Under Shifting Glass (4 page)

Brothers.

All through the pregnancy, Mom's been calling them my brothers.
When the twins are born, when your brothers are born
. . . . But, I realize, standing in the hospital Intensive Care Baby Unit, that they are not my brothers. Not full
brothers, anyway. We share a mother, but not a father, so they are my half-brothers. But half-brothers sounds as if they're only half here or as if they don't quite belong. And that's scary. Or maybe it's actually me who doesn't quite belong anymore, as though a chunk of what I thought of as family has somehow slid away. And that's even scarier.

So I'm going to call them brothers—my
brothers
.

Mom looks up, shifts herself up on her pillows a little when she sees me, although I can tell it hurts her.

“Jess . . . come here, sweetie.”

I come and she puts her arms right around me, even though it's difficult leaning from the bed.

“Look.” She nods toward the incubator. “Here they are. Here they are at last.”

They lie facing each other, little white knitted hats on their heads, hands entwined. Yes, they're holding hands. Fast asleep and tucked in under a single white blanket, they look innocent. Normal.

“Aren't they beautiful?” says Mom.

“Yes,” I say. And it's true, too, though there is something frail about them, two little birds who can't fly and are lucky to have fallen together in such a nest.

“You were a beautiful baby, too, Jess.”

She is making it ordinary, but it isn't ordinary. Somewhere beneath that blanket, my brothers are joined together and I want to see that join. At least I do now, although for months the idea of the join has been making me feel queasy.

There, I've said it.

The truth is, when Mom first told me she was pregnant I felt all rushing and hot. Not about the join, which we didn't know about then, or even about them being twins. No, I felt rushing and hot about her being pregnant at all. I can't really explain it except to say I didn't want people looking at my mother, I didn't want them watching her swelling up with Si's baby. It seemed to be making something very private go very public. And I didn't like myself for the way I felt, so when it turned out to be twins, and conjoined twins at that, I hid myself in the join. I made this the secret. I didn't want people to know about the join (I told Zoe, I told Em), because of all the mumbo jumbo talked about such twins across the centuries. I didn't tell them that I wasn't so sure about the babies myself, that the idea of the join actually made me feel sick to my stomach. I kept very quiet about that.

Am I a bad person?

A nurse is hovering and sees the babies stir.

“Do you want to hold them, Mom?” the nurse says as if my mother is her mother.

“Yes,” says Mom.

Si helps Mom into a comfortable sitting position while the nurse unhitches one side of the incubator and adjusts some tubes. Then he stands protectively as the nurse puts a broad arm under both babies and draws them out. Si never takes his eyes off the babies. There is something fierce in his gaze and something soft, too, which I've never seen before.

“There now,” says the nurse as she gives the babies to Mom. They are in Mom's arms, but they are still facing each other, of course. The nurse has been careful to keep the blanket round the babies as she lifts them and she's careful now to tuck it in.

One of the babies makes a little yelping noise. Mom puts a finger to the baby's lips and he appears to suck.

“They're doing very well,” says Mom, and then she loosens the blanket.

The babies are naked, naked except for oversize diapers that seem to go from their knees to their waists—where the join begins. Mom leaves the blanket open quite deliberately. Gran turns her head away, but I look. I look long and hard, as Mom means me to do.

The babies' skin is a kind of brick color, as if their blood is very close to the surface, and it is also dry and wrinkled, as if they are very old rather than very young. Aunt Edie again. But the skin where they join is smooth and actually rather beautiful, like the webs between your fingers. It makes me feel like crying.

Very gently, Mom strokes the place where her children join, and then she draws the blanket back around them.

I realize then I don't know what the babies are named.

“Richie,” says Mom, “after Si's father. And Clem, after mine.”

It seems to be enough for Mom. She lies back and closes her eyes and the nurse comes and takes the babies away again. I think Si would like to lift them himself, but he doesn't dare. Maybe he feels they are too fragile, that he'd hurt them.

Mom seems to have gone into an almost immediate sleep, and just for a moment, I feel we might all be just some dream of hers—me and Si and Gran and the babies, all rather unlikely conjurings of her exhausted brain. And then, as I watch her chest rise and fall, I think about the flask and that seems like an even deeper dream. I had planned to tell Mom about the flask, how I found it in the desk and how it was full of something unearthly, something beautiful and scary at the same time, and how I captured it, because I feel fierce and soft toward it, just like Si does toward the twins, but
that I also feel bad because, as Mr. Brand says, you can't catch things that are supposed to be wild and free and . . .

“I think we ought to go now,” says Gran.

“Mom . . .” I say.

“Shh,” says Si. “She needs to rest.”

By the time we get back home, it is almost dark.

“Who's that?” Gran asks as we turn into our driveway.

It's Zoe, of course, knocking at our front door. She turns as she hears the car pull up. I roll down my window.

“Want to come to the park?” she asks.

Zoe and I often go to the park at dusk. It's one of our little rituals. We swing on the swings after all the little kids have gone home. We swing and talk. Or Zoe dances. She dances around the swan on its large metal spring. She dances along the wooden logs that are held up by chains. She back-flips off the slide. When she's tired, which isn't often, we lie together on our backs in the half-moon swing and look at the sky. Or I look at the sky, anyway. She looks upward, but what she sees I don't know, because people
can look in the same place but not see the same things, can't they?

“Bit late for the park,” says Gran.

But I want to go to the park because I want some private time with Zoe. I want to tell her how beautiful my brothers are, after all; I want to take time, sharing all the details of those little birds and the web of their join. I want to look in her eyes, see myself reflected in the mirror of her, the big sister of two baby boys.

“Please,” I say to Gran. “Just for half an hour.”

I also want to tell Zoe about the flask.

“Well,” says Gran. She looks at her watch. “Oh, all right then. Just while I make dinner.”

“Thanks, Gran,” I say, and I actually lean over and give her a kiss.

Zoe doesn't know we've just come from the hospital and I don't tell her. I want to be lying in the half-moon when I tell her about the babies. I want her to be the first to know, as she was about the join. A special moment, shared. Luckily, as we head down the cul-de-sac, she's already chatting to me, telling me about her sister's boyfriend and his new car and how her mother won't let the boyfriend drive Zoe around but doesn't mind him driving her sister around, which is ridiculous and . . .

And soon we're at the park and Paddy and Sam are there, too, with a soccer ball and two sweaters to mark a goal. Paddy isn't Paddy's real name; his real name is Maxim, but he doesn't look like a Maxim so everyone calls him Paddy. He has a big, round, smiling face and he bounces through life like a beach ball. Happy and full of air. Or, at least, that's what I think. Zoe thinks he's massively handsome and has an Outstanding Sense of Humor. It's Paddy, in fact, who Zoe has her eyes on.

I'm desperate to skirt behind the chestnut tree so we can get to the playground unseen, but Zoe is heading straight for the boys.

“Zoe . . .” I start urgently, clutching at her jacket.

But she's already pulling away, calling. “Hi! Hi! Hi, Paddy. Hi, Sam.”

So there I am, trailing behind her.

The boys look up.

“Hey,” Sam says. Sam wears slouchy pants and likes to think he's cool. “How's it going?”

“Great,” says Zoe.

“We were just going to the swings,” I say quickly.

“Well, in a sec,” says Zoe.

Paddy looks at Zoe and then he looks at me. “Did the babies arrive yet?” he asks.

And there's a moment where I could just say no. I could just say no, and then we could walk away, and I could tell Zoe like I planned to as we lay in the half-moon swing.

“Well, did they?”

“Yes,” I say.

“What?” shrieks Zoe.

“They arrived.” I think I say it because I don't want to deny them anymore, these baby birds who are my brothers. I need them to be around me. Solid.

“Why didn't you tell me?” shrieks Zoe.

Why didn't you ask?

“Oh, right,” says Sam, whose interests are pretty much confined to sports and his computer.

“And?” asks Paddy.

“And they're beautiful,” I say. “Boys. Two boys.”

“They're all right, then?” says Zoe. “They're both all right?”

“They've got eight legs,” says Paddy.

“What?” says Sam.

“That's what my nana said,” Paddy continues. “They could have eight legs.”

“Mumbo jumbo,” I say, and I shoot a look at Zoe. “They have four legs.”

“Four!” exclaims Paddy.

“Yes,” I say. “Two each. Like normal people.”

“Oh—normal!” Paddy laughs.

Zoe's shrugging. Zoe's making out that whatever Paddy's saying, it's nothing to do with her.

“What are you talking about?” Sam asks.

“Jess's brothers,” says Paddy. “They're not just any old twins. They're Siamese.”

Sam is doing knee-ups with the soccer ball. “Siamese?” he says.

“Conjoined.” I hear my voice going up. I hear myself about to shout. “The correct term is
conjoined twins
. And as for normal, they
are
normal. Considering the cellular complexity of the average human being, that is.”
Shut up, Si
. “They're as normal as me. Or you. If you call that normal.”

Paddy ignores
normal
. “Point is,” he says, “they're joined down the chest.”

Sam drops the ball. He drops his jaw. His mouth hangs open. “Man,” he says. “Joined down the chest? Wow. Like, you mean, face to face? Like they're facing each other all the time? Jeez.”

“If I was stuck onto my brother,” says Paddy, going to retrieve the ball, “if he was the first thing I saw when I woke up and the last thing I saw before I went to sleep, that would kill me.”

“More likely kill your brother, being stuck to you,” I say. Then I round on Zoe. “Come on,” I say. “We're going.”

But Zoe's feet seem planted in the ground.

“In the old days,” says Paddy, “they put Siamese twins in the circus. People paid to see them.”

“Conjoined!” I shout.

“You could do that,” Paddy continues. “You could bring your brothers in next semester and charge a dollar a time to look at them.”

“They might not even last that long,” I say. Or maybe I don't say it. Maybe it's the silent thing shouting in my head.
They might not even last that long
.

Paddy's big face is shining with excitement. “I'd pay,” he says. “I'd pay to look. Wouldn't you, Sam?”

“Yeah,” says Sam.

“You could have a different rate depending on whether it was just a look or a touch,” Paddy continues.

“Shut up,” I say.

“A dollar for a look, two dollars for a good look, and five dollars for a touch.”

“I said SHUT UP.”

“We could call it JFS—Jess's Freak Show.”

And now everything that's been silent and bottled up comes frothing and boiling over at last and I go right up to
him because I'm going to hit him in his stupid, shining face. I draw back my fist and I lash out as hard and fast as I can, but he just catches my wrist.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey. What's up with you? It was only a joke. Can't you take a joke now?”

“I hate you!” I scream.

But it's actually Zoe I hate.

I turn and march away from the park. Of course, Zoe follows me.

“Jess,” she says. “Jess, Jess, Jess!” And now it's her turn to clutch me by the sleeve. “Come on!”

I stop. I wheel around. “Come on
what
, exactly?”

“I never told him,” she says. “I didn't.”

“Oh, right; he just made it up, did he? Thought it up out of his own stupid little brain?”

“I didn't tell him, Jess, I promise, I swear.”

I stare at her. Her eyes are all lit up bright, but not like a mirror. I can't see myself in them, in her. “Then who did?”

“I don't know,” Zoe exclaims. “Maybe your mom told his mom and she told Paddy.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“Or Em. You didn't tell just me, did you? You pretended you did, but you didn't. You told Em, too. So maybe it was Em who told Paddy.”

Very clever. And hurtful, because it's true. I did tell Em, actually, and I did pretend to Zoe that she was the only one who knew. Why did I do that? Because Zoe can be jealous, probably. She can go crazy just like she did about the friendship bracelet thing in fourth grade. But Em's away on vacation. Em isn't here to defend herself. “Why would Em tell Paddy? She doesn't even like Paddy. No one likes Paddy.” I pause. “Except you.”

“I still didn't tell him, Jess. I mean—why would I?”