Without Claudia and her car, Kate couldn’t get to work, so she didn’t go. She wandered around Claudia’s apartment, looking through Claudia’s closet and dresser drawers, trying on her clothes, reading her journals and old school papers. She found some pictures of Claudia naked and some poems someone had written about Claudia and an engagement ring with a note saying that Claudia should keep the ring anyway and think of him sometimes, love always, Paul.
When, at last, Kate’s father called, she thought he would come straight away, would figure out where Claudia was and what she was doing, then would make her stop at once and come home. But when Kate answered the phone, her father didn’t ask about Claudia. He was crying, and a long moment passed before he spoke — he and her mother had decided it would be best for everyone if he moved into the city for a while.
Kate had probably seen this coming, her father said, and Kate told him that she had, not because she had at all seen it coming, but because — now that she thought about it — she saw that she should have.
The day of her last meeting with Claudia’s psychologist, Kate walked to the college with the sun spilling between the leaves. If Claudia did not come back, maybe Kate could just stay here, could live in Claudia’s apartment and attend Claudia’s college. It would be easy enough to say that Kate was the sister who went missing, to let it be Kate’s life that went unfinished.
But during their final session, Claudia’s psychologist told Kate that though it had been a pleasure getting to know her, it was her opinion that Claudia should not enroll in fall classes. Then she told Kate that she was, at her heart, a very gentle person, and that she shouldn’t be ashamed of that.
* * *
A few days later there was no food left in Claudia’s apartment, so Kate quit eating. She drank water and Lipton tea and returned to Claudia’s closet hourly to check the increasing ease with which she slid into Claudia’s clothing. The phone rang several times, then Kate unplugged it. She stopped looking out the window. She stopped listening for Claudia’s footsteps outside. She closed the curtains and counted her ribs and thought about those fallen belles and mad wives of gentlemen, the women left alone in decomposing mansions and drafty attics, the ones who, in the end, always set fire to everything.
When, at last, a knock came at the door, Kate answered with her legs wobbly and her thoughts loose in her head. This would be her mother, probably, here to collect her, here to fall to pieces when she realized Claudia was missing, had been missing for, what was it now, eleven days? Or her father, who would shout horrible things, things Kate deserved to have shouted at her, for she had called no one, told no one, that Claudia was missing, and what if something terrible had happened, what if Claudia was dead? Until this moment the thought had not actually occurred to her: What if Claudia was dead?
Kate opened the door, and their dentist’s lovely wife stood on the doorstep twisting her lovely hands. She’d been crying and her hair was wet, which made Kate think that it was raining, though it wasn’t. For a moment, Kate thought this must be a dream, one of those mundane, immediately forgotten scenes in which some slight acquaintance suddenly takes the main stage, but then their dentist’s wife told Kate that it was over with their dentist, and her perfume passed across the threshold like a lilac-scented breeze.
She was beautiful in the way that women in magazines are beautiful, sloped and elegant. Kate’s sister had stolen the husband of a beautiful woman — why else would she be here? — and now, in Claudia’s absence, Kate would have to pay.
Inside the apartment, the light was dim and their dentist’s wife perched on the edge of Claudia’s futon, squinting at Claudia’s bong in a way that made Kate wonder if she’d ever seen one before. Kate asked if she wanted some and she shook her head, then pointed at the pack of cigarettes beside it. She’d take one of those, though.
Kate gave her a cigarette and watched her light it then sit and smoke in silence.
She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, their dentist’s wife said finally. She hadn’t meant to, but she had. She’d once cheated on their dentist with an old boyfriend. But she’d done this only once, and she’d felt like shit every single second of every single day ever since. You could live with a secret for so long, she told Kate, that the secret became the only thing you knew was true about yourself.
Kate should have put together what was happening. But a moment later their dentist’s wife was thanking her for her courage and her honesty, her strength of character, her sense of decency. And though Kate could not think of a single reason for their dentist’s wife to thank her for anything, she was momentarily so drunk on the praise and gratitude that she could not be bothered to question its ill fit. And it wasn’t until their dentist’s wife took both of Kate’s hands in hers and said, “If you hadn’t told me what he was up to with Holly, I don’t know how many more years I would have gone without knowing,” that Kate realized she’d been taken for Claudia.
* * *
Claudia left with her professor. He’d had a change of heart over the summer. Decided he couldn’t live without her after all. Had been a fool. Et cetera.
Years later, Claudia would write Kate a letter, trying to explain. She’d been young and vulnerable, in terrible pain. She’d never meant to put Kate in the middle of such a mess or to leave her to handle by herself that incident with their mother and the sleeping pills shortly after. Claudia was so very sorry, she wrote in that letter, to have learned about Kate’s recent troubles in love. Perhaps in her current situation, Kate might at least imagine how Claudia could have behaved so atrociously that summer.
Along with her letter, Claudia sent a check for fifty dollars with her apologies for missing so many birthdays, and a photo she had cut from a magazine — a portrait of a famous actress in character as the famous photographer she was about to portray on film. Claudia was including the picture, she wrote, because when she’d first seen it, she’d thought it was Kate.
The famous actress did not resemble the famous photographer and neither of them particularly resembled Kate, but the photograph captured the ghost of an expression and, for a queer moment, Kate too thought she had seen herself.
They should try harder to keep in touch, Claudia wrote at the end of her letter. She would like to be better friends. They were sisters, after all.
Kate put the letter away somewhere. But the portrait of the actress-photographer kicked around for a while and was the subject of much conversation. In the year or so before it disappeared into clutter or was tossed in a move, no one who saw the image—not even those who knew Kate very, very well — could pass by without asking, “Is that you?”
