Twins

by Marcy Dermansky

  Mr. Markman had packed a suitcase full of videotapes, his whole basketball career, including games he played in high school. In the mornings, he went for a swim at the small, perfect beach not far from the house. Even in the water, he was quiet. Mr. Markman floated on his back, looking into the vast sky. In the afternoon, Lisa and Todd and I would go to another beach, a bigger beach further down the road, where we rented blue lounge chairs and ordered drinks from roving waiters. We left Mr. Markman alone in the house, watching his old games.

  “He’s so depressed,” Lisa said, her voice gleeful, “he won’t notice what we do.”

  Lisa wanted to take a glass-bottom boat cruise. “Free drinks,” she said.

  “Awesome,” Todd said.

  “We can’t go swimming drunk,” I said. Sue had warned me about so many death scenarios that I had become overly nervous.

  I was amazed by the fish that swam underneath: yellow and blue angelfish, a school of long, purple fish, hundreds of them, clustered under the glass. Through the glass bottom, I saw trumpet fish and sea turtles. I kept on pointing out amazing new fish for Lisa to look at, but she had been to Hawaii before. “Oh, sweet, naïve Chloe,” she said. “This is nothing. The last time I was here, I swam with a school of dolphins.”

  “Bullshit,” Todd said.

  The boat anchored over a large coral reef, and we were all given masks and snorkels and flippers. I swam right up to a pair of sea turtles and followed them. I could feel myself smiling underwater. It was hard to believe that this underwater paradise existed, and that somewhere, on the other side of the planet, Sue was stewing away with her filthy hair and her filthy clothes in her filthy bedroom. When the turtles finally swam away, I circled around the coral closer to the boat. I noticed Todd hovering over one spot, and when he saw me he waved excitedly. He was swimming above a big nurse shark. A school of yellow and blue angelfish hovered above them. Underwater, we grinned at each other.

  Hawaii, I thought.

  Back on the boat, Lisa, Todd, and I drank rum punch. We took drinks from the trays, and no one seemed to care that we were underage.

  “Aren’t we having a great time?” Lisa said. She wrapped her fingers around a strand of my wet hair.

  “Todd,” she said, “has an enormous crush on you.”

  I looked at Todd and smiled. I remembered kissing him in the closet at Lisa’s party. He was younger and he was shy, which was the reason I had picked him first. I was surprised that Lisa wanted him to hang out with us at all on this trip.

  “He’s sort of cute, isn’t he?”

  I drank my rum punch and smiled.

  “Sure.” I wondered what it would be like to have a little brother. It could be fun, I thought. He would look up to you, not the way Daniel looked down on me and Sue.

  “Chloe thinks you’re cute,” she told Todd.

  Todd blushed.

  I looked at the boat’s glass bottom, wishing that I was still swimming with the fish. I did not understand what Lisa was getting at. Todd was two years younger. Back at her house in New Jersey, neither of us ever talked to him.

  “I bet you would kiss Todd again if he asked you to,” Lisa said.

  I shook my head. “He showed me a nurse shark,” I said. “That was nice.”

  After the boat docked, Lisa and I rented beach chairs. Lisa ordered piña coladas and sent Todd away to bodysurf.

  “Are you having a good time, Chloe?” she asked me.

  I looked at the drink that had magically appeared in the sand next to my chair. I did not want to drink anymore. I thought about the sea turtles and how simple and good life had seemed swimming beside them.

  “I am,” I said.

  Lisa nodded.

  “I knew you would,” she said. “That’s why I asked you here. You’re going to burn. Let me put more lotion on you.”

  I had brought only one-piece bathing suits, to cover my tattoo. Lisa wore skimpy bikinis, like she had said she would. Men stared at us wherever we went. I knew they were checking out Lisa because she was so ridiculously sexy that they could not help themselves and not because I was a freak of nature. I knelt in the sand in front of Lisa’s chair and let her put lotion on my back. She slipped her fingers past the edge of my bathing suit with the lotion, reaching much further than she needed to.

  “You should consider modeling,” she said, giving my ass a small squeeze. Ever since we had gotten off the plane, Lisa had been acting strangely. She watched me get dressed. She was rude to her father. “You could get lots of work.”

  I shook my head. Modeling was worse than Sue’s idea of starring in a television sitcom. I would not make a career out of having people look at me. I had been stared at my entire life. Lisa leaned forward and kissed my neck. She looked at me for a second and then leaned back in, putting her lips on my neck, sucking hard. I felt myself freeze, uncertain about what was happening, but then I pushed her away.

  Lisa laughed like nothing had happened.

  “You taste salty,” she said.

  I put my hand on my neck. Lisa had told me about kissing the English model when she was in Milan, but I never thought anything about it. She said all sorts of things about sex. It would have never occurred to me that Lisa would try to do anything sexual with me. We were both girls. She was my friend. Lisa Markman was the only friend I had ever had.

  “This is Hawaii,” Lisa said. “You have to loosen up. Look at Todd. There in the water. He’s hot, right? You said so.”

  Todd stood up in the water, and clutching his boogie board to his chest, he waved at us.

  “He’s in love with you,” Lisa said.

  “He’s two years younger.”

  I looked at my foot in the sand. I scooped up a handful of sand and let it slide through my fingers, covering my toes. I knew that I was uptight compared to other kids my age. I knew that when I walked down the halls at school clutching my books I was taking school too seriously. I wanted to have friends and I wanted to have fun, but I did not think I was ready for the kind of fun Lisa was offering me. I closed my eyes. The blue sky was too bright. I wondered if I had remembered to pack aspirin in my beach bag.

  “Let’s be serious,” Lisa said. “Two years is nothing. Todd’s a little lamb and he worships you. You could do whatever you wanted with him and he would be grateful. It is so past time for you to lose your virginity, Chloe. You don’t know yourself until you start having sex. There is this whole other world that you’re not a part of, that you’re totally excluded from. Sex is everywhere, Chloe. Do you see him, that hot guy over there?” Lisa looked across the beach and pointed at a blond guy in a pair of pink bathing trunks, who was coming from the water carrying a surfboard. He looked much too old for us, in his twenties at least. I wanted Lisa to put her arm down. He would see us. I didn’t want to talk about sex. I didn’t want to think about sex. I wanted to play in the waves and see more turtles. “I could totally have him if I wanted. You want to see how it works?”

  “What?” I said. “See what?”

  Lisa waved for him to come over. I watched as he jogged our way across the sandy beach, still dripping wet from the ocean. It was that simple. She had never talked to him before. She knew nothing about him. Think, I could hear Sue say, of the diseases this guy could give you.

  “Why would you want to?” I whispered. “Why would you want to sleep with him?”

  Lisa laughed. “You don’t want to be a child forever, Chloe,” she said. “This is what you do. You have fun. You screw. No one falls in love anymore. Anyway, why do you think people come to Hawaii?”

  “To snorkel?” I said.

  Lisa sighed, exasperated with me.

  “You’re definitely better off with younger men. I’ll tell Todd you’re interested, okay? He needs so much help, and you have to start somewhere. Unless you want the surfer. I’ll let you have him if that’s what you want.”

  I shook my head. The surfer had already reached us. I couldn’t get myself to look at him. I scooped more sand onto m
y toes, wishing he would go away.

  “Hey, girls,” he said, and Lisa pointed to the edge of her long beach chair. I watched it happen. The surfer sat down; I could see him notice Lisa’s long, brown body in her tiny, red bikini.

  “How are the waves?” Lisa said.

  “Awesome,” he said. I saw his knee bang into hers. I watched Todd catch a wave on his boogie board, ride over the crest, and then go under the surf. I did not want to watch Lisa flirt with the surfer. I hoped that she wouldn’t sleep with him. I thought we were going to hike up volcanoes in Hawaii. She had not told me she had plans for my virginity. I was staying in her house. I was her guest. I didn’t want to make her angry with me. Now my head really hurt. I walked down to the water. The white sand, like the sky, was blindingly bright. The water was clear and warm. I thought about Sue, threatening to slit her wrists.

  I floated on my back, staring at the blue sky. I tried to float the way Mr. Markman floated in the mornings, steady and purposeful.

  I hoped that Sue would not be dead when I came home.

  Todd came into my room late that night.

  Lisa had gone out with the surfer. Mr. Markman was downstairs, alone in the dark living room, watching himself play basketball on the TV. I listened for the steady thump of the ball on the TV, the squeaking of the sneakers on the wood floor and then the sound of the VCR as Mr. Markman fast-forwarded through the tapes. I could not sleep. I was hurt and confused by the fight I had had with Lisa, watching her get dressed to go out.

  “I expect you won’t tell my father I went out,” she said. She opened the window to the room we were sharing and hopped out.

  “I wouldn’t,” I said.

  “You might,” she said. “It’s revolting the way you look at him during dinner. ‘Thank you for the meal, Mr. Markman.’ ‘Everything is wonderful, Mr. Markman.’ ”

  I sat on the bed with my SAT study guide books open, but I was so focused on listening to the ball that I couldn’t concentrate on the questions. I wondered what Mr. Markman would think if I went to join him. He had cooked us a nice dinner, striped bass and vegetables, which Lisa and Todd picked at. Lisa was on a diet, and Todd said that the fish was disgusting on account of the eyes and the bones. I was also on a diet, but I ate the fish to make Mr. Markman happy. He showed me how to separate the flakes of fish from the skeleton while Lisa sneered. Mr. Markman smiled at me when I told him that the food was wonderful. My father had never taken me and Sue on a vacation. All of our life, I could not remember a single vacation we had been on, ever.

  Now Todd was trying to look down my nightshirt.

  “You like to study a lot,” he said, sitting next to me on the bed. “I never met anyone who studied on vacation before.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. I had always thought that Sue was strange, but I wondered if maybe we were both odd.

  “I never forgot what it was like at the party,” Todd said. “You are the first girl I ever kissed. You were so soft and you smelled so good. You let me put my hands wherever I wanted. I never forgot that.”

  “I did not,” I said, surprised, but then I remembered. It was only supposed to be a kissing game, but Sue had let a boy do whatever he did to her in the dark. I had let Sue pretend to be me, to keep her from making us leave the party. I had let her pretend to be me, and that was how she’d treated my body.

  “I didn’t even mind that you punched me in the stomach,” he said.

  “That wasn’t me.” I shook my head, wondering if Todd had told Lisa. “That was Sue. We switched clothes.”

  “It was you,” he said. “We went into the closet three times together. I know how you kiss, Chloe. I’ve never stopped thinking about you.”

  “I want to study,” I said.

  Todd took the SAT guide from my hands and tossed it on the floor.

  “I love you,” he said. “I have loved you for so long, Chloe.”

  I looked down. I could have stayed home to be harassed like this. Sue loved to throw my things around. She had gotten more reckless since Lisa came back from Europe. One time, she snatched a finished essay straight out of my hands and threw it into the fireplace. She cracked the spines of my textbooks as I watched, silent.

  “Kiss me,” Todd said.

  He leaned over and kissed the edge of my mouth. I reached down to the floor for my book. I had felt silly packing study guides for a tropical vacation, but my books had become a source of comfort. I had been stupid enough to hope that Hawaii would be a dream trip, an escape, and Sue had known better. She had predicted all kinds of misfortune. The undertow that would carry me away, the third-degree sunburn that would fry my pale skin, an oxygen tank that would turn out to be empty when I was thirty feet under the sea. Mr. Markman had signed me up for a beginner scuba dive, but when the instructor tried to familiarize me with the equipment, I got an instant headache. I started to shake putting on the gear, and once we were in the pool, which was only five feet deep in the deep end, I refused to go underwater. But even Sue hadn’t thought to warn me about Lisa and Todd.

  “You were a different kind of girl in the closet,” Todd said, leaning over to kiss me again. “You acted all sexy.”

  “That wasn’t me,” I said. “You kissed Sue in the closet.”

  “You don’t have to worry,” he whispered. “This will be special. I won’t get you pregnant. I promise.” Todd leaned over me again, but this time he put his hand directly on my chest. The room was quiet, and I could hear the sounds of Mr. Markman’s basketball games coming from the living room. Todd and I stared at each other. We both looked at his hand on top of my pink nightshirt. I heard the buzzer go off on the television and the broadcaster’s voice talking about the game. “You don’t have to be shy. Lisa already told me you liked me,” he said. “She said you wanted to lose your virginity. She said that’s why you came to Hawaii.”

  I smiled, embarrassed. I did not want to hurt Todd’s feelings. Todd was a nice enough boy, and it seemed unfair that Lisa had led him on this way. But I wouldn’t sleep with him just to spare his feelings. More than anything, I wanted for us both to stay very quiet. I did not want Mr. Markman to know what was going on in this room, in his house. Todd lifted his hand from my nightshirt and slid it underneath. I could feel my whole body tense. I could feel the familiar pounding at the back of my head.

  “I’m sorry, Todd,” I whispered, “but Lisa should never have told you that. I don’t know why she would tell you that.”

  “I am totally into you, Chloe,” he said. “I want to touch you like we did in the closet. I want to do everything with you.”

  I grabbed Todd’s wrist and tried to pull his hand away.

  “We’re in Hawaii,” he whispered, reaching for me with his other hand.

  I was still trying to get Todd’s first hand out from under my nightshirt when I realized that he wasn’t letting go of me, and then I felt panicked. Even though he was younger, Todd was larger than me, taller and heavier and stronger. Without thinking, I bit his shoulder. Todd jumped away, fast. He fell on the floor with a loud thud.

  “Shit,” he said, rubbing his shoulder. His eyes looked watery, and I was afraid he was going to start to cry. “You didn’t have to bite me.”

  I could feel myself shaking all over. I had no idea why Lisa would do this to me. I wondered if she knew that Todd would come tonight while she was out with the surfer. I had thought Lisa was my friend. I had thought she was saving me from Sue. I tried to smooth out my hair.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Is everything okay in there, sweetheart?”

  Mr. Markman came into the room before I could think of an answer. I straightened my nightshirt. Todd got up from the floor, picking up my SAT guide as if we were having a late-night study session. But the look on my face must have told Mr. Markman that everything was not all right at all.

  “Get out of Chloe’s room, son,” he said. “I did not raise you to show such disrespect to a guest.”

  “No.” Todd
snorted. “All you ever did was play basketball.”

  Mr. Markman looked at his son. They did not look alike. Todd’s skin was much fairer than Mr. Markman’s, and his eyes were almost blue. Lisa once told me that Todd had no interest in sports whatsoever.

  “You’re angry at me,” Mr. Markman said to Todd. “But that has nothing to do with imposing yourself on a young woman. I am suppressing the urge to whack you upside the head, but I will if you don’t leave this room this instant.”

  Todd opened his mouth wide, but then he said nothing, and without looking back at me, he stormed out of the room. I smiled shyly at Mr. Markman. No one had ever come to my rescue before. If my father had ever come to check on me at night, if he had come into my room to wish Sue and me good night before our thirteenth birthday while I rocked my weeping twin sister in my arms, maybe he could have saved me from getting a tattoo I never wanted.

  “I have to apologize to you,” he said, “for my son.”

  I had stopped shaking, but I was embarrassed to be talking to Mr. Markman in the middle of the night, sitting on a bed in my nightshirt.

  “This is not the kind of hospitality I meant to provide to a young girl.” He looked at Lisa’s empty bed. “Her mother was a wild woman,” he said. “I was only twenty when we had Lisa. My career was just starting to take off.”

  “That isn’t your fault.”

  “I know a lot more about playing basketball than raising children.”

  But I knew that Mr. Markman was a wonderful parent. He took us to the beach every morning and cooked us dinner every night, serving local fruit for dessert, slices of mangos and papaya, berries and star fruit. My parents had never grilled us a fish or taken us on a vacation or thought to rescue me, ever, from Sue. It broke my heart that Mr. Markman was unhappy.

  “Can I come sit with you?” I said. “Can I sit with you and watch you play basketball?”

  “You want to do that? You would like that?”

  I nodded. I put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and joined Mr. Markman in the living room. I sat in the armchair and he sat on the couch. Mr. Markman leaned forward, his hands on his knees; on the television, he stood poised on the foul line, readying himself for a free throw.