I'll Be You(60)

Oh, but Elli’s DNA was my DNA, too.

As I stood there, I understood suddenly what I had to do, with an imperativeness that almost knocked me off my feet.

I stumbled out of the room and went to the laundry room, where I found a pile of my sister’s clothes in a basket waiting to be folded. I found her favorite perfume in a pocket of her purse in the kitchen. I went to the bathroom, changed, scrubbed my face clean of makeup that might give me away, and pulled my hair up in a messy bun like Elli wore. I looked in the mirror and even though I couldn’t quite focus—the room blurred and pulsed with every breath and my eyes were going sideways—I knew I could see my sister in the person looking back at me. Good enough, right? Men like Chuck don’t bother to look hard at women, I told myself; they never think to question their privileged realities and wonder just who is adoring them. It had worked on our seventeenth birthday and there was no reason it wouldn’t work now.

I’ll be you, I thought.

I was ovulating. I’d learned how to identify this pretty easily, during those rounds of egg retrieval over the years—from the number of days in my cycle, from the pang in my side, from the consistency of my mucus. It was now or never. Elli had already turned down my offer to donate an egg, but once it was presented to her as a done deal, a baby already conceived, wouldn’t she be thrilled? Wouldn’t she forgive me? Wouldn’t it bring us close again? Wouldn’t it make up for all the ways I’d let her down before?

I was nearly blackout drunk. Which isn’t an excuse. But it will hopefully explain why it seemed perfectly logical—selfless, really—to walk back in the den and crawl under the blanket with Chuck and run my hand down his chest and whisper in his ear, “Let’s do it.”



* * *



—

I was wrong about men being blind to women, apparently, because it took Chuck only a minute—maybe two—to figure out that I was not his wife. At first, he just stirred in the dark, eyes closed, sleepily running his hands up and down my body as I pressed myself against him. He must have connected with something that felt familiar at first: the soft texture of Elli’s T-shirt, the rise of her hip, the heft of her hair. And the smell of her perfume, surely that was right.

I lay there for a moment, steeling myself against a sudden wave of revulsion. Hadn’t I screwed plenty of men I didn’t like when I was drunk? I told myself. Why was this any different? And then I reached for his sweatpants. He shifted slightly to let me work on the drawstring, which was tied in a tight knot. I fumbled at this, with fingers that didn’t know how to obey. I could feel him growing hard and hot below my hand, and he kept trying to kiss me, though I turned my head from his lips, feigning focus. The alarming reality of the situation was quickly setting in—this is a terrible idea—but I kept at the knot, tearing at it madly. Eventually, I gave up and tried to tug the sweatpants down without loosening the drawstring.

The room spun in giddy circles around me; I realized that I was dangerously close to throwing up.

The sweatpants lodged on his hips and wouldn’t budge. And now he was awake enough that he finally opened his eyes. “Here,” he said, “I’ll do it.” He reached down with his own hand and began to work at the knot and then he suddenly shifted, his eyes going sharp, and he was looking at me.

“Elli…?” It wasn’t a question so much as an expression of hope. Please be Elli.

But he already knew the answer. Maybe it was my breath, still shot with booze, that had given me away. Maybe Elli had a gentler touch, as opposed to my panicky, aggressive fumble. Regardless, he jerked upright, sitting up so quickly that I slid straight off the couch and onto the floor with a loud thump.

He stared at me in disbelief. “What the fuck, Sam.”

I lay on the floor, stunned, my head ringing from where I’d made contact with the edge of the coffee table. “I’m sorry—I’m…just trying to help.”

His voice was awfully loud. “By trying to have sex with me?”

Already, I could hear noise overhead, the soft patter of bare footfall on floorboard. I’d woken up my sister. Shit.

“I didn’t want to have sex with you. I was just trying to…make a baby, for you guys.” The words felt thick and convoluted in my mouth, making no sense even to me. “Because I love Elli. Because I want you guys to have what you want because you have been so good to me.”

He wrapped his arms protectively around his chest, as if he thought I might fling myself at him again. “That’s insane, Sam. You need help.”

And suddenly Elli was standing in the doorway, holding a silk bathrobe closed with one fist, her hair wild, eyes swollen into slits. She stared at me, rolling around on the floor, trying and failing to sit upright.

“Are you drunk? Seriously? Oh, Sam.”

The notes of concern and disappointment in her voice—that this, my sobriety, was what she was most worried about at this particular moment—nearly broke me in two. A momentary uplift of hope: She doesn’t know what I just did. Why would she? I was on the floor, drunk. Chuck and I were both dressed. Maybe I’d get away with it. Maybe Chuck would help me sweep it under the rug, a terrible mistake we would pretend never happened, to preserve Elli’s feelings.

I think I understood then, for the first time, just how fragile my sister was, and that this might be the moment that would break her.