The Identicals(21)

“Are we doing name tags?” Ainsley asks her mother.

“Heavens, no,” Tabitha says. She lifts a flute of champagne off the tray. “Hello, gorgeous.”

The waitress seems to think Tabitha is speaking to her instead of to the champagne. “Harper?” she says. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear heels before.”

“I’m not Harper,” Tabitha says. “I’m her twin sister, Tabitha.”

“Seriously?” the waitress says.

Ainsley picks up a name tag and writes: BILLY’S GRANDDAUGHTER, but she doesn’t leave enough room for granddaughter, so she has to crumple it up and start over. She affixes the name tag to the front of her black Milly butterfly-sleeve dress. The tent is hot; she’s going to melt. She wishes she’d worn something more summery, but Tabitha and Eleanor had insisted on black. They are the only people who dressed up. Everyone else is in regular daytime clothes. There is a group of men in golf shirts, a couple of middle-aged women in slacks and comfortable shoes, and a frosted-blond woman of “a certain age” wearing a Lilly Pulitzer sundress and sandals.

Harper is over in the far corner of the tent talking to a policeman, and for a second Ainsley wonders if her aunt is in trouble. But then Ainsley sees tender gestures. First the officer touches Harper’s cheek, then the two of them start kissing. If Eleanor sees them, she’ll have a conniption fit; she deplores public displays of affection, and although Eleanor isn’t blatantly racist, she is old-fashioned. She calls black people Negroes, no matter how many times both Ainsley and Tabitha have informed her that the term is not acceptable. Will Eleanor care that Harper is kissing a black policeman in front of the assembled guests? Was that the reason Harper deflected Tabitha’s question about whether she was seeing anyone?

Eleanor and Tabitha are busy signing the guest book, each with a glass of champagne in hand, and they don’t notice Harper and the policeman going gangbusters in the corner.

Ainsley misses Teddy. She feels a dull pain—like her heart has a cramp—when she thinks about Teddy with Emma.

Finally Harper pulls away. The policeman strolls out of the tent past Ainsley, close enough for her to hear the static of his walkie-talkie and smell his aftershave. He’s cute. He’s young, possibly closer to Ainsley’s age than her aunt’s. Go, Aunt Harper! Ainsley thinks. Tabitha broke up with Ramsay, which is another reason Ainsley hates her mother. She brought Ramsay into Ainsley’s life, encouraged her to love him—and Ainsley did love Ramsay very much—then she gave him the boot. Now Tabitha jokes about taking a younger lover. She jokes about the guy who teaches surfing lessons at Cisco Beach and about Mr. Bly, Ainsley’s chemistry teacher. Every time Tabitha brings it up, Ainsley thinks: Ew. But thinking about her aunt dating a policeman does not inspire the same distaste.

Tabitha could never catch or keep a guy that young and hot, Ainsley thinks, despite the fact that she and Harper are identical twins. Tabitha is too stuck up and absolutely no fun.

Harper speaks to the gentlemen in golf shirts. She says something that makes them laugh, then she approaches Ainsley.

“Would you like a glass of champagne?” she asks. “I ordered the good stuff. Taittinger. And there are supposed to be finger sandwiches and sliders. I kept it Waspy for your grandmother’s sake. No spring rolls, no quesadillas.”

“Nothing with any actual flavor,” Ainsley says. She gives Harper a conspiratorial smile. It’s so bizarre—her mother’s face on a much nicer, cooler person. “So was that guy, the policeman, your boyfriend?”

Harper’s expression changes. She looks anxious, like she’s been caught. “Boyfriend?” she says. “You mean Drew?”

“I’m sorry,” Ainsley says. “It’s none of my business.”

Harper takes a long look at Ainsley, as if she’s trying to see inside her somehow. “I wish I could go back to your age,” she says. “Start over. I’d do things differently.”

Ainsley nods. “I’d love some champagne,” she says. “And I’ll even eat pale triangular sandwiches. I’m starving. We didn’t have breakfast.”

Harper says, “Just take a flute of champagne, and if anyone gives you trouble, tell them your grandfather wrote it into his will that you’re not only allowed to drink champagne at his memorial, you’re also supposed to.”

Ainsley nods, knowing full well that this explanation will not work with her mother or grandmother.

“I’m going to check on things back in the kitchen,” Harper says. “Cut some crusts off myself if I have to.”

Harper leaves the tent, and Ainsley feels abandoned. She sees her grandmother and mother standing off to the side, holding their champagne flutes in front of them as they would hold crosses in the presence of vampires. They aren’t speaking to each other or to anyone else. God forbid they actually engage with Billy’s friends. Why did they even bother coming?

Ainsley grabs a flute of champagne from the waitress’s tray and heads over to the men in golf shirts. “Hello,” she says. “I’m Ainsley, Billy’s granddaughter.”



Ainsley drinks that flute of champagne, then Smitty, the ringleader among Billy’s golfing buddies, procures her another. The champagne goes right to her head on an empty stomach, but she doesn’t care; she kind of likes it. She is a celebrity here, at least among these men and all the people Smitty introduces her to, such as the woman in the Lilly Pulitzer shift, presented to Ainsley—with a nudge and a wink that make Ainsley think she should pay special attention—as Mrs. Tobias.