Lisa Miscione - Twice

Lydia slid out of the cab behind Jeffrey and looked at the door to the ob/gyn office with trepidation.

“Maybe that test was wrong,” she said, hesitating at the sidewalk.

“Maybe,” answered Jeffrey, reaching out his hand. “That’s why we’re here.”

But he hoped that it wasn’t wrong. He wanted this and he knew in his heart that she did, too. She was just afraid. But he was sure that everything was just as it should be and that they were going to be fine… all three of them.

The past was immortal. Maybe it slept, but it never died. It had been creeping up upon them all this time. Without sound and without odor, like the most skilled predator, it had stalked them and suddenly it was upon them. In her two-bedroom suite at the Waldorf-Astoria on Fifth Avenue, Eleanor Ross poured hot water from a hand-painted porcelain pot into a matching teacup. The scent of oolong tea rose potent and savory as she put the lid in place with a delicate clink, and replaced the pot on the tray. She sat on the plush sofa and drummed her long fingernails on the dark oak surface of the coffee table.

She regarded her hands for a moment with their long manicured fingers, their loose white skin and veins like ropes beneath the nearly translucent surface. They were the hands of an old woman. She brought a hand to her hair and touched the rough, brittle strands that were pulled back tightly into a bun. The hair of an old woman. It was funny how the external changed so dramatically but the internal remained much the same. Her perceptions, her concept of herself had not changed all that much since she was a young mother. Even though the shell of her was virtually unrecognizable. She’d been beautiful once, so beautiful. Tall and voluptuous, with long, thick red hair, almond-shaped eyes that blazed green, perfect breasts, magnificent white unblemished skin. But that was all in the past now… the only part of the past that was dead and gone. Beauty had faded, but the horror lived and breathed.

It seemed so silly now that she had imagined they could all escape their legacy. She thought of her daughter in that awful place, the twins sleeping in the bedroom across the suite. They were still innocent, but she saw it in them, too. In their too-old eyes, in the way they looked at each other, in the way they communicated without speech. She had tried to ignore it, but she had seen it too many times. Eleanor still missed her own brother, in spite of everything. In spite of the fact that he’d been dead now nearly twenty years. There was a connection there that no one and nothing could sunder. Not even time. Not even murder.

She looked into the facets of the magnificent emerald in its antique platinum setting on her left hand. Her engagement ring, given to her by the only man she had ever loved enough to marry. Gone now, too. Before she could stop it a tear traveled down her cheek and she quickly wiped it away. She got up and walked to the window, looked down to the street, where people hustled about their ordinary lives. Steam billowed from a manhole cover, its plumes rising into the air and dissipating in the cold before they reached the sky. The day was gray and felt like snow. The people, coming home from work, or running to do some shopping for Christmas, or meeting friends for dinner, filled Eleanor with envy. What must it be like not to live under the shadow her family lived under? But then she imagined, maybe just to make herself feel better, that they were all haunted by something, weren’t they? There was something that they didn’t want to be. They didn’t want to repeat the cycle of their family legacy, become an alcoholic, an abusive parent, the victim of a congenital disease, an old woman living alone with no one to look in on her. Everyone lived under the shadow of some fear or dysfunction, didn’t they?

The phone was ringing softly on the end table beside the couch, maybe twice, maybe three times before she noticed it. She moved over to it quickly and picked it up.

“Hello?” she said warily, anxious that it might be more bad news. The phone was cold and heavy in her hand.

“Ms. Ross. It’s Lydia Strong. We wanted to let you know that we’re going to be taking on your case.”

“I’m so glad,” she said, and she was. Relief washed over her like a wave.

“There’s paperwork you’ll need to fill out. Would you like us to messenger it to you, or would you prefer to come by?”

“You saw my daughter today,” she said, not answering the question. “Do you think she’s guilty?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone before the girl answered. “No. I don’t.”

Eleanor was glad to hear it, though she wasn’t sure she believed Lydia Strong. “I’ll come by the office tomorrow around noon, if that’s all right.”

“That’s fine. We can talk some more then. I have some more questions for you.”

“Very well,” answered Eleanor. “Good-bye.” She hung up the phone and sighed. They could ask all the questions they wanted. But there were only so many answers she could give.

Lydia folded Jeffrey’s cell phone and handed it back to him. He took it from her and held her hand in the warm pink waiting room. Everything was pink and roses, smelling of potpourri. Even the bulbs behind the sconce lighting were pink, the reception desk a rose-colored Corian. A very pregnant woman sat across from Lydia reading a copy of Parenting magazine. She looked so young and serene, her cheeks glowing with health and color. She had her arm looped with the arm of a young man, who was reading a copy of Money . She stared at them in wonder. Aren’t they terrified? She was ready to get up and run screaming from the doctor’s office, and these two just radiated peace and joy. The young woman looked up at her, must have felt Lydia’s eyes on her. She gave Lydia a happy, shy smile, and patted her belly. “I’m huge, aren’t I?” she said, her blue eyes shining, “Just a couple more weeks.”

Lydia smiled back at her. “You’re beautiful,” she said, and meant it. The man smiled at them and returned to his magazine. After a few more moments, a nurse came out and escorted the young couple in to see the doctor. Lydia noticed a soapstone sculpture that sat beneath a lamp on the end table next to the couch where the woman had been sitting. It was the impression of a woman, her head a stone atop her belly, which was a circular nest with another tiny stone nestled in the curve. Motherhood .

“Oh, God,” said Lydia, squeezing Jeffrey’s hand.

“I’m right here,” he said with an indulgent smile.

“You damn well better be,” she said. “You’re stuck now… shotgun wedding and all.”

He laughed and released her hand, put his arm around her and pulled her close. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried,” he whispered in her ear.

Ford McKirdy pulled his green Taurus into the narrow driveway beneath his Bay Ridge row house. He didn’t bother pulling the car into the garage, but he attached the Club to his steering wheel, took the bag of Chinese takeout from the passenger seat, and locked the doors. Nobody wanted his piece-of-shit car, anyway, which was part of the reason why he drove it.

He felt heavy and tired as he pulled himself up the red brick steps to his front door. His neighbors in most of the other houses had hung their Christmas lights and decorations, making the block a tacky visual cacophony of multicolored bulbs, plastic Santas, reindeer, snowmen, and nativity scenes. Ford’s house looked grim and neglected by comparison. He held the screen door open with his back, looping the bag around his wrist as he fit the key into the knob. The air was cold outside, a biting winter chill moving in for the first time in a season that had been unusually mild. The house was dark inside, empty.