The Legend of the Ditto Twins (21 page)

I
shrugged. "February?"

"What
day?"

I told
her.

"Pisces."

"What
time were you born?

"Oh.
That I can tell you. One minute after midnight."

"And
your twin?"

"Same
time. Mom says our birth certificates both read 12:01 AM. We came out
practically together. Sort of a two-headed monster." It didn't sound as
funny as usual.

"One
of you must've come out first."

"Mom
always told me that I was the first one out." I laughed lamely. "But
then she told Clark the same thing."

She
nodded. "Where were you born?"

I told
her.

She
dropped down on the floor, sprawled prone over her book bag, and began to
remove one dog-eared volume after another, jotting down notes, making charts on
a piece of graph paper, and muttering to herself as if she were chanting. Lily
and I watched, dumbfounded. Ten minutes later, she u
nderlined her last note and looked up at me.

"I
've never seen anything like it. Your charts filled with
Scorpio!
Scorpio, Scorpio,
Scorpio!"
She looked at us in
awe. "Sex fiends, right?"

Lily
shrieked. "I knew it! Bona fide perverts! See how special you are?"

We didn't
go to the movies that night. Instead, I talked to Clark for a long time. He was
in a foul mood, and I couldn't seem to cheer him up.

"
Everything'll
be fine once you get here," I promised.
"Once we're together. Only a couple more days."

"If
I come."

"Clark,
what's going on?"

"Uh...
maybe we should cool it for awhile."

"What
are you talking about?"

"You
know, the
incest
thing. The more I read..."

"What's
gotten into you?"

"I'm
scared."

"Okay,
but what about... us?"

"Yeah,
what about us?" It was almost a wail.

"I
don't get it. Don't you want us to be... you know..."

"Sometimes."
A long pause. "Sometimes not."

That
scared the hell out of me. "This isn't something we can talk about over
the phone. I'm coming home. Right now. Tonight. I'll tell Clay..."

"No!
That'd be worse. Mom would..."

"Then
you've got to come here. The ticket's waiting."

"Okay.
But just to talk. No blowjobs this weekend."

And he
hung up. For the next hour I called him every ten minutes, but he wouldn't pick
up. The next day, I tried again and again, but he'd turned off his phone.
Friday afternoon, when I went to the bus station to meet him, I was sure he
wouldn't be there. But he was.

"I've
missed you," I said simply.

He said
nothing.

"I've
been going crazy."

He said
nothing.

"Can
I touch you?"

"Better
not."

He didn't
say another word until we were back in our room. The minute I closed the door
behind us, I lunged forward to kiss him, as usual, but he sidestepped me and
held out one arm like a semaphore.

"Stop
being so damned stupid," he said. "Why can't you ever see the bigger
picture?"

"What're
you talking about?" I tried to embrace him again.

"Stop
it,
dammit
!"

"Aren't
you ever going to let me kiss you again?"

"I
don't know."

"What's
changed?"

"Everything."

He
produced a library book he'd brought with him. "Read this. It'll tell you
how sick we are."

"You
want me to read this? Right this minute? Clark, it's two inches thick and
weighs five pounds."

"Over
a thousand pages, and I read every one of them. It says right there in black
and white, how perverted it is to do what... what we've been doing. We're real
sickos
, Mark. Abnormal, psychopathic."

I
collapsed on the bed. "It doesn't feel sick to me."

"But
the author's a psychologist."

"So
was the dwarf who sucked off Go-To Guy."

"I
thought of that."

"Then,
why...?" I didn't know how to finish that sentence, so I added,
"Don't you know what you mean to me?"

Before
Clark could answer, there was a knock on the door. It was Lily. "Tonight
we're ordering from that macrobiotic dump on LaSalle." She shoved a
Xeroxed menu at us. "Clay's on a health food kick. Personally, I'd rather
have a nice, juicy cheeseburger with a side order of Lipitor, but..." She
stopped short. "Is something wrong?"

"No,
we're just getting caught up."

"Well,
don't take too long. Clay wants you."

Clay was
sprawled in the recliner, as usual. On the TV table beside him was a stack of
videotapes a foot high.

"Thought
you might like to see what
I
've been up to," he said. "Well, don't just fuckin'
stand there."

We
dropped down on the floor. For the next twenty minutes we were treated to a
narrated video travelogue of the city as seen through his eyes. This was the
place Jay and he did this; that is the building where Jay and he did that.
There was even a guided tour of the city dump. I tried to pay attention, and
Clark was making an effort as well, but our minds were obviously elsewhere.

It wasn't
long before Clay noticed. As he re-wound that first tape, he looked down at us.
"Okay, what's up?"

"Nothing,"
we assured him in one voice.

"Bullshit."

"Clay..."
I began tentatively. "We're just..."

“...sorting
through some stuff, and..."

“...we
will
talk to you about
it, but..."

“...not
just yet. Okay?"

His
response was sharp. "Okay. Don't talk. Fine."

Before we
could respond, Lily swept into the room with our macrobiotic meal served on a
large silver tray.

"This
is the most revolting looking food I've ever seen," she announced.
"Bon
appetit
!"

"If
I have to suffer, so do you," replied Clay.

The food
tasted even worse than it looked, but we managed to get some of it down while
we settled in for an evening of old home movies that had been transferred to
video.

"We
couldn't have been more than four or five," Clay was saying as we watched
the first of the old tapes. On it, two little blond look-alikes cavorted under
a lawn spray. I leaned forward—they could have been Clark and me.

"Which
one is you, Clay?" I asked.

"The
mean little bastard."

As he
spoke, one of the little towheads tackled the other, pulled off his twins
swimming trunks, and ran off, his brother in hot pursuit. In the next shot,
both boys were running naked through a flower garden, screaming and waving each
other's bathing suit aloft.

"When
did you lose your suit, Clay?" asked Lily.

"Probably
took it off myself," roared her father. "I always hated clothes when
I was a kid. Quit wearing underwear when I was nine or ten."

I looked
over at Clark, whose eyes were locked to the screen. He never looked my way
during the entire evening of filmed birthday parties, Christmas gatherings,
Halloween costumes, Disneyland vacations, outings at the State Fair—one Kodak
moment after another—their first bicycles, their first medals in the state
swimming championships, and finally their first automobile, a red '57 Corvette.

The
spookiest thing about the evening was watching Clay and Jay grow up. The older
they became, the more they looked like Clark and me. Everything they did seemed
familiar. I felt as if I were watching the story of our life. Only the
backgrounds differed.

It wasn't
until we were halfway through the last tape that anyone but Jay and Clay
appeared onscreen. Then, suddenly, there were three people, our twin uncles and
a young girl, all in their teens, at an amusement park. She was clutching a
stuffed panda, and the twins were trying to feed her swirls of pink cotton
candy. Clearly, she was not amused by their behavior and kept running in one
direction and then the other, unable to escape them.

"Freeze
that! Freeze it, Clay!" I shouted.

He
obeyed. "What?"

"Oh,
my God, that's Mom. Isn't it?"

Clay
nodded. "The one and only."

As the
frozen image fluttered slightly, I took a long look at my mother.

On closer
inspection, her face was already taut with brittle tension, in spite of her age
and the occasion. No, not tension—rage. It bothered me, and I looked over at
Clark, but his eyes remained fixed on the screen.

"Enough
nostalgia," decided Lily. "I'm going to bed."

"Good
fuckin idea," agreed Clay, getting up. "Anyway, that's the last
footage we ever made, as I recall. Besides, I'm dragging ass. Watching yourself
grow old, right before your very eyes, is a fuckin' bitch."

They left
the room, arm in arm. Clark and I didn't move, but still he wouldn't look at
me. I didn't know what to do. Finally, I stood and ejected the last cassette.

"I'm
gonna take this one and watch it again. Coming?"

My
brother muttered something inaudible, and I knew there was no point in asking
him to repeat it. I went on into our room, inserted the cassette, and rewound
the tape until my mother's hard face again filled the screen. I hit freeze
frame, undressed as I studied her, and was completely naked when Clark finally
came into the room. He glanced at her image for a moment, then turned to me.