VERNON, B.C. — Felicia Simms is a natural on television. The camera accentuates her pale blue eyes and silky dark hair. She is dressed in a black outfit with a burgundy blazer and high-heeled pumps, bearing little resemblance to the jeans- and T-shirt-wearing mother of four from the British Columbia interior.
Flown to Los Angeles in January along with her parents and her conjoined twin girls, Ms. Simms, 21, sits on the couch with talk-show host and supermodel Tyra Banks, who glows as she cradles three-month-old Tatiana and Krista.
Ms. Simms calls them "very gorgeous angels."
Earlier, the program showed her bathing and feeding the girls in a sunlit, tastefully decorated house. What the audience wasn't told is that these scenes were filmed in a rented house in Pasadena, Calif., thousands of kilometres from her crowded apartment in Vernon, B.C., and life in a clan so dependent and closely knit that, in a sense, the whole family seems conjoined.
Brendan Hogan kisses girlfriend Felicia Simms as she holds the twins in Vernon, B.C. last month. Krista is shown. (John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail)
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PANIC ATTACKS
Once a frontier town of ranchers and fruit growers, Vernon is now a haven for skiers in winter and campers, hikers and golfers in summer.
Luxury condos are sprouting along the shores of Okanagan and Kalamalka Lakes. On the main street, cyclists and women pushing pricey strollers congregate for latte and organic muffins at the Bean Scene coffee house. Shiny SUVs with Alberta plates pack mall parking lots.
The Simms family isn't part of this Vernon society. They live in rented houses and apartments and receive social assistance.
Ms. Simms and her live-in boyfriend, Brendan Hogan, the twins' 23-year-old father, don't have driver's licences. They rely on rides from Ms. Simms's stepfather, Doug McKay, although he has many other children and grandchildren to ferry around.
In fact, the entire family travels together around Vernon on daily errands. They visit and talk on cellphones, eat most meals together and serve as each other's confidantes and roommates. There are 15 of them in all.
Felicia Simms has rarely been alone -- by choice. Even as a mother of four children -- Rosa, 4, Christopher, 2, and the six-month-old twins -- she doesn't want quiet. Her home is a cacophony of children's voices and babies' cries; occasionally, an explosive noise emanates from the widescreen TV, the site of many video-game duels between Mr. Hogan and Ms. Simms's sister, Rhea.
Silence frightens Ms. Simms, stirring panic. "I've always had noise. My mom never made any of us be quiet. If it's quiet, I have to put on my MP3 player."
Ms. Simms and her four siblings all inherited the anxiety from their mother, Louise, who suffered years of debilitating panic attacks brought on by silence and solitude. In 1986, with two failed marriages behind her and a live-in boyfriend -- an Alberta oil-rig worker -- having an affair, Louise Simms packed up her three children and drove home to Vernon.
Not long after, she met Doug McKay at a backyard party and the two have been together ever since. Two more children followed. Technically, Mr. McKay is Felicia Simms's stepfather, but to her he's "the only father I've known."
"He's loved us from the beginning," Ms. Simms said. "My dad is like a workaholic. He always made sure his kids were fed."
Mr. McKay worked on farms and ranches across B.C. to support his six children (he brought an older daughter from a previous union). He bounced from Merritt and Cache Creek to Lumby, Armstrong, Golden and Salmon Arm, wherever Mr. McKay could find farm work. Whenever Ms. McKay suffered a panic attack -- an intense irrational fear that becomes associated with a place -- the family moved on.
"As soon as you're alone, your mind starts to wander," she said. "All of a sudden, you're thinking: 'Uh-oh, I'm alone. What if I had a heart attack or what if I fall down the stairs? What if someone breaks in?' And then, bam, you're in a full-flight panic." She said the attacks became so intense that she couldn't breathe, broke into a sweat and felt the room spinning. "A panic attack feels like you're dying," she said.
There were other family struggles. For years, Mr. McKay drank a case of beer a day until Ms. McKay threatened to leave. He's been sober for the past decade.
