The unfortunate reality that Lewyn would also be a Cornell freshman was an inconvenient truth to be carried offstage and stored out of sight, because for all our mother’s rhapsodizing about the great adventure she and Lewyn were about to share—a fantasy that seemed to encompass hot cider at the Dartmouth game or debriefing over weekly （God, perhaps daily） sibling dinners—all Sally Oppenheimer wanted from this great adventure of college life was that it be undertaken finally, blessedly, alone.
There were so many things she had loathed about being a triplet, but the greatest of these was the way people always gushed about how the three of them would have one another through life and never be on their own, as if being forced to share a house and a family and a womb were not some contrived human torture on an existential level. True, as “the girl” she had been the most fortunate of the three of them, granted an instantaneous other status from her brothers （and not insignificantly, her own room in the house on the Esplanade, and on the Vineyard, while the boys had been forced to share）。 That was certainly an asset. But the threeness of it all, the psychic merge that strangers and classmates and teachers and relations and even our parents seemed to assume, had been a source of constant outrage to her. Yes, she had a chip on her shoulder. Two chips, if you wanted to be precise.
How could anyone not born into instantaneous, enforced, and eternal siblinghood, as the three of them had been, understand the joy of turning to one’s left, and then to one’s right, and seeing neither of them there? She had been irritated to discover that Lewyn was applying to Cornell, and enraged to learn that he would be matriculating. Of all the colleges! And it wasn’t as if he had some academic or life goal that required this particular institution! （That she, herself, was also basically directionless when it came to her own education, let alone life plans, was not relevant here.） Mainly, Sally was furious at her brother for not just letting her go.
She understood, though, why he seemed determined to hold on. She and Lewyn had been cemented in their auxiliary orbit of two since infancy, which was when Harrison had effectively and permanently renounced them, jettisoning his siblings like some no longer necessary engine to his rocket ship, and consigning his sister and brother to the far side of his personal barricade. Harrison being Harrison, it was not enough to merely separate himself; he’d fueled that separation with icy moods and glowering expressions, punctuating it with constant disparagement, loudly or silently doing everything possible to convey to them how eminently superior he was. This intra-triplet excision might have brought the rejected parties closer together, but not even the shared experience of their brother’s dismissal had been enough to accomplish that. Sally and Lewyn had learned to vote in tandem on all issues, trivial or profound （travel plans, restaurant choices, kid activities）， and it was always gratifying to see the impact of their majority on their brother, but they both understood that they were motivated solely by an aversion to Harrison, rather than any real affinity for each other. In other words, neither their brother’s rejection nor their shared loathing of him could make Lewyn and Sally actually like each other.
Now she had gone to this great trouble of leaving home, only to find her brother still beside her, his dormitory literally next door to Balch Hall on the handy campus map in her packet. This was intolerable, obviously, but she would tolerate it. And she had already decided how. She would not volunteer, to any of the friends, classmates, dormmates, or study partners she was about to meet, the fact that she had a brother similarly matriculated at the university. Lewyn knew where she was. If he cut off a hand or drank himself into a coma in one of Cornell’s fine fraternal organizations, he could come and find her and she would （probably） not turn him away. Short of that, her brother was on his own.
Sally got rid of Johanna as soon as she could by dispatching her to Lewyn’s dorm （to have, presumably, a more lachrymose farewell）， then she rushed around, trying to get things sorted before her roommate, a Rochelle Steiner of Ellesmere, Long Island, （and possibly additional Steiners） could materialize and potentially express her own opinions about how things in the room should be established. She moved the beds into an L formation, which doubled the usable space of the room, and dragged one of the desks out into the hall and left it there, because （a） it was unbelievably ugly and （b） she wasn’t really a desk person. Her sacrifice would be a gift to 213 Balch Hall, she thought. You’re welcome.