I’m at my parents’ row house in South Philly the next day, playing hooky because my twin sister’s on parole from the convent. She only gets out once a year under the rules of her cloistered order, and isn’t permitted phone calls or mail. I hate the convent for taking my twin from me. I can’t believe that God, even if he does exist, would want to divide us.
“You all right, Maria?” My mother frowns behind her thick glasses, which make her brown eyes look supernaturally large. She’s half blind from sewing lampshades in the basement of this very house, her childhood home. The kitchen is the only thing that’s changed since then; the furniture and fixtures remain the same, stop-time. We still use the tinny black switchplate like a bulletin board, leaving notes among the dogeared mass cards, a photo of JFK, and a frond of dried-out palm.
“I’m fine, Ma. I’m fine.” I wouldn’t dream of telling her I think I’m being watched. She’s like a supersensitive instrument, the kind that calibrates air pressure—or lies. She has a jumpy needle, and the news would send it into the red zone.
“Maria? They’re not treating you good at that office?” She scrutinizes me, the wooden spoon resting against her stretch pants like Excalibur in its scabbard.
“I’ve just been busy. It’s almost time for them to decide who makes partner.”
“Dio mio! They’re lucky to have you! Lucky! The nuns said you were a genius! A genius!” A scowl contorts her delicate features. Even at seventy-three, she makes up in the morning and gets her hair done every Saturday at the corner, where they tease it to hide her bald spot.
“Catholic school standards, Ma.”
“I should go up there to that fancy office! I should tell them how lucky they are to have my daughter be their lawyer!” She unsheaths the spoon and waves it recklessly in the air.
“No, Ma. Please.” I touch her forearm to calm her. Her skin feels papery.
“They should burn in hell!” She trembles with agitation. I wrap my arms around her, surprised at her frailty.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“Whaddaya two doing, the fox-trot?” jokes my father, puffing his cigar as he walks into the kitchen. He looks roly-poly in a thin short-sleeved shirt. It’s almost transparent, made from some obscure synthetic fiber, and he’s got the dago T-shirt on underneath. My father has dressed this way for as long as I can remember. When he’s dressed up, that is.
“Out! Out of the kitchen with that cigar!” my mother shouts—of necessity, because my father never wears his hearing aid.
“Don’t shoot!” He puts up both hands, then returns to the baseball game blaring in the living room.
My mother’s magnified eyes are an inch from my nose. “When is he going to stop with those cigars? When?”
“He’s been smoking cigars for sixty years, Ma. You think he’ll quit soon?”
Suddenly, there’s a commotion at the front door and I hear Angie shouting a greeting to my father. My mother and I hurry into the living room, where Angie is taking off her sweater.
“Hello, beautiful,” she says, with a laugh. She always calls me that. It’s her joke, since we’re identical twins.
“Angie!” I lock her in a bear hug.
“Hey, that’s too tight, let me go.”
“No.”
“Mare …”
“Not until you tell me you miss me.”
“Ma, get her off of me, please.”
“Let your sister alone. You’re too old for that. Too old.” My mother swats me in the arm with the spoon.
“Too old to hug my own twin? Since when?”
She hits me again.
“Ouch! What is this, Mommy Dearest?” I let Angie go.
“Yeah, grow up,” she says, with a short laugh. Her eyes look large and luminous under a short haircut—our childhood pixie resurrected. She’s dressed in jeans and a Penn sweatshirt just like mine, having left her Halloween costume back at the convent. We’re twins again, but for the hair and the fact that Angie looks rested and serene, with a solid spiritual core.
“Look at her, Ma, she looks so good!” I say. “Angie, you look great!”
“Stop, you.” Angie can’t take a compliment, never could.
“Turn around. Let me see.”
She does a obligatory swish-turn in her jeans.
“You wearing underwear?”
She laughs gaily. For a split second, it’s a snapshot of the twin I grew up with. I catch glimpses of the old Angie only now and then. The rest of the time, she’s a twin I hardly know.
“Basta, Maria! Basta!” chides my mother happily.
“So you’re out of uniform. I can’t believe it.”
“I changed at a Hojo’s after I left.” She sets her purse on the floor.
“Why?”
“No special reason. Tired of you making all those habit jokes, I guess.”
“Me?”
“You.”
“Well I love the sweatshirt. You look like yourself again.”
“Like I didn’t know you’d say that,” Angie says.
“Look at this hair!” My mother runs an arthritic hand through Angie’s hair. “So soft. Just like a baby’s.”
Angie smiles, and I wonder why she’s so accepting of my mother’s touch and not my own.
“Look at this hair, Matty!” my mother shouts delightedly. “Just like a baby’s!”
My father smiles. “You got your baby back, Mama.”
Angie positively glows in my mother’s arms. “I can’t get over how good you look, Ange. I think I’m in love,” I say.
“Will you stop already?” She wiggles away from my mother, still smiling.
“Plus I’m not used to you looking so much better than me. You look like the after picture and I look like the before.”
“That’s because you work too hard.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Did you make a partner yet?”
“No, they decide in two months. I’m going crazy. I hate life.” I wish I could tell her about the partnership rumors and the strange car, but we won’t
