Double, Double Toil and Trouble
Anyone who has ever met identical twins for the first time has reasonably presumed that every deception played in their likeness is the consequence of some corresponding mandate they must naturally have over Fun. It is only those who get to know these lookalikes over time who discover that their tricks do not always come back as treats.
My brother Russ and I — he’s three minutes older, I’m a quarter inch taller (which would you rather be?) — have certainly had as much fun as the best of them, like those other twins we knew in our youth: Jim and Tim (not James and Timothy), who thought they were so clever on Dress-Up Day when they came to class in pajamas, except that Tim was suspended for donning his without underwear; Chrissy and Missy (not Christine and Margaret), who used to go to the town fair on one ticket so they could get all the food and drinks at ‘half price’; and Barry and Larry (not Bartholomew and Lawrence), who, together, dropped the largest poop ever recorded in Upstate New York (in the high-school girl’s room), a twenty-three-and-one-half-inch spiral in a rising poof like Marge Simpson’s hair (but not the same color). And as adults our fun has continued thanks to our parents, who did not name us Ken and Ben.
We, too, used to one-up the town fair, and switched classes, dates, even personalities. Russ is the left-brain investment broker, I’m the right-brain writer, and once when I was writing for a Chicago newspaper he’d walked right up to the editor waving a manuscript of utter gibberish that was due in ten minutes for the next morning’s front page, until, on threat of termination — the whole newsroom so quiet by then you could hear all dozen of its international clocks — I’d finally walked in with the real deal. Yet still hard to believe for many, twins’ duality does not always benefit; it sometimes backfires.
For my brother and me, landing to earth happened practically as soon as we were on our own and our careers brought us both to St Louis (of course), especially during the seven years (seven years too many) that we both worked in Clayton, St Louis’s little cosmopolitan sister fifteen minutes to the west. Russ, in his banker suits, and I, in my business casuals, would routinely alienate workmates without the slightest intention or awareness, such as the time four of his lambasted him after lunch at Chucky Cheese for having not acknowledged their existence one table over (which it had been impossible for me to do on his behalf, since I’d never seen a one of them before in my life).
And another time, at Arby’s, when I’d felt the tap on my shoulder.
“You know, Russ,” said the guy in the three-piece Fioravanti, “I’ve heard people do all sorts of things on their lunch hour: walk, jog, run errands,...”
My flailing arms had no effect on him.
“...read a book, take a nap, ‘walk the dog,’ smoke, piss, crap, drink [his list eventually stopped around fifteen]. But I’ve never heard of anyone changing clothes.”
Actually, in the social situations in which our sameness turns against us, the frequent revelation of our singularity does not always spawn oppression. Once, for instance, as I was alone waiting for the ‘Walk’ light, kitty-corner across the intersection a quite fetching lass suddenly began running toward me, Bo Derek in knickers, and before I knew what had hit me, was polishing my face with kisses. “Oh, Russy, Russy, it’s been so long!” she purred.
But that was before either of us had married.
***
In our first three decades on earth, the stupidest thing my brother and I ever did against our twinness was to get married five years apart: I at twenty-three, he at twenty-eight. And to compound this mistake, within those intervening years he’d turned into a playboy.
My wife at the time, the mother of our two children, was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with our first, so to celebrate what we’d playfully deemed our last weekend of freedom, one Saturday night we made reservations at the area’s most romantic restaurant.
Of course, this was the time of our lives when she and I were floating in the very nexus of our fledgling adulthood, when life is still cast in innocence and love makes of the heart an oversized jumping bean and the head perpetually dumb. With our first child soon to make three, we were in love.
So on that appointed evening, strolling beside her hand-in-hand toward the restaurant’s front door, she looked especially ravishing, despite her resemblance to a bassinet draped in a dress. No, she was practically Siren-like on that starry night, and the stars were aligned.
And then the restaurant door opened.
We were still fifty feet away when I noticed her, The Brunette — partly because she was Siren-like (and alone), and partly because she was staring at me (and I was not). She seemed in a hurry.
As my wife and I lilted on, like penguins in penny loafers, all of a sudden this other morphed into a roller derby queen, her fists clenching; her whole body tightening, as if flexing in upon itself; her iron shoulders U-shaping in forward-thrust, a missile aimed right at us and about to go off.
Just then, as on the other side of town my brother was gifting the final point of an intentionally fixed tennis match to his newest love conquest, I felt a swift knee to the crotch and a punch on my cheek (which proceeded right through to the other, as though one of the restaurant’s slate roof tiles had fallen and found me).
“Russell Vanderbeek, you not only stand me up, you get another girl pregnant!” she stormed past, leaving me in a cyclone of perfume.
How many times before, during those years, had I been admonished by women who were complete strangers? How many times before had my wife likewise been so intruded upon that, were it not for their innocence, she might have felt as a rival? As usual, she broke out laughing.
At the same instant I turned and called out to my offender.
“Excuse me,” I said, “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t get your name...”
***
The next day, the first thing I did after salving my chops and privates was call Russ. Who was that woman? I wanted to know.
He said he wasn’t sure.
“That can’t be possible,” I said. “I — I mean, you — stood her up!”
To this, all he said was that he couldn’t be expected to “remember” — at the time he’d been in the middle of an important tennis match.
So I described her.
“Gotta give me more,” he said.
“What else do you need to know,” I said, “whether she has a tattoo on her left pinky toe?”
He never did figure out which of the several handfuls of brunettes he was dating then (all at the same time) was the Bombshell Basher, but at least he’d been able to narrow her down to three. And then he’d promptly tossed their phone numbers.
And I, I laid low for a while after that, content to cook homemade meals with my wife and light some candles, ever thankful that my parents hadn’t named me Gus.
The End