Mistaken for twins on occasion, as young children. Later, even during high school years, referred to as “the twins” by neighbors who knew they were not. Neither Sara nor Delia would make the correction. At a distance one might notice only the sandy-blond hair, the slender builds and short statures, the fair skin; closer up the blue-gray eyes, one oval face with a slightly aquiline nose, one round face, a more buttonish nose, the same precisely curved lips. They were thirteen months apart, and some years that mattered; but no one would confuse Delia’s face for Sara’s, or Sara’s for Delia’s. To Joanie MacFarland, “Nora’s girls” referred to all the Murphy daughters, “twins” to Sara and Delia only. Shorthand, yes, but also slippage from that early resemblance between Molly and the young Delia? At times it seemed “twins” conjured Molly too, referring to an approximate category centered around Delia—Molly Delia’s dead twin, Sara her fraternal one, the number of pregnancies irrelevant.
To Sara, at times they had seemed a trio, though Molly appeared as a peripheral blur Sara struggled to define. Delia’s curiosity—intermittent, less vexed—had focused on Molly’s taste in games or food or color (did Molly also love jam?) and rarely involved Rome. Nor was Delia troubled by resemblance and mistaken assumptions. During childhood, if relatives slipped and called her Molly, she answered “Delia” in the lighthearted tone of a party hostess. As a teenager, and later, she too mixed up the baby photos. “Maybe my cheeks were fatter?” she’d say. “Hard to tell.” Yet how fully Delia occupied her own body: for her, the questions ended here.
Paired, yes, but not mistaken. Acquaintances referred to Sara as “the quiet” one, Delia “the lively.” In school, Sara earned straight As, Delia—bright but unpredictable—a few more Bs, the occasional C if the teacher was, as she explained to Nora, “a turd.” It was Sara who remembered to bring their lunches to school; Sara who closed the house windows during storms; Sara who knew when they’d visit James. Delia planned beach picnics and baked cookies and lobbied for trips to the mall.
They were unserious competitors, though they joined teams and sometimes won (Sara mainly wanted to swim; Delia to socialize). Only to each other did they speak of disappointments in their siblings and their father; together they worried about Nora. Well liked, both of them; still, Sara could be morose, Delia clownish to a fault. Boyfriends. To Sara, Delia’s resembled retriever puppies. To Delia, Sara’s were dopily earnest or brooding and mute. As high school girls, both first had sex, Sara with a boy who lived near the harbor and showed her his boat designs and stole beer from his parents. He rushed, not needing, he said, a warm-up. “Oh, God,” Delia told her. “I hope he gave you a beer.” Though Delia’s own first time was unlaughing, a constrained educational exercise with a boy from varsity soccer.
Not twins. After high school the moniker dropped away; once they left Blue Rock for college, they were plainly sisters, though only later could they sort the implications. Sara moved to Western Massachusetts; Delia stayed near Boston. They talked on the phone, they pursued degrees; in certain ways they mystified each other. Delia joined social committees: she event-planned, she networked. Sara hung out in cafés and slept with disaffected men. And mulled: really, did the mulling help? Would sports? Maybe she could try a local league, or pickup games; Delia played Frisbee and met a sweet guy named Mike.
High GPAs, both of them, and graduate programs. Delia trained in physical therapy; Delia wanted kids. In these choices, she was clear. Less clear about Nora, who’d sometimes be unavailable for weeks; less clear about the distance from Theo, to whom she mailed outlandish postcards and holiday gifts. He sent comic responses and expensive presents. It was something, a relationship of sorts, if from a distant sphere. Only once, when Theo had been out of touch longer than usual, Delia said, “Maybe I have too much Molly.” “He’s like that with everyone,” Sara told her. Delia did not worry about her relationship to James: amicable monthly visits and weekly phone calls seemed enough. She did not worry about Katy, whom she saw often, and whose life her own soon began to resemble.
A marriage. Two girls. A house in the outer suburbs.
To Sara, Delia’s life seemed lucid and precisely chosen and unimaginable. In college the subjects Sara studied—sociology, art history—posed abstract questions that led meanderingly to rare concrete jobs. She waitressed; she temped; she joined a community garden. Only later, after a master’s and a return to Boston, did the work improve. In the intervening years, Delia spoke to her with an apparent patience that continued even after Sara resettled and found what Delia called a “grown-up job” in nonprofit media. Delia at thirty sent rainbow-colored party invitations and thank-you notes; this Delia arranged family dinners—pizza, but dinners nonetheless—and invited Sara to block parties and birthday gatherings.
Sara could not explain Delia; neither could she explain herself. By her early thirties, her work anchored her as much as any work might. She too could write thank-you notes; she too remembered birthdays. It occurred to her that for Delia a spouse might be another kind of twin. Unclear how many such pairings a life might sustain, or how long they might last. A bond separate and distinct from the kinship Sara felt in friendships and relationships, though she’d been in love—or a state she understood to be love—several times. Men. Thrilling, at first. It was always easy, in the beginning, to lose herself in sex, but the more intimate the relationship became—and the more familial—the more she retreated. As if she were at first escaping into pleasure, but later (and more dangerously) began to vanish from herself. It had happened even in the most hopeful of relationships, despite apparent trust, elated future planning—that brief feeling of arrival as if the place of arrival might not also be a point of departure. And then? A growing disorientation, her body again becoming a separate thing. Questions arose, reasonable questions—other cities, children, how to shape a married life—and there appeared, again, a vanishing point beyond which she could not imagine or travel, and in its contemplation felt herself receding. It did not seem to be a matter of wanting or not wanting; she had never said, “I don’t want that.” She didn’t know. It was as if she couldn’t speak the language. As if she were hearing Russian: she knew only English and French.
At thirty-two, she left a man she’d been with for three years. Hadn’t she loved him? He had not pushed for children; he too did not know. He’d studied architectural history. What he’d wanted, it appeared, was a worldly recognition she understood to be fame, though that desire was hard to parse from his dazzling curiosity and solid work ethic. He would not have used the word fame. He would have said professional advancement, perhaps correctly. The desire, the ambition, had nothing to do with her, but it appeared to take on a life of its own, like a permanent house guest from whose company she’d withdrawn. Maybe she could not judge; maybe her own desires were timid and sparse.
“Your own what?” Delia said. “Maybe you just don’t like him anymore.”
This sounded true. “I thought I did,” Sara said. “I thought a lot of things.”