nerdy friends had become hot when they’d started driving, playing varsity sports, and growing serious facial hair where there had once only been severe cases of acne. Whatever the reason, these days Mary Theresa spent more time with Mitch and his friends than she did with Maggie.
Not that it mattered a whole lot. Sure, Maggie missed hanging out with her twin, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They were starting to separate finally, their interests weren’t the same anymore, and probably the biggest reason they didn’t get along was that Maggie refused to be led by the nose by her sister.
Mary Theresa had always made the decisions about what they were going to do, what friends they would share, or where they would go. But Maggie was sick of it. Sick of being a twin. Especially being the paler version of her flashy sister.
When they had started having “woman cycles” or “the monthly curse,” as their mother had called their periods, Mary Theresa was the first to get a cramp and therefore able to give Maggie more advice than she’d ever hoped to hear by the time her body had come to grips with womanhood six weeks later. Somehow it made Mary Theresa a know-it-all on all things related to blossoming womanhood and femininity.
A few years back Mary Theresa had gotten into clothes and nail polish and lipstick and listening to music that didn’t appeal to Maggie. She’d taken to smoking cigarettes in her room and blowing the smoke out her window late at night, bleaching streaks into her hair, and sneaking out once in a while, never confiding in Maggie about where she was going or what she was doing or whom she was meeting.
“You wouldn’t understand,” she’d said once when Maggie had caught her slipping through the window. Mary Theresa had been wearing skintight white shorts and a cropped-off yellow top that showed off her flat abdomen. “Just cover for me.”
“And say what?”
“I don’t know. Use your imagination. You’re supposed to be so good at it. All the English teachers say so,” she added with an envious edge to her voice. “As if you’re gonna be a writer or somethin’.”
“Well, I can’t imagine where you’re going or how I’m going to lie to Mom and Dad.”
“You’ll come up with something,” Mary Theresa had replied, clutching her pack of Virginia Slims in one hand while holding on to the sill with her other. She flashed her sister a radiant smile, then slipped into the yard, ducking past the pools of lights from lamps placed strategically between the rosebushes that had been in full, fragrant blossom.
Fortunately, their parents had never noticed Mary Theresa’s absences, and Maggie had never been forced to lie. Well, not yet anyway.
Now as she skimmed through the water and closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing and the steady rhythm of her strokes, the unrest in the family ate at her, destroying her concentration.
Whenever Mitch’s friends came around, Mary Theresa lit up like a Christmas tree while Maggie felt as if she disappeared into the woodwork. Mary Theresa flirted and giggled, dodging playful pinches, hot-blooded leers, and sensual remarks with an aplomb that left Maggie speechless.
It was bound to happen, she supposed. Who cared anyway?
She sensed rather than saw the edge of the pool, touched it with the tips of her fingers, and tucked quickly into an underwater somersault that propelled her back toward the house where Mary Theresa, disgruntled at the shade cast by the hedge, was shifting in the chaise.
Quickly Maggie swam twenty laps without a break. Her muscles began to ache. One more turn. She saw the edge of the pool near the house and knifed through the water. Stroke, stroke, stroke. Her lungs burned. She stretched and finally her fingers touched cement at the shallow end. She broke surface and gulped in air.
“Done already?” Mary Theresa asked, one eyebrow lifting over the tops of her Ray-Bans. Her body was slick with oil, tanned to a dark tawny shade, her hair piled onto her head.
“For now.” Maggie snagged the white towel she’d dropped at the pool’s lip.
Mary Theresa sighed. “Waste of time,” she muttered under her breath.
Irritated, Maggie patted her face dry, then, spying Mary Theresa basking with conceited calm on the lounge, she reached into the water, and on a whim, flung some cool drips onto Mary’s flat belly.
“Hey!” Mary Theresa shrieked and shot out of the chair. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothin’,” Mary Theresa mimed in a high-pitched voice, her face pulled into a nasty pout. “Pulllease, grow up for God’s sake, Maggie. Do you know what an embarrassment you are?”
Unperturbed, Maggie placed her hands on the ledge and hauled her body out of the water in a quick, lithe motion. She didn’t see how she could be that much of an embarrassment because she looked a lot like her sister. Maybe not quite as pretty, but close enough that once in a while people called them the wrong names. Oh, that really burned Mary Theresa’s butt. Maggie loved it. “You’re an idiot, a…a…kid. Why don’t you go and ride your damned horse or something?”
“I will.” It sounded like heaven. Anything to get away from this house and all the ill will that seemed to grow as the summer wore on. When had it started to happen, Maggie wondered, thinking back to when she and Maggie were in junior high and Mitch had just started high school. They’d been happier then. All of them.
Maggie didn’t remember the muffled arguments behind her parents’ bedroom door, or the empty vodka bottles piled high in the trash, or the frigid silence from their mother, an intense, heavy lack of conversation that seemed to radiate from her while quieting everyone else. Bernice Reilly’s deadly silence was able to numb them all. One icy look from her furious eyes was capable of bringing conversation and laughter to a standstill at the dinner table or stopping all communication in the car.
As Mary Theresa brushed the offending water droplets from her body, Maggie eyed the long, rambling house set on the crest of the hill. This place had been her parents’ dream, and recently, she thought, it had turned into a nightmare. Ancient oaks, olives, and eucalyptuses shaded a well-tended yard and the stucco house where they resided. Painted a soft dun color and resplendent with a sweeping red-tile roof and terra-cotta patio that stretched to the pool—their father’s pride and joy—the house seemed cold and empty as a tomb to Maggie, and she longed for their little three-bedroom rambler in the valley.
But with his professional jump to a rival company, Frank Reilly had elevated himself to this house, a new pool and sporty red Mercedes while Bernice had been able to hire Lydia, their Spanish-speaking maid, and for the first time in her life was able to spend hours having manicures, pedicures, and facials between her tennis matches and bridge club.
Maggie wasn’t certain the move had been so good. She missed the neighbors and small yard where she could sneak through the broken fence into Jamie Tortoni’s vegetable garden. They could share secrets while watching Jamie’s father’s goldfish swim lazily in a cement pool he’d designed and built. Whenever Maggie had been fighting with Mary Theresa, she’d been able to count on Jamie as a friend and confidante.
But that was a long time ago. When they’d moved, Mary Theresa and Maggie had gone to a different high school. Maggie and Jamie never saw each other anymore.
In the meantime Mary Theresa had changed. At the old house Maggie and M.T. had shared a room decorated with lavender paint, matching twin
