Short of discovering a syringe, I don’t care what I find.” I bite my tongue, but Dori doesn’t seem to take any notice of my syringe comment. I guess she believes that it doesn’t apply to her, since, before she left, Twyla was abusing prescription drugs she stole from her babysitting customers, instead of shooting up or doing anything that involved syringes. I want to ask Dori if she regrets our pact, since Twyla clearly could have benefited from a few room searches.
I comfort myself with the thought that at least Aubrey never had any interest in drugs. Then I feel bad that Twyla is my At Least. All mothers have them. The child who—no matter what our own offspring is smoking or drinking or failing at—we can look at and think, At least. At least my child is not pregnant or in prison. Or gone off to live with her drugged-out, Aerosmith-wannabe dad. Surrounded as I am by all the Parkhaven overachievers trying to decide between Duke or Stanford, I desperately need an At Least. I just wish that it weren’t Twyla.
“So what are we looking for?”
“Nothing, really. Okay, I’d love to find some proof that she’s using birth control.”
“You should have gotten her on the pill.”
“Don’t ‘should’ on me, Edith Piaf.”
“I think my mother crushed up birth-control pills and sprinkled them on my Pablum. Oh no, wait, now I remember. She had me locked up in a chastity belt. So you think Aubrey’s pregnant? Our little rule follower? No way.”
Dori eliminates the possibility. Twyla was the wild one. Aubrey was the sensible one. Until Tyler came along she was the diligent student, the neat freak, the conscientious grade-grubber who was going to keep us all organized.
“Jesus. Aubrey and I should be cruising the aisles at Target, arguing about minifridges like all the other mothers and daughters.”
“Well, not all.”
Dori flops down on Aubrey’s bed. She strokes the hardened remnants of BeeBee’s purple hair. “Remember when the girls went through their fairy period?”
Instantly, Aubrey and Twyla are back in this room with us. They sit together on Aubrey’s bed dressed in their fairy getups: gauzy wings from the dollar store and Goodwill prom dresses scissored into fluttery Tinker Bell creations. Twyla’s copper curls are dark, almost mahogany compared with Aubrey’s duckling-down blondeness. Like the two little girls in the locker room, they talk to each other with the solemn intentness that only girls of that age can bring to a conversation with a friend.
“You are the mama fairy,” Twyla dictated to Aubrey. “And I’ll be the baby fairy.”
“And you’re lost in the deep dark forest,” Aubrey improvised. “And I come and find you.”
“No!” Twyla shouted. Strong-willed and loud, like the little girl in the locker room she automatically vetoed any changes to her script. “I find the hidden treasure and there are jewels and rubies.”
Aubrey didn’t respond.
Our daughters were in sixth grade when they watched their last movie together, Moulin Rouge. Aubrey had liked the film all right, but Twyla, who’d recently gone as boy-crazy as any girl I’d ever seen, became obsessed. No matter what you asked her, she’d sing a lyric from Moulin Rouge in response. The last time Aubrey invited her to sleep over, Twyla stayed up all night watching the movie again and again while Aubrey slept. In the morning, I asked Twyla if she wanted waffles or cereal and she sang something back to me about the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. Aubrey rolled her eyes, shook her head, and went to see what was on TV.
Another Twyla-Aubrey memory crowds in. It was early in the summer, the girls had just finished first grade, Dori and I were sitting on my rarely used front porch while the girls played inside the house. We had citronella candles burning, a bottle of kangaroo red working, and were deep into telling each other the stories of how we’d lost our virginity when Aubrey yelled out to us through a crack in the front door, “Guys! Listen, guys! Shut your eyes! Are they shut? Are you ready?” This was before she had grown out of her speech impediment, so it came out, “Aw they shut? Aw you weddy?”
After Dori and I both covered our eyes with our hands, and assured Aubrey that we couldn’t see a thing. The door creaked open and the nails of our wild young rescue dog, Pretzels, clicked on the floor as she bolted out. She