My Evil Twin?

I pulled into the gas station and one of the attendants came out to see if I needed help. He looked at me kind of funny and said, “Are you related to Melissa?”

I get this a lot, my youngest sister and I look alike (I'm the one in blue and she's the one in the wedding dress) and I can’t count how many times I’ve had someone who knows her stop me and ask if I’m her sister so this didn’t surprise me. I smiled and said “Yes.”

Then he said, “You must be her mother!”

Believe it or not I’ve got this before too, I was thirteen when she was born and there were several times I’d be packing her around on my hip when someone would stop to admire and ask if she was mine. I had a hard time believing that they really thought I was the mother—I always suspected that they just wanted to have their consciences assured that I wasn’t an unwed mother, dropping out of junior high to raise my love child.

At thirteen I loved the flattery of looking old enough to have a baby but 25 years have a way of dampening my enthusiasm for mistaken maternity and I hadn’t expected him to take me for her mother. I mean, come on! I'd have to be at least 40 to have produced a 24 year old daughter—and that's if I had her at 16. I'm still at least three whole years away from 40! THREE years baby! Still, I was determined not to take offense and I smiled and said, “Uh, no, I’m her sister.”

“Oh sorry—” he said with a smile (he wasn’t even old enough to be embarrassed at his mistake) “but you look just like her!”

“Yea, we get that a lot.” And I smiled back.

There was a pause while my gas kept pumping and I wondered if he gave this kind of attention to all the customers at his gas station or just the ones who look like old girlfriends when he said, “Didn’t she just have a baby?”

“Yes—it was a girl and they named her Lucy.”

“I thought so, I didn’t get a chance to see them when they were up here.”

There was another pause while I wondered if this were another guy she’d dated before getting married a year and a half ago. It had been a long time since they'd been up to Anchorage.

“How do you know Melissa?” I asked.

“We had a class together at UAA . . . ”

I didn’t realize Melissa had taken any classes at the University—she is at school down south but it isn’t unusual for people to pick up classes in the summer here before going back to school in the fall, maybe she'd had a class I didn't know about. But then it got really weird.

“ . . . and I used to see her at Change Point . . . ”

Change Point? What was Change Point? My mind did a quick revving of the data tapes to remember where I’d heard that name before. Was it one of those trade schools like Charter College or something? It couldn’t be one of those rehab places like Charter North could it? How well did I know my sweet little sister? Change Point . . . Change Point . . . Change Point . . . that name was so familiar. Wasn't that the huge warehouse church off Minnesota Boulevard?

He must have noticed the stupid look on my face as my memory banks were churning on empty and he slowed down to a conversational trickle.

“Uh . . . are we talking about the same Melissa?” He asked.

“I don’t know—are we?”

“I guess not. But man you look just like her!”

Just like her plus twenty years apparently.

I finished the gas and drove away, pondering two possibilities: first, that my little sister is living a double life working for the CIA as an top-secret operative infiltrating local non-denominational churches like Change Point or second, not only do I have a double in my younger sister but now there is another woman out there who looks just like us (if it’s a third look alike would she still be a double or would you call her a triple?) and that not only is she the same age as my sister, but she is also married, just recently had a baby AND is named Melissa. What are the odds?

But really now, who cares? All I know is that I’ve been mistaken for a grandmother.

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