The Legend of the Ditto Twins (10 page)

"Why
should you? It's a private matter."

"A
man thing."

"Don't
you use that tone of voice with me, young man." She sputtered a moment
before reaching for the screen door. "What in the world has come over you
two? Why, you're acting like... Uh..."

"Men?"
Clark offered.

Mom was silent.
She couldn't even sputter.

I raised
a finger as if to a child. "Mom, you're the one who started this."

"Yeah,
insinuating we were doing dirty things..."

“...upstairs
in our bedroom. I tell
ya
..."

“...accusations
like that make a kid grow up real fast."

"Boys,
this kind of talk is completely
unsatis
..."

Clark cut
her off. "Oh, one more thing. Don't call us boys. We're not boys
anymore."

"But
you are. You're only fifteen."

"No,"
he said sharply. "We grew up the day you accused us of doing dirty things
with each other. We don't do dirty things with each other."

I smiled
helpfully. "If you have to call Uncle Clay by six, you'd better go find
Dad. See you in the kitchen. Twenty minutes."

The
moment we were out of her sight, both Clark and I began to shake at our own
temerity. Clark's hand found mine. All he said was: "God, that took
balls."

Down in
the basement, we stood under the makeshift shower Dad had rigged up, our
airborne dicks locked in each other's sudsy fists. An old mirror had been hung
directly behind the shower, and we were staring into it, watching ourselves
kiss. Little puffs of steam floated through our line of vision, but we kept our
eyes wide open, storing up memories, I guess. Have you ever watched yourself
kiss someone? Have you ever watched yourself being kissed?

"Time's
running out," said Clark, letting go of me and reaching for the Burma
Shave.

I nodded,
reluctantly released him, opened the cellophane packet with my teeth, and took
out one of the razors. I was surprised at how lightweight the plastic handle
felt. I'll always remember it was orange.

I watched
him spray a dollop of shaving cream into the palm of his hand. He smiled,
leaned close, and let his tongue lick slowly across the golden fringe on my
upper lip. And then, as gently as he had ever touched me, he began petting the
cool, pine-scented cream into my sideburns, my jaw, my chin, my cheeks, and
last of all, my upper lip. He motioned me to face the mirror, and we exchanged
a nod before he took the razor from my hand and traded it for the Burma Shave.

I
squirted out an equal portion of the creamy foam onto my palm and motioned him
to watch in the mirror. He nodded. I stared down at the golden fringe on his
lip and shook my head sadly. In a few moments it would be gone forever. I
kissed it half a dozen times before I set about coating the lower half of his
face as he had mine. That done, we studied the image of the two selfsame men in
the mirror until the portrait was fixed in our memory.

Finally,
Clark took the Burma Shave and set it aside. "You first," he
whispered and handed me back the razor.

I d
watched my father shave dozens of times, maybe hundreds, and I was confident
that I could execute the task with a certain amount of skill. Still, it ha
d
to be perfect, and
I took my time, until finally there was no unshaven area left but my brothers
upper lip. I looked at him and then at his reflection in the mirror. It urged me
to proceed. In five seconds, Clark's promise of stubble was gone.

After
rinsing off, Clark extracted a fresh razor from the cellophane packet and began
the process all over again, on me. I did not watch him do it, except in the
mirror. Consciously but not calculatedly, I began to slide my nervous er
ection
across his stomach.
He responded to this new sort of slow dancing even as he continued to give me
my first shave. Neither of us entertained the slightest concern that he might
slip and, in the heat of the moment, nick me. That was not going to happen.
Even so, as he finally completed the last razor stroke across my upper lip, I
exploded without touching myself.

I looked
down. So had he.

"Sorry.
That took a little longer..."

“...than
we thought it would," we said as we entered the kitchen, garbed for battle
in nothing but fresh tees and jeans.

Mom and Dad
were standing face to face at the stove. Warily, both acknowledged our
greeting. Each clutched a mug of coffee in both hands, clearly not quite sure
how to proceed. At once, Clark crossed to the breakfast table, pulled out Dad's
chair, and sat down. My mother stiffened, but
Dad touched her
arm, and she bit her lip, both literally and figuratively. Clark motioned them
to sit.

They did, in the chairs usually
occupied by us. Momentarily taken aback by my brothers calm audacity, I tardily
slipped into the last empty seat. I had barely pulled my chair up to the table
when I felt Clark's big toe gently nuzzling my balls.

He glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Okay, we've got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to do it,
so let's get started. First things first. Mark and I had a long talk this
afternoon, and we tentatively agreed that one of us will go to live with Uncle
Clay this summer. More specifically, Mark will go. I'll stay here and work for
Dad in the dairy. Any problems with that?"

Dad shook his head amenably. Mom
looked from Clark to me and back again, her eyes narrowing.

"What's the catch?"

"Well, we do need to work out a
few things." He smiled. "Dot a few i’s, cross a few t's before we go
to contract."

"Contract? This isn't..."

"Oh, yes it is, Mom. That's
exactly what it is. You want a commitment from us. We want one from you. Fair
is fair."

"I'm listening."

"Good, good." God, Clark
was suddenly ten years older. A man. "You see, we've really thought a lot
about your concerns. Maybe Mark and I shouldn't need each other so much,
shouldn't love each other so much."

"I never said that!"

"Okay, calm down now. Let me put
it another way. Maybe each of us needs to discover his own space, his own self.
Frankly, we don't think so, but we're willing to give it a shot. Try to make
some new friends. Start dating."

His toes were twiddling away at my
crotch as if they were laughing. I didn't pull back.

"Sure, Mark and I, we're very
close. But what's so unhealthy about that? Y'know, all twins are really Siamese,
even if you can't see any visible link
that
locks them together. But the connections
are
there, so you can't expect
Mark and me to cut ourselves in two just because you
once found a jar of Vaseline on the bedroom floor."

Dad shook
his head. "Clark. Don't go there."

"We're
already there, Dad." He turned to Mom, who was chewing on the inside of
her cheek by then. "Sometimes I think you'd rather have us knock up some
local virgin in the back seat of a car somewhere than love each other in our
own home—as you have always urged us to do."

"Clark,
you're twisting things..."

"Not
now, Mom. We're running late. It's almost six." He
paused. "Bottom line: We agree to go our separate ways this summer. In
return you agree never to make innuendoes about us again or say another word
about where we sleep, not this summer when Mark comes home to visit, not next
fall—if he comes home at all."

Mom
gasped. "Not come home?"

"Isn't
that what you want? For him to make a new life? For me to, too? Away from each
other. Suppose he does?"

"That's
not what I meant."

"No?
Well, you have to be prepared for all eventualities."
He looked at the clock again. "It’s almost six." And then he nailed
her. "One last thing: Don't ever mention Grandma's room again."

Dad
breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. "Uh... That doesn't seem
unreasonable. Uh, honey?"

Mom just
waved the air with her hand and walked out of the room.

"Don't
forget to phone Uncle Clay," called Clark. "And, hey, find out what
kind of money he's talking about."

Dad
stood. "You are something else, Clark. How old are you two now?"

"Fifteen.
You should know."

"Fifteen
going on thirty's more like it." He patted my brother's shoulder.
"Your mother's a good woman. She'll come around, she's just never had her
balls cut off before."

Clark
snickered and gave him a light poke in the gut before he left. Jubilantly, I
raised an imaginary glass to my brother. He found one too, and w
e toasted in silence.

My toes
found his crotch. "God, Clark, I could almost believe everything you were
saying."

He was as
hard as I was. "Why not? Some of it was almost true."

As we all
hovered nearby, Mom's phone call to Uncle Clay produced two big surprises. One:
My wages were going to be more than expected. The other: He needed me there by
tomorrow afternoon. The situation wasn't hypothetical anymore. I looked at
Clark, determined not to cry, but if I've got a soul, it was bawling. So was
his, I could tell.

Once the
phone call ended, Mom went into her bedroom to comb her hair and wash up before
she started dinner. Dad dropped into his favorite chair, an overstuffed eyesore
that had come from his own childhood home, and it was as beat up and worn down
as he was. He settled in before he spoke.