I didn’t want to fall in love with Nate, but I did. It was an adventure, utterly magical, like learning to swim in a tropical sea, our sex like starlight and storm. And, yes, I would want to walk with him a little longer. Of course I would. I would hold on to Nate forever if I could. But I always knew I couldn’t stay with him always. I’m not who he thinks I am, and I carry that fear of discovery like a drowning man carries stones. The truth is, I could never bear to tell Nate that I’m not the person he believes he knows, the person he loves, that deep down I’m really just a thief, a fake, a runaway fraud. He is so honest, so straight, so decent, so good. His disappointment in me would be too much. I couldn’t bear seeing it, the truth of myself reflected in his eyes and, worse, the kindness he would show me then, the pity. I always knew that I would need to end things sometime, before he started to discover the gaps in my narrative, the tiny bits that didn’t quite add up. So when he asked me to go with him to London for six months, to set up his street-music project there, I knew the time had come. I couldn’t, I told him. I had commitments, arrangements, work. Anyway, it was England, I told myself, the last place I wanted to go. Not that I needed to be afraid of anyone recognizing me, not after more than twenty years. No, it was just an ideal time to end things. And, I told myself, I would do it in such a way as to mean there was no turning back. I would wait until he was already over there, totally involved in his project, and then I’d do it snappily, by email or text, so he wouldn’t hear the heartbreak in my voice, nor I any in his. And I would have to be absolute the moment it was done, not waver. Change my number. Not answer his calls. Let him find happiness with somebody else, someone better than me. Hard as it would be, I knew that Claudette could do that. She was strong enough. Wise.
***
But still, the pull of him was like a moon over a mountain.
I said I would come for a week.
23 Supper with Friends Claudette
A woman opens the door in a rush, her cheeks flushed.
“Thank God you’re here,” she says to Nate. “I can’t begin to tell you.” She throws her arms around his neck and hugs him, hard. Nate laughs.
“Good grief,” he says, as she releases her grip. “How late are we? The traffic—”
“Hell, don’t worry about that. Just get in there and lighten the mood. Claudette,” she says to me, “sorry, I’m being rude. It’s brilliant to meet you at last. I’m Cat. Nate never stops talking about you.”
She kisses me on both cheeks, then follows it up with a hug. She’s a beautiful woman and feels instantly familiar: my boyfriend transformed into womanhood. She’s slender, with high angular cheekbones, the same cropped hair as Nate and clever, quick-moving eyes. We’re still standing on the doorstep.
“Come in,” she says as she takes our coats and the bag of goodies I’ve brought them from Paris, “you’re letting the cold air in. Shut the door. And don’t even think about going up to see the kids tonight, just wait till tomorrow, okay? If you woke the boys up, I’d literally have to kill you.”
“What’s going on, then?” Nate says, grinning, and with a quick upward nod indicates the kitchen door, behind which we can hear the voices of their other guests.
“Nothing, really. Willa was having a moment.”
Willa. There must be more than one Willa in the world. Nonetheless, the name feels like a sly pinch in a playground. I reach into my bag and pull out a pair of glasses with heavy tortoiseshell frames. The lenses aren’t prescription. I used to wear them a lot, hardly ever now. These days they’re more like a comfort blanket than anything else. We move toward the door.
“Hey,” Cat says, stopping in her tracks with a hand on Nate’s chest. She looks at me and says, lowering her voice, “Don’t forget I told Robyn you don’t speak English.” A wide and wicked grin spreads over her face. “Do me a favor and play along for a bit, will you? Just enough to see her squirm. Believe me, languages are not her forte.”
Cat goes first into the warm glow of the kitchen, and I follow behind Nate. My boyfriend is instantly at ease, hugging Cat’s wife, Robyn, and greeting Michael and Liv, all of whom rise from the table to greet us. There are two other guests too. At the back of the kitchen, standing behind the table, is a large, heavyset man holding a slim woman in a close embrace. The woman has almost-red hair and she’s the only other woman in the room, so this must be my sister’s namesake, Willa. I do a double take. Jesus. Despite the fact her face is turned away from the rest of us, pressed into the chest of the large man, this woman is my sister, Willa. I feel it with every atom of my body. Instantly my nerve endings are snapping and fizzing. I freeze. I think, No fucking way. I take a sharp intake of breath. I look again. It’s her. I can feel my heart spinning like a freshly trapped wildcat. I need to leave. Right now. Before she sees me. Before she turns round and says Laika. I step toward the door.
“Eh voilà,” Nate says, sweeping an arm around me, “je vous présente ma magnifique Claudette, ma petite amie.”
“Please tell Claudette, Nate, that we’re all thrilled to meet her at last and are looking forward to getting to know her better.” Standing beside Robyn, Cat nods at me, holding my eyes and smiling, her lips puckering with the effort not to laugh. I glance at Willa, but she’s still completely preoccupied. In fact, she hasn’t even noticed there’s a newcomer in the room. She’s far too busy canoodling with the big bloke. I stand frozen beside Nate.
“And Robyn,” Nate says, “I’m right in thinking you speak some French, right?”
His sister’s wife nods, a look of barely contained panic in her eyes.
“I can certainly give it a go.”
Concentrate. Her French is hesitant, but the basics are all there. In truth I’m barely listening anyway. Nonetheless I join in, and blather something in return, talking as fast as I can, gesturing with my hands for the full effect and to keep her eyes on me and off Cat and Nate, both of whom are in fits.
“Claudette speaks fluent English, Robs,” Nate says, laughing. He grins at me, a wild and happy look in his eye, his arm slung around his sister’s shoulders, and another part of the picture of him falls silently into place. Robyn takes it gracefully enough. If it were me, I would have thumped him. In fact, right now I’d thump anyone. But, worse, I’ve missed my one chance; there’s no way I can leave now. In which case, I need to get in control. Breathe, I think, get a grip.
I switch to English and smile at Robyn, who already seems far too nice to be the butt of such a joke. “Thanks for having us and I’m really sorry we’re late. That honestly wasn’t my idea.” I automatically use just the right amount of accent to indicate that English is not my first language. Plus, it’s grounding for me, Claudette. I’m Claudette. And, evidently, I’m French. I feel calmer. Perhaps it’s not my sister. It can’t be. I’ve been thrown into panic over nothing. I haven’t even had a good look at her face. It can’t be my sister. She’s not my sister. She’s not.
We’ve kept everyone waiting, so the food is already being placed on the table, and in the hubbub of all that action the other woman and I are not introduced, which does somehow feel like a happy accident. I need time. Right now I feel as if I have a whole bunch of ants marching through my veins and some of them aren’t even going the right way. That’s not good. I take a few silent minutes to still my breathing first and then my mind, shutting myself off and drawing myself quietly back into a place of certainty and peace, using every technique I’ve learned over the years. The voices around me recede. I shut my eyes for a moment. I’m okay.
As I bring myself back, I become aware of some good scents: ginger, lime leaf, basil. Plus music: Nina Simone, “I Loves You, Porgy.” The comfort of candlelight. Nate’s voice, wonderful food and, clearly, good people, people I’d genuinely like to know better. Robyn’s eyes meet mine, and she beams at me. I smile back.
But it’s Willa I really want to see. Or even hear. I keep glancing toward her, but we’re both sitting on the same side of the table, so it’s hard to get a good look without making it obvious. I strain my ears to try to catch the sound of her voice, but she’s barely said a thing so far. That’s odd. In fact, thinking about it, that wouldn’t fit with my sister at all, trained as she was by our mother to be the most socially appropriate person in the room. If that was my sister, right now she’d undoubtedly be leaning across the table, nodding, smiling, politely joining in. So it can’t be her, then, just someone who looks like her. And for further proof: there’s no way my sister would have somehow ended up with this leering goon of a man opposite me, Jamie, a man who hasn’t taken his eyes off Liv’s cleavage the entire night. So that woman can’t be my sister. She’s just someone who looks so much like her I want to cry.
“What’s your thesis about, Liv?” Cat asks, as she and Robyn clear the main course and bring out a long wooden platter filled with fruit.
“I’ve been looking at the corruption of memory,” Liv says, “by which I mean how memory can be changed, altered with time. I’m a psychologist.”
“Interesting stuff,” I say, and I mean it.
“It is,” Liv says, meeting my eyes. Hers have a new brightness in them, that sort of inner light that switches on when somebody touches on a subject that truly fascinates them. “It really is. I’ve been looking into false memories. It’s truly extraordinary how easily the human brain can be tricked into believing it remembers something that didn’t happen. You’d be amazed.”
I look around the table. Everyone’s listening, and within minutes everyone is joining in, asking questions, bashing ideas around and wanting to know more.
Then a voice from the other end of the table speaks up, shaky but clear. “But how are we ever meant to know?”
My thoughts rise like startled birds. It’s my sister’s voice, I’m absolutely sure. It’s changed certainly, matured by twenty years, but still hers. It’s her voice. That’s my sister. I look down the table again, a quick glance. Love and terror flood through me. I want to meet her eyes and at the same time I feel an urgent need to avoid them. What if she sees me, stands up and says Laika? Then what? Deny it? Fess up, right here? Opposite her, and in my direct line of sight, is Nate, my honest, straightforward boyfriend, a man who trusts me. Nate, who knows me as I am now, the me I’ve worked so hard to become. Nate, who thinks I’m French, for fuck’s sake. No, I sloughed off Laika a long time ago. This is my life now. A life I’ve made. Mine. And it’s definitely not a life I’m about to throw away at a moment’s notice.
I see Willa glance down the table. Shit, I think, she’s clocked me. Heart jumping, I shift back in my seat a little, using the other guests to block her line of sight. Thankfully no one else seems to notice my little dance; they’re all preoccupied by Liv, who is now talking about how people can sometimes actually absorb other people’s memories, how it’s not always easy to know if our memories are even credible in the first place.
“Here’s a simple example,” Liv says. “Think about your earliest memory. Okay, done that?” She looks around the table. “What is it?”
Must we? I think. Believe me, only someone with a happy childhood would come up with that game. My earliest memory is my father jabbing me so hard in the ribs in the name of “tickling” that I actually wet my pants. Fuck this, I think, I’m not playing. But instantly I’m powerless to stop another memory that comes barreling out of the dark. A different one. The worst.
I’m a child again.
Deedee plucks a baby bird from my hands and feeds it to her dogs.
I howl. I’m sent inside and I am hiding under a shelf in the pantry when two adults almost fall inside, slamming the door behind them.
