Three Black Swans

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Missy was whispering into the phone. “Clairedy.”

  “I’m here,” she whispered back.

  “There are three of us. We’re all three identical.”

  Claire was not going there. “It’s some video trick. Three people cannot be identical. She downloaded our pictures from the video. From our own Facebook pages. She manipulated them with some program.”

  “Check out her earlobes. You and I each have one pierced earring hole. She’s got three. She isn’t us.”

  Claire gagged.

  “Do you think somebody cloned us?” asked Missy. “Do you think we’re a set? Did we come in a box? Or a tube?”

  “Clone” was a hideous word. It sounded like sheep and laboratories and things forbidden by law. I can’t be a clone, thought Claire.

  “So now we know,” said Missy. “You and I are not cousins. We’re not identical twins, either. We are identical triplets.”

  Had Claire ever used the word “triplet”? Did you ever need that word? If three people played instruments, they were a trio. If three people went somewhere, they were a threesome. If something happened three times in a row in a sport, you might have a three-peat.

  Only musical notation had triplets: three notes forced into the space of the usual two. It was a good definition. Genevieve Candler was forcing herself into the space of the usual two.

  No, said Claire to herself. I won’t have it. She’s not getting into my life.

  Missy’s voice ballooned with excitement. “Clairedy, there are three of us! We have another sister. We’re a three-per. We’re triplets!”

  If Missy was right, this girl Genevieve had been alive for the exact same number of years, months and days as Claire. She had been brushing the same hair, putting polish on the same fingernails, choosing a bathing suit for the same body.

  Claire Linnehan was exactly the same as this stranger on the screen.

  Not that separated triplets were precisely strangers.

  I knew her once, thought Claire. I touched her once.

  “Whoever we are,” cried Missy—and Claire knew that Missy was dancing, because that was what Missy did when she was excited; she leaped and spun—“whoever we are, we have the same parents!” Missy sounded thrilled, as if she did not realize this meant that the parents they’d lived with all their lives were fakes.

  Claire knew adopted kids. Their parents loved to talk about how they had lined up and begged and pleaded and gotten interviewed and waited for years, all for the privilege of having this particular child. But if Claire was one of three identical babies, she was not a particular child. She was a group. You might as well say you wanted the orange on the left instead of the orange in the middle. Who could tell? Who even cared?

  How simple and pleasant her earlier guesses seemed. As adopted identical twins, they would just reset the same group of six: Claire and her wonderful parents plus Missy and her wonderful parents. Oh, sure, they would have to sort things out and admit stuff and wonder about biological whatevers, but they would still be who they’d always been.

  Wrong.

  There was a third person.

  In Language Arts, you learned about “person.” There was first person, as in the sentence “I am loved.” There was second person, as in the sentence “You are loved.” First person and second person were always standing right there. You were them or you could see them.

  But third person was somebody else, as in “She is a stranger.”

  There was now a third person. And a third family.

  “Let’s call her up!” said Missy. “She gave us her cell number! Let’s call right now! She practically says it’s a matter of life and death! I can’t wait to hear her voice!”

  Claire would have screamed, but she did not want to wake her parents. “Are you nuts, Missy?”

  Her father would call this a can of worms. It was one of his favorite phrases, used to describe everything from failed economies to political scandals.

  In fact, Claire’s family ate very little out of cans. They certainly didn’t buy cans of worms. When were worms canned? Perhaps you saved your empty baked bean can and used it for the worms you caught for your fishing trip. Claire pictured the worms as fat and gelatinous and wriggling. Piled on each other, suffocating each other, each little squirmy head trying to get free. She pictured the can falling over and the worms slithering out.

  “Genevieve will be awake, I know she will,” said Missy confidently, as if she and Genevieve had known each other for years.

  And maybe we have, thought Claire. Maybe she will be just like us. Like those thirty-year-old guys with the same bowling scores.

  The can of worms emptied in Claire’s hair, crawled into her brain and down into her heart. “I will not get in touch with her. I do not want to know her. I want her to go away.”

  “She won’t go away. She must have as many questions as we do. She’s awake, Claire. She’s staring at her cell phone, wanting it to ring, just the way I was staring at my cell phone, wanting you to call and forgive me. The three of us are doing the exact same thing at the exact same time because we are the exact same. She’s our sister, Clairedy.”

  “I’m not ready to be your sister, never mind hers.”

  “But aren’t you excited, Clairedy? Aren’t you dying to meet her?”

  “No. It could still be some elaborate hoax. Or confusion. Or coincidence.”

  “Then we have to see her in person. The moment we see her, we’ll know if she’s our twin. I mean, triplet. And if she is, we’ll run toward each other and merge.”

  As if Claire wanted to “merge” with anybody. As if it could be a good thing for these sickeningly similar creatures to meet.

  Not to mention that three families would be shredded now.

  Why stop at three? Maybe there were four or five. If you were going to clone or multiply, why not really go for it? Maybe every few years, another Claire would pop up.

  * * *

  Already the name Genevieve seemed soft and familiar, like Missy’s favorite old velvet pillow on the downstairs sofa. Lying on her stomach on the bed, she Googled every clue from the pictures. “Genevieve isn’t that far away in miles,” she told Claire. “I just found her high school Web site, which I got off her High School Bowl pin in that photograph. The White Pages show two Candlers in that town, and now I’m doing Street Map, and I’m guessing our Candlers do not live in a nursing home, so ours is the one on Bayberry. Okay, I’m bringing up a map. Our house is one mile from the beach here in Connecticut and where we live, it’s maybe thirteen or fourteen miles to cross Long Island Sound, and now I’ve found her street, and she’s four or five miles inland. So technically speaking, although not by road of course—by road it’s a couple of hours—we’re about twenty miles away from Genevieve.”

  She and Claire were also about twenty miles apart.

  Missy considered geography. The metropolitan area around New York City was complex, and water, either Long Island Sound or the Hudson River, divided everything. There were three states involved: New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Some of New York State abutted New York City, like Westchester County, where Claire lived. Long Island, where Genevieve lived, began with Brooklyn and then stuck out into the Atlantic Ocean to the east, parallel to Connecticut’s shore. Commuters into New York City went by car, train or bus. Trains entered one of two stations. Westchester and Connecticut riders ended up at Grand Central Terminal, New Jersey and Long Island riders at Penn Station. Buses had more freedom, and cars just needed to decide which bridge or tunnel to use.

  “It’s Friday night,” said Missy. “You and I never plan anything for Saturday morning except each other, Clairedy. Let’s call Genevieve and arrange to meet under the clock in Grand Central tomorrow.”

  “No! We have to wait and think this through.”

  Missy began singing football cheers under her breath. “Motivate your feet, get the rhythm, get the beat! Clairedy, I have to see her. I have to breathe her air. I have to touch her.
One—let’s scream! Two—let’s shout! Three—come on, let’s shake it out!”

  Claire did not take up the cheer. “If you and I are twins, we get an equal vote. I vote no. That means it’s a tie.”

  “But we’re not twins, Clairedy. I was wrong. I always knew there was a hole in my heart and this is it. It’s Genevieve! She used to be here. My heart knew. You and she and I are triplets. So you get one third of the vote, and we already know Genevieve’s vote, because she got in touch with us first. So it’s two against one, you’re outnumbered.”

  “I won’t be part of it. Don’t you ruin my life!”

  Missy tried to be patient. “It won’t ruin anybody. It’ll be an addition. We’ll have another sister.”

  “I don’t want any sisters. Not even you. You make a great cousin. I don’t want a twin. Even when I admit it, I don’t want it to be true. Missy, slow down. I just found out that my mother is too tired to keep working and my father doesn’t have work and they aren’t my parents anyway, I’m adopted, and my cousin is actually my twin—and now you want me to stalk some stranger?”

  “What is your problem?” demanded Missy. “I did want answers from our parents. But now that I know about Genevieve, I don’t care about explanations and documents. I want to be with her. Clairedy, the moment I am with Genevieve Candler, I will know who we are.”

  “Don’t call me Clairedy. Don’t call me Claire, either. It’s some made-up name stuck on me by parents who aren’t my parents. I probably don’t even have a name. Listen, Missy. Today has been one ice bath after another. Don’t call this girl! If you do, don’t tell me. If you meet each other, don’t include me. I’m not part of it!”

  * * *

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  IN SPITE OF the fact that she had been lobbying for this for years, Claire’s mother was unsettled that the girls were not getting together. Claire was studying? Claire never studied on a Friday night. Fridays were reserved for Missy. The girls’ need to talk and share surpassed anything Frannie had seen in years of watching women gather to talk and share. Sometimes the girls literally talked the whole night. Other times they baked cookies or played board games or rented movies. They could talk through an entire movie. Her husband couldn’t stand it. He had to leave the room.

  Frannie knocked on her daughter’s bedroom door.

  “I’m busy,” said Claire.

  Frannie did not interpret this as “Don’t come in.” She opened the door and said, “Want to have a midnight snack with Dad and me?”

  Claire did not glance up from her computer. “It’s nowhere near midnight. Anyway, I have too much to do.”

  Frannie sat on the bed. “Clairedy, did something happen between you and Missy?”

  Claire looked at her mother as if smelling roadkill. “I have a project I cannot postpone.”

  “What’s the project?”

  “I’m still choosing a topic.”

  “Which class?”

  Claire looked her mother up and down as if she were an insect to be stomped on.

  It’s here, thought Frannie. The awful adolescent dislike of parents everybody talks about. I’ve lost my sweet baby.

  Claire heaved an irritated sigh. “Language Arts,” she said finally.

  Frannie almost apologized for being interested in her daughter’s life. She found her husband. They went to a movie without Claire. When they got home, Claire was still in front of her computer, still grumpy.

  “It’s late, honey,” said Frannie.

  “It’s Friday,” said her daughter, in the voice of one dealing with stupid people. “It doesn’t matter how late I stay up.”

  Frannie bent to kiss her daughter good night. Claire did not return the kiss.

  * * *

  STILL FRIDAY NIGHT

  TRAIN SCHEDULES WERE posted online. Missy found a 9:03 local from Stamford that got into the city at 10:09 a.m. She would need a ride to the train station and a good excuse. She had minimal interest in culture, but she looked up current exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One was Byzantine art. What was that? And who cared?

  She checked her cash situation. She was in good shape. Tomorrow morning, she would say that somebody had canceled on the art class field trip, making room for somebody else, and Missy was taking advantage of cultural opportunities, and Byzantine art would be broadening. Her parents would be happy that Missy was having a non-Claire event and might end up with a new best friend who was not a cousin.

  And this might come true.

  Missy Vianello called the cell phone number Genevieve Candler had put in her Facebook message.

  The possible sister was up and waiting. “This is Genevieve.”

  Claire’s voice, thought Missy. For a moment, she wanted to hang up. For a moment, she wanted Claire far more than she wanted this stranger. Then she said, “This is Missy.”

  “Missy! Thank you for calling! I’ve been sitting up in bed willing you to call. Did you compare pictures? Did you see?”

  “I compared. I saw. You’re me. I’m you.” I know by phone, thought Missy. I don’t have to touch her or see her.

  Missy wept. Am I crying for a lost sister or a found one?

  “I’ve watched the video of you and Claire about a hundred times,” said Genevieve.

  “Us too. Claire is opposed.”

  “She wants her own gene pool?” asked Genevieve.

  I’m a born giggler, thought Missy. Is Genevieve?

  Born. How had they all been born? And to whom? “Claire doesn’t want to be part of this,” Missy said, and her heart wrenched and a different kind of hole opened up. “She thinks it’s creepy.”

  “It is creepy,” said Genevieve in Claire’s voice, “but I keep telling myself it isn’t too creepy.”

  “How did you find the video?” Missy asked.

  Genevieve told her about Jimmy Fleming and Ray Feingold. “Jimmy guessed that the hoax was a hoax.”

  “He’s right. Genevieve, I have to meet you. Now, not some other time. I checked train schedules. What are you doing tomorrow? Can you cancel it? Do your parents let you go into New York by yourself? Can you fib about a class trip if you’re not allowed to go alone? Do you have the money? I’ll take the train from Stamford that gets in about ten-fifteen. We’ll meet under the clock on the upper level at Grand Central.” She could hear Genevieve crying. “Don’t cry,” Missy begged, even though she herself had been crying through the entire conversation.

  “I’m crying from joy. I never thought I’d have a sister, let alone one who can’t wait to meet me. But what about Claire? I can’t not meet Claire. Should I call her? Will she talk to me?”

  “I think she’d flip out. She’s angry. She says I had no right to drag her into my hoax. She wants the same parents and the same life.”

  “She gets to keep the same parents and the same life. I won’t be in the way. I’ll just be an add-on, like an ell off the same kitchen.”

  “Identical triplets are a little more intense. I’ll call her again in the morning and give her a second chance.”

  “No, call her now,” said Genevieve.

  It was the first thing that actually surprised Missy: Genevieve expected to be in charge. Because she’s the oldest? I wonder if we’ll ever know which of us is the oldest. Or is it because her personality is stronger? Claire will be happy to hear that our personalities aren’t cloned. She will not be happy to hear that Genevieve is a little bossy.

  On the other hand, Genevieve was right. Including Claire could not wait until the morning. “Okay, I’ll call her now,” said Missy. “The excuse I’m giving my parents is a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum to see Byzantine art.”

  “My parents are fine with anything. Long Island trains go to Penn Station, though. I’ll take a taxi over to Grand Central and meet you at ten-fifteen under the clock.”

  Missy started to say “How will I recognize you?” when she remembered that she would be looking for herself.

  * * *

  FRIDAY NIGHT />
  Late

  MATT VIANELLO HAD known that he would love being a dad, but he had not known how much he would love it. In the lottery of life, he was always so grateful that he had been given Missy.

  Scrawny and sickly, Missy had paid a high price for her low birth weight. Colds became pneumonia. Coughs became bronchitis. Fevers were life-threatening. And there had been that bout of meningitis, when he and Kitty had sat at the hospital holding hands, wondering if their little girl would live until dawn. For years, their lives were punctured by illness—days and nights spent rocking, walking, cuddling, soothing, medicating and above all, worrying.

  They wanted to homeschool Missy rather than expose her to classroom germs. But Missy insisted on being exactly like her big cousin Claire, and so their fragile child went to kindergarten after all. Missy had known what she was doing, which was always the case. She loved school from the first day and she loved it now. She danced through dozens of activities, spending the minimum amount of time on each, so she never became good at anything, but she sure enjoyed herself.

  She was a year older than most of her classmates because Matt and Kitty had kept her home an extra year to stabilize her. Missy hadn’t pressed her father as hard as he had expected about getting her driver’s license. His line that Missy’s full-speed personality was a driving risk had been accepted. But one day he would need paperwork.

  Now, Matt Vianello could not fall asleep. His wife and sister-in-law had been trying to end the girls’ Friday-night sleepovers for years. Now that it was happening, he felt dread.

  All week his daughter had seemed to study him as if he were an arithmetic problem and she was coming up short. There was no affection in her gaze. He had the sensation that he and his wife had fulfilled their purpose and soon Missy would walk away and never look back.

  You were supposed to bring up your kid with wings to fly. But flying meant departure. He could not imagine how empty life would be when Missy departed.

  A sudden peal of laughter from Missy’s room cut through the dark of the house. At this hour, she could only be on the phone with Claire.