Chapter Thirty-Five
thirty-five
DECEMBER 1990
LUCILLE had gotten used to the twin bed she had back at Lawrence Academy. That mattress sagged. The slats dug into her back. She’d even gotten used to her roommate’s obnoxious snoring. In the mornings she’d wake up and the pale light would stream in and reveal her roommate’s wall of magazine cutouts.
The first day Lucille moved in, her roommate introduced herself as someone who sang choir and did model UN. Her dream college was Wellesley because her mother had gone there. She invited Lucille to a party. Lucille went out of politeness. She stood in the corner and didn’t speak to anyone. After that, she didn’t get any more invitations. The walls on her side of the room stayed blank.
Lucille hated boarding school. She hated that Mā had shipped them off, so suddenly that she had been enrolled in the middle of the second week of the term. She hated its cold, damp halls and its mildewed smell. Mā had to ship them winter coats. She sat in classrooms and read while people leaned over their chairs to talk to one another. She sat in the library writing essays while they got ready for parties. They’d known each other for years, and she was the new kid who arrived senior year. Some people tried talking to her, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t want anyone to know anything about her. Especially not about her father. Or her mother. Or her sister. So everyone talked about her instead, and she let them. Lucille tucked Ada safely away, deep in her chest. In her mind, her twin was still here with her.
But now she was home for the holidays, and she wished she were back at Lawrence. It was a strange feeling to sleep in her own bed again. In the house, they couldn’t hide from one another. They sat at the long dinner table, too vast for the three of them, and ate the bland noodles that Mā made. None of them could look one another in the eye.
Mā had faded into herself. Her garish gray roots grew out into her unkempt perm, which flared out around her bare face like she’d received an electric shock. She hadn’t booked a role since the summer. For all they knew, she was done with acting.
Rennie, on the other hand, got cast in the Lawrence production of Romeo and Juliet and wouldn’t shut up about it. Lucille said nothing. Everything she wanted to say, she only wanted to say to her dead twin sister. Every day she passed Ada’s closed bedroom door.
Maybe it was good that their mother had sent her and Rennie to a school on the East Coast, one that cost half a year’s college tuition. In school she could lose herself in her classwork and come home to a nondescript room. Teachers wrote blocks of praise on her essays. That was the one thing she could control. She was going to get into Dad’s alma mater. She was determined to go to Yale. She faded into the crowded hallways during passing periods. Sometimes she would see Rennie, talking and laughing, surrounded by a crowd of her new friends. A vicious pang would tear through Lucille to see her younger sister happy like that. Their eyes would meet, and Lucille would look away.
At school, she dreamed of coming home. She would get on a plane and Mā would drive her home from the airport, and she would open the door and Ada would be there, asking where have you been? Lucille dreamed it was still summer and the garden was blooming. She thought about the two of them, sitting on the terrace, driving around. If only she were home—she’d wake up and realize it had all been some terrible nightmare.
But now that she was home, she saw that this house could never be what she dreamed of. Josiah and Edith had moved away. Weeds had overtaken the garden. Rotted twigs and mold collected in the stagnant fountain, which was drying out. She kept thinking about Ada’s last moments. She thought about how shards of the windshield punctured through her eye and cut into her brain as the car burst into flames around her. That’s what the coroner said.
She was here for three more days, and the feeling was starting again. A strict tightness wrapped itself around her chest and closed her throat. Lucille’s muscles locked up, her body freezing against her bed. She pulled in one breath, then another. She just needed to wait for the feeling to pass. This had been happening for months. The minutes stretched out before her, gaping and eternal.
When it was over, she forced herself to sit up and move. In the bathroom, she ran the sink and splashed cold water on her cheeks. She stared at herself in the mirror, against the backdrop of dark green wallpaper.
For a moment the face in the mirror shifted, and there was a dimple that hadn’t been there before. A gash on her head weeping blood.
Ada looked out at her from the mirror and opened her mouth as if to say something.
Lucille stumbled back, crashing into the door behind her. A sharp pain jolted through her back.
She heaved breaths through gritted teeth and tilted up her gaze. The sink came into view first. It was still running. Then she faced her reflection in the mirror. Ada was gone. She was alone.
RENNIE knew that the holidays were for family, but her family was broken. There was a reason Mā had sent her and Lucille off to boarding school. She couldn’t bear to be around them anymore. It seemed like she couldn’t bear to be around anyone.
And Rennie couldn’t sleep .
One of her friends, Nancy, had given her some of her sleeping pills. They calmed her nerves down, she said. Helped her relax. The first time Rennie took one of those pills last month, she sank so deeply into sleep that she didn’t have a single dream. Oh, it was heaven . Nancy had given her a couple more, and Rennie had hidden them in an emptied box of mints. She’d run out right before she came home, and now she had spent five nights turning off the lights and lying awake, trying to will herself into slumber.
I’m going back tomorrow , she repeated to herself, as if doing so would push the clock faster. She felt awful for it.
Lucille was the one who had demanded they go home for winter break. They had crouched around the school’s communal payphone after another short call with Mā. They spoke in Mandarin, in hushed tones. People passed by and stared at them. “Mā needs us. We need each other.”
But then they came home and no one spoke. Mā shut herself in her room all day, or sat in the library staring into space. Rennie tried so desperately to fill the dead air with stories from school, but Mā only offered her half smiles. Lucille stayed silent and sullen and angry. As if this hadn’t been her idea.
This was how it was at school, too. Rennie waved to her in the halls, and Lucille’s unforgiving gaze barely brushed hers before she’d march on, alone, the other way.
“Your half sister’s kind of a bitch,” her friends would say. “No offense. You’re the normal one.”
Rennie would lightly shrug and swallow the burning feeling in the back of her throat. She knew Lucille was angry with her. For making friends in this school, for filling her days with choir and theater, for going to parties on the weekends. She felt guilty for running from one thing to the next. But she was scared that if she stayed still and had even a moment to herself, her guilt would consume her.
So she went to class, and then rehearsal. She gave herself highlights in the communal bathroom. She loved not being able to see past the stage. She reveled in the heat of the spotlights. She got the part of Juliet in the Shakespeare production. And it felt good, acting out a part that was on paper, with lines that were already written. She loved it.
Rennie was a natural. Everyone told her so. She glowed with the praise. She had arched brows and expressive, doe-like eyes perfect for an actress. She got invited to parties with the older kids from the theater crowd, and they all said she was like their little sister. She played their drinking games, and they called her affectionate names. If they got sufficiently drunk, they would try to guess Rennie’s ethnicity. “You don’t look Chinese,” they would say. They would tilt their heads. “But you do.” They’d turn. “Does she?”
Rennie’s insides would burn. She didn’t know how to explain that she’d grown up eating Chinese food, that she still perfectly understood the Mandarin that Mā and Edith spoke to each other. She realized with a sinking feeling that this was always how she would be seen by others. In-between, always speculated upon. But when they ruffled her hair and kissed her on the cheek, that burning feeling in her stomach eased, just a little bit. She soaked in their affection, smoking joints with them on the balconies while they harmonized and talked about their dreams: New York, Los Angeles, a casting call that was posted in the Boston area for this one coveted movie role. They didn’t see her as the kid who lost two members of her family in one catastrophic summer, and she didn’t tell them. She was only what lay ahead of her: a promising actress. A bright future. They took her in. “You’re so pretty,” someone said, holding her chin and jaw once. “You remind me of someone famous, but I don’t remember who.”
But no matter what she did, at some point in the night Rennie would be awake.
And then she would think about Dad. And Ada.
Now, in the bedroom she’d grown up in, all those thoughts gripped her. She thought about Ada’s soft laugh. The times that she would come downstairs and make a warm cup of milk for Rennie in the middle of the night. When they had been younger and Rennie wanted to tag along with her and Lucille and Sophie, Ada was always the one to relent. Lucille would get annoyed, but Ada was only sweet to her. Except for that last night.
You ruined everything, Ada had said that night. I hope you’re happy.
Rennie glanced outside the window that overlooked the garden, just like she’d done over the summer. Someone was standing in the garden.
“She’s out there.”
Rennie froze. She felt a presence behind her and, slowly, she turned around.
Ada was looking straight at her. “Go.”
A scream curdled in Rennie’s throat. She scrambled backward and squeezed her eyes shut. The back of her head knocked into the windowsill, and pain shot through her skull. She counted to ten and opened her eyes.
No one was there.
You’re fucked-up, Rennie. You’re seeing things.
She lowered herself to the ground, her knees pressing against the unforgiving floorboards. Ada was gone. Whatever that was—a ghost, a vision, an apparition—had disappeared. And yet a part of Rennie wished she’d kept her eyes open. Ji? Jie , a braver version of herself would have pleaded. Don’t be mad at me. What did I do to you? Please, tell me. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
LUCILLE woke up weeks later to an uneven knock at her door. They were back at school and it was the middle of the night. A moment later there was another knock. Her roommate snored. Lucille sat up in bed. The unblinking red numbers on the digital clock told her it was past four.
And then she heard, in a soft, muffled voice, “Lucille?”
Lucille jumped down and slipped outside. “Rennie? What’s going on?”
Her sister stood in the hall, arms crossed, wearing a too-tight cardigan sweater. Her eyes were wide and framed with clumped mascara. Her lipstick was half-smeared and blotchy. She said in a blurry voice, “I just want to talk to someone.”
Lucille closed the door behind her. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“I just—” Rennie sighed, and Lucille could smell something sharp and sour on her breath. “Can’t sleep.”
“You can’t sleep?” Lucille blinked awake. They stood in the stark dormitory hallway under the harsh fluorescent lights. It was damp and cold, and she shivered in her T-shirt. “That’s all? Where were you? Were you drinking?”
Rennie shrank. “Not really—”
“You could smell the vodka from Connecticut.”
“ Fine . I was in one of my friends’ rooms. Just hanging out. But now they’ve all gone to bed, and I don’t want to sleep. I don’t wanna.”
Jesus , Lucille thought. It’s almost five. “Why not?”
“Because I wake up and I feel awful.”
That stopped Lucille. All this time she’d thought Rennie had moved on and happily shed her old life. She reached out and held Rennie’s arm. Her sister was slightly taller than her, long-limbed and uncertain. They were no longer eye level. Rennie flattened herself against the wall and closed her eyes. Lucille leaned against the wall next to her sister.
“And I get nightmares about her.”
Lucille bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from crying. She said in a thick voice, “Me too.”
“Do you think—”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“No, say it.”
“Do you think we’ll ever be okay?”
Lucille paused for a long time. Did Rennie expect everything to go back to normal? Was she looking for reassurance? Didn’t they both know the answer to that question? Lucille didn’t know how things could ever change. The school counselor had told her it would get better as time went on. But she was also becoming aware that the more time passed, the further she got from Ada, and that thought terrified her too. She settled on something that she knew would comfort her sister, but it came out sounding hollow. “I’m sure we will be.”
Rennie whispered, “Do you ever see Ada?”
Lucille’s eyes flew open. “What do you mean?”
“I keep seeing her. She keeps appearing. I saw her when we were home for break. And I just saw her today.”
Lucille started to feel numb. “Okay,” she said slowly. Her hands were tingling. “Rennie. What were you doing at this party?”
“I was just—”
“Did you take something?”
“I—”
“You took something.”
“This wasn’t tonight,” Rennie said. “This was the other night. When I was coming back from rehearsal. I wasn’t taking anything but sleeping pills, I swear.”
“Sleeping pills?” Lucille’s voice rose. “Are you serious ?”
“I can’t— sleep. It helps. ”
“You’re taking fucking sleeping pills?” Lucille felt hysterical. “After what happened with Dad?” She whirled around and shook her sister by the arms. The color drained from Rennie’s face. “Listen to me. This isn’t normal. You’ve been hallucinating. You are going crazy. You need to quit whatever you’re taking, right now .” She felt her chest constrict, but she pushed through. “Or you’ll end up like him.”
She saw the moment her words sank in, and she felt monstrous. Rennie’s face crumpled and she broke from Lucille’s grip.
Lucille swallowed and dropped her hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know that.”
Rennie was clearly trying very hard not to cry. She said in a small voice, “Okay.”
It was the truth, Lucille told herself, even as she watched Rennie’s lonely figure move down the freezing halls. It was cruel, but there was no other way to say it. She couldn’t lose her little sister, too.