Here She Lies

a stack and accidentally jostled the wireless mouse. The sleeping monitor popped to life and I was startled to see that Julie had changed her screen saver to a photo of herself and Lexy, one of the portraits I took last week and downloaded right before leaving for Manhattan. Bobby and I both stared at it. I wondered what he saw. Could he recognize Julie in two dimensions as readily as I could? What I saw was myself but curiously the self part was reflected in Lexy’s image, not Julie’s, and it struck me how much my center had shifted in having a child. The emotional negotiation of being with Lexy and Julie, the three of us together, had blunted that awareness before now, but suddenly it was clear. If I had to choose between them I would choose my daughter, not my twin — an impulsive thought I could never speak aloud.
    “Why is the computer on?” Bobby sat down in Julie’s chair.
    “She never turns it off,” I said. “She works really crazy hours and she likes to check her e-mail a lot.”
    I stood behind him, looking at the computer’s desktop. The entire left side was covered with neatly arranged icons. It was impossible not to study them, given our argument last night. She had a zillion programs and Web links at her fingertips and even though I was no computer whiz I recognized them all: Excel, PowerPoint, Lexus Nexus, Money, and so on and so forth through the standard inventory of professional tools.
    “What is all this?” Bobby’s hand was cupped overthe mouse, but he didn’t dare click anything with me watching.
    “All the usual office stuff. You’d know half of it from the clinic, Bobby, if you ever used the computer.”
    “Please don’t start that now, Annie. I never needed a computer in my life.” He didn’t finish the sentence: until now.
    Just to satisfy him I double-clicked on some of the icons. Programs and sites filled the screen, with Julie’s sign-on data loading automatically. Because we weren’t marketers nothing looked more intriguing than anything else.
    “Satisfied?” I asked.
    “I didn’t say a word.”
    My lips clamped and by his sigh I knew he caught my meaning. You didn’t have to. The final page of the credit report exited the fax machine. Bobby clipped the pages together and left the report on my dresser in the Yellow Room.
    We headed into town.
    Five minutes along, turning off Division Street, I realized how close we were to the nursery school playground, the closest place to the house with baby swings.
    “Take a right, just for a minute,” I said.
    “It’s almost ten. Shouldn’t we go directly to the appraiser?”
    “Just drive past the playground.”
    When he understood my motivation he didn’t question me again: maybe, just maybe, we would find Lexy and Julie here. The little schoolyard was busy with a dozen or so preschoolers laughing and runningand climbing and jumping and chasing each other on the wood-chipped ground. A teacher in a blue skirt turned to watch us as we drove slowly past and with a pang of shame I realized how it must have looked, two strangers eyeing the children. I waved, but she just stared at me as we drove away. I realized what a dumb idea it was to look for Lexy here — Julie and I had never brought her during school hours, when the older children used the playground. I glanced at Bobby, staring ahead at the road, and knew he was feeling what I felt: shame, helplessness, an unnamable unease. No parents felt right, separated from their child; even without a solid reason to fear for her safety, we wouldn’t relax until we saw her with our own eyes.
    “Maybe she’s at the public playground in Stock-bridge,” I ventured.
    “We don’t have time now, Annie.” Translation: he didn’t think they were whiling away the time at any playground. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking — your sister took your identity and now she has our child and you’re not even worried — another impulsive thought that I willfully banished. There were more and more things I could not dare to think about right now, like why I had been arrested, really why, and what the charge against me could blossom into. My goal this morning was to reach noon with Bobby’s suspicions dispelled and just stay balanced on what was feeling like a tightrope walk: one wrong move and I’d be in free fall. I needed to convince myself that they could turn up unexpectedly, anywhere, and so all the way to Main Street, in the thick springtimeair that was