The Trouble with Twins

by Nancy Warren

Melissa stomped to the TV and grabbed the remote— “Let’s find something more suitable—” and punched around until she found Bert and Ernie in an intense discussion about paper clips.

  With identical snorts of disgust, the twins peeled themselves off the couch and trudged to the front entrance, where they’d left their knapsacks. Melissa watched them haul out handheld video games and drop where they stood. Soon the front hall sounded like a miniarcade, but she decided she’d let it go. So long as they didn’t damage her home or hurt her children in any way, she’d let them be. For now.

  Back at the kitchen table, Melissa found an old envelope and a pen and started a to-do list. She hated writing on the backs of envelopes, hated the way the ridges spoiled her handwriting, but nice fresh pads of paper were one more luxury she could no longer afford. She’d discovered it wasn’t losing the big things that bothered her. It was the little ones. She could forgo new clothes, hair appointments and even, after a struggle, Swiss chocolate.

  It was the dumb little things like foregoing boxed tissues and pads of writing paper that irked her the most.

  With a shudder, she propped her head on her hand. And wrote:

  Find Stephen.

  Research lawyers.

  Increase income.

  They looked so neat, those prim little instructions to herself, telling her how to fix her life. She chewed her lip for a while, thinking. From the front hall, little pings and beeps sounded along with girlish shouts of triumph or groans of failure.

  The most important item was to track down her ex-husband. He’d betrayed her so often she shouldn’t be surprised. But she was. She couldn’t believe he’d gone off and abandoned his children, gone back on his promise about the house.

  Maybe something had happened to him?

  What if he was dead? But a moment’s reflection told her that was unlikely. If he’d had some kind of accident, he wouldn’t have given notice at his apartment and closed up his office. No. He’d run away from his responsibilities. A bad habit of his. At least if he’d died, she’d have the life insurance money for her kids.

  By lunchtime, she was feeling a little more hopeful. She’d discovered a legal aid clinic that specialized in helping women and that was open in the evenings. She’d made an appointment.

  Her mind revolved around where Stephen might have gone and what had happened to his successful business while she warmed up soup, arranged rice crackers on a plate, sliced an apple and poured three glasses of watery juice.

  Then she went in search of the girls.

  They were no longer in the front hall, although everything they’d pulled out of their backpacks was scattered all over the floor. Her lips pursed when she heard the music coming from the TV room.

  Sure enough, the three of them were sitting on the couch glued to the same music station she’d already switched off once. This time the group was a quartet of white-suited young men, so squeaky clean they looked like they’d been bleached. All blond, pale-skinned and in white suits and shoes they crooned some sappy love song.

  “I thought I told you—”

  “Shh—it’s the Bravo Boys!”

  “I don’t care if it’s the Three Tenors break-dancing, you aren’t watching it,” she said, aiming the remote toward the screen.

  “No. Please just let us watch this. It’s ‘Born To Be Bravo,’ my favorite.” They sounded so desperately serious, Melissa paused with the remote in midair.

  She had to admit there wasn’t anything to pervert Alice’s innocent mind on the TV screen. If anything, the boys were so cute they were nauseating. Melissa had a flashback of a Duran Duran poster that used to hang in her room when she was a teenager and paused with her finger still on the off button. The twins were rapt—and so was Alice.

  “Born To Be Bravo” would never win a Grammy—she hoped—but at least the lyrics were expletive-free and far from disgusting, although the level of schmaltz could well be toxic. It was certainly an upbeat melody, probably the kind that got stuck in your head on an endless loop—like the jingle on a toothpaste commercial.

  When the song ended, she clicked off the TV and sent the girls to wash up for lunch. Sure enough, they clambered up the stairs banging their feet rhythmically, chanting, “Born to be bra-bra-braaavo!” Alice’s tiny voice wavered along with them, a beat or two behind. Melissa couldn’t help but grin.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I HATE SOUP.”

  “You haven’t even tried it yet,” Melissa reminded the girl scowling at her. The four of them were sitting at her kitchen table for lunch, though it felt more like they were two battalions preparing for war.

  “I hate all soup.”

  “Can I have milk instead of juice?” the other twin asked.

  Spoiled brats. Melissa’s fists clenched, and she counted silently to ten. “The soup and crackers—and the juice—are easy on your stomach.”

  “Dad never makes us eat stuff we hate.”

  “He doesn’t let our babysitters make us, either.”

  Deciding nonconfrontation was her best course of action, Melissa put her spoon into her soup and started eating.

  She refused to react when the twins walked away from the table, leaving their lunches barely touched. She needed to talk to their father about how she planned to handle the girls, and for this first day, she was curious to see how they behaved. Although curious was quickly turning to appalled.

  After lunch, Alice went down reluctantly for her nap. “I want to play with the two twins,” she argued.

  “They’ll still be here when you wake up. Besides, they’ll be resting, too,” Melissa promised her.

  And rest and quiet was exactly what the twins needed. Knowing they would want to watch more TV, Melissa was determined, so long as they were under her care, they wouldn’t spend all their time drooling over the Bravo Boys.

  It was time she took charge. She went to her room and dug out Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie from among her favorite books from childhood.

  As she returned downstairs she heard the hum of the TV, as she’d expected. Marching into the room she stopped dead. She’d anticipated the music videos. But she certainly hadn’t expected to find the twins curled on the couch surrounded by potato chips and candy bars.

  “What on earth?” she cried angrily.

  “Dad said we could bring some snacks,” replied the one she’d come to see as the bolder of the two, her chin jutting forward. The smell of grease and chocolate hung in the air, and Melissa stared at the bold twin—Laura, she thought—until the girl’s defiant gaze faltered. She was beginning to see subtle differences between the twins, but it would be a while before she’s be able to distinguish them unerringly.

  Cellophane crackled beneath her fingers as she scooped up the load of junk food from the couch and ordered the girls to wash their hands once more.

  “But I didn’t finish my Doritos.”

  “In my house, you follow my rules. No snacks between meals if you don’t eat your lunch.”

  They glared at her as if she were an ogre before stomping off, muttering to each other.

  If they thought she was evil to take away their junk food, she must have dropped even lower in their estimation when she produced the books.

  “We don’t have to do homework, we’re sick.”

  “This isn’t homework. It’s called reading for pleasure.”

  Glumly, Laura took the proffered book and then balked again when she read the cover. “Don’t you have A Series of Unfortunate Events?”

  She shook her head.

  “American Girls?” Jessie cried, glancing at the cover of Little House on the Prairie. “Redwall? Saddle Club?”

  “Sorry, I only have the books I used to read when I was a little girl.”

  The two identical looks of horror caused her lips to tremble with barely suppressed amusement. “That was just after the printing press was invented.”

  “You read this stuff?”

  “Well, only because the
Bravo Boys weren’t born yet.”

  “My Dad—”

  “Would you like to phone your Dad and check if it’s okay to read a book at my house?”

  The panicked glance the twins shared confirmed what Melissa had begun to suspect: they were on their worst behavior for her benefit. Without another word, they opened their books and at least made a pretense of reading.

  “I’m going to start dinner now. If you have trouble understanding any words, you can bring the book into the kitchen.”

  “But we’re too sick to read,” Jessie whined.

  “Then you can nap in Matthew’s bed.”

  They had their heads down, eyes to the page in seconds.

  Challenge is good. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She continued her silent pep talk as she started preparing dinner. While she was peeling onions the phone rang.

  “Hello?” she answered, sniffing.

  “Melissa?”

  She sniffed again, and wiped her streaming eyes with her sleeve. Oh, for a tissue. “Hello, Seth.”

  “What is it? Have the twins made you cry?” Seth’s voice sounded full of dread.

  She chuckled. “I’m peeling onions. The twins are fine.”

  She heard scuffling noises in the hall and suddenly the bold twin bounded in the room gesturing frantically. It took Melissa a minute to figure out that the flapping, pointing and silent begging were a plea for her not to tell Seth about the junk food stash in the backpacks. Interesting. Maybe he wasn’t a complete pushover after all.

  The sigh that rumbled out of the receiver said more than any words could. “Tough day?” she asked.

  “Annual directors’ meeting. It went all right, but I had trouble concentrating.” He paused. “I was worried about the twins.”

  Was he worried she was being mean to his sweet darlings? His sympathy would have been better placed with their caregiver. She kept these feelings to herself, however, and asked what time he’d be picking them up.

  A groan of frustration was her answer. “There are a couple of urgent items I’ve got to clean up. I was hoping you could keep them till seven tonight…at your overtime rate, of course.”

  She hesitated. Frankly, she had been counting the minutes till she could get rid of the twins, but she heard real anxiety in Seth’s voice. And he was paying her overtime. “All right,” she finally agreed.

  “I’ll tell you what.” She heard the relief in his tone and was glad she was able to help. “Put the onions away, I’ll have pizza delivered to your place for dinner.”

  “We’ll take a rain check on pizza. The last thing those girls need is more junk in their stomachs. I’ll make them something wholesome.”

  He chuckled, and the sound did something to her stomach that she didn’t even want to consider. “If it’s wholesome, they probably won’t eat it, but you’re the boss.”

  She was thinking that if he used that laughing, sexy voice all the time, the bank would be swamped with female customers. And even though he and his daughters seemed to have taken over her life in a matter of twenty-four hours, she felt her lips turning up in response. “See you later.”

  Surprisingly, he turned out to be wrong. Maybe it was because they hadn’t eaten anything but a few filched potato chips and a lunch they’d only picked at, but the twins wolfed down the chicken and vegetable stew she’d made and got through most of a loaf of whole wheat bread. They looked suspiciously at the rice pudding, but once they’d tasted it, they made short work of that, too.

  And they surprised Melissa by displaying excellent table manners.

  Matthew was so much in awe of them that he spent the entire mealtime staring at first one, then the other twin. Maybe they were used to that kind of attention; they didn’t even seem to notice. Alice didn’t stare. She merely copied everything they did.

  “How did you get on with Anne of Green Gables, Laura?” Melissa asked. They hadn’t come to her all afternoon for help, so she was suspicious about how much reading they’d done. She’d peeked in on them once and found Laura reading and Jessie sound asleep on the couch.

  “It was okay.” The girl shrugged and fell silent.

  “Did you have any trouble with big words?” Melissa persisted.

  “Not really.”

  Had the girl read any of it? Or had she heard Melissa’s approach and stuck the book in front of her face before she got caught doing something else? “What did you like about the book?”

  Laura stared hard into her rice pudding. Beneath the rioting auburn curls, Melissa made out a different shade of red staining her cheeks.

  Nobody said anything for several seconds.

  Just as Melissa was about to ask her what she’d really been doing all afternoon she burst out with, “That Anne was an orphan. If our dad dies we’ll be orphans, too, and nobody will want us.” She raised a face wet with tears, her eyes huge.

  “Laura, that’s not true.” Melissa’s heart turned over at the real fear she saw in those big, wet eyes before the child turned and dashed out of the room. “Laura, come back,” but the running footsteps kept pounding down the hall and up the stairs.

  Before Melissa could stand, Jessie let out a sob, and knocking her chair over in her haste, jogged after her sister, beginning her own noisy brand of wailing.

  Melissa stood up. “Excuse me, children,” she mumbled. What had she done?

  She started to follow the twins, but, glancing at Alice, saw her daughter’s face start to pucker. She wouldn’t understand what the crying was about, but she’d responded to the emotion she’d witnessed.

  Matthew looked anxious. He was pulling on the cowlick in the centre of his hairline, a habit he had when he was upset. “We don’t have a dad. Are we orphans?”

  Sudden tears pricked Melissa’s own eyes. “Of course you have a dad. And he loves you. And you have me.” She felt as though a vise was squeezing her ribs. “I won’t let anything happen to you…I promise.” By this time, tears were streaming helplessly down her own cheeks and Matthew’s eyes had flooded.

  Alice howled, “I want my daddeee!”

  At that moment Seth O’Reilly walked into the kitchen. “Nobody answered the door. I…what the—?”

  SETH BLINKED HIS EYES AS though he could reopen them and find the world was back to the familiar place he knew.

  It wasn’t.

  Melissa was melting into a puddle right in front of him, and strangely, he felt a strong urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. Except that she was already moving to offer comfort to her sobbing children.

  He glanced around for his own children. What had they done now? Fear clenched his gut. “The twins?”

  Melissa pointed upward, her body shaking badly. “I’m so s-sorry.” She could barely speak. “The b-book. It’s all my fault.”

  He bounded out of the kitchen and up the stairs without bothering to ask permission. “Girls?” he shouted as he ran, terrified of what he might find. He’d never thought of a book as being a deadly weapon, but with the twins you never knew. His terror eased a little when he heard distinct, noisy sobs coming from down the hall.

  They were lying curled up together on a single bed in a room so dominated by pink and purple it must have been Alice’s. A quick survey showed him they weren’t obviously hurt. There was no visible bleeding or broken body parts. Some of his panic dissipated and he crossed quietly to perch on the bed beside them.

  “Hey Red, what’s up?” he said softly, using the nickname he’d had for them since they were toddlers.

  “Dad-ee!” they cried in unison and somehow both ended up on his lap, clutching at him. “Don’t d-die,” Laura begged him, turning a tear-swollen face up to him.

  Even as he opened his mouth to utter an automatic soothing promise, a pain sharp and cruel pierced his chest. How could he promise something he had no control over? Who’d have thought Claire would die? Claire, who’d embraced life and who would have done anything to spare her children pain. “I’m right here,” he said with a catch
in his own voice. It was the best he could offer.

  “I don’t want to be an orphan,” Laura sobbed. “They make you work like a c-cleaning lady and send you on trains to people who don’t even w-want you.”

  “Who does?” Seth was floundering way out of his depth. Cleaning ladies? Trains? Death? What kind of a babysitter was Melissa Theisen? “Nobody’s going to make you a cleaning lady,” he soothed.

  “That’s what happened to Anne. And she finally finds a place she likes but they d-didn’t like her because she was a girl. Why couldn’t we be b-boys?”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re girls.” Seth latched on to the one part of her complaint he understood. “Your mom and I always wanted a girl, and we were so lucky when we got two of you.” He squeezed their slim shoulders to him in a hug.

  Jessie’s body shuddered on a hiccup.

  “Who’s Anne?” He never remembered hearing about anyone at school called Anne. He thought he knew most of their friends outside of school. No Annes there, either.

  “Anne Shirley.”

  “Anne Shirley?” Now where had he heard that name before? Then he remembered, Melissa had mentioned a book. “Anne of Green Gables? That Anne Shirley?”

  Laura nodded and sniffed.

  “Anne Shirley is a fictional character. And that book was written a long time ago. That’s never going to happen to you.”

  “Then who’s going to look after us when you die?” Laura demanded.

  “First of all, I’m not planning to die for a long time. And if something did happen, your Auntie Janice would look after you. You know that.”

  “But she has her own kids,” Jessie objected.

  “She’d let us live with her to be cleaning ladies and do all the cooking and the wash,” Laura warned.

  “Well, she wouldn’t be getting much of a bargain,” Seth said drily. “You two would soon have her whole house looking like your bedroom.” He squeezed his arms around them in another big hug. “And after yesterday, I don’t think she’ll be asking you to do any cooking.”

  A reluctant chuckle answered him.

  “How was the rest of your day?”