by Karen Rivers
She’s always been that way. Nan used to say that Mum let go of the reins so long ago that her horses had time to gallop clear out of the country, never to return again. (Nan was very horsey when she was young and I think she was a bit disappointed that Mum wasn’t quite so proper and ENGLISH about everything. She didn’t care a bit for horses and wasn’t all gaga about the Royals or the proper way to make tea or any of that.)
Nan had lots of stories about things Mum did when she was young that most people wouldn’t do. Crazy things. Embarrassing things. She’d tell them sometimes when Mum wasn’t around. If Mum heard her, she’d get cross, saying that Nan was confusing me or making her seem like she was incompetent, but I guess the thing is that she is a little incompetent. Not at everything, just at being a mum. But she’s a brilliant artist. You should Google her. She’s a bit famous-ish. Her name is Delilah Starling, but it’s also Delilah Etourneau. You can find loads of things under both names.
The thing is that she usually only paints me, which you’ll see. I wish she wouldn’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that the sign that Nan sent me was this one painting Mum did when I was a baby. It’s skin-crawlingly creepy, because there’s me in my cot, sleeping, and then in the shadowy corner of the room, there’s another me, crawling towards the door.
Nan knocked the painting over! To tell me something! And I think she wanted me to know that it’s you, the baby crawling towards the door! It’s not the duality of humankind or whatever Fi said that Mum told her for her essay. It’s YOU. Ruth Quayle. Leaving us.
It’s shivery to think that, isn’t it? I shivered, typing it out.
But it all almost fits, if only it made sense. I was born in New York City. Mum and Dad were living there at the time. Mum says New York was the best place on earth for an artist to live, and Dad wanted to become a famous actor. It was so romantic! They were young and in love and newlywed and had a flat so small that the bath was in the living room. Mum was getting ready to do a show at one of their friends’ galleries and Dad was making money being a waiter at a French restaurant and going on all sorts of glamorous auditions and trying to learn how to speak American English properly so he wasn’t always rejected for being so French.
And then he DIED.
I don’t like to talk about that too much, even though I didn’t ever know him. It’s just so tragic though, being young and in love and running away to America for fame and fortune, and then getting hit by a cab while crossing the road.
Mum says she couldn’t believe it either. She says she would sit in the bathtub in the middle of the flat she couldn’t afford anymore and wait for him to come in the door, all the while getting bigger and bigger and bigger with me, until she had to stop taking baths because she was afraid she’d get stuck. (She had sponge baths instead, of course. Not that she stayed dirty.)
Then I was born. I guess it was terribly upsetting because she doesn’t say much about it except that her water broke right outside Saks Fifth Avenue and the doorman there was lovely and hailed her a cab right away and even paid for it because she couldn’t afford to do it. Someone at the hospital called Nan and she came whisking over efficiently from England, even though she and Mum hadn’t spoken for yonks, because of the whole ‘moving to America with my French husband even though we are very young’ situation, which Nan didn’t approve of. And then she moved back to England with me — and missed out on her fab American show, after all! — to live with Nan, who is really the only person that Mum would allow to help her out. And she needed help. She was very depressed, and it’s hard to be a mum. She tells me all the time how she didn’t think she could do it, but she did, because Nan was there telling her to get out of bed in the morning and things like that. Nan was the most lovely, amazing woman in the world.
I don’t have any other rellies. Dad’s family all live in France, and I think they hate Mum, because they think he moved to New York for Mum, for her art, and then got killed. Which she says is rubbish, he moved to America for his own career! So that’s totally unfair of them to be cruel to her about it, but they’ve never liked the English for some confusing reason that Mum says has to do with something that happened a hundred years ago. I don’t take it personally. They are obviously really really really strange people who hold grudges and don’t like England at all. And I’m English! I get lovely French cards from them on my birthday and at Christmas, when they write me things in French because they don’t speak English (or just refuse to try, says Mum). My French is terrible so mostly I just admire the nice Frenchness of the stylish stationery and then put them in a box under my bed and don’t ever answer them. So I can’t write to them now. How would you say, ‘Why do I have a twin I don’t know about? Love, your barbarian English granddaughter’ in French?
About a year after Dad died, Mum changed her last name to Starling, because it’s the English translation of ‘Etourneau’. (That was his name, Philippe Etourneau.) She wanted to keep his name, but she was so angry with his French family that she didn’t want to keep their name. So it’s really all a huge mix-up of hurt feelings and misunderstandings and things, like a pantomime, except not even a bit funny.
I am honestly terrible at French. I think maybe that’s part of why I feel like Dad is only a story to me — not quite real. I just don’t feel FRENCH. Mum says I got my sense of style from Dad, but I don’t know. I don’t think style is a thing you can inherit from someone dead, and in the pictures, his clothes aren’t really that special. He was astonishingly handsome, though. Like, pop-star handsome. I can see why Mum loved him.
Now that Nan’s gone, it’s just Mum and me. Sometimes she has boyfriends, but they’re mostly smug gits. Dad probably was one too, if you think about it. If all her boyfriends now are awful, why would he be the one who was different just because he’s dead? And French? I try not to think about that a lot, because I want to like my dad, even if he is dead and French and I’ll never meet him. Unless heaven is real, then I suppose I’ll meet him there, but he won’t know me, will he? And even thinking about all that gives me a migraine, so I really mustn’t talk about it anymore. Besides, it’s more than you want to know, I’m sure.
I don’t know why I’m telling you all this! None of it adds up to anything. And I just don’t understand how you were adopted and I’m not. Definitely not. I have a photo of my mum when she was up the duff, so I know for sure that I’m hers. She was huge, like a baleen whale. (Normally she’s rake thin, even when she eats nothing but chips and tea for weeks, like she does when she’s working.) In the photo, there’s a plate and cup balanced there on her stomach. She says it was just like a shelf where she could store things, like car keys and snacks and her mobile phone. She once found a bar of chocolate that she’d been eating hidden in there half a day later, all melted and squished into her skin. She says it must have fallen down her blouse and she hadn’t noticed. She was so sad then, you see, she didn’t notice a lot of things. She says it was all a blur of being sad and huge and pretending to be OK, even when she wasn’t, just so her show could go on, which it didn’t ever do. It makes me sad to think about that! How hard she worked and then I came along at just the wrong time.
Anyway, I look just like her, except for having Dad’s hair and the gappy thing between my front teeth. Mum has this marvelously glamorous red hair that cascades all down her back in perfect curls. Up until I was five, I was sure she was a mermaid, but then Nan convinced me of how silly that was, as obviously mermaids are fairy tales and also, Mum can’t swim.
I have to have a think. It takes me awhile to think about things. Mum is always saying, ‘Ruby is a thinker’! Can you stop writing to me, just for a few days? While I think. It’s just that you say so much in your notes that I get muddled up and can’t straighten it all out properly in my head.
Dear Ruby,
YAY! I got your note and I actually whooped out loud and clapped. Also, just like that, after days of feeling like my legs couldn’t stay still, they stopped jiggling.
&
nbsp; YES, RUBY.
YES.
IT’S TRUE.
WE ARE TWINS!
I am so so so so so so so so so happy that you know, that you understand. That we are right. That we are us. And we’re so much alike! I like thinking too. And I get migraines. And I totes get what you’re saying about checking the mirror to see if you’re still there. I’ve always felt like that! But I thought it was because I was adopted, so I was missing all the strings that attach regular people to the earth, so I always felt floaty and like I was different from everyone else and kind of fainter and sort of transparent compared to them, like they were solid and real and I was just … an illusion. Something that someone made up.
I SO GET IT, RUBY! I DO!
Mom got delayed in Boston so she’s not coming back until late tonight, but after that, I will have ANSWERS.
I can hardly type this because my hands are shaking and my mind is whirling like a dervish. I’m just … I know you’re thinking, but I have to say this part and I hope it doesn’t give you a headache or confuse you, but it’s just so huge and true and important that I can’t not say it.
RUBY, IF YOU ARE NOT ADOPTED, THEN YOUR PARENTS ARE MY PARENTS.
My “real” parents.
If you are not adopted, then maybe you do not know how huge this news is when you are adopted and then discover a twin on the Internet and then accidentally — because you weren’t thinking about ever even wanting to find your Real Parents™ — you find out who they are. It’s like everything you ever wanted or dreamed about, all crunched up into a boulder-sized snowball and thrown at your face unexpectedly, dislodging your front teeth.
It’s almost too much to take in. And it hurts.
A lot.
What you say is just, well, honestly, it’s NOT what I was imagining when I imagined who my real parents were. When I was a little kid, I thought they were probably super-famous people, possibly royalty, and that maybe I had to be given away because I needed to be a boy for the good of the country somehow. But then when I got older and more mature and saw some daytime talk shows, I figured out that doesn’t really happen, and it’s more likely that they were frail or poor or teenagers or some combo of all three, and I was sad. I mourned the king and queen who gave me away to save the Kingdom of Cornucopia! But then I got around to feeling sad for my tragic teen parents and imagined that they had gone on to college and were someday going to find me and hug me and tell me they loved me and whatnot, even though they had to give me away because they were poor and young and (possibly) mysteriously sick, with something historical-sounding and romantic-ish, like consumption. When I tried to picture them, the image got all blurry around the edges and swam out of my line of sight. So that’s sort of as far as I got when I was imagining it, to the hug. And then … that was it.
Then I turned twelve and I realized that my parents were just people who decided not to keep me, and I got mad. Dad says that being angry makes people sick, and I’ve already had enough of sicknesses for my whole life, so I know he’s just trying to protect me from getting sick again by teaching me all this stuff about Buddhism. He says it saved his life, a long time ago, but sometimes I think he just likes Buddhism when it makes him feel like he’s right about things. And he might be right about being angry, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not angry. There’s no other way of looking at it anyway, Ruby. Someone, somewhere, gave me away.
And I guess, if you’re right, and you weren’t adopted after all, then YOUR MOM, Delilah Starling, is the one. She is the one who gave me away. So obviously, all my rage about being given away suddenly has a place to go, and that’s square onto her shoulders. I’m sorry, but it’s true. In Buddhism, in case you don’t know this, there are Four Noble Truths, and the gist of them is that even though life is generally pretty miserable, you can make yourself happier by being in the moment and not being really super angry with people from your past and so on. (It’s quite confusing.) And I know that I am not going to be filled with inner peace and such because my insides are basically a giant, white squall of fury. That doesn’t fit with ANYTHING in Buddhism, but I don’t care. I can’t believe she gave me away.
And she kept you?
I just can’t make it make sense.
And honestly, now I’m sort of angry with you too, even though it’s not your fault, but not at your dad because it’s not his fault that he’s dead!
When I used to picture anything about my Real Mom™, I just imagined long graceful hands and hair that shone golden in the sunlight and a small smiling mouth. Then, like I said, I got furious with her. After that, I pictured her as someone who chewed gum aggressively and didn’t brush her hair and maybe had terrible teeth and spat when she talked. But I just couldn’t put the pieces together to make a whole person, you know?
Someone awful.
But now I guess I can just Google her.
This is so surreal, it’s like you can’t even begin to make it seem real in your head. In my head, I mean. Maybe it doesn’t seem so weird to you.
I don’t know why I can’t seem to bring myself to enter her name in the search bar! But I can’t. Oh, my heart is beating so fast, it’s like wings. I don’t like it. I’m freaking out.
I’m completely and totally freaking out.
It’s weird.
Upsetting.
Anyway, you can’t possibly get what I mean.
Because you are the one she kept.
And now I’m crying really, really hard. It’s bubbling out of me like an erupting volcano of molten tears! I have to stop typing.
I have to think too.
Mostly right now, I think that I hope I’m wrong. Because even when I was mad all the time at this idea of a mom, that was nothing compared to how it feels to be mad at an actual person with long red hair and an inability to tell night from day when she’s working.
Love,
Ruth
I want to say that I’m sorry about your dad. I didn’t say it before, but I should have because your dad died and I AM sorry. I know you seem not very sad about it but I think you must be sad, deep down inside, and not really just annoyed with his French relatives, who DO sound annoying, if only because they don’t seem to care about you, and it’s awful to not feel cared about. I know that. Not because my parents don’t care about me, but because I don’t think many people care about me, really — just my parents and Jedgar. Sometimes it’s like I live on an island. An Island of Ruth, where I’m just entirely alone. And Mom and Dad and Jedgar come and visit and it’s totes fun and happy and awesome when they do. But the rest of the time, I’m on the island alone with birds and squirrels and whatnot, but feeling like I just don’t quite fit.
But the truth is, I’m never alone. Because of Ashley Mary Jane.
I have to tell you about AMJ RIGHT NOW, before I get too mad at you to tell you things that you should know.
I know it’s a lot to take in, especially on top of this crazy revelation about Delilah Starling, child abandoner. But I have to tell you this because if you don’t know this, then you can’t be on my island. Do you know what I mean? There are things only people on your island can know and you’re my twin, so you have to be on my island with me. And if I don’t tell you now, then when I do tell you, you’ll feel walloped by it, just like I feel walloped by the mermaid Delilah.
I have someone else’s heart.
My heart used to belong to a baby named Ashley Mary Jane McNay. She died when she was 11/6 years old, in a car wreck in upstate New York. Her parents were named Haley and Jack McNay. It was raining. They were on their way to Costco when their car was smashed to smithereens by a pickup truck (silver, with patches of rust). No one else died, but her mom had three broken ribs and her dad is still in a wheelchair. Her brother was completely and totally entirely fine! He’s 17 now and his name is Chaz. I sometimes pretend that he’s my brother, even though he’s not, and basically I only see him one time per year. Chaz plays varsity football, or did last year. He is extremely cute, Holly
wood-level cute. Basically, he looks exactly like what an older brother would look like on TV. Like he was made to be someone’s hero! To save the day! Etc.! And so on!
I needed a heart because of all the holes in mine. There are pictures of me in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) where I look exactly like a frog, splayed out on a dissecting tray, but with a biggish (compared to my body) baby head. My limbs were all blueish and not regular flesh-colored, which is how I know my situation was totes dire, if the spindly limbs and tubes didn’t give it away. They put in Ashley Mary Jane’s heart, and threw my miniature Swiss cheese heart, full of holes and airy parts, directly into the trash, or the “medical waste” as Dad likes to say when I remind him that my heart is in the landfill. (It’s not! They burn medical waste. My poor old heart.) I miss my old heart sometimes, like you might miss a teddy bear you had when you were a baby.
I was a month old when I had the operation. Only ONE MONTH!
I should have died, I guess. Maybe a whole bunch of times. It’s complicated, but I think that if I wasn’t about to die, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have got me. They got me BECAUSE of my heart and how Dad was a heart surgeon. And because I guess they were told that it was a legal technicality and I’d die anyway. Mom says she knew I’d live, even though they had to revive me with tiny CPR paddles and air tubes and machines that were as big as airplanes next to my baby-bird body. Can you even imagine? Every time I see a fresh new wrinkly red baby in the mall, gurgling and spitting up in its stroller, I can’t help but imagine it being dead and then revived, and then I get choked up with a wave of weeping that could flood the entire store. Poor babies. Poor baby me. Poor everyone.
So I am only not dead because a driver in a silver truck was drunk and smashed right into Ashley Mary Jane, who was not meant to be dead. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it was the right place for me, because if she hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here. What a terrible trade, right? What if you were Ashley Mary Jane’s brother? Boy, he must hate me.