Brit Bennett - The Vanishing Half

“I don’t know how,” she said.

“You just don’t like gettin your hands dirty,” her mother said. “Desiree!”

“She at work, Miss Adele,” the man said.

“Work?”

“Over in town.”

“Well somebody ought to get her. She’s gonna miss supper.”

“Stella’ll fetch her,” the man said. “I’m gonna stay right here with you.”

He wrapped an arm around her mother’s shoulders, protectively. Protecting her from me, Stella realized, gently setting down the knife. She stepped out onto the front porch and stared into the woods. She did not realize until she was walking through the dirt that she had no idea where she was going.

—

THE FIRST THING to know about the Reunion, as it would later be called, is that there were no real witnesses. Lou’s Egg House was always empty between lunch and dinner, which was when Jude phoned from the student union. Desiree loved those noisy calls, even though Jude always sounded harried, rushing off to a lecture or a lab. That afternoon, she was trying to coax Desiree to visit her again.

“You know I can’t,” Desiree said.

“I know,” Jude said. “I just miss you. I worry about you sometimes.”

Desiree swallowed. “Well, don’t,” she said. “You out there livin your life. That’s all I want for you. Don’t you worry about me. Mama’ll be all right.”

She didn’t hear the bell jingle over the door until after she hung up the phone. It surprised her. The diner had been empty when she’d stepped into the back to answer the phone, except for Marvin Landry, who was never sober past noon, the war having done him, and that afternoon in particular, he was slumped in a back booth, a fifth of whiskey inside his jacket. He hadn’t touched the turkey sandwich Desiree had left in front of him. He didn’t even wake up when Stella Vignes stepped inside. He didn’t see her pause in the doorway, glancing around at the peeling linoleum floors, the bursting leather stools, the bum snoozing in the corner. Didn’t hear Desiree call from the back, “Be right out!”

He certainly didn’t see Desiree backing out of the kitchen, retying her apron. She didn’t notice him at all, because when she turned around, she was staring at Stella.

“Oh,” Desiree said. That was all she could think to say. Oh. Less a word than a sound. She dropped her apron strings, the garment flapping uselessly against her. Across the counter, Stella was smiling but her eyes filled with tears. She stepped toward her but Desiree held up a hand.

“Don’t,” she said, choking back anger. Stella standing in front of her, appearing with no warning, no apologies, returning only after Desiree had finally let her go. Wearing that blouse that she would sometimes remember as the color of cream, other times the color of bone, a blouse that looked like it had never stained or wrinkled. Tiny pearl buttons. A shiny silver bracelet. No wedding ring, her hands tightening into fists the way they curled sometimes when Stella was nervous, and she was nervous now, wasn’t she, she had never been nervous around Desiree before. But why shouldn’t she be? All those years, what had given her the nerve to show her face again? To expect that she might be welcomed? Desiree’s thoughts ran jumbled through her head. She could barely follow them. And Stella’s smile faded, but she still took another tiny step closer.

“I mean it,” Desiree said. Her voice low, threatening.

“Forgive me,” Stella said. “Forgive me.”

She was still repeating those words when she walked around the counter. Desiree tried to push her away but Stella pulled and then they were struggling, and then they were holding each other, Desiree exhausted, whimpering, Stella begging for forgiveness into her sister’s hair. And that’s what Marvin Landry told everyone he saw when he finally woke up: a turkey sandwich resting on a plate in front of him, and a misted bottle of Coke, and behind the counter, Desiree Vignes wrapped around herself.

—

SHE’S DIFFERENT NOW.

The same words passed through each twin’s mind. Desiree, eyeing how Stella held her knife and fork, barely gripping the metal. Stella, noticing how boldly Desiree moved around the kitchen now. Desiree, watching Stella rub the back of her neck, a gesture that seemed so wearied, it startled her. Stella, listening to Desiree speak to their mother, her voice soft and soothing. And all the while, to Adele Vignes, the twins were the same as they’d ever been. Time was collapsing and expanding; the twins were different and the same all at once. There could have been fifty pairs of twins sitting at that dinner table, a seat for each person they had been since they’d spoken last: a battered wife and a bored one, a waitress and a professor, each woman seated next to a stranger.

Instead, there were only the twins, Early sitting between them. He felt, watching Stella primly cut her fish, that he didn’t know Desiree at all, that maybe it was impossible to know one without the other. After dinner, he cleared the dishes while the twins stepped out onto the front porch, Desiree carrying a dusty bottle of gin that she’d found in the back of the pantry. She’d brought it out even though she didn’t know if Stella even liked gin, but Stella’s eyes drifted to the bottle, then back to hers, and Desiree felt the thrill of a silent conversation. She smuggled it outside, Stella trailing after her.

“Don’t y’all stay out too late,” their mother called. “It’s a school night.”

Now they passed the bottle lazily between them, wincing through sips of that ancient gin, which had been a wedding gift from Marie Vignes. The Decuirs had been scandalized—what a present from your mother-in-law!—and somehow, the controversial bottle had been forgotten over the years. Desiree sipped, then Stella, the twins falling into an easy rhythm.

“You talk different now,” Desiree said.

“What do you mean?” Stella said.

“Like that. Wut do you mean. How’d you learn to talk like that?”

Stella paused, then smiled. “Television,” she said. “I used to watch hours of it. Just to learn how to sound like them.”

“Jesus,” Desiree said. “I still can’t believe you did it, Stella.”

“It isn’t so hard. You could’ve done it.”

“You didn’t want me to. You left me.” God, Desiree hated how wounded she sounded. After all these years, whining like a child abandoned on the play yard.

“It wasn’t that,” Stella said. “I met someone.”

“You did all this for a man?”

“Not for him,” she said. “I just liked who I was with him.”

“White.”

“No,” Stella said. “Free.”

Desiree laughed. “Same thing, baby.” She took another sip of gin, swallowing hard. “Well, who was he?”

Again, Stella paused.

“Mr. Sanders,” she finally said.

In spite of everything, Desiree laughed. She laughed harder than she had in weeks, years even, laughed until Stella, laughing too, snatched the bottle out of her hands before she knocked it over.

“Mr. Sanders?” she said. “That ol’ boss of yours? You ran off with him? Farrah said—”

“Farrah Thibodeaux! I haven’t thought about her in years.”

“She said she seen you with a man—”

“What ever happened to her?”

“I don’t know. This was years ago—she married some alderman—”

“A politician’s wife!”

“Can you believe it?”

The twins, laughing, talking over each other again, churning their way through that bottle. Desiree, looking out for their mother, the way she’d done when they were teenagers smoking on the porch. She was a little drunk by now. She didn’t even know how late it was.

“How’d you do it?” she said. “All those years.”