“Sometimes,” Haylee said, and all the men laughed.
“But Mother never does,” I added.
Daddy quickly got them all into the tennis, and the argument about homeschooling was forgotten.
Mother decided to add one other thing to our education: piano lessons. What shocked Daddy was that she insisted on each of us having her own piano.
“Why can’t they just take turns with the instructor?” he asked.
“That won’t work,” she insisted. “Eventually, they’ll be teaching each other this way. It’s natural to identical twins. One always mimics the other. I call it the shadow syndrome, which is a good thing.”
He was still against it, but she went ahead and bought two pianos anyway. Our first piano teacher, Joe LaRuffa, a former high school music teacher, was quite impressed with us having our own pianos, but he was also impressed with how quickly we learned and how much Mother made us practice.
So music instruction became part of our homeschooling, something Mother told us was being sacrificed in public schools. “Which is another reason I want you homeschooled first. Your father knows nothing about any of this.”
We had as much of a structured day as any school-age child. Every day, even on weekends sometimes, we sat in the den that she had converted into a classroom, blackboard and all. We even had actual school desks that Mother had found at an antiques shop. One had the initials BB carved deeply into it, so rather than grind them out, she carved the same initials into the second desk exactly where they were on the first.
We watched her work in the garage. Daddy wasn’t home at the time. He was on another business trip. I was fascinated with how she bore down on the desk without the initials and carved them into the wood. Her expression was so intent that I thought she was angry about it. She worked carefully and paused every few moments to be sure they would be exactly the same when she had finished. She wouldn’t let either of us touch the desks until she had completed the carving. Then she shellacked both the desks and the chairs and placed the exact same number of pencils and pens in the holders.
When Daddy got home, he was amazed and asked about the initials. “How did you find two with the same initials carved in them and in the exact same place?”
“Maybe it was the name of the school,” she said, “or maybe it was the initials of a boy two girls had crushes on.”
He shook his head and stood there smiling like someone waiting to hear the end of a story or the punch line of a joke. I thought she would say she was kidding and tell him what she had done, but she never did, and neither Haylee nor I ever told him what we saw her do. Instinctively, we knew it would upset her. It was always a question of us being more loyal to her than to him, even though we weren’t sure why she would have to lie to him about it.
Later, when Daddy wasn’t there, she complimented us for not saying anything. “Your father would not understand,” she said. “You sensed that, I know. You are so amazing.”
I looked at Haylee. I was sure she didn’t have that idea. I certainly didn’t. I was simply afraid that Mother would be angry, but I had no real thought about why. Maybe we were amazing.
When we began what she called our formal homeschooling, Mother spent most of her time continuing to teach us to read. Once she felt we had achieved a certain level, she had our school day divided into subjects: English, math, science, and social studies, with thirty minutes for each. Our music instruction was on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In order for us to get used to the idea of separate classes, she had a clock timed to ring after thirty minutes. We had our lunch period, but even that was like a class, because she taught us proper dining etiquette, including how to softly dab at our lips with our napkins. If I did it one more time than Haylee did or if she did it one more time than I did, Mother pointed it out so we would do it exactly the same. After all the subjects were done, we had to spend another half hour in what she called a study session, during which we would mostly read. I read faster than Haylee, but I knew that if I finished too soon, Mother would make me start again until Haylee caught up.
“You might have missed something,” she would say.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we also had what she called physical education class, even if it was raining or snowing. We would go out back and do exercises, and then we were allowed to kick a ball or just run in circles. I could beat Haylee in a race, but the first time I did it, she started to cry, and Mother looked very upset. She made us race again, and this time, I deliberately lost, something I often saw Daddy do when he played tennis with Mother.
Exercise was usually the end of school on those days. Of course, we had homework to do before we could watch television or play a game. Mother compared our handwriting and pointed out that Haylee wasn’t finishing her Qs as well as I was. She made her practice just writing Qs until she did it the same way I did. After we were seven, she decided to add French, because she spoke French well. Once, when Haylee couldn’t remember how to ask in French to go to the bathroom, Mother made her stand in the middle of the room and hold it in until she got it right.
“You’ll thank me later,” she assured both of us. “They won’t teach you a language in grade school, even at the private school we’ve been considering for you when I think you’re ready to attend. Forget the public school. A good education is a luxury here in this country and not a necessity. Even after you begin at the private school, we’ll continue our work here at home, especially with French. I want you to always be miles ahead of your classmates.”
She smiled. “They’ll think you’re special simply because you’re perfect twins, and they’ll expect you to be superior, perfect in everything. That’s fine. You know why? Because you will be,” she said. “You’ll be so far ahead when you do enter school that your teachers will not know what to do with you. Why, I expect that on graduation day, you’ll be so close in your averages that you’ll make the speech together. Wouldn’t that be something? You’ll alternate lines. There’ll be enough applause to make everyone deaf for a few moments.”
I was the first to realize that Mother tried her best to avoid referring to us as two. She wouldn’t say “the two of you.” It was always just “you.”
When I realized this, I told Haylee. Mother was right. We were already way ahead of children our age when it came to the study of English grammar, so I pointed out the use of the pronoun. “She’s using the plural you whenever she refers to either of us. It’s almost like she sees double.” That was something many people joked about when they first saw us.
Haylee shrugged, but then she thought about it again, and despite what Mother believed about our simultaneous habitual gestures, Haylee narrowed her eyelids into slits of suspicion and showed a touch of anger. I never did that with my eyes. I didn’t think I ever looked as mean as Haylee could look.
“I don’t care about the plural you. You’re just trying to show off. She looks mainly at me anyway,” Haylee said, “and she means me anyway when she says ‘you.’ She can’t help it, no matter what she says. I’m the better student, so I understand everything faster. She knows.”
How could she say that? I wondered. Mother never gave her a higher grade on a test than she had given me. In fact, neither
of us ever had a different grade, higher or lower, on anything. Contrary to what Haylee claimed, I was usually the one who came up with the answers to Mother’s questions first.
I was about to disagree with her when Mother entered our bedroom, and I practically glued my lips together so none of my protest would escape, because that would have caused a furious argument right in front of Mother.
If Haylee and I got into an argument about something, no matter what it was, she always blamed us both and punished us equally. Neither of us could ever be right or wrong. In fact, both of us had to be a little wrong if we disagreed. If Daddy made a comment that favored one or the other of us in an argument, Mother practically clawed him to death. There was one thing she stressed above all else. I was surprised she had never had it on a plaque above our bedroom door: Never blame your sister for anything; never make her look foolish or stupid, or you will look foolish and stupid, too.
Once, when we were only six, she brought us down to the living room after Haylee had shouted at me for spoiling her drawing of our house that she was going to show Mother and Daddy. I had added the porch light by the front door. She had forgotten it, and I was just trying to help. Mother could hear Haylee scream and came rushing in.