Thorn in My Side (3 page)

What happened was, some jerk at a bar wouldn’t leave us alone. He kept poking Kirk, prodding at him like he was a specimen in the lab.

“Freak! Freak! Freak!” he kept saying, like a duck quacking.

I ignored the jerk, which I’ve always felt is the best way to deal with bullies. Kirk couldn’t do the same. There was something about this guy that got under his skin. The taunting led to threats. The threats led to pushing. The pushing led to shoving. The shoving led to punching, and before either of us knew it, fists were flying.

Kirk’s fists.

My fists.

Who knew?

Freak, the guy had called us. The same word our parents had used. The same word that rude, obnoxious children use before they run and hide behind their mommy’s skirts.

Our only defense in the courtroom was Kirk. He told our lawyer to sit down, and he told anyone who would listen that we had come into this world together and we would defend ourselves together. Not that I was capable of doing anything of the sort. I was sobbing so hard at the time that I could barely form words. Kirk had told the judge he wasn’t sure who had punched the guy so badly that his ear had snapped off. He didn’t know who’d broken the man’s jaw or stomped on his hand. The truth of the matter was that one of us had been attacked, so both of us had been attacked.

We were brothers. We were bound not just by blood, but by skin and flesh and bone. Hurt one of us and the other bleeds. Strike one of us and the other is stricken.

What finally swayed the judge was Kirk’s tearful admission: the man in the bar, the so-called victim, had called us a freak. Not even freaks. Just one freak. As if we weren’t two separate people. We each had our own social security numbers. We each paid taxes. We each had to pass the test before we could receive our individual driver’s license. Were we not men? Were we not of two separate brains, two separate thoughts?

And then Kirk had played what the newspapers called the “conjoined card.”

If we had been not conjoined, but separate—two brothers, one looking out for the other—would both of us now be facing eight to ten years in prison? Could this judge really punish one brother for coming to the defense of the other? Could he send one man to prison, thus damning the other man to pay the heavy price for a crime he did not commit?

Granted, the judge had been confused, but it was Kirk’s eloquent homily to brotherhood that swung things our way. Even I was swayed. My sobbing turned into tears of gratitude for the loving words that came from my brother’s mouth.

Five years’ probation. Medical costs for the victim.

And, like that, we were free men. That was all that mattered to me. That one night in jail when we were arrested was enough to scare me straight. And Kirk, by default, was scared straight along with me. Every time he raised his fist or threatened someone, I was there to smooth things over. To calm him down. To diffuse the situation.

Until last night.

Kirk opened the front door to the Dixie Research Center. Wilhelmina Lenting, the receptionist, was sitting behind the half-circle of her desk, looking smart in a blue blouse and matching earrings.

Kirk never gave Willie the time of day. He knew how I felt about her—that the graceful curve of her neck could flood my mind with bad poetry, that the dulcet tones of her voice sent a shiver up my side of our spine. Yet, in the ten years Willie had been working at Dixie, he’d never done more than glance at her when we walked in the door. His impatience to get to work was always such that I barely had time to tell her hello before we were practically jogging toward our cubicle.

Today, he stopped. I stood there looking like a fool, not knowing what to do with my hand. I shuffled my foot.

Kirk said, “Willie, you’ve changed your hair.”

She stroked down her brown curls. They weren’t lustrous. They weren’t even natural—she must’ve bought a home perm at the store every other payday—but there was something beautiful about the way her hair compacted around her skull. I don’t know why this appealed to me. Maybe if I controlled a penis, my taste in women would be more pedestrian in the way of Kirk’s, but Willie was the type of woman I could see myself having a conversation with. A long conversation. And maybe, if we found we had things in common, and we realized that there was a spark between us, we might end up going on a date.

I’d never been on a date before. Kirk was the one who got the school janitor’s daughter to go to the prom with him. Kirk was the one who lost his virginity in the back of a bus parked on the grounds of a gospel tent revival outside the Bethel Baptist Church. He was the one whose lips touched others. He was the one who knew what it was like to feel warm flesh pressed against something other than his thigh.

I was the one who…watched all this happen. Who, if I was lucky, got a tingling and a tightening while Kirk rutted like a wild boar that’s just come upon a mound of fresh chicory.

Willie patted the tight curls of her hair. “Well, bless your heart. My hair’s just the same as it ever was.” She was a good deal older than us, somewhere north of seventy, and she used phrases like this. “Did y’all have a good weekend?”

Kirk smiled. I was pretty sure he winked. “We did indeed, Willie. Church in the morning, then we stayed in all last night watching a movie.”

“Which one’s that?”

“
Little Women
,” Kirk said, quick as you please. “The one with Katharine Hepburn.”

“That’s the best version,” she said, and I felt my heart soar in my chest. I knew she’d like old movies, and not just because she was around when they were new.

Kirk must’ve felt my joy, but instead of squashing it in his usual way, he asked her, “Why don’t you join us for lunch today?”

She pressed her hand to her large bosom. Bosoms—there was something I thought I could work with. One arm, one face, two breasts. What more did a man need?

Willie said, “I’d be delighted.”

“We’ll see you at lunch, then,” Kirk told her, and I guess I must’ve been caught up in staring at her bosoms, because I have no idea what went on before that. Kirk practically had to drag me down the hall.

He told me, “Easy, right?”

I could barely speak. I felt like I was floating across the floor instead of walking. “She’s never talked to me before.”

“Today’s your lucky day, Wayne-o. A new day. Whatever happened last night is over, right? It’s just lunch with Willie, and maybe lunch with her tomorrow, and who knows what will happen after that? You might be holding hands by the end of the week.”

He was right! My head was buzzing with delight. Was this what it felt like to have a woman in your life? Was this what it felt like to know that you were going to have lunch with someone who had bosoms? “We actually spoke, Kirk. We had a conversation with her. We’re going to have lunch with her!”

“We are. She really likes you, Wayne. Did you see how she was looking at you?”

“She
was
looking at me, wasn’t she?”

“You tiger. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He patted me on my half-shoulder. I can’t lie about this part. I walked past those cubicles lining the operations center with my head held high. I’d never felt so proud of myself before. It’s like my ball dropped or something. I was the King of Dixie.

We sat down at our desk. Kirk opened his briefcase and took out his headphone and pen. I opened my drawer and took out my headphone and pen. It wasn’t until the middle of my first call that I realized it was Kirk who’d talked to Willie. Not me.

“What is it?” he asked, turning his head my way. He had his hand over the mouthpiece on his headphone.

I covered my mouthpiece, too. “
You
talked to her.”

“She’ll talk to you at lunch. You can even stare at her tits.”

“She’ll talk to
you
. They always talk to you.”

“Stop sulking like a baby, Wayne. She likes you. Just roll with it. Take advantage of the situation. Think about the future.”

I could hear someone screaming in my earpiece. A woman yelling at me for waking her toddler during his morning nap. I pulled out the jack from the telephone console. In a flash, I saw myself pulling the jack out of the Town and Country’s entertainment system last night. Marmee was crying about Beth’s scarlet fever, and then Wayne was yelling at Mindy about touching me.

Had
she touched me? Maybe it was an accident. Maybe her hand had trailed down my chest without her realizing what she was doing. Non-conjoined people probably did that all of the time. A body was a lot to keep up with on your own. Two arms. Two legs. One brain. Maybe her hand brushed my nipple by accident. Let’s face it, no one expected a nipple to be there.

But she had looked at me while she was doing it. She had looked me in the eye, and then…Kirk had killed her. He had beaten her with his fist. He had screamed so loud that our stomach clenched and our heart trembled.

I said, “You talked to Willie so I wouldn’t call the police.”

“She talked back to you. That’s the important part.”

“She barely even knew I was there.”

Kirk started shaking his head. “We’re not turning ourselves in. You’ve been in prison before, Wayne. Do you want to go back?”

“It was jail. Not prison.”

“And you had a good time?” He saw my expression and snorted a laugh. “Hell, Wayne, if you think that’s the only way you’re gonna get laid—”

“Mindy Connor has a family. She said she had a brother. Surely there’s a mother and father. They’re probably wondering where she is right now.”

“They probably think she’s out blowing guys for dime bags.”

“Don’t talk about her that way. She was a human being.”

He went quiet. I could hear the murmur of operators around us, cubicle-bound, solitary people calling young mothers during nap time and asking them if they were happy with their car insurance carrier.

Kirk’s low rumble vibrated in our chest. “She called us freaks.”

“She called
you
a freak.”

He was quiet again. The hum continued, and I had this image in my head of Mindy Connor and her family. It was Christmas. They were all wearing red and green matching sweaters with reindeer stitched onto the fronts. Their grandmother had knitted them. She was in the old folks’ home now, but they were going to visit her after they said prayers and carved the turkey.

Kirk cleared his throat. “Wayne, just listen to me. It was a mistake. We have to put it behind us.”

“She has a family. A family who wears matching—”

“They look retarded in those sweaters. Come on, the sleeves are too long and the neckline’s a mess.”

He had a point.

“She was a junkie. You saw her arms.” He gave me a meaningful look. “You saw them when she was stroking your shoulder.” I chewed my lip as I straightened my paperclip dispenser. He added, “You’d better be glad I’m not making you go halfsies with me. Twenty-five bucks.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. “And it would be twenty-two-fifty.”

“You felt something, didn’t you? I could feel you feeling it.”

“No.”

“We had a deal. Sunday nights are mine.”

“I went to the club with you.”

“You’re supposed to leave me alone. It’s my only time to be alone.” I could tell he was getting angry again. His fist clenched. His voice became strained. “How many times, Wayne? How many times was I with somebody, but she was secretly with you?”

“You’ve got it all wrong.”

“Do I?” he demanded. “Is that what you’re really telling me? All those women, and you never felt anything?”

“Now is not the time to discuss—”

“Because I felt something just now, Wayne. I felt it when you were looking at Willie.”

My head snapped around.

His lips were twisted in a nasty grin. “You think I don’t know what you feel when you stare at Willie’s tits?”

“I would prefer you didn’t use such coarse—”

“That time she sneezed and her whole rack shook, I thought your ball was gonna shoot out enough sperm to—”

“Stop it,” I hissed. “Just stop it, all right? I’m sick of this. I’m sick and tired of covering for your mistakes. I’m sick of the way you treat people. I’m sick of the way you treat
me
.”

“You?” He looked shocked. “What the hell does that mean, Wayne? I treat you better than I treat myself. Hell, half of everything that goes into me gets shared with you.”

“And all of what you’re finished with comes out of
me
.”

“Oh, we’re gonna have that conversation again? You’re gonna whine to me about getting the asshole?” He threw up his hand in disgust. “Do you know what it feels like when you have to piss and
someone
doesn’t want to get up because they’re going to miss the last two minutes of
Dancing with the Stars
?”

“I’m just a lump to you. That’s all I am. A lump. An appendage. A-a-a…”

He stared at me. “Parasite?”

I shook my head and looked down at my desk. The blotter was lined up parallel to the back of the cubicle wall. My pen and paper were equidistant from the edge. I liked to keep things neat, tidy. Unlike Kirk, who’d already stuck a wadded-up piece of chewing gum on a crinkled work order. I shuddered to think what our prison cell would look like.

“I’m not going to prison,” Kirk hissed. “I swear to God, I’ll swallow a bottle of pills first.”

“Great. So I won’t get into heaven because you committed suicide?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why you believe in a God who’d give two grown men one asshole.”

“Don’t you dare blaspheme right now. I’m warning you, Kirk. I have very little patience today.”

He took a deep breath and let it go.

I tried to be reasonable. “Look, we’re in this together. As long as we stick by each other—”

“Do I have a choice?” he snapped. “I’ve been stuck by you all of my life, whether I wanted to be or not.”

And there it was, the unspoken truth. Or maybe the passive-aggressively hinted at truth. Kirk wanted to live without me. Kirk
could
live without me.