by Jen Brooks
I don’t love real Kylie the same way I love my girlfriend. I am undeniably attracted to her, fascinated by the differences between her and my girlfriend, in love with the prospect of her loving me, but we have not put in the years together—the long runs, the dinners, all the other intimacies—that my girlfriend and I have to make what we have love. That said, I don’t think it would take very much to be in love with real Kylie. I’m most of the way there.
My feelings aside, cheating on girlfriend Kylie is not okay, and neither is making real Kylie miserable. This can’t go on indefinitely.
I don’t know what to do. What I feel for both Kylies is painfully real, and I hate that they didn’t come by their feelings for me naturally, as I did for them. I’m seized by an urge to cry. I need someone to talk to who isn’t Kylie, but I have no one else in my life but Uncle Joey. Maybe he’s home, in bed early. I must really be desperate, because I decide to go check.
I let the banister guide me back downstairs. I go through the living room and into Uncle Joey’s wing. His bedroom door is open, and when I look inside, I see his bed is still made. Just in case he’s sitting in his office in the dark, I check there, too, and find I am as alone as I thought in this empty, empty house.
I slog back upstairs, but this time pass my bedroom and head for the room at the end of the hall. I open the door but leave the light off. Instead of re-examining the contents of the boxes, I open the closet. Some of my mom’s and dad’s best clothes hang inside here—Mom’s wedding dress and some evening wear, Dad’s suits and ties. Not the sweaters they used to wear apple picking, the jeans for the playground, or the T-shirts and shorts for painting the house one summer.
The everyday clothes are all gone now. Bagged up and left in a drop box years ago. This black dress and gray suit aren’t what I really want right now, but they’ll do. I take them into my arms and sit under the window holding them, just holding these things that my mom and dad marked important occasions with, hopefully laughed in, maybe were wearing when they pulled out their wallets and showed off pictures of me and Tess. My cheeks are wet, and I’m sniffling every few seconds because I’m hugging the clothes tight to my chest. Maybe I’m ruining them with my tears, but I can’t imagine my mom and dad would mind at this point. I don’t mean to be over-sentimental, but for some reason I’m compelled to just start talking to them.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. It’s me.”
They don’t answer.
“I just wanted to tell you I miss you. That’s all. And that I don’t know what to do about Kylie. And I’m failing high school. And everything’s all screwed up and I’m a little short on people to talk about it with. That’s all.”
The clothes smell like dust from a closet, not the warm, vibrant smells of two people who used soap, detergent, and other perfumey things in life. They’re soft, though. If my parents were here to hug me, it would be through two layers of clothes, theirs and mine, so it’s partly satisfying. In the dark it’s easier to imagine they’re here.
“When you were alive,” I say, “did you picture what you wanted me to be someday? Did you want your kid to be a doctor? A philosopher? A medical researcher? Before the crash was there anything I was kinda good at? Anything I can choose to make you proud?”
I heard of a movie once where some mom who was dying made a video for her kids for after she was gone. A professor dying of cancer wrote a book for his kids. My parents didn’t leave me anything. Not even clues. Of course, they didn’t know they were going to die suddenly, but it would have been helpful if they’d planned for the unexpected.
Once, not long after I made Jonathan-is-a-hero, I wanted to make another world called The-crash-never-happened. The night I almost did was a night a lot like this. Only, I was crying on my bed instead of in this cold room, and I was holding the picture from the mantel instead of dusty clothes. I had The-crash-never-happened all worked out, what day it would start (a sunny day in summer), what we would do that day (go to the beach), what we would pack for lunch (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches), even what towels we would bring (the circus-themed ones Auntie Carrie had given us). The cry I’m having right now is nothing compared to the one I had that night. I was still pretty young, still talking to God back then, and I prayed so hard that He would just give me back my family without my having to do it by making a world. He could send their souls back from heaven anytime He wanted, but He didn’t.
In the end I couldn’t do it either. There is a difference between creating a world from nothing, like Jonathan-is-a-hero, or copying a living person I barely knew, like Kylie, and bringing the three people who meant the most to me back from the dead. It was too much to bear. I hated myself for a long time after that night. Since I had been granted world-making powers, what better way to use them than to give my family back the lives that were stolen away? Drowning in my guilt over the decision to leave them dead was more painful than almost drowning in a sinking plane in Boston Harbor.
If I had made The-crash-never-happened, I would have a mom and dad right now to tell me what to do. About Kylie. About everything. I wipe my slobbery face on the gray suit and sit, tearless in the dark. I’m all dried up. And I’m very tired.
“It’s not so bad as all that.” The light snaps on, and I hit my head on the windowsill as I jump with shock. Standing at the switch is the pink-sweater girl. Only, she’s wearing a black leather vest over a brown turtleneck.
“Tess?”
She’s chewing gum. Her jaw drops and rises with the chomping of it. Then she blows and snaps a quick bubble. “Yep.”
I rise and brush the wrinkles out of Mom’s and Dad’s clothes to hang them back in the closet, never taking my eyes off Tess. My dead little sister.
She just watches with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall. “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d be the type to hold a pity-fest.”
My eyes are still swollen, so there’s no use pretending they weren’t full of tears. “I would think, of all people, you’d understand.”
“Oh, I understand perfectly.”
I hang Mom’s and Dad’s clothes nicely in their place, and now I have nothing to do with my hands but shove them into my jeans pockets while I confront this strangely hostile, grown-up person who says she’s Tess. “Have you returned from the dead to torment me?”
She scoffs at that. “Yeah, I was restless in my grave because I never had the chance to get you back for tormenting me.”
“I never tormented you.”
“As the big brother, you made torment a priority.”
“I think you—”
She holds up a hand like a police officer halting traffic. “Shut up. I’m not here to argue with you.”
The room turns chilly all of a sudden, like they say it does when a ghost is in the room. I’m just shy of scared right now—my arguing with her was a way to keep my nerves in check. “Then why are you here? What are you?”
“I thought you recognized me.”
“How can you possibly be Tess?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
What a lousy thing to say. I can’t believe she said that at a moment like this. “Who are you, really?”
She pushes off the wall and steps closer to me. “C’mon, Bro. This room is creepy.” She takes my hand, and a shudder runs through me. Her touch is warm, like a living person’s, but she can’t be my Tess and be living.
Since she’s evasive with her answers, I stop asking questions and let her lead me out of the room. Her straight black hair hangs to the middle of her back. A couple of metal bracelets clink together as she sways her free hand with her stride. She’s all womanly figure, which makes it even harder to believe she’s the same person who did her hair in pigtails and played shirtless at the beach with me.
Shouldn’t a reunion between a long-lost sister and brother require, at minimum, a great big hug? She doesn’t seem
too moved by seeing me, and the emotional distance makes an even bigger tangle of my emotions. This might really be Tess. My Tess. Alive Tess.
She takes me into my room and sits me on the bed, then plops down beside me and checks her wristwatch. I glance over at my alarm clock to see it’s almost ten p.m. “Usually,” Tess says, “she’s asleep by now, but she’s writing that damned paper.”
Writing a paper. “Are you talking about Kylie?”
“Of course I’m talking about Kylie. Isn’t that why you’re all weepy and such?”
“Your pleasant attitude’s making me happier by the minute.”
“Don’t flatter me.”
She checks her watch again, like it will say something different even though it has been only a few seconds. She leans back on my bed, pulling her legs up so the bottoms of her boots are on the edge of the mattress, and puts her hands behind her head. Since I don’t move, all I can see of her now are her black leather boots. “Tell me, Big Brother, if you could have only one Kylie, which would you pick?”
“I’m not discussing Kylie with you.”
“Sure you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Not even if I can solve your problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“Sure you do.”
She shifts position again, and her boots disappear behind me. “I’m here to help you solve it.” She moves around on the bed, and the next thing I know, her fingers are massaging my shoulders. Where she touches me, warmth radiates down in deep circles, like her hands are heating pads, or even heating guns. Ironically, it makes me shiver at first, but as she kneads and presses and digs with her thumbs, I realize my shoulders have been holding a lot of tension. I melt into a slouch, and Tess pushes me down onto the bed so she can reach my middle back, my lower back. I sink into the bedcovers, and she straddles me, pushing me deeper into the mattress while her warm fingers find tension and rub it away. I think vaguely that having my sister do this is not appropriate, but the heat spreads quickly from my back into my chest, arms, and legs. My head grows heavy like I’m half-asleep, and with my eyes closed all I can do is absorb the deep circles she’s making from my spine out, then from my lower back up. Long, slow, rhythmic movements. Penetrating knots and cares and untying them until I feel something like an ice cream cone that’s melted to the summer pavement.
She changes technique and starts running her fingers up and down with a feathery touch. My skin prickles, and all my little alarms go off because I can’t move. She pauses at my lower back and lifts my shirt a few inches, running her fingers left and right on the bare skin. I try to fight it but sink deeper and deeper into that dreamy state. Her hands slide up under my shirt, and the weight of her shifts forward. With an increasing warmth she lowers herself to reach up to my bare shoulders. The tension is gone, and I’m about as able to shake her off me as a puddle can shake off a towel. Every movement of her fingers soaks some of me up, and I’m drawn inside her, like her flesh and blood and bone are my flesh and blood and bone. I open my mouth to protest, but all I hear is a moan stifled by the blanket. Everything is wrong.
Her chest presses against my back, and her head settles on my neck. Her fingers stroke gently up and down behind my ears, even the ear turned to the mattress. She reaches under my jaw and rubs circles to loosen the clench I’ve apparently been holding. The unnatural warmth of her hands and her body covers me like the world’s heaviest down comforter, and I’m sweating even as my skin remains prickled all over. She moves my arms so they stretch out over my head, intertwines her fingers with mine, and my softened muscles don’t resist. She’s massaged herself into me so deeply, I can only lie there beneath her.
In this position her mouth is near my upturned ear. “This is merging,” she says. “This is your answer.”
My mouth forms the words as she says them. Her words, my words, I’m not sure anymore. My fingers grasp my own fingers; her leather boots crowd my own toes; her leather vest pulls tight over my own chest; her feminine, flowery scent becomes my scent. When she breathes, it’s my breath. Our hearts thump with one pulse. I am still me, but she is also me. Her calm control interlaces with my panic and makes it feel like I’m yelling to myself from a mountaintop far, far away.
“If this were the Kylies,” she says, but I hear my own voice, “they’d become everything you want.” Our arms come down, and she’s no longer on top of me. She has descended into me. We roll to our side and curl into the covers, breathing, slowly breathing. “One new Kylie to want you and love you and remember everything you’ve shared in your made-up world. But she’d be here, in your real world.”
I hear the quiet of my room like an echo. Her ear, my ear, one ear. The desk, dresser, and closet all stand, solid and timeless, while I see them with echoing vision. Old Jonathan’s room. I am old Jonathan no longer.
We curl a little more tightly, grasping the covers with our shared hands, and all these thoughts that aren’t mine mix themselves in. Memories combine. Two perspectives of what it meant for an older brother and younger sister to witness the same snowfall through the windowpane. Of the jealously one felt while the other blew out birthday candles and opened presents. Of running, simply running through the yard and down the street. Of one falling from a tree and breaking on the ground and the other screaming for Mom and Dad to come help. Of one pushing the other into the deep end of the neighbor’s pool. Of petting sheep and using crayons and hiking in woods and watching cartoons. Magic, speed, singing, anger, whiteness, joy. Seizing with panic when the cabin alarm goes off and Mom clutches one of us and Dad the other and the fire rolls across the ceiling. Seat belts choke our bellies and Mom burns black and Dad yanks our buckles, and windows darken with sea, and the minutes, the endless minutes, while water rises from the front of the cabin and we hold on to seat backs to climb to the place where someone has opened a door at the back, and seat belts are stuck, all the seat belts are stuck except for ours, and hands can’t unstick them, and the pressure of the water on our chests and the cold and the moment when we can hold out no longer and breathe the water in.
Kylie. Either I think of her or Tess thinks of her. I’m with Kylie on the very first day I made Kylie-Simms-is-my-girlfriend. She smiles at me. Even though I willed her to love me as part of my world-making, I gasp with surprise when she kisses me for the first time. It’s awkward to gasp while someone’s lips are touching yours, and I panic that I’ve just given her the worst kiss ever. She doesn’t take notice, just tries again, and this time I do a little better, even manage to move my hands along her back.
I dredge up real Kylie at Mexican Station, shaky and awkward as she describes her “obsession” with me. Tess mentally smirks at the idea of someone enthralled by my pathetic case, and her callous response flits amid my own embarrassment over Kylie’s weird feelings. The Fine Arts Museum emerges next, complete with my dissatisfaction with my girlfriend’s lack of realness and my girlfriend’s perception that something’s not right between us.
More images, more sensations, rise and recede intermixed with shadows from Tess, as if certain thoughts wither and die before they can reach me, whereas my thoughts can’t move into her fast enough. In a flash of insight, I realize most of what’s coming from her is really an echo of what’s coming from me—not really a sister’s perspective at all but my own framed in a stranger’s set of eyes. I try to see Tess herself, but get only shadow. She, by contrast, soaks up everything I am, down to my guilt over whatever is happening to Kylie in both worlds.
The bed shifts beneath me, and Tess’s fingers are kneading at my back again. Thoughts of Kylie subside, and I flex my fingers, the first movement I’ve been able to make for some minutes. I check to see that I can curl my toes. My abdomen contracts on command. My eyes open and close. Tess’s warmth leaks away as I test more and more parts and remaster my thoughts, feel my liquid self grow solid again.
Tess squeezes
my arm, then lies down behind me. As before, her touch makes me shiver, though she is as warm as a furnace.
I lie still, reliving the past few moments, thinking of that movie where the guy goes into a chamber with a fly and comes out with the fly’s genetics all mixed up in him. That’s not too far off from how I feel. Only, instead of becoming part fly, I’ve become doubly myself.
She pats me on the arm and then shifts again as if moving to sit up. I slip away from her and perch at the end of the bed, far enough so she can’t confuse me with another touch.
“What just happened?”
“I told you. It’s merging. It’s your answer.”
“My answer to what?”
“What to do about Kylie.”
“I’m not doing that with Kylie.” No way.
“You don’t merge with her. She has to merge with herself. You know, the real Kylie with the extra special version you created.”
“That’s sick.”
“Well, she wouldn’t be quite so relaxed. I was just trying to help you out.”
“That’s sick,” I say again. I wouldn’t have had the experience myself if I’d been given a choice.
“Oh, get over yourself, Jonathan.”
“No, you get over yourself, Tess. If you really are Tess.” I’m remembering how part of what just happened was sharing the experience of drowning in the crash. Something about those memories now seems more like the echo I sensed just before she finished with me. Did she steal my memories and then send them back like they were hers, too?
“If you have a problem with me, I don’t have to help you,” she says.
“I don’t see any help here.”