‘Audrey I take that back I don’t want to break up with you!’ He shouted into the night, sat up and found himself in a bed with green bed sheet.
‘Break up with me?’ He turned to his left, to the voice.
And saw Audrey. He believed this was Audrey. Long hair, in a summer dress, but…
‘Where’s your make up?’
‘Lee, are you all right? I got some irritation last week, remember? I am not touching make up anymore.’ Oh this was Audrey, his brain was registering. He checked her soft eyes, her smile. Audrey, all right. He glanced to her right arm, there was the scar he was looking for in his dream.
‘Where am I?’
‘My parents’ house. You had food poisoning yesterday and you were delirious, you didn’t want to go to your room so I brought you here for the weekend. Lee, do you remember anything? You look very lost.’
‘Audrey.’ He said, reached out and hugged her. It felt the same, the same feeling he would always get when she was this close to him. So close.
‘Audrey I had a terrible dream, I broke up with you and after 7 years, I came back to see you but you had…you had…’ He pulled back.
‘I had what?’ Audrey said. She was here, he told himself. He wanted to say her name over and over again and hear her answer.
‘Nothing, Audrey, some nightmare that was.’ He breathed a relief. He was back in college, not the 7-year-older-I-want-to-be-a-girl Lee with hormone-induced boobs. He was back with Audrey who was reading beside his bed, waiting for him to wake up.
Audrey only laughed. ‘Adrienne has been painting you while you were asleep.’ He ran his hand through his unkempt hair.
‘Audrey I will not let you go.’ He grasped her hand suddenly. Audrey blinked, her eyebrows knitted, and laughed softly.
‘Darling I know.’ She paused and continued. ‘And on the other hand, when you’re well, you’re going to catch up with your study and then I don’t know, design a great garden or something, that’s what you do best. Whatever it is you’re having with your mom, well, you have to put it aside, we’ll do what we can and make do with things.’ He was reminded of Audrey’s parents’ garden that he had toyed around a design; it had become a hit among the family friends.
His museum of things remembered was back in order. Audrey was here with him.
They all returned home for tea. Mark pulled Lee to the playroom and he followed. He saw Audrey pulling Michael to the kitchen. He heard her laugh for a while and then they were speaking softly. Michael then came to the playroom.
‘Who’s coming with Daddy to get some juice?’ Mark’s hand shot up with a squeal. ‘Mark!’ he said and jumped towards his dad.
‘Lee, make yourself comfortable, I’ll be back. I’ve told my lovely wife not to kill you.’ He grinned and Lee could not help but laugh. They left. Lee went to the kitchen. Fish was in his high chair, talking to his mom in his baby talk, his mom responding to everything.
‘What is he saying?’ Lee said and stood beside her at the sink. She handed her a glass of milk which he happily took and drank away.
‘I have no idea. But I need him to know that I’m listening. I’m still learning to be a mother. Michael’s the one who’s good at parenting.’ She said sheepishly.
‘You’re fine. Do you still play?’
‘Play?’
‘What, you gave up music?’ He asked in alarm. Audrey played music so beautifully. He went to every performance she did in college.
‘Oh, play. Well..’ She started and then Lee noticed something. He did not notice it yesterday, she was wearing a long sleeve shirt.
‘Where’s that scar on your arm?’
‘Scar? I don’t have a scar on my arm.’
‘You do. Where is it?’ Lee took a closer look. There was no scar on her right arm, the one that Audrey got after she collided with her guitar in the dark in her room at college, looking for the switch. There was not even a trace. The skin was perfect. He checked the other arm. Nil.
That was when it hit him.
‘You’re not Audrey.’ He staggered backwards. The one whom he had been calling Audrey calmly finished the dishes and turned off the tap. Lee stood there frozen, his mind racing to figure things out.
She turned to face him, her face had a sad smile. Lee wanted to run.
‘I’m Adrienne, remember? Audrey’s twin.’ Lee blinked. He remembered.
‘God, Adrienne, uh, geez, no wonder, no wonder…’ He faltered there, he was shaking but the rest of the sentence echoed in his head. No wonder her hair was short, she wore jeans and top, she liked kids and she looked lost when he asked whether she still played music. No wonder her smile looked different.
‘Sit down, Lee, you’re shaking.’ Lee obeyed. He was numb now. Where’s Audrey? He shouted in his head.
‘You look so… alike.’ But he had begun to see how different Adrienne looked now- in the slant of her nose, her fierce eyes. Audrey’s eyes were soft, like a calm evening after the rain. In college, Audrey studied music and Adrienne did art. She painted and sculpted but her favourite was portraits. Lee and Audrey had always been hauled to her room to pose for her portrait. She always had instructions- some days they had to pose like they had just had a fight, some day they had to eat because Adrienne wanted to paint people eating.
‘Well, we’re twins. But you never got us wrong. Even when I wore Audrey’s dress.’ Fish had gone quiet. He was watching.
Of course he had taken that this was Audrey when she appeared at the hospital. Of course he did not notice the difference, it had been seven years.
‘Where’s Audrey? This is a joke, right? She’s got to be here, hiding. With a camera. Where’s Audrey? I, uh, I’m sorry to burst into your life like this, I really thought..’ What should he say? He could not think.
‘Lee, listen.’ She pulled a chair and sat down. She held his hand. ‘Audrey died last year. It was a hit-and-run. Some drunk driver.’ Adrienne looked right into Lee’s eyes. She had known Lee in college. She had approved him for Audrey, had drilled him with questions and warned him hell should he do Audrey wrong. She had hated Lee when he broke up with Audrey but while Audrey did not say that it was the right thing to do, she had asked Adrienne to stop being mad at Lee. Lee had issues, she said. It was not easy, she said.
‘Audrey…’ and that was all that Lee could say before he slumped onto the dining table and cried his silent cry. Adrienne patted his hand, took Fish from his high chair and said to him.
‘We’ll be in the playroom.’ Lee nodded. He felt his heart dropping and dropping and he would like to take that heart out so there would not be too much pain but he sat there at the table, this was his mourning, this was all he could do right now.
No one entered the kitchen all the time Lee was there crying. No one. He did not remember hearing Michael and Mark return. He only heard the things that Audrey said to him while they were together, the way Audrey played violin and sent him a thousand miles up in the clouds. Lee had not cried for a long time, not since his mother decided that not seeing him made her feel better, not since the last day he saw Audrey. And let her go, his heart told him. I know, Lee murmured.
When he had regained his breath, he washed his face and went to the playroom. Mark and Fish were on the carpet asleep. Adrienne was in Michael’s arms, she had been crying too.
‘Uh, I’m so sorry I, uh, you know.’ He said, his voice hoarse, he believed this was all a dream. He stood at the door, his hand in his pockets. Michael smiled to him, kissed his wife on his forehead, took his sons in his arms and left the playroom.
Lee went to sit near Adrienne.
‘I carry Audrey’s phone around. I can’t bear the thought to have it switched off. Not yet, at least. So that’s how I came to answer the call. And you must have met Edward before the accident.’
‘But you came to see me.’
‘I did, I wanted to tell you but you were sick, and then you were all about this nonsense sex change and I figured I had to wait for a right time. So I played along, all the time searching my brain for the things that Audrey told me about you. Well, and then you noticed that I had no scar.’
‘Yes. But you said all the right things, like you’re really Audrey.’
‘You know how tight we were. She told me everything. And all those nights that we all went out together, you didn’t think I would have known you by heart?’
‘Not really. I thought you just went along with us because you wanted to see if I was good for Audrey.’
‘I liked you for Audrey. I hated you when you broke up with her. Audrey, well, Audrey said you were not in your right mind. You would let go what you think you don’t deserve. I never got what she said, but when I started running Michael’s foundation, I began to see what a broken, dysfunctional family does to the kids, to the spouses. I don’t really understand but may be, you did what you thought you had to do.’
‘I was up to no good. Adrienne, she’s so excellent with her music, people like her, she knows what she wants to do, she’ so fine, she.. uh, she, I mean, she was… was all that.’
‘Sometimes I forgot she’s gone too.’ Adrienne nodded. ‘You didn’t screw up that badly, after all. I didn’t know you designed that garden Michael was talking about. He showed it to me, it was in a magazine. It was simply amazing.’
‘But in college, well, you know.’
‘Lee, people blunder all the time. And it wasn’t your fault. Perhaps we should not give up so easily.’
‘I gave up on me and Audrey.’ He pulled his knees up to his face and sobbed. Lee had never sobbed in front of anyone. This was baring his soul to the core. This was unnerving, even. This was about Audrey.
‘You should know that Audrey did not really fret on it. She was okay for like 2 months, and then one night, she cried for you, she threw away everything she had with you, the clothes you bought, pictures, things you gave her, all the time crying. Cried really hard I thought she was going mad. Then she was okay again, she let the whole thing go. She had done her mourning and she moved on.’
‘Did she have anyone else?’
‘Yeah, one or two but she was never really serious. I didn’t know if she had always wanted you all the while, she never said, she just was not interested with the others. She was looking for security, I guess.’
‘Why did I let her go?’ He mumbled to himself.
‘Do you want me to take you to see, uh, Audrey’s place?’ He nodded.
*
Audrey’s place was near an oak tree. On the gravestone was written ‘Audrey Fay Taylor. Beloved.’ As simple as that.
‘No dates?’
‘I don’t want to remember the dates. My parents had let me decide. They lost a daughter but I lost half of me. Literally. Like I was a paper doll and someone has torn me in half. Perhaps because she was my twin, and we used to be so close and…’
‘Looked so alike.’ Lee said.
‘Yes.’ She said.
This time he was right. Audrey and Adrienne looked so alike, like a carbon copy. You had to see them everyday to finally come to see the very little difference in how they looked. Like how Audrey’s lips bloomed full fledge into a smile when the first autumn leaf fell. It was not that Adrienne did not smile but she smiled differently.
Lee stood still and there were a thousand voices in his head, like he was watching a movie, only that everyone was speaking at the same time. And it was not really everyone. He was re-playing the things he had talked with Audrey, the imaginary conversations he had staged when they were no longer together, the things he knew she would say, like ‘Lee your bread is burnt!’ when he had turned the dial on the toaster at the wrong direction. His museum of remembered things was busy today.
‘Funny how she would mention about you once in a while. Like when we passed by some place and she would say ‘Oh Lee used to go here for his potato chips and dips.’ This and that, small things I thought she did not remember. I said to her once, would she say yes if you happened to come back and wanted to get with her again. She said no. She said, Lee doesn’t do changes, if he thinks he’s a lost cause, that’s how he will always think, doesn’t matter if he wins Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. You would only leave her again, she said.’ Adrienne paused. ‘Is that true?’
Lee did not say anything for a long time. They just stood there at Audrey’s place, and then he said ‘You should also know that when someone points out my flaw, and it happens to be true, I just stay quiet.’ Adrienne laughed softly. She said she would leave him there, he could give her a call if he needed a ride. Lee refused that, he said he would go to his friend’s house. He thanked Adrienne, asked her to send his thanks to Michael too for being so understanding and kind.
Lee stayed there for a long time. He did a lot of thinking. Audrey’s laughter rang in his head, the music that she used to play echoed in the wind. He was in mourning.
