Mothers Don't Wear Orange Nail Polish

It was hot. Cara remembered why she never took assignments in Florida in the summer. It was too damn hot. She lifted her mass of curls off the back of her neck and fanned her face with a crumpled magazine. A family trooped past her wearing matching Hawaiian shirts and fantastic sunburns. Cara did a quick glance in her bag. 

Sunscreen. Got it.

She squinted along the line of cars, watching the sun glint off the windshields, when she spotted what had to be her sister’s car. It was black, of course, and not a speck of dirt on it. The vehicle pulled up to Cara and the driver rolled down her window. Cara found herself staring at an identical face.

“Hey Chris,” she said. “Pop the trunk.” Her twin hit a button and Cara heard the thunk of the trunk popping open. She flung her suitcase inside and slammed the top closed.

“Careful!” her sister scolded.

Cara hopped in the front seat and took a moment to enjoy the air conditioning blasting her in the face. She popped down the shade to check her make-up in the mirror. She’d stood outside sweltering for a solid half an hour and she was surprised to see her eyeliner hadn’t melted off her face.

“Sorry I’m late. Traffic.” Chris eased the car onto the road and left the airport behind them. 

“No worries. It’s just you? Where’s the kids?” Cara asked. Chris set her mouth in a thin line and glared at the road. It was an innocent enough question, but they both knew that Cara was referring to just one kid, the youngest, a girl called Lisa. 

“At home with Jim,” Chris said, casting a sidelong glance at her twin. “It’s a school night. They have homework.”

“They can’t skip homework for one day? I haven’t seen any of them in years.”

“No. They can’t.” Chris’ voice was clipped at the edges and Cara sank into the seat. Leather. Nice. Way too nice for someone with three kids. 

No. Four. Four kids. Lisa belonged to Chris and her husband, not to Cara. 

“How do you keep it so clean in here?” Cara asked so she wouldn’t have to ask how Lisa was. 

“I don’t let the kids in. That’s why we have a van,” Chris said with a smirk.

They drove on in silence and Cara watched the palm trees sail by, silhouetted in the setting sun. Ten years. It had been ten years since Cara had seen her sister. Ten years since she’d seen a face that was like looking in a mirror. Cara glanced at her sister. The years had aged her. She wore her hair tied back in a severe bun, a valiant attempt to tame the wildness that Cara embraced. Chris wore no makeup, no accessories other than a simple wedding band, kept her nails short and bare and not a wrinkle in her clothes. Cara picked at her nail-polish (bright orange) and nodded. Yes. Her sister was a much better mother. Stable, reliable. She had rules that she actually followed. 

“So where are you these days?” Chris asked.

“Based in Oakland, but I’ve been working abroad a lot. Just spent a month in Russia. Got used to the cold. How do you stand the summer here?” Cara yanked her hair off her neck. The air felt like a sponge someone needed to wring out. 

“We grew up in Arizona,” Chris said rolling her eyes.

“Yeah, but that’s a dry heat,” Cara giggled, remembering how much that phrase annoyed her sister.  100 degrees is hot no matter what Chris would say, but this time she didn’t.

“We’ve decided it’s best not to tell her.”

What?

“But--”

“It’s not like you’ll ever be able to take her. Not with your lifestyle. I’m not supposed to be doing this you know. I don’t usually bend the rules. The social worker said it’s better if Lisa believes that Jim and I are her parents.”

Cara said nothing. She let her hair flop back onto her sweaty neck. This could only mean one thing. Lisa didn’t remember. Of course she didn’t. She was two when it happened. 

“She has no idea you know. We were worried that the trauma was buried under the surface, but it seems she was young enough not to be scarred. No point in telling her now. She’s happy. She’s safe. Besides, there’s no way you can take care of her, not with you gallivanting all over the globe literally looking for trouble.” Chris gave her a side eye. Cara let out a huff and sat back in the seat remembering the day she lost everything.

It had been hot then too. She and her boyfriend worked for a travel blog. They were doing a two year trip, riding their bikes tip to tip North to South America. They were somewhere in Texas when it all went wrong. Cara was riding ahead. Lisa was strapped in her baby seat. She’d been fussy Cara remembered. Lisa hated being hot. They were attacked and when it was over, her boyfriend was dead. Cara survived. Lisa survived. Chris and Jim stepped in and took Lisa while Cara recovered and once she was back and ready to resume the trip that Ray didn’t get to finish with her daughter in tow she was told “no.” And not just no. It was more like HELL NO. The system declared Cara mentally unfit to care for her daughter and handed the girl off to the responsible sister with the clean car and no nail polish. 

“I could just take her,” Cara hissed at her sister as they came to a stop on a crowded highway.

“You could. That would be kidnapping,” Chris said.

“She’s MY daughter. How can I kidnap my own daughter?” Cara yelled. She grabbed the handle. She didn’t need Chris’ superior smirk. But when she tried to open the door, she found it locked.

“LET ME OUT!” Cara screamed.

“See? This. This is why. You can’t just jump onto the highway,” Chris said in a condescending tone that made Cara want to reach over and rip out that perfect bun. “You can’t just be rash. Emotional. You can’t raise a kid if you’re the type of person that jumps out onto a highway when someone says something you don’t want to hear.” Chris disengaged the locks. “Go ahead. Walk. It’s 100 degrees. We’re still ten miles from my house and you don’t know the address, but go ahead. Walk.”

Cara didn’t move but the traffic did and her sister let the car ease forward, slowly building speed as they squeezed past a semi and an old jeep towing a camper. 

“She’s officially yours?” Cara asked.

“She is.”

Cara sat back. The past ten years had been a blur of foreign cities and hospitals and parties and working and forgetting. Through all that though, Cara never imagined that her sister, her twin sister, would take the one piece of her old life that she still had, that she clung to. Now that was gone too. Cara could lay claim to nothing.

They turned off the highway and into a pristine subdivision with perfect green lawns and tailored landscapes.

“Stop,” Cara ordered. Chris eased the car to the side of the road. Cara kicked open the door, marched to the trunk. Chris popped it open and Cara yanked her suitcase out, not caring if she scratched the paint. She dug into the front pocket and pulled out a little stuffed cat she’d brought. Lisa was probably too old now for stuffies, but it was cute and she’d bought it on impulse at the airport in Seoul. 

“Give her this. Tell her it’s from me.” Cara tossed the stuffie into Chris’ lap, turned, and marched away, already ordering an Uber back to the airport.