“Go stand over there.” She pointed to a table full of sweaters. “Count to five, maybe, and then hold up a sweater to look at in the light, up over your head. Then put it down, count up to around ten. You got that?”
I understood perfectly. I wouldn’t miss a word Yumiko said. Yumiko twirled a braid behind her ear, grinning at me. I walked over to the angora sweaters, did everything that Yumiko had told me to do. When I put the sweater down, I looked for her, but she wasn’t by the mittens. There was a long line at the cash register, but Yumiko wasn’t in it.
I looked at the flared jeans, counting to twenty just to be safe, and then I went looking for Yumiko. She was sitting next to Daniel on the bench, leaning her head on his shoulder.
“Hey,” I said.
I didn’t like the way her body touched Daniel’s.
“Sue,” Yumiko said, smiling, smiling at me. She had perfect teeth, small and glinty white, even rows. She sat up and held out her hands, and I saw she was wearing the mittens.
“Wow,” I said.
I thought they had security tags on everything.
“They look like ice-skating mittens,” Daniel said. “Why don’t we go ice skating?”
Yumiko shook her head.
“Let’s shop some more.”
“More?” Daniel said. He picked up his book and sighed. “I’ll wait here, I guess.”
Me, I was thrilled. I loved the idea of it, shoplifting. In some way, I had been practicing all my life, stealing cash and credit cards and cashmere socks from my father. He could go to Hawaii too and get eaten by a great white shark for all I cared. Daniel turned the page of his book. Yumiko and I left him behind, sitting alone on the bench.
In the changing room at Macy’s, Yumiko cut the plastic security tag with a pair of nail scissors. I went in with her, standing in front of the changing mirror, which Yumiko said would block the hidden camera. We slid lace dresses over our clothes, and then, for everyone to see, walked out of the changing room, through the women’s section, back toward the mall.
“This is fun,” I said. I’d never gone anywhere without Chloe before. “This is funner than anything.”
A security guard came up to us from behind as we were leaving the store.
“Party’s over,” he said. He grabbed us by the wrists and led us away. Me and Yumiko, in the hands of the law. I knew I was supposed to be scared, but I couldn’t stop smiling.
The guard led us to a dark, cramped room in a hidden corridor of the mall.
“You girls look cute like that,” he said before closing the door.
“Well,” Yumiko said. “This is definitely extreme. Usually, they just let you go. It costs more for them to prosecute than to forgive and forget.”
An hour later, we were in the back of a police car. I thought about Daniel alone on his bench and I giggled. He had been left behind, my poor loser brother, while Yumiko and I were off on our own adventure. When I had woken up that morning, the day had seemed cold and ugly. Chloe was in Hawaii with Lisa Markman. But now I was going to jail with the prettiest Japanese girl in the world.
When the cop pulled out onto the highway, Yumiko slipped me another pill, giving me the thumbs-up. Then she also swallowed a pill. “Jails are a little dirty,” she said apologetically.
“Yumiko,” I said. I loved to say her name out loud. “Thank you.”
She laughed. “I got you arrested.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I always knew one day I would be arrested.
At the station, we were instructed to fill out forms, then we were fingerprinted. I loved rolling my thumbs in the black ink. The police officers were all polite. I didn’t have an ID card; Yumiko gave them her driver’s license. She had braces on her teeth in the photo. I wanted to stare at it, but a police officer put the license into an envelope. We were led to a holding cell. It was a square room with orange and white tiles on the walls, a toilet in the corner, and big glass windows where the police officers could watch us. The room smelled like pee, just the way a holding room was supposed to smell. Yumiko looked out of place in her little-girl overalls and her long, shiny braids. I felt like I fit right in.
I sat next to Yumiko on the orange plastic bench while we waited for my parents to pick us up. I lay my head on her shoulder, like she had laid her head on Daniel’s. This was the best I had felt in a long time. I never wanted to go home. Wherever Yumiko went, that was where I would go next.
“Do you feel the pill?” Yumiko said, rubbing my head.
I nodded, careful not to move my head.
“It’s really not all that bad, getting arrested,” Yumiko said. “Real-life experience is a good thing. So many psych majors read books, study case histories, but I think there has to be more than observing humanity if you want to truly understand it. You can’t, for instance, truly understand a kleptomaniac unless you have stolen.”
“You should write a book,” I said.
“My friend Smita is writing a book,” she said. “Her memoirs. Her father is a big movie star in India.”
“What kind of name is Smita?”
“Indian,” Yumiko said. “I love her name. Smeee-ta.”
“I love your name.”
Yumiko grinned.
“What is your twin really like? Chloe?”
I looked at my shoes. Big, clunky black shoes and dirty red shoelaces. Chloe hated these shoes.
“Daniel says she isn’t worth half of you,” she said.
“He said she’s perfect.”
“Oh, that.” Yumiko shook her head. “Is perfect all that interesting? Honestly, Sue.”
I lifted my head to look at her. Of course Chloe was interesting. Yumiko didn’t know her or she’d understand. Yumiko wore lace dresses and had cute frog stickers, but that didn’t mean she could insult my identical twin. Chloe was smart and beautiful and she was good at everything she did and I loved her more than anyone else. We had once done everything together: breathed the same air, thought the same thoughts, shared the same bed. We shared hamburgers, eating from the opposite ends until our lips met in the center. That was all I wanted. But now Chloe wouldn’t even eat hamburgers; meat was full of fat and antibiotics, and the carbohydrate calories from the bun turned to sugar in the bloodstream.
“Daniel’s wrong,” I said. “Daniel is jealous. He’s always been jealous.”
Yumiko put her hands in her pockets.
“I wish they hadn’t taken my purse away,” she said. “I want some lip gloss. My lips are so dry in here. Aren’t yours?”
I nodded.
“I love your bag,” I said.
“I know,” Yumiko said. “It’s fantastic.”
I looked out the big, glass window. The guard, a black woman in a uniform, sat behind a desk, reading a magazine. She was wearing orange lipstick. It was the same color as the tiled walls and the plastic benches.
“You’ve been arrested before?” I asked.
Yumiko licked her lips.
“Oh, sure. Lots of times.”
“Shoplifting?”
She nodded. “Shoplifting, breaking and entering, protest rallies. Mainly protest rallies.”
“What do you protest?”
“Oh, all sorts of things. Clean air. WTO rallies. Antiwar. Abortion rights. One time, I got so furious at this pro-life guy. He was carrying a fetus in a jar. I grabbed the jar from his hand, smashed it on the ground, and threw the fetus in his hair. The guy went insane. He attacked me.”
I thought of Yumiko, small and frail in her white lace dress, standing up to angry mobs.
“You didn’t,” I said. “Really?”
“The cops broke my arm, breaking up the fight.”
“They did?”
Yumiko held out her arm proudly, and I touched it.
“Big lawsuit,” she said. “I’m five feet tall. I weigh ninety-two pounds. The settlement is going to get me through school when the inheritance runs out.”
“The inheritance?”
“
It seemed enormous when I was younger. Over eight million yen. But the currency in Japan is fucked. I shouldn’t have picked such an expensive college. Anyway, I’ve given up on protests. It’s too exhausting. I’m taking a sculpture class this semester.”
The guard looked up from her magazine. We made eye contact. I tried to stare her down like I did with Daisy. I felt as if I was becoming a hardened criminal. It would drive Chloe crazy, having a twin sister in jail. The guard went back to her magazine.
“My arm still hurts sometimes,” Yumiko said. “Mainly when it’s cold.”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew how to ride a unicycle, but I had never been beat up.
“You grew up in Japan?” I asked Yumiko.
“New York,” she said. “I moved here when I was five. After my parents drowned. My uncle has a restaurant in midtown.”
“He does?”
Yumiko nodded. “What else is there for a Japanese person to do in this country?”
“Cameras?” I said.
Yumiko laughed.
“Poor Daniel,” she said. “I wonder when he figured out we were hauled off.”
She stood up from the bench and stretched. Bent perfectly in half, she skimmed her fingers over the surface of the floor.
“Dirty,” she said, holding the backs of her calves, laying her head against her knees. “You don’t appreciate Daniel,” she said. “He’s got his charms, you know.”
I didn’t want to know.
“But you like me better?” I said.
Chloe was in Hawaii with Lisa Markman. But maybe I didn’t need Chloe. Maybe I didn’t want her anymore. She could run out of oxygen and die at the bottom of the ocean. I had Yumiko.
Yumiko swung up out of her stretch, reaching her fingertips up toward the ceiling. “Of course I do,” she said. “You ride a unicycle.”
“Can I visit you at college?”
“Sure,” Yumiko said. “That would be fun.”
A telephone rang in the hall. The guard answered, staring at us through the glass while she talked. I crossed my eyes and she laughed. Jail was fun.
“That’s our call,” Yumiko said. “Your parents will be upset.”
“Therapy time,” I said.
The guard had a big set of keys on her belt, just like on TV.
“You’re free to go,” she said, opening the door.
We followed her down the hall.
“I believe in therapy, you know,” Yumiko said. “I’m a psychology major after all. I have, at times, greatly benefited from talking to a trained counselor.”
Yumiko slipped her hand into mine.
“Don’t admire perfect. Perfect is a mess. Who knows what kind of crap lies beneath a perfect exterior? Pus and guts.”
I had no idea what Yumiko meant. My parents were waiting out front. Daniel had come too. Yumiko drove home with him in his car, but I was put into the backseat of one of the evil silver Mercedeses with my unhappy, divorcing parents.
“We’ve made you an appointment with a highly recommended therapist for next Thursday,” my father said.
Outside, it had started to snow. I rubbed my tattoo, making small circles on my back. I wanted to show my tattoo to Yumiko. I wanted to tell her everything.
“You are an idiot and a moron,” I said to my father.
Chloe
Lisa had spent two years abroad, working as a runway model in Paris and Milan. She barely resembled the person I remembered before she left. She had a smaller, more delicate nose, styled to re-create the likeness of Catherine Deneuve. She had also shaved her head, which made her look older and somehow more exotic. She looked like somebody famous. She was now six feet tall and only wore heels so that she towered above everyone at school, male and female. She wore asymmetric shirts and tight, striped pants. She had become both glamorous and frightening, and I couldn’t understand why she still wanted to talk to me.
Lisa thought it was cute, how hard I studied. I sat with her in her big, gleaming kitchen while she drank espressos, smoked cigarettes, and casually told me about her sexual experiences.
“There was a French man,” she said. “A cellist. He liked to give me baths. He used to rub me all over with a loofah sponge until my skin was red and tingly.”
Lisa held out her wrist, and I leaned over to examine the piece of jewelry, a heavy gold bracelet.
“That is beautiful,” I said.
“He gave it to me,” she said. “Men are fools when it comes to sex. You can’t even believe the things you can get. Only now I’m under house arrest. My father doesn’t want me to work anymore until I finish high school.”
I tried to return Lisa’s intimate smile. She had singled me out when she came back from Europe. She did not have any use for any of her old friends. According to Lisa, they were not sophisticated. I didn’t know why she thought I was somehow better than them. I did not approve of the idea of men giving women presents for sex. That sounded like prostitution to me, and it seemed to me that Lisa was too young to be wearing such expensive jewelry. She wore a diamond stud in the top fleshy part of her ear. Some of her stories about men sounded like lies, but I had learned to expect lies from spending so much time with Sue. Lisa Markman was my friend and she had spent time in Europe, where according to Lisa, people had different ideas about life.
Lisa wanted to quit school and get her own apartment in New York, but her father refused.
“Now that his career is shot to shit, he’s worried all of a sudden that I don’t have a mother,” she said. “So I have to get an education and explore my options. My father talks like he’s quoting some bullshit self-help book. I think he’s remembering his Christian upbringing. He wants me to realize my full potential. He wants to teach me how to play basketball. I can’t stand being near the bastard. It was his fault that my mother was drunk, driving drunk in the middle of the night. She was going to see her lover. I know, because she told me. I loved my mother.”
I nodded, nervous. Not only did I not know how to respond, but I didn’t want to insult her father, whom I had liked from the first time he shook my hand. Lisa’s anger reminded me of Sue’s, and I wondered if she would not be better off with my sister, who seemed equally mad at the world. But no matter how little I contributed to the conversation, Lisa seemed to like me. And though I was not sure that I still liked Lisa, I loved spending time at her house. After desperately trying to assert my independence at home, I had fallen back into a routine with Sue. We had begun acting like twins. Sometimes, I even slept in my old room.
But Lisa’s return from Europe changed everything. I had a safe place to go, a real person to escape to. Lisa had a trunkful of designer samples, and she could spend hours discussing the new designers and what was fashionable in Europe. She gave me an Armani beaded sweater and a red dress by Stella McCartney. When she invited me to go to Hawaii with her family for Christmas, I knew that I would go, and wouldn’t even consider for a second how Sue might react. I knew that she would react badly. I knew that she followed us back to Lisa’s house after school. The trip would be the first time I would ever travel anywhere without her. In Hawaii, halfway around the world, I would cease to be an identical twin.
Lisa started to tell me the virtues of Hawaii. Their house on Maui, right on the beach, the dolphins and the turtles and the tropical fish, the volcano we could take a helicopter ride to, the incredible bars where we could drink tropical drinks without ever getting carded.
“The sky is so blue,” Lisa said. “The water is so blue. We’ll wear killer bikinis. We’ll drive men wild. You’ll love it there. You have to go scuba diving.”
I listened to Lisa describing our vacation and surprised us both when I spontaneously hugged her.
“You don’t know how happy I am that you are back,” I whispered.
It did not matter that Lisa had had a threesome in Milan with her hairdresser and an English model named Martha. It did not matter that she smoked a pack of cigarettes a day, and sometimes poured vodka into her oran
ge juice at breakfast. I was grateful to have a friend.
Lisa seemed embarrassed. She pulled away and lit a cigarette.
“I am wild about your hair,” she said. “I know it’s, like, stupid, but you remind me of a princess. Martha totally reminded me of you.”
Lisa stopped talking suddenly. She leaned over closer to me and started to stroke my hair. “Sometimes,” she said, “I used to call her Chloe.”
“Who?” I said.
“Martha,” she said, touching my hand and looking at me with such tenderness that I felt uneasy. “I used to call her Chloe.”
Lisa’s dead mother had bought and decorated their beach house on Maui the year Mr. Markman won his first NBA championship. It was a pretty white house on top of a cliff. Sun filled the rooms, and I could hear the birds sing and the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks. Mr. Markman had to sleep diagonally to fit in the canopy bed in the master bedroom. His long legs did not fit under the dining room table, and he often banged his head against the crystal chandelier in the living room. This, according to Lisa, was all intentional. “Mom hated him,” she whispered, the first time we heard the dangling crystals clatter across the house.
“She bought that chandelier just to spite him,” she said.
Lisa’s younger brother, Todd, laughed. I thought it was cruel the way Lisa and Todd made fun of their father. He took them on vacation. He was sweet and funny and kind. But I never said anything. I would be spending ten days with them. Todd had stared at me with puppy dog eyes on the airplane, a twelve-hour flight.
Mr. Markman rubbed the top of his head. No matter what time of the day, it looked as if he was just waking up.
“Got to bend those knees, Dad,” Lisa said.
“Show the old man some compassion.”
“When you let me get my own apartment,” Lisa said.
Mr. Markman had gotten arthroscopic surgery on his knee in the fall. He walked with a limp. He was thirty-six years old and already retired. Though he smiled at me warmly, he did not talk much. I worried that I would be a nuisance to a man who clearly was set upon a quiet vacation, but Lisa said it wouldn’t matter because we would ignore him anyway. “You, me and Todd are going to run wild,” she said. “I’ve got to teach you infants the ways of the world.”
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