Her: A Memoir (10 page)

Before we left for college she took on the task of building for us trinket boxes, shelving, and, in her most clever feat, what she refers to as “Atta girls.” These are pencil holders cut from blocks as high and thick as bricks, from identical pieces of sunny blond pine, and finished in a slick shiny glaze: Mom cut and sanded the wood herself, shellacked it with polyurethane, drilled five holes in the tops, and completed them with a handmade carving with her Dremel. She engraved each with our name and a tender joke: Writer’s Block. As we set up our room at Bard, Mom filled each Writer’s Block with pens and set it on the appropriate desk.

Mom has Cara’s now. It sits beside her computer alongside several pictures of Cara. In one, Cara stands in a piazza in Venice, laughing, her arms out at her sides like a child playing airplane, pigeons flying away from her open hands full of bird feed. I still have my Writer’s Block. It sits on top of Cara’s desk, which I inherited and where I work. I fill it not with pens but with fresh daises, lavender, and the dried rose I took from an arrangement at my sister’s funeral.

Cara and I played Tracy Chapman while we unpacked at Bard, singing along. We arranged the room so our beds were against each outer wall, our desks pushed against the footboards. Cara interspersed her newly bought books for freshman seminar with the picture books our mother had read to us as children:
Snow White
beside the
Tao Te Ching
,
Cinderella
beside
The Odyssey
. I had made certain that our wall posters were framed and Cara tapped each picture-hanging nail into the wall delicately so as not to disturb the neighbors. I festooned the curtain rods and doorway with strings of white Christmas lights. We hung light pink drapes on the windows, covered the stiff gray industrial carpeting with an oval rainbow hand-knotted rug that looked as if it should furnish a senior living apartment. We’d brought vases for freshly cut flowers and enough plates and utensils to stock a full kitchen. We’d packed an air-popper and a mini refrigerator. We filled the fridge with condiments and the tiny clear glass vials that contained my inhalant medicines for asthma.

Pleased, I stretched out in bed and cranked up the air-conditioning unit that was installed only inches from my pillow.

Our resident assistant stood in our doorway to greet us. We had set up our room in three hours, a record, she informed us. We were sweating and exhausted. The air conditioner blasting, we lay on our twin beds in the room, a small room, no more than ten feet wide. Identical pastel quilts that felt like cardboard topped our beds and hung stiffly over matching white dust ruffles.

“Wow! You guys really know how to make a home.” The RA looked around at our suburban-style dorm, bewildered.

“Thanks,” we chimed back; we were pleased with ourselves. Home was only an hour away, but Cara and Mom and I knew it was much farther.

Chapter 9

Cara married at twenty-two,
which seemed foolishly young.

She had known what marriage meant for us as twins. She’d wanted to marry, but needed to include me. She bought me a tiny engagement ring as a gift, a token for fulfilling the duties as her maid of honor. She slipped it onto the ring finger of my left hand and told me that I was also a wife in her marriage. When I married, I did the same for her, and bought her the tiniest diamond cluster ring for being my matron of honor. We both wore our rings every day until she died. The undertaker gave me Cara’s cluster ring after her wake. I pulled my wedding rings off and put both hers and mine on, one next to the other. The set didn’t match, but it was ours. I wore my engagement diamond and my wedding band on the wrong hand from then on.

There was no reason for me to marry young also except because Cara had. And that’s exactly what I did. I made a plea to Jedediah that we should marry even though he thought we should wait. We’d save money living together, I’d argued, appealing to his practical side. Jedediah and I were married in August of 2001; I was twenty-four.

But then we were rarely alone.

Cara often stalked us.

On the fourth day of our honeymoon in Cape Cod, just as we finished up brunch at our bed-and-breakfast, Cara called. Jedediah and I had stowed our cell phones in a drawer of a vanity in our suite. The world was to be shut out; the world meaning my sister. But Cara rang for me at the reception desk, and the innkeepers brought me to the phone.

I knew who it was before I even said hello. There was not another friend or family member who would dare call.

“Hi, Cara. What’s up?” I asked, short and measured.

“How’d you know it was me?” She giggled, innocent as a girl.

“Lucky guess.” I laughed back. “Who else would care enough to interrupt my honeymoon?”

“Good point! I miss you.”

“It’s only been a few days.”

“You’re married now.” Cara’s voice cracked at “married.” “It’s different. I feel like you don’t need me anymore.”

“Jesus, Cara. You’ve been married for over a year. Stop it.”

I’d done my best even though it broke my heart to pair Cara off with Kahlil; they loved each other then. At their ceremony the summer before, I’d read a passage from the Bible on love and sharing, and had broken down in tears as I read, having to stop when I got to a line about parting from birth family into a new married one.

On the phone Cara sniffled. “It’s not the same. Kahlil knows you’re the most important person in my life. Jedediah doesn’t care. Now you’re far away on your honeymoon and I’m stuck all by myself at home.”

“Please don’t start this now,” I said. Cara had bullied Jedediah all through our wedding weekend, beginning on the night of our rehearsal dinner. She’d gotten falling-down drunk at a Catskill mountain lodge where Jedediah’s family hosted the meal, cornering him as he made his way to the bathroom. She pushed him up against a wall outside of the men’s room, standing on her tiptoes so the two were face-to-face. Cara told Jedediah that he’d better understand that marrying me meant marrying her, too. He was also to know that I would never love him as much as I loved her. These were the rules for marrying a twin, and she thought he should know. Her hair was crazy, windblown. She was unsteady on her feet, and Jedediah kindly held her up. She’d just come in from a smoke on the porch, her silky blouse had been pulled back over one shoulder when she’d taken off her coat, and she’d not adjusted it back into place. She’d had enough vodka, and not a care left for her tidiness. My husband-to-be didn’t comment on her rules for his marriage. He put his arm around her and walked her back to the table where a tall vanilla cake waited for the bride and groom. I held on to the cool handle of the cake knife and motioned for Jedediah to come over. He had placed his hand over mine and we had pushed the knife down through the layers of cake and kissed. Cara had poured herself a tall glass of water and a taller glass of wine.

“How’s the lover’s nest?” Cara teased. Our Cape Cod honeymoon was about to end.

“It’s cozy,” I sighed. A beach bag packed with towels and sunscreen sat at my feet. Jedediah had excused himself from our brunch table and stood near the reception counter, waiting to hear what Cara had in store. He’d propped the perfectly collapsed and tightly snapped beach umbrella on the railing to the stairs that led up to the second floor, to our room. He carried a paperback copy of
Invisible Cities
and a crisp black Moleskine notebook. “We’ve had a good time. Lots of fish and chips, and we still have four more days of what looks to be good weather,” I said.

“I see.” My report wasn’t what Cara had hoped for. Her own honeymoon had been a disaster. They’d taken a cruise and were lodged in a windowless cabin. The food was lousy, and they’d both gotten serious cases of scabies. I could hear the usual compare and despair in her silence. “I’m lonely.”

“Where’s Kahlil?”

“Who knows? Busy, I guess.”

“How about you write, or go visit Mom?”

“I want to see the ocean.”

I looked over at Jedediah. “She wants to come,” I mouthed. “What do I do?”

Jedediah looked up from
Invisible Cities
, alarmed. “Hang up,” he whispered. “Hang up now, before she won’t take no for an answer.”

Cara piped in. “I’ve already bought a bus ticket. I get in at eight o’clock tonight.”

“What about our privacy?” I begged.

“Don’t worry. I booked a room down the street. You’ll barely know I’m there.”

Cara hung up before I could protest anymore.

She arrived on that evening’s bus as promised. I picked her up from the station and Jedediah waited at the bed-and-breakfast. She descended the bus stairs with an overstuffed backpack and a bouquet of my favorite flowers. “For the bride,” she said and smelled the bunch of purple hydrangea and red roses. How could I tell my husband that I wanted her with us? It was difficult to appreciate the ocean without my twin; to see the world apart from her was to be there only by half.

In the end, Cara kept her promise to Jedediah: his marriage to me was all she’d said it would be. She called whenever she liked. She showed up whenever she liked. She still had me, like he never could.

Chapter 10

I
try to understand
the truths and see how
what-if
s and
if-only
s have altered my memories. I remember in plain terms what I could have done and didn’t, what I did and fumbled. I see my sister’s life through the veil of my failure to save her.

It’s as simple as this memory: the day after my sister’s attack, I refused to get her a glass of water. The pain medicines caused her thirst; her nose was broken so she breathed through her mouth; she’d wept herself dry. I had been with her through the night—she’d allowed no other inside her room. I sat beside her and held her up as she struggled to swallow, put a soft pillow at the small of her back. The next morning I heard her call my name and pretended not to hear. I couldn’t bring myself to see her battered face in the daylight. What would have happened to Cara had I answered her call? Not just that one, all that I missed?

The moment my sister fell under her rapist’s hand, he untwinned us: the bodies were the same but Cara became lost in hers. My body became a vessel of guilt, reminded us both of the past: the free, easy, joyful giving of sex, ripe exposed youth, and the naive belly that still tickles at touch.

It’s not like this old, boring question: When something happens to your twin, can you feel it?

It’s more like this: you’ve eaten something spoiled and it’s made its way into every part of you, itching the skin, and you can’t get at it. Or it’s like a withered phantom limb you can’t see, but you can feel every inch. It’s your broken bedridden twin, sobbing as you attempt to comb the knots from her hair. You try but you can’t reach the tangles: her neck, it’s been twisted too hard. She can’t turn her head. She hates you for reminding her of what she was. You fear her for showing you what you could become.

*   *   *

The events of October 18 are a patchwork. I went inside from the backyard when the sun went down and decided to color my hair. I heard the phone ring from the kitchen and ran for it, thinking it was Cara calling me to tell me how her story had been critiqued in class. But it was several hours too early for that call. She shouldn’t have been home yet.

My hair was still goopy and wet and weighty with coloring, slicked up and twisted into a knot. I lifted the receiver to my ear and then pulled it back; I left a murky ring of L’Oreal Midnight circled on the earpiece.

“Christa?” Kahlil asked for me, said my name as if he were apologizing.

“Heya Tall Glass of Water.” I liked to nickname him. He usually had one to toss back at me. Not this time.

“I’ve got some terrible news,” Kahlil said. “Cara was attacked.”

“Attacked?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was raped.” He said the word as if he didn’t understand what it meant—and he didn’t. It would take two years and the dissolution of his marriage before he understood.

I fell back as if I’d taken a blow. “Was she out with the dog?” I hated that doofy dog. I’d told my sister again and again not to walk the dog in the woods; she never listened.

“Yes.”

“By herself?”

“Yes.”

“Where were you?” The question landed like a bomb.

“I was home playing video games.” But not like my husband, I thought. Kahlil didn’t just play games; he escaped into them, abandoning common sense and all responsibility as he played. The man was a boy.

I sped toward Holyoke to get to Cara. Before I left I called my mother, who was still at work on an evening shift. Then I tried to reach Jedediah, who was home playing his own game. The phone was busy. I wouldn’t reach him for hours. I sped west to east on the thruway; I remember that. Memory plays tricks, and when I try to recall that evening I see Jedediah beside me in the car. I can’t remember how and if he held my hand, what was said or wasn’t, how he consoled me. What I see is my young husband looking out the passenger’s side window tapping his finger lightly against the glass, humming softly to the radio. In my memory of Cara’s rape I’ve put him in the place I needed him at that moment, beside me.

In my memory we drove together through the night without talking. I nervously flicked through the stations to find music that could both soothe my nerves and help keep us awake. In reality, I rolled down both windows all the way, a shock of cold air stinging the side of my face, helping me focus on driving and not the violent thing I was about to see.

Mom called after eight o’clock. I was nearly halfway to Cara. She told me she was making good time. She didn’t know what to expect, she said. She’d called Kahlil to try to understand what had happened. He’d said that Cara had been raped, which confused her. It’s not possible, Mom said again and again. Could we check with the police that a mistake hadn’t been made? Maybe Cara had only been beat up a little? There must have been a misunderstanding? Cara had probably just been involved in a scuffle and hurt a bit, a pride-bruising black eye, a snatched purse?