One day she went to Mrs. Harder and asked, “What’s twins?”
“You and Lois are twins, darling,” Mrs. Harder said.
“I know, but what’s twins?”
“That means you were born together. You look alike.”
“Were Eve and me born together?”
“No, darling.”
“Well, we look alike.”
“But not exactly alike. You and Lois are identical twins. That means you look exactly alike.”
Linda pondered this for a grave moment. Then she said, “I don’t want to look exactly like nobody but me.”
And even though Mrs. Harder had laughed and said something about both her girls being adorable little darlings, Linda was not pleased at all.
After that, whenever anyone mistakenly called her “Lois,” she would whirl angrily and say, “I’m Linda!”
She did not enjoy the confusion their sameness bred. She did not smile when her nursery-school teacher reported, “One of your girls was very naughty today, Mrs. Harder. I can’t remember which one. They’re so hard to tell apart.”
She did not appreciate other children referring to her and Lois as “Harder One” and “Harder Two.” To one of these children, she angrily replied, “I’m not a number. I’m Linda!”
Nor did she enjoy the constant comparison.
“Well, Linda doesn’t draw as well as Lois, but she likes to work with clay.”
“No, Lois is the one who tells the stories. Linda’s a little shy.”
“You can tell if you really look closely. Linda’s hair isn’t as glossy.”
“Now eat your cauliflower, Linda! See how nicely Lois is eating?”
It took her a long while to learn that there were compensations for loss of identity.
There was, to begin with, the protective coloration of the pack. Both girls, she discovered, could raise holy hell together and get away with it, simply because it was considered adorably cute in tandem. Both girls could utter completely stupid inanities which were considered terribly advanced and grown up, simply because they were spoken by twins. At any party, the Harder twins — dressed exactly alike, their black-banged hair sleekly brushed, their blue eyes sparkling beneath long black lashes, their petticoats stiffly rustling — stole the show from the moment they entered. There was sanctuary and notoriety in twinship.
But most important of all, there was companionship.
There was no such thing as a lonely rainy day indoors, no such thing as a long solitary bout with the whooping cough or the mumps. Lois was constantly by her side, an ally and a friend. It was not so bad being a twin at all.
Except sometimes, when you remembered sitting alone on a park bench, alone, Linda Harder.
When you remembered the fall of a solitary leaf.
At eight-twenty, when Linda came out of the bedroom, Hank MacLean was sitting in the living room talking to her parents. He was a tall boy with sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes. He wore a gray tweed suit and a blue tie, and he rose instantly when Linda entered the room.
“You look pretty,” he said.
“Thank you. Was Dad telling you how tough business is?”
“As a matter of fact,” Hank said, “I was telling him about fencing.”
“I didn’t know he was on the fencing team, Linda,” Mr. Harder said.
“The second team, Mr. Harder,” Hank corrected. “That means I only get to stab people every now and then.”
Mr. Harder chuckled. Mrs. Harder inspected her daughter and said, “You look very lovely, darling.”
“Thank you. Shall we go, Hank?”
“Sure. If you’re ready.”
Linda kissed her parents and then walked to the closet. “Is it cold out?” she asked. “Do I need something for my head?”
“It’s just brisk,” Hank said.
She took her coat from a hanger, and he helped her on with it. She felt rather strange. She always did when she was dating one of Lois’s cast-offs. She had the feeling that, having failed with his first choice, he was now dating a mildly reasonable facsimile of the original. Invariably, boys who expected a carbon copy of Lois were disappointed. She did not know Hank at all, except that he had dated Lois several times and then suddenly called Linda one day last week. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was second choice, second best, and she remembered him helping Lois into her coat just two short weeks ago, and the memory was painful.
“I didn’t know whether you and your sister would be dressing alike,” he said. She turned, puzzled, buttoning her coat. “Even though you’re not going out together, I think it’s nice for people to know you apart, don’t you?”
“What?” she said, thoroughly puzzled.
He lifted a box from the hall table. “This is for your buttonhole,” he said. “So I’ll know you when we meet at the out-of-town newspaper stand.”
She was too surprised to speak. She lifted the lid from the box, parted the green paper, and then picked up the corsage.
“I guess roses go with everything,” he said. “I hope.”
“This... this was very thoughtful, Hank,” she said. “Would you help me pin it?”
“I’m only on the second team!” he said, backing away from the pins.
Linda laughed. “Mom?” she said, and Mrs. Harder came to pin the corsage.
“There,” she said. “That’s a beautiful corsage. You look lovely, Linda.”
Hank nodded. He didn’t say anything. He simply nodded, and Linda saw the nod and the strange sort of pride in his eyes, and she looped her hand through his arm suddenly.
“Not too late, Hank, please,” Mrs. Harder said. “This is a weekday.”
“Okay,” he answered. “Good night, Mr. Harder.”
“G’night,” Mr. Harder said from the living room.
From the bedroom, Lois called, “Have fun, Lindy! Hi, Hank!”
“Hi,” Hank called back.
Gently, he loosened Linda’s hand from his sleeve and captured it with his own.
13
On Thursday night, in the darkness of the parked automobile, Larry sat and waited.
He was grateful for the darkness. He did not want to be seen in town when he was supposed to be in New York. In the light of the dash, his watch read 8:15 and he wondered for the fifteenth time since eight o’clock whether she would come. He had never liked waiting. She should have realized it would be painful for him. She certainly could have shown the consideration of being on time.
If, of course, she were coming at all.
What am I doing here, anyway? he asked himself. Am I crazy? Why did I lie to Eve? This girl means nothing to me. She’s stupid and cheap and she’s probably been had by a thousand men. What do I want from her?
He admitted to himself what he wanted from her.
Not sparkling conversation, not a charming dinner companion, not a twinkle-toed dancing partner. He knew exactly what he desired. Knowing it, admitting it, the lying had seemed essential.
But it disturbed him, and not because it hurt Eve, who had accepted the falsehood with faithful innocence. It was her very trust, instead, which had turned his deception into a barbed shaft that twisted in his chest. He had been untruthful before, but never with Eve. And those lies had never been outrageously false; they had been only the polite inaccuracies of society, small falsehoods that oiled the machinery of American culture, designed to promote harmony, almost merciful in character.