by Kim Zarins
Zac’s parents had no idea that their son had grown up longing for a mother or wanting black parents or just wanting to look like a regular family. Zac had never complained, which would seem ungrateful, and he was a star student at his prep school. So there was nothing to prepare either of his dads for what was happening now.
They came to his room, and Pa tried to rub Zac’s back, but Zac wouldn’t let him. He had to tell them, but he was crying so hard he kept garbling his words.
“You made a mistake,” Zac said, his voice raw when he could finally speak. “You took me from my family. My real family.”
Pa and Dad were totally shocked, so Zac showed them the pictures. Zac wiped his nose. “See? He’s my brother, my twin. That’s my family. There must have been a mistake, and I got taken from them.”
Taken. The word made him panicked and helpless all at once.
While Dad looked at the pictures—mouth hanging open, disbelief all over his face—Pa was reaching out to Zac and saying things to comfort him, like “It will all be okay” and “We’re still a family” and “Dad will find out what’s going on.”
Zac flung out his arms like he was losing his balance, like he was going to fall off a cliff. “No! Don’t find out. Don’t . . .”
“But, Zac,” Dad began. His glasses glinted with the glare of the computer. Dad was a professor—a researcher. He could find out everything.
Zac rounded on him, pushing Pa’s protective arms away. “I said NO! They’re my family. It’s my decision.”
“But we don’t know if they’re your family,” Dad countered.
“Of course they are—look at him. His profile even lists the same birthday and D.C. as his birthplace.” What separated them? He had to believe Aaron’s mother—his mother—wouldn’t put Zac in a duffel bag and abandon him, not from the look of her standing in front of a church, or the one at their dining table laden with a holiday meal. What had really happened?
“Zac, stop!” Pa was weeping, desperate. He tried to draw Zac into his arms, and Zac gave up and let him. “We’re your family, honey. We are! And we always will be. Even if it’s true, our family will just grow with more people to love you. It’ll be okay.”
Zac didn’t know how it could ever be okay. He already felt guilty for wanting his birth family. He felt like he should be saying, I love you back to Pa, but he couldn’t. It was too painful knowing his life with his dads was a mistake, and his real life—the life he was supposed to have—was going on just fine without him.
After arriving at school very late, he zombie-walked through classes until Leila cornered him with a hug that he could barely return. It felt like years since he’d seen her. He wished they’d never met.
She twirled with excitement. “So, did you message him? Aaron? What’s the score?”
She didn’t seem to realize how shattered he was. To her it was just some sort of interesting mystery. He’d been a twin without knowing it. Maybe it was something to match the weird novelty of having two white dads.
“No.”
“Oh, come on. I mean, you guys are long-lost twins. You have to get together!”
Zac’s stomach dropped. “I don’t think so.”
He wanted to, and he didn’t. All he had to do was message Aaron. His twin. When a baby is born, he can’t go back inside his mother. And Zac knew that if he wrote to Aaron, there would be no return. It would change everything for both of them, forever.
He’d grown up okay in spite of not knowing his twin. He’d grown up okay in spite of having two white dads. He wanted to keep everything the same way.
For the next few days everything in Zac’s life felt tilted beyond repair. Pa hovered. Dad got jittery. Zac found himself looking at the familiar way his dads made coffee or spread out a newspaper. There were a million familiar things that connected them as a family, but they felt fragile. Dandelion fluff that would blow away as soon as he made a wish for his real family.
But, finally, he couldn’t not reach out any longer. The pull for family was too strong.
Zac left an instant message for Aaron and waited for an hour or so. Then waited some more. Maybe Aaron wasn’t online much. It was a Saturday night. Maybe Aaron was out. Or maybe he didn’t want Zac coming in and invading his family. Or maybe he thought Zac was a prankster and wouldn’t reply or would block him. Or maybe . . .
Three hours later Aaron wrote back:
I can’t believe it! I’m checking out your photos, AND I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!!!
So began a storm of messages.
And then, a phone call.
“Is that really you?” Zac asked. The laugh on the other end gave Zac shivers, because it was his own laugh coming through the phone.
“I can’t believe it!” Aaron shouted, and he laughed until Zac joined in, still to his amazement, identically. They were total strangers, and yet totally connected.
Three weeks later, after some coordinating with the parents, they met face-to-face.
Pa and Dad came too. They wouldn’t let him take the train to Philly alone. But this also meant they’d be driving and getting a hotel. If Zac had gone alone, as he’d wanted to do, Aaron’s family (his family!) would have picked him up at the train station, and he would have slept in Aaron’s room like the brothers they were. Pa and Dad were treating this like a vacation, but Zac knew it was so much bigger than that. This was a family reunion—or rather, a family union, since it had never happened before.
When the front door opened, Zac saw . . . himself. They knew what to expect, but neither boy was quite prepared. They both stared, lost to all else.
“They’re here!” sang a female voice. And then Zac saw her. She was older than Miss Day, but still had that perfect warmth in her face.
His mother.
His father stood there too, but Zac couldn’t help but be more obsessed with his mother. He already had two dads.
He hugged her, and her bighearted squeeze completely matched her personality. It wasn’t a long enough embrace for Zac. She pulled back and her eyes misted. “My, but you boys look alike!” Zac smiled and waited to be claimed as she looked searchingly at his face.
She didn’t claim him though.
“Come in, come in!” Then she looked at Zac’s dads and said, “I know you two are Steve and Tom, but who is who?” As if they were twins too.
Everyone stepped inside with a mix of introductions and handshakes and nervous laughter. It all felt so impossible and strange.
Aaron and his family were friendly to Zac’s dads, which was good. Zac had been worried that they would be uncomfortable with the two-dads thing. But the emotional charge he expected from his parents—his real parents—wasn’t there. What did they think of him? What did he think of them?
“Look at him!” Aaron’s mom laughed. “He twists his mouth when he thinks hard, exactly like Aaron does!”
He looked at Aaron’s identical face. It was surreal.
But then he looked at his birth parents. At their mouths. “Do you do that too?”
“Do what?” asked his dad cheerfully. His real dad.
“The mouth thing,” Zac said, but he hesitated. Something was off.
His mother covered her mouth and gasped. “Oh, honey, you thought we were your . . . Sweetie, we adopted Aaron, same way you were adopted. Aaron, didn’t you tell him?”
Aaron looked embarrassed. “I thought I did. I don’t know.” Full of concern he looked at Zac. “I’m sorry.”
The pity on their faces . . . He had to look away. To look anywhere but at all these people staring at him. “But I thought we—you looked . . .”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. We’re not—”
Zac cut her off. “Sure. Okay.”
She kept on going. “We didn’t know about you. There was nothing in Aaron’s file saying that he was a twin.”
Zac nodded in quick jerks, wanting to flee the house. “Yeah, that’s fine.”
He tightened his jaw and used every ounce of willpower not to cry. An
d all the parents knew how to read him, either because they had brought him up or because they had brought up his twin.
Aaron bailed him out of the humiliating silence. “Do you want to see my room?”
So Zac escaped with Aaron. They played video games, ate sandwiches, and played basketball on the driveway. They also just stared at each other a lot, marveled at their sameness. Zac felt a deep connection with Aaron that he’d never felt for any other person. After taking a shot and flubbing it (he really was terrible at basketball), Zac asked, “Have you thought much about your birth parents . . . I mean, our birth parents?”
Aaron scooped up the ball. “Never. I already have the best parents.”
“Never?” How was that even possible, not to wonder, not to long to meet them? Zac couldn’t imagine. Maybe it was easier for Aaron, since his family all looked related.
As Aaron dribbled, he jammed his tongue into his cheek the same way Zac did. “Someone found me on a park bench in D.C. I was adopted soon after that.”
“I was found on the Metro.” That duffel bag apparently caused a scare. Was it left behind by accident or on purpose? Was there a bomb in it? The mood changed in a heartbeat when a weak cry revealed not a bomb but a baby, and Zac was found.
What if Zac hadn’t cried?
Aaron nodded, reading all that pain on Zac’s face. “It hurts, doesn’t it? But the love outweighs the hurt. The people who love me, those are my parents.”
“Yeah,” Zac replied, but his voice came out a question, because it had never been that easy for him.
They were very much the same—but very different, too.
Zac had expected Aaron would totally get him. But did he?
He should be happy, but it was sort of sad, meeting this twin who had charm and tons of friends and athletic ability and all that confidence. It was like meeting a version of himself that he himself could never be. Zac had grown up okay, he guessed. Some people worry about kids with two dads, but he turned out fine. But maybe he was supposed to turn out like Aaron, except that, living with his white dads, he turned out to be Zac instead.
But then Zac asked, “Did you ever think you had a twin?”
Aaron sank the ball. “Not once!” He laughed. “Just goes to show you, doesn’t it?”
Zac retrieved the ball, passed it to Aaron. “Show you what?”
Zac expected Aaron to sink the ball yet again, but instead, Aaron tucked it under his arm and faced Zac. Looked at him in wonder. “It shows you the best things in life are the things you never even dreamed up. I mean, a twin I never knew I had came knocking on my door! Just last month I felt like everything was going fine. I was happy, life was good. But now, meeting you, things aren’t just great. They’re complete.”
Something electric sang inside Zac. To see Aaron’s face so joyful somehow made him mirror back the same joy. “I feel the same way.”
Aaron laughed. “Of course you do! We’re twins, man!”
And Aaron put out his hand for a huge high five. The boys made a loud slap! with their perfectly matched hands, and Zac realized he’d always wanted just one person in the family that would look related to him. That wish had been granted, and then some. He had a twin! He was complete, and he’d finally found his family.
The end.
Briony smiles, eyes misting.
Pard raps his pencil hard against his sketchbook, and for a second, he reminds me of Reeve. “So what do you have against mixed-race families, or gay parents, for that matter? And what the hell does it mean that Zac spends an hour with his ‘real’ family and then feels okay with life again?”
Briony crosses her legs—or I think she does, by the way she wiggles from side to side. She looks at Pard with some distaste, or maybe she’s bracing herself against the criticism. “Obviously I’m pro-interracial families. I’d love to be in one down the road, if I’m lucky enough to marry a great guy.” She takes Kai’s hand, and Kai smiles back at her. “And I have nothing against gays adopting babies. The story was about adoptive and birth families, and that strange, amazing connection you only get with your birth family. You don’t know how powerful it is to meet your blood family when you’ve spent your whole life separated.”
Pard makes that irritated teh sound with his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “More powerful than living with your fake family—is that it?”
“I never said ‘fake.’ You’re twisting my words. Meeting someone for the first time and noticing you share the same gestures, the same posture, the same favorite colors and flavors . . . it’s surreal, and I don’t expect you to understand it.”
I flinch, because Pard would know all about that. He’s a twin. Was a twin.
“I’m adopted,” she adds. “I met my mom for the first time last summer. It was pretty weird, but awesome. The most powerful experience in my life.”
“Wow. I didn’t know that,” Franklin blurts. “That’s cool.”
“Yeah, well, I was adopted at birth. It was a teenage pregnancy, and my birth mom let me go. She said it was hard, but in the end, she knew she didn’t have the support of her family to care for me. Meeting her was good. Painful, but good. Fulfilling. We’re staying in touch now.”
Pard’s still angry. “That’s great, but let’s get back to the story. I know you’re aiming for some nice Zac-Aaron vibe, but you’re forgetting the guy who found the baby in the subway. Pa.”
“How do you know it’s Pa and not Dad?” I ask. I wonder why he’s focused on the parent-child relationship and not the twins, but don’t dare mention it.
He rolls his eyes. “It’s obvious. That Dad guy is kind of formal, you know? Like, always getting on his computer and stuff, while Pa desperately wants to put his arms around Zac the way he did when he opened that duffel bag and saw a precious baby alone in this world. I mean, shit, the big love story here isn’t about the brothers; it’s about Pa and Zac. The ending needs to come back to those two. Yeah, yeah, they’re not blood, but there are no buts. There’s no ‘in spite of,’ plan B crap that you’re insinuating. Like, he grew up okay in spite of having two dads, or white dads. Zac is meh about his parents but ends up feeling good enough with life because his twin feels that way? No, no, no. You can’t celebrate this newly discovered twin at the expense of Zac’s parents, especially Pa. You can’t. Pa said it himself, that Zac’s family was growing, not swapping old for new. Not an either/or. So Zac needs to put to rest all these doubts that you’ve written into him and acknowledge his love for Pa. The ending should go like this . . .”
They came back inside and saw their parents chatting over coffee in the living room, Zac’s parents on one couch and Aaron’s parents on the couch facing them. The adults looked up at the sight of their identical boys. Pa met Zac’s eyes with a look that carried an avalanche of feelings, and Zac froze. He hadn’t been thinking about Pa lately, but now it hit him. That hurting yet loving look. Maybe Pa was torn up from all these new discoveries just as much as Zac was. He had a good guess of what these last weeks had been for Pa, living with the pain of wanting to embrace a child who has shut him out and put up a wall, and on that wall the child tacked up pictures of his new family.
They say you can’t choose your family, but that’s not always true. Pa chose Zac fourteen years ago and never looked back. He was on the Metro headed to a big interview that might have given him a whole new life. But the life-changing part of the day happened when he heard the cry and discovered Zac. He didn’t go to the interview after that—he went straight into his new role as Zac’s strongest supporter, and soon, his parent. While Zac fixated on being abandoned and lacking his true family, Pa was all about claiming Zac on that first day and every day after that and being everything he could be for Zac.
And it was that moment, seeing Pa’s pale eyes and balding head and anxious face—the lips parting in an effort to smile—that their roles were switched. In his heart, Zac could abandon Pa or claim him. It was like finding him and getting to decide for himself what to do with this middle-aged
man. It was a huge moment, maybe in its way just as important as the moment Pa picked up the baby and refused to let go.
Zac would never let him go either, he realized, and determination rushed through him to hold on tight to both of his dads.
Zac squeezed in between Dad and Pa on the couch. Dad smiled and made room, and Pa slipped his arm around Zac’s shoulders, his eyebrows lifted as if to ask if that were okay.
Aaron’s mother was confirming something about childhood similarities—they were talking about favorite foods, Halloween costumes, video games, everything, and finding uncanny resemblances. Her voice was a perfect blend of feminine rasp and softness, motherly things that Zac had always wanted for his own. Yet, in some ways, it was a relief she wasn’t his real mother. This couch was already full.
Finding Aaron was an incredible blessing, a gift, and he was amazed to see his mirror image on the opposite couch, but he also knew he needed to keep his own parents close, maybe more than ever. He needed them, and they needed him.
Facing ahead and nodding to the conversation, Zac let his knee bump against Pa’s leg.
“Hey,” Pa whispered. “Everything okay?”
Zac nodded but suddenly felt bashful. How do you claim someone? How do you make it clear this is what you’re doing without being a complete sap?
“Everything’s great,” Zac told him. “Just wondering . . . have you told them about how we met? I love that story.”
“I love it too.” And no one laughed or made a fuss when Pa teared up and took Zac’s hand as he began to put into words the most important moment in their lives.
The end.
“Well, isn’t that perfect?” Cece sourly complains. “Leave it to a man to come in and revise a woman’s story.”
The bus explodes with debate of whether Pard’s ending was helping or hurting and what Briony’s story really accomplished, with a few jokes at Pard’s expense thrown in.
I stay quiet, trying to keep Pard’s final sentences in my head to see how they completely recalibrated Briony’s story. This ending is so sweet that I want him to keep going. I know that the story is over, but I want to hear Pa tell the whole story and have a private heart-to-heart with Zac. I want to hear Pa’s voice.