Three Black Swans (11 page)

When she was a girl, GeeGee had loved ballet. She had attended ballet classes in the city for decades and had taken her great-granddaughter to many a performance.

And if I’m not her great-granddaughter? thought Genevieve.

GeeGee might take the news in stride. Age gave perspective. But if you have staked your all on one child and that child isn’t
yours after all, and the parents of that child have been lying for years …

How had Ned and Allegra gotten away with it? If Allegra had not been pregnant but suddenly had a baby, everybody from her employer to her grandmother-in-law would have known it wasn’t hers.

Genevieve walked into the pool room.

The smile that told Genevieve she was the most welcome person on earth transformed GeeGee’s wrinkled face.

I’m going to sob, thought Genevieve. Just like Claire sobbed.

Am I just like Claire?
Exactly, precisely, identically like Claire?

She kissed her great-grandmother and stepped out of her jeans.

Her ancient “swimmers” invariably felt the pool water ought to be warmer, so Genevieve pleased them by jumping into the pool and shrieking, “Aaaaaah!” as if she too were shocked by the cold, although actually the water was annoyingly warm. Genevieve projected her voice to fill the cavernous room and to overcome the deafness suffered by her entire group. “Let’s all jog in place for a minute! Remember to breathe!”

The seniors laughed, since taking one’s last breath was a big worry in this crowd.

“If you hold your breath because it makes exercise seem easier,” Genevieve said for the umpteenth time, “your blood pressure will rise.”

Everybody had a noodle, a long plump foam ribbon to help with balance. The noodles were green and yellow and pink and blue. “Rainbow!” called Genevieve, and up went the noodles
to form brightly colored arcs in the air. The class stretched left and then they stretched right.

A few summers ago, with both her parents out of town on business trips, Genevieve had amused herself by going through every drawer of the desk and three bureaus in her parents’ bedroom. Doesn’t every kid do the same? Genevieve had not expected to find treasure or secrets; she just wanted to know what was there.

Jewelry. A stash of cash. Old programs and ticket stubs. Lists. Old passports. Birth certificates, including her own. She couldn’t remember it now, so it must have listed Ned and Allegra Candler as her parents, and Genevieve as their baby, or she would have noticed.

I’m not adopted after all, she realized. These parents who are so unparental are my parents. Whoever Missy and Claire are, I’m not related to them. I don’t have sisters.

She leaped into action so she wouldn’t weep. “Crosscountry!” she shouted. “Pretend you’re on skis! Lunge forward! Let’s try to do twenty! Let’s do a countdown! Nineteen! Eighteen! Seventeen! Lucille, you can’t drop out yet!”

Lucille yelled, “I’m ninety! I can drop out whenever I want!”

“Not in my class!” yelled Genevieve. “I’m the commander here! Keep up the pace!”

They were all laughing.

I only saw Claire crying, thought Genevieve. I only saw Missy excited. I want to see their smiles. I want to hear them laugh.

Her body exploded. She churned the water, making waves
and whirlpools. I want to see them. I want to be in the same room with Missy and Claire.

Once I see them, I’ll know.

Do I have sisters?

Am I adopted?

I’ll know.

*  *  *

Genevieve’s walk home was peaceful and familiar. A pleasantly shaded sidewalk led through the village, past boutiques and real estate offices, the post office and a coffee shop. Beyond them were the tracks of the Long Island Railroad. She turned south, walked two long blocks, swung left at a little park and followed this street home.

When she had been young enough to need after-school sitters, Genevieve had not come home to an empty house. Now each time she unlocked the door and reset the alarm, she felt a pang. She acclimated herself to the emptiness and then walked silently into the back half of the house, where there was light. Genevieve loved sunlight. In school, she always wanted a desk by the window. She was vague about her future and could not visualize her life beyond the first week of college, but she knew she wanted sunlight. Texas, maybe. Southern California. Spain.

The Candlers lived in a town of spacious homes, many of them true mansions, and all with generous yards, but their own house was small and cramped, with a living room/kitchen
taking up the entire back half, a master bedroom and bath the front left quarter and the garage the front right quarter.

In the large living room/kitchen, the Candlers lived like pioneers in a one-room log cabin, except that their one room had every conceivable electronic delight. If her parents were home and awake, they were here. In this room was life: magazines and mail, microwave and gas fireplace, books and television, movies and radio, sound system and computer. The appliances hummed, waiting for human attention.

Me too, thought Genevieve.

Their backyard was so small it didn’t even have a tree, but their neighbors’ big yards were filled with massive maples. With no fences, it felt and looked as if the Candlers had a big yard too. The setting sun gleamed through half-bare branches.

She had turned her cell phone off when she arrived at the pool, because when her phone rang, she absolutely could not stand letting it ring. If she vaulted out of the pool to snatch it up, GeeGee was disapproving.

Now she powered it on, watching a photograph appear on the little screen: an above-the-shoulders picture of herself, GeeGee and her parents at their anniversary party last year. Her parents had a good marriage. Maybe a great one. They loved each other’s company. Of all the events to which her father received tickets, dances were their favorites. Often the dance floor would clear while people stepped back to admire Ned and Allegra. Her mother loved to talk about these wonderful nights, when she and her handsome husband were the envy of every couple.

On Genevieve’s cell phone were messages from both parents.

Her mother’s voice was deep, as if she were a heavy smoker, when in fact Mom had literally never touched a cigarette. “I’m afraid of them,” she had told Genevieve once. “It looks like such fun waving them around and watching the smoke waft. If I so much as hold an unlit cigarette between my fingers, I’ll be hooked and spend my life rushing outdoors in all weather to suck on one.”

Genevieve’s eyes filled with tears. Yes, she wished her parents were different. Yes, she wished they had more time for her. But she loved them. If only they loved her back.

“Vivi,” said her mother’s voice, “it’s about four. I have a staff meeting I can’t skip. I won’t be home until nine. Ten if I miss my train. There’s plenty to eat in the fridge. I can’t take a call during the meeting, but text so I know you got home all right. Love you.”

Then Dad’s voice, higher than Mom’s. He was a tenor, and used to sing in a concert choir but missed too many rehearsals what with all his engagements, and had to drop out. “Vivi. Building committee is tonight. I’ll be home maybe ten o’clock. I’m not far, fifteen minutes if you need me. See you.”

They do love me, she told herself. They do worry. They just trust me to lead my life while they lead theirs. I’ve never said to them, “I hate all this independence. Come home. Do nothing for a change. Sit around. Keep me company.”

If her parents ever sat around, Genevieve would know they were fatally ill, severely depressed or too penniless to fill the gas tank.

Usually she sent both of them the same text, letting them know that she’d had a good day and was now home studying. I could forward the video instead, she thought. Even on the smallest screen, those girls are me.

It was tempting. Allegra would see the video during her important meeting. Ned would get his during his not particularly important meeting. Would it slap them in the face? Would they crumble? Or did they know already that there were two more of her in the world?

I’m probably overreacting, she thought. It was probably an ordinary mild resemblance.

But both Ray Feingold and Jimmy Fleming had seen Genevieve Candler when they saw Missy and Claire.

The sun went down. The living space was shadowy and silent. Without music or TV, she was alone in the world of her house.

What if she was
not
alone? What if she had Missy and Claire?

They don’t know that I’ve found them, she thought. They don’t know I exist. They think they’re twins.

Genevieve never did her homework in her bedroom. It was isolated up there. She worked at the kitchen counter, books spread over the expanse of glittering granite, and she ate dinner in nibbles, a little of this, a bite of that, all evening long. Now she prepared her tools: pencils, Post-its, fork and spoon.

Where the kitchen counter turned a corner, a built-in desk held the family computer. Genevieve circled the kitchen island
where her books were strewn, sat down at the little desk and brought up the video. Claire’s last name had not been given, but Genevieve tried various spellings of Vianello on MySpace and Facebook. And there she was: Missy Vianello, her page closed except to friends.

Genevieve researched. She herself had been born in Connecticut, and the high school where Missy had introduced her twin was also in Connecticut. Genevieve located the Connecticut statute dealing with the birth certificates of adopted children. It was difficult to work through the legal prose. It looked as if a newborn’s birth certificate gave the biological parents’ names, but once a court decreed the adoption, a new birth certificate was issued. This one had the adoptive parents’ names. So the adoptive parents had a legal birth certificate for their baby, but not precisely a true one.

Was that the kind of birth certificate she had found in her parents’ room?

It did not look as if any birth certificate would have a line at the bottom saying, “Multiple birth—check for siblings.”

Because no matter how many multiples are born, she thought, the babies are separate people. They get their own identities. If I were adopted, though, there would be a court decree. I didn’t find that. On the other hand, to keep the adoption secret, you would not store proof in a drawer where the child would find it.

Genevieve imagined her real mother as a young girl in high school, terrified, her future at risk. She imagined the girl sobbing as the social worker whisked away her babies.

I could be older than my real mother was when I was born! That real mother could have been fourteen. What fourteen-year-old could do a good job with one baby, let alone three?

Genevieve found herself weeping for her fourteen-year-old mother. She imagined the mother of this teenager—Genevieve’s biological grandmother—saying, “I might help you with one baby, but three? Give them up.”

Genevieve didn’t like the grandmother.

Maybe the biological mother was much older, in the middle of a spectacular career, already had two teenagers and could not disrupt her life for another kid, let alone three.

Genevieve didn’t like them, either. They ought to have celebrated! Rearranged the house! Rejoiced in three new babies!

What about the father? Was he just a kid himself? Or a stranger passing in the night, and the mother hadn’t even told him? Maybe she didn’t even know who he was so she
could
tell him.

Maybe they were both druggies out on the street and Social Services collected the babies from some slummy room as the parents sat around in a stupor.

Maybe the real mother was married but out of work, and her husband was a paraplegic and they’d lost their house in a fire and had no insurance on their car, which had broken down anyway, and they were using old bureau drawers for cribs, and it seemed kinder and better to let rich people be the parents.

I’m inventing birth mothers like a movie director trying to
find a good scene, she thought. And in Connecticut, Claire and Missy must be lying awake playing the same game.

No—wait—they already had the answers! How had they found each other? What did they know?

She watched the video again.

In the maddening way of television, half the sixty seconds were spent on the announcer. This made Genevieve crazy in nature shows, when the camera cut away from the grizzly bear or the lioness to show the expert. She always wanted to telephone and say sternly, “Nobody cares about you. Get out of the picture.”

But she did sort of care about Rick, with his unfortunate glasses and his cute face. He had brought Missy and Claire to her. If only he had given her more time with them.

Enough of this, she decided. I’m wasting time. She texted Jimmy.
I have to reach Ray Feingold.

In a minute, Jimmy texted back with Ray’s cell number.

Genevieve psyched herself up. Was anybody else in the entire United States asking how to get in touch with possible triplet sisters?

Halfway through dialing Ray’s number, she stopped. Once she reached those girls, the truth—whatever it was—was going to exist in this room. It would exist in her life. In her conversations. In her future. Between her and her parents. Between her and GeeGee.

I should sleep on it, she thought, knowing she wasn’t going to sleep tonight at all. She was going to be watching herself times two on video.

Mom and Dad will be home before long, she reminded herself. I could be sitting here. I could point to the screen. “Got sixty seconds?” I could say.

But Ned and Allegra’s reaction was beside the point. The two people who mattered now were Missy and Claire. Genevieve wanted to touch them and hear their voices and meet their eyes. The parents who had lied could be dealt with later. She completed her call to Ray Feingold. “This is Genevieve Candler,” she said, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.

“Hey, it’s me, Ray. You saw that video, Genevieve?” His voice was loud with excitement.

“I’ve been studying it for hours. Ray, I don’t have the answer. I don’t know what I’m seeing. I just know that I have to call those two girls up. I have to talk to them.”

“I agree,” said Ray. “I knew you’d be in touch. My friend at Missy’s high school gave me Missy’s cell number but he didn’t have the other girl’s. Ready to write it down?”