Double Billing: The Interactive Novel Project

The End of Chapter 7

2007-06-01T08:58:00.000-04:00

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.

Chapter 6

2007-05-29T08:56:00.000-04:00

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.

Read My Fiction

2007-05-24T07:52:00.000-04:00

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.

The beginning of Chapter 5

2007-05-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

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.”

* * *

Double Billing: Chapter 4

2007-05-22T09:03:00.000-04:00

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 3

2007-05-21T12:33:00.001-04:00

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.

Another Poll

2007-05-19T22:28:00.001-04:00

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?

Two Versions of Chapter One: Vote For The One You Like Best

2007-05-16T21:36:00.000-04:00

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

Introduction To The Interactive Novel Project

2007-05-16T12:23:00.000-04:00

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!