Olive was elegant. There was no doubt about that. She was tall and slim with alabaster skin, bright blue eyes and jet black wavy hair. Even as a little girl she chose her clothes with great care. “Do you think this colour matches my eyes?” she would ask her mother. Her mother said to friends, “My Olive is beautiful and she knows it.”
Olive’s twin sister Louise was the exact opposite. She was heavy set with dirty blonde hair and grey eyes. She was totally disinterested in clothes. Her mother would say about Louise, “She is slap happy with her appearance, but she is very kind and very smart.”
“God gave me the two of you,” Anita would say to the twins, “so I could have one perfect daughter.”
Their father said nothing at all about anything. When he left the family, he just up and left with no explanation and no warning at all. The twins were twelve. When they contacted him he simply said, “I don’t love your mother anymore”. And they hadn’t seen him since.
On the day the twins turned 22, Anita made a salad for the three of them. It had to be salad because that was all Olive ever ate. But it was a special salad called a Waldorf and Anita thought that sounded ever so posh. She got the recipe from Chatelaine magazine. She bought some of that low-fat ice cream for dessert. She hid the Haagen-Dazs at the back of the freezer along with some deliciously rich chocolate that she and Louise snacked on some evenings when Olive was out with her friends.
Just as they were finishing their salads, Olive made an announcement.
“I am moving to New York to become a fashion model and from now on I will be known as Olivia.”
“But darling Olive is such a pretty name and I named you after my mother. “
And Anita turned and went out to the kitchen to fetch the ice cream, leaving the twins at the table.It was if Anita hadn’t heard the bit about New York.
Louise was used to her glamorous sister and her outrageous ideas so she said nothing at all. She picked up her book from the other side of the table and began reading. She was reading Michael Redhill’s book, Bellevue Square for the second time.
Anyway, it didn’t matter to her one way or the other whether Olive wanted to be Olivia and live in New York or Olive and stay in Toronto. They had nothing in common. And she couldn’t stand most of Olive’s friends. In her opinion, they were all flighty and shallow. They were so different she and Olive. That was why she liked Bellevue Square so much. Maybe she had a doppelganger. She always wondered if perhaps there had been a mistake made at the hospital. Maybe there was someone in the world who looked just like her.
Louise sighed. “If only,” she thought to herself. Out loud she said, “Maybe Mom will be less stressed with you living in New York. And goodness knows, maybe she’ll stop comparing us,” Louise said to her sister.
“What sort of a family is this,” answered Olive. “I’ll be pleased to be out of here.” And she stormed out of the room, picked up her Stella McCartney jacket from the front hall, and walked out the door without a backward glance.
Anita returned to the dining room with the ice cream and asked, “Where’s Olive?”
“Olivia is not home,” said Louise in an affected voice just the way her sister always spoke. “Now Mum let’s put some maple syrup and some chocolate bark on the ice cream.
And the two of them settled in for the evening. Comfy in their PJs, Louise reading her book and Anita watching TV. Coronation Street and then a rerun of the Price is Right.
****
Had writer’s block so picked three random words and wrote this story. The three words — olive, elegant and bark.
