by Alan Katz
“Of course, we know that you guys aren’t actually selling anything,” their dad added. “But in your case, an open conversation could lead to making you happier and more responsible. It could also improve your grades, and add to your overall well-being.”
“It could even make Myron more contented and glad to be with us,” their mother said, smiling.
“So let’s chat,” Mr. Wohlfardt said. “How is Myron doing?”
“Good,” Nathan said.
“Good,” David said.
“Let’s be more specific,” Mr. Wohlfardt suggested. “For example, how is Myron in terms of helping you with school?”
“Good,” David said.
“Good,” Nathan said.
“How about we think about things by comparison?” Mrs. Wohlfardt said. “When it comes to helping you with school matters, would you say Myron is better or not as good as Martin, your last nanny, was?”
“Better,” Nathan said.
“Butter,” David said.
Nathan and his parents looked at David.
“What? I want someone to pass the butter,” David explained.
Mrs. Wohlfardt gave her son the butter. And she stared at him until he answered the question about Martin vs. Myron.
“Martin was helpful, and so is Myron,” David said. “But it’s usually the kind of help where you have to figure out why it’s helpful.”
“What do you mean?” his dad wanted to know.
“Like, when there’s math homework, most of our other nannies would lead us to the right answer. Myron helps us get to the wrong answer, but he tells us it’s the wrong answer, so we keep going to find the right one,” David said.
Nathan continued the thought: “You basically have to take small pieces of Myron’s advice. You can’t just consider—”
“The whole enchilada,” David interrupted.
There was a pause until David added, “What? I want someone to pass the whole enchilada that I brought from the buffet that somehow got moved to the other side of the table.”
Nathan slammed the enchilada plate down near David and said: “Yeah, Myron can be tricky. But if you know he’s tricking you, you can always out-trick him.”
“Unless he knows you’re gonna out-trick him. Then you have to watch for him to be straightforward without any tricks at all,” David warned.
“Myron also challenges us when it comes to meals, tidying up, even—”
“Dressing,” David interrupted.
Mr. Wohlfardt scowled and pushed the dressing toward David.
“No, I wasn’t asking for the salad dressing. I mean, he tricks us when we’re dressing for school. He tells us to dress sloppily so that we dress neat. He pretty much makes our whole lives one big brain teaser,” David said.
“The main thing is, if we figure out what he’s really trying to say, we learn,” Nathan said.
“Interesting approach,” Mr. Wohlfardt said, stroking his face to feel a beard that he actually hadn’t had in more than ten years.
“I think it’s based on the Backwardian theory of knowledge,” said Mrs. Wohlfardt, stroking her chin, where, of course, she’d never had a beard.
“Really, Myron is almost exactly the same as Martin was. In pretty much every way,” David said.
“Do you agree with David?” Mr. Wohlfardt asked Nathan.
“Agreeing with that squirrel is bad for my reputation,” Nathan said. “But Myron and Martin are extremely alike. In fact, there are times when Myron says or does something and it reminds me so much of Martin . . . that I’m pretty sure they are actually the same person!”
“We’ve been keeping a list of differences and similarities,” David told them, taking out the extremely messy, extremely crumpled Myron or Martin Evidence Chart.
“This is very interesting,” Mrs. Wohlfardt said, carefully studying the chart. “Very interesting indeed. And tremendously eye-opening.”
“What does it say?” Mr. Wohlfardt wanted to know.
“According to this chart,” she told him, “the Bohemian Fairy Swallow is a pigeon. I always thought it was a swallow.”
“I did too,” Mr. Wohlfardt admitted.
“Check, please,” David said, slapping his forehead. And his brother.
A few days later, while Nathan was at practice practice, David and Myron were alone in the house.
“Hey, do you want to take a walk with me to the library, oh great Dictionarian?” Myron wanted to know. “I have a book about returning library books to return.”
“No thanks, Mart—I mean, Myron,” David said, slipping on the nanny’s name, since evidence and conversations had been making him more suspicious than ever that Myron, in fact, was Martin.
“Okay, I’ll be back before you can say, ‘Hello, glad to see you back here so soon’!” Myron told him.
With that, Myron walked out. David stood alone in the kitchen, swirling and curling interesting designs in the banana-and-potato stains that Myron had mashed into the counter quite a long time ago.
Less than ten seconds had gone by since Myron had left for the library, so David was somewhat surprised when he saw a mustache—and the man attached to it—walk into the house.
“Hello, glad to see you back here so soon.” David laughed. “Forget something? Like your book, or your wallet, or your eyeballs, tongue, or spleen, perhaps?”
“Is that any way to say hello to your all-time favorite nanny?” the man asked.
Not noticing that the nanny was wearing a red coat instead of the blue one he’d seen just a moment before, David laughed and decided he would play along.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you since you left!” David said. “The pain, the agony, the longing and hoping that you’d someday return!”
David ran across the room and gave him a giant hug.
“That’s better,” was the nanny’s response.
“Life was so hard without you,” David continued. “And even though you were only gone for maybe ten seconds, it felt like months and months and months!”
“Ten seconds? What do you mean?” asked the nanny.
“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’?” asked David.
“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean, what do you mean?’?” asked the nanny.
“Can we please not do this again?” asked David.
“What do you mean, ‘again’?” the nanny wanted to know.
“We had a whole ‘what do you mean, what do you mean’ conversation on the day you got here,” David said.
“No, we didn’t.”
“Yes, we did.”
“You got taller since I saw you,” the nanny said. “How’s school?
“Yeah, right,” David scoffed. “Good one, Myron.”
“Myron? Myron? Gee, did I ever tell you about my brother Myron?” the man wanted to know. “How odd. I simply don’t remember doing that.”
“Stop it, Myron,” David said.
“I’m not Myron, I’m Martin,” the man said.
“Stop it, Myron,” David said. “It was funny once, but—”
“I tell you, I am Martin ,” the man insisted. “Myron is my long-lost twin brother.”
“I don’t believe any of this!” David said.
“Don’t believe any of what?” Nathan asked as he walked into the house wearing his soccer uniform—even though he was coming from cartooning club practice.
“Your brother doesn’t believe that I am none other than Martin Healey Discount,” the man who insisted he was Martin told the boys.
“Wait, I’m confused,” Nathan said.
“Well, I’m confused that you’re confused,” the man replied.
“You being confused about his confusion is confusing to me,” David said.
“You’ve got to believe me. It’s me, Martin. How can I convince you, Nathan and David?” the man wanted to know.
“You just did,” Nathan said, with a touch of surprise in his voice. “When you called us Nathan and David.”
“Yep,
I’m convinced too,” David agreed. “Because Myron never calls us by our real names.”
“Right,” added Nathan. “But you did, right off the bat. Which means you are, without question, Martin.”
“Well, welcome back to me, then,” Martin said. “Now it’s time for you to show me that it’s so good to see me!”
The boys rushed to Martin and gave him a seventeen-second hug, which is pretty much the longest hug either of them had ever given anyone, if you don’t count the time Aunt Selma surprised them each with one hundred dollars cash for their birthday. Technically, her hug lasted twenty-four seconds, but it involved two hundred dollars cash, so really the seventeen-second “free” hug was much more impressive.
“Where have you been, Martin?” David wanted to know.
“Yeah,” Nathan added. “And why are you back?”
Martin struck a pose and delivered a speech. “Nathan, that sounds like you don’t want me back. But of course, that could not be the case. You simply misspoke. Or perhaps I misheard. Perhaps it is a combination of both. At any rate, I have returned because although travels through exotic lands are, well, exotic, and while it’s wonderful to live where fresh, ripe papaya freely walk the streets, the truth is . . . I missed you numbskulls.”
“We’ve missed you too, Martin,” David said. “After you left us, things got pretty terrible around here. We fought a lot. We couldn’t concentrate on schoolwork. Our room turned into a sloppy pigsty again. We kind of went back to being the horrible kids we were before you ever showed up.”
“The kid’s right, Martin,” Nathan added. “Although he was far horribler.”
David ignored this, and continued: “Most of all, our mom and dad were totally frantic without the best kid-watcher in the world in the house.”
“Aw, thanks, kid,” Martin said. “But the big news is that all the horribleosity is over and you don’t have to live without a nanny any longer—Martin Healey Discount is back, and he’s back on the job!”
David slid over next to Nathan and whispered into his ear.
“You better tell him about Myron.”
Nathan scowled and whispered back.
“You better tell him about Myron.”
“No, you .”
“No, you .”
“I can’t tell him that.”
“Well, I can’t tell him that.”
Now, Martin may not have been the brightest man in the world, but he knew something was up. He replayed the last few minutes of conversation in his mind, finally put two and two together, and said, “Uh-oh, guys. I get the sense that one of two insane things is happening. If I’m thinking this through correctly, either your mother has a Top 40 country hit called ‘You Better Tell Him About Myron’ or . . . my twin brother is living with the Wohlfardt family, doing my job!”
The boys were somewhat impressed by Martin’s reasoning skills.
“Guys, it’s as plain as the noses on your faces,” Martin said, his lip quivering. “I can tell in your four eyes which of my guesses is correct, and frankly, it’s, it’s, it’s my worst nightmare come true.”
“I’m afraid so, Martin,” Nathan said.
“Yeah, tough break,” David added.
Martin blubbered as he said, “I simply cannot, cannot, cannot believe that your mother achieved country music stardom before I ever could!”
And with that, Martin stormed out.
David looked at Nathan. Nathan looked at David. David looked back. Then Nathan did the same.
Somehow, what had just happened was too much for their young minds to process. Even the fact that combined they technically had the mental brainpower of someone who was practically an adult didn’t make it any easier to understand.
“Let’s review,” David said slowly. “Martin Healey Discount stopped being our nanny, so Mom and Dad hired Myron Hyron Dyron. Myron Hyron Dyron becomes our nanny, and he goes out, and in walks Martin Healey Discount, who’s come back to be our nanny. But . . .”
“. . . Martin Healey Discount doesn’t know that Myron Hyron Dyron is now our nanny . . . ,” Nathan continued.
“. . . and Myron Hyron Dyron doesn’t know that . . .”
“Myron Hyron Dyron doesn’t know what?” the man said as he walked through the front door.
Neither boy noticed that this man was wearing a blue coat instead of the one they’d just seen. If they had, perhaps they would have come to the conclusion that it was Myron, back from the library.
But alas, that conclusion would have been . . . wrong. It was Martin again; he’d gone outside, changed his coat to the warmer one he always kept hidden deep in the front bushes, and come back inside.
“M-Myron?” David asked, tentatively, still not knowing.
“M-M-Myron?” Nathan asked, even more tentatively (which you can tell by the extra M he added to the name).
“Guys, I told you—I’m Martin. Martin. M-A-R-T, um. I’m pretty sure there’s more letters, but I always forget which ones,” Martin said. “Anyway, men, stop talking about my brother Myron!”
“This is like one of those books where one person walks out the door, and his look-alike walks in, and the people in the room don’t know who’s who,” Nathan said.
“Yeah, like The Parent Trap ,” David said.
“You never read The Parent Trap ,” Nathan told him.
“No, but I read the movie version,” David said.
“Why do authors write stories about mistaken identity, anyway?” Nathan wanted to know. “I mean, that stuff only happens in fiction. Real people like us can always tell who’s who. Right, Nathan?”
“I’m David. You’re Nathan,” David told him.
“Oh yeah, never mind,” said Nathan.
“Anyhoo,” Martin interrupted. “I’m standing here. I’m waiting. I’m Martin. And you guys seem to be acting really, really, really weird. Tell me why. It’s time to spill the beans. Cough up the truth. Let the cat out of the bag. Mollow the pollow . . .”
“That last one’s not a real thing,” David said.
“Okay, maybe not,” Martin admitted. “But I need to know—why are you both stranger than usual, and why are you talking so much about my brother Myron?”
Nathan and David both realized that they should tell Martin the truth: that they were talking about Myron because he was living in their house and taking care of them.
But neither boy could bring himself to do so. They stood there silently for what felt like ten minutes.
“Gentlemen, I sense there is a secret among us. And if you remember the speech I gave back on the day I was elected to the Nanny Hall of Fame . . . oh, wait, that wasn’t me. Anyway, you both know how I feel about keeping secrets,” Martin said.
“No, we don’t,” Nathan said.
“Not at all,” David added.
“Well, I’d like to tell you how I feel about secrets, guys,” Martin informed them. “But I can’t. I just can’t.”
More silence from the boys.
“Okay, guys. Here’s the deal. I really should go unpack and tell your parents that their favorite person ever is back to bring joy, order, and nummy-nummy-num-num cooking to their love lier than lovely home. . . .”
Nathan rolled his eyeballs so far that they almost ended up in David’s eyes.
Martin continued: “But first, let’s talk out all this Myron stuff. You’re twins. I’m a twin. And for whatever reason you’re curious about my brother Myron. I’ll tell you about him. . . .”
More silence from the boys.
“The number one thing you really must know about my long-lost brother Myron Hyron Dyron, my identical twin with whom I shared a mother, a crib, and a pacifier, but not a last name . . . a man whom I haven’t seen in over one thousand fortnights . . . is that he is . . . he is . . . he is . . .”
“Standing right here,” Myron said from the doorway.
Myron looked at Martin. Martin looked at Myron. Myron looked back. Then Martin did the same.
Somehow, what had just
happened was too much for their adult minds to process. Even the fact that combined they technically had the mental brainpower of an almost senior citizen didn’t make it any easier to understand.
But Nathan and David knew one thing: effective immediately, they no longer needed the Myron or Martin Evidence Chart. All the evidence in the world was standing right in front of them.
“Is that you, my brother?” Myron shrieked.
“It’s me,” Martin shrieked. “Is that you, my brother?”
“It’s me,” Myron shrieked. “Is that you, my brother?”
“Is that you, my brother?” David shrieked.
“It’s me,” Nathan shrieked. “Is that you, my brother?”
“It’s me,” David shrieked. “Is that you, my brother?”
They all met in the center of the room. Myron hugged David. Martin hugged Nathan. Martin hugged David. Myron hugged Nathan. Nathan and David each hugged a lamp. Then finally, the boys stepped aside so that Myron could hug Martin and Martin could hug Myron.
It was a hug that the men hadn’t felt in over fourteen and a half years. And neither man wanted to let go. They squeezed and hugged and blubbered and kept saying each other’s names over and over again.
“Oh, Martin!” Myron said.
“Oh, Myron!” Martin said.
“Oh, Martin, Martin!” Myron said.
“Oh, Myron, Myron!” Martin said.
“Oh, Martin, Martin, Martin!” Myron said.
“Oh, Myron, Myron, Myron!” Martin said.
And on it went, until David finally said, “Oh, brother!”
“Yes, it’s my brother!” Martin said.
“Yes, it’s my brother!” Myron said.
“My brother, brother!” Martin said.
“My brother, brother!” Myron said.
“My brother, brother, brother!” Martin said.
“My brother, brother, brother!” Myron said.
Nathan was getting sick from watching them, and he tried to put himself in their place. He wondered if he’d be that happy to see David if they had been apart for nearly fifteen years.