Twins

by Marcy Dermansky

“More than your hair is growing,” she whispered, and suddenly, I felt shy. I needed a pill or at least a blanket. I was glad when I heard Smita’s door open upstairs. We jumped up from the couch, straightening our clothes. We were both breathing fast. Lisa looked pleased, smiling at me, as if this was the reason she had driven all this way.

  “Hey, I remember you,” Daniel said, coming down the stairs. “You’re Chloe’s little friend.”

  Daniel sat down on the edge of the armchair, grinning at Lisa.

  “No,” Lisa said. “Negative. I’m Sue’s little friend.”

  There it was. I felt myself blush. Lisa Markman liked me. She preferred me over Chloe. She had driven more than four hours to see me. Just me. She liked my hair, my necklace, my chest that had finally started to grow. I introduced Lisa to Smita, hoping that she could see beyond Lisa’s pants.

  “Gosh,” Smita said.

  Right away, Smita took in the clothes. It wasn’t only the leather pants. Lisa was wearing high-heeled boots, and a sheer red shirt with a black camisole underneath. “You are so stylish. You look like you stepped out of the pages of a magazine.”

  “I am a model,” Lisa said. “Or, I used to model before my father went parental and decided to ruin my life.”

  “Fathers,” Smita said. She shook her head. “I wish women could reproduce without the bother of sperm. There are so many bad fathers.”

  “Well,” Daniel said, scratching his face. “Men are okay.”

  But we were three to one. Smita seemed to like Lisa.

  “I am starving hungry,” Smita announced.

  “So am I,” Lisa said. “I have been driving all day.”

  Lisa drove us to a restaurant in her red convertible. I sat in the front seat, Smita and Daniel in the back. At the restaurant, Lisa reached for my hand under the table. I felt her press a pill into the palm of my hand. I swallowed it with my water while Smita and Daniel looked at their menus. Lisa winked at me. We were the kids; Smita and Daniel were the adults. This was what dinner out with your parents was supposed to feel like. Daniel and Smita and Lisa talked and talked, and I gazed at them through a happy haze.

  “You are quiet tonight,” Smita said.

  I smiled at her.

  Lisa and I shared a chocolate mousse for dessert. I let the chocolate sit on my tongue. I swirled it round the top of my mouth. I had never quite tasted chocolate like this before.

  Smita was asking Lisa questions about modeling.

  “Tell me about the gaze,” she said. “Did you enjoy being the object of so much attention?”

  “Absolutely,” Lisa said.

  “Did it bother you that your image was being used to sell merchandise?”

  “That never bothered me,” Lisa said. “I got a lot of free stuff.”

  Smita nodded. “Free stuff,” she said.

  Daniel, I noticed, wasn’t talking either. He was staring at Smita like a lovesick puppy.

  “Hey, Daniel,” I said.

  “Sue,” Daniel said. “Hello.”

  This was my life without Chloe. I had never wanted Chloe to leave me, but instead I had arrived someplace on my own. I was all right by myself. I had my own hair. My own clothes. I had my own face.

  I looked at Daniel, and somehow he knew. We smiled at each other in the dim, candlelit restaurant.

  “You’re great, Sue,” he said. “You’re terrific.”

  Lisa and Smita were still going back and forth.

  I heard Smita break out into laughter.

  Lisa was showing Smita her diamond ring.

  “You’ll have to give it back,” she said. “When you break the engagement.”

  “No way,” Lisa said. “The ring is mine.”

  “You sound just like Gollum,” Daniel said.

  “What?” Lisa said.

  Smita sipped her coffee.

  “You are giving our gender a bad name,” she told Lisa.

  I loved the way Smita flat-out ignored Daniel when she felt like it. “Women shouldn’t accept gifts from men they do not love,” she told Lisa. “Women should not engage in relationships for profit’s sake. It gives the wrong message.”

  “Isn’t that what marriage is all about?” Lisa said.

  “Is it?” Smita said. “I think the rules of partnership have changed in recent years.”

  Lisa shook her head. “But look at this ring,” she said. “Have you looked at it?”

  I decided to look. It was a big ring. A large rock. Larger than my mother’s. I had forgotten that Lisa said she was engaged. “Who are you engaged to?” I said. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  Lisa patted my head like I was her pet dog.

  “I have some books you need to read,” Smita said. “Back at the house.”

  “No way,” Lisa said. “I’m not interested.”

  I took another spoonful of mousse. I did not have to worry about Lisa’s faraway fiancé. I just had to taste the chocolate in my mouth.

  “You have to try it on,” Lisa told Smita.

  Smita held out her hand. She had long, graceful fingers. Her skin was darker than Lisa’s.

  Daniel and I watched as Lisa slipped the diamond ring on Smita’s finger.

  “It sparkles,” Smita said.

  “Is this an engagement I am watching?” Daniel said.

  Smita was studying the diamond.

  “Fascinating,” she said.

  “Take off the ring,” Daniel said. “I can sense its evil powers.”

  Smita gave Lisa back her ring.

  “You can’t keep it,” she said. “Unless you marry the man.”

  “Of course I can,” Lisa said. “Feminists are hopeless. Angry man-haters who don’t shave their armpits.”

  “These are outdated ideas,” Smita said. “Stereotypes all of them. Look at me.”

  “You’re not a feminist,” Lisa said. “You’re much too pretty.”

  Smita moved her head up and down.

  “Holy shit,” Lisa said.

  I wondered who Chloe ate dinner with. I hoped she did not eat all alone. I was her other half, but I had left her behind. I’d left her to be murdered by strange men who answered our telephone. It had been years since I had seen Chloe laugh. Suddenly I felt sick with guilt. I would die if something had happened to Chloe.

  I went to the bathroom and threw up.

  Chloe

  I felt much too old, tired, walking back to high school to start my senior year. Sue did not have to go confront the same faces. James and Jamal had graduated. Only I had to walk those horrible halls: one more year of passing Lisa Markman and her brother, Todd, Melanie and Brittany, all of the friends I had never made and no longer wanted. On my way, I recognized the corner where I had once broken into a jog, running to get away from Sue when I could not stand her for another second. I remembered the exhilaration I felt as I picked up the pace, sprinting the last quarter of a mile until I reached the front steps of the school. I no longer had any reason to run.

  It burned when I peed.

  I put my head on the desk during my classes. Official basketball practice wouldn’t start for several months, but the coach had arranged some early sessions for returning players. He had even called the house to confirm my attendance, but Tashika answered the phone. I dodged him in the hall and cut gym class. Kendra, the center of the team, once tried to talk to me, but I brushed her off. “I’ve got better things to do,” I told her. I saw the surprise on her face and realized that I was doing a terrible thing. I was the star of the team, and Kendra had been nice, always passing the ball to me.

  But I felt like I was finished with basketball. Mr. Markman would not be in the stands to watch me play. I came home from school and locked myself in the bathroom, forcing myself to pee. I did not know why it stung. There was the chance that James had given me some horrible disease. He had taken me to the beach at the end of the summer. I could see that he was trying to be sweet to me, and we spent the day swimming in the waves, but I got sunburned, and by the time we got back
to the house I felt sick with fever. My skin was so hot I sweat through the sheets, and I made him go sleep on the couch.

  “We’re not having so much fun, are we, Chloe?” James had said.

  He could not make me laugh like he used to. Most days, he came home tired from painting houses. He and Jamal crashed on the couch, playing Nintendo. Tashika took classes at the community college. She had started keeping the house a little cleaner. She often brought home chicken from Popeyes for us to eat.

  James was disappointed when I told him I didn’t want to play anymore. He smiled his sweet smile at me, flashing those two rows of perfect teeth. “Running down the court in those cute, shiny shorts, that’s what got me interested in you in the first place. You have to go back. You have to play. I want to go to your games.”

  “Really?” I said, feeling tears well up in my eyes. “Really?”

  I had become just like Sue. There wasn’t a day when something did not make me cry. But I put on my running sneakers and headed to the track, thinking, Yes, I will go to practice, yes, I can start again. I can start again. I ran laps and remembered how good it felt to move my body. I enjoyed working out, pushing myself, even the sheen of sweat from the exertion. But the next day, I woke up feeling tired and defeated all over again, and I slipped quietly out of bed to get dressed for school, leaving my basketball sneakers in the back of the closet.

  It all made sense to me now: why my parents had left, why Sue decided that I was not her sole purpose in life. I was not an exceptional person. I had given up my dog without a fight, I had surrendered my family, lost my virginity, misplaced my confidence, and now, it seemed only logical that I give up basketball, a game that had once given me joy. It was a stupid sport, and I was probably mistaken about the joy part. It had always been Mr. Markman who took pleasure in my success.

  Rodney Markman had no reason in the world to be afraid of my father. My absent father had no idea what I did every day. Mr. Markman could have raped me every day and my father would never have had any idea. It was all so sad and ridiculous, because Mr. Markman would never have done anything to hurt me. He was too good. But for what were supposed to be my own best interests, I had been forsaken. I had seen him once at the movies, standing in line at the popcorn counter with Lisa and Todd. Mr. Markman did not see me, and I made James and Jamal take me home before the movie started.

  Now Kendra also ignored me at school. I was a true social outcast, like Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter, the book I was reading for English class. I no longer talked in my classes. Teachers looked at me hopefully, but I raised my hand only to be excused to the bathroom. I constantly felt like I needed to pee, though when I tried, nothing happened. Only the burning, stinging sensation between my legs. I’d sit in the bathroom stall and cry quietly into my hands.

  In December, I started to pee blood.

  I decided, finally, to call James’s mother.

  She took the afternoon off and we went to her gynecologist. Louise, still dressed in her uniform, sat with me in the waiting room reading People magazine, and it seemed fantastic that my picture was once in those pages. Louise promised to wait for me while I was examined by her doctor. I was instructed to change into a paper robe, and then wearing just the robe, walk through the hall to a bathroom, where I had to pee into a paper cup. In the examining room, I started to cry when the doctor had me scoot down to the end of the table and lift my legs for a Pap smear. She gave me a tissue to wipe my face, and I answered her questions about my sexual history. I did not know the right answers. I hung my head in shame. I was grateful that she did not ask me about my parents.

  The doctor told me I had a urinary tract infection. She gave me a prescription for antibiotics.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  For the first time in a long time, I found myself grinning. The doctor looked at me, concerned.

  Louise drove me to the drugstore, and she sat with me in blue plastic chairs as we waited for my prescription to be filled. She kept her lips pursed, as if she was dying to say something. When the prescription was ready, Louise asked me if I wanted her to take me back home, and when I shook my head, she took me back to her apartment. I loved Louise’s tiny apartment, the slipcover on the couch, the cheerful welcome mat and the crocheted pillows.

  Louise treated me as if I were sick. I sat at her kitchen table while she made me chicken soup with stars. She poured me a glass of cold milk to drink. When the soup was ready, Louise sat across from me, watching me as I ate. The canned soup was delicious, better than anything I had tasted in weeks.

  “You tell that boy to keep his hands off you,” Louise said.

  I did not want to talk about James. I just wanted to eat my soup. I wondered if I had made a bad choice, coming to her. I had knowingly gotten myself into this mess. I was the one who had seduced her son. I had let his friend Jamal move into the house. I had let Tashika stay. I had introduced them to my father’s case of Irish whiskey in the basement. I had paid for the food and the electricity and for the neighborhood boy who mowed the lawn. James liked steak, and Jamal liked French cheeses, Brie and Camembert and Port Salut, and even though they both had jobs, I paid. I saw everything go wrong as it was happening. My life was my own fault.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Louise said.

  I looked at the cute little stars floating in the bowl. I could not remember my mother ever making me soup from a can. She was above such small domestic activities. She made far too much money to eat processed food from a can. She would look down on every single part of Louise’s life, from her small apartment to her lavender headband, which matched her uniform.

  “What are you going to do, honey?” Louise repeated. “This can’t go on. You could get a kidney infection if you are not careful.”

  I shook my head. I gulped down my milk. After handing me my prescription, the doctor had warned me about kidney infections. Almost all teenage girls, everyone but Sue, had sex. I was the only one who got a urinary tract infection.

  I felt my eyes growing wet.

  “Thank you for the soup,” I said.

  “Tell me, Chloe,” Louise said. “Do you love my son?”

  Love? I looked at Louise, who was tall like James, who had the same eyes. I wasn’t sure. I wanted to love James, but almost from the start, he had seemed inconsequential. He could not live up to the comparison of Mr. Markman. James and Jamal spent hours and hours stoned in front of the TV playing video games. They took it for granted that I did their laundry.

  “That’s a personal question,” I said.

  Louise nodded. “Okay. Tell me this. Do you like living with my son?”

  I took a deep breath. I could answer that question honestly.

  “No,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  I felt my heart beating fast. I had never flat-out admitted this fact. I hated Tashika, even though she brought home food and made James and Jamal turn down the music at night. She borrowed my clothes without asking. She wore my makeup. Jamal left his bong on the living room table for the neighbors to see. The tub in the bathroom was filled with strange hairs.

  “You don’t like it?” Louise said. “The experience has not been everything that you expected it to be?”

  I could see what an effort it was for Louise to keep her expression even. It was not possible, I told myself, that she would be gloating over my failure. She was a kind person, and she was worried about me; she’d taken time off work to take me to the doctor. She had cleaned my teeth.

  “You don’t want to continue living with my son, do you, sweetheart?”

  I shook my head, looking down into my bowl of soup. My leg had started to shake. I did not want to go on as I was, and that, I understood, was the real reason I had called Louise. I could have found a doctor on my own, but I had no idea how I could make them all leave. James and Jamal and Tashika. They were more comfortable in my house than I was.

  “Do you need my help?” Louise said.

  Louise was watching me. I
had begun to cry steadily into my soup, and she started to cry with me. I felt strangely happy because we were crying together.

  “Of course, Louise Patterson, that is why the girl came to you. Because she needs your help.” She touched my hand. “I let this happen. This is my fault. I foresaw this. I can bring James home if that’s what you want.”

  I looked up at her. I wiped the tears from my face.

  “Can I stay here instead?” I asked. “With you?”

  Louise looked surprised. “Sweetheart,” she said. “You have a lovely house. You go wash your face, and then I’ll take you home. I will stand beside you when you tell my son that he has to pack his things and go.”

  Louise, of course, did not know about the others.

  “We have to break up?” I said.

  I felt panicked at the idea. James was my boyfriend, the only person in the entire world who loved me. He really did care about me. He told me to play basketball. All the other stuff, his friends and the noise and the mess, that didn’t matter. I would take my antibiotics and work at being happier.

  “You have to call your parents,” Louise said.

  She patted my hand, and I understood. This was the end of my relationship with both Louise and James Patterson. If things went her way, she would have her son back by the end of the night. My problems were my problems.

  But I would not call my parents. We had gotten our divorce. I had visited their Manhattan apartment. I had admired their elegant furniture, the view from the thirty-fourth floor. We had eaten dinner together in an expensive French restaurant and made conversation. My mother worried that I was gaining weight. My father asked me which Ivy League college was I shooting for. We did not talk about Sue. At the end of the meal, my mother sprayed my wrist with her new perfume and we agreed to skip dessert. The moment we stepped outside, a cab pulled up in front of the restaurant to let out another couple, and my father put me inside the empty taxi. He handed me a one-hundred-dollar bill and kissed both of my cheeks as my mother blew kisses from the sidewalk. I never told them about James.

  “You have to call your parents,” Louise repeated. “You need them.”