Tru Confessions

by Janet Tashjian

  I turn around to leave.

  “Besides, it gets boring picking on the handicapped. Not enough of a challenge.”

  Walk away, I tell myself. Get out while you’re ahead, with some dignity. I picture myself on top of the Mass. Ave. bridge, the sun shining on me now, not on Billy’s crooked smile.

  When I reach my mother, she puts her arm around me and squeezes. Sometimes if people pick on Eddie, she steps in and tells them they are acting out of ignorance, that Eddie is a lot like them if they’d take the time to notice. But because it’s Billy Meier, she zips her jacket and starts walking toward the car. I know if I ask for a candied apple, she’ll say yes and she does.

  On the way home, I remember an old album from her college days that Eddie used to play. There is a song on it, “Love Stinks,” and I start to hum it in the car. My mother laughs when she recognizes it, but thankfully, she doesn’t say anything about Billy. If I add up all the time I have wasted thinking about going out with him, or having him come to one of my soccer games, I’d have enough time to film two feature-length movies. I can’t figure out which of us is the bigger loser. When I get my own show, he’ll have to stand outside for three days and two nights in the rain to wait in line for tickets and even then he won’t get in.

  But Eddie … Eddie is oblivious. (I wish I could be sometimes.) He rolls down the window, paying attention only to the cherry blossoms on Memorial Drive and the crisp spring wind blowing off the river.

  Graffiti on the wall of the second-floor girls’ bathroom:

  (I have no idea who wrote this …)

  Soup or Sandwich?

  It’s a Saturday morning and Denise, Eddie, and I are watching the Three Stooges. Eddie is running his usual commentary: Every time someone picks up a hammer, Eddie says, “He’s picking up the hammer,” and before the clanging noise begins, Eddie’s already yelling, “Ouch!” It’s too bad we don’t have any blind friends because they would really enjoy watching TV with Eddie.

  My mother peeks into the room, rubbing her neck the way she does when she’s been at the computer for a few hours. “What do you kids want for lunch?”

  Denise nudges me.

  “I’m not going to do it,” I say.

  “Come on,” Denise begs.

  I sigh. “Hey, Eddie,” I say. “For lunch, do you want soup or a sandwich?”

  “Sandwich.”

  I ask him again, a little differently this time. “Do you want a sandwich or soup?”

  “Soup.”

  Eddie always picks the last thing you say, no matter what it is. “Do you want soup or a dead bird?” I ask.

  “A dead bird.”

  Denise keeps doing it, asking him over and over, laughing at the different answers each time.

  “That’s no way for future women to act,” my mother calls from the kitchen. Denise and I roll our eyes.

  Eddie is so busy pretending to hit himself in the head that he doesn’t notice that we’ve been goofing on him.

  Later we play games on my mother’s computer and help her plant tulip bulbs even though it’s still drizzling. Eddie’s fingernails are usually kind of dirty, anyway, but after working in the garden, all of us are filthy.

  “This is how it must be in Africa where my father is,” I tell Denise. “He spends a lot of time in the rain forest.”

  When Denise and Eddie go into the house to wash up, my mother pulls me aside.

  “Tru, you know your father isn’t in Africa. Why did you say that?”

  I scrape the mud off the palm of my hand with my fingernail. She kneels down beside me. “We’ve been through this before. After he left, he spent three months in Africa, then moved to Rhode Island. He lives in an apartment building, not a thatched hut. You know this.”

  Maybe it’s my overactive imagination or maybe I’m a little slow, too. Or maybe the truth is too boring. Or painful. “It’s more fun to pretend he’s in Rwanda, not Rhode Island,” I tell her.

  “He didn’t leave because of you,” she says.

  “He left because of Eddie, didn’t he?”

  “There were lots of reasons why he left. It wasn’t one thing. How many times have I told you that? I don’t want you making up any more stories, okay?”

  I nod. “Why is Eddie the way he is?”

  She rubs her face with her hands, leaving two brown streaks of mud. “You know why. Because the cord was wrapped around his neck and they couldn’t get him out of me fast enough.”

  “Was it because of me? Because I was squishing him? Or thrashing around like a baby shark?”

  She tilts her head, not knowing what I’m talking about. “I don’t blame myself, you shouldn’t blame yourself, either.” She holds out the tulip bulbs in her hand. “Just like these, right? They could blossom any color. It’s a surprise. Like everything in life.”

  I want to tell her the bag they came in said all the tulips inside were Royal Reds, but with the rain frizzing her hair and the mist around us, she looks like a fuzzy angel and I want to believe her.

  We go inside and make hot chocolate. Denise calls her mother to see if she can stay, then we all make pizza for dinner. Later we sit in a circle in the living room surrounded by candles and take turns telling ghost stories. My mother’s are the scariest, and Eddie tells the same one as always, about the man with the hook for a hand. Denise. makes one up about a leprechaun who lures people to their death with his pot of gold. I know I can’t tell my usual—a man lost in the jungles of Africa—so instead I tell one about a little girl who is knocking on apartment doors, looking for her father. Door after door opens, and no one is there, until finally someone says, “Come in.” But by the time she gets inside, the person has gone, and all she finds is a sheet lying on the couch, remnants of a forgotten ghost.

  Still haven’t heard about my tape …

  B.J.’s Sleepover

  The pajama party at my friend B.J.’s is the first thing I’ve done without Eddie in months. The six of us unroll our sleeping bags in the basement (the finished part, not the cement area with the dartboard where her brother hangs out) and pass around a big glass bowl of popcorn.

  The first item on the agenda for any of our sleepovers is a seance. Denise asks if she can be the Gypsy first. She wraps one of B.J.’s mother’s scarves around her head and borrows my hoop earrings (say good-bye to those). B.J. empties the popcorn into a plastic container and turns the glass bowl upside down to use as a crystal ball.

  We sit in a circle around Denise.

  “Mr. Santos,” Denise chants, swaying back and forth. “We are trying to reach you.”

  Mr. Santos was the old janitor at our school who died last summer from a heart attack.

  “Mr. Santos, where are you?”

  We all have our eyes closed and are quietly humming. Suddenly there’s a loud crash and we all jump.

  “Mr. Santos!” Denise says, waving her arms. “Let us see you!”

  But it’s not Mr. Santos who enters the room, it’s B.J.’s crazy grandmother, Nana Beauchene. She isn’t really crazy, just eccentric, B.J.’s mother says. Nana squeezes into the circle between me and Judi Hedren. “I love seances,” she says. “Let me give it a go”

  Denise reluctantly hands over the scarf and the crystal ball. (I hold out my hand until she forks over the earrings.)

  Nana Beauchene ties the scarf tightly around her head. “Alphonso,” she says in a voice much lower than her usual one, “come to me.”

  “Alphonso,” we repeat. “Come to us.”

  B.J. rolls her eyes and mouths the words “My grandfather.”

  Nana Beauchene might still be with us in body, but her mind is definitely somewhere else. She starts talking in a language I have never heard before, not even on Geography Night. By the look on B.J.’s face, she hasn’t heard it before, either.

  The bulkhead door begins to bang and a cool breeze blows into the cellar. “Alphonso,” she says. “Play.”

  She sits down at the old upright piano and starts playing, a slow w
altz-type song that sounds a few hundred years old. Her eyes are still closed but she doesn’t miss a note. Judi Hedren begins to cry and runs upstairs to call her mother. Suddenly the breeze stops and so does Nana Beauchene.

  “He’s gone now.” She unties the scarf and drapes it across the piano. She pats B.J. on the head and goes upstairs.

  Nice time to forget the video camera!

  After she leaves the room, B.J. tells us her nana doesn’t know how to play the piano, but Papa Alphonso used to play all the time. We are still kind of scared, so we watch Clueless for the millionth time and finish the rest of the popcorn. We take a vote to invite Nana Beauchene to the next sleepover, no matter whose house it’s at. After we go to bed, I lie awake in my sleeping bag, listening to B.J. snore, watching the fringe of the scarf spread across the piano like silken fingers.

  Probable Responses to the Sleepover Story If I Ever Work It into My Hit Show

  Trudy completely made up the part about the grandmother. I mean, who would wreck a sleepover faster than a grandmother?

  As if.

  The grandmother was probably speaking Russian or something.

  I’m sure Trudy hasn’t seen Clueless a million

  times. It’s good, but it isn’t that good.

  Do you think I could borrow Trudy’s earrings?

  Where’s Eddie? He’s more interesting.

  Mom’s Dates

  Mom hasn’t had a boyfriend in a while. She’s gone on dates, sure, but usually the guy fades out pretty quickly after spending time with me and Eddie.

  One guy—his name was Guy, but he pronounced it the French way, Ghee—used to take my mother to the movies on Friday nights. When they got back, he’d always act surprised that we were still up. Once, while my mother was making coffee, he offered Eddie and me five dollars to leave him and Mom alone.

  Eddie grabbed the money from his hand and ran into the kitchen. “Guy gave us five dollars. Let’s go to Disney World.” (He was serious.)

  My mother thought Guy was just being nice until I told her he was trying to bribe us. He left before the coffee was ready.

  Another time, she was seeing someone she met at a business meeting in New York. His name was Peter and he used to let Eddie and me take turns driving his car in the Star Market parking lot. My mother was quiet around the house for days after he started seeing someone else.

  But she must’ve been really lonely when she decided to go out with Danny. He has one of those I’m-so-cool goatees and hair so slicked back, it looks like he uses a gallon of Vaseline. He never talks to Eddie or me, he just nods as if ignoring us will make us go away. But the real reason I don’t like him is the way my mother acts around him. Laughing at things that aren’t funny, talking about things she doesn’t care about—the way I used to act around Billy Meier before I came to my senses. I know I should respect her choices, but even the remote possibility of having Danny for a father makes my skin crawl.

  I hear his car pull into the driveway. He always locks his car, even if he pops in for a minute.

  Eddie is watching TV in the living room. “Hey, Eddie,” I say. “Act retarded.” (Completely unfair, I know. The worst, I admit it.) But for some reason, Eddie gets the idea. He limps to the front door like Quasimodo.

  “Danny, hey, Danny boy. How’re you doing, Danny? Hi, Danny.”

  I’d never ask anyone to do something I wouldn’t do myself, let alone Eddie, so I join in.

  “Hey, Danny old boy, old Danny, old boy, old Danny.” I’m kind of spitting and crossing my eyes. (Not that any special-needs kids I know do either of these things, but I am using autistic—I mean artistic—license.)

  Danny tries not to stare at us and looks helplessly toward my mother. “Virginia, what’s going on?”

  She gives me her this-is-not-funny face, that I-know-what-you’re-doing face.

  “Trudy’s very imaginative. She’s practicing for a play.”

  I can’t stop now. “Dannnnnnnnnnnnnny. Dannnnnnnnnnnnnny.”

  She pats me on the head like a dog. “We won’t be long.”

  The problem with getting Eddie to do any kind of acting is that it’s hard to get him to stop. I spend the next twenty minutes trying to get him back to normal—whatever that means.

  When my mother comes back around ten o’clock, Danny doesn’t come in. She sits next to me on the couch.

  “All you had to do was tell me you didn’t like him. You didn’t have to embarrass yourself. Or Eddie.”

  “Why can’t you go out with a nice guy for a change?” Even before I say it, I know it’s a mean thing to say. Between working and taking care of us, she doesn’t have much time to meet men, never mind good ones looking for a relationship with a woman with two kids.

  She suddenly looks tired and kind of old. “Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to meet someone as perfect as Billy Meier,” she says.

  I want to tell my mother I’m sorry, but I don’t. When she gets off the couch, her pocketbook swings from her arm and almost hits me.

  A Frying Pan Hits Me on the Head—Oh Yeah, Eddie Has Special Needs

  I am so tired of pacing around the kitchen and biting my nails waiting for the cable company to call me about my tape that I decide to take Eddie to the mall on Boston Bruins Day. Mistake! The place is crawling with a million kids all wearing the same yellow-and-black jacket as Eddie, all screaming and jostling to see their favorite hockey players. I first notice that Eddie’s missing in the record store. When the manager says she hasn’t seen him, I run out of the store to look for him.

  Suddenly I feel like a flower surrounded by hundreds of buzzing bees. Everywhere I turn there is another kid in one of those stupid yellow-and-black jackets. I grab a few of them by the arm but they’re not Eddie. (One guy gets pretty mad.) An expression of my mother’s comes to mind: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I cup my hands to my mouth like a megaphone. “Eddie Walker!”

  Nothing.

  In the center of the mall, a large cluster of kids are jumping up and down, asking one of the hockey players for his autograph. I push my way through the crowd, calling for Eddie. One part of me hopes he’s here, but another doesn’t. If there’s one thing Eddie is, it’s claustrophobic. I don’t need any special twin power to recognize his voice in the center of the crowd, anyone within a ten-mile radius can hear him. Thank you, angel.

  The word relief doesn’t come close to explaining the look on Eddie’s face when he sees me. But his expression also shows fear and anger, and most of all, frustration. I pull him out of the crowd and into the nearest shop.

  He keeps tugging at his ears and brushing his head as if to get rid of cobwebs. His body sways back and forth like some kind of monk in a trance. “Tru, Tru, Tru, Tru,” he chants over and over.

  “Eddie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” We sound like Pete and Repeat. “Let’s go catch the bus.”

  The thought of the sardine-packed city bus must have thrown him into a frenzy. He knocks over a rack of women’s lacy underwear with his thrashing. Two salespeople try to usher us out the door but I tell them no. Eddie hasn’t had a panic attack in years, but I know the last thing to do right now is to try and move him. “Just let it play itself out,” my mother said last time. I hold him close while he wails, paying no attention to the crowd that is gathering. By the time the security guard comes, Eddie is wiped out.

  The guard—a nice grandfatherly type named Emmitt—lets me call my mother to come pick us up, then he helps the women hang up the clothes Eddie has knocked over. Even though I have my hands full with Eddie, I still wonder if Emmitt is embarrassed picking up all those little silk nighties. They look much more uncomfortable to sleep in than my mom’s old T-shirts.

  We wait at the front entrance, next to the shop for tall men. Eddie’s face is damp with sweat and spit, so I wipe it with my bandanna. I am fiddling with the zipper of my purse when I hear something that sounds like a wounded buffalo in that Kevin Costner movie. It’s Eddie.

  He is looking at hims
elf in the full-length mirror, sobbing. “I don’t want to be different,” he says. “I want to be the same. Same as everybody else.”

  His wish doesn’t form the lump in my throat; his self-awareness does. He has never talked about his condition before, never questioned his identity.

  “Everybody’s different,” I say. “Not just you.”

  He rubs his eyes and continues to look at himself in the mirror and cry. His dark hair sticks up around his face, his green eyes are wet with grief. “No,” he says. “Just like you. Just like you.”

  Our images in the mirror look similar—we are twins after all—but when I look at him now, I see me, see the life I could have had if I’d been the one tangled in the umbilical cord.

  I put my arm around him. “You’re the best brother in the world,” I say, trying to be sincere but sounding like some bad Hallmark card. “I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

  He shakes my arm off, still wounded.

  By the time my mother comes, we are both crying.

  When she sees us, I think she might start crying, too. But by the time we get home, Eddie is quiet and goes up to his room to play records. At dinnertime he’s fine, and we play Monkey Man later. But the image that keeps flashing in front of me is Eddie looking at himself in the mirror, saddened by what he sees. A lot of people don’t like what they see in the mirror, but it’s usually something superficial like a zit or a few extra pounds. Eddie was upset by something that he couldn’t change with a flashy product or fancy diet. His best hope rests with one person—me. I’ll double my efforts to come up with some kind of cure, some kind of … something, so the next time he stares at himself in the mirror, the reflection looking back is one he’s happy to see.

  I can’t even believe that during my twin brother’s moment of intense emotional pain, for a moment—just a moment—I cursed myself for not bringing the video camera. I am so heartless and cruel, maybe I should consider a career change. Is it too late to think about law school?