“What do you think?”
“I think . . . I think I have to get to know him a little more,” I said. That seemed safe enough.
“That sounds very intelligent and mature of you, Kaylee.”
“Maybe I’m just frightened, Daddy.”
“You’ll figure it out. Call me whenever you want, although I’m not the best authority when it comes to relationships.”
“Yes, you are,” I insisted. “?’Bye, Daddy. I’ve got to go to the library.”
“I’ll call you after the weekend, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
I sat there for a few moments to let what my father had told me settle inside me. Haylee home for Thanksgiving? What would that be like? Would she gloat about how successful she was at deceiving Dr. Alexander and the staff at the institution? Would she continue to be unremorseful, even daring to ask me to give her the details of my abduction as if it were only an adventure?
On the other hand, what if she had changed? What if she begged for my forgiveness, using the spirit of the holiday and family to pressure me? Could she really believe I would simply shrug it all off? Oh, well, you didn’t really mean to get rid of me?
And what about Mother? Whose side would she favor? Would she also try to persuade me to be forgiving and return the family to what it had been? Would I want to return to that? Would my resistance drive Mother back to the psych ward, and would everyone blame me?
Or would we all sit around the table and pretend nothing had happened? Not a word would be said, not a reference would be made to my abduction and Haylee’s role in arranging it. Haylee would come into my room just as she used to and ask me questions about my new school, my new friends, and any boys I liked. She’d pepper me with questions just to keep me from saying or asking a single thing about what she had done. At the end, she might even kiss me good night and expect me to kiss her as well, just as we always had.
My father had clearly indicated that I might still stop all this. Dr. Alexander wanted something from me to convince her it would be all right to permit Haylee to go home for Thanksgiving. If I refused even to meet with her, that might be enough, but then how would I look, especially to Mother if she found out? Once again, Haylee would win. I could even imagine her gloating. She had proven I was worse. She was willing to try to redeem herself, but I wouldn’t let it happen.
I rose and walked slowly toward the library. It did look like there would be at least snow showers today. The sky was almost completely overcast, and there was more of a chill in the air. Maybe the chill was really coming from inside me. I quickened my pace.
Right now, all I wanted to do was lose myself in my schoolwork and forget that I even had a family, not to mention Thanksgiving. After all, the things I’d be thankful for would give most girls my age endless nightmares.
12
Marcy and Claudia were gone by the time I returned from the library. I had dived so deeply into the assignments that I forgot to pause for lunch. Early in the afternoon, my stomach growled angrily at being ignored, and I came up for air. I stopped at the cafeteria to pick up a sandwich and a drink and returned to the dorm to eat in Claudia’s and my room.
Most everyone else was out doing fun things. The snow showers came and went, and the winds blew holes in the overcast sky, revealing patches of blue that widened until it was partly cloudy, with enough sunshine to raise the temperature. I was sure
Marcy, Claudia, and the boys were having a better time now, and for a moment, I was envious, but I had finished most of my weekend assignments. They’d all be cramming and moaning tomorrow, and Marcy would be begging me for my homework answers.
I looked over my clothes to choose something to wear on my date.
For most of Haylee’s and my lives, even when we had entered high school, Mother would make it her business to choose what we should wear. When we were older, we had to have her approve of anything we had chosen for ourselves. Gradually, with Haylee in the lead, we had begun to dress differently, first in small ways, with different shoes and socks, different earrings and bracelets, and then with different blouses, skirts, and jeans. Haylee even packed things in her school bag to change into once we were out of Mother’s sight.
For other girls our age, sisters or otherwise, making these kinds of choices for themselves was as natural as breathing. Who would understand how firmly Mother had imposed her will on us, stressing not independence but similarity always? She believed that as long as we were closely alike, down to the smallest of details, we were loving twins.
Our friends always questioned us about it or made fun of us, especially when we were younger, but gradually, they became used to it and were surprised and eager to point out the differences that especially Haylee created. We were like the puzzle in a magazine with two pictures of the same scene side by side and you had to find the tiny differences. Haylee always enjoyed all this attention, but I was embarrassed.
Once recently when Mother permitted herself to speak about the horrible events surrounding my abduction, she actually said it was her fault for not being strict enough in forbidding us to seek out our individuality.
“I saw you were drifting apart,” she moaned, her eyes filling with tears of regret, “and I didn’t do enough to stop it.”
Long before all these terrible things had happened and Mother had been taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation and therapy, Haylee would tell me our mother was insane.
“She’s not normal,” she would whisper. “And she will make us both crazy, too, if we don’t do something about it.”
Of course, I knew how different she was from other mothers, but for me, it was always easier to humor Mother, to do what she asked, and whenever possible, as Haylee was doing, to change when we were out from under her surveillance. Haylee was far more defiant and even at the age of ten or so would deliberately do something to challenge Mother’s wishes. She tried to sneak past her wearing a ring I wasn’t wearing or different-colored socks from mine. Most of the time, Mother spotted what she had done and made her go back and change. Haylee said Mother should work for the TSA, but pretty soon, she stopped joking about it. She complained more to my father than I ever did and in a real sense drove him into the arguments with Mother that laid the foundation for their eventual divorce. It was devastating to me, but Haylee seemed pleased.
“Now our father will be more on our side,” she told me. She knew more about the ways children of divorce played one parent against the other. She was reluctant to be a good student, relying on me to help her or to do her homework, but she devoured any information about children of divorce after it looked inevitable that it would happen between our parents.
Now that I thought more about our past and all the little things I recalled Haylee doing, I realized I was the blind one in our home and deliberately so. I had more opportunity to see Haylee’s real goals and intentions, but I wouldn’t face up to it. Instead, I tried to placate her, do what she wanted us to do, and even tried to think about things the way she did. I wanted to keep the peace on a battlefield where there was no truce or any possibility of one.