doing. Emily was anxious and obviously not very hungry.
“Yes,” I said. I knew exactly what she was talking about. I believed that Betsy White, or whoever this person who had given birth to us was, had abandoned two babies in two different places. I didn’t have a timeline, I didn’t think about whether she left one of us and then the other, but when I really considered it, she’d shown up with me at a Chicago emergency room and there was no mention of another baby in the story, so I guess I thought she abandoned my sister first. But it was all speculation and I wondered what Emily was getting at.
“I wasn’t adopted,” Emily said. “I may have been abandoned by my mother, but I wasn’t adopted. It never occurred to me to question if my father was my father, our father. It’s because he was.”
“He didn’t like goat cheese,” I blurted out, without thinking and instantly I realized how ridiculous and petty I sounded. I wished I could inhale the words. Emily put down her roll and knife and stared at me.
“I’m sorry, what a ridiculous thing to say,” I said. “You caught me off guard. I’m just trying to make sense of this. You have to be adopted, there’s just no way to make this story work otherwise. You just happened to bump into an identical twin who was given away by an otherwise intact family?”
I didn’t give her time to respond, I was ranting or something close to it.Emily tensed a little, but waited without saying anything. I was relieved when the waiter came to refill my iced tea; I asked for a clean lemon wedge. The waiter’s nose and eyebrow were pierced, his arms had colorful tattoos running up and down them.
“So,” I said at last, “You think he was my father, too?” I was tossing all sorts of ideas around in my head, trying to figure out what Emily was thinking.
“Yes.”
I suppose that was obvious. As identical twins, we had to have the same parents.
“And do you think your mother, Sandra Klee Mason, was really our mother?” I felt like I was playing twenty questions and wished Emily would just spit out her theory already. Even if I didn’t necessarily want to hear it. I’d come to some peace with this idea of joint abandonment; I’m not sure I wanted another option added to the possibility of my past.
“My father was my biological father and yours too,” Emily said. She looked upset and said nothing more. I sensed she knew something I didn’t, but still, I couldn’t think of what, and I hated being so out of control.
My lemon came with our salads. I waited for the tattooed server to finish and considered if I really wanted to squeeze it into my drink. Why not, go for it, I thought.
“Why would she—either Sandra Mason Klee or some other mystery mom—leave me and keep you?”
“Because I’m cuter,” Emily said with a poker face. She fished a walnut out from a pile of greens and balanced it on her fork. It was the first glimpse I had of her sense of humor, we’d both kept it pretty serious. My life, I realized, had been devoid of humor since the moment I walked through the door at Empire T’s. There certainly weren’t many ha ha’s on my recent shuttle to and from Denmark.
“Obviously,” I said.
“Maybe they only wanted one kid. Maybe they could only afford one kid; my father wasn’t on the big buck circuit. Maybe you were colicky or just didn’t laugh at her jokes.”
“Maybe,” I countered, “Betsy White dropped you on a church doorstep and me on an ER gurney. Then Mike and Sandra adopted you, and Sandra skipped town when she realized she really didn’t want to be anyone’s mother.”
I was still stuck on the original theory. I have to say, I liked it best or at least it was the one I’d gotten used to. It came out sounding mean, though, and I felt badly. Emily wasn’t taking this well, she looked anxious.We both ordered dessert and coffee. We’d cleared the air with our theories and even if I didn’t like Emily’s, I couldn’t be angry. She had other thoughts, something more was going on-- I could tell-- but she wasn’t sharing them with me. Maybe she was worried her ideas were too convoluted to be considered, that I would dismiss them.
The more time we spent together, the more I was forced to look at how different we actually were. I realized, somewhere in the middle of a bite of key lime pie, that I liked Emily. It wasn’t just that she was my twin, or that we shared an uncertain but clearly linked past, I simply liked her.
Maybe it was the mess in her apartment. It made her human, vulnerable, something other than my reflection in a stranger’s clothes.
“Emily,” Emily said. She picked up her napkin and started twisting it, wringing it actually. “There’s something you need to know.”
I thought she was on the verge of telling me something about our history. I wasn’t at all prepared for what would come next.
“ I have cancer.”I put my fork down, I said nothing, looked to Emily, then to the wall. I didn’t want to hear it. I’ve only just found you, I thought.
“Many cancers are curable,” I told Emily when I could locate some words.
“There was an initial response to chemotherapy,” Emily said. She had a good feel for the medical lingo. “The tumor metastasized before it was discovered,” she continued, “and the chemotherapy just bought me time. I have small tumors in my lymph nodes and lungs. They’ve stopped growing for now, but at some point, they’ll grow again. The long-term prognosis is grim.”
“That’s what they said? Grim?” What kind of oncologist would tell a patient her prognosis was grim?
“No, he didn’t say it in quite those words. He wrote it. I read my chart when the doctor stepped out of the room.”
Oh. She wasn’t supposed to do that, but it wasn’t worth pointing that out.
“So how much time?” I asked, at last. Really, I wanted to scream: How can you leave me?
Emily shrugged her shoulders.
“No one says. In a way, I wish they would, at least I could plan. For now, all I know is I’m here. I’m tired a lot, but I’m able to work and I’m able to take care of Abigail. When I’ve asked, I been told no one can give me a time frame.”
Abigail, I thought, and was overwhelmed with horror. I felt stricken that Emily would die and leave me; what about her little girl? The trajedy of it was paralyzing.
What could I do? Nothing, Emily said, but I wondered. She had summoned me to Philadelphia that day to tell me about her cancer. It had been treated the summer before, in 2004, and she hadn’t mentioned it the first night we’d met or the next night in my apartment, or in any of her emails or phone calls. She was telling me for a reason and I wondered what it was. I thought of Philip Howard.
“I met this man in Denmark, an oncologist who studies bone marrow transplants in identical twins with breast cancer. He’s at the University of California in San Diego. I could track him down,” I offered.
No one was certain where Emily’s cancer had originated. By the time it was discovered, it was all through her and the point of origin couldn’t be ascertained.
“They don’t do bone marrow transplants for this kind of cancer,” Emily said. She looked at me strangely, as though I should have known. Was she hoping I had a miracle up my sleeve, or knew someone who did, because I was a physician?
“You could get a second opinion at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. One of my friends from medical school is a pulmonologist there and I could ask her for help.”
Emily nodded. She was being treated at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania—she called it HUP, with the familiarity of a good friend, one she knew way too well, and she felt confident every possible treatment was being considered. When she was first diagnosed, she’d gone to Johns Hopkins for a consultation, and the doctors there agreed with her doctors at HUP.Emily had finished chemotherapy and she was waiting. Waiting to get sick then die, at some undetermined date, maybe months or even years in the future. It was a formidable burden to know her time was limited even if perhaps she was better off than some unsuspecting person who dies before her in a terrorist attack, a car accident, or even just keels over from a heart attack with no prior warning.
We had walked back to Emily’s apartment after lunch, after key lime pie, after tipping the tatooed young waiter. The sun was out; it was warmer than I’d expected, and I was hot in my jacket. I took it off and tied the arms around my waist, the way the kids do. We were both quiet on the walk back and I found myself noticing the weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks, soda bottles thrown carelessly around the curb, the dog poop that no one had bothered to bag and cart off. A bus screeched to a stop and sirens wailed in the distance. With every breath, I inhaled car the smells of stagnant garbage. Not so different from New York, I thought, but on my own turf, I blocked out all the unpleasant sensory input and here it rushed at me.
Emily’s apartment was one of three in a row house. She had the second floor, and the first and third floors were both occupied by dental students. The first floor apartment housed a young couple, and I wondered if, after graduation, they’d open a husband-wife practice together where their names would be painted on a big, white, tooth-shaped sign.
We reached the building and Abigail was sitting on the steps with another, younger, little girl. They were playing with a doll and Abigail was clearly in charge. She looked more solid, less tentative, then I remembered her being. The younger child was maybe two-and-a-half or three years old and chubby, with soft brown curly hair that framed her. She looked like something out of a commercial and my heart hurt. The little girl reached for the doll; her arms were so round, it seemed she had no wrists or elbows. Their play was gentle and loving; this must be Abby’s half-sister, I thought. I was pleased to see Abby and I felt a horrible pang of pity for the child who would be left without a mother.
Abigail stiffened when she saw me approach. The other little girl grew bubblier.“
Abby, look it’s your mommy. Look, it’s two of your mommies!”
I thought she would burst.
“That’s my mom’s twin,” Abby said. I could tell from the change in her posture that she didn’t like this situation. It threatened everything she knew.
A man stood up, appearing from the shadows of the stairs. He was tall and balding, wearing jeans and a sweater that hung loose over his shoulders. He smiled at Emily, and reached out his hand to shake mine.
“This is Richard, Abigail’s father,” Emily said, then turned toward me. “My sister, Emily.”
She said nothing more, so I assumed he knew the story of how we’d met.
“Abby told me about you,” Richard said. “Wow!” He looked back and forth between us like he was watching a tennis match. He settled his gaze on Emily and he said, “Two of you. What a thought!”
Richard bent down and kissed Abigail good-bye. He hoisted the little curly-haired girl onto his hip and clicked his remote to unlock the Toyota at the curb. The little girl wailed as he put her into a car seat. She screamed to her sister in desperation, and the three of us looked on silently as Richard and the unhappy toddler drove off. Abigail also looked forlorn. Emily rubbed her back very lightly and quickly.
“Daddy will be back soon, honey.”“I know,” she answered with a wisdom that struck me as tragic. Who offered more solace to whom, I wondered.
I had a train to catch, so Emily and Abigail walked me to Penn Station. Somehow, the walk back seemed shorter than the cab ride coming. I kissed them both good-bye. Abigail let me squeeze her and it felt right.
“Emily?” I asked as an afterthought. She was at the edge of earshot and stopped to see if I had really called her name. She looked at me, now hand-in-hand with her daughter. “Before the chemo, how long was your hair?”
“About as long as yours,” Emily answered.
I thought so.
Chapter 10
John Stellar had been sexually abused as a child. Repeatedly, over the course of years, by the parish priest he respected and loved, and it left him feeling like permanently damaged goods. The Catholic Archdiocese paid for his psychiatric treatment, twice a week, every week, for however long it took. Reparations they called it, though such a word implied that damage done could simply be repaired with enough something—time, money, medications, psychotherapy. It didn’t allow that some injuries are irreparable and the shadows they cast become a part of the person.
At his first appointment with me two years before, Mr. Stellar had told me about his history of being molested. He talked readily about the sexual acts he’d been made to perform and those that had been acted upon him. It was a matter-of-fact telling of the stomach-turning sadistic abuse of a young boy, and he could have been reciting the names of the state capitals in alphabetic order. While it was easy enough for him to talk about what had occurred, it took Mr. Stellar many months to tell me the perpetrator had been a priest, and that revelation had come with a torrent of emotion even though, intellectually, he was aware I’d known this all along. He had sobbed violently.
“You feel very betrayed,” I said. The abuse was in the past but the feelings remained.
“It changed my life,” he admitted. “I’d never be here if it hadn’t happened.”
“This,” I said, meaning the need to see a psychiatrist or have psychotherapy, “is a sign of weakness?”
“I just wouldn’t need it. I’m not the type.” He resented me and all that I stood for, and that was obvious. Mr. Stellar wanted me to agree with him: he was strong.
“You’re a different person because of the awful things you’ve endured,” I agreed. He sighed and I went on to ad, “You know, even with what you’ve been through, you’re strong. It takes courage to survive and move on and you’re doing that. And it takes courage to get help. You’re doing a good job.”
He shifted in his seat and looked away, perhaps a bit embarrased, but no longer on edge.
“How do you feel now about the man who molested you?” I asked the question quietly enough that he could pretend not to hear, if he wanted. I asked because I wanted to know and I didn’t want to guess; I especially didn’t want to guess wrong. He could have a whole host of feelings, though I imagined he might feel some combination of fear and murderous rage. Father Thomas Malloy, the priest who had initially contacted me to arrange for Mr. Stellar’s treatment, had said a number of boys were involved over a long period of time and the perpetrator was serving a lengthy prison term.
“He’s a source of shame to all of us,” Father Thomas had said, “and we’re doing our best to do right by the victims.” He’d had a gentle, seductive voice which I found almost irresistible over the phone; I’d wondered if the priest who’d violated the boys shared this hypnotic quality.
“I’m supposed to be angry,” Mr. Stellar had said with surprising calm, “I tell that to myself and I try. It’s just not there. It’s like I have this open wound that seeps, that nothing will stem and yet it doesn’t hurt doesn’t hurt and doesn’t even sting, it simply seeps. Mostly, I feel numb.”
That Monday, the Monday after I came back from Philadelphia, Mr. Stellar talked about his ex-wife. The marriage had ended because she couldn’t stand his jealousy and his constant need to control her. He couldn’t see how he was so hard to live with and he repeatedly talked about what an attentive husband and father he’d been, and how she had left him even though he’d sacrificed everything for her and their children. He felt victimized and betrayed, and there were on-going issues related to custody and parenting that he frequently talked about in treatment.
“Every Friday, and I mean every single Friday, I came home with a gift for her. Usually it was just flowers, but sometimes it was a piece of jewelry, once in a while chocolate—she loves chocolate but Susan’s always watching her weight and sometimes she’d be thrilled to have it, other times she’d get pissy. She has a great body and I’d just tell her to enjoy it and stop worrying, but you know women and their weight. So mostly I’d just stop and get flowers. How many guys do you know who do that, every single Friday? I never missed one. Even after we separated, I’d send her something, a card, or a little gift I’d leave in her mailbox.”
The gifts, the romance, they all came with a price and Mr. Stellar just didn’t see that. The ones that continued after they split—I assumed they were unwanted, his way of trying to woo her back, to court her, to remind her of what she was giving up, and to gain control in a pathetic, begging sort of way.
“Did Susan like the gifts?”
“Sure, she loved them. She said I was the most romantic guy she’d ever met. We fought a lot even before we were married, and the gifts, the flowers, they always softened her. Later, though, if we were fighting, she’d throw the stuff at me or make a show of depositing them in the garbage.”
“This made you angry,” I said.
“Hell, yes.”
Toward the end of the session, he said he needed to tell me about something that had happened over the weekend.
“John Junior pitched in a little league game.”
He went on to tell me that Susan was also there. Mr. Stellar was an avid and excitable fan and he’d gotten wrapped up in the game and cheered Johnny on from the sidelines. On a crucial pitch, the umpire made a bad call and Mr. Stellar went over to the plate and yelled at him.
“Susan made this federal case out of it. She insisted I embarrassed myself and embarrassed John Junior. It was an awful call—it should have been strike three, he’s out, and instead this fucking ump calls ball four and sends the runt to first base.”
“It sound like Susan wasn’t as concerned with the game as she was with your behavior,” I commented.
“If she wasn’t such a bitch…” he said, leaving his sentence unfinished.
Sometimes therapy was hard for Mr. Stellar and sometimes his therapy was hard for me. He’d come from a world with no boundaries, one where the person you trust most—the person you’re told is a messenger of God, someone you follow unfailingly without question-- might violate you in unspeakable ways. When Mr. Stellar intruded on my world, commented on the things that should be off-limits and were completely irrelevant to his treatment, it left me feeling exposed and resentful. His world had no boundaries, but in a venture as intimate as psychotherapy gets, I could have used a few.
“You look tired, Dr. Glassman.”
“You’d rather talk about how I look than about how you behaved yesterday,” I said.
“You really look tired. There are circles under your eyes.”
I was tired. I’d been back from Denmark for two weeks and still hadn’t unpacked. I’d returned from Philadelphia late the night before after learning my twin had cancer. I was tired. What should I have said to Mr. Stellar? It would be fine with me if he didn’t point out the bags under my eyes; I’d be happy to pretend they weren’t noticeable to the rest of the world.
“I’m a little tired,” I said. It was a bit like yelling uncle.
“Late night out?”
I struggled not to be offended. I was feeling too vulnerable to be my sharpest, to keep my best therapeutic and objective cool. And then, of course, I felt guilty for being angry. This patient was the victim of horrible abuse, he needed and deserved my compassion, not my resentment.
“Are you worried about me?” I asked.
“Should I be?”
“No.”
Mr. Stellar looked me straight in the eyes. “Maybe I should be worried about you, Doc,” he said, then deflected his gaze.
* * *
I remained exhausted, despite what felt like many many hours of deep sleep. I had this sense that I couldn’t catch up, and that if I just got enough sleep, deep enough for long enough, I’d go back to being myself. It was an effort to get to work, to make it through the day.
“Do you think I’m depressed?” I asked Jules. He’d commented several times that I hadn’t been the same since I returned from Denmark. I tried not to think about all that had transpired there, even if it was destroying me.
“Over Emily’s cancer?” He asked.
Well, that and other things, I thought.
By Friday afternoon, I had to admit I was late. I stopped at Duane Reed on the way home from the office. Jules was still at work and Zoey, who was eager to go for a walk, clamored outside the bathroom door. I’d done this many times before, always hopeful and always disappointed. That Friday, for the first time, I prayed it would be negative. My urine ricocheted off the strip, it’s deflected stream splattered onto my hand. I flushed and waited, too anxious to get off the toilet seat. I sat there staring at the little blue plus sign that popped up to announce I was pregnant.
* * *
“Congratulations!” Dr. Bornamen was genuinely thrilled. He burst into his office where I was already sitting, the confirmatory test results in his hands. “Everything looks perfect, your levels are right where they should be and in a few weeks we can do a sonogram.”
His white shirt was stained beneath his lab coat and he hadn’t shaved that morning—perhaps because he’d been attending a birth—but his face radiated joy. We’d graduated medical school the same year so I’d always assumed we were the same age, though on that particular day he felt a little older, and perhaps a little wiser. Or maybe, I just needed him to be.
I burst into tears. I hoped he’d think they were tears of happiness or relief-- after all, I’d been trying so desperately to get pregnant. And suddenly, I had just what I wanted without the help of modern medicine and I was sobbing.
The joy drained from his face.
He sat down across from me and simply said, “Tell me.”
“Jules isn’t the father.”
He uncrossed his legs, leaned in towards me just a bit, and waited. So I continued, telling him things I had never intended to disclose and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude that he’d take the time to listen and care.
I told him about my trip to Denmark, about Steen and the power of the moment. About how I felt too guilty to have sex with Jules when I first got back, too tired after that. I didn’t tell him about Emily, I guess because it just didn’t seem relevant, except perhaps to explain why I was in Denmark in the first place, but that wasn’t what I was crying about and there was so much more to deal with.
Dr. Bornamen listened. I talked. He didn’t say much.
Finally, he asked, “What are your thoughts about the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It felt like a catastrophe. I’d come to see him, but I hadn’t taken it further, hadn’t thought about an endpoint.
“Do you think I should terminate it?” I asked. It felt funny to hear myself say the word aloud. “Terminate.” It sounded so final, but not like anything that had to do with a baby. You terminate contracts, not people.
“Not if you want to have a child,” he said gently. “Emily, I’m a fertility specialist. I help people get pregnant and I’ve been unable to help you. Maybe there was something about this affair.” There, he’d used the word I didn’t even want to think: affair. “Maybe,” he continued, “there’s some incompatibility between your eggs and Jules’ sperm. The two of you have been trying for years, first alone and then with intervention, and it hasn’t happened, and really, it isn’t likely to ever happen. As I mentioned when we met in January, having failed invitro, your best bet from here would be to get pregnant with artificial insemination by a sperm donor. I know you and Jules ruled that out, but it’s essentially what your one-time event with this man abroad was, if you don’t plan to see him again, that is. Or, you might consider a surrogate to carry a child for you—a complicated deal, I might add—or adoption. So, no, from my point of view, this is a blessing and you shouldn’t terminate the pregnancy. I realize there are other factors going on here, but you asked me.”
“What do I tell Jules?” I asked.
“That one I can’t answer for you,” he said. Dr. Bornamen looked sad, and I was sorry I hadn’t left him joyful. He was angry, as well, I assumed, though he was kind enough to hide that from me. I stopped crying and he stood up to leave.
“You’ll let me know what you decide? And in the meantime, prenatal vitamins with folate. No tobacco, no alcohol, no medications, no street drugs, no downhill skiing.” The obvious.
“Yes, of course.”
“If you’re….” Dr. Bornamen hesitated. He wasn’t used to talking about elective abortion and he was searching for the right words. “… going the course, come back in one month.” He didn’t tell me what to do if I wasn’t going the course and I was left to assume I should go elsewhere.
I was swept with sadness and decided to walk the forty blocks home. It would give me a chance to think through my options and at least I’d have an excuse for my exhaustion.
* * *
“How are you feeling?” Jules was home when I got there. Zoey greeted me at the door and sniffed my crotch.
“No, Zoey, come here,” Jules said. He found her crotch-sniffing habit offensive and often would scold her. I leaned down and kissed her, then scratched hard behind her ears, the way she liked.
“You’re the best little crotch-sniffer,” I whispered. She wanted me to scratch longer and she followed me around the apartment. Finally, I settled into a chair and held her head in my lap.
“Why are you home?”
It was early, I didn’t expect Jules to be home for at least an hour or two and I was looking forward to a little solitude. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting me so early either; I hadn’t mentioned my doctor’s appointment.
“I took the afternoon off. I did the grocery shopping and ran a few errands. I wanted to surprise you with dinner, but you’re home early, too.” He was clearly disappointed.
I went in the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea. There were grocery bags on the floor and food on the table in various stages of being put away. I grabbed a couple of yogurts and put them in the refrigerator. It was then I noticed the flowers resting on the table. Roses. Jules saw me looking at them.
“These are for you,” he said, as he reached for the bouquet, then presented them to me with a slight, dramatically gallant bow. “I would have cut the stems and put them in a vase, but I just got in.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, ticking through a mental calendar that came up blank.
“I wanted to do something nice for you, to cheer you up. You’ve been so upset since...” Jules hesitated, “since your trip, or maybe since Emily.”
All I could think of was how I’d destroyed us when I’d slept with another man. It was all I could do to smile at his gesture and later, to get some of the dinner down.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Back Shortly
Thank you all so much for your feedback on Chapter 1 through 7. I'm thinking about all the ideas I've gotten and working on incorporating your comments into a new and improved manuscript. I'll be back soon with changes and then I'll begin posting Chapters 8 on.
Again, thank you! And if I didn't mention you by name in my I Want To Talk post, please know that I've read your comments-- I may have responded to them in the comments section already. Thanks for catching that typo Emy L. Nosti.
And "Anonymous"-- if you want to tell any specific places where you felt it just didn't work for you, I'd love to hear.
Again, thank you! And if I didn't mention you by name in my I Want To Talk post, please know that I've read your comments-- I may have responded to them in the comments section already. Thanks for catching that typo Emy L. Nosti.
And "Anonymous"-- if you want to tell any specific places where you felt it just didn't work for you, I'd love to hear.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
I Want To Talk
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
For the I-lost-count time I went through everyone's comments on all the posts. I'm not sure I can keep them straight.
Many of you asked plot questions: you're supposed to want to know these things, keep reading! Emy I Nosti (It's only me?)-- hold on, the answers will come.
Sarebear: commas always go inside the quotations. I had a little trouble following all your thoughts. Writers vary with whether thoughts are put into quotations, here I didn't. And we went out for dinner tonight and I noticed that all the places were set at the tables before we approached. Empire T's, in my imagination, uses paper napkins, just so you know. And cheap metal flatware. You commented that I said that Emily had little history and then discussed how her father died, thereby giving history. She will remain a little mysterious, the character we know the least by the end. So yes, she has some history, some of it rather interesting, but she will remain a carrier of secrets. Try not to worry about tenses, I did. And I still have to look at some of your suggestions against the raw story.
Clink: Emily cries because she is overwhelmed and she is distraught to lose the story for her past that she believed she had and she must completely rethink herself.
Commas--- it feels to me like I use them a lot. When I read other people's fiction, I notice there are lots and lots of commas, but when I'm reading along, I just really don't see them. Are they still noticeable to you?
Plotwise, Jules needs to long for Abby, it has to be a fairly powerful thing or later Anon will be saying "Wait, where the hell did that come from? Where's the foreplay?" Foreplay in a literary sense. So he's not a pedophile, but it's fine if you want to wonder. The wondering, I'm hoping, pulls you along. Jules will come out as more of his own as time marches on.
Oh, and you didn't like that Emily Mason tells us why she broke up with her daughter's father, seemed too intimate for a first meeting. I will contend that she didn't-- she tells us they didn't agree on basic things, dirty socks on the floor-- this is cliche, people don't end relationships over socks on the floor. She's giving an acceptable, not too deep, reason for a breakup, and once you show up with someone's kid, you kind of have to say something. Emily will continue to skirt the issues. Am I wrong here that this conversation, which is supposed to tread on intimacy with a new-found twin, but not really, does that?
Anon: Sorry you don't like Middlefart. Geographically, it works as a one-hour drive from Odense. Funny, but there isn't much around the isle of Funan from what I could tell. Mapquest Europe is pretty cool for those of us who want to write about places we've never been. I couldn't resist the name, and now that I've researched it, described it down to bridges, street names, and the International Museum of Ceramic Art (which is a real place)-- it's done. It's only an afternoon, you'll be okay.
Okay, so I was most curious about Anon's comment that everything is too fast, that the characters aren't getting developed-- help me out here! What do you want more of? We're about a quarter of the way through, maybe a little less, the characters get developed as the story unfolds. You want more up front? I can certainly slow down some of the scenes-- I didn't want to slow the sex down, there was no foreplay-- Emily was feeling momentarily connected, intimate, understood, and it had to happen before she could reconsider--if it slows down, she wouldnt' have had sex with an ugly guy she just met. It actually has been slowed down a bit-- originally the feedback I got was that it felt like a rape scene (which is okay, too, but it seemed to distress my first set of readers). She needs to have sex with him and she needs to be absolutely tormented about it. If it was slow and considered--wouldn't you be mad at her? Fine to hate Steen, he's not a particularly nice man. Having said that, I'm still left with wondering where else you might like the chapter slowed down? My Fiction Techniques prof had the same comment and I did slow down the earlier chapters-- the class didn't get all the way to Denmark.
Still thinking about the flashback scene with Emily as a little girl...I'm not sure what else to do with that yet.
Thanks to everyone!
For the I-lost-count time I went through everyone's comments on all the posts. I'm not sure I can keep them straight.
Many of you asked plot questions: you're supposed to want to know these things, keep reading! Emy I Nosti (It's only me?)-- hold on, the answers will come.
Sarebear: commas always go inside the quotations. I had a little trouble following all your thoughts. Writers vary with whether thoughts are put into quotations, here I didn't. And we went out for dinner tonight and I noticed that all the places were set at the tables before we approached. Empire T's, in my imagination, uses paper napkins, just so you know. And cheap metal flatware. You commented that I said that Emily had little history and then discussed how her father died, thereby giving history. She will remain a little mysterious, the character we know the least by the end. So yes, she has some history, some of it rather interesting, but she will remain a carrier of secrets. Try not to worry about tenses, I did. And I still have to look at some of your suggestions against the raw story.
Clink: Emily cries because she is overwhelmed and she is distraught to lose the story for her past that she believed she had and she must completely rethink herself.
Commas--- it feels to me like I use them a lot. When I read other people's fiction, I notice there are lots and lots of commas, but when I'm reading along, I just really don't see them. Are they still noticeable to you?
Plotwise, Jules needs to long for Abby, it has to be a fairly powerful thing or later Anon will be saying "Wait, where the hell did that come from? Where's the foreplay?" Foreplay in a literary sense. So he's not a pedophile, but it's fine if you want to wonder. The wondering, I'm hoping, pulls you along. Jules will come out as more of his own as time marches on.
Oh, and you didn't like that Emily Mason tells us why she broke up with her daughter's father, seemed too intimate for a first meeting. I will contend that she didn't-- she tells us they didn't agree on basic things, dirty socks on the floor-- this is cliche, people don't end relationships over socks on the floor. She's giving an acceptable, not too deep, reason for a breakup, and once you show up with someone's kid, you kind of have to say something. Emily will continue to skirt the issues. Am I wrong here that this conversation, which is supposed to tread on intimacy with a new-found twin, but not really, does that?
Anon: Sorry you don't like Middlefart. Geographically, it works as a one-hour drive from Odense. Funny, but there isn't much around the isle of Funan from what I could tell. Mapquest Europe is pretty cool for those of us who want to write about places we've never been. I couldn't resist the name, and now that I've researched it, described it down to bridges, street names, and the International Museum of Ceramic Art (which is a real place)-- it's done. It's only an afternoon, you'll be okay.
Okay, so I was most curious about Anon's comment that everything is too fast, that the characters aren't getting developed-- help me out here! What do you want more of? We're about a quarter of the way through, maybe a little less, the characters get developed as the story unfolds. You want more up front? I can certainly slow down some of the scenes-- I didn't want to slow the sex down, there was no foreplay-- Emily was feeling momentarily connected, intimate, understood, and it had to happen before she could reconsider--if it slows down, she wouldnt' have had sex with an ugly guy she just met. It actually has been slowed down a bit-- originally the feedback I got was that it felt like a rape scene (which is okay, too, but it seemed to distress my first set of readers). She needs to have sex with him and she needs to be absolutely tormented about it. If it was slow and considered--wouldn't you be mad at her? Fine to hate Steen, he's not a particularly nice man. Having said that, I'm still left with wondering where else you might like the chapter slowed down? My Fiction Techniques prof had the same comment and I did slow down the earlier chapters-- the class didn't get all the way to Denmark.
Still thinking about the flashback scene with Emily as a little girl...I'm not sure what else to do with that yet.
Thanks to everyone!
Friday, June 1, 2007
The End of Chapter 7
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets, and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.” But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction. “Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered. There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard. The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I settled on the sofa and Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English. He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage, my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness, my sudden dissatisfaction with life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father, Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas, but in the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. His hand was under my blouse, then squeezing my breast. In the next breath, or so it seemed, he was inside of me. It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been, if he felt something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or if this wasn’t just about the conquest. It wasn’t until later, back at my hotel, that I could feel repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit. I packed my bags and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets, and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.” But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction. “Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered. There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard. The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I settled on the sofa and Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English. He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage, my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness, my sudden dissatisfaction with life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father, Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas, but in the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. His hand was under my blouse, then squeezing my breast. In the next breath, or so it seemed, he was inside of me. It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been, if he felt something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or if this wasn’t just about the conquest. It wasn’t until later, back at my hotel, that I could feel repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit. I packed my bags and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
More of Chapter 7
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and, on days he left Odense, recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step travel directions with maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places, and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason
the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.” Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all
surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to
apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.” The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask. I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.
“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I; the white hair was deceptively aging.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and, on days he left Odense, recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step travel directions with maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places, and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason
the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.” Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all
surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to
apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.” The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask. I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.
“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I; the white hair was deceptively aging.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
The Beginning of Chapter 7
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived in Nyborg, on the water and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing things off him, the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards; it has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978, with Steen as the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of zygosity—fraternal versus identical twinship-- is crucial in how they differ from other collections of data. Monozygotic (MZ) twins come from a single egg, fertilized by a single sperm, and are genetically the same. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal, or dizygotic (DZ) twins, on the other hand, grow from two eggs and two sperm, and are no more genetically alike than regular siblings; statically they share half their gene pool. It is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. If the other twin does not get the illness, the twin pair is said to be discordant for the illness. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into MZ and DZ pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. They were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became diabetic), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen was fond of saying, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket.
Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him; it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived in Nyborg, on the water and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing things off him, the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards; it has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978, with Steen as the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of zygosity—fraternal versus identical twinship-- is crucial in how they differ from other collections of data. Monozygotic (MZ) twins come from a single egg, fertilized by a single sperm, and are genetically the same. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal, or dizygotic (DZ) twins, on the other hand, grow from two eggs and two sperm, and are no more genetically alike than regular siblings; statically they share half their gene pool. It is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. If the other twin does not get the illness, the twin pair is said to be discordant for the illness. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into MZ and DZ pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. They were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became diabetic), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen was fond of saying, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket.
Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him; it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Chapter 6
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but again, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction; there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled, proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of What other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him. Finally, Jules asked, “It would be nice to invite everyone in?”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our living room. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. She was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we’d had a child, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. I brought out drinks and appetizers. I hadn’t planned on a little one and had to search the pantry for some juice and cookies. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules stared at her daughter. I could feel his longing across the room.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot, she knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, and with that they found one another.
We made small talk, but it was stiffer than I would have liked and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated heating systems and they churn out the heat. The radiator pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in; at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with it’s mismatched chairs, metal table, and sink full of dishes. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I’d assumed she had shared my life, my history, and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at
focusing on the details.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter. “Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school. We were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet; we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. He’s a good guy with all his cards on the table, but we have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing radical vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest of things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“Life became difficult over the silliest of things and after we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource their all clamoring for and there’s not enough to go around.
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person; we might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though I think she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her own biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems, so it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating Chinese take-out, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name, though I didn’t know how to Instant Message.
“You’ll learn,” she insisted.
I was disappointed they were leaving and I hugged them both a little too long.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I freed the cloistered Zoey and took her for a walk. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, not to mention nieces and nephews. Would I ever see her again? Was Emily someone who would shake up my life? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d exchanged with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind the magazine.
“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.
Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.
“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. That
night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I might feel compelled to look for one.
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but again, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction; there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled, proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of What other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him. Finally, Jules asked, “It would be nice to invite everyone in?”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our living room. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. She was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we’d had a child, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. I brought out drinks and appetizers. I hadn’t planned on a little one and had to search the pantry for some juice and cookies. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules stared at her daughter. I could feel his longing across the room.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot, she knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, and with that they found one another.
We made small talk, but it was stiffer than I would have liked and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated heating systems and they churn out the heat. The radiator pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in; at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with it’s mismatched chairs, metal table, and sink full of dishes. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I’d assumed she had shared my life, my history, and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at
focusing on the details.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter. “Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school. We were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet; we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. He’s a good guy with all his cards on the table, but we have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing radical vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest of things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“Life became difficult over the silliest of things and after we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource their all clamoring for and there’s not enough to go around.
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person; we might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though I think she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her own biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems, so it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating Chinese take-out, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name, though I didn’t know how to Instant Message.
“You’ll learn,” she insisted.
I was disappointed they were leaving and I hugged them both a little too long.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I freed the cloistered Zoey and took her for a walk. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, not to mention nieces and nephews. Would I ever see her again? Was Emily someone who would shake up my life? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d exchanged with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind the magazine.
“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.
Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.
“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. That
night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I might feel compelled to look for one.
Friday, May 25, 2007
The Rest Of Chapter 5
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
* * *
Jules called at 1:55. He always called at five of the hour, hoping to catch me between sessions.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight for…” he hesitated. “Emily?” Had he started to say “your sister” or “your twin?” This was a new idea for him as well. An unanticipated someone inserted into our lives.
I thought about the chicken in the refrigerator and wondered if Emily would like my curry. Or would it be better to order out and not be preoccupied with cooking? I’m prone to obsession and I wondered if the other Emily was as well.
“Jules,” I said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I asked her to have DNA testing?”
He hesitated.
“It’s only dinner,” he said, implying that yes, it would be offensive. “What are you thinking?”
There was a lot I could be thinking about the stranger with my shared gene pool. A lot he could be thinking.
“My mother suggested that maybe it’s just coincidence that we look alike,” I answered.
“It would be an awful lot of coincidence. Your mother wasn’t there. Trust me, you don’t need DNA testing.”
There was so much to consider. I hadn’t asked Emily her birth date. I’d never wanted to focus on it, but in my own psychotherapy I’d been forced to confront how uncomfortable I was with all the uncertainties of my early life, of my unknown genetics, of this sense that my life had begun when I was seven months old and swallowed into the Weitz family. Everything before my adoption by the parents who then served as the observing historians to my childhood was this odd sort of blankness, as though I’d been sucked free from a Black Hole. There were no photographs from that time, no baby books documenting my first roll-over or spoonful of rice cereal. Every genetic disease I learned about in medical school left me with an aching vulnerability: could I be a carrier of the Huntington’s gene? Was I prone to diabetes? Was I at risk for schizophrenia? I presumed there must be some mental illness in my genetic family. What sane person would abandon her baby?
Suddenly, I had a partner in this unknown Black Hole. Jules was positive we were identical twins. Certainly, sisters can look very much alike and even I couldn’t dispute that this other Emily had to be a blood relative of mine. Did it matter if we were monozygotic twins cast from the same ovum, dizygotic twins sharing a womb but not identical genetic material, or simply sisters?
Yes.
Should I have felt embarrassed, or apologetic, that I wanted to know and that somehow it mattered to me? Would Emily mind? Would she also want to know or was this like asking a potential lover to have an AIDS test, thereby conveying something short of total trust? And was I even ready to admit that there was something other than a sister, a twin, that I might want from this stranger?
* * *
Jules called at 1:55. He always called at five of the hour, hoping to catch me between sessions.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight for…” he hesitated. “Emily?” Had he started to say “your sister” or “your twin?” This was a new idea for him as well. An unanticipated someone inserted into our lives.
I thought about the chicken in the refrigerator and wondered if Emily would like my curry. Or would it be better to order out and not be preoccupied with cooking? I’m prone to obsession and I wondered if the other Emily was as well.
“Jules,” I said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I asked her to have DNA testing?”
He hesitated.
“It’s only dinner,” he said, implying that yes, it would be offensive. “What are you thinking?”
There was a lot I could be thinking about the stranger with my shared gene pool. A lot he could be thinking.
“My mother suggested that maybe it’s just coincidence that we look alike,” I answered.
“It would be an awful lot of coincidence. Your mother wasn’t there. Trust me, you don’t need DNA testing.”
There was so much to consider. I hadn’t asked Emily her birth date. I’d never wanted to focus on it, but in my own psychotherapy I’d been forced to confront how uncomfortable I was with all the uncertainties of my early life, of my unknown genetics, of this sense that my life had begun when I was seven months old and swallowed into the Weitz family. Everything before my adoption by the parents who then served as the observing historians to my childhood was this odd sort of blankness, as though I’d been sucked free from a Black Hole. There were no photographs from that time, no baby books documenting my first roll-over or spoonful of rice cereal. Every genetic disease I learned about in medical school left me with an aching vulnerability: could I be a carrier of the Huntington’s gene? Was I prone to diabetes? Was I at risk for schizophrenia? I presumed there must be some mental illness in my genetic family. What sane person would abandon her baby?
Suddenly, I had a partner in this unknown Black Hole. Jules was positive we were identical twins. Certainly, sisters can look very much alike and even I couldn’t dispute that this other Emily had to be a blood relative of mine. Did it matter if we were monozygotic twins cast from the same ovum, dizygotic twins sharing a womb but not identical genetic material, or simply sisters?
Yes.
Should I have felt embarrassed, or apologetic, that I wanted to know and that somehow it mattered to me? Would Emily mind? Would she also want to know or was this like asking a potential lover to have an AIDS test, thereby conveying something short of total trust? And was I even ready to admit that there was something other than a sister, a twin, that I might want from this stranger?
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Read My Fiction
ClinkShrink told me to say "Read My Fiction."
I always do what ClinkShrink and Roy say to do.
Coming soon: the rest of Chapter 5--- Emily comes to dinner.
I always do what ClinkShrink and Roy say to do.
Coming soon: the rest of Chapter 5--- Emily comes to dinner.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
The beginning of Chapter 5
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Chapter 5.
John Stellar was a huge man both in measure of his height and weight, but also in terms of the presence he bore. His voice was loud, his laugh filled the room-- his tears even more so—and sometimes I felt crowded out. His perceptiveness was, at times, both uncanny and intrusive and he noticed details no one else would ever see or think to comment upon. A new pillow on the couch or painting on the wall were fair game for his speculation. If I dropped a few pounds or wore a new outfit, those were up for comment as well. He chose, without fail, the seat closest to mine and some days I wished for a little more distance.
Mr. Stellar was my first patient on the morning after Emily and I had discovered one another. I was, to say the least, distracted, tired from my sleepless night, and not quite sure how I was going to settle myself to the plane I needed to be on to do psychotherapy all day.
He used the session to talk about a problem he was having at work.
“And the son-of-a-bitch has the nerve to say I offended one of the clients. Offended, can you believe that, after I spent weeks getting this guy’s mess straightened out?” He was angry.
I was tempted to mirror that feeling back to him, but in the past he either insisted he wasn’t angry, or screamed, “Of course I’m angry, wouldn’t you be angry?” While it should have been a helpful insight, for Mr. Stellar it was not. His anger narrowed his options and effectively ruined his life, but he was too invested in justifying it to consider other ways.
“You feel he didn’t appreciate your efforts,” I said. I was soft-stepping it. My personal goal for the session was to survive it, and I instantly felt guilty: Mr. Stellar deserved more from me than mere survival, my own at that, not even his! I could simply agree that the client was a son-of-a-bitch. It was the easiest tactic for that day—it would have given him some momentary relief-- but it was counter-therapeutic in the long run to collude with this patient’s basic belief that everyone else in the world was an asshole and the point of therapy was to blow off steam about how they were all shitting on him (his language, not mine). Most days, I still held out for an ideal where he might gain a more tempered view of his role in these uncomfortable dynamics. With insight, I hoped, he would change-- a cautious destination on my part, but one worth retaining as an ideal.
“Of course he didn’t appreciate my efforts. I told you, I spent weeks working on his miserable little numbers and then all he did was piss on it.”
I waited. There was nothing that called for my reply. Without one, my patient appeared to have exhausted the subject. He glanced over at my desk, then settled his eyes on me.
“You change your hair, Dr. Glassman?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“You look different. Are you sure it’s not lighter?”
I forced a smile but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t changed my hair color, I’d simply discovered that my whole life had been misconstrued.
“Something wrong? You seem kind of quiet.” Of course John Stellar would pick up on my distraction. It made me mad.
“I’m fine. Go on with your story,” I said.
He stood up and for a moment, I felt tense. Scared even. There was something intimidating about Mr. Stellar even though he had no history of physical violence and his questions about me were always caged in caring tones. He was brash, but he was respectful, though that too was contrived and purposeful.
He walked towards the window, away from me and I felt a sense of relief. It made me aware of just how fragile I was feeling.
“This is a great view,” he said.
My office is a small room off a shared waiting area on the sixth floor. The window overlooks Central Park West. It’s high enough to afford a view of the Park, but low enough to allow for some people-watching. I wondered what he was looking at. I didn’t want to get up—it would feel too intimate to join him—but I asked.
“Oh, there’s a couple kissing, and a guy walking his golden retriever who’s peeing on a bench leg—the golden, not the guy-- and some bikers and roller bladders weaving through The Gates. Kind of icy out there for those guys. Next week they begin to dismantle them.”
He stopped for a moment to take it all in.
“Hard to believe the scale of that project, all those years it took in the planning, making the materials, erecting thousands of them-- each measured to the width of the footpath where it rests-- and you look at it and say, art? This is art? I like them, it’s just hard to see each individual one as much of anything, but the thousands of them together really are kind of spectacular.”
I thought about Emily and imagined her walking though Central Park, taking it all in.
“You know, Jeanne-Claude and Christo are married to each other,” Mr. Stellar said, referring to the artists who designed, constructed, and financed The Gates.
“I did know that,” I said.
“Did you know they were born in the same hour of the same day?”
A shiver went down my spine. The Gates had brought my identical twin to the city, it all seemed like too much coincidence.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely. He was born in Bulgaria, she was born in Morrocco, 1935. I don’t remember the exact date, but sometime in June. They’re both Geminis.” The sign of the twins.
“That’s okay,” I said, not really thinking.
“All that planning,” Mr. Stellar continued, “and all those tens of millions of dollars for materials and they’re up for just two weeks, only to be taken down. You’d think they could leave it for a while or bring it to other parks—Golden Gate, or Hyde, or somewhere so more people could see it. There’s something frustrating about having a it be so transient.”
He spoken calmly and thoughtfully. No bluster, no anger, no obscenities. I remembered he has a master’s degree—he was often invested in projecting a rough, stay-back image, one that betrayed his gentler and more vulnerable self-- and when his guard went down, his sensitivity came through. I remember that I liked him and I felt silly that moments before I’d been frightened. What was that about?
Mr. Stellar continued to consider the world outside. He wondered if it would snow again and commented on the bareness of the trees against the bright saffron Gates.
“You’re worried The Gates won’t be adequately appreciated,” I said after a bit, linking his observation to his earlier distress about his boss and the offended client.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly.
“You’re good, Doc.”
* * *
Chapter 5.
John Stellar was a huge man both in measure of his height and weight, but also in terms of the presence he bore. His voice was loud, his laugh filled the room-- his tears even more so—and sometimes I felt crowded out. His perceptiveness was, at times, both uncanny and intrusive and he noticed details no one else would ever see or think to comment upon. A new pillow on the couch or painting on the wall were fair game for his speculation. If I dropped a few pounds or wore a new outfit, those were up for comment as well. He chose, without fail, the seat closest to mine and some days I wished for a little more distance.
Mr. Stellar was my first patient on the morning after Emily and I had discovered one another. I was, to say the least, distracted, tired from my sleepless night, and not quite sure how I was going to settle myself to the plane I needed to be on to do psychotherapy all day.
He used the session to talk about a problem he was having at work.
“And the son-of-a-bitch has the nerve to say I offended one of the clients. Offended, can you believe that, after I spent weeks getting this guy’s mess straightened out?” He was angry.
I was tempted to mirror that feeling back to him, but in the past he either insisted he wasn’t angry, or screamed, “Of course I’m angry, wouldn’t you be angry?” While it should have been a helpful insight, for Mr. Stellar it was not. His anger narrowed his options and effectively ruined his life, but he was too invested in justifying it to consider other ways.
“You feel he didn’t appreciate your efforts,” I said. I was soft-stepping it. My personal goal for the session was to survive it, and I instantly felt guilty: Mr. Stellar deserved more from me than mere survival, my own at that, not even his! I could simply agree that the client was a son-of-a-bitch. It was the easiest tactic for that day—it would have given him some momentary relief-- but it was counter-therapeutic in the long run to collude with this patient’s basic belief that everyone else in the world was an asshole and the point of therapy was to blow off steam about how they were all shitting on him (his language, not mine). Most days, I still held out for an ideal where he might gain a more tempered view of his role in these uncomfortable dynamics. With insight, I hoped, he would change-- a cautious destination on my part, but one worth retaining as an ideal.
“Of course he didn’t appreciate my efforts. I told you, I spent weeks working on his miserable little numbers and then all he did was piss on it.”
I waited. There was nothing that called for my reply. Without one, my patient appeared to have exhausted the subject. He glanced over at my desk, then settled his eyes on me.
“You change your hair, Dr. Glassman?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“You look different. Are you sure it’s not lighter?”
I forced a smile but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t changed my hair color, I’d simply discovered that my whole life had been misconstrued.
“Something wrong? You seem kind of quiet.” Of course John Stellar would pick up on my distraction. It made me mad.
“I’m fine. Go on with your story,” I said.
He stood up and for a moment, I felt tense. Scared even. There was something intimidating about Mr. Stellar even though he had no history of physical violence and his questions about me were always caged in caring tones. He was brash, but he was respectful, though that too was contrived and purposeful.
He walked towards the window, away from me and I felt a sense of relief. It made me aware of just how fragile I was feeling.
“This is a great view,” he said.
My office is a small room off a shared waiting area on the sixth floor. The window overlooks Central Park West. It’s high enough to afford a view of the Park, but low enough to allow for some people-watching. I wondered what he was looking at. I didn’t want to get up—it would feel too intimate to join him—but I asked.
“Oh, there’s a couple kissing, and a guy walking his golden retriever who’s peeing on a bench leg—the golden, not the guy-- and some bikers and roller bladders weaving through The Gates. Kind of icy out there for those guys. Next week they begin to dismantle them.”
He stopped for a moment to take it all in.
“Hard to believe the scale of that project, all those years it took in the planning, making the materials, erecting thousands of them-- each measured to the width of the footpath where it rests-- and you look at it and say, art? This is art? I like them, it’s just hard to see each individual one as much of anything, but the thousands of them together really are kind of spectacular.”
I thought about Emily and imagined her walking though Central Park, taking it all in.
“You know, Jeanne-Claude and Christo are married to each other,” Mr. Stellar said, referring to the artists who designed, constructed, and financed The Gates.
“I did know that,” I said.
“Did you know they were born in the same hour of the same day?”
A shiver went down my spine. The Gates had brought my identical twin to the city, it all seemed like too much coincidence.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely. He was born in Bulgaria, she was born in Morrocco, 1935. I don’t remember the exact date, but sometime in June. They’re both Geminis.” The sign of the twins.
“That’s okay,” I said, not really thinking.
“All that planning,” Mr. Stellar continued, “and all those tens of millions of dollars for materials and they’re up for just two weeks, only to be taken down. You’d think they could leave it for a while or bring it to other parks—Golden Gate, or Hyde, or somewhere so more people could see it. There’s something frustrating about having a it be so transient.”
He spoken calmly and thoughtfully. No bluster, no anger, no obscenities. I remembered he has a master’s degree—he was often invested in projecting a rough, stay-back image, one that betrayed his gentler and more vulnerable self-- and when his guard went down, his sensitivity came through. I remember that I liked him and I felt silly that moments before I’d been frightened. What was that about?
Mr. Stellar continued to consider the world outside. He wondered if it would snow again and commented on the bareness of the trees against the bright saffron Gates.
“You’re worried The Gates won’t be adequately appreciated,” I said after a bit, linking his observation to his earlier distress about his boss and the offended client.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly.
“You’re good, Doc.”
* * *
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Double Billing: Chapter 4
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Chapter 4
I always knew I was adopted. My parents were open about such things and the story of my arrival was a part of our family history. It was, however, my story alone with no mention of an identical twin.
Robert and Diana Weitz had tried for years to conceive a child before they finally adopted me. No sooner had I arrived in their eager home, loved and welcomed and delivered to a nursery decorated with only the finest of baby finery, when my mother became pregnant, again, and again, and again: I grew up the oldest of four in a middle class Jewish household. If they loved me less, or expected anything different from me because I was not their biological child, then they hid it well.
The fact is, I could have been theirs. Sure, with four kids, I could have picked it apart -- there are ways we were alike and ways we weren’t; none of it created an equation where the other five members of my family were obviously related and I was not. So, I was less artistic than Sam and Matthew and my hair was lighter than Lisa’s. I was a better student than the others, especially at math and science, a fact that was chalked up to my role as the oldest, never to a quirk of genetics.
My mother was a broad-boned woman, with brown eyes and poker straight hair she kept cropped close. She had olive skin that tanned deeply with the first touch of sun. Her hair was silver, though when I was little, it was a shade just shy of rust. My father was a slight, pale man, who sported a full head of light curly hair and hazel eyes. Pretty much anyone of any size or shape could have been the off-spring of these two people. Strangers who didn’t know I was adopted often commented that I looked a bit like my father. I have his slim build, though I am nearly two inches taller, and my light brown hair has some wave to it. Like him, I am fair-skinned, though my eyes are uniquely my own. I have big black eyes that are spaced too widely apart, a feature I’ve been told, that makes me look like a creature of prey.
“What do you think your real parents are like?” Matthew asked at dinner one night when I was in seventh grade. He liked to ask questions, to pose the never-ending series of what ifs.
“We are Emily’s real parents,” my father said, and he reached over me to get the ketchup. “And you are Emily’s real brother.” He didn’t object to the conversation, just the issue of “real.”
“I know,” Matthew said, “but what about the parents who gave her up to us?”
“Her birth parents,” my mother said. She had finished eating and was gathering the remnants of the meal from the table. “Are you done with that, Rob?” she asked, snatching the ketchup as my father set it down.
“I suppose I am now,” he said.
“Okay, so what do you think your birth parents are like?” Matthew continued.
“Obviously,” I said, “they are stupid.”
Matthew, being a younger brother, was delighted. “You’re a dope so they must be dopes too!” He could have been singing.
“Matthew!” our parents scolded simultaneously.
“If they gave me up, they must have been pretty dumb,” I said, self-satisfied.
“What if your real mom is a princess or a movie star?” Lisa blurted out. She giggled, but I could tell she actually did wonder if this could be true. I, of course, had always assumed my birth mother was royalty and loved hearing Lisa ask the question. Why had she given me up and was she looking to find me and make me heir to her throne? Like my little sister, I wanted it all to be glamorous.
“Mommy, tell about how we got Emily!” Lisa, who was six at the time, lingered over the story of my adoption. Sometimes I thought she was jealous that I was the adopted one.
“Emily needs to work on her haphtarah portion,” my mother said. My Bat Mitzvah was only weeks away and much of my mother’s energy was focused on directing my studying.
“Please!” Lisa insisted. She noticed my father standing in front of the open freezer, and knowing his intent, yelled, “I want ice cream, too, Daddy!”
“Me, too,” said Sam, the third in line and the quietest child. “Chocolate!”
The chorus continued and all six of us ended up back at the dinner table with bowls of ice cream. Lisa managed to dip one of her long braids into the ice cream and my mother was briefly occupied getting a wet washcloth to clean off Lisa’s hair. I was spared Bat Mitzvah study for a few more minutes and I stretched the time by softening my ice cream with the back of my spoon and making it into a soupy mixture.
My mother settled with her bowl of half-strawberry, half-chocolate, and re-told the tale of me. Emily Weitz.
I was brought to a hospital emergency room in Chicago by a woman, presumably my mother, when I was three months old. I was sick, she’d told the nurse who registered me, and she checked me in under the name of Sally White, born on March 20, 1968. She gave her own name as Betsy White. The nurse brought us back to the pediatrics section of the emergency room and when the doctor came to examine me, Betsy White was gone, having left me in a pile of blankets on the floor.
I was healthy with no signs of illness or trauma and there was no trace anywhere of a Betsy White, or even an Elizabeth White, who’d given birth in Chicago to a baby girl three months earlier.
I was placed in an orphanage, then adopted four months later by my parents, the Weitz’s of Connecticut. I was re-anointed Emily, and at seven months of age, my official history—documented in baby books, on photographs, slides, and reel-to-reel home movies—began.
I crawled at the time of purchase, walked at thirteen months. I Spoke words at eleven months, sentences at eighteen months, paragraphs before two. I was a good daughter and everyone was excited about my upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I would stay a good daughter and make everyone proud when I became a doctor. It never crossed my mind to be anyone other than who they wanted me to be.
“Why did her mother leave her there?” Lisa wanted to know. The story was always fresh to her and the questions she asked were variants of the same themes, asked over and over. They weren’t so different from the questions I had asked when I was six.
“Emily’s mother loved her, but she couldn’t take care of her. She took Emily to the hospital because she knew the doctors would find her the perfect family.”
Lisa was satisfied. At thirteen, I was starting to realize that the story might have missing parts. Maybe Betsy White was a drug addict or a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t my mother at all. Maybe she had kidnapped me from my real family, from people who had really wanted me. My fantasies varied with my mood.
“Time to go study,” my mother said, clearing my bowl.
“My real mother was a chocolate queen,” I whispered into Lisa’s ear as I slipped a piece of candy from my pocket to her hand.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said and I loved that her little face brightened as she snatched the gift.
I had a story I could live with and I was told the agency that arranged my adoption had no other information. My parents couldn’t help me search for my birth parents because there were no leads, nothing to go on. I could wonder all I wanted and I could wallow in my royal fantasies, but the story stopped there.
At least I had a story, one that explained me and gave my life context. It wasn’t until I lost it that I realized just how important it was.
Chapter 4
I always knew I was adopted. My parents were open about such things and the story of my arrival was a part of our family history. It was, however, my story alone with no mention of an identical twin.
Robert and Diana Weitz had tried for years to conceive a child before they finally adopted me. No sooner had I arrived in their eager home, loved and welcomed and delivered to a nursery decorated with only the finest of baby finery, when my mother became pregnant, again, and again, and again: I grew up the oldest of four in a middle class Jewish household. If they loved me less, or expected anything different from me because I was not their biological child, then they hid it well.
The fact is, I could have been theirs. Sure, with four kids, I could have picked it apart -- there are ways we were alike and ways we weren’t; none of it created an equation where the other five members of my family were obviously related and I was not. So, I was less artistic than Sam and Matthew and my hair was lighter than Lisa’s. I was a better student than the others, especially at math and science, a fact that was chalked up to my role as the oldest, never to a quirk of genetics.
My mother was a broad-boned woman, with brown eyes and poker straight hair she kept cropped close. She had olive skin that tanned deeply with the first touch of sun. Her hair was silver, though when I was little, it was a shade just shy of rust. My father was a slight, pale man, who sported a full head of light curly hair and hazel eyes. Pretty much anyone of any size or shape could have been the off-spring of these two people. Strangers who didn’t know I was adopted often commented that I looked a bit like my father. I have his slim build, though I am nearly two inches taller, and my light brown hair has some wave to it. Like him, I am fair-skinned, though my eyes are uniquely my own. I have big black eyes that are spaced too widely apart, a feature I’ve been told, that makes me look like a creature of prey.
“What do you think your real parents are like?” Matthew asked at dinner one night when I was in seventh grade. He liked to ask questions, to pose the never-ending series of what ifs.
“We are Emily’s real parents,” my father said, and he reached over me to get the ketchup. “And you are Emily’s real brother.” He didn’t object to the conversation, just the issue of “real.”
“I know,” Matthew said, “but what about the parents who gave her up to us?”
“Her birth parents,” my mother said. She had finished eating and was gathering the remnants of the meal from the table. “Are you done with that, Rob?” she asked, snatching the ketchup as my father set it down.
“I suppose I am now,” he said.
“Okay, so what do you think your birth parents are like?” Matthew continued.
“Obviously,” I said, “they are stupid.”
Matthew, being a younger brother, was delighted. “You’re a dope so they must be dopes too!” He could have been singing.
“Matthew!” our parents scolded simultaneously.
“If they gave me up, they must have been pretty dumb,” I said, self-satisfied.
“What if your real mom is a princess or a movie star?” Lisa blurted out. She giggled, but I could tell she actually did wonder if this could be true. I, of course, had always assumed my birth mother was royalty and loved hearing Lisa ask the question. Why had she given me up and was she looking to find me and make me heir to her throne? Like my little sister, I wanted it all to be glamorous.
“Mommy, tell about how we got Emily!” Lisa, who was six at the time, lingered over the story of my adoption. Sometimes I thought she was jealous that I was the adopted one.
“Emily needs to work on her haphtarah portion,” my mother said. My Bat Mitzvah was only weeks away and much of my mother’s energy was focused on directing my studying.
“Please!” Lisa insisted. She noticed my father standing in front of the open freezer, and knowing his intent, yelled, “I want ice cream, too, Daddy!”
“Me, too,” said Sam, the third in line and the quietest child. “Chocolate!”
The chorus continued and all six of us ended up back at the dinner table with bowls of ice cream. Lisa managed to dip one of her long braids into the ice cream and my mother was briefly occupied getting a wet washcloth to clean off Lisa’s hair. I was spared Bat Mitzvah study for a few more minutes and I stretched the time by softening my ice cream with the back of my spoon and making it into a soupy mixture.
My mother settled with her bowl of half-strawberry, half-chocolate, and re-told the tale of me. Emily Weitz.
I was brought to a hospital emergency room in Chicago by a woman, presumably my mother, when I was three months old. I was sick, she’d told the nurse who registered me, and she checked me in under the name of Sally White, born on March 20, 1968. She gave her own name as Betsy White. The nurse brought us back to the pediatrics section of the emergency room and when the doctor came to examine me, Betsy White was gone, having left me in a pile of blankets on the floor.
I was healthy with no signs of illness or trauma and there was no trace anywhere of a Betsy White, or even an Elizabeth White, who’d given birth in Chicago to a baby girl three months earlier.
I was placed in an orphanage, then adopted four months later by my parents, the Weitz’s of Connecticut. I was re-anointed Emily, and at seven months of age, my official history—documented in baby books, on photographs, slides, and reel-to-reel home movies—began.
I crawled at the time of purchase, walked at thirteen months. I Spoke words at eleven months, sentences at eighteen months, paragraphs before two. I was a good daughter and everyone was excited about my upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I would stay a good daughter and make everyone proud when I became a doctor. It never crossed my mind to be anyone other than who they wanted me to be.
“Why did her mother leave her there?” Lisa wanted to know. The story was always fresh to her and the questions she asked were variants of the same themes, asked over and over. They weren’t so different from the questions I had asked when I was six.
“Emily’s mother loved her, but she couldn’t take care of her. She took Emily to the hospital because she knew the doctors would find her the perfect family.”
Lisa was satisfied. At thirteen, I was starting to realize that the story might have missing parts. Maybe Betsy White was a drug addict or a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t my mother at all. Maybe she had kidnapped me from my real family, from people who had really wanted me. My fantasies varied with my mood.
“Time to go study,” my mother said, clearing my bowl.
“My real mother was a chocolate queen,” I whispered into Lisa’s ear as I slipped a piece of candy from my pocket to her hand.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said and I loved that her little face brightened as she snatched the gift.
I had a story I could live with and I was told the agency that arranged my adoption had no other information. My parents couldn’t help me search for my birth parents because there were no leads, nothing to go on. I could wonder all I wanted and I could wallow in my royal fantasies, but the story stopped there.
At least I had a story, one that explained me and gave my life context. It wasn’t until I lost it that I realized just how important it was.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Chapter 3
If you'd like to read Double Billing starting from the beginning, Click Here.
Chapter 3
Obviously, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t find a comfortable position and the bedroom was too hot, so I kicked off the blankets, then got cold and pulled them back on. Jules seemed to dream peacefully beside me, and I wished I had the energy to get up and do something useful, but I was exhausted. I took the remote from the bed stand and turned on the TV. Worried I’d wake Jules, I muted it while I channel surfed. The room flicked in electric blue as I clicked from station to station, but nothing captured my attention enough to distracted me from my edginess. I hit the off button and, frustrated, set down the control. I tried to go back to sleep, but again, I was hot, then cold. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom.
My thoughts circled around in my head. Probably, it was too much to have even expected to sleep. I thought about the moment when I first saw Emily. In the space of that moment, I became my own scientific experiment. What becomes of identical twins raised apart? Do they have similar personalities? Do they like the same movies? Cringe at the same insects? Find the same men sexy? Do the same things make them angry, tearful, guilty, or regretful? Do they get the same illnesses, die the same deaths? In the space of that moment my whole past changed. I didn’t consider it then, of course, but my whole future changed as well.
I thought about my life where it was only hours before. The winter of 2005 was mostly a good time. Mostly. My career was going well, I was feeling like I’d achieved some degree of success. I had my own private practice on the Upper West Side and a teaching appointment at Bellevue. It was at Bellevue, in the outpatient center, where one afternoon a month I ran a clinic for indigent women with Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder, known in non-psychiatric circles as Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS, and as such, I’d gotten a reputation as an expert in the field.
In the middle of what felt like a cold, drab January, I was asked to appear on The Today Show, along with Harvard’s Hilda Druesen, and several women who suffer from severe PMS, women whose symptoms had abated with treatment. I was on television, sitting to Katie Couric’s left, caked in makeup and doused in hot stage lights.
“There are several medications that are FDA-approved,” I said, “but when those don’t work, we sometimes use medications ‘off-label,’ meaning the medicines have been tested and approved for other disorders, and that they’re safe. So we might find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents, while not specifically tested for PMS, can be helpful.”
The women chosen to appear on the show suffered from the most extreme of symptoms, of course. They’d been picked because they told their stories with force and they evoked sympathy from the audience. One girl hurled wine glasses against the door every month, exactly two days before her period started. She’d gone through six boxes in less than a year, including an entire set of Reidel stemware. Another young woman had been arrested fourteen times, only premenstrually, for getting into fist fights, plus once she’d whacked the plumber with his own plunger. Both woman were appalled by their own behavior so their remorse and bewilderment made them the perfect talk show guests. The third patient had bright orange hair that stood nearly as high as it reached long. She was plagued by episodes of profound sleepiness—narcoleptic attacks, actually—which kept her from driving or working for five days out of every month. All three women had been transformed by psychiatric treatment, though none were my patients. I wasn’t sure where they’d been recruited from, perhaps the actors’ guild.
Jules was excited, my family was thrilled, the phone at my already over-filled private practice didn’t let up. The day after the show aired, a stranger recognized me when I stopped at Duane Reed to purchase toothpaste.
“You’re the doctor who was on The Today Show!” she announced. From the noise she made, you would have thought I was George Clooney arriving for a blind date. I was flattered and ate up the attention.
The fuss was short-lived, my so-called fifteen minutes of fame. Still, it gave my ego a boost, one that I relished after seasons of unsuccessful fertility treatment that had left my body almost as bruised and battered as it had left my emotions. The baby-making issue was the only kink in our marriage, a marriage that was otherwise smooth and loving.
Finally, I clicked off the TV and got out of bed. I went into the kitchen, poured myself some Diet Coke--- I was already so agitated, I didn’t think a little caffeine would make any difference-- and I dialed my parents’ number. It was 3:45 A.M. and I had never, ever, phoned them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been aware of this odd, misplaced sense of anger when I first saw Emily, and I realized that someone, somewhere, must have known about us—identical twins separated at birth, or near birth, is something that couldn’t easily be hidden. My past, as I’d been told it, must have been a lie, and I was angry at this betrayal.
Zoey accompanied me to the kitchen and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her while the phone rang; her hair felt matted, she needed to be groomed. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough and settled herself on the floor under the table. I swallowed the final sip of soda and was still thirsty.
My mother’s voice was sleepy, but her “hello” had a sense of urgency to it. A hint of the panic one feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night and explodes what was a restful slumber, mixed with the hope that it is what it usually is at that hour: a wrong number and not news of a tragedy.
“Mom, it’s Emily. Nothing’s wrong.” Nothing’s wrong. I’m not calling to tell you that someone is dead or injured or needing to be bailed out of jail. This really could have waited until the morning. How would I explain that while it could wait, I couldn’t? I wanted to pet Zoey, but she was out of my reach, and it didn’t seem fair to ask so much of the dog. I hugged my knees instead.
“Emily.” She said nothing more, just waited.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll call you in the morning. This can wait.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m awake now.” Of course she was. My mother was always there for her children, she wouldn’t have it any other way—it remained, always, an integral part of her identity . I heard her tell my father to go back to sleep. It’s Emily, but nothing is wrong.
Certainly, they were both sitting upright, wondering why I’d called. I didn’t know if they’d turned on a light or if my father had gotten out of bed. People have rituals for such things.
I told my mother about meeting Emily in Empire T’s. This woman who looked just like me. She had not only the same name, the same face, the same body, and the same mannerisms, but the exact same voice.
“Her name is Emily?” My mother was perplexed. It seemed like a funny thing to focus on.
“A coincidence, I’m sure, or maybe we both looked like Emilys as babies.”
“We didn’t name you Emily because of how you looked. You were named after your father’s aunt Esther. We would have named you Emily even if you’d looked like a Mildred.”
Jews name their children after dead relatives. It’s the Hebrew name that matters, so often the English version just has the same first letter. Esther. Emily. It was all decided before I got there.
“So, it’s a coincidence,” I said. This seemed like a trivial part of the story.
I waited while she told my father. I got some pretzel sticks from the cabinet and set the bag down on the kitchen table. I ate one, but it was stale, and so I put a few on the table top and made patterns with them while my parents conferred. My mother’s hand was over the mouthpiece and all I heard was the muffled sound of undecipherable voices. My mother didn’t know from Mute buttons.
I spelled out ‘Emily.’ It took a lot of pretzel sticks and the letters were uneven, the ‘m’ being the shortest and the ‘e’ and ‘y’ being much taller.
“We don’t know anything about a twin,” my mother said. “Are you sure? Sometimes people just look alike.” My mother sounded anxious, edgy even, the way she sounded when she felt out of control.
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. It wasn’t the conversation I’d wanted and I let her go back to sleep. I put down the receiver and felt selfish that I hadn’t waited until morning and angry that I’d been dismissed.
“What?” Jules asked when I finally got back into bed.
“Nothing,” I said. I wondered just briefly if he’d want to make love. My thoughts were a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. There was sex and there was the baby issue. And now I was a twin.
“Where were you?” Jules asked. He was awake now.
“I called my mother.”
“Did she know about the other Emily?”
“No.” I answered. “Someone must have known, right? Do you think she was with me in the orphanage? Do you think they said to my parents, ‘Here, we have two, pick one.’”
“I don’t know what to think, Em.”
We lay there together with our thoughts. Jules reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“Do that some more,” I said and he did. “Rub the other one, too.” I turned away from him so he could reach both my shoulders. He dug his thumbs hard into the muscle, hurting me as he pressed out the tension. I wanted to tell Jules to stop, but I didn’t. He’d taught me that if I tolerated the pain, my muscles would eventually relax.
When he felt me go limp, Jules put his hands under my T-shirt and rubbed my skin softly. His palms circled over and over on my shoulders and back and then he stopped. Finally, we made love. It was quiet and wordless and my breath caught with that final orgasmic quiver. I found myself wondering if Jules would like to make love to my twin.
I never did fall asleep. The night wore on and I started to anticipate the upcoming day and all that it would bring. I thought about my patients, wondered if they’d see something different in me. I thought about Emily and worried about dinner. Would it be difficult to make conversation? Would it be harder to say good-bye?
Finally, the alarm pierced the February darkness, sounding its unwelcome series of escalating beeps to usher in my sense of dread.
Chapter 3
Obviously, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t find a comfortable position and the bedroom was too hot, so I kicked off the blankets, then got cold and pulled them back on. Jules seemed to dream peacefully beside me, and I wished I had the energy to get up and do something useful, but I was exhausted. I took the remote from the bed stand and turned on the TV. Worried I’d wake Jules, I muted it while I channel surfed. The room flicked in electric blue as I clicked from station to station, but nothing captured my attention enough to distracted me from my edginess. I hit the off button and, frustrated, set down the control. I tried to go back to sleep, but again, I was hot, then cold. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom.
My thoughts circled around in my head. Probably, it was too much to have even expected to sleep. I thought about the moment when I first saw Emily. In the space of that moment, I became my own scientific experiment. What becomes of identical twins raised apart? Do they have similar personalities? Do they like the same movies? Cringe at the same insects? Find the same men sexy? Do the same things make them angry, tearful, guilty, or regretful? Do they get the same illnesses, die the same deaths? In the space of that moment my whole past changed. I didn’t consider it then, of course, but my whole future changed as well.
I thought about my life where it was only hours before. The winter of 2005 was mostly a good time. Mostly. My career was going well, I was feeling like I’d achieved some degree of success. I had my own private practice on the Upper West Side and a teaching appointment at Bellevue. It was at Bellevue, in the outpatient center, where one afternoon a month I ran a clinic for indigent women with Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder, known in non-psychiatric circles as Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS, and as such, I’d gotten a reputation as an expert in the field.
In the middle of what felt like a cold, drab January, I was asked to appear on The Today Show, along with Harvard’s Hilda Druesen, and several women who suffer from severe PMS, women whose symptoms had abated with treatment. I was on television, sitting to Katie Couric’s left, caked in makeup and doused in hot stage lights.
“There are several medications that are FDA-approved,” I said, “but when those don’t work, we sometimes use medications ‘off-label,’ meaning the medicines have been tested and approved for other disorders, and that they’re safe. So we might find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents, while not specifically tested for PMS, can be helpful.”
The women chosen to appear on the show suffered from the most extreme of symptoms, of course. They’d been picked because they told their stories with force and they evoked sympathy from the audience. One girl hurled wine glasses against the door every month, exactly two days before her period started. She’d gone through six boxes in less than a year, including an entire set of Reidel stemware. Another young woman had been arrested fourteen times, only premenstrually, for getting into fist fights, plus once she’d whacked the plumber with his own plunger. Both woman were appalled by their own behavior so their remorse and bewilderment made them the perfect talk show guests. The third patient had bright orange hair that stood nearly as high as it reached long. She was plagued by episodes of profound sleepiness—narcoleptic attacks, actually—which kept her from driving or working for five days out of every month. All three women had been transformed by psychiatric treatment, though none were my patients. I wasn’t sure where they’d been recruited from, perhaps the actors’ guild.
Jules was excited, my family was thrilled, the phone at my already over-filled private practice didn’t let up. The day after the show aired, a stranger recognized me when I stopped at Duane Reed to purchase toothpaste.
“You’re the doctor who was on The Today Show!” she announced. From the noise she made, you would have thought I was George Clooney arriving for a blind date. I was flattered and ate up the attention.
The fuss was short-lived, my so-called fifteen minutes of fame. Still, it gave my ego a boost, one that I relished after seasons of unsuccessful fertility treatment that had left my body almost as bruised and battered as it had left my emotions. The baby-making issue was the only kink in our marriage, a marriage that was otherwise smooth and loving.
Finally, I clicked off the TV and got out of bed. I went into the kitchen, poured myself some Diet Coke--- I was already so agitated, I didn’t think a little caffeine would make any difference-- and I dialed my parents’ number. It was 3:45 A.M. and I had never, ever, phoned them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been aware of this odd, misplaced sense of anger when I first saw Emily, and I realized that someone, somewhere, must have known about us—identical twins separated at birth, or near birth, is something that couldn’t easily be hidden. My past, as I’d been told it, must have been a lie, and I was angry at this betrayal.
Zoey accompanied me to the kitchen and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her while the phone rang; her hair felt matted, she needed to be groomed. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough and settled herself on the floor under the table. I swallowed the final sip of soda and was still thirsty.
My mother’s voice was sleepy, but her “hello” had a sense of urgency to it. A hint of the panic one feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night and explodes what was a restful slumber, mixed with the hope that it is what it usually is at that hour: a wrong number and not news of a tragedy.
“Mom, it’s Emily. Nothing’s wrong.” Nothing’s wrong. I’m not calling to tell you that someone is dead or injured or needing to be bailed out of jail. This really could have waited until the morning. How would I explain that while it could wait, I couldn’t? I wanted to pet Zoey, but she was out of my reach, and it didn’t seem fair to ask so much of the dog. I hugged my knees instead.
“Emily.” She said nothing more, just waited.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll call you in the morning. This can wait.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m awake now.” Of course she was. My mother was always there for her children, she wouldn’t have it any other way—it remained, always, an integral part of her identity . I heard her tell my father to go back to sleep. It’s Emily, but nothing is wrong.
Certainly, they were both sitting upright, wondering why I’d called. I didn’t know if they’d turned on a light or if my father had gotten out of bed. People have rituals for such things.
I told my mother about meeting Emily in Empire T’s. This woman who looked just like me. She had not only the same name, the same face, the same body, and the same mannerisms, but the exact same voice.
“Her name is Emily?” My mother was perplexed. It seemed like a funny thing to focus on.
“A coincidence, I’m sure, or maybe we both looked like Emilys as babies.”
“We didn’t name you Emily because of how you looked. You were named after your father’s aunt Esther. We would have named you Emily even if you’d looked like a Mildred.”
Jews name their children after dead relatives. It’s the Hebrew name that matters, so often the English version just has the same first letter. Esther. Emily. It was all decided before I got there.
“So, it’s a coincidence,” I said. This seemed like a trivial part of the story.
I waited while she told my father. I got some pretzel sticks from the cabinet and set the bag down on the kitchen table. I ate one, but it was stale, and so I put a few on the table top and made patterns with them while my parents conferred. My mother’s hand was over the mouthpiece and all I heard was the muffled sound of undecipherable voices. My mother didn’t know from Mute buttons.
I spelled out ‘Emily.’ It took a lot of pretzel sticks and the letters were uneven, the ‘m’ being the shortest and the ‘e’ and ‘y’ being much taller.
“We don’t know anything about a twin,” my mother said. “Are you sure? Sometimes people just look alike.” My mother sounded anxious, edgy even, the way she sounded when she felt out of control.
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. It wasn’t the conversation I’d wanted and I let her go back to sleep. I put down the receiver and felt selfish that I hadn’t waited until morning and angry that I’d been dismissed.
“What?” Jules asked when I finally got back into bed.
“Nothing,” I said. I wondered just briefly if he’d want to make love. My thoughts were a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. There was sex and there was the baby issue. And now I was a twin.
“Where were you?” Jules asked. He was awake now.
“I called my mother.”
“Did she know about the other Emily?”
“No.” I answered. “Someone must have known, right? Do you think she was with me in the orphanage? Do you think they said to my parents, ‘Here, we have two, pick one.’”
“I don’t know what to think, Em.”
We lay there together with our thoughts. Jules reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“Do that some more,” I said and he did. “Rub the other one, too.” I turned away from him so he could reach both my shoulders. He dug his thumbs hard into the muscle, hurting me as he pressed out the tension. I wanted to tell Jules to stop, but I didn’t. He’d taught me that if I tolerated the pain, my muscles would eventually relax.
When he felt me go limp, Jules put his hands under my T-shirt and rubbed my skin softly. His palms circled over and over on my shoulders and back and then he stopped. Finally, we made love. It was quiet and wordless and my breath caught with that final orgasmic quiver. I found myself wondering if Jules would like to make love to my twin.
I never did fall asleep. The night wore on and I started to anticipate the upcoming day and all that it would bring. I thought about my patients, wondered if they’d see something different in me. I thought about Emily and worried about dinner. Would it be difficult to make conversation? Would it be harder to say good-bye?
Finally, the alarm pierced the February darkness, sounding its unwelcome series of escalating beeps to usher in my sense of dread.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Another Poll
You've read two chapters.
1) -- Would you buy it?
2)-- Do you want more?
3) --ClinkShrink doesn't like how the Emily Mason's backstory is handled-- the italicized flashback to her interactions with her father after her mother leaves.
What do you think?
If you don't like it, what would work better?
1) -- Would you buy it?
2)-- Do you want more?
3) --ClinkShrink doesn't like how the Emily Mason's backstory is handled-- the italicized flashback to her interactions with her father after her mother leaves.
What do you think?
If you don't like it, what would work better?
Friday, May 18, 2007
Chapters 1 to Chapter 7
Version two of Chapter One has won the vote and is shown here. This was not on Shrink Rap so feel free to comment, or scroll down to the previous post to Vote. Material will be added in new colors to help you find the place where you last left off. I welcome your comments, no poll on this post.
Chapter One
My sister was a person with no history or anchors. Her mother left when she was three, and those memories of her are elusive, at best. Her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence and it was just the two of them, an only child of an only child, until he died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily came to New York City, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of thousands of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and she felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled. Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark, and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but she knew no one in Manhattan, and Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half.There was no hostess and she searched for a clean table; the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table set for four. The restaurant was mostly empty so she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs. Still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.
The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, the man's expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so on that cold February evening, my identical twin sister met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
Chapter 2
Everything went wrong the day I discovered my twin. Like a series of mistakes all calculated to make the equation work anyway, it put me serendipitously in a given place at a given time. Like any day that capsizes your life, I’ve played the mundane events over and over in my head, a line from a song that just won’t stop.
On the morning of that cold February day in 2005, I’d taken chicken out of the freezer. I was planning to make a curry, something rich, heavy, and bright yellow, to off-set the winter’s gray. I checked our refrigerator and the nearly-empty pantry for ingredients. We needed cream—the half-pint in there was rancid-- and I liked to throw in some pineapple and peanuts, so I reminded myself to pick those up on the way home. I even called my cell phone and left myself a voicemail.
It turned out to be one of those days, though, where nothing went quite as scheduled. I spent my lunch hour phoning in prescriptions and haggling with insurance companies, and then I got a call from a patient who was in crisis.
“Dr. Glassman,” Nancy said , whispering. “I’m hearing voices again.”
“What are they saying?” I asked. Nancy had been doing well and I dreaded the thought that she was psychotic again. I wondered if she had stopped taking her medications.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is that because they’re telling you not to talk to me?” I ventured a guess.
“Yes.”
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure Nancy. “I think it will be okay if you tell me what they’re saying.”
“I can’t,” she insisted, “Not on the phone.”
Perhaps I should have told Nancy go to the Emergency Room, but I knew from past episodes, she’d hang up and never go. Instead I instructed her to come right in, which left me to reschedule two patients to later in the day.
Nancy arrived fifteen minutes late, both paranoid and suicidal, and it took me a while to calm her and then to negotiate her hospital admission. By the time I finished seeing patients, hours later than I’d originally scheduled, the last thing I felt like doing was shopping and cooking dinner.
I called Jules.
“Rough day,” I said, “I’m wiped.” He couldn’t hear me, we had a bad connection and I had to repeat myself. I finally ended up yelling loudly enough that people at the bus stop glared at me.
“Anything I can do?” He asked.
“Put the chicken back in the refrigerator. I’ll make curry tomorrow.”
We agreed to meet at Empire T’s, the diner down the street from our apartment. It was no place fancy, but it’s fast, the food’s fine, and the service was quick so it was our standby for week nights when things didn’t go exactly as scheduled. An older Greek cashier—he may have been the owner-- knew my name from my credit card, and would often greet me with a nod, then quietly say, “Evening, Dr. Glassman.” I didn’t know his name, but I always smiled and returned his greeting.
I ran up to the apartment to see Zoey, our standard poodle, and hoped I’d also catch Jules. If he’d been there, perhaps we’d have decided to stay home, order a pizza or just make do with cereal. If he’d been there, perhaps my whole life would have continued along its usual trajectory.
Jules had come and gone already, but the dog was excited to see me and wagged her tail so hard I thought it would send her airborne. I nuzzled my face in her black curls, hugged her tightly and told her I needed a quick doggy fix.
“You’re a good puppy,” I said and gave her a few too many treats before I hurried off to meet Jules at Empire T’s.
At a table by the door, I saw my husband’s belongings. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of a chair and two beers, still cold and foaming, had already been served and were waiting for us. The men’s room, I assumed and headed to the seat across from his. I started to sit, then I spotted Jules talking to a woman a few tables away. She was sitting and he was standing, they both had their backs to me. Should I interrupt, I wondered? I waited just a moment; their conversation looked animated, maybe even heated, and not at all like one he be having if he’d bumped into a client.
“Emily,” he said, looking up at me as I approached.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. He looked drained and confused and I was about to ask if something was wrong when he cut me off.
“Emily, this is Emily Mason,” he said, pointing to the woman who turned her head to greet me.
The world and everything in it froze. I could have been looking in a mirror. Emily Mason looked up at me and I saw myself, my wavy light brown hair parted just to the left of center, though inches shorter, the right side tucked back behind the ear, my black eyes piercing straight through me. The expression of surprise – shock, really—that Emily Mason wore, was my own. Only the clothing and jewelry were different, the long pink scarf, the grey wool cardigan, the jeans and hiking shoes—these were not mine. Long dangling earrings flowed from her lobes; pearl studs sat in mine. I saw myself and I knew, instantly, without hesitation or question, that this was my identical twin. Perhaps I’d known all along that she existed because there was no question about coincidence, no thought that we might be unrelated strangers who looked alike or even simply blood relations. The image I took in was fully my own, there was no room for any other explanation. I knew too, in an instant that blurred my emotions into this mix of excitement, fear, and perhaps even anger, that my whole life had changed and would never be the same again.
It felt like I was standing on the scaffolding outside the building of my life, quietly looking in, when suddenly and unexpectedly everything dropped, leaving me in mid-air, a cartoon character doomed to splatter on the ground below. It didn’t feel good and the air was vacuumed from my lungs as my heart finally began to slow.
“Emily,” she said, softly, and I felt tears spilling from my eyes. She stood up and there we were, side by side.
“Holy shit,” Jules said, also quite softly. Holy shit is right, I thought. Without asking, he took my coat off me and rested it on the chair, over my twin’s coat. She was thinner than I, the exact same height, she had the same nervous cough, the same tears now pouring forth. Jules guided me around the table to the chair across from Emily’s.
I never asked, I just sat down and joined her. Emily put her head on the table and buried it in her arms. I would have wanted to do the same. The truth is, this was a moment I’d never rehearsed for. One might imagine what they’d do if they ran into their unknown identical twin, but it was an event I was simply not prepared for. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to ask, I just cried. Emily, too, was overwhelmed.
Jules got our drinks, his coat and keys and gloves, and we both settled in across from her, uninvited guests at Emily’s table.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter interrupted our silence, directing his question at Jules. The young waiter’s eyes bounced from one of us to the other and back again. He smiled a little, as if let in on the secret. Twins--even as adults, they make people smile.
Jules took charge and placed an order. To the waiter’s delight, Jules said, “My wife will have what…” and he tripped over the words here, as we all would countless times that night, finally settling on, “…her sister is having,” and the same bowls of soup appeared before us soon after. The smell and the steam that rose from it were good. I could not eat a bite.
“Do you live in the neighborhood?” Jules asked.
“No, no. I live in Philadelphia,” Emily said. She was as anxious as I was, as much at a loss for what to do next. “I’m staying with a friend and her family in Brooklyn. We went to college together, she had to work today.” Emily stuck her tongue in her cheek, a funny little gesture I’d never seen anyone make before. “I took the subway in. I came…” she stopped mid-sentence for just a second, a brief pause before she finished her thought, “…to see The Gates.”
“Emily does…” Jules caught himself in his confusion and started over. “My wife does that,” he said and I looked at him.
“What?” Emily and I asked the question in unison.
He didn’t know who to turn to while he answered. “She puffs her cheek out like that,” he said.
“I do?” I was surprised.
“You do.”
I suppose there was a lot we could have talked about that night in Empire T’s. We could have compared notes on our likes and dislikes, our thoughts and fears, our bodies, our habits, our gestures, our lives. I didn’t ask Emily then about her life and she didn’t ask me about mine. We both seemed to know there would be time.
Instead, she told us first about her afternoon, her fascination with The Gates, and then about her childhood. My twin was a talented story-teller. Jules and I sat there completely transfixed as she transported us back.
“Where’s mommy?” the little, blond-haired, black-eyed Emily asked her father.
“She went away,” her father said.
“When is she coming back?”
“Don’t know,” he answered.
“I want my hair in braids. Mommy does my hair in braids.”
Mike Mason considered the request. He was a barber, fairly new to the profession, and he cut only men’s hair. He’d looked at Emily’s hair, had the three-year-old turn in a circle, and finally he’d said, “I can do pigtails or a pony tail, or you can wear it loose. Daddies don’t make braids.”
Emily chose pigtails that day. He took her to work with him and sat her in a corner with a coloring book. She’d listened while his stream of clients came in, chatting away about their jobs, their golf games, their families. One man offered Mike suggestions on the stock market. This went on for days, until finally he’d found a neighbor to baby-sit while he worked.
“When is mommy coming back?” Emily had asked.
“Don’t know,” he’d answered.
“I want Mommy to come back,” Emily said. “I don’t like pigtails and pony tails. I want braids.” She started to sob.
“Stop crying,” her father ordered. “There’s nothing I can do.” His tone was uncharacteristically harsh.
When she didn’t stop, he left the room, and finally the apartment. He came back, hours later, to the little girl he’d left alone. Emily, at first scared, then hungry, then finally tired, had fallen asleep on the sofa. Their cat, Pepper, sat next to her clawing at the material on the already shabby piece of furniture. The room was cool, no one had turned on the heat. Her father gently lifted her up, then carried her into the kitchen where he sat her on the counter, draped a huge nylon cutting cape around her, and cut her hair with his barber shears. She sat very still, barely awake, shivering, afraid to move or to cry, and he trimmed the length to the middle of her ears, leaving Emily with a pixie cut.
“There,” he said quietly, and lifted her in his arms so she could see herself in the bathroom mirror, “now you don’t have to worry about braids.”
“Amazing,” Jules said. “If Emily…” he stopped himself, once again confused by the duality of our names, “If you,” he said directly to me, “weren’t sitting here, or if my eyes were closed, I’d swear it was you talking.” He turned to my twin. “Your voices are the same, but it’s more than that, the inflection, the rhythm, where you take breaths, it’s just too weird.”
“Let her go on,” I said. I saw myself in Emily’s gestures—it was weird-- but mostly I wanted to hear the story. I wanted to go back in time to a place when everything made sense. I must have guessed that would be a long journey.
Emily told us she’d stopped asking about her mother, but she never stopped waiting for her return. She and her father moved from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C. before Emily started school. She quietly worried that her mother, who’d left them in Virginia, wouldn’t know where to find them. And she had no answers to the questions posed at school: Where is your mother? What does she do? Why isn’t she with you?
Emily didn’t have answers, and her father remained kind, but distant. He never said, “Don’t ask questions.” He never had to. He was, she later concluded, heartbroken if not devastated.
There was more to the story that Emily didn’t offer up and I had no way of knowing what she might be withholding.
“He didn’t date other women?” I asked.
“No,” she said and she took a sip of her water. The ice had long ago melted. “Dad went to work and he took care of me. He died when I was nineteen.”
“It sounds like a stoic life,” I said. I didn’t want to analyze her dead father, but he sounded depressed at best, or perhaps personality disordered. Schizoid or avoidant. I kept the diagnoses to myself; there were times when it really wasn’t helpful to be a psychiatrist. And, of course, it hit me, her dead father might well be my father, and with that unnerving insight, I really didn’t want to diagnose him.
“Yes.” she said thoughtfully, “Stoic is a good word to describe Dad. He kept it all bottled in, then one day he had a heart attack and died.”
The waiter appeared and refilled Emily’s water glass. She took a long sip and waited for him to leave.
“Would you like some dessert or coffee?” he asked.
“Just the bill,” Jules answered. Everyone was tired and he knew I wouldn’t want anything else, he assumed Emily didn’t as well.
“Wait,” Jules said to the young man, then turned to my twin, “I didn’t mean to make assumptions. Did you want coffee or dessert?”
“No. I’m fine, ”she said, and with that the waiter left.
“I went through his belongings after he died,” she continued. “I found the divorce decree, his bank statements, old tax returns, social security card, not much else. The only sentimental things he hung on to were related to me—photos, a tap dance program from a recital when I was eight, my high school awards, two letters I wrote to him my freshman year at college. It was strange to see those letters; he died less than a year later, yet I didn’t remember writing or sending them. They were the only letters I’d ever written to Dad, and they were so bland, formulaic. ‘Dear Dad, How are you? I am fine, I like my classes and I’ve met some good friends. Hope you’re well.’ There was nothing more interesting to share with my father. When I went through his things doing his last call on housekeeping, I was looking for something. Something to hold on to, or perhaps something to explain this strange, disenfranchised life we’d had. I wished he’d kept a journal or held on to some old love letters, left me something that would have given me some posthumous insight into who he was besides my father and a good barber.”
I thought for a moment.
“What was your mother’s name,” I asked.
“Sandra Klee Mason. It’s funny, but I’d always just thought of her as Mommy, right as she was when she left.” Emily abruptly stopped talking.
“No one ever talked about your mother?” I asked. How could that be? Weren’t there other family members? People who had known them as a couple?
“We moved when I was five,” Emily said, “to a place where no one knew us. My father was an only child and his parents were both dead. He was a loner, except at work where he chatted away with the customers, but mostly he listened to stories about their lives. When he talked, it was about sports. He certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to anyone that his wife had walked out on him.”
“There weren’t any adoption papers? I was adopted as a baby.”
“No.” Emily considered this, but she was certain she was raised by her biological father.
Something about Emily’s delivery left me wanting and I wondered if she knew more than she let on. Her presentation didn’t invite questions. There was a guardedness that I pushed against. It was too new, too unreal, for the questions to fully form, for the story to make sense and Emily asked me nothing about my adoption. She didn’t so much as flinch.
“There was no marriage certificate, so I’m guessing she took that. Or Dad shredded it. It wouldn’t be unlike him to simply destroy any thing he didn’t want to be. Like giving life a haircut so short it can’t be braided.”
The check came, delivered not by the waiter, but by the older Greek cashier. The diner was empty now. It was late and a weekday and Empire T’s was one of the few diners around that wasn’t open twenty-four hours. The cashier looked at us both, and unsure who was who and for how long—it could have been a couple of years—there’d been two of us when he’d thought there was only one, he handed the bill to Jules.
“Two Dr. Glassmans,” he said. He nodded and walked away.
I wasn’t sure what to say, what to do.
“Are you going back to Brooklyn tonight?” I asked. Should I invite her to stay with us? We had an extra room, a rarity in the city but we’d taken the apartment with plans to start a family. Emily was, in fact, a stranger, and she was here visiting a friend.
“I am,” she said. “I should be going.”
“Then you’ll come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow,” Jules said. It was a statement, a bit insistent, more a command than an invitation.
“Yes,” I said, “we’d love to have you.” It would give me a chance to think, to figure out what else I wanted to know. What else I wanted to share.
“And I’d love to come,” Emily said.
Jules wrote out our address on a napkin. He and I stood up to gather our belongings, and suddenly, without warning, I started to sob-- I suppose I was relieved that I would see my twin again or perhaps I was just overwhelmed at the shock of it all. Then she, too, folded into the chair and started to weep. And so I found myself holding this stranger close to me, as if we were any pair of twin sisters in need of comfort during that particular February evening.
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but again, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction; there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said,
“Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled, proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of What other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him. Finally, Jules asked, “It would be nice to invite everyone in?”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our living room. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. She was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we’d had a child, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. I brought out drinks and appetizers. I hadn’t planned on a little one and had to search the pantry for some juice and cookies. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules stared at her daughter. I could feel his longing across the room.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot, she knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, and with that they found one another.
We made small talk, but it was stiffer than I would have liked and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated heating systems and they churn out the heat. The radiator pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in; at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with it’s mismatched chairs, metal table, and sink full of dishes. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I’d assumed she had shared my life, my history, and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at focusing on the details.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter. “Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school. We were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet; we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. He’s a good guy with all his cards on the table, but we have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing radical vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest of things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“Life became difficult over the silliest of things and after we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource their all clamoring for and there’s not enough to go around.
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person; we might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though I think she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her own biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems, so it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating Chinese take-out, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name, though I didn’t know how to Instant Message.
“You’ll learn,” she insisted.
I was disappointed they were leaving and I hugged them both a little too long.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I freed the cloistered Zoey and took her for a walk. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, not to mention nieces and nephews. Would I ever see her again? Was Emily someone who would shake up my life? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d exchanged with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind the magazine.
“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.
Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.
“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. That night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I might feel compelled to look for one.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived in Nyborg, on the water and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing things off him, the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards; it has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978, with Steen as the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of zygosity—fraternal versus identical twinship-- is crucial in how they differ from other collections of data. Monozygotic (MZ) twins come from a single egg, fertilized by a single sperm, and are genetically the same. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal, or dizygotic (DZ) twins, on the other hand, grow from two eggs and two sperm, and are no more genetically alike than regular siblings; statically they share half their gene pool. It is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. If the other twin does not get the illness, the twin pair is said to be discordant for the illness. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into MZ and DZ pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. They were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became diabetic), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen was fond of saying, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket.
Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him; it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and, on days he left Odense, recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step travel directions with maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places, and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.” Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.” The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask. I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.
“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I; the white hair was deceptively aging.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets, and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.” But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction. “Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered. There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard. The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I settled on the sofa and Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English. He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage, my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness, my sudden dissatisfaction with life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father, Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas, but in the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. His hand was under my blouse, then squeezing my breast. In the next breath, or so it seemed, he was inside of me. It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been, if he felt something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or if this wasn’t just about the conquest. It wasn’t until later, back at my hotel, that I could feel repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit. I packed my bags and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
Chapter One
My sister was a person with no history or anchors. Her mother left when she was three, and those memories of her are elusive, at best. Her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence and it was just the two of them, an only child of an only child, until he died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily came to New York City, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of thousands of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and she felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled. Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark, and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but she knew no one in Manhattan, and Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half.There was no hostess and she searched for a clean table; the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table set for four. The restaurant was mostly empty so she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs. Still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.
The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, the man's expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so on that cold February evening, my identical twin sister met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
Chapter 2
Everything went wrong the day I discovered my twin. Like a series of mistakes all calculated to make the equation work anyway, it put me serendipitously in a given place at a given time. Like any day that capsizes your life, I’ve played the mundane events over and over in my head, a line from a song that just won’t stop.
On the morning of that cold February day in 2005, I’d taken chicken out of the freezer. I was planning to make a curry, something rich, heavy, and bright yellow, to off-set the winter’s gray. I checked our refrigerator and the nearly-empty pantry for ingredients. We needed cream—the half-pint in there was rancid-- and I liked to throw in some pineapple and peanuts, so I reminded myself to pick those up on the way home. I even called my cell phone and left myself a voicemail.
It turned out to be one of those days, though, where nothing went quite as scheduled. I spent my lunch hour phoning in prescriptions and haggling with insurance companies, and then I got a call from a patient who was in crisis.
“Dr. Glassman,” Nancy said , whispering. “I’m hearing voices again.”
“What are they saying?” I asked. Nancy had been doing well and I dreaded the thought that she was psychotic again. I wondered if she had stopped taking her medications.
“I can’t tell you.”
“Is that because they’re telling you not to talk to me?” I ventured a guess.
“Yes.”
“It’s okay,” I tried to reassure Nancy. “I think it will be okay if you tell me what they’re saying.”
“I can’t,” she insisted, “Not on the phone.”
Perhaps I should have told Nancy go to the Emergency Room, but I knew from past episodes, she’d hang up and never go. Instead I instructed her to come right in, which left me to reschedule two patients to later in the day.
Nancy arrived fifteen minutes late, both paranoid and suicidal, and it took me a while to calm her and then to negotiate her hospital admission. By the time I finished seeing patients, hours later than I’d originally scheduled, the last thing I felt like doing was shopping and cooking dinner.
I called Jules.
“Rough day,” I said, “I’m wiped.” He couldn’t hear me, we had a bad connection and I had to repeat myself. I finally ended up yelling loudly enough that people at the bus stop glared at me.
“Anything I can do?” He asked.
“Put the chicken back in the refrigerator. I’ll make curry tomorrow.”
We agreed to meet at Empire T’s, the diner down the street from our apartment. It was no place fancy, but it’s fast, the food’s fine, and the service was quick so it was our standby for week nights when things didn’t go exactly as scheduled. An older Greek cashier—he may have been the owner-- knew my name from my credit card, and would often greet me with a nod, then quietly say, “Evening, Dr. Glassman.” I didn’t know his name, but I always smiled and returned his greeting.
I ran up to the apartment to see Zoey, our standard poodle, and hoped I’d also catch Jules. If he’d been there, perhaps we’d have decided to stay home, order a pizza or just make do with cereal. If he’d been there, perhaps my whole life would have continued along its usual trajectory.
Jules had come and gone already, but the dog was excited to see me and wagged her tail so hard I thought it would send her airborne. I nuzzled my face in her black curls, hugged her tightly and told her I needed a quick doggy fix.
“You’re a good puppy,” I said and gave her a few too many treats before I hurried off to meet Jules at Empire T’s.
At a table by the door, I saw my husband’s belongings. His leather jacket was thrown over the back of a chair and two beers, still cold and foaming, had already been served and were waiting for us. The men’s room, I assumed and headed to the seat across from his. I started to sit, then I spotted Jules talking to a woman a few tables away. She was sitting and he was standing, they both had their backs to me. Should I interrupt, I wondered? I waited just a moment; their conversation looked animated, maybe even heated, and not at all like one he be having if he’d bumped into a client.
“Emily,” he said, looking up at me as I approached.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. He looked drained and confused and I was about to ask if something was wrong when he cut me off.
“Emily, this is Emily Mason,” he said, pointing to the woman who turned her head to greet me.
The world and everything in it froze. I could have been looking in a mirror. Emily Mason looked up at me and I saw myself, my wavy light brown hair parted just to the left of center, though inches shorter, the right side tucked back behind the ear, my black eyes piercing straight through me. The expression of surprise – shock, really—that Emily Mason wore, was my own. Only the clothing and jewelry were different, the long pink scarf, the grey wool cardigan, the jeans and hiking shoes—these were not mine. Long dangling earrings flowed from her lobes; pearl studs sat in mine. I saw myself and I knew, instantly, without hesitation or question, that this was my identical twin. Perhaps I’d known all along that she existed because there was no question about coincidence, no thought that we might be unrelated strangers who looked alike or even simply blood relations. The image I took in was fully my own, there was no room for any other explanation. I knew too, in an instant that blurred my emotions into this mix of excitement, fear, and perhaps even anger, that my whole life had changed and would never be the same again.
It felt like I was standing on the scaffolding outside the building of my life, quietly looking in, when suddenly and unexpectedly everything dropped, leaving me in mid-air, a cartoon character doomed to splatter on the ground below. It didn’t feel good and the air was vacuumed from my lungs as my heart finally began to slow.
“Emily,” she said, softly, and I felt tears spilling from my eyes. She stood up and there we were, side by side.
“Holy shit,” Jules said, also quite softly. Holy shit is right, I thought. Without asking, he took my coat off me and rested it on the chair, over my twin’s coat. She was thinner than I, the exact same height, she had the same nervous cough, the same tears now pouring forth. Jules guided me around the table to the chair across from Emily’s.
I never asked, I just sat down and joined her. Emily put her head on the table and buried it in her arms. I would have wanted to do the same. The truth is, this was a moment I’d never rehearsed for. One might imagine what they’d do if they ran into their unknown identical twin, but it was an event I was simply not prepared for. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to ask, I just cried. Emily, too, was overwhelmed.
Jules got our drinks, his coat and keys and gloves, and we both settled in across from her, uninvited guests at Emily’s table.
“Are you ready to order?” The waiter interrupted our silence, directing his question at Jules. The young waiter’s eyes bounced from one of us to the other and back again. He smiled a little, as if let in on the secret. Twins--even as adults, they make people smile.
Jules took charge and placed an order. To the waiter’s delight, Jules said, “My wife will have what…” and he tripped over the words here, as we all would countless times that night, finally settling on, “…her sister is having,” and the same bowls of soup appeared before us soon after. The smell and the steam that rose from it were good. I could not eat a bite.
“Do you live in the neighborhood?” Jules asked.
“No, no. I live in Philadelphia,” Emily said. She was as anxious as I was, as much at a loss for what to do next. “I’m staying with a friend and her family in Brooklyn. We went to college together, she had to work today.” Emily stuck her tongue in her cheek, a funny little gesture I’d never seen anyone make before. “I took the subway in. I came…” she stopped mid-sentence for just a second, a brief pause before she finished her thought, “…to see The Gates.”
“Emily does…” Jules caught himself in his confusion and started over. “My wife does that,” he said and I looked at him.
“What?” Emily and I asked the question in unison.
He didn’t know who to turn to while he answered. “She puffs her cheek out like that,” he said.
“I do?” I was surprised.
“You do.”
I suppose there was a lot we could have talked about that night in Empire T’s. We could have compared notes on our likes and dislikes, our thoughts and fears, our bodies, our habits, our gestures, our lives. I didn’t ask Emily then about her life and she didn’t ask me about mine. We both seemed to know there would be time.
Instead, she told us first about her afternoon, her fascination with The Gates, and then about her childhood. My twin was a talented story-teller. Jules and I sat there completely transfixed as she transported us back.
“Where’s mommy?” the little, blond-haired, black-eyed Emily asked her father.
“She went away,” her father said.
“When is she coming back?”
“Don’t know,” he answered.
“I want my hair in braids. Mommy does my hair in braids.”
Mike Mason considered the request. He was a barber, fairly new to the profession, and he cut only men’s hair. He’d looked at Emily’s hair, had the three-year-old turn in a circle, and finally he’d said, “I can do pigtails or a pony tail, or you can wear it loose. Daddies don’t make braids.”
Emily chose pigtails that day. He took her to work with him and sat her in a corner with a coloring book. She’d listened while his stream of clients came in, chatting away about their jobs, their golf games, their families. One man offered Mike suggestions on the stock market. This went on for days, until finally he’d found a neighbor to baby-sit while he worked.
“When is mommy coming back?” Emily had asked.
“Don’t know,” he’d answered.
“I want Mommy to come back,” Emily said. “I don’t like pigtails and pony tails. I want braids.” She started to sob.
“Stop crying,” her father ordered. “There’s nothing I can do.” His tone was uncharacteristically harsh.
When she didn’t stop, he left the room, and finally the apartment. He came back, hours later, to the little girl he’d left alone. Emily, at first scared, then hungry, then finally tired, had fallen asleep on the sofa. Their cat, Pepper, sat next to her clawing at the material on the already shabby piece of furniture. The room was cool, no one had turned on the heat. Her father gently lifted her up, then carried her into the kitchen where he sat her on the counter, draped a huge nylon cutting cape around her, and cut her hair with his barber shears. She sat very still, barely awake, shivering, afraid to move or to cry, and he trimmed the length to the middle of her ears, leaving Emily with a pixie cut.
“There,” he said quietly, and lifted her in his arms so she could see herself in the bathroom mirror, “now you don’t have to worry about braids.”
“Amazing,” Jules said. “If Emily…” he stopped himself, once again confused by the duality of our names, “If you,” he said directly to me, “weren’t sitting here, or if my eyes were closed, I’d swear it was you talking.” He turned to my twin. “Your voices are the same, but it’s more than that, the inflection, the rhythm, where you take breaths, it’s just too weird.”
“Let her go on,” I said. I saw myself in Emily’s gestures—it was weird-- but mostly I wanted to hear the story. I wanted to go back in time to a place when everything made sense. I must have guessed that would be a long journey.
Emily told us she’d stopped asking about her mother, but she never stopped waiting for her return. She and her father moved from Richmond, Virginia to Washington, D.C. before Emily started school. She quietly worried that her mother, who’d left them in Virginia, wouldn’t know where to find them. And she had no answers to the questions posed at school: Where is your mother? What does she do? Why isn’t she with you?
Emily didn’t have answers, and her father remained kind, but distant. He never said, “Don’t ask questions.” He never had to. He was, she later concluded, heartbroken if not devastated.
There was more to the story that Emily didn’t offer up and I had no way of knowing what she might be withholding.
“He didn’t date other women?” I asked.
“No,” she said and she took a sip of her water. The ice had long ago melted. “Dad went to work and he took care of me. He died when I was nineteen.”
“It sounds like a stoic life,” I said. I didn’t want to analyze her dead father, but he sounded depressed at best, or perhaps personality disordered. Schizoid or avoidant. I kept the diagnoses to myself; there were times when it really wasn’t helpful to be a psychiatrist. And, of course, it hit me, her dead father might well be my father, and with that unnerving insight, I really didn’t want to diagnose him.
“Yes.” she said thoughtfully, “Stoic is a good word to describe Dad. He kept it all bottled in, then one day he had a heart attack and died.”
The waiter appeared and refilled Emily’s water glass. She took a long sip and waited for him to leave.
“Would you like some dessert or coffee?” he asked.
“Just the bill,” Jules answered. Everyone was tired and he knew I wouldn’t want anything else, he assumed Emily didn’t as well.
“Wait,” Jules said to the young man, then turned to my twin, “I didn’t mean to make assumptions. Did you want coffee or dessert?”
“No. I’m fine, ”she said, and with that the waiter left.
“I went through his belongings after he died,” she continued. “I found the divorce decree, his bank statements, old tax returns, social security card, not much else. The only sentimental things he hung on to were related to me—photos, a tap dance program from a recital when I was eight, my high school awards, two letters I wrote to him my freshman year at college. It was strange to see those letters; he died less than a year later, yet I didn’t remember writing or sending them. They were the only letters I’d ever written to Dad, and they were so bland, formulaic. ‘Dear Dad, How are you? I am fine, I like my classes and I’ve met some good friends. Hope you’re well.’ There was nothing more interesting to share with my father. When I went through his things doing his last call on housekeeping, I was looking for something. Something to hold on to, or perhaps something to explain this strange, disenfranchised life we’d had. I wished he’d kept a journal or held on to some old love letters, left me something that would have given me some posthumous insight into who he was besides my father and a good barber.”
I thought for a moment.
“What was your mother’s name,” I asked.
“Sandra Klee Mason. It’s funny, but I’d always just thought of her as Mommy, right as she was when she left.” Emily abruptly stopped talking.
“No one ever talked about your mother?” I asked. How could that be? Weren’t there other family members? People who had known them as a couple?
“We moved when I was five,” Emily said, “to a place where no one knew us. My father was an only child and his parents were both dead. He was a loner, except at work where he chatted away with the customers, but mostly he listened to stories about their lives. When he talked, it was about sports. He certainly wasn’t going to volunteer to anyone that his wife had walked out on him.”
“There weren’t any adoption papers? I was adopted as a baby.”
“No.” Emily considered this, but she was certain she was raised by her biological father.
Something about Emily’s delivery left me wanting and I wondered if she knew more than she let on. Her presentation didn’t invite questions. There was a guardedness that I pushed against. It was too new, too unreal, for the questions to fully form, for the story to make sense and Emily asked me nothing about my adoption. She didn’t so much as flinch.
“There was no marriage certificate, so I’m guessing she took that. Or Dad shredded it. It wouldn’t be unlike him to simply destroy any thing he didn’t want to be. Like giving life a haircut so short it can’t be braided.”
The check came, delivered not by the waiter, but by the older Greek cashier. The diner was empty now. It was late and a weekday and Empire T’s was one of the few diners around that wasn’t open twenty-four hours. The cashier looked at us both, and unsure who was who and for how long—it could have been a couple of years—there’d been two of us when he’d thought there was only one, he handed the bill to Jules.
“Two Dr. Glassmans,” he said. He nodded and walked away.
I wasn’t sure what to say, what to do.
“Are you going back to Brooklyn tonight?” I asked. Should I invite her to stay with us? We had an extra room, a rarity in the city but we’d taken the apartment with plans to start a family. Emily was, in fact, a stranger, and she was here visiting a friend.
“I am,” she said. “I should be going.”
“Then you’ll come to our apartment for dinner tomorrow,” Jules said. It was a statement, a bit insistent, more a command than an invitation.
“Yes,” I said, “we’d love to have you.” It would give me a chance to think, to figure out what else I wanted to know. What else I wanted to share.
“And I’d love to come,” Emily said.
Jules wrote out our address on a napkin. He and I stood up to gather our belongings, and suddenly, without warning, I started to sob-- I suppose I was relieved that I would see my twin again or perhaps I was just overwhelmed at the shock of it all. Then she, too, folded into the chair and started to weep. And so I found myself holding this stranger close to me, as if we were any pair of twin sisters in need of comfort during that particular February evening.
Chapter 3
Obviously, I didn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t find a comfortable position and the bedroom was too hot, so I kicked off the blankets, then got cold and pulled them back on. Jules seemed to dream peacefully beside me, and I wished I had the energy to get up and do something useful, but I was exhausted. I took the remote from the bed stand and turned on the TV. Worried I’d wake Jules, I muted it while I channel surfed. The room flicked in electric blue as I clicked from station to station, but nothing captured my attention enough to distracted me from my edginess. I hit the off button and, frustrated, set down the control. I tried to go back to sleep, but again, I was hot, then cold. I was thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom.
My thoughts circled around in my head. Probably, it was too much to have even expected to sleep. I thought about the moment when I first saw Emily. In the space of that moment, I became my own scientific experiment. What becomes of identical twins raised apart? Do they have similar personalities? Do they like the same movies? Cringe at the same insects? Find the same men sexy? Do the same things make them angry, tearful, guilty, or regretful? Do they get the same illnesses, die the same deaths? In the space of that moment my whole past changed. I didn’t consider it then, of course, but my whole future changed as well.
I thought about my life where it was only hours before. The winter of 2005 was mostly a good time. Mostly. My career was going well, I was feeling like I’d achieved some degree of success. I had my own private practice on the Upper West Side and a teaching appointment at Bellevue. It was at Bellevue, in the outpatient center, where one afternoon a month I ran a clinic for indigent women with Late Luteal Phase Dysphoric Disorder, known in non-psychiatric circles as Premenstrual Syndrome, or PMS, and as such, I’d gotten a reputation as an expert in the field.
In the middle of what felt like a cold, drab January, I was asked to appear on The Today Show, along with Harvard’s Hilda Druesen, and several women who suffer from severe PMS, women whose symptoms had abated with treatment. I was on television, sitting to Katie Couric’s left, caked in makeup and doused in hot stage lights.
“There are several medications that are FDA-approved,” I said, “but when those don’t work, we sometimes use medications ‘off-label,’ meaning the medicines have been tested and approved for other disorders, and that they’re safe. So we might find that anti-depressants or anti-anxiety agents, while not specifically tested for PMS, can be helpful.”
The women chosen to appear on the show suffered from the most extreme of symptoms, of course. They’d been picked because they told their stories with force and they evoked sympathy from the audience. One girl hurled wine glasses against the door every month, exactly two days before her period started. She’d gone through six boxes in less than a year, including an entire set of Reidel stemware. Another young woman had been arrested fourteen times, only premenstrually, for getting into fist fights, plus once she’d whacked the plumber with his own plunger. Both woman were appalled by their own behavior so their remorse and bewilderment made them the perfect talk show guests. The third patient had bright orange hair that stood nearly as high as it reached long. She was plagued by episodes of profound sleepiness—narcoleptic attacks, actually—which kept her from driving or working for five days out of every month. All three women had been transformed by psychiatric treatment, though none were my patients. I wasn’t sure where they’d been recruited from, perhaps the actors’ guild.
Jules was excited, my family was thrilled, the phone at my already over-filled private practice didn’t let up. The day after the show aired, a stranger recognized me when I stopped at Duane Reed to purchase toothpaste.
“You’re the doctor who was on The Today Show!” she announced. From the noise she made, you would have thought I was George Clooney arriving for a blind date. I was flattered and ate up the attention.
The fuss was short-lived, my so-called fifteen minutes of fame. Still, it gave my ego a boost, one that I relished after seasons of unsuccessful fertility treatment that had left my body almost as bruised and battered as it had left my emotions. The baby-making issue was the only kink in our marriage, a marriage that was otherwise smooth and loving.
Finally, I clicked off the TV and got out of bed. I went into the kitchen, poured myself some Diet Coke--- I was already so agitated, I didn’t think a little caffeine would make any difference-- and I dialed my parents’ number. It was 3:45 A.M. and I had never, ever, phoned them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d been aware of this odd, misplaced sense of anger when I first saw Emily, and I realized that someone, somewhere, must have known about us—identical twins separated at birth, or near birth, is something that couldn’t easily be hidden. My past, as I’d been told it, must have been a lie, and I was angry at this betrayal.
Zoey accompanied me to the kitchen and rested her head in my lap. I stroked her while the phone rang; her hair felt matted, she needed to be groomed. After a few moments, she decided she’d had enough and settled herself on the floor under the table. I swallowed the final sip of soda and was still thirsty.
My mother’s voice was sleepy, but her “hello” had a sense of urgency to it. A hint of the panic one feels when the phone rings in the middle of the night and explodes what was a restful slumber, mixed with the hope that it is what it usually is at that hour: a wrong number and not news of a tragedy.
“Mom, it’s Emily. Nothing’s wrong.” Nothing’s wrong. I’m not calling to tell you that someone is dead or injured or needing to be bailed out of jail. This really could have waited until the morning. How would I explain that while it could wait, I couldn’t? I wanted to pet Zoey, but she was out of my reach, and it didn’t seem fair to ask so much of the dog. I hugged my knees instead.
“Emily.” She said nothing more, just waited.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’ll call you in the morning. This can wait.”
“No, it’s okay, I’m awake now.” Of course she was. My mother was always there for her children, she wouldn’t have it any other way—it remained, always, an integral part of her identity . I heard her tell my father to go back to sleep. It’s Emily, but nothing is wrong. Certainly, they were both sitting upright, wondering why I’d called. I didn’t know if they’d turned on a light or if my father had gotten out of bed. People have rituals for such things.
I told my mother about meeting Emily in Empire T’s. This woman who looked just like me. She had not only the same name, the same face, the same body, and the same mannerisms, but the exact same voice.
“Her name is Emily?” My mother was perplexed. It seemed like a funny thing to focus on.
“A coincidence, I’m sure, or maybe we both looked like Emilys as babies.”
“We didn’t name you Emily because of how you looked. You were named after your father’s aunt Esther. We would have named you Emily even if you’d looked like a Mildred.”
Jews name their children after dead relatives. It’s the Hebrew name that matters, so often the English version just has the same first letter. Esther. Emily. It was all decided before I got there.
“So, it’s a coincidence,” I said. This seemed like a trivial part of the story.
I waited while she told my father. I got some pretzel sticks from the cabinet and set the bag down on the kitchen table. I ate one, but it was stale, and so I put a few on the table top and made patterns with them while my parents conferred. My mother’s hand was over the mouthpiece and all I heard was the muffled sound of undecipherable voices. My mother didn’t know from Mute buttons.
I spelled out ‘Emily.’ It took a lot of pretzel sticks and the letters were uneven, the ‘m’ being the shortest and the ‘e’ and ‘y’ being much taller.
“We don’t know anything about a twin,” my mother said. “Are you sure? Sometimes people just look alike.” My mother sounded anxious, edgy even, the way she sounded when she felt out of control.
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. It wasn’t the conversation I’d wanted and I let her go back to sleep. I put down the receiver and felt selfish that I hadn’t waited until morning and angry that I’d been dismissed.
“What?” Jules asked when I finally got back into bed.
“Nothing,” I said. I wondered just briefly if he’d want to make love. My thoughts were a jumble, I couldn’t concentrate. There was sex and there was the baby issue. And now I was a twin.
“Where were you?” Jules asked. He was awake now.
“I called my mother.”
“Did she know about the other Emily?”
“No.” I answered. “Someone must have known, right? Do you think she was with me in the orphanage? Do you think they said to my parents, ‘Here, we have two, pick one.’”
“I don’t know what to think, Em.”
We lay there together with our thoughts. Jules reached over and squeezed my shoulder.
“Do that some more,” I said and he did. “Rub the other one, too.” I turned away from him so he could reach both my shoulders. He dug his thumbs hard into the muscle, hurting me as he pressed out the tension. I wanted to tell Jules to stop, but I didn’t. He’d taught me that if I tolerated the pain, my muscles would eventually relax.
When he felt me go limp, Jules put his hands under my T-shirt and rubbed my skin softly. His palms circled over and over on my shoulders and back and then he stopped. Finally, we made love. It was quiet and wordless and my breath caught with that final orgasmic quiver. I found myself wondering if Jules would like to make love to my twin.
I never did fall asleep. The night wore on and I started to anticipate the upcoming day and all that it would bring. I thought about my patients, wondered if they’d see something different in me. I thought about Emily and worried about dinner. Would it be difficult to make conversation? Would it be harder to say good-bye?
Finally, the alarm pierced the February darkness, sounding its unwelcome series of escalating beeps to usher in my sense of dread.
Chapter 4
I always knew I was adopted. My parents were open about such things and the story of my arrival was a part of our family history. It was, however, my story alone with no mention of an identical twin.
Robert and Diana Weitz had tried for years to conceive a child before they finally adopted me. No sooner had I arrived in their eager home, loved and welcomed and delivered to a nursery decorated with only the finest of baby finery, when my mother became pregnant, again, and again, and again: I grew up the oldest of four in a middle class Jewish household. If they loved me less, or expected anything different from me because I was not their biological child, then they hid it well.
The fact is, I could have been theirs. Sure, with four kids, I could have picked it apart -- there are ways we were alike and ways we weren’t; none of it created an equation where the other five members of my family were obviously related and I was not. So, I was less artistic than Sam and Matthew and my hair was lighter than Lisa’s. I was a better student than the others, especially at math and science, a fact that was chalked up to my role as the oldest, never to a quirk of genetics.
My mother was a broad-boned woman, with brown eyes and poker straight hair she kept cropped close. She had olive skin that tanned deeply with the first touch of sun. Her hair was silver, though when I was little, it was a shade just shy of rust. My father was a slight, pale man, who sported a full head of light curly hair and hazel eyes. Pretty much anyone of any size or shape could have been the off-spring of these two people. Strangers who didn’t know I was adopted often commented that I looked a bit like my father. I have his slim build, though I am nearly two inches taller, and my light brown hair has some wave to it. Like him, I am fair-skinned, though my eyes are uniquely my own. I have big black eyes that are spaced too widely apart, a feature I’ve been told, that makes me look like a creature of prey.
“What do you think your real parents are like?” Matthew asked at dinner one night when I was in seventh grade. He liked to ask questions, to pose the never-ending series of what ifs.
“We are Emily’s real parents,” my father said, and he reached over me to get the ketchup. “And you are Emily’s real brother.” He didn’t object to the conversation, just the issue of “real.”
“I know,” Matthew said, “but what about the parents who gave her up to us?”
“Her birth parents,” my mother said. She had finished eating and was gathering the remnants of the meal from the table. “Are you done with that, Rob?” she asked, snatching the ketchup as my father set it down.
“I suppose I am now,” he said.
“Okay, so what do you think your birth parents are like?” Matthew continued.
“Obviously,” I said, “they are stupid.”
Matthew, being a younger brother, was delighted. “You’re a dope so they must be dopes too!” He could have been singing.
“Matthew!” our parents scolded simultaneously.
“If they gave me up, they must have been pretty dumb,” I said, self-satisfied.
“What if your real mom is a princess or a movie star?” Lisa blurted out. She giggled, but I could tell she actually did wonder if this could be true. I, of course, had always assumed my birth mother was royalty and loved hearing Lisa ask the question. Why had she given me up and was she looking to find me and make me heir to her throne? Like my little sister, I wanted it all to be glamorous.
“Mommy, tell about how we got Emily!” Lisa, who was six at the time, lingered over the story of my adoption. Sometimes I thought she was jealous that I was the adopted one.
“Emily needs to work on her haphtarah portion,” my mother said. My Bat Mitzvah was only weeks away and much of my mother’s energy was focused on directing my studying.
“Please!” Lisa insisted. She noticed my father standing in front of the open freezer, and knowing his intent, yelled, “I want ice cream, too, Daddy!”
“Me, too,” said Sam, the third in line and the quietest child. “Chocolate!”
The chorus continued and all six of us ended up back at the dinner table with bowls of ice cream. Lisa managed to dip one of her long braids into the ice cream and my mother was briefly occupied getting a wet washcloth to clean off Lisa’s hair. I was spared Bat Mitzvah study for a few more minutes and I stretched the time by softening my ice cream with the back of my spoon and making it into a soupy mixture.
My mother settled with her bowl of half-strawberry, half-chocolate, and re-told the tale of me. Emily Weitz.
I was brought to a hospital emergency room in Chicago by a woman, presumably my mother, when I was three months old. I was sick, she’d told the nurse who registered me, and she checked me in under the name of Sally White, born on March 20, 1968. She gave her own name as Betsy White. The nurse brought us back to the pediatrics section of the emergency room and when the doctor came to examine me, Betsy White was gone, having left me in a pile of blankets on the floor.
I was healthy with no signs of illness or trauma and there was no trace anywhere of a Betsy White, or even an Elizabeth White, who’d given birth in Chicago to a baby girl three months earlier.
I was placed in an orphanage, then adopted four months later by my parents, the Weitz’s of Connecticut. I was re-anointed Emily, and at seven months of age, my official history—documented in baby books, on photographs, slides, and reel-to-reel home movies—began.
I crawled at the time of purchase, walked at thirteen months. I Spoke words at eleven months, sentences at eighteen months, paragraphs before two. I was a good daughter and everyone was excited about my upcoming Bat Mitzvah. I would stay a good daughter and make everyone proud when I became a doctor. It never crossed my mind to be anyone other than who they wanted me to be.
“Why did her mother leave her there?” Lisa wanted to know. The story was always fresh to her and the questions she asked were variants of the same themes, asked over and over. They weren’t so different from the questions I had asked when I was six.
“Emily’s mother loved her, but she couldn’t take care of her. She took Emily to the hospital because she knew the doctors would find her the perfect family.”
Lisa was satisfied. At thirteen, I was starting to realize that the story might have missing parts. Maybe Betsy White was a drug addict or a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t my mother at all. Maybe she had kidnapped me from my real family, from people who had really wanted me. My fantasies varied with my mood.
“Time to go study,” my mother said, clearing my bowl.
“My real mother was a chocolate queen,” I whispered into Lisa’s ear as I slipped a piece of candy from my pocket to her hand.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said and I loved that her little face brightened as she snatched the gift.
I had a story I could live with and I was told the agency that arranged my adoption had no other information. My parents couldn’t help me search for my birth parents because there were no leads, nothing to go on. I could wonder all I wanted and I could wallow in my royal fantasies, but the story stopped there.
At least I had a story, one that explained me and gave my life context. It wasn’t until I lost it that I realized just how important it was.
Chapter 5.
John Stellar was a huge man both in measure of his height and weight, but also in terms of the presence he bore. His voice was loud, his laugh filled the room-- his tears even more so—and sometimes I felt crowded out. His perceptiveness was, at times, both uncanny and intrusive and he noticed details no one else would ever see or think to comment upon. A new pillow on the couch or painting on the wall were fair game for his speculation. If I dropped a few pounds or wore a new outfit, those were up for comment as well. He chose, without fail, the seat closest to mine and some days I wished for a little more distance.
Mr. Stellar was my first patient on the morning after Emily and I had discovered one another. I was, to say the least, distracted, tired from my sleepless night, and not quite sure how I was going to settle myself to the plane I needed to be on to do psychotherapy all day.
He used the session to talk about a problem he was having at work.
“And the son-of-a-bitch has the nerve to say I offended one of the clients. Offended, can you believe that, after I spent weeks getting this guy’s mess straightened out?” He was angry.
I was tempted to mirror that feeling back to him, but in the past he either insisted he wasn’t angry, or screamed, “Of course I’m angry, wouldn’t you be angry?” While it should have been a helpful insight, for Mr. Stellar it was not. His anger narrowed his options and effectively ruined his life, but he was too invested in justifying it to consider other ways.
“You feel he didn’t appreciate your efforts,” I said. I was soft-stepping it. My personal goal for the session was to survive it, and I instantly felt guilty: Mr. Stellar deserved more from me than mere survival, my own at that, not even his! I could simply agree that the client was a son-of-a-bitch. It was the easiest tactic for that day—it would have given him some momentary relief-- but it was counter-therapeutic in the long run to collude with this patient’s basic belief that everyone else in the world was an asshole and the point of therapy was to blow off steam about how they were all shitting on him (his language, not mine). Most days, I still held out for an ideal where he might gain a more tempered view of his role in these uncomfortable dynamics. With insight, I hoped, he would change-- a cautious destination on my part, but one worth retaining as an ideal.
“Of course he didn’t appreciate my efforts. I told you, I spent weeks working on his miserable little numbers and then all he did was piss on it.”
I waited. There was nothing that called for my reply. Without one, my patient appeared to have exhausted the subject. He glanced over at my desk, then settled his eyes on me.
“You change your hair, Dr. Glassman?”
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“You look different. Are you sure it’s not lighter?”
I forced a smile but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t changed my hair color, I’d simply discovered that my whole life had been misconstrued.
“Something wrong? You seem kind of quiet.” Of course John Stellar would pick up on my distraction. It made me mad.
“I’m fine. Go on with your story,” I said.
He stood up and for a moment, I felt tense. Scared even. There was something intimidating about Mr. Stellar even though he had no history of physical violence and his questions about me were always caged in caring tones. He was brash, but he was respectful, though that too was contrived and purposeful.
He walked towards the window, away from me and I felt a sense of relief. It made me aware of just how fragile I was feeling.
“This is a great view,” he said.
My office is a small room off a shared waiting area on the sixth floor. The window overlooks Central Park West. It’s high enough to afford a view of the Park, but low enough to allow for some people-watching. I wondered what he was looking at. I didn’t want to get up—it would feel too intimate to join him—but I asked.
“Oh, there’s a couple kissing, and a guy walking his golden retriever who’s peeing on a bench leg—the golden, not the guy-- and some bikers and roller bladders weaving through The Gates. Kind of icy out there for those guys. Next week they begin to dismantle them.”
He stopped for a moment to take it all in.
“Hard to believe the scale of that project, all those years it took in the planning, making the materials, erecting thousands of them-- each measured to the width of the footpath where it rests-- and you look at it and say, art? This is art? I like them, it’s just hard to see each individual one as much of anything, but the thousands of them together really are kind of spectacular.”
I thought about Emily and imagined her walking though Central Park, taking it all in.
“You know, Jeanne-Claude and Christo are married to each other,” Mr. Stellar said, referring to the artists who designed, constructed, and financed The Gates.
“I did know that,” I said.
“Did you know they were born in the same hour of the same day?”
A shiver went down my spine. The Gates had brought my identical twin to the city, it all seemed like too much coincidence.
“No, I didn’t,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Absolutely. He was born in Bulgaria, she was born in Morrocco, 1935. I don’t remember the exact date, but sometime in June. They’re both Geminis.” The sign of the twins.
“That’s okay,” I said, not really thinking.
“All that planning,” Mr. Stellar continued, “and all those tens of millions of dollars for materials and they’re up for just two weeks, only to be taken down. You’d think they could leave it for a while or bring it to other parks—Golden Gate, or Hyde, or somewhere so more people could see it. There’s something frustrating about having a it be so transient.”
He spoken calmly and thoughtfully. No bluster, no anger, no obscenities. I remembered he has a master’s degree—he was often invested in projecting a rough, stay-back image, one that betrayed his gentler and more vulnerable self-- and when his guard went down, his sensitivity came through. I remember that I liked him and I felt silly that moments before I’d been frightened. What was that about?
Mr. Stellar continued to consider the world outside. He wondered if it would snow again and commented on the bareness of the trees against the bright saffron Gates.
“You’re worried The Gates won’t be adequately appreciated,” I said after a bit, linking his observation to his earlier distress about his boss and the offended client.
He looked at me and smiled knowingly.
“You’re good, Doc.”
* * *
Jules called at 1:55. He always called at five of the hour, hoping to catch me between sessions.
“What are we going to do for dinner tonight for…” he hesitated. “Emily?” Had he started to say “your sister” or “your twin?” This was a new idea for him as well. An unanticipated someone inserted into our lives.
I thought about the chicken in the refrigerator and wondered if Emily would like my curry. Or would it be better to order out and not be preoccupied with cooking? I’m prone to obsession and I wondered if the other Emily was as well.
“Jules,” I said. “Do you think she’d be offended if I asked her to have DNA testing?”
He hesitated.
“It’s only dinner,” he said, implying that yes, it would be offensive. “What are you thinking?”
There was a lot I could be thinking about the stranger with my shared gene pool. A lot he could be thinking.
“My mother suggested that maybe it’s just coincidence that we look alike,” I answered.
“It would be an awful lot of coincidence. Your mother wasn’t there. Trust me, you don’t need DNA testing.”
There was so much to consider. I hadn’t asked Emily her birth date. I’d never wanted to focus on it, but in my own psychotherapy I’d been forced to confront how uncomfortable I was with all the uncertainties of my early life, of my unknown genetics, of this sense that my life had begun when I was seven months old and swallowed into the Weitz family. Everything before my adoption by the parents who then served as the observing historians to my childhood was this odd sort of blankness, as though I’d been sucked free from a Black Hole. There were no photographs from that time, no baby books documenting my first roll-over or spoonful of rice cereal. Every genetic disease I learned about in medical school left me with an aching vulnerability: could I be a carrier of the Huntington’s gene? Was I prone to diabetes? Was I at risk for schizophrenia? I presumed there must be some mental illness in my genetic family. What sane person would abandon her baby?
Suddenly, I had a partner in this unknown Black Hole. Jules was positive we were identical twins. Certainly, sisters can look very much alike and even I couldn’t dispute that this other Emily had to be a blood relative of mine. Did it matter if we were monozygotic twins cast from the same ovum, dizygotic twins sharing a womb but not identical genetic material, or simply sisters?
Yes.
Should I have felt embarrassed, or apologetic, that I wanted to know and that somehow it mattered to me? Would Emily mind? Would she also want to know or was this like asking a potential lover to have an AIDS test, thereby conveying something short of total trust? And was I even ready to admit that there was something other than a sister, a twin, that I might want from this stranger?
Chapter 6
The second time it should not have been a shock. I was prepared to answer the door and find my twin there, but again, despite all the psychological bracing I could rally, I was surprised to see my own image standing at the door. If that was not enough, beside Emily there stood a little white-haired girl wearing a red jumper and those sneakers that have soles that light and sparkle. A mini version of us, though not a clone. I took in a deep breath and steadied myself against the door frame.
“You have a daughter,” I said in greeting, not sure which of the two of them I wanted to stare at more. It hadn’t even occurred to me—or to Jules for that matter-- that Emily would be a mother. I swallowed a million emotions all at once.
“This is Abigail. She’s seven and in the second grade.” Emily looked at her child and said, “This is your Aunt Emily.” She said it with hesitation, as if she wasn’t sure it was the right introduction; there was no other explanation available.
The little girl said hello and I think she was scared. Who wants, at the age of seven, to meet someone who looks and sounds like their mother? I wanted to reach down and hug her, but I was afraid I’d frighten her even more. Instead, I bent forward, extended my hand and said,
“Nice to meet you, Abigail.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” She replied and her little palm was warm in mine. Her mother smiled, proud of how the little girl had managed the introduction.
Jules was suddenly beside me. He looked at Emily, looked at Abigail, looked at me. I saw my feelings race across his face: envy, jealousy, grief, desire, just to name a few. A drop of What other surprises are we in for? I introduced Jules to Abigail as “Uncle Jay,” what my nieces and nephews called him. Finally, Jules asked, “It would be nice to invite everyone in?”
I laughed a nervous laugh and moved aside so they could enter our living room. Zoey ran to Abigail who immediately retreated, letting out a howl. She was frightened of the dog. Jules corralled Zoey and led her to the bedroom. If we’d had a child, I wondered, would she be afraid of dogs?
“It’s okay, honey,” I said to my newfound niece, “Zoey will settle down in the bedroom. She would never hurt you.”
We sat in the living room with the company furniture—Queen Anne chairs, an antique sofa and a Persian rug. I brought out drinks and appetizers. I hadn’t planned on a little one and had to search the pantry for some juice and cookies. I wondered why Emily hadn’t mentioned her daughter the night before and I wondered what else she hadn’t mentioned. While I couldn’t take my eyes off my sister, Jules stared at her daughter. I could feel his longing across the room.
Abigail had watery blue eyes, the kind that let you see right through the person. In someone so young, they announced that she’d been through a lot, she knew about pain and loss. They could have been an old person’s eyes stuck into a little girl.
Jules stared. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t captured, didn’t try to politely avert his gaze. Abigail’s eyes passed his and then they caught. There was nothing uncomfortable about it for either of them and I saw my husband and Abigail look right into each other, a look that lasted only seconds, and with that they found one another.
We made small talk, but it was stiffer than I would have liked and I felt inhibited by the presence of a child. The room was hot—these old pre-war buildings have antiquated heating systems and they churn out the heat. The radiator pipes banged. Sweat formed on Emily’s forehead, her little girl squirmed, and finally I got up and opened a window. The cold air came rushing in; at first it was a relief, but soon the room was chilled. Abigail shivered and moved closer to her mother.
We were renovating the dining room-- among other things replacing a chandelier and the new one sat on the table waiting for the electrician to come install it. It left us to eat in the kitchen with it’s mismatched chairs, metal table, and sink full of dishes. I would have apologized, but once we moved from the living room, conversation loosened.
“What do you do?” Jules asked Emily.
Funny, we’d heard about her childhood, but I hadn’t asked about her career, her relationships, the fact that she had a child. It was almost like I’d assumed she had shared my life, my history, and it was eerie to consider how there was a Xerox of me out there living a different life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Emily announced she was a psychiatrist; I half expected it.
“I’m a writer. A journalist, mostly. I write features for an alternative paper in Philadelphia. That pays the bills, and then I write poetry.”
“And what about your husband?” Jules asked. He was doing better than I at focusing on the details.
“I’m not married,” Emily answered. She looked at her daughter. “Abby’s father and I met when I was in grad school. We were together for a long time. I guess we knew it wasn’t going to work because we never made it legal and then we split up when Abby was two.
Funny, really, that the daughter of a barber would have gone to graduate school. A vote for genetics over environment, I thought, figuring it wasn’t so strange for one sister to be a psychiatrist and the other to be a poet; we both had careers that shuffled around introspection, the analysis of relationships, the interplay of people and their feelings.
“Richard works for Legal Aid, if that was your question,” Emily continued. “He specializes in domestic violence and represents battered women. He’s a good guy with all his cards on the table, but we have different perspectives on life. He’s politically conservative, probably the first conservative to ever work at Legal Aid, and he jokes about being surrounded all day by left-wing radical vegetarians. We argued a lot about the simplest of things—whether it was okay to leave dirty socks on the floor, what to spend money on, who should pick up the dry cleaning.”
Emily paused for a moment. Before I could say anything, she went on.
“Life became difficult over the silliest of things and after we split, I realized we each thought we were so right and the other was so wrong. I wanted to be vindicated, as did he, and no one was invested in changing. He told me later that he learned something from this and when he fell in love again he was less concerned with being right, he was able to just go with the flow. So, he married Julia and they had a baby. Since Abby’s half-sister was born, it’s been tough. Julia feels threatened by Abigail, like she’s this huge drain on Richard’s time and money, like he’s some resource their all clamoring for and there’s not enough to go around.
Abby looked uncomfortable and Emily reached over to stroke her hair. “She’s a really good girl,” Emily said, mostly to her daughter.
“Julia’s hard on Abby, harder than she has to be,” Emily continued and she looked up at Jules, “and it creates a lot of tension. Richard gets stuck in the middle between his wife and his daughter.”
The existence of Abby remained a jolt of reality. Emily and I weren’t the same person; we might have similarities, but even if we had the exact same gene pool, there were obvious differences and we had completely different stories.
I was awash in envy. I may have found my unknown twin, but I hadn’t found myself. Like my mother, I struggled with infertility. Jules and I ached for a child. My mother was sympathetic, though I think she believed that I would eventually have children, just as she became pregnant after they adopted me. My siblings, her own biological offspring, had all been able to have children without problems, so it seemed ironic that I, the adopted child, would “inherit” this particular problem. Clearly, my own biological mother had no such difficulties, she popped them out two at a time in the days before in vitro fertilization made multiple births commonplace.
It seemed like we had finally settled, finally become comfortable together in the kitchen, eating Chinese take-out, when Emily announced they needed to go. It was past Abby’s bedtime and they’d be returning to Philadelphia in the morning. We exchanged an assortment of numbers—home, work, mobile, email and postal addresses, and Emily gave me her screen name, though I didn’t know how to Instant Message.
“You’ll learn,” she insisted.
I was disappointed they were leaving and I hugged them both a little too long.
Jules and I were mostly quiet that night. He did the dishes while I freed the cloistered Zoey and took her for a walk. Even in bed, we were unusually silent and Jules brought a magazine to read.
I was thinking about where Emily fit in my life. I had a family and I hadn’t been looking for any more relatives. I had brothers and a sister, not to mention nieces and nephews. Would I ever see her again? Was Emily someone who would shake up my life? Or had our chance meeting been a one-shot deal? I thought about Abigail and the look she’d exchanged with Jules. I thought about who might have known these people had been out there all these years.
Jules remained behind the magazine.
“What do you think she wants?” He asked, without putting it down.
Want? What could we want from one another? The list was beginning to form.
“I can only wonder,” I answered.
Jules didn’t ask that night, or any other night, what I might want. That night I wouldn’t have had an answer or even known where I might feel compelled to look for one.
Chapter 7
Steen Biorn was an unassuming man who started his work days with the same routine. He rose early-- even when the days were shortest and the mornings darkest— showered, and left for work before his wife and sons began to stir. They lived in Nyborg, on the water and Ditte, his wife, said it was a waste because he was never home to appreciate it. He told me there was no traffic that early and his drive through the farmlands would have been picturesque if only he’d waited for daylight. He arrived on campus early enough to stop at the same café, read the newspaper, and indulge on wienerbrod before he began his work day.
The University of Southern Denmark is located just south of the city center of Odense, Denmark’s third largest city. Odense brags of being the birthplace to Hans Christian Andersen, though the fairytale author left for Copenhagen at the age of 14. Academically, Odense University holds the limelight, and the University of Southern Denmark at Odense is a bit of an afterthought.
The Institute of Public Health is housed in an unremarkable concrete building with under-sized bubble windows, on the very edge of campus. The Danish Twin Registry occupies the third floor of that building, and Steen’s office sat just to the left of the stairwell. He mostly kept his door closed so he wouldn’t be distracted by foot traffic, but his co-workers thought nothing of knocking and sticking their heads in to tell him anything of interest, even if it was just a restaurant recommendation or a movie review. He retained a calm demeanor, one that revealed little about his inner emotions, and people liked bouncing things off him, the routine meanderings of their day.
The Danish Twin Registry is the oldest twin registry in the world. It was started in the early 1950’s by Tage Kemp, Mogens Hauge and Bent Harvald at the University of Copenhagen’s Institute of Medical Genetics. They contacted the vicars of each of Denmark’s 2200 parishes and had the vicars identify twin pairs born from 1870 on. Once identified, the twins or their family members were hunted down and sent inventories asking about their similarities in an attempt to ascertain if they were identical or fraternal twins, and about their health. If they were no longer living, family members, or even neighbors, were queried and the data was still used, with “Cause of Death” as a prominent final, and perhaps most important, line.
After Kemp’s death in 1964, Hauge and Harvald moved to Odense, taking the twin registry with them. They continued to locate and follow twin pairs, and have identified 73,000 pairs over a 130-year period. Initially, the data was entered on index cards; it has since been computerized. The Early Separation Research Unit has existed as its own department since 1978, with Steen as the third director since its inception.
The Danish Twin Study is the oldest twin registry in the world, but it is not the largest. The Swedish Twin Registry was begun a few years later and has data on twins born after 1886; it contains data on 86,000 twin pairs. Data from that registry helped identify smoking as a cause of lung cancer.
Twin registries serve as data banks for information about health and behavior. The issue of zygosity—fraternal versus identical twinship-- is crucial in how they differ from other collections of data. Monozygotic (MZ) twins come from a single egg, fertilized by a single sperm, and are genetically the same. Given that identical twins have the exact same genes, differences in what illnesses they acquire or how their personalities differ are presumed to be due to environmental—including intrauterine-- variations. Fraternal, or dizygotic (DZ) twins, on the other hand, grow from two eggs and two sperm, and are no more genetically alike than regular siblings; statically they share half their gene pool. It is assumed that fraternal twins have reasonably similar environments, more so than non-twin siblings, at least in childhood.
If one twin has an illness or condition of interest, he is called the proband. If the other twin gets the illness, the twins are said to be concordant for that disease. If the other twin does not get the illness, the twin pair is said to be discordant for the illness. So, for example, if there is a one hundred percent concordance for a disease among identical twins, it would be safe to conclude that the etiology of the illness is genetic. If eighty percent of identical twins are concordant for an illness, then there is a strong genetic predisposition, but something environmental is likely protecting those twins who remain healthy. The twin registries identify twin pairs and separates them into MZ and DZ pairs, then collects information about health, behavior, and longevity. The data is then made available to researchers looking at specific illnesses or patterns, if they come looking for it.
Steen was himself a twin. He described his sister, Ane, as his polar opposite: he was tall, she was short; he was intense and focused, she was relaxed and wayward. They were no closer, he said, than non-twin siblings, and he found it curious how there might be any expectation otherwise. What they did have in common is that they both developed juvenile diabetes at the age of nine. Genetic, perhaps, or viral with some genetic tilting (none of the other six family members living in their household became diabetic), but it was an usual and troubling fate to share. Their pediatrician was curious; indeed, he reported them to the Danish Twin Registry where they were already on file.
“We couldn’t have both had freckled noses,” Steen was fond of saying, “but rather we had to get the same chronic illness.”
He was mathematically inclined and studied statistics in college, then obtained a graduate degree in Epidemiology. It seemed inevitable that he would base his career with The Danish Twin Registry.
“And Ane?” I asked.
“She is a glass-blower on Bornholm where she has her own workshop. She is quite good,” he answered, pointing to a colorful vase on a shelf in the corner.
Steen collected data from a very specific set of twins: those raised apart. Psychiatrists, in particular, have been fascinated with the question of what causes mental illness-- genetics versus environment-- and information garnered from identical twins raised in separate environments provides invaluable information that can’t be gleaned in any other way. Because cases of twins raised apart are so rare—indeed, if circumstances require the separation of twins they usually go to family members and remain in close contact with shared family and culture--- Steen met with these twins in person at regular intervals. He tracked them over time and gathered information about some of the more detailed aspects of their behavior and emotions, as well as the usual health and habit histories that all the twins were queried for. So, for example, while the mailed, and then e-mailed, inquiries that the raised-together twin sets answered might record that a twin was treated for panic disorder, with Steen’s separated twins he went into detail about which exact symptoms of panic the twin experienced, what precipitated an attack, what led to its resolution. He then asked detailed questions about other anxiety symptoms and he asked the other twin if they experienced the same symptoms in the same ways. The in-person interviews allowed him to collect more data and gave him some freedom to veer. He got personal in a way a questionnaire could not.
I met Steen at his office. He was used to visits from researchers, but not from foreign twins with vague agendas and I imagine the Danish Twin Registry only tolerated my visit because I’d identified myself as a psychiatrist.
Steen was a tall man with an athletic build, blue eyes, and dark hair. He wore khaki pants and a sweater. My visit did not warrant a tie or a jacket.
Given the ingredients, Steen should have been handsome, but nothing was attractive about the way his features combined. His eyes were too close, his nose was both crooked and bulbous, his lips were line thin and his skin irregular. I wouldn’t say he was ugly, but someone else might. He was, however, soft-spoken, thoughtful, and a gentle listener. There was something both safe and welcoming about him and it was no wonder that scores of twins, many separated in infancy by events that left them damaged and vulnerable, willingly divulged things they would tell no one else. They marked his visits on their calendars and they anticipated his arrival for days in advance. Steen did not carry himself like an ugly man; he radiated a self-assurance that would have been construed as arrogance in a handsome man.
I was introduced to every member of the Danish Twin Registry, though it was a perfunctory introduction as I toured the third floor. Steen’s secretary, Dagmar Ribe, was a graying woman who’d been with the project for thirty years. She shook my hand, and looked both embarrassed and pleased when Steen called her “the brains of the organization.” It was a line she had no doubt heard before and it no doubt made her blush every time it was uttered. I had met her, of course, when I’d first arrived and she had gushed about Steen, telling about how everyone liked and respected him; it was through her eyes that my expectations had been set.
Dagmar smiled at me and handed Steen a folder. It contained his day’s schedule, travel directions and, on days he left Odense, recommendations for the best places to eat.
“She researches this,” Steen said, and showed me step-by-step travel directions with maps and parking suggestions. When we were out of earshot, he added, “Sometimes, she doesn’t do so well on the restaurants. She’s sent me to some awful places, and later I’ve found out there was some where wonderful just down the road, but by then it’s been too late.”
“Too late?” I asked. I wasn’t quite following him.
“I wasn’t hungry any more. I’d filled up on the lousy food.”
He’d never let Dagmar know her efforts fell short. He returned from each day’s journey full of praise for her suggestions.
“I’d never risk upsetting her. Dagmar would be devastated if she knew I didn’t like my lunch. She keeps this place running. Thirty years, all the subjects know her and she calls them and lets them know I’m coming. They make me tea, set out smørrebrød—what Americans call open-faced sandwiches. Even if they don’t know me, they all know Dagmar and if she’s the one sending me, I must be good. I can forgive the bad restaurants. Mostly she goes by what she sees on the Internet.”
We passed the elevator and Steen knocked on the next door down. Bendt Pedersen, the Director of the Registry, was talking on his cell phone in Danish. Steen motioned an apology for disrupting him and indicated we’d return later.
“My boss. He’s in the middle of a divorce,” Steen said.
He led me to a conference room where a group of people sat around a long table. They looked to be on a coffee break; one man had slipped off his shoes and had his feet up on a chair, everyone else had a drink, a newspaper, or both. At the far end of the room there was a coffee maker, a refrigerator, and a microwave.
“This is our everything room,” Steen said. “Axel, Ib, Hagen, and Ericka, this is Dr. Glassman. She’s come from New York City to see what it is we do here.”
Ericka smiled. The three men stood, I shook hands all around, and Steen poured me a cup of coffee.
“I’m fine,” I started to say, but stopped myself, afraid of violating some rule of Danish etiquette. I took the cup and feigned a sip.
“What is your area of research?” Ericka asked. Her accent was decidedly different from that of the Danes I’d already met. German, I guessed.
I wasn’t sure what to answer. Visitors, I gathered, were commonplace; they were the reason the database existed.
“I’m a psychiatrist,” I said, though that really had little relevance to my visit. A ticket in, “and I recently learned that I have an identical twin, one I was separated from at birth.” Did that explain me?
“That’s Steen’s specialty,” one of them men said. I could no longer recall who was who. I was glad when no one wanted to know more.
Steen continued with the tour and introductions. I saw offices, secretarial stations, and several large file rooms. The data had been computerized, but individual paper files were kept. Given the amount of data, much of it compiled in questionnaires done by hand, it was all surprisingly well organized.
At the very end of the hall there were offices for visiting researchers to park themselves. Steen opened the door to one, a room he’d believed to be empty, and said I could station myself there as the other offices were occupied. A man with white hair and a salt-and-pepper beard looked up from his laptop screen. He wasn’t startled, though Steen obviously was and began to apologize in Danish. The man stood.
“I’m sorry,” he said in English. “Dr. Pedersen said I could use this office.” He extended his hand to Steen. “Philip Howard, University of California at San Diego. I do breast cancer research.”
Steen would find me a place in another office, though I wasn’t sure I really needed any place to sit. I’d hoped to talk with him and based on what he’d been telling the people he’d introduced me to, he was planning to take me into the field with him today.
Dr. Howard moved his laptop and files to one side of the table and insisted he wouldn’t mind my company.
“Please, there’s just me. Plenty of room here,” he said, and there was. Researchers often came in pairs and each group was allotted their own space. The other rooms were in use by scientists from France and Venezuela.
“If you’re sure,” Steen said. “That’s very kind of you.” The registry members wanted to be good hosts; they were proud of their work and the role it had in so many medical and sociological studies. Steen left me, saying he’d be back in a few minutes and I was welcome to join him on a home visit to a twin in Middelfart.
“I’d love to,” I said. I had no idea where that was and Steen was gone before I could ask. I set down my bag and took off my coat. Philip Howard watched me, and I felt awkward. I had a novel and a Danish-English dictionary in my bag, but nothing more official to occupy my time with. I pulled out a seat, and made myself busy digging through the bag, hoping Dr. Howard would just go on with his work.
“Dr. Biorn works with separated twin pairs,” he commented.
“Yes.”
“You have a research interest?”
He wanted company, or wanted to make small talk, or just liked having another American around. I gave him the same line I’d given the group in the conference room, adding that I was from New York, and this sufficed. I asked about his research and hoped he wouldn’t ask about mine.
“There’s been a lot of debate about the efficacy of bone marrow and stem cell transplants in the treatment of stage four breast cancer,” Dr. Howard explained. “Mostly, it’s been called experimental, which means insurance companies refuse to pay for it and much of the data show no differences in survival rates. As such, it’s no longer used as a treatment for advanced breast cancer, though the South African group had notably higher survival rates in their transplanted groups. So many women underwent bone marrow transplants in the nineties that it’s hard to ignore the anecdotal results, the stories of those who are still alive, even some who had widespread metastases.”
I felt like I was sitting at a medical talk. Dr. Howard was animated-- he could have been standing in front of a packed auditorium hall with stadium-style seats. He would, have gone on to give a complete lecture and I suppose I was grateful I wasn’t left to twiddle my thumbs while he busied himself with work. Still, as an audience of one, I interrupted his discourse.
“And the Twin Registry, how does that help?” I asked.
“Breast cancer,” he explained, “is a common illness. With this number of twin pairs, there are many, many cases of breast cancer. The multi-center trials that looked at the efficacy of transplant have all followed either autologous transplants---where the individual donates his own bone marrow or stem cells—or allogenic transplants—those from a closely matched relative. The twin studies allow us to look at syngenic transplants—those where the donor was an identical twin—and compare the results. We are particularly interested in follow-up of the donor, asking if she, too, eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer and if the donor origin makes a prognostic difference for the twin who was originally diagnosed. We’ve actually found a handful of twin pairs where the twin sister donated bone marrow, the first sister survived, and the second twin—the donor—has then been diagnosed with the disease and the first twin subsequently served as the donor for the second twin’s transplant.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It is,” Dr. Howard was enthusiastic and liked having an audience. “Unfortunately, it’s not the norm. In the vase majority of cases, the first twin has had a recurrence and died. One of the things we’re just now looking at is the fate of the second twin.”
“And?” I asked.
“So far, about half of them have been diagnosed with breast cancer.”
Steen reappeared, pleased that Dr. Howard and I were getting along, as if he’d negotiated our successful marriage. I wondered how old Philip Howard was, and it occurred to me that he wasn’t much older than I; the white hair was deceptively aging.
It took just under an hour to get where we were going. Middlefart is a harbor town at the western-most tip of the island of Funan, it is connected to the Danish mainland by two bridges. It is a pristine town with narrow streets, and is home to the Museum of International Ceramic Art. Steen was apologetic; we wouldn’t have time to visit, but he suggested I might want to return on my own.
“It’s not to be missed,” he insisted. “The beaches, too, are nice here. Clean.” But it was not beach season and I shivered at the thought of standing in the wind by the water.
Steen talked as he negotiated the drive and I was relieved that he didn’t require much from me.
“I’m taking you to meet Jonna Hjelmberg. You’ll like her. She is old now, eighty-one or eighty-two,” he said, “and she was separated from her twin after both parents died in a fire when they were babies. The father threw the girls out a third-story window to a neighbor, and then he jumped. He was injured in the fall and died a couple of weeks later, presumably of an infection. The mother never followed and she died of smoke inhalation before the flames incinerated her. There were no relatives, just a great-aunt who was too feeble to care for twin babies. The neighbor was stuck with them and when the father died, he brought them to the parish vicar who could find no one to care for two colicky babies. Eventually, they were separated and Jonna’s sister, Lærk, was sent to a family in a rural area outside Kolding.”
“Is that far?” I asked.
“With the roads now, it’s maybe twenty minutes at the most. Who knows how long it took back then.”
“So did they stay in contact as children?”
“They’ve never met,” Steen said, matter-of-factly.
“They’ve never met?” I was surprised and it occurred to me that Steen enjoyed my reaction. “Do they know of each other’s existence?”
“Well they didn’t as children, but when the Registry was started they found out. They were in their thirties, each woman was married and had children and they were apparently both very bland about the whole idea. They agreed to be interviewed and to fill out regular health and habit surveys, but neither has asked about the other and there has been no talk of contact. I was brought on twelve years ago to head the Early Separation Research Unit and since then I’ve met with each twin three times a year.”
“They’ve never wanted to meet?”
“They’ve never wanted to meet,” Steen answered. There really wasn’t any more to it than that. Their personalities were similar, I guessed. What, I wondered would happen if one did want a reunion and the other didn’t? Perhaps, I thought, they might someday bump into each other in a restaurant.
“Now they don’t look alike,” Steen warned me, though he’d already told me we wouldn’t be meeting Lærk. “Jonna is a bit heavier and she gets her hair done up every week. Her features are more filled out and she is still quite spry. Lærk is thin and frail and her hair is wiry. Her face sinks in a little because her teeth are bad and she has arthritis in one knee, so she hobbles more than walks.”
Jonna lived in an apartment above a shoe store on Handelsgaden Østergade, a main boulevard with shops and cafes. Steen was pleased to find a parking space right around the corner. He fed the billetautomat 10 krone and it gave him a ticket.
“Our version of a parking meter,” he said as he placed the ticket on his dashboard. The streets were clean and it occurred to me that if we had this system in New York, these little stubs would be flying everywhere.
Jonna’s apartment was dark—she had the curtains drawn—and filled with a lifetime of photographs and clutter. She was very excited to see Steen and ushered us in with a flurry, talking in an animated and gesticulated Danish. Steen introduced me and she held out her hand and exclaimed, “Hi!” I had to smile. I was pleased to be so warmly welcomed.
She led us to a kitchen table, set for two with napkins and utensils. She quickly added another place setting and I sat in silence as the two of them talked. She served us coffee, then rye bread topped with butter and sugar. The apartment smelled like fish and no sooner had we finished the bread, then out came more of the bread with a tray of pickled herring, some sliced meats and cheese, hard-boiled eggs, and red cabbage.
“This is wonderful,” I said to Jonna in English. It wasn’t until Steen turned to her to translate that I realized she didn’t speak English. Up until now, everyone I’d met had been fluent. My heart dropped a notch or two-- I had hoped to talk with her about my experience of meeting my twin. I was curious as to why she hadn’t wanted to meet hers and no one else I’d met, or even heard of, might relate to this experience. I felt some bond with the elderly Jonna as she flitted about in her housedress and apron, serving us food and drink, hovering over Steen, trying so hard to please.
After lunch, we moved to the living room. Steen and I settled on the sofa and Jonna showed us a photo album of her most recent great-grandchildren. She talked quickly, and Steen sat next to me translating a modified version of who was who and why the photo was being taken.
“That’s nine-year-old Else right before her piano recital,” Steen said. She was a pretty girl with long hair and a soft, round face.
He was patient and never rushed Jonna, never pointed out that we were here for a purpose. When she reached the last page of the album, Jonna closed it and sat down heavily on a chair. Without words, she implied, Okay, your turn.
Steen pulled some papers from his bag and put on his reading glasses. He kept one set of the papers for himself and gave me another set in English. He asked her question after question in an even, methodical tone, and recorded her answers. If she hesitated to answer, he would translate for me, but otherwise he progressed with his work. Jonna, too, became serious and she cooperated fully with the process. There were checklists of diseases and symptoms; he recorded her medications—she was on eight different ones and brought him all the bottles. There were questions that asked about habits, environmental exposures, personality features, tastes and preferences. Jonna did not flinch when he asked about her sexual habits, and he didn’t translate at all during this section, so I could only wonder what they were saying. Her husband, Steen had told me earlier, died nearly twenty years ago and her four children were very close and very attentive. Her grandchildren were less attentive and more needy. She didn’t have money for them, but they often asked her to baby-sit or to sew for them. It let her feel useful, though occasionally she felt they took advantage.
When they were finished and the papers had been put away, Steen turned to me and said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “Dr. Glassman, I’ve explained to Jonna the circumstances of your personal discovery and your visit here. She says it would be fine for you to ask her any questions and I will be happy to serve as your translator.”
I was taken back. Yes, I had questions. I hadn’t thought them out, though, and I wished I’d brought a list. As polite as Steen was, it felt like I was imposing for my own selfish, unscientific gain. I wasn’t sure what to say.
I guess, I said, ask Jonna why she hasn’t wanted to meet her twin. Steen looked a bit disturbed, but he translated and they talked.
“She says she’s had a full life, occupied by many people, and there has been no space to put a stranger.”
There had to be more to it than that, but I looked in Jonna’s eyes, and knew there was nothing else to be learned. She was an old woman, she loved—yes, loved—Steen, and the attention he brought, but she was not looking for a twin to fill a void, or upset the homeostasis of her life and her relationships. I looked into Jonna’s eyes and wondered what I was looking for, what had pulled me to these people and this place. My life, too, was full, and what space was there for Emily-- or Abigail, for that matter? I didn’t belong in this apartment and I was relieved when it was time to go. Jonna hugged Steen, and we thanked her for lunch.
Steen was quiet on the ride back to Odense. It was a comfortable silence for him—he had no need to fill the air with words—but, initially, an awkward one for me. I talked and he said nothing, just listened to me ramble about Jonna and how I envied her ease, her lack of need, her satisfaction with what life had given her and how she wasn’t searching for something more. We were on the highway and the landscape zoomed by. Farms and flatlands, the leaves were gone and Spring, though nearly here, still felt very far away. The sunlight had that wintry dimness that cast just enough light without truly illuminating.
Now and again Steen would make a comment, something to lead me on or to acknowledge he was listening, or perhaps to just be polite. I grew more comfortable talking and found myself saying things I wouldn’t normally confide to a stranger.
“My husband and I haven’t been able to have children.”
Steen said nothing, just looked to the road, and I continued.
“Emily has a daughter, Abigail, and it was funny to realize there was someone out there who is the genetic equivalent of my child,” I said.
“You are jealous,” Steen said, echoing back to me the feeling I’d never asserted as such. Yes, very. Just thinking about Abby left me throbbing.
I told Steen about Jules, about the look he’d exchanged with Abby, about how his heart ached for her or a child like her. Steen could have been the psychiatrist-- he understood and it left me feeling vulnerable to be seen through. Then again, this whole trip was about being transparent.
Steen pulled off the highway well before Odense. I wondered if we were going to see another twin, but he parked the car alongside a garden that had a few early-blossoming flowers. The trees all remained bare with their brown branches pointing to the sky, still weeks from budding. The only structure in sight was a church, well in the distance.
“Twins have a connection,” Steen said. “It’s all twins, those who are identical, those who are fraternal, even those who’ve lost their twin at birth. There is something special, mystical. My sister, Ane, and I are as different as siblings can be, but still, we are the twins, there is something that has always been exceptional, something that always will be and everyone else knows they are left out.
“The separated twins have all told me they knew,” Steen continued. “Maybe they didn’t know, but they all had a sense there was someone else out there, someone with a bond, that the world somewhere contained something they were missing. Even Jonna, who wants nothing from her sister, who’s life is full--she knew. She wouldn’t put it in quite those words, but Lærk will always be a part of who she is. Maybe you don’t know it, maybe my words have a hollow sound, but I guarantee, it’s why you became a psychiatrist. You knew there was more, you were searching, just in the wrong place. It’s why you came here.
“It’s not just a bond to each other,” he continued, “it’s to all twins. We are drawn together, seek each other out, feel understood by one another in a way singletons can’t.”
I tried on his words, like slipping into a beautiful silk blouse; either they fit just right or I so much wanted them to. Something about that drive had been very powerful for me, It had been a long time since anyone had listened to me like that. I thought of Jules back in New York and of the shards of sorrow that tainted our marriage, my suspicion that he blamed me for our childlessness, my sudden dissatisfaction with life since Emily had found her way in.
Excuses, I’d think later and I’d remind myself that no one was responsible for my behavior but me. Jules could be sad that he wasn’t a father, Steen could listen and charm me with mystical ideas, but in the end, I was left to my own self-loathing.
Before I had a chance to respond, to even consider if I might have somewhere in my unconscious had any glimpse of the fact that I was a twin, Steen reached over and kissed me lightly on the side of my mouth. He put his hand on my cheek, guided my face towards his, and kissed me a second time, this time passionately.
I wish I’d felt repulsed, angry, or guilty, and that I’d pushed him away. I could have shoved him back, opened the car door and ran. I could have simply turned my head away and said no, or administered a compact Hollywood-style slap across the face. Instead, I reverted to the college girl I had been before I met Jules, before I had ever fallen in love, when sex was about the moment and the moment was about satisfaction. My life would change that day in that car in that country, and I would have no way of explaining, even to myself, how I could have let it happen.
I melted into Steen’s kiss, and then his caresses. His hand was under my blouse, then squeezing my breast. In the next breath, or so it seemed, he was inside of me. It wasn’t until later that I could wonder what number twin I’d been, if he felt something for me and the intimacies I’d shared, or if this wasn’t just about the conquest. It wasn’t until later, back at my hotel, that I could feel repulsed, angry, and overwhelmingly guilty.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d gone to Denmark to find, but by morning I knew the search was over. I could not go back to the Danish Twin Registry, to it’s Early Separation Research Unit. I packed my bags and went to Copenhagen where I watched movies in my hotel room and waited for it to be time to go home.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Two Versions of Chapter One: Vote For The One You Like Best
Version One of Double Billing: Chapter 1 -- You may have read this on Shrink Rap
She emerged from the subway to an assault on all her senses. Cars, buses and taxicabs honked their horns, black exhaust puffed in her face, pedestrians rushed by with to-go coffee cups still steaming, the wind blew cold, and she had no idea which way to go. She studied the streets signs, glanced at a map and unable to get her bearings, finally just picked a direction and started walking.
Emily Mason came to New York City that day, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally 7,503 Gates, each standing 16 feet tall, lining 23 miles of walkways.
Emily made her way to Central Park and once there, she walked for hours, stopping only once to buy sugar-coated nuts from a vendor. The Gates were the oddest of sights, magical and magnificent, and Emily felt compelled to follow their trail. Was it art, she asked? What did it mean? Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped; after all, it was February. It was suddenly quite dark and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get where she wanted to be. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, she left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively; she didn’t know him and Emily is such a common name-- obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half. There was no hostess and Emily searched for a clean table—the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table for four; the restaurant was nearly empty and she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto the chair beside her though, still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, his expression changed. His eyes grew wide, maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so my identical twin met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
End of Version One of Chapter One.
__________
Version Two of Chapter One:
My sister was a person with no history or anchors. Her mother left when she was three, and those memories of her are elusive, at best. Her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence and it was just the two of them, an only child of an only child, until he died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily came to New York City, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of thousands of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and she felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled. Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark, and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but she knew no one in Manhattan, and Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half.
There was no hostess and she searched for a clean table—the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table set for four, but the restaurant was so empty, she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs though, still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.
The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, his expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so my identical twin met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
End Chapter One, Version Two
She emerged from the subway to an assault on all her senses. Cars, buses and taxicabs honked their horns, black exhaust puffed in her face, pedestrians rushed by with to-go coffee cups still steaming, the wind blew cold, and she had no idea which way to go. She studied the streets signs, glanced at a map and unable to get her bearings, finally just picked a direction and started walking.
Emily Mason came to New York City that day, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally 7,503 Gates, each standing 16 feet tall, lining 23 miles of walkways.
Emily made her way to Central Park and once there, she walked for hours, stopping only once to buy sugar-coated nuts from a vendor. The Gates were the oddest of sights, magical and magnificent, and Emily felt compelled to follow their trail. Was it art, she asked? What did it mean? Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped; after all, it was February. It was suddenly quite dark and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get where she wanted to be. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, she left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively; she didn’t know him and Emily is such a common name-- obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half. There was no hostess and Emily searched for a clean table—the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table for four; the restaurant was nearly empty and she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto the chair beside her though, still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, his expression changed. His eyes grew wide, maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so my identical twin met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
End of Version One of Chapter One.
__________
Version Two of Chapter One:
My sister was a person with no history or anchors. Her mother left when she was three, and those memories of her are elusive, at best. Her father wasn’t much for conversation or reminiscence and it was just the two of them, an only child of an only child, until he died when she was nineteen, leaving her alone and on a quest for a family. She was happy, I believe, to have found me that day.
Neither Emily nor I ever liked secrets and her unexpected entry into my life turned me into someone I found hard to recognize. Someone who never liked secrets but was now owned by them.
It was February, 2005 and Emily came to New York City, in part, to see The Gates in Central Park—the display by Christo and Jeanne-Claude of thousands of monuments lining the footpaths of the park. Each one was a huge metal portal topped with an orange curtain flap that billowed in the wind, looking a bit like a giant puppet theatre. There were thousands of them, literally, and she felt drawn to follow their long paths. She walked for hours in the park. Was it art, she asked? Did it mean something? She didn’t have an answer and didn’t have a companion to discuss it with, but she was compelled. Here and there, in the northern, quieter parts of the park, Emily would leave the paths, climb a boulder to look out over the landscape, and find herself giggling out loud at the bewildering sight of the orange fluttering canvases.
Eventually, the sun set and the temperature dropped. It was suddenly quite dark, and a stranger to New York City, Emily found herself a bit disoriented and unsure of how to get back to where she started. Chilled, tired, and no longer able to appreciate anything but her own discomfort, my sister left Central Park on the East Side by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and walked over to Third Avenue. She wanted hot soup or coffee, or both, and ducked into a diner.
“Emily,” A man said. She glanced at the stranger reflexively, but she knew no one in Manhattan, and Emily is such a common name; obviously he was talking to some other Emily. He was sitting alone, though his table remained set for two and he’d been careful not to let his belongings— his black leather gloves, house keys, an unopened envelope-- spill onto the other half.
There was no hostess and she searched for a clean table—the ones closest to the door had dirty dishes on them.
“Emily!” The man’s voice was more insistent. She spotted a table set for four, but the restaurant was so empty, she was certain it would be okay to sit there alone. She’d have room to give her bag its own seat and spread out with a street map. Emily settled her coat onto one of the chairs though, still chilled, she left her scarf draped around her shoulders.
The man was suddenly there, having gotten up from his own seat to approach her. She could have been frightened but he had a gentle face, a cultured presence, and nothing about him was threatening.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I got us a table over there. I ordered a drink for you.”
She was confused. I’m sorry, sir, she wanted to say, but you have the wrong Emily. Before she could speak, his expression changed. His eyes grew wide; maybe his skin blanched a shade.
“Emily, what did you do to your hair? And where did you get those clothes?”
And so my identical twin met Jules, my husband-- her brother-in-law-- just moments before I, also an Emily, arrived.
End Chapter One, Version Two
Introduction To The Interactive Novel Project
This blog started on Shrink Rap-- a blog by psychiatrists, for psychiatrists and anyone else interested in the journey. I am a psychiatrist and a writer, and in 2001, my first novel, Monday at The Charm was published. Since then, I've written a number of novels, taken classes, stood on my head and ranted, and just haven't found my niche. After reading a New York Times article on the quirkiness and unpredictability of what makes a novel sell, I decided to start my own experiment with my latest book, Double Billing.
The premise is simple, I will post chapters along with polls. You are invited to vote, you are invited to comment. I welcome your insights and I have a thick skin.
For the first post, please click here to read and comment on the first chapter of Double Billing.
Thanks for your help!
The premise is simple, I will post chapters along with polls. You are invited to vote, you are invited to comment. I welcome your insights and I have a thick skin.
For the first post, please click here to read and comment on the first chapter of Double Billing.
Thanks for your help!
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