Here She Lies

betweenJulie and me: during any medical procedure, she blanched and looked away. Not I. Nearly every drop of blood that had ever left my body had been observed by me. All our adult lives Julie and I had donated blood as a matter of conscience, and every time it was the same: I would focus on my blood’s journey from vein to tube to vial; she would focus anywhere else. When Lexy was born, I had screamed and fought and even watched, at moments, through a mirror I had insisted Bobby hold up at the end of the hospital bed. I remember him cringing a little at the suggestion of the mirror — he thought it was “gruesome” — and I had to explain my strange relationship with blood, as a twin. It was a matter of my own body and where it ended; blood that came from my body belonged only to me. Julie had her own blood and her own reaction to it.
    This fascination had started when I was a child, when a teacher had explained that during gestation some twins shared a sac, while others had their own individual sacs; likewise, some twins shared a placenta, while others did not. And to further complicate the possible variables, twins sharing a placenta and a sac sometimes also shared circulation: that is, blood. One’s blood would circulate through the other and back again, to the extent that some fraternal boy/girl twin pairs soaked up each other’s hormones, blurring gender-based behaviors later on. So the question of whether or not I had my very own blood, or some combination of mine and Julie’s, felt significant to me.
    Because we were identical twins, I was attuned to any differences. For instance, growing up, I’d thought I was served a greater dollop of bravery (what mymother called “impulsiveness” or, in frustration, “foolishness”) than my sister, but I now realized that my curiosity about my own blood was about an urge to see evidence of myself. Because we were so much alike, it was impossible to know exactly how much we shared — where she ended and I began. Did the blood that came from my body also flow through hers? Were we really identical twins or did we only look identical? It was something I’d always secretly wondered about — secretly because our parents had never allowed us to broach the possibility that we weren’t actually, verifiably, genetically identical. We’d looked so cute in matching dresses and played so nicely together and everyone mistook one for the other. What other proof did you need? And what did it really matter? Before we got old enough to insist that our parents tell us (if in fact they knew), they both died.
    My blood left my body, entered the tube.
    I looked at the technician. “My twin sister and I never had the blood test, to find out if we’re really identical.”
    “You want it?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll take some extra, then.”
    She twisted off one filled tube, plugged it, and attached another. In the end she had four tubes of my blood upright in her tray. I felt a little dizzy, so she gave me some orange juice and a cookie and told me to sit for a couple of minutes before getting up. I drank the juice and ate the cookie, but I didn’t want to stay.
    I was still a little dizzy on the way home, so I drove slowly, but mile by mile, I felt better. It was a magnificentspring afternoon, greenery and flowers bursting in every view, and the road back was quiet. The sense of peacefulness I had abandoned on my way to the clinic began to return to me. By the time I pulled into the small gravel parking lot of the Weathervane Inn, I felt practically happy — done with the lineup, done with the blood test — like a child who hated camp X-ing days off a calendar. By the end of the week we’d be home.
    Before I was out of the car, my cell phone rang. I saw it was Bobby.
    “Where are you?” he asked.
    “I just pulled up. I’m right outside the inn.”
    I got out of the car, slammed the door and there he was, slipping his cell phone into his jeans pocket.
    “Lexy still asleep?” I asked.
    “Listen, Annie. Bad news.”
    I froze. I didn’t know if I could take any more. “Better just tell me.”
    “Gabe Lazare called,” he said. “It turns out Julie did rent a vacation house in Maine. It agrees with everything she said before.”
    “But she never said anything to me about that! She says I knew she was taking Lexy there, but I didn’t.”
    “Shh. Calm down.” He reached out to stroke my arm, but I yanked it away.
    “I can’t calm down. She’s lying, Bobby!