The Good Twin(9)

I pulled out my cell phone and clicked on Safari, then typed in the website for Switchboard.com. When it opened, I typed the name Charlotte Jensen Gordon. Seconds later, a list of people popped up. Below each name were names of people each Charlotte Gordon knew. The second Charlotte Gordon knew a Ben Gordon, the man Findly had mentioned. It had to be her. I clicked on the name and a phone number, and an address on East Sixty-Second Street came up. I knew it was wrong to bother this woman at home. Maybe the closed studio was a sign I should walk away, go home, and forget about her. I also knew, if I did, I’d likely never come back. I tucked my phone back in my purse and started walking to the subway.





CHAPTER 7

It took a while for someone to answer the doorbell, and when the door finally opened, a tall man with brown hair and an athlete’s body stood before me. He was dressed in neatly pressed jeans and a Knicks jersey. “Is this the home of Charlotte Gordon, the owner of Jensen Gallery?”

The man stood mute, his face drained of color. When he finally spoke, he said, “Who are you?”

I understood his reaction. It was the same feeling I’d experienced a week earlier when I’d first laid eyes on Charlotte. “My name is Mallory Holcolm.”

“Are you related to Charly?”

“I don’t know.” I fidgeted with my fingers. I felt just as uncomfortable as the man standing before me looked.

He hesitated, then opened the door wider. “Charly’s not home now. That’s what everyone calls her. Not Charlotte. My name is Ben. I’m her husband. Why don’t you come in?” He led me inside a marble-floored foyer, then into the den, and gestured for me to take a seat. The room was bigger than my whole apartment back in Scranton. The largest television I had ever seen was affixed to one wall, with a basketball game paused. Ben picked up the remote and turned off the TV. He sat down, then asked, once again, “Who are you? I mean, not your name. But you look so much like my wife, it’s uncanny.”

“I know. I work at a restaurant, and a few weeks ago, a guy—he said his name was Matt Findly—confused me for your wife. He told me about her gallery, and I passed by it last week. I thought I was looking at myself.”

“Matt went to college with us. Did you talk to Charly? What was her reaction?”

I shook my head. “I was so startled, I walked away. Well, ran is more accurate. It frightened me.”

“Charly was adopted. Were you?”

All this past week, when I’d run through possible explanations, that was the thing that had terrified me most: the possibility that my whole life had been a lie. That the mother I’d known hadn’t given birth to me. “I don’t think so. At least, my mother never told me I was.”

Ben stood up. “I’m going to get a glass of wine. Would you like one?”

I nodded. It was exactly what I needed right now. Ben disappeared into what I assumed was the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later with two wineglasses, filled to the top. He handed one to me.

“Has Charly ever tried searching for her birth parents?”

Ben shook his head. “She’s never seemed to be interested in that.”

That surprised me. If it were me, I’d want to know. I’d want my family to be as big and inclusive as possible. I took a sip of wine, then glanced around the room. “You have a beautiful home.”

“Would you like a tour?”

“Sure.”

Ben took me from the den into an even larger room. The ceilings in each room were twelve feet high. “Our living room. More like a museum, if you ask me.”

Although the furnishings were appealing and, I assumed, expensive, my eyes were drawn to the paintings hanging on the walls. Ben was right. It was like being in a museum. Most were contemporary or modern style, and all were breathtaking. I didn’t need to look at the signatures on the paintings. I recognized the work of Gerhard Richter, Jasper Johns, and Richard Prince. Others I was less familiar with but were just as exquisite. I wondered what it must be like to have such masters at one’s fingertips, to be able to gaze upon their beauty every day. I briefly felt a pang of jealousy, then pushed it away.

“Ready to see the rest of the apartment?”

I tore myself away from the paintings and followed Ben into the dining room, where more artwork hung than in the kitchen. It was bigger than the kitchen at Trattoria Ricciardi, with off-white cabinets, the top names in stainless-steel appliances, and a grayish-black soapstone countertop. The light wood floors in the other rooms continued into the kitchen. I had learned to cook out of necessity—when my mother worked, she often wasn’t home to prepare dinner, and later, when she became ill, she was too weak to cook. At first, I popped frozen dinners into the oven but quickly grew tired of them. I began by making simple foods—scrambled eggs, hamburgers, spaghetti. But gradually, I started to experiment. When I had time, I watched the cooking shows on cable TV and soon became quite proficient. I missed cooking. There was no opportunity for it, living in one room in a boardinghouse. Cooking in a kitchen like this would be a dream.

Ben took me into the other rooms: three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom, and an office. When finished, we returned to the den.

“What was your home like, growing up?” Ben asked.

A hard laugh escaped. “Imagine the opposite of this.”

“You were poor?”