Half

by Sharon Harrigan

  Barack finished his cousin’s sentence. “. . . read each other’s minds.”

  I didn’t have the heart to tell them I had picked out my sister’s pair. That I always bought two of everything, then sent one to her.

  Colson and Sebastian finished shoveling the sidewalks and the driveway and joined us in the yard. Mom opened her kitchen window. “Come back in! You’ll catch your death!”

  “We’re not cold,” the boys said. They took off their mittens to prove their point and packed snowballs with their bare hands. “We’re robots.”

  “Won’t you rust?” Mom asked.

  “Grandpa’s out here in the snow,” they said. “He can’t come in or he’ll melt. And we don’t want to leave him alone.”

  Mom tramped out in her ankle-length down. “Where’s Artis?” she asked me.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. I couldn’t believe I could not know everything about her and still breathe.

  Zeke removed his flannel and tied it around the snowman’s waist.

  “Who’s that guy with the beard, again?” the boys asked.

  “He’s Zeke,” I said. “Your uncle Zeke.”

  “Will he die, too?” they asked. “Is that what grown-ups do?”

  “No,” I said. “Not right away.”

  “At least we got to meet him first,” they said. “At least once.”

  “You’ll see him again,” I said. “I promise.”

  They pelted him with snowballs, and he faked a slow, dramatic death. Then they laughed. Did they even know what death meant?

  We all got down on the ground, rolled onto our backs and flapped our arms, and said we were making snow puppies.

  “Snow angels,” Mom corrected us.

  “How come everyone always looks up at the sky?” the boys asked. “Are the aliens coming?”

  Let them. We could make room.

  Flakes hung from our chins like beards. Mom gazed up at the clouds that kept dumping down on us. We breathed in the good and bad weather, and it mixed up inside us. We grabbed hands and huddled together. With so many bodies, we could stay warm.

  52

  Even my husband didn’t come looking for me. I heard him say that word: uncle. “Here’s a snowball to throw at your uncle Zeke.” I hadn’t told my son that Zeke was his uncle. Is family so cheap it can be made in a day? Here, knock Zeke down with an iceball, I would have said. Make a bruise. That’s how he’ll know you’re family.

  I told Sebastian at our wedding that a twin was two-for-one, Paula and me. And now? Did we have only half a marriage left?

  I could curl into a ball and wait till that interloper was gone. Watch me do it. Or don’t. That’s the point.

  53

  When we all came in from the cold, Artis finally emerged from the basement. We drank hot toddies and hot cocoa, but I could no longer feel the whiskey burn my sister’s belly.

  We were the last, again, to bed. Of course we couldn’t sleep. Looking through the boxes of stuff, I found the mother-of-pearl pocketknife he had given us and the rabbit fur coats he had made, while Artis lost herself in her phone. Doing what? Even in plain sight I could no longer tell.

  As she had the night before, Mom slept on the couch and gave us each a bedroom to share with our husband and son. We stomped off to sleep, or to pretend to sleep, each with a spouse awakening enough to spoon our naked backs, each with a child in a pile of comforters on the floor. I heard the sounds from my sister’s room, mimicking those in my own.

  “How cute!” we had said to each other when we first arrived, kissing our five-year-old nephews, complimenting their new haircuts and holiday outfits. But now, in bed, I saw we should have said, “How fragile. How tenuous.”

  I watched my son’s belly rise and fall, wondering if someday he would run away, too, and not come back until my funeral. If our patriarch, with skin as thick as oak, could tumble so hard, what about us?

  When my son exhaled, out came everything Dad would never teach him. How to jump-start a car. Skin a deer. Build a campfire. Swear in different languages. Fuck, I could barely do it in one.

  When my son inhaled, in went his resentment of me. Hadn’t I, hours earlier, snapped at him for walking around with his shoes untied? Hushed and shushed and shut him up too many times in his short life?

  Now I was gasping for breath. Climbing on my husband, I pawed him awake, kissing, hissing, caressing, and finally crying out. A cry that mirrored my sister’s down the hall.

  At our animal squeals, our children awakened. “Mom, why are you on top of Dad?” they asked Artis and me. “Are you hurt?” and “What was that terrible sound?”

  I rolled onto my side and covered up. “You were just dreaming,” I said.

  I could hear the boys fall back to sleep as they turned onto their bellies, pressing against the frayed brown carpet we had grown up tramping down. I could almost smell the dirty laundry we never picked up, the footed pajamas we wore even after our feet broke through, the cherry lip gloss fermented into the sickly sweet smell of adolescence.

  We lay in the beds we had made for ourselves, holding our breath now, as if any noise could make the children scatter like deer. We uncoupled ourselves, reeling with grief and love. For the man who gave us life and, finally, with his death, broke

  Acknowledgments

  My story “Half,” which was the seed that grew into this novel, was published in the summer 2013 issue of Pleaides. An excerpt from this novel, called “Granny,” appeared in the April 2015 issue of Streetlight magazine.

  Many nonfiction books and articles helped inform my understanding of what it is like to be a twin, including Christa Paravanni’s memoir Her.

  Many novels with first-person plural narrators inspired my style, including We the Animals by Justin Torres, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka.

  My gratitude is deep and wide and sky-high. This book took many years to write and revise and publish, and so many talented people suspended their disbelief that such an unusual little book could find its way into the big world. They gave so much of themselves to help me, and I am astonished at their insight and generosity.

  I will list everyone (except my family) in chronological order, from when I started writing about these girls in short-story form in 2012.

  My MFA mentors, especially Benjamin Percy, who, when I told him about my crazy idea of making two narrators speak in one voice, told me it would be hard but also made me believe I could pull it off. Jack Driscoll, who edited my sentences to make them sing and taught me how to edit my own work. And to all my fellow students in the Pacific University MFA Creative Writing Program.

  The Key West Literary Seminar for choosing my story for its Cecelia Joyce Johnson Award.

  Phong Nguyen, for publishing my story and choosing it for the Kinder Award.

  Gail Hochman, for reading multiple drafts and believing in the value of innovative literary work.

  The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hambidge Creative Residency Program, and the Porches Writing Retreat for providing the time and space to work without interruption or distraction.

  Bret Anthony Johnston and his workshop at the Virginia Quarterly Review Conference.

  Christine Schutt and Allen Wier and their workshop at the Sewanee Summer Workshop.

  Brilliant writer friends who agreed to read the entire manuscript in various versions, including one that read like linked stories and one set in a sci-fi near future: Hope Mills Voelkel, Artis Henderson, Pat Dobie, Leigh Camacho Rourks, Louise Marburg, and Deborah Reed. I am boundlessly lucky to have them all in my life, and I am grateful for their moral support and insight.

  Kat Setzer, a talented freelance editor.

  Friends who believed in this book even when I no longer did, including Mika Yamamoto and Christophe Carlier.

  Bonnie Jo Campbell, the judge for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award Series for the Novel, who named my manuscript a finalist and who went above a
nd beyond the duty of a judge.

  Jesse Lee Kercheval and the other peer reviewers and board members at the University of Wisconsin Press, who read my work with such care and enthusiasm.

  The wonderful staff at the University of Wisconsin Press, including Dennis Lloyd, Sheila McMahon, Jennifer Conn, Kaitlin Svabek, and Casey LaVela. I am grateful that they championed my work and made the publication process so smooth and easy. I could not have asked for a better press.

  Heidi Bell. The term “copyeditor” is too small to convey the magic she performs. She makes books better.

  Sheryl Johnston, the perfect publicist.

  My daughter, an accomplished writer herself, who read a draft and helped me portray contemporary adolescence authentically.

  My son, who is always willing to talk about my writing.

  My brother, Louis Waldman, who is not my twin but might as well be. My close relationship with him growing up inspired me to try to imagine the upper limits of platonic intimacy. There is no one we share more with, it seems to me, than a sibling, and I’m lucky to have one who was my teacher, my father figure, my companion, and who is still my dear friend.

  Most of all I would like to thank my husband, James. He is one of the smartest and most voracious readers I know. He is a numbers guy, but he believes in the value of art to feed our souls, and he believes in me. He makes my writing life possible, and he fills my days with joy that is high and wide and ocean-deep.