Really, it wasn't such a big thing.  Of course, there are those who turn a summer shower into the storm of the century, but people of breeding don't dwell on unpleasantness.   They avert their eyes, same as if they spied a run-over cat in the road while taking a Sunday drive.  When they look up again, all they see are the wildflowers planted by the Highway Beautification Project to make every square inch of our fair state postcard-pretty.

It began on my patio with a discussion of meat.

"Lamb chops Mignon.  Lamb en brochette.  Lamb in balsamic sauce."  Lucinda Newsom tossed aside An Affair to Remember's menu.   "Lamb tastes like wool.  Is this caterer from up North?"

Lucinda had asked me to help with arrangements for the Plantation Presentation, our debutante ball held every spring.  It isn't the largest party in the South, like those swarms of debs in Atlanta and Memphis, but it's one of the most exclusive.  There aren't any strangers on our guest list, only kin and folks close enough to pass for kin.

On that September afternoon, Lucinda had more on her mind than the ball.  "I've a favor to ask, Chloe.  A relative of mine is moving here soon — Amber Ashford, the daughter of my cousin Walker, who has a ranch in California.  She's had no end of trouble recently — an unhappy romance, then she flunked out of UCLA.  Walker thinks Tromperville is the perfect place for her to start over.  Would you play big sister and introduce her to all those fun young people you know?"

That being settled more easily than our party menu, Lucinda handed me her glass of sweet tea.  "Could you freshen my drink with a little bourbon?  It must be cocktail time in some time zone."

When Lucinda invited me over to meet Amber, I thought she'd been sent the wrong child.

In contrast to Lucinda's precise petiteness, Amber was the Marlboro Man's baby sister — a great galumphing rangy girl, six feet tall, in faded denim with a shock of sun-bleached hair and skin permanently stained toast-brown.  Her eyes were as pale as rainwater and she wore the addled expression of a rabbit that's been in the sun too long eluding predators.  I hoped Lucinda hadn't been doing something thoroughly genteel but inhumane, like making her memorize issues of Southern Living — just to get up to speed, you know.

As I drank my gin-and-tonic, Amber interrogated me.  Clearly, her father had forgotten to advise her that Southerners don't ask or answer direct questions, if at all possible.  I applied a determinedly affable smile to my face while the child probed into more corners of my life than the IRS.

"Of course I love living in Tromperville — why?  Because it's the nicest place in the world . . . No, I haven't actually lived elsewhere . . . Yes, I love selling real estate . . . No, I don't exactly make 'beaucoup bucks', as you put it, but I do all right . . . Yes, I have a wonderful boyfriend — Cameron Faircloth — and he's got an identical twin brother, Crawford, whom you might enjoy meeting . . . How long have I known them?  Oh, since we were knee babies . . . Are Cameron and I getting married?  Well, we haven't gotten around to discussing that quite yet. . . ."

Afraid she was going to ask my bra size next, I excused myself and escaped to the powder room.  When I emerged, Lucinda awaited me.

"Isn't Amber just the sweetest thing?  Talky as a blue jay, too," she said.  "I'm sure it's dreadfully boring for her to be living with a middle-aged widow lady.  Perhaps you could offer to show her apartments?  I can't suggest it, of course.  It would seem inhospitable."

When I left, Amber trailed me out to my car like a grotesquely overgrown puppy.  "Thanks for helping me find a place.  I've only been here a week, but it's obvious I'm in the way."

She bobbed over me, bending slightly in deference to our height difference.  I marveled how something could be both huge and cute, like those gigantic cartoon character balloons in parades.

"Lucinda has a boyfriend, but for some reason, she doesn't want me to know," Amber continued.  "He sneaks in at night and she hustles him out early.  I hear her saying things like, 'I'll get rid of her soon,' and he's always hitting her up for money.  I walked in on him last night in the bathroom.  I almost died when he stuck out his hand and introduced himself.  He was stark naked."

"Oh, my.  What's his name?"

"Darryl Wilmoth."

No wonder Lucinda wanted her inquisitive second cousin out of the house.  Darryl was a mechanic at Alligood's Garage.  The president of the Tromperville chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy couldn't afford to have everyone in town find out that she was paying a certain randy redneck to service more than just her Cadillac.

Finding Amber a place was as lost a cause as the South winning Mr.  Lincoln's War.

She had no job prospects, work experience, degree, credit cards or bank accounts.  Even the trailer park would have turned her down as a renter.  All she had was some cash from her daddy to tide her over until she got settled.

Lucinda called nightly with suggestions to expedite the process.  "Chloe dear," she said, her voice as sharp and clear as the crystal from which she sipped her Jack Daniel's, "you know I'm counting on you.  Perhaps Amber could share an apartment with another girl?"

I had little choice but to invite Amber to move in with me until she could, as Lucinda put it, get her ducks in a row.

Amber proved to be a pleasant roommate, irrepressibly cheerful and abjectly grateful to me for taking her in.  While I was out showing property, she cleaned house, cooked dinner and looked for work, but only The Pussycat Lounge offered her a job.  I had to tell her that being a hostess there did not mean showing a customer to his table.  Her naivete and childlike enthusiasm gave her an artless charm that made one overlook the fact she didn't know the difference between a seafood and a salad fork or own a cocktail dress.  I thought Lucinda was remiss not to dedicate herself to the poor child's restoration with the same fervor she bestowed on the crumbling architecture of her Save Our Southern Heritage preservation projects.

Not long after Amber moved in, Cameron and Crawford gave a large cocktail party at Cameron's condominium.  "It'll be a good way for your new little houseguest to meet folks," Cam suggested.  And it was — she received two dinner invitations, a lunch date, an evening at the symphony, and three improper advances.

"Don't you adore the Faircloth boys?"  I asked her as we drove home after the party.  "You get two for the price of one — two identically handsome men fawning over you and flattering you outrageously.  What could be nicer?"

"How do you keep them straight?  I couldn't tell them apart."

"Well, they usually talk about different things.  Someone made up an amusing rhyme — 'Craw draws and Cam scams.'"

"Cam scams?"

"A little joke about Cam's financial services firm.  There was a scandal about brokers defrauding elderly clients by having them invest in nonexistent companies.  Cam wasn't involved, of course.  But the foolproof way to tell the difference between them is the cowlick.  Craw has an untamable one.  Cam doesn't."

The next day, Craw phoned Amber and asked if she'd like to see his art studio.  After that, the two were inseparable.  I wasn't surprised they hit it off so well.  Craw was sufficiently unconventional to appeal to a girl who thought dressing for dinner meant wearing the unripped Levis.  He hadn't held a regular job since graduating from college ten years ago, and lived in a renovated loft in a commercial building downtown.  He gave private art lessons, had the occasional showing at local galleries, and painted canvases made-to-order for the color schemes, design periods, and artistic preferences of his clients.

It wasn't long before Amber moved out of my place and into Craw's studio.  There were some raised eyebrows, but more in amusement than disapproval: the cowgirl and the artist — a colorful counterpoint to the monochromatic decorum of our circle.   We watched them at the country club, dancing slow dances to fast tunes, and at our dinner parties, playing footsie under the table.  All over town, we spotted them walking arm-in-arm, she in jeans and buckskin, he in a black turtleneck with a long scarf around his neck.  As they nuzzled and rooted on sofas and porch swings and park benches, we smiled indulgently and exchanged shrewd glances.  We knew that, unlike good breeding, high cheekbones and old money wisely invested, flamboyant romances don't last.

One afternoon, when she and I were lunching at the club, Amber thrust her left hand under my nose.  On her ring finger, she wore a silver love knot band.

"How lovely!"  I exclaimed, although it resembled the friendship ring from Kmart that Vance Gulley gave me in ninth grade.  "I don't think I've seen it before, have I?"

"It's from Craw," she gushed, her expression so idiotically happy that it embarrassed me.

I sipped my wine and dabbed my lips with a napkin to disguise my surprise.  "Does this mean what I think it does?  Should we be registering your silver and china patterns?"

"Well, it isn't exactly official," Amber replied.  "Craw hasn't had a chance to tell his parents about us yet.  I shouldn't even be telling you, but you're my best friend."

I murmured the appropriate felicitations, but it was half-hearted.  Perhaps it was because I simply couldn't envision Amber at Olivia Wainwright Faircloth's eighteenth century dining table that groaned under the weight of Georgian silver, eating ham from Judge Faircloth's own smokehouse.  Or because I knew Craw and Cam had both received family heirloom diamond rings from Olivia for their future fiancées — but here was Amber, proudly sporting something that looked like it came from a Cracker Jack box.  Maybe she didn't care for antique jewelry, I rationalized.  Maybe she thought diamonds were a bit over-the-top for her.

Or maybe Craw hadn't gotten around to fetching the four-carat solitaire from the bank vault — any more than he'd found time to tell his mother about Amber.

It was nearly midnight on Thanksgiving when an agitated Amber banged on my door.

"I can't believe what they've been doing!"  she sputtered, pacing back and forth in my living room.  "What sort of people are they?  It's sick to deceive women like this for their own entertainment — "

"Who're you talking about?"  I asked.

"Craw and Cam!"  she screamed.  "Who else?"

I maneuvered her into a chair.  "Calm down and tell me what's happened."

Amber took a deep breath.  "This morning, Craw left to spend Thanksgiving with his parents.  He said he would have invited me, but it's deadly dull there, stuck way out in the country in that big, creepy old house with his snotty family.  He said it wouldn't be a good way for them to meet me."

I raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"He was going to stay overnight, but promised to call me.  When it got late and I still hadn't heard from him, I called him.  I thought the maid would answer the phone.  Craw said they have servants."

"I know.  I've been at the Faircloth estate many times."

"Of course.  How stupid of me to forget how very well you know the Faircloth twins."

Her sarcastic tone stung.  It was hardly my fault that I'd been born and raised in Tromperville, and she hadn't.

"Anyway, the phone rang forever," Amber continued, "then finally, a woman answered and said — no hello or anything — just 'Yes?' in this pissed-off voice."

"The staff always has Thanksgiving night off," I informed her, "and Olivia despises answering the telephone."

"I introduced myself and said we hadn't met.  She replied, 'I'm well aware of that.'  I asked for Craw.  She said he wasn't there.  I asked if he'd come back to town.  And do you know what she said?"   Amber glared at me.  "Well?"

"For goodness sake, how could I possibly know what Olivia said?"

"Okay, play dumb if you want," she snapped.  "The only person you're fooling is yourself.  She said Crawford was still in Savannah, where he'd been visiting his grandmother all week.  Then she said, 'I'll put Cameron on.  He drove out here this morning to spend the holiday with us.'"

"It's not surprising Craw's over to Savannah — he's so fond of his Grandmama Wainwright.  Poor dear, she's got gout — "

"I don't give a goddamn about Granny's gout!"  Amber shouted.  "If Craw has been in Savannah all week, I've been sleeping with Cam who's pretending to be Craw.  God, Chloe, what's the matter with you?  Your wonderful boyfriend has been posing as his brother and cheating on you.  That's — that's — perverted."

I sighed.  Emotional scenes, with hot tempers and harsh words and hasty accusations, are so unnecessary.  Nothing is solved, and once you say something, it can't be unsaid.  Though people may kiss and make up, and forgive and promise to forget, ill-considered remarks have a life of their own.  Like termites or dry rot, they're always there, in some recess of your mind, doing their nasty work unnoticed for the rest of your born days.

"What did you say to Olivia?"  I asked, though I really didn't want to know.

"I told her she must be mistaken, that Craw had been in town all week and I'd been with him.  'Young woman,' she said, 'I've been the twins' mother for thirty-two years.  I can identify my own sons, thank you.'  God, I've never been so humiliated in my whole life."

Amber's eyes glazed over with tears.  I reached over to pat her hand, but she snatched it away and stared at me accusingly, as if I'd tried to cut her with a razor rather than comfort her.

"Then Cameron got on the phone," she continued.  "'Well, you've caught us,' he said and laughed, like it was a big joke.  He explained that he and Craw had been trading places since they were kids, and they've kept doing it as adults because it's fun and so useful — like when he took Craw's calculus final and Craw pretended to be him to break off his engagement to a girl."

"Lainie Yarborough," I said, "and it was a sticky situation.  She's the daughter of Senator Yarborough, and nobody wants him for an enemy, believe you me.  Craw handled it with such delicacy that she and Cam remained friends and she even got her father to use Cam as his broker.  It all turned out so well."

"That's what Cam said, too — 'No harm's done and everything turns out nicely.' I told him that he and his brother were the most evil people I'd ever met.  He said, 'You're over-reacting.  Quit behaving like a silly schoolgirl.  It hasn't bothered the other women we've dated.  Just ask Chloe.'"

"Well, umm, I did know about Lainie.  God, everybody did! And, of course, the tricks at school — "

"Cam must have worn himself out this week, running back and forth between your bed and mine.  And I'm sure Craw has subbed for Cam with you plenty of times, when Cam had something more interesting to do."  Amber's perfect California golden girl burnished skin had turned an unappealing olive hue, like she was going to throw up.  "By the way, I asked about that famous cowlick.  Cam said, 'Ever heard of styling gel?' and hung up."

Amber stared at me so hard that I had to glance away.  It's disconcerting to look at disagreeable green faces.

"I have no idea which brother took me where or made love to me or gave me this ring.  But obviously, it doesn't bother you to not know who you're fucking."

The four-letter word made me wince.  The child has no breeding, I thought sadly.  What did we all see in her in the first place?  "Amber, please don't go saying things you'll regret tomorrow — " I began.

"The only thing I regret is letting my father talk me into coming here!"  she shouted.  "A nice little town with family and people close enough to be family to take care of you — that's what he told me Tromperville was.  He's crazy.  I thought you were my friend, Chloe.  You were like the sister I always wanted.  How could you do this to me?"

"Darlin', I haven't done anything to you," I murmured in a honeyed voice, hoping to pacify her.  "And I'm certain Craw and Cam never intended to hurt anyone.  .  .  ."

"You knew! You've known all along!"  Amber screamed, jumping to her feet.  "Sick bitch!"   She departed, slamming the door so violently that the pictures rattled on the walls.

I sat there as a thick silence swamped the room, like quicksand closing over the place where some hapless thing got sucked in, leaving no trace of what's happened.

I didn't see Amber again.  Lucinda phoned once to lament her second cousin's sudden bout of strange behavior.  "I don't know what's gotten into the child," she said.  "Frequenting places no lady would be caught dead in and associating with males who'd never be mistaken for Southern gentlemen."  She asked if I'd have a word with her, while the family name was still salvageable.  I assured her I would, but unfortunately, the opportunity never arose, and the next thing I knew, Amber had left town.  

"The ungrateful thing didn't even say goodbye or thank me for all I did for her," Lucinda told me.  "I phoned Walker and informed him I did not appreciate him raising up a mess of a child and then foisting her off on me when he couldn't handle her anymore."  She sighed profoundly.  "It's so disappointing when an apple falls so far from the tree, isn't it, Chloe dear?"

Always the epitome of tact, the Faircloth boys never mentioned Amber.  Cam and I began to discuss marriage; he'll be retrieving the diamond ring from the bank vault any day now.  I finally found a satisfactory caterer and the Plantation Presentation was a great success.  We were fortunate to book a popular band, the Boone Brothers, whose trademark is to toss faux-fur coonskin caps to couples on the dance floor.  It brought a smile to our faces, watching a dozen debs and their escorts in those adorable hats.  With a little planning combined with good taste, things can indeed run perfectly.

Author Bio

Phoebe Kate Foster was raised in genteel poverty in the South, the daughter of an Ozark Mountains woman who foretold the future and saw the spirits of the dead, and a Virginia gentleman who worshiped at the graves of ancestors who fought in Mr.  Lincoln's War.  At various times, she has been or pretended to be a debutante, a fortune teller, a faith healer, an equestrienne, an educational media producer, a hippie, a gypsy, a spy, a Junior League matron, a Jewish mystic, a wife and a mother.  This year, her story "Mazzonelli's Masterpiece" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.  She is still in a state of shock.