Maybelle Montgomery was sufficiently drunk when she received the phone call from her step-father that her twin sister was alive.
She was so drunk that, believing the Jack Daniels was causing her to hallucinate (as it tended to do lately), she hung up on him. She had been passed out on the faux-leather couch in her living room when George, her mother’s second husband, had called her on her ancient house phone, bringing her to consciousness and out of her alcohol-induced haze. George and her mother were the only two people in the world that still called her house phone.
She knew from George’s clipped tone that he could tell she was wasted, which he and her mother had both deemed “inappropriate” and “irresponsible” behavior for a 26 year old woman at 6pm on a Wednesday.
Maybelle’s head swam as she tried to sit up, quickly giving up and lying back on the worn couch. George’s voice faded in and out, the sound of her pounding head drowning out most of his words.
“…can’t explain it right…just showed up…think your mother’s in shock…”
Maybelle pulled the phone away from her ear, looked at it incredulously, and hung it back up in its cradle. This would not be the first time her drunken imagination had concocted a phone call of this nature. She tried to blink away her blurry vision, squinting at the time on the old-fashioned clock on the living room wall. It was only 6:45pm, and she was so drunk she couldn’t stand. Perhaps she had hit the bottle a bit too hard and a bit too early that night.
It was when George called her back not more than 30 seconds later that Maybelle’s inebriated state dulled. The shrill ring of the telephone in the otherwise silent house made her stomach clench. As she sat up abruptly, the blood rushing to her head, a wave of panic washed over her.
She was stone-cold sober when she picked up the phone this time.
Even more sobering was the severity in George’s voice. Her typically even-keeled and level-headed step-father, the man her father had married when she was in middle school and whom she had maintained a cordial and businesslike relationship with at best, snapped at her to sober up and listen.
He told her that the doorbell had rung around dinner time, and that when her mother opened the door, her twin sister, Grace, was standing on their doorstep. Her mother had immediately fainted.
Today was the eleven year anniversary of the day Grace went missing.
George then told her to come to Traverse County Memorial Hospital immediately, where they were checking Grace over.
Maybelle stood up and began to look for her car keys, almost forgetting that the phone cord was anchoring her to the vicinity of the living room. She was hysterical, the reality of the situation hitting her like a Mack truck.
“She’s alive?” she managed to choke out.
“Yes,” George answered, testing the words out as if he were afraid to speak them out loud.
Maybelle collapsed back on the couch, the raw emotion rendering her unable to stand. “How did…what happened? Where has she been…”
George sighed into the phone. “You just need to come down to the hospital, Maybelle.”
As soon as Maybelle hung up the phone, she quickly got to her feet again in search of her car keys. Perhaps it was the overwhelming nature of the phone call, perhaps it was the Jack Daniels (more likely a combination of both), but Maybelle quickly decided that she was not able to drive to Traverse County Memorial. Her head was swimming. She quickly swallowed the bile that beckoned at the back of her throat and called a cab. Maybelle spent the next twenty minutes sitting on the cracked concrete steps in front of her house, head pounding, heart racing. She was opening the back door of the taxi before it came to a full stop.
During the fifteen minute cab ride to the hospital, Maybelle’s chest felt as if it were going to explode. Her head and heart were so full of memories and thoughts, fear and hope. Was this really happening? Or was this another of her drunken fantasies, which sometimes came in such vivid detail?
She found her hands trembling noticeably as she dug into her purse, pulling out her bottle of Xanax. It took her three tries to open the bottle, and she finally popped two tiny white pills into her mouth. She leaned her head back against the cracked backseat of the taxi, waiting for the relief the anxiety medication would bring her. The cab driver looked at her through the rear view mirror with warranted disapproval and caution. She could only imagine the way she looked at the moment, half-cocked, frantic, and now popping pills in the backseat of the cab. She didn’t give a shit how she looked anymore.
The huge blue neon sign for Traverse County Memorial Hospital loomed above the cab. She threw a $20 over the driver’s shoulder, opening the backdoor to the cab before he put the car in park in front of the Emergency Room. She half ran, half stumbled through the sliding glass doors of the ER. The hustle and bustle of nurses, coughing patients in the waiting room, and phones ringing behind the front desk made her head pound even harder.
She walked up to the front desk, heart hammering in her chest like a bird trapped in a cage. A plump woman in blue scrubs held a phone between her ear and shoulder. She was explaining to the voice on the other end that she could not give the nature of the injury over the phone, they would have to come down to the hospital to get more information. She was also scanning through patient charts and didn’t register Maybelle’s presence.
Maybelle stood there for a minute or so, still unacknowledged by the nurse, or anyone else.
“Grace Montgomery?” she finally demanded. Her mother was apt to tell her that her social skills had withered away from the alcohol abuse. The situation at hand coupled with the alcohol in her system also did not help her lack of manners, or caring, for that matter.
The woman behind the desk looked up at her, narrowing her eyes as if to say, Who the hell do you think you are? Before Nurse Useless could respond, Maybelle’s step-father came through the double doors that led back into the exam rooms on her left.
George smiled tightly and was all business, as usual. “Maybelle,” he nodded. “You’re looking…well.”
She tried to smile, which came out more like a grimace. Nurse Useless gave Maybelle a once-over, glanced back at George as if to say, This belongs to you?, and continued searching through her charts.
Maybelle followed George through the double doors, to the maze of hallways that made up the ER. Machines beeped, a nurse’s voice boomed over the loud speaker paging a Dr. Forest. Thin curtains were drawn to give privacy to the patients in the small alcoves that held the patient beds.
George stopped in front of a curtained-off alcove marked “E-11”. The irony that today was the eleventh anniversary of Grace’s disappearance was not lost on Maybelle. He turned to her, started to talk, and then stopped again. This was the most disorganized, disheveled, and lost for words that Maybelle had ever seen her step-father. She ignored his attempt to speak, walked past him and drew open the curtain.
And there she was.
George was still speaking behind her, whispering urgently in hushed tones. Maybelle continued to ignore him. She was too busy staring at the tangle of long dark hair, the delicate frame, the wide-set nose that matched her own perfectly.
“May, what happened to you?”
Grace spoke. She sat there on the hospital bed, legs crossed, filthy. Her face was streaked with dirt, her hair was matted and strewn with leaves. She wore faded jeans with holes and tears, and a red sweater with pulls and loose threads that was three sizes too big for her.
But she was there. She was there, and she was talking. She had been assumed dead eleven years ago.
And here she was, back from the dead, and worried about how Maybelle looked.
The tears came, unbid and without warning. Maybelle dropped her purse, Tampax and pills and mini vodka bottle spilling out onto the linoleum floor. She stood in the threshold of the small room, frozen. Her identical twin sister, who she had not seen or spoken to in eleven years, was sitting just a foot away from her. And she was speechless.
Grace had aged more delicately than Maybelle. Years of alcohol abuse, anxiety and grief had carved fine lines in Maybelle’s forehead, left permanent bags under her eyes, and a pallid tone to her already pale skin. Other than the dirt that caked Grace’s clothes and skin, she was beautiful. Her skin was smooth porcelain, her eyes bright and alert. She seemed confused, but not upset.
Not like someone who had been missing and presumed dead for over a decade.
Grace observed Maybelle, looking her up and down with a look of…what was it, disgust? Pity? Revulsion?
“May,” she repeated sadly, “What happened?”
Despite her already overloaded emotional state, Maybelle found her cheeks burning from embarrassment. She had long since given up caring what she looked like, or what her future may hold. In the years after Grace’s disappearance, she had fallen into a bottomless pit of drinking binges and depression, with several toxic relationships and a few stints of rehab (both forced and voluntary) mixed in between.
“It’s been…” Maybelle started, clearing her throat and giving her step-father a sideways glance. “Hard, without you. Since you…disappeared.”
“What the hell is going on?”
Maybelle turned and found her mother standing in the threshold. Laurel Montgomery-Hughes was looking at Maybelle in disgust, but clearly addressing George.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Laurel snapped at her husband.
“Hello, mom,” Maybelle said dryly. “Nice to see you, too.”
George pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “She deserved to know,” he tried to speak calmly, but annoyance broke through his words.
Laurel huffed. “I just thought we agreed to have the doctors examine Grace before we called anyone…”
Grace blinked, staring blankly at Maybelle. She shook her head apologetically “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. I just don’t…how could you look so different, so quickly?”
Maybelle stared back at Grace, dumbfounded. She turned back to her mother and George, who were looming by the curtain, wearing pained expressions. Her mother looked bewildered, which was not an expression that Laurel Montgomery-Hughes wore often. George looked sad and helpless.
“Would someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here?” Maybelle demanded, her voice breaking.
“I would like to ask the same question, actually,” Grace interjected, exasperated. “Could someone please tell me why everyone looks so different?” Her voice was wavering. “Why the house is painted a different color than it was when I left this morning? Why there are new cars in the driveway? And why everyone looks so…so much older?”
Her questions met silence and nervous glances.
Maybelle’s eyes widened as she looked at her sister. The questions Grace asked were genuine, the confusion and impatience in her voice were not a façade.
“Why is everyone avoiding my questions?” Grace’s voice was escalating, her confusion and impatience boiling over to hysteria.
Maybelle turned once again to her mother and George, her eyes narrowing. “What the hell is she talking about? This morning?”
Laurel crossed her arms over her chest as George put an hand on her shoulder. She was fidgety, avoiding eye contact and stalling. “This is why I didn’t want to call you right away. We don’t know anything yet. We’re waiting for the doctors to give us some answers and for the police to interview Grace…”
“Stop!”
Everyone turned and looked at Grace. She looked angry and terrified, fists clenched in her lap.
“Can someone please tell me how I left for school this morning, and come home tonight to find everything completely changed?”
justchapterone 