Twin Set

I am not my sister.

Bailey’s shadow fell over my life less than a minute after I was born, when she shoved her way out of our mother’s womb. The doctor laid me down—tenderly, I’m sure—to look after her more pressing needs. Once Bailey’s airway was cleared, her oxygen-starved complexion shifted from death’s-door blue to baby-girl pink, and our pediatrician became the first to utter the refrain that has haunted us for thirty years now: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pair of twins who are so absolutely identical. They’re mirror images of each other.” At least, that’s how our mother always told the story.

In the meantime, I waited—quietly, according to Mother—until all of Bailey’s needs were met. Then someone found the time to wipe the birth blood off me and welcome me to the world.

Having begun my life smeared in blood, perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when I woke up half an hour ago, covered in a sheet heavy with the stuff. Perhaps it would have been better if the blood were mine.

***

It was the movie that triggered the attack. There can’t be any doubt. Hardly a week ago, I lay curled in this very bed beside Mack, watching a movie about a twin who committed a murder and tried to pin the crime on his brother. The handsome investigator was stumped because DNA testing can’t distinguish between samples collected from identical twins. Or identical triplets or quadruplets, for that matter. Even if one twin’s DNA mutates after conception, the difference is usually undetectable by forensics labs.

I was troubled by the knowledge that my sister might also be absorbing this dangerous information, so troubled that I lied to Mack. I told him I needed to run next door to Bailey’s apartment to retrieve a sweater, or I’d have nothing to wear to work the next day.

“You girls should just knock down the wall between your closets. I don’t think either of you ever wear your own stuff,” Mack had said, reaching his long arms overhead and stretching every muscle on a body that was well-blessed with them.

Mack was half right. I never wore my own stuff, because Bailey’s closet was always full of my clothes and hers, too.

I let myself into her apartment without knocking and found her watching political commentary on PBS, but it was an obvious ploy. I sensed that she had anticipated my arrival and changed the channel, and Mack’s death proves that my intuition was right. Twins know each other in ways that are somehow more than natural, but still not supernatural. How else can I explain what has happened? Seven days ago, the television detective told me that Bailey and I are indistinguishable to a crime lab, and now Mack is dead.

***

“Fingerprints,” the handsome television detective had observed, “are formed after conception, in the womb. They are truly individual. Even identical twins have unique fingerprints.”

Too bad Bailey is so careful to bleach her hair to the exact shade of platinum that I prefer. This means that both of our bathroom closets are equally well-stocked with rubber gloves. They do a great job of protecting our hands from peroxide. It is highly unlikely that she would have been barehanded when she slipped into my apartment, slid my chef’s knife out of a kitchen drawer, and slid it through Mack’s ribs into his heart. Several times.

I should have seen this coming. Our history is littered with stolen boyfriends and headless dolls. And now Mack is the latest casualty of our lifelong battles. Not that he was left headless, like our entire flock of childhood Barbies. His gentle face was spared but, judging from the condition of my sheets, I would guess that he was left bloodless, or nearly so.

***

I don’t know how long I lay there in my defiled bed, asking, “How could I have been here, six inches away from Mack, while this happened? How did Bailey accomplish this?”

My neurons didn’t seem to be firing properly, a problem that was both the answer to my question and the reason I was so slow to recognize that answer. When had I been drugged?

The three of us had sipped martinis on the balcony just before midnight, then Bailey had gone home. The digital clock on my nightstand told me that it was now nearly four. Who had poured those martinis? It didn’t matter. It would have been no trick for a treacherous sister to slip a bitter powder into a bitter drink. And into Mack’s drink, too? God, I hoped so. When I emerged from the drug and from the shock, it was going to help me if I could convince myself that he didn’t suffer.

I raked my eyes over the bedroom, dimly illuminated by the muted television and the face of my alarm clock. Had she left a trace of herself behind, something that would convince a jury when I told them she’d done this? The prospect of Bailey in prison made me catch my breath. All my life, I’d dreamed of being free of her, and now that dream was in reach.

I huddled in the bed for a sick moment, trying to think. My entire apartment was a crime scene. What if I set my bloodied foot on the carpet and obliterated the only shred of evidence that would put Bailey away? What if I reached out my hand and picked up the phone, dialed 911, and in the process lost my chance to have her locked up? Prudence suggested that I take a moment to look around.

A faint sheen of streetlamp glow penetrated the French doors that opened onto my balcony—the balcony where we had lingered so pleasantly, four hours before. A nightlight in the kitchen leaked brightness through the cracks around my bedroom door. Bailey had been in my kitchen, too, before our final cocktail hour. And she’d lain sprawled across our bed, watching the weather forecast, just before she left for the night. Her fingerprints were everywhere in my apartment. Her hair, too, was everywhere: in the bed where I slept, in my clothes, on the floor, in my dryer’s lint trap. Not that it mattered, unless a forensics lab had developed some secret way of discerning my hair, grown by the same DNA and colored by the same dye, from hers.

The chef’s knife lay beside me, atop a thick comforter that had been snowy white just a few hours before. I didn’t need any special fingerprint powder to know that the only prints on it were mine, not when Bailey had a full stock of rubber gloves in her bathroom. I studied the knife lying mere inches from my right hand and asked myself how I could possibly prove to a jury that it wasn’t me who opened my lover’s chest and let him die?

The answer was clear. I couldn’t prove it, not with mere science. Before I involved the police, Bailey and I were going to work this little problem out. Sister to sister.

***

Why did Bailey and I live in the same apartment building, work in the same industry, and run with the same crowd of friends when we detested each other so? Out of sheer force of habit? No. But not out of love, either.

In our crib—no, in our mother’s womb—we learned the importance of keeping an eye on one’s enemy. All these years, whether we were grappling over a picture book or a tube of lipstick or a man, we’ve always remained face-to-face. For thirty years, I have stared in horror at my own face in the mirror.

I have known twins who carried lifelong scars because they weren’t considered “the smart one” or “the athletic one” or “the pretty one.” Bailey and I never suffered from those labels. Is either of us prettier? I can’t give an unbiased opinion on that, but men seem to like us both. Neither of us is athletic, and both of us are smart. Even in high school, it is difficult to feel a sense of competition with your sister when both of you scored a hundred percent on yesterday’s algebra test.

If we’d been different people, the experience might have bonded us. It can be lonely when you’re surrounded by people who can’t grasp the concept that x sometimes equals two and it sometimes equals seventy-two. Everybody in ninth grade was floored by the notion that you couldn’t just nail down a value for x once and get it over with. Everybody, that is, but me and Bailey, but we hated each other for reasons that had nothing to do with algebra, so we didn’t bond. We just lived our lonely lives, side by side.

If our enmity didn’t arise out of jealousy or competition, then where did it come from? I can’t speak for most other people, but I can speak for Bailey because I’ve watched every minute of her life. I know her. I’m not her, but I am, in some weird way. Both of us are suffused with the bone-deep knowledge that the other sister just shouldn’t be there. Each of us has been cursed with the ultimate intruder.

***

Why did Bailey kill Mack? Because he made me happy? Or because she saw him first? Men have a habit of seeing Bailey first, then recognizing her for what she is and turning to me, but she never killed any of the others. Why Mack, and why now? Maybe because we’re thirty now and, soon enough, men will stop seeing her first. Before long, they’ll stop seeing either of us at all. What will it be like to look in the mirror and find that we’ve become invisible?

Having already determined that the legal system was not going to save me from Bailey, I decided to save myself. I stretched my right hand toward the knife and wrapped my fingers around its handle. It balanced easily in my hand, as well it should, considering how much it had cost me. Its blade was forged of high carbon steel, which the saleswoman had said maintained the sharpest edge, and it was of full tang construction, which she had told me was the strongest design. Bailey’s evening activities had rendered the woman’s sales pitch a trifle macabre.

Knife in hand, I rose from the bed. Within a few staggering steps, I had regained most of the equilibrium that the drug had stolen. Piled on the floor outside the bedroom door, I found a sweater, a pair of jeans, some socks, and a pair of loafers. They were all soaked in blood, and they were all mine. It appeared that Bailey had returned some of the clothes she borrowed. If she was smart—and she was—she’d probably showered in my bathroom and departed in some of the clean clothes that I’d left folded atop my dryer.

I lifted the key to Bailey’s apartment from its hook beside the refrigerator. Then, key in one hand and killer blade in the other, I left Mack behind and went looking for my sister.

***

Bailey’s apartment was immediately adjacent to mine, which means that our front doors were hardly twenty feet apart. That’s not very far, but it was a long way to walk in my bloody negligée.

There was little chance of my being seen at this unholy hour. Had anyone seen Bailey creep in the other direction a few hours before, then back home? Even if they had, their testimony wouldn’t help me defend myself against an accusation that I murdered Mack. The differences between us were so subtle—hair that whorled in opposite directions on the back of our skulls, mirror-image birthmarks on our shoulders—that the casual observer would have merely assumed that I was walking into my own apartment. Bailey had committed the perfect crime, but she never reckoned that I would rise up against her. That I would finally say, “I refuse to take this any more. No matter what the consequence.” She didn’t take into consideration that framing me for murder left me with very little to lose.

I was glad that Bailey’s apartment was to the left of mine, so that I could trail my left hand along the wall to steady myself as I walked down the corridor. My body would eventually win its war with adrenaline and the remnants of knockout drops, but I was not enjoying my time in the battlefield. The key in my hand raked lightly across the textured wallpaper and the sound rubbed like sandpaper against my eardrums. I regretted smudging blood on the expensive wallpaper, but it couldn’t be helped. Neither could the crimson smears my feet left on the carpet. They stretched behind me like the tracks of a frostbitten woman lost in the snow.

As my mind shook off the chemicals, flashes of memory began to plague me. A sharp shadow on the wall. The weak sheen of moonlight on steel. Blood that flowed black in my darkened room. These visions rocked my tentative equilibrium, threatening to knock me off my feet. They gave me the strength to press on.

I groped my way to my sister’s doorknob and turned the key.

***

I could tell by the bags under Bailey’s eyes that she had been asleep, but we’re all programmed to wake at the sound of an unexpected key in the front door. She stepped into the living room as I rushed headlong through her apartment, and I was disappointed. Her bedroom was identical to the one where Mack lay dead, and I had so wanted to confront her there.

She stood swaying in her powder-pink nightgown, and matching satin slippers peeked from beneath its hem. We have always looked particularly nice in that color. Her eyes were so dilated that I could hardly make out their deep blue irises. It occurred to me that, in a stroke of genius, she’d gone home after Mack was dead and drugged herself, making it look as though I were the one doing the drugging and the killing.

She clutched her phone as if she’d planned to greet a burglar politely, then call the police. “What have you done, Haley? Are you hurt?” she asked, as if I were the one who had brought this calamity down on both our heads. “Does Mack know where you are?”

My grip tightened on the handle of the knife hidden in the folds of my nightgown, which had once been powder pink, too. “Mack is dead. You know that.”

The phone clattered to the floor. Her face crumpled like it did when she was a little girl, and she was having trouble getting her way. “You didn’t have to do that. He was never coming back to me.” She put both hands to her face. “You can finally quit torturing me now, because I’ll suffer over this for the rest of my life.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, as the knife rose high over my head and I thought of Mack. “You won’t suffer for long.”

Her left arm shot up and her forearm caught my descending wrist, deflecting the blow. She used her right hand to pull me toward her, destroying the leverage that I would need to use the knife effectively.

“You’re slow, Haley.” Her lips, just like mine, were inches from my face. “I feel like I’ve been drugged, but you’re even slower than I am. Did you drug yourself, too, so you could pretend you were unconscious when someone killed Mack?” Her eyes widened and I could see their pink rims, lined with pale lashes. “Were you going to pretend that I did it?”

“You did it. You.” I bore down on her upturned arm.

Tears washed down her face. “Didn’t you ever love me, Haley? Not ever?”

I shifted my weight, trying to break her hold, but she anticipated the feint and moved with me. Why would her reflexes be better than mine when we wore the same body and had lived essentially the same life? If she were right, if she had been drugged before Mack died and I’d been drugged after I…after somebody killed him, then she would be more alert than I. Her quickness, both mental and physical, suggested that she had guessed right.

In the instant that I doubted my memory, Bailey exploited her advantage. She thrust her right hand out and pushed me an arm’s length away. Then she bent her yoga-conditioned knee up between her breasts, planted her foot on my chest, and pushed hard. I landed halfway across the room and could only watch, impotent, as she backed through her bedroom door and locked it. Fortunately, I lived in an identical apartment, and I knew that the flimsy little lock was mainly just for show. My own yoga-conditioned legs would make short work of it.

“The DNA lab will see us as the same person,” I shouted through the door. “There’s no physical evidence that will pin this on me. It’ll be my word against yours, and the jury will believe me.”

“People believe you. They always have.” She fell silent, as if she were reviewing all the times—and there were many—that my word had prevailed over hers.

I punctuated the silence with a kick to the door.

“But, Haley, there is physical evidence this time, if you used that knife in your hand to kill Mack.”

I answered her with another solid kick.

“We’re mirror twins, Haley. You know that.”

As if I could forget. Everyone who ever saw us was fascinated by the two pretty girls who could each pass for the other’s reflection. Bailey’s hair parted on the left, and mine parted on the right. My dimple, the one that had so charmed Mack, was in my left cheek. Bailey’s was on the right. Looking at her was like looking into a cruel mirror.

“The police will be able to tell whether the killer was right-handed or left-handed. Where was Mack stabbed? On his right side, or his left?”

Through the heart. Mack had been stabbed through the heart, from the front. On his left side. That meant that his killer was right-handed. And I was the right-handed twin.

I put my shoulder to the door, shoving it over and over until the lock broke. When the door flew open, Bailey was nowhere in sight.

I hovered on the balls of my feet, searching the room’s dark corners, ready to spring at a sudden movement. I saw nothing, only an unmade bed and a cluttered desk. Like my room, much of the ambient light came from the French doors that opened onto the balcony. I reached for the light switch but, having spotted my prey, I drew back my hand. It would be so much better to creep up on Bailey in the dark.

The toe of a powder pink slipper was barely visible through the bottom pane of the French door. Bailey had retreated too far, and she’d left herself no escape route. I crossed the room in four steps, flung the door open, and turned to face her.

There was no one there.

A disembodied satin slipper rested at my feet, carefully laid as a decoy. I looked over the railing, half-hoping to see her body sprawled below me, but I was disappointed.

I turned back toward the door in time to witness Bailey’s treachery. A well-manicured hand reached out from beneath the bed, shoved the door closed, and shot the bolt that attached it to the floor. She scrambled from her hiding place, turned the dead bolt, and ran screaming from the room. I watched her scoop the telephone off the floor and run straight out into the hall, where I knew she would begin banging on the neighbors’ doors. It’s certainly what I would have done.

It would do me no good to smash the panes in the French door and go rushing after Bailey, because she had already woken a flock of witnesses. Loud voices were sounding in the hallway outside her apartment while I weighed my options. Someone would come for me soon.

My body had almost cleansed itself of the drug. Uncomfortable flashes of memory had begun to convince me that Bailey was right about who killed Mack. I could visualize the knife swinging down in a powerful arc and striking home, over and over, and the movie scene in my mind’s eye was not shot from the angle of a woman lying in bed beside the victim.

But this didn’t mean that Bailey could prove it to a jury, not beyond a reasonable doubt. And it didn’t mean that Bailey didn’t plant awful memories in my mind when I was drugged and suggestible.

I dropped the knife into the bushes below, angling my toss so that it landed halfway between my balcony and Bailey’s. That should confuse the courtroom conversation for a few days.

Perhaps the killer threw it from the balcony after killing Mack, my lawyer would say. Perhaps my client wasn’t carrying it when she came to tell Bailey that he was dead. It’s always possible that Bailey was mistaken. Or that she’s lying to cover the fact that she killed him herself.

My lawyer would have to be damn good to pin this on Bailey, since Mack’s wounds were obviously made by a right-handed attacker, but he could always try. My client’s sister has studied yoga for years. She could have trained herself to use her left hand well enough to kill an unconscious man.

My attorney could plan for a fallback position—Perhaps a right-handed stranger broke into my client’s apartment with a knife—but I’d really prefer to go after Bailey. Labeling her as the culprit would do a better job of explaining the drugs in all three of our systems. And seeing her accused would give me great personal satisfaction.

I knew it would take me some time to think through the details of my defense and, as I said before, I knew I would need a damn good lawyer. Unusual intelligence would be a point in my favor, though it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that my equally intelligent sister would be testifying for the other side.

I clearly had a lot to think about. I was still weighing my options when the sirens sounded on the street below.