“You think Janice is going to stay?” I ask, still clutching to the possibility she might.
“If she does, it won’t be next door”, Dad says with a degree of certainty. “She told me that they’re selling the house to break up the equity. Whether she’ll stay in the area or not, who knows? She’s got her job so-.”
“And her lover”, Mom interjects.
Dad eyeballs her with laughable disbelief. “Your mother has this wild theory that Janice is secretly seeing someone in the neighborhood.”
“I’m not the only one, Doug”, Mom says. “People are talking.”
“People are gossiping”, Dad says. “They’ve never liked Janice and you know it.”
“I wonder why”, Mom says.
“Whatever happens”, Dad says, returning to the conversation, “at least we won’t have to put up with the noise from next door.”
Or the twins going out early in the morning to run, or the ever so slight possibility that they might fall in love with me. Nope, that’s never going to happen now.
“And on the plus side”, Dad continues, “those boys are going to get a head start on their careers.”
“It’s not much compensation, is it?” Mom says. “Your parents break up, you have to move across the country and say goodbye to all of your friends and what do you get for it? A scholarship at LSU. I know which I’d prefer.”
“A chance to make it big”, Dad says. “And I know which I’d prefer too, but sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to.”
“No, clearly they don’t”, Mom says, locking eyes with him challengingly.
“And anyway”, Dad continues, “those boys have one focus, and they always have. Nothing else matters to them but their sport.”
“They matter to me”, I say.
Dad is quiet for a moment, before he looks at me and laughs.
“These two could be the best quarterbacks in this country since Landon Maddox and Alex Vann Haden, and they were always going away anyway. I haven’t seen you guys together since seventh grade so I’m not sure why it bothers you so much.”
“It doesn’t”, I lie, “but it’s still going to be weird not having them live next door.”
“I’m sure you’ll adjust”, Dad says, before he looks at Mom pointedly. “I’m sure we all will.”
“I’m not sure all of us want to”, Mom says quietly, before gathering her cutlery together in the middle of her plate.
Chapter Fourteen
My parents increasingly strange behavior eventually becomes too much for me to worry about. With Donkey’s departure, the onset of the summer and a radical change to the status quo I feel like I have enough on my plate already without any desire to complicate it further with wild theories about what it is exactly my parents are struggling with.
There is clearly something wrong, and perhaps there has been for longer than I’ve allowed myself to realize, my attention diverted away to other things - Jack and Zach’s parent’s diminishing relationship, my own unfulfilled attempts to form a relationship of my own with them, or desire to do so with anyone else, my lack of academic success in placing at a college outside of my state which might be better suited for my career of choice. Who knows?
In the days leading up to Donkey’s departure, and then the days beyond it, when the time itself seems to fold like a concertina in on itself, the only thing I know is that whether by fault or design, my parents relationship, perhaps as an ironic echo to that of Donkey’s seems to be constantly on a path to destruction. It’s subtle and unspoken, as things always have been between my parents, but it’s as evident as rising damp around the base of a wall, even if they think that in the way they are managing it, they’re somehow hiding it from me.
Donkey and Brian leave less than seven days after the news is broken to me. On the Friday morning, when my parents have both gone to work and I should be concentrating on finding something for myself, I watch Brian and the boys load up his car with as much stuff as will fit into it, while a hired team fill a small white truck with as much of the rest of the contents of the house as Janice will allow them to go with.
When they are done, and this is finally it, the last chance I’ll get to see them for what could be a lifetime and more, I watch Donkey come towards the house, spot me through the living room window and then wait for me to come outside and join them.
As much as I try to, I can’t hold back my tears. I hug them both without words and then step back to manage the embarrassment.
“Stay in contact”, I say, wiping the tears away with my thumb. “An email or whatever.”
“We can do that”, Jack says, all regretful smiles.
“We’re going to miss you, Jen”, Zach says. “More than you think.”
“Yeah, right. You won’t even remember what I look like in a couple of weeks”, I joke. “I wish you could stay.”
“Yeah, we’d like that too”, Jack says. “We’ll be back.”
“Promise?” I ask.
“Pinky swear”, Zach says, holding his little finger out for me to take.
“You know we haven’t done pinky swear for-”, I begin to say before Jack cuts in.
“Too long”, Jack says, before holding out his hand too, his free arm around his twin brother.
I take both of them, one in each hand, so I’ve got a twin either side of me and together we form an unbroken circle.
“That means you have to come back”, I say. “Now that we’ve pinky sworn on it.”
“Come on, wrap it up”, Brian calls over. “Time to go.”
“Can’t break a pinky swear”, Zach says. “We’d have to cut our fingers off.”
“Exactly”, I say, remembering the consequences we used to level at each other. “That might fuck up your football career.”
“It certainly wouldn’t help our chances”, Jack says.
“Guys, come on!” Brian calls again. “Let’s get on the road already.”
“We’ve got to go”, Jack says.
“I know”, I respond, completely unprepared for it.
Jack hugs me again and Zach folds himself into us both grabbing on tighter than he needs to and refusing to let go, making light of our last moment together, so when they make their way back towards the car and I’m left to wave them away, all three of us are laughing.
At the car, I see Jack take something from the back seat and run back over towards me.
“Almost forget”, he says, handing the plastic bag to me.
The thing inside feels like a book, but I have no idea what it could be.
“We found it when we were clearing out the car.”
I don’t get time to look what it is, process what it might be, or even respond to him with much more than a smile, before Jack kisses me on the cheek and skips back towards the car.
I wave as I watch them pull away, Donkey a bundle of sad smiles, and me rooted to the spot, tears still streaming down my cheek.
When I can no longer see them on the horizon, I reach inside the bag tentatively to pull out the object from inside, hoping to all hell it isn’t what I think it could be.
“No”, I say as I see it, my skin going cold. This cannot be fucking happening.
The cover is a little more worn that it was when I last saw it, the pages a little more frayed, but apart from that, this is definitely it.
This is my secret notebook.
Part Four.
Surviving The Fall
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t hear from Donkey at all over the summer. Not a single call, email, facebook message, tweet, snapchat, instagram, postcard, telegram or radio shout out. I begin to think it’s probably for the best. With absolute and total separation, going full cold turkey, I don’t have to cope with the possibility that in the back of my mind something might eventually happen. If they aren’t here, nothing can happen. I won’t accidentally get drunk and wake up in their bed fully clothed, they won’t climb in through my window and deflower me in the night,
and I certainly won’t somehow lose my fucking notebook, only for it to turn up in the back of their car.
I still don’t know whether they read it or not. Marcy thinks it doesn’t matter if they did or not, and if they did, it might somehow work in my favor. If they didn’t, it doesn’t matter anyway. Naturally, I’m too scared to ask them.
It takes the whole summer to just about get over it. A month into class and I still get shivers thinking about it. I’ve burned the notebook since. I burnt it the week after Jack handed it back to me, and I haven’t written anything about me and them since, even though I’ve been thinking about them constantly.
Dad gets periodic updates from Brian, which Mom thinks come through Janice, and while my parents own relationship seems to be spiralling out of control, it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Dad’s and Janice’s seems to be positively flourishing.
That’s a whole different world, though, and one I have decided not to give too much thought to. There is far too much on my plate to believe there is anything developing there in the sense that Mom seems to be subtly insinuating.
Janice still hasn’t sold the house, although it’s been on the market since the weekend after the rest of her family left, while Dad has been helping her with a few repairs and cosmetic upgrades that he makes pains to point out Brian never had the capacity to fulfil in the first place.
Donkey, as much as I understand it, are doing even better than everyone expected. They’ve adjusted to their new environment like baby ducks to water, they’re excelling both academically and within their chosen sporting fields, and look ready to set the world on fire. This after only one month.
High school feels like such a long time ago, and right now, after desperately wanting to grow up and start college as soon as possible, I feel like I want nothing more than to be back there at the very beginning again, watching Donkey move into their new life.
College is a distraction, and class is fun, but it’s still not enough to take my mind off it. I can’t help but think I’ve somehow missed out by not acting when I should have done, and even though I know I shouldn’t have regrets, I do, lots of them, even if the chance of Donkey and I getting together in the first place was always super slim to non-existent.
Also, as much as I try and forget about it, I can’t stop thinking about the notebook. If Jack and Zach read what I wrote about them, which is highly likely considering the notebook was in their possession, they’ll know exactly how I feel. If they know, and they’re not saying anything about it, then it means they wish they didn’t. If they didn’t read it, which doesn’t make any sense to me at all, then the reason they haven’t got in contact is a much more significant one. It means they’ve got much better things to spend their time on than me.
I’m not sure which is more depressing, knowing they know how I feel and ignoring me anyway, or just ignoring me without knowing how I feel. They only thing I can be absolutely sure about is that thinking about it without knowing for certain is a time sink and a head fuck I could do without.
If I do ever see them again, which I’m beginning to think more and more unlikely each new day that passes, I know I’m going to die of embarrassment. If I don’t, I’ll just have to live with the regret.
I imagine Donkey passing the book between them and laughing at me, or even reading huge chunks of it out to their friends, like I did the night I lost it to Marcy, while they all sit around and take turns to humiliate me.
Thankfully, there has been nothing on social media to suggest that might be true, which means it could just be a case of my imagination getting the better of me.
I guess either I’ll never know, and I’ll have to cope with accepting that, or I’ll know and equally I’ll have to cope with whatever consequences that will bring.
Marcy tells me I have to forget about Donkey and concentrate on other men, and there definitely isn’t a shortage of them here for me to do that, but giving advice and taking it, even if you know it’s the right thing, are definitely two different things entirely.
No-one, anywhere I’ve ever seen, are like Donkey. Even split up into their constituent parts, no individual has ever come close. There are good looking guys here, both on campus and in my classroom, and there are guys that are probably more suited to me, that share similar interests, but it isn’t the same.
Conversations with people who I can recognize are attractive and might even be flirting with me, don’t make me feel the same way. I find myself comparing whomever I meet to Jack and Zach and each and every time they fall flat.
Even my stories don’t have the same kind of oomph to them. I’ve stopped referring to Donkey by name, but I haven’t stopped writing about them at all, mostly because the emotions are too strong to keep inside.
I know it’s not healthy, but right now I can’t do anything else. The only thing that’s going to make this go away is time, despite Marcy’s advise to fuck everything that moves because she thinks that as soon as I do, Donkey will feel like a silly little crush.
Fucking is exactly what I want to do, but I always imagined losing my virginity to Donkey, not to some no name Joe in any college, USA, even if he’s a better match for me.
“Jenny?”
I look up to a world of eyeballs on me. Our lecturer, a tweed patched, pipe smoking ex-hippy with a syrupy voice smiles haplessly at what has become a trademark for me already.
“Sorry”, I say, “I was miles away.”
“Of mice and men”, he reminds me, lifting up the book. “Curtis thinks it’s gloriously overrated.”
I look at Curtis, and then back to the professor, while the rest of the class wait patiently for me to respond. I’m not usually quick to judge, but in my limited experience so far, Curtis seems to be keen to share his opinion with little to back it up. I read Of mice and men slowly when I was thirteen and then again when I was sixteen cover to cover without even taking a break to eat. If anything it’s criminally underrated and not the other way round. Of all the books we are studying this semester, there isn’t a single one I haven’t read twice. I’ve not had much opportunity to sit in a room and discuss them, but I could comfortably pass this module with my eyes closed and my mind elsewhere, and it’s likely that I might just do that.
“I think that might be a common point of view”, I begin lackadaisically, “to anyone who doesn’t really understand it.”
“Excellent”, our lecturer says, before rubbing his hands together gleefully. “Another Steinbeck fan. Please, do elaborate on your theory, Jenny.”
I elaborate easily, shoot down contradictions by Curtis, articulate my argument so confidently I surprise myself and manage to forget, just for a short while about Donkey, my notebook, my new life and what I’m going to have to do to fit in and forget forever.
By the end of the class, despite my somewhat half-hearted interaction, I somehow come out as the student with the most interesting and incisive input.
I might be able to coast today, but I know that as a long term strategy it’s not going to keep me going for long.
Back at home, the environment is frostier than it’s been in a while. Ever since starting college I’ve been thinking seriously about moving out, and lately, rather than it just seemingly like a good idea, it seems like the only option to stay sane.
Mom and Dad are practically not talking to each other at the moment, and I still can’t understand why. We sit down as a family, and pretend to be a family but since the end of school and the beginning of summer I haven’t felt like we are at all.
“Is suppose you heard already”, Dad says to me out of a silence that none of us have seemed like they want to break up until that point.
“No, what?” I say, looking up to him, not a single clue what he’s about to say. For all I know, he’s about to tell me that they are getting a divorce, and if he did, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.
His eyes go to Mom’s and then back to me. “They’ve told them they’re going to play.”
“Who�
��s going to play what?” I ask.
“I thought you might already be on top of this”, he says, and I’m still confused about what he’s really trying to say. “You’ve seen the schedule right. LSU play The Badgers in November, here in Madison. Donkey have made the team.”
“Donkey?” I say, trying to work out if I’m processing this right. “They’re going to be back in Madison?”
“That’s what Janice is saying”, Mom says, “You’re dad should know.”
My eyes go from Mom to Dad and then back again.
“That’s what I heard from Brian”, Dad says firmly. “He’s proud as hell for the kids. I thought you might already know.”
“No”, I say, shaking my head. “No, I didn’t already know.”
Chapter Sixteen
It could be fiction, it’s that fucking outrageous. This is the kind of thing you read about in those real life magazines about other people in parts of the country you’ve never even heard of, you think are so ridiculous they have to be made up.
I could be in my class now, listening to one of the other students read out what they think is their magnum opus.
It’s fucked up. So fucked up I can’t even comprehend it.
Not only do I have to cope with the fact that I’m in love with two people, twin brothers at that, I have to deal with the fact that my father, the man I thought I knew, has been fucking their mother Janice for the best part of the last three years, and has kept it so well concealed he almost looks like he’s doubting the veracity of it himself.
If someone told me the friction I’ve been witnessing in my parents relationship over the last six months was down to a secret affair, you could have given me a million guesses and I still wouldn’t have worked it out.
Dad has been fucking Donkey’s mother behind everyone’s backs, and now with Brian and the boys out of the equation, his own daughter seemingly old enough and adult enough to manage the blow, he decides it’s high time the truth were out.
Donkey Doubled: A Twin Stepbrother Menage Romance Page 9