My Vanishing Twin

by Tom Stern

  “That…” Walter blurted out more by reflex than will before realizing that he would need to complete the sentence with additional words. So he considered different pairings of words before resigning himself to the simplest explanation at hand, which also happened to be the truest, “…is my brother.”

  Twin smiled broadly upon hearing these words, producing more of a violent, piercing grimace than what one might think of as a smile, before proudly reaching out his crooked mass of a hand and confidently shaking Mr. Sheprick’s well-formed one.

  “You have a brother?” Beau Chalmers decried, the crevasse of his heartbreak expanding only wider with the shocking truth that all this time Walter not only had a brother, but that this brother was, as Beau would later term it, a “special-needs person.”

  “I admire the longevity of your business, sir,” Twin began, lighting Mr. Sheprick right up. “Veronica tells me you’ve been successfully operating for more than four decades.”

  Walter had never seen Mr. Sheprick light up, let alone light right up.

  “Well, thank you,” Mr. Sheprick smiled. “It might not look like much, but a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into this place. What did you say your name was, young man?”

  Twin looked to Veronica.

  Veronica looked to Walter.

  “His name is…” Walter wracked his brain.

  All he could think about was the fact that Twin would potentially be using Walter’s identity to go to business school. But no parent would name their two sons the same thing. So whatever name he picked, he wanted to make sure it was different, but not too far removed, from his own.

  “His name is…” Walter started again, but still with no end to the sentence in mind. This time, however, a word escaped his mouth. A word he had not necessarily decided upon before speaking it, but a word that nevertheless fulfilled his hastily assembled internal criteria. “…Wallace.”

  “Wallace Braum,” Mr. Sheprick repeated. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  “Wallace?” Beau Chalmers repeated, as if to assure Walter that this name had absolutely never come up in their conversations.

  “Wallace,” Veronica repeated as well, affirmatively, “is actually in the process of applying to business schools right now.”

  “An MBA candidate,” Mr. Sheprick said, gleefully impressed. “I learned more in pursuit of my MBA than in any other single endeavor in my life.”

  “Is that right?” Twin, now Wallace, asked with pro

  found interest.

  “It opens up possibilities to your thinking that you otherwise would not have even known existed. And it allows you to see risk as a gradient, rather than as a simple presence or absence.”

  “That sounds absolutely wonderful. It is my hope that creating a broader historical and contemporary business context for myself will allow precisely those things to occur for me.”

  “But you’ve got to love business,” Mr. Sheprick added.

  “Oh,” Wallace explained, “it is my deepest and truest passion.”

  Wallace, of course, spoke these words with a plaintive and sober yet impassioned earnestness that Walter, of course, had never personally managed to manifest into any of the countless words he had ever spoken his whole life over.

  “It is so refreshing to hear that passion in the next generation,” Mr. Sheprick replied, a slight quiver in his voice and possibly the glaze of a tear in his eye. “If there’s any way in which I can help you achieve your goals, please do let me know.”

  Mr. Sheprick shook his head and cast a disgusted look in Walter’s direction. “Why wouldn’t you mention this to me sooner, Walter?” he all but spat.

  “I didn’t want to trouble you, sir, with…” Walter started.

  “Nonsense,” Mr. Sheprick cut in. “There’s no such thing as trouble amongst true businessmen. Never trouble at all.”

  “I don’t mean to pressure you, my love,” Veronica explained over lunch at Frill Café, where Walter this time ordered the smoked fish plate and Wallace ordered a French onion soup that, of course, looked even better than the smoked fish plate.

  “But?” Walter expedited.

  “We really do need an answer,” she stated what she thought was obvious.

  “It’s just that I am scheduled to start today with my GMAT tutor for the entrance exam,” Wallace explained. “I know we’re moving sort of quickly. It just feels so right.”

  “When you look at the projections in the report,” Veronica piled on, “you can see that it’s not really that big of a risk for us.”

  “But…” Walter started, only to trail off. He could not bring himself to talk about the Wells-Bergamot contract and all that hinged upon it. Nor could he openly admit that his failure on this project was a distinct possibility, and subsequently so was the loss of his job. “The whole thing,” he offered instead, “makes me a bit nervous.”

  Wallace reached out and placed his hand atop Walter’s.

  “I don’t want to make you nervous,” Wallace said, kindly. “We will wait.”

  “No,” Veronica chimed in.

  “It’s okay, Veronica,” Wallace insisted.

  “It’s not at all okay!” Veronica yelled. Suddenly and for the second time, the lunchtime patrons at Frill Café were all staring unkindly at Walter Braum. “This is life! Life is risk!”

  “Please, Veronica,” Wallace gently prodded.

  “Some risks,” Walter started in a somewhat sharp tone, hoping that his conviction would greaten the likelihood that this thought would wind up somewhere that made sense, “are quiet struggles. But those are some of the biggest motherfucking risks in the world. Because your whole life can pass you by while you’re tending to them.”

  “What,” Veronica replied, “are you even talking about?”

  Walter was not sure what he was talking about, exactly. But it felt like there was a kernel of something true somewhere in there. “I’m just saying,” Walter replied.

  “What are you just saying, Walter?” Veronica kept right on. “Because we need an answer. And I really think you need to support your brother.”

  Walter looked over to his brother who was just then taking a piping hot spoonful of soup into his jagged, damp, dark mouth. The heat of the broth as it hit his mouth caused Wallace to recoil, his lips spreading open and his tongue projecting forward as the soup poured down his chin and dripped onto the table and all over his lap while he made a sort of semi-grunting sound. By the time Walter looked back to Veronica, she was already using her napkin to wipe away the slovenly mess while Wallace bore down to ride out the pain, teary eyes blinking repeatedly as he sucked cool air in through his mouth.

  Walter knew that he wasn’t going to say no to the odd little bastard and his all-but-certainly boundless future success. Saying yes to Veronica, though, required some serious self-discipline.

  “I’d just like you to acknowledge that this is a risk for me. One that I’m willing to take for Wallace, but one that…”

  “So you’ll do it?” Veronica cut him off before yanking Wallace out of his chair and into her overeager embrace. “He’ll do it!”

  “Thank you, Walter,” Wallace struggled to say from deep within Veronica’s celebratory smother. “Your belief in me means everything.”

  Walter could not help but feel a durable and significant joy at seeing Wallace so happy. A surge of pride, even, swelled in his heart that his decision had such an impact. He knew as surely as he had ever known anything that Wallace was going to crack the business world open, build it back up, and leave it reinvented and all the better. And this would be Walter’s small part in making that happen.

  At the same time, Walter could not help but also feel a not insignificant amount of resentment regarding Veronica’s pure and unbridled elation over his decision. He could not remember Veronica ever hugging him like that. Not even once
in all the time he had known her.

  “What exactly is Wallace’s condition?” Mr. Sheprick called Walter into his office to ask not ten minutes after Walter had returned from lunch.

  Walter inhaled a long, slow breath, in the hopes that in that time a good answer to this question might magically appear in his mind.

  It did not.

  “It’s no condition,” Walter started, yet again unsure of where his thought would end up. “That’s just…his state…of being.”

  “There’s no medical explanation?”

  “That just is…how it is.”

  “He’s your older brother?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Relative maturity.”

  “No,” said Walter, insulted. “We’re twins.”

  “Twins? So that could have been you?”

  “What?” said Walter, mildly indignant even though he wasn’t sure why. “No more than I could have been you.”

  “Depending on different factors and whatnot, couldn’t you have developed like that just as easily as he did?” Mr. Sheprick elaborated.

  “No,” Walter answered definitively even though he had no idea the plausibility of Mr. Sheprick’s hypothesis. “I mean, who knows what factors make one person different from another, let alone—?”

  “Geneticists,” Mr. Sheprick interrupted plainly.

  “—why we are who we are to begin with,” Walter finished his thought. “At a certain point it’s all a mystery. So…”

  Walter trailed off, confident that making his point any further would have no ultimate impact upon Mr. Sheprick’s opinions on this or any other topic for that matter.

  “There must be something the doctors can tell you,” Mr. Sheprick returned to his initial point of inquiry. “I have a great doctor if you’d like to meet with him.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “It’s not a problem. He’d be glad to help. Old friend of mine. Granted, he’s also looked up my ass, so that’s not really a friendship, per se. But you get my meaning…”

  “I don’t at all,” Walter insisted, troubled not only by the mention of Mr. Sheprick’s ass, but also by the fact that in all the time that Walter had known Mr. Sheprick, the man had never before offered to assist Walter with anything, not once, big or small, until now. “But that’s okay. We decided long ago that the search for an answer would really just preclude our efforts to move forward, to live life, to grow, to learn.”

  “Preclude,” Mr. Sheprick repeated. “Good word.”

  “Thank you,” Walter offered. He had learned the word from Wallace, of course.

  “I was thinking,” Mr. Sheprick started again, “Wallace might like to work with you on the Wells-Bergamot contract.”

  “Oh, no,” Walter barked. “I’ve got this.”

  The Wells-Bergamot contract was now far more than just a contract to Walter. It was a symbol. It was a gesture. It was a gift. It was his to land and, in turn, to give.

  “Just as a pre-internship of sorts. I couldn’t pay him, of course. And he wouldn’t really get course credit for it as he’s not in his MBA program just yet. But I was thinking I might be able to get him a tutor in exchange for his efforts.”

  “A tutor?”

  “For his entrance exams. A friend of mine has a son who does this sort of work. And I’m sure he would be happy to help.”

  Walter found it hard to believe that Mr. Sheprick had this many friends. Apropos of no hard evidence toward such a premise, he had always assumed a secularly ascetic lifestyle for the man, with room for little more than his family and his business.

  “That’s not necessary,” Walter explained. “I think he has a tutor. And besides, I would like to handle Wells-Bergamot on my own. So compensation is really not relevant.”

  “What can it hurt?”

  “I would just rather…”

  “He might have some really fresh ideas.”

  “No thank you. I should get back to work,” Walter said, halting this conversation and choosing to assume that Mr. Sheprick had conceded every point of disagreement that had just arisen.

  When Walter came home that night, dinner was on the table and ready. Wallace had found a recipe for some French pastry and he and Veronica had spent the afternoon perfecting it.

  It, of course, looked delicious. As did the accompanying rack of lamb and creamed spinach side.

  This all, needless to say, soured Walter’s disposition, which was already sharp given the days unexpected events.

  “Mr. Sheprick seems like a delightful man,” Wallace observed through drool-y, crumb-y bits of the flaky dough. Veronica heaped deep portions onto Walter’s plate.

  “He’s not,” Walter explained.

  “Why do you do that, Walter?” Veronica chimed in, clearly upset.

  “Do what?”

  “Look critically upon everything in your life.”

  “She said to Walter, critically,” Walter parried.

  Veronica slammed a plate of lamb onto the table.

  Walter looked to Wallace.

  Wallace looked to Veronica.

  Veronica looked to Wallace.

  Wallace offered her a supportive, reassuring nod.

  Something about their knowing glances reminded Walter of a most grave oversight on his part. An oversight that plummeted his heart into his stomach and shot Walter through with anxiety. An oversight he would need to be at least two blocks from his home to attempt to reconcile.

  “Do I not tend to my responsibilities?” Walter fired, rhetorically, as he pushed his plate bitterly away and schemed his fastest way out the door.

  “No one is saying that you don’t,” Veronica answered, equally sharp in tone.

  “I take care of everything.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Veronica.

  “So who cares if I’m not fulfilled, right?” Walter went right on. “I presume that’s just a shortcoming on my part.”

  Walter got up and threw his napkin down on the table beside his plate.

  He then turned and left the apartment.

  Veronica was tired of saying things.

  So she fell silent and she let him go.

  “He’s just made of different stuff,” Wallace eventually explained, sympathetically. “Not better, not worse,” Wallace added. “Just different.”

  “I am so sorry,” Walter explained into his cell phone, two blocks and one step from his apartment. “I completely forgot. Veronica showed up for lunch unexpectedly and…”

  “You think I want to hear about Veronica, Walter?” Eleanor fired back through the phone. Walter hoped that this disdain was perhaps revelatory of genuine feelings harbored for him.

  “You need to pay me,” Eleanor added after a moment and a sigh. “Even if you don’t use the time, you need to pay me.”

  Walter went numb. His heart fell from his chest, onto the ground. His mind searched for ways to prove that this was not happening.

  “I really wanted to see you,” Walter explained, in complete earnest.

  “I don’t care,” she barked back, coldly. “I’m a businesswoman, Walter.”

  “Look, it’s not about the money,” Walter found himself saying. “I can pay. I guess I just thought that maybe we were…”

  “Then pay.”

  “Of course. I will. Yes. But I think this is an opportunity to maybe clarify that I’ve been wondering all this time if maybe what we have is more than…”

  “Stop talking, Walter.”

  Walter did.

  But then he started again…

  “I really like you, Eleanor.”

  Eleanor had nothing to say to this.

  So Walter pressed on.

  “I don’t mean just…professionally. I mean that I…have affection…for you. And I don’t just mean tha
t sweetly. I mean it…” Walter reached for a word but couldn’t conjure the one that meant what he was trying to convey, so instead he said, “I mean it with feelings. And sometimes I wonder if you might mean it with feelings, too?”

  “Just pay me double next time,” Eleanor concluded and hung up the phone.

  By the time Walter returned home, Veronica was in the bedroom getting changed for bed. She was walking around in nothing more than her panties, her fist-sized breasts jiggling with each step, her slightly flabby butt cheeks crescent-mooned by the bottoms of her underwear, her hair still wet from the shower.

  All of these things got Walter a bit aroused. Which, in turn, gave Walter a general sense of self-loathing.

  “You look nice,” Walter said, as he started changing out of his work clothes.

  In immediate hindsight, he could see how this comment might have been more appropriate had Veronica actually been wearing something more than just her underwear.

  “I just took a shower, Walter,” Veronica explained. “I don’t want to have sex right now.”

  “I just thought,” Walter defended, “we said we would do it.” After enough silence accumulated between them to officially qualify as a lack of response, he added, “Would have sex, I mean.”

  Veronica’s continued silence somehow clearly affirmed that she had completely understood his initial meaning and had not required any elaboration at all.

  “What does the shower have to do with it?” Walter finally added.

  “I would need to take another shower after,” Veronica snapped.

  “You wouldn’t have to.”

  Veronica had, by now, pulled on a loose, tattered T-shirt to sleep in.

  Walter sometimes found Veronica in her bed clothes even sexier than Veronica in the nude. This time was one of those sometimes.

  “Wallace thinks I’m wonderful,” Veronica explained to Walter, her tone shifting vulnerable.

  Her words, or maybe it was her tone, made Walter realize that while he presently very much wanted to have sex with Veronica, he simultaneously did not want to feel particularly close to her at all. Not in a mean way. He just did not want emotional things right now. He wanted physical things. He often just wanted physical things. But Veronica more or less never really did. She always wanted Walter’s heart. Which was often much more difficult to give than Walter could stand. For Walter, sometimes loving someone meant being able to not have to feel that love all the time, as strange as that might seem to someone like Veronica. Not that he felt hate in place of the love, although maybe sometimes he did in passing moments. Resentment, too. But for the most part he just wanted to feel nothing sometimes. So he could think about other things, too. Like getting tasks done at work. Or just relaxing into lunch. Or daydreaming, even. Walter felt strongly that these things were somehow just as important to a relationship sometimes as when he did feel his love. Just because he might not actively feel something in a particular moment, it does not mean that thing does not exist. But Walter could not say this to Veronica. He was certain she would never understand him. Not that he had ever really tried to explain this to her. But this thought, once fleshed out, didn’t seem like the type of thing that would really make sense to anyone other than him, even if it did feel true.