by Gayle Roper
Bill sulked the whole drive to Johnny’s, all ten minutes of it. At least he tried to. It was hard with Terror sitting in his lap and kissing him. Still he gave it the old college try.
“I still don’t know why I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” he complained as he climbed out of Clay’s car. “After all, it’s my vacation.”
“Give it a rest, Bill.” Clay looked directly into Bill’s eyes. “Your mom doesn’t need you grumpy all day. Not after the scare you gave her last night.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault. I didn’t tie Terror out there.”
“I know. But it was still hard on her, watching and not knowing if you’d get back safely and all.”
Bill looked at Leigh out of the corner of his eye, and she tried to look as sad as she could, which wasn’t easy with Clay defending her like that. This was the way it probably happened in two parent families, she thought, the dad speaking up for the mom and vice versa. She sighed with longing. It must be wonderful.
“Why don’t you take Terror out back and play, Billy—Bill?” she suggested. “Just don’t go onto the bird reserve. I want you close.”
“Mom!” he squawked.
“Bill,” she said in a steely voice.
Bill looked at her, then at Clay. He made a face and muttered, “Come on, Terror. There’s at least five feet of yard we can romp in out there.”
“Romp?” Clay said with a laugh as Bill raced off. “Whatever happened to play?”
Leigh just shook her head and turned to look at her family home. Her heart caught as she thought of all the sadness that had lived within those walls. Now nothing lived here but her own ghosts.
She studied the front door. It was a faded, uneven blue now, but one summer it had been beautiful. She’d painted it a rich Williamsburg blue with paint she bought with money saved from her new job at the Acme. Johnny had mocked her when he came home and saw what she had done.
“Who cares about a front door? Just so it closes and locks; that’s all you need. That’s nothing but a waste of money, girl. Now get me a beer.”
“I just want our house to look pretty,” she said, staring at the ground. “I thought I’d do the porch railings too.”
Johnny hooted derisively. “Well, where are they?” he asked, looking up and down the deserted street.
“What? Who?”
“The magazine people who are taking our picture for House Be-oo-tee-ful.” And he laughed that mocking laugh that made her feel useless, worthless, and all the other less words in the dictionary. She’d never painted the railings.
She shook away the memory as she started up the steps. “I don’t know how I survived.”
“But the important thing is that you did, Leigh,” Clay said as he started to follow her. “You’re a woman of character.”
She turned, surprised. “What did you say?”
“You’re a woman of character?” He looked almost as astonished as she that he’d said it. “Well, it’s true, you know.”
“Hmm.” She turned and crossed the porch. “Thank you.” Especially when he knew how little character she’d had at one time.
He didn’t respond as she pulled the old key from her jeans pocket and slid it into the lock. The blue door opened with a creak.
“Who owns this property now?” He looked at the sun-bleached shingles and the hanging downspouts.
“I do,” she said. “Though I haven’t the vaguest idea what I’ll do with it. I sure don’t want to live here.”
“It’s yours? Really? I half expected you to say that Johnny died in testate, and the property was now the pride of the state of New Jersey.”
“He probably would have, but one of his cronies in jail was studying law with the idea of getting himself off on a technicality. He drew up wills for anyone who wanted one and was willing to pay him twenty-five bucks.”
“Your father actually parted with twenty-five dollars for a will?”
Leigh grinned wryly. “Not him. Me. I paid it. I put it right in the hands of that jailhouse lawyer myself. So Johnny had a will. All his worldly goods he me endowed.” She swung her hand in an arc. “This is the whole of it. Big deal.”
“You can probably get a good price in spite of the house’s condition. The land is the valuable thing.”
“Out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Clay shrugged. “Some people like solitude. And birds,” he added, obviously thinking of the reserve that abutted the property.
She shook her head, but she knew she’d think about selling more seriously. She’d always assumed that because she hated the place, everyone would. She saw now how foolish that was. No one else came to the house with a history in it. They came with a clean slate.
Maybe by leaving her the house, Johnny had actually done her a favor for once in his life. Maybe with the money from the sale she could buy her own house. Now there was a wonderful idea to ponder.
She pushed the faded blue door open and stepped inside. Immediately she halted. Time rolled back upon itself like a scroll rewinding. Memories poured over her, scalding, burning, searing. She must have made a sound because suddenly Clay’s hands were on her shoulders.
“Hard?” he asked.
“It’s always like this when I come here.” She lifted a hand and rubbed the spot on her forehead over her left eye. “That’s why I hardly ever come.”
Her eyes swept the living room, shabby and ugly. Even before she’d gone to Will and Julia’s, she’d recognized that the cheap, gaudy sofa and speckled rug were atrocious. Now that she’d lived with loveliness for so long, the sheer tastelessness of the room overwhelmed her.
Without being conscious of moving, she found herself leaning back against Clay. She knew she should straighten, but the house sapped her strength. She continued to lean.
“I feel diminished when I come here,” she whispered. “Like everything I’ve gained has been a mirage, and this ugliness and misery are the only realities. I’m only fooling myself if I think I can be anyone but the foolish, inept girl who lived here.”
His hands tightened, and she thought she felt a light brush of a kiss on her hair.
Johnny’s chair, worn black Naugahyde with a button on the side that raised the foot piece and lowered the back, dominated the room as he’d dominated her life for so many years. Johnny sprawled there, beer in hand, watching ball game after ball game after ball game with time out for professional wrestling when he could find it. There might not have been money for necessities, but there was always money for his beer.
“Another can, girl!” he’d order, and she’d drop whatever she was doing and fetch it. After she made their dinner. After she did their laundry. After she cleaned up his mess. After she swept the living room so the sweeper marks all were parallel just as he liked. After she did the dishes. After …
In her lonely, bitter moments, she felt little more than an indentured servant. Once she rebelled when he called for another beer.
“Get your own, Johnny. I’m busy.” And she was. She was doing her homework, writing a theme for Mrs. Bronson, her eighth grade English teacher. Johnny might not like her, but her teachers seemed to, and she ached to keep it that way. Someone somewhere had to like her.
“What did you say?” The disbelief in Johnny’s voice reached from the living room into her little back room that was hardly more than a closet.
“I said I’m busy.” But instead of anger and independence, she heard only fear and impotence in her wavering voice.
“You want Social Services to come get you, girl?” he roared. “You want to go into foster care? Or maybe live on the street? I don’t have to keep you. You’re only here because I got a good heart. I can throw you out anytime I want.”
God! she cried silently in the depths of her soul. Oh, God, if You’re real, help me! I can’t stand this!
Just as she was about to get up from the card table she used as a desk and go get his beer, Johnny burst through her door. He’d beaten her so hard, she’d never
challenged him again. She’d missed three days of school, and it had been a week before she could move without pain.
She stood in front of that black chair and felt all the old hatred well up, and it scared her. She shook her head. She couldn’t—she wouldn’t let the past imprison her again.
“I’m sorry it was so bad for you back then.” Clay’s voice was soft and sincere. “I wish I had been smart enough to understand.”
She shook her head. “Don’t blame yourself. I did everything I could to keep it a secret. It was too shaming.”
“Johnny was certainly shameful, but you had nothing to be ashamed about. The girl I knew was wonderful, intelligent, kind. I’m the one who should be embarrassed because of my blindness.”
She closed her eyes against the sting of tears and nodded. “When you’re raised in a wonderful family like yours, I guess it’s hard to imagine one as bent as mine.”
“And when you’re a selfish kid with only your own dreams and goals and needs occupying your mind, it’s hard to look beyond yourself.”
Sorrow edged his voice, and she knew he was talking about more than her growing up Johnny’s daughter. “Don’t, Clay. If there’s one thing the Lord has taught me, it’s that you can’t go back. You can’t undo the failures. You just offer them to Him in confession.”
Her eyes fell on a crystal vase, the loveliest thing in the room. Its luster was much dimmed by dust and dirt, but it was still striking. Johnny had given it to Mom shortly before she died. It was one of the few gentle moments she remembered between the two of them.
Candace had looked at him with her heart in her eyes. “Oh, Johnny, it’s beautiful!” She ran her fingers up and down the grooves in the sides and around and around the scalloped rim. She laughed and ran to the window, holding the vase to the light. Crystal rainbows were refracted and danced across the walls and ceiling.
“Look, Leigh, love,” Candace said as the prisms of light swept the room. “It’s my heart dancing with love for you and Johnny.”
The young Leigh in jeans with holes and socks that no longer came white laughed and ran to her mother, her small hands eager to touch the vase. She reached Candace just as Johnny did. His big arms swept both of them in a hug. Even as a child, Leigh had known it was a mistake that she was inside that hug. Surely Johnny meant to embrace Candace only, and his long arms accidentally wrapped about her too.
Johnny dropped his arms without even looking at her, and she stepped quickly aside. He embraced Candace again, but Leigh had seen the look on her mother’s face at the casual but definite rejection of their daughter. The sheen was off the gift, the balloon of pleasure popped.
Three days later, Mom was killed when she was broadsided by a kid who ran a stop sign, and Johnny never hugged his daughter again, even accidentally.
“Where should we start our search?” Clay asked, his breath stirring her hair.
Leigh blinked, abruptly returned to the present. She straightened away from Clay. “I have no idea. It’s useless anyway. There’s nothing here. I know it.”
Clay released her shoulders and looked around. “We’ve got to at least appear to try,” he said. “He might be watching.”
Leigh shivered.
Twenty
TED STUDIED THE photo in his hand as he lay back against the pillows. He’d grabbed it Sunday when David Traynor had looked at it, dropped it, then bolted after his mother who had taken off like a flare a minute earlier.
When Ted had picked it up, he had felt nothing but curiosity. The kick in the gut when he looked at that kid in glasses had taken his breath. He’d quickly stuck the picture in his pocket before Clay or Leigh noticed anything funny going on. He kept it to himself as, unutterably weary, he’d come upstairs.
Even two days later he still felt that initial shock of understanding, the frisson of how can this be? He ran a pale, too thin finger over the face of the young Will Wharton. The resemblance was uncanny. Even the goofy grin was Billy’s.
How had his father never seen it? How had his mother missed it? They had watched Bill grow with all the interest and enthusiasm of true grandparents. But then his mother hadn’t known his father when he was ten, and his father hadn’t been looking for any likeness of himself in Leigh’s child.
He lay the photo facedown beside him. He was supposed to be taking a nap. He opened his mouth gingerly to see how the sores were doing. He was able to open fairly wide before he felt the pull of the scabbing. He’d be able to eat a piece of cake. David’s medicine was working, at least in this one area.
Too bad it wasn’t working overall. He could feel the continual lessening of energy, the weakening of muscles, the occasional lack of mental clarity that scared him more than anything else. How often had he pled with God to protect him from dementia?
He tried to be honest with David about every little diminishment, but he also tried to protect his mother. She was fragile, more so than Leigh, and his instinct was to shield her. She’d been hurt so badly when his father died. Personally he thought David’s interest in her a good thing, and he was sort of proud that he precipitated their friendship.
Your mom lonely? Get sick so she can date the doctor. He grinned. Worked for him.
And now Clay was here for the duration. Funny how that both drained and energized him.
Oh, Lord, I shouldn’t enjoy baiting him so much. I apologize, and I hope You noticed that I was good yesterday. It’s just he’s such a straight arrow that he asks for it. He does. But I won’t ruin the birthday party tonight. I promise.
He was supposed to be sleeping so that he’d have enough stamina to enjoy tonight. After all, it would be his last birthday party ever and Clay’s last as a twin.
Or were you still a twin even after your twin died? Interesting question. He was still Will Wharton’s son even though his father was dead. Shouldn’t that mean that Clay was his twin even after he was dead? He pondered this question for a few minutes, coming to no conclusion but suspecting that once a twin, always a twin regardless of circumstances.
Oh, Lord, I’m so tired. Bone weary. Wiped out. How will I ever make it through tonight?
Ted turned and looked out the French door to the beach and sea. How he loved the ocean with its constant motion, its beauty, its occasional ferocity. Its independence. Nobody told the sea what to do except, of course, God. It did as it pleased, and you’d better all beware.
Maybe he should ask Clay to help him get to the water this afternoon. It was sunny and warm. How many more sunny, warm days would he have? It was a cinch that he couldn’t walk that far by himself. Maybe for a birthday present, Clay could carry him through the dunes to the sea while Leigh lugged a chair for him. He smiled. What a lovely thought.
If Clay were willing to help him.
Ted sighed. Back to the same old, same old. There had to be a way to resolve the antipathy between him and his twin. He knew Clay was trying. The twice daily visits were proof. They were also a terrible strain on him and, he suspected, on Clay. Neither knew what to say. At least they hadn’t argued since Saturday.
Maybe if Clay had been distressed instead of angry all those years ago when he understood Ted’s choices, the rift between them wouldn’t have been so bad. Maybe if Clay had been willing to try to understand, they could have found a middle ground. But he had been furious, acting like he’d been betrayed.
“How can you be gay?” Clay had stormed. “How can you do this to me?”
“Do this to you? You think I’m doing this on purpose? That I planned to be different? To be anathema? You think I want to make you furious with me? Don’t be so stupid, Clay.”
“I think you’re choosing to turn your back on everything we’ve been taught.” Clay was adamant. “You know what the Bible says. Homosexuality is wrong.”
“You’re just afraid people will question your manhood.” Ted threw the statement down with a tone that left no doubt that here was as much a challenge as any glove slapped across the face of a court dandy.
; Clay was so mad he sputtered. “As if I’d ever stoop that low!”
“Ha!” Ted pointed his index finger. “You are afraid! You’re afraid that because we’re twins, you’re going to be just like me.”
“Never.” Clay ground the word between clenched teeth. “If anything, being identical twins proves that you have a choice about lifestyle. If you are doomed to be gay genetically, shouldn’t I be also? Same egg, same sperm. Well, I’m not. So you’re not.”
Ted sneered. “No proof.”
“Logic. And no proof differently.”
Ted ignored Clay’s comments because he had no answer for them. “You’re so goody-goody that you’d never stray from the straight and narrow even if you felt like it. You’re Mr. Perfect. You’d never be like me. You’d die first.”
Well, funny thing, he was the one who was going to die first, and all because he’d followed where his nature led him.
And Clay had followed where his nature led him too. That fact was amazing, overwhelming. Clay with feet of clay.
He looked at the picture again. Bill was Dad to a T, thanks to the immutability of genetics. He’d wondered once or twice if Clay could be Bill’s father, but it had been such a mind-boggling thought that he’d dropped it almost immediately. He only considered the absurd idea because he’d seen Leigh look at Clay with that moony look girls got when they thought a guy was pretty terrific. But Clay went off to Annapolis and Leigh to Glassboro, and they never saw each other. Certainly, Leigh gave no indication at all that Clay was Bill’s father.
But those momentary suspicions had been right all along. William Clayton Spenser might have been named after William Clayton Wharton Sr., like Leigh always said. But he was also named after Clay.
And old Clay had no idea.
Ted couldn’t decide how he felt about Clay’s ignorance. If Bill were his own son and no one ever told him, how would he feel? Of course if no one told him, he wouldn’t feel anything. But how would he react if and when he did learn the truth? Anger? Disbelief? Regret? Fear? It was hard to imagine what he would feel in a situation he’d never face.