Audrey Niffenegger - Her Fearful Symmetry

“Let the girls have it,” he had replied. “I have more than enough.”

“Hmm. I will, then. But what can I give you?”

They were sitting on her hospital bed. She had a fever; it was after the splenectomy. Elspeth’s dinner sat untouched on the wheeled bedside table. He was massaging her feet, his hands slippery with the warm, fragrant oil. “I don’t know. Could you arrange to be reincarnated?”

“The twins are rumoured to be pretty close copies.” Elspeth smiled. “I’ll make them come and live in the flat if they want it. Shall I leave you the twins?”

Robert smiled back at her. “That could backfire. That could be quite-painful.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t give it a whirl. But I want to give you something.”

“A lock of hair?”

“Oh, but it’s bad hair now,” she said, fingering her downy silver fuzz. “We should have saved a bit when I still had my real hair.” Elspeth’s hair had been longish, wavy, the colour of winter butter.

Robert shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I just wanted something of you.”

“Like the Victorians? It’s a pity it isn’t longer. You could make earrings or a brooch or something.” She laughed. “You could clone me.”

He pretended to consider it. “But I don’t think they’ve worked all the bugs out of cloning. You might turn out morbidly obese, or flipper-limbed or whatnot. Plus I’d have to wait for you to grow up, by which time I’d be a pensioner and you’d want nothing to do with me.”

“The twins are a much better bet. They’re fifty per cent me and fifty per cent Jack. I’ve seen photos, you really can’t see him in them at all.”

“Where are you getting photos of the twins?”

Elspeth covered her mouth with her hand. “Edie, actually. But don’t tell anyone.”

Robert said, “Since when are you in touch with Edie? I thought you hated Edie.”

“Hated Edie?” Elspeth looked stricken. “No. I was very angry with Edie, and I still am. But I never hated Edie; that would be like hating myself. She just-she did something quite stupid that bollixed up our lives. But she’s still my twin.” Elspeth hesitated. “I wrote to her about a year ago-when I first got diagnosed. I thought she ought to know.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I know. It was private.”

Robert knew it was childish to feel hurt. He didn’t say anything.

She said, “Ah, come on. If your father got in touch would you tell me all about it?”

“I would, actually.”

Elspeth put her thumb in her mouth and bit gently. He had always found this highly sexual, a huge turn-on, but now it was somehow devoid of that power. She said, “Yes, of course you would.”

“And what do you mean they are half you? They’re Edie’s kids.”

“They are. They are her kids. But Edie and I are identical twins, so her kids equal my kids, genetically.”

“But you’ve never even met them.”

“Does it matter so much? All I can say is, you haven’t got a twin, so you can’t know how it is.” Robert continued to sulk. “Oh, don’t. Don’t be that way.” She tried to move towards him, but the tubes in her arms overruled her. Robert carefully set her feet on a towel, wiped his hands, got up and reseated himself on the arc of white sheet next to her waist. She took up almost no space at all. He placed one hand on her pillow, just beside her head, and leaned over her. Elspeth put her hand on his cheek. It was like being touched with sandpaper; her skin almost hurt him. He turned his head and kissed her palm. They had done all these things so many times before.

“Let me give you my diaries,” Elspeth said softly. “Then you’ll know all my secrets.”

He realised later that she had planned this all along. But then he had only said, “Tell me all your secrets now. Are they so very terrible?”

“Dreadful. But they’re all very old secrets. Since I met you I’ve lived a chaste and blameless life.”

“Chaste?”

“Well, monogamous, anyway.”

“That’ll do.” He kissed her, briefly. She was more feverish now. “You ought to sleep.”

“Do my feet more?” She was like a child asking for her favourite bedtime story. He resumed his place at her feet and squeezed more oil onto his hands, warmed it by rubbing it between his palms.

Elspeth sighed and closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she said after a while, arching her feet. “That’s bloody marvellous.” Then she had slept, and he’d sat there holding her slippery feet in his hands, thinking.

Robert opened his eyes. He wondered briefly if he had fallen asleep; the memory had been so vivid. Where are you, Elspeth? Perhaps you’re only living in my head now. Robert stared at the graves across the path, which were dangerously tilted. One had trees growing on both sides; they had lifted the monument slightly off its base so that it levitated an inch or so in the air. As Robert watched, a fox trotted through the ivy that choked the graves behind the ones on the main path. The fox saw him, paused for a moment and disappeared into the undergrowth. Robert heard other foxes howling to each other, some close by, some off in the deeper parts of the cemetery. It was the mating season. The daylight was going; Robert was chilled and wet. He roused himself.

“Goodnight, Elspeth.” He felt silly saying it. He got up and began to walk back to the office, feeling much the way he had as a teenager when he realised that he was no longer able to pray. Wherever Elspeth might be, she wasn’t here.

J ULIA AND Valentina Poole liked to get up early. This was curious, because they were out of school, unemployed and rather indolent. There was no reason for the twins to be up with the dawn; they were early birds who weren’t particularly interested in getting the worm.

On this particular Saturday in February the sun was not quite up. The twelve inches of snow that had fallen overnight looked bluish in the half-light; the huge trees that lined Pembridge Road bowed under the weight of it. Lake Forest was still asleep. The yellow brick ranch house where the twins lived with their parents felt quiet and snug under the snow. All the usual traffic, bird and dog noises were stilled.

Julia turned up the heat while Valentina made hot chocolate from a mix. Julia went into the family room and clicked on the TV. When Valentina came into the room with the tray, Julia was standing in front of the TV flicking through the channels even though she knew what they wanted to watch. It was always the same, every Saturday. The twins loved the sameness, even as they felt incapable of enduring it for one more minute. Julia paused on CNN. President Bush was talking to Karl Rove in a conference room. “Nuke them,” said Valentina. The twins gave the finger to the president and his aide in unison, and Julia changed the channels until she got to This Old House . She turned the sound up, careful not to blast it and risk waking their parents. Valentina and Julia settled onto the couch, wrapped around each other, with Julia’s legs resting on Valentina’s lap. Mookie, their aged tabby cat, sat next to Valentina. They pulled the plaid wool blanket over themselves, warmed their hands with their mugs of chocolate and stared at the TV, lost to everything else. On Saturday mornings they could watch four reruns of This Old House back to back.

“Soapstone kitchen counters,” said Julia.

“Mmm hmm,” said Valentina, entranced.

The family room was dim; the only light came from the television and the front window. But if the light had been stronger the room would have been hard to look at, because everything in it was Kelly green, bright red plaid, or related to golf. The entire house was aggressively decorated. All the furnishings were either overstuffed, covered in chintz, made of brushed metal or frosted glass, or painted in colours with names that sounded like ice-cream flavours. Edie was an interior decorator; she liked to practise on their house, and Jack had given up trying to have any say in the matter. The twins were convinced that their mother had the most egregious taste in the entire world. This was probably not true; most Lake Forest homes were decorated in more expensive versions of the same. The twins liked the family room because it was their dad’s, and therefore ironically hideous. Jack took a certain pleasure in acquiescing to the demands of his tribe as long as he was comfortable.