Twins

by Marcy Dermansky

  On the way to the game, Mr. Markman warned me that there would be attention from fans and other players and perhaps even the press. He wore a dark blue suit, a crisp light blue shirt, and a matching pastel tie. I felt young and simple in my jeans and pink sweater, and the Nike Air basketball sneakers Mr. Markman had given me.

  “You’re going to like this,” he said. He squeezed my hand as we stepped out of the limousine. A photographer took our picture. The bulb flashed in my eyes, and for a second I felt blinded.

  Our seats were in a glassed-in VIP box, far from the court. The seats were soft and leather and filled with middle-aged white men, men who looked like but who were not my father. They were lawyers and executives, all of them, according to Mr. Markman. They began to murmur excitedly when we took our seats, and several came over to Mr. Markman, to shake his hand and welcome him back. “How’s the knee, Rodney?” they asked. “How are the kids?”

  Even I could understand what was behind the question. They wanted to know where were Lisa and Todd, and who was I, this young, blond girl at Mr. Markman’s side? I assumed that Mr. Markman had not invited Lisa and Todd to come with us. This game was a present for all my hard work. It was also a learning experience, for in a couple of days’ time, I would be on the court in my ugly green-and-blue team uniform, playing in my first competitive game. His children didn’t appreciate basketball the way I did. They did not want to learn from Mr. Markman. They were self-absorbed and sex-crazed and so insanely selfish that they did not understand how lucky they were to have such a splendid father.

  Mr. Markman had introduced me as his prodigy. I was thrilled with the word. Prodigy. I felt my heart beating fast. I played basketball because I enjoyed it. I played for the pleasure I felt when the ball went through the hoop, swish, and because Mr. Markman believed in me.

  The men in the box blinked through my introduction, staring at me with open curiosity. I hoped that it was because I was too pretty to look like a real basketball player, that despite my newfound athleticism, it would be hard to believe I could take the ball to the hoop. “So, you shoot hoops?” one of them said, his eyes wandering down to the round neckline of my sweater. None of these men believed Mr. Markman. Suddenly, I understood that, as Mr. Markman’s prized student, I should have been a young, black boy from the projects instead of a white, teenage girl. They thought I was a slut. I felt my face turn red. I excused myself and went to the women’s bathroom to comb my hair.

  For a long time, I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked different since I had started playing basketball. My face had filled in. Despite all the exercise, I had gained weight. I was not fat, I told myself, I was healthy. I put on lipstick and then wiped it off. I wished Mr. Markman had arranged for a private box.

  When I got back, Mr. Markman handed me a pair of binoculars.

  “Look for celebrities,” he said. “Spike Lee comes to a lot of games. So does Woody Allen.” He pointed to the center seats on the floor right behind the players’ benches. I directed the binoculars until they were focused right on him, Woody Allen in a baseball cap, and next to him Soon-Yi, who had a little boy on her lap. I smiled at Mr. Markman.

  “Women also play at the Garden,” he said. “The WNBA is making enormous strides in the game. The Liberty play a fine game of B-ball.”

  “I won’t be a professional player,” I said.

  I did not want to disappoint Mr. Markman, but I had seen female professional basketball players. They had beefy faces and thick arms, thick legs and ugly hair. I didn’t want to look like them. I had always thought I would be a lawyer like my parents.

  “Next time,” Mr. Markman said. “I’ll take you to a Liberty game. You should see these women handle the ball.”

  I had never been to a professional sporting event. It was an entirely different thing than watching a videotape in a quiet living room in Hawaii with a gentle breeze wafting through the open window, the sounds of tropical birds in the distance. At Madison Square Garden, the game was there, directly in front of us. I could hear the basketball hitting the court, the loud squeaks of the players’ sneakers on the wood floor. With only two minutes left in the game, the Knicks down by five, they scored four straight baskets to win the game, and I was cheering at the top of my lungs with the rest of the crowd. Thousands of people, strangers up on their feet, all for a basketball team. I felt that I understood finally why it was not enough for me to play alone. It was one thing to practice; I got the same quiet feeling sinking free throws that I had once experienced studying for the SAT. But a game was something else altogether.

  I had no idea that it was possible to get this excited about anything.

  The whole time, without actually looking at Mr. Markman, I could sense him watching me.

  “Not long from now,” he said, pointing to players on the floor who were hugging and slapping each other on the back, “that will be you.”

  Mr. Markman helped me into my jacket.

  “So I take it you enjoyed the game?” he said. He gently touched my nose, and I nodded.

  “I was hoping you would feel that way,” he said.

  Then Mr. Markman zipped up my jacket as if I were a little girl.

  I wondered where my father was. He lived in Manhattan, and there I was, also in Manhattan, but my father did not take me to basketball games. He had said that Sue and I should come visit him at his new apartment, but so far, we had not gone.

  “Thank you so much,” I said. “This was wonderful.”

  Now that the game was over, the executives were back to watching us. Surely, they could not think that I was Mr. Markman’s girlfriend. I was sixteen years old. Mr. Markman weighed more than 250 pounds. There was a camera crew waiting for us outside the VIP box.

  Later that night, Mr. Markman and I were on the TV news. The footage showed us walking quickly away from the cameras, Mr. Markman steering me through the crowds with his hand on the small of my back. My face was not visible, only my blond hair. “Rodney Markman, back in the public eye for the first time since his retirement from the New York Knicks, attended the game with an unidentified young woman,” the newscaster said.

  Three days later, another picture—Mr. Markman holding my hand as I stepped out of the limousine—was published in People magazine.

  It did not take long for my identity to be discovered. Kids at school stopped and stared. My English teacher called me aside after class; he asked me out for coffee. The guidance counselor had me in for a talk. “How is your life at home?” he wanted to know. “Fine,” I told him. The man wore corduroy moccasins to work. I wouldn’t talk to him.

  For the first time since we’d come back from Hawaii, both Lisa and Todd had something to say to me. Todd Markman waited for me after basketball practice. I came out of the gym, tired and sweaty, and he looked me up and down. “You are not that pretty,” he said.

  Lisa also found me in the gym, where I was doing wind sprints during lunch. I went mainly to the gym during my lunch breaks instead of to the library. Mr. Markman had told me that conditioning made all the difference between a good player and a great player.

  “White women always like a tall, fine black man,” Lisa said. “My mother got herself a black basketball god. She drove off the fucking road, you know.”

  My mother, who had gone back to work, who had started working later and later and sometimes didn’t come home at all, thought the very worst of me. She approached me nervously while we were having breakfast, her yellow legal pad and a copy of People on the table next to the bowl of cereal with sliced bananas I had made for her.

  “Are you still a virgin?” she said.

  I didn’t want to blush, but I felt myself blushing.

  “He teaches me basketball,” I said.

  My mother sighed. I looked down at her pad. I saw her cross out the words statutory rape. On the next line, I saw the words birth control. I couldn’t believe she would really think something that awful about Mr. Markman.

  Sue blew bubbles into her or
ange juice with one of her stupid striped straws, letting the cereal I had poured for her go soggy.

  “Only lesbians and ugly girls play basketball,” she said.

  “I know it’s not the fifties.” My mother looked at me knowingly. “But you should consider getting a boyfriend. To protect your reputation. I know that your father is concerned.”

  “The cocksucker,” Sue said.

  She mashed a banana with her spoon into the side of her cereal bowl. I wondered why I continued to make food for Sue that I knew she would never eat. “Pretty soon,” she said, “you’re going to be too fat to have your picture shown anywhere.”

  I had to stop myself from throwing Sue’s cereal against the wall. Sue wanted to hurt me, and she did, every time. I looked to my mother to defend me, but she was done parenting for the day. My hands were shaking as I watched her finish her breakfast.

  My father’s paralegal called to set up a meeting. Later another paralegal called to cancel the meeting. A letter came FedEx the next day. My father had put three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills inside with a note to buy myself something pretty to wear.

  A reporter from Sports Illustrated called the house when I was at practice. I did not return the call.

  “I told him,” Sue said, “that I can ride a unicycle, but he wasn’t interested.”

  Kendra, the center on my team, asked me if I liked black guys. She was tall and skinny. Her greatest skill on the court was to stand under the basket and get in everyone’s way. She seemed curious, friendly, and it occurred to me that if I said yes, I did like black guys, Kendra, who was also black, might like me. I very much wanted a friend on the basketball team. “No,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

  I started to blush, realizing that I had handled her question all wrong. I didn’t like guys, white or black. I played basketball. I was terrified Kendra would think I was a racist, but I told myself it didn’t matter what she thought. There was no way we could become friends. I was a better player, the coach gave me more attention at practice, and before long, Kendra would certainly begin to hate me.

  Some guy from school called to ask me to the movies. He did not mention the magazine, but I knew that was why he called; no one had ever called before. “I don’t go to the movies,” I told him. “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t?” he said. “What do you do?”

  “I play basketball,” I said.

  “I know you play basketball,” he said.

  He said that his name was James Patterson. I had no idea who he was.

  The same reporter from Sports Illustrated came to a practice. He talked to my coach and other players on the team.

  “You could be a real story,” he told me. “Like it or not, Rodney Markman calls you his prodigy. If it’s true, that’s something the sports world takes seriously.”

  Mr. Markman told me not to pay attention to any of it. He called me at home to wish me luck the night before my first game.

  “This silliness will all go away,” he said. His voice was as calm as ever. No matter the circumstances, Mr. Markman radiated a sense of tranquillity. “Don’t pay attention to the chatter in your head. You just play your game and your mind will go quiet.”

  “You’ll come see me play?” I said.

  “Child,” he said. “You couldn’t keep me away. You have worked so hard for this. I am proud of you.”

  I scored twenty-two points in my first game. I was the top scorer of the night. During a time-out, the coach told the other players to pass the ball to me when they did not have an open shot. The center, Kendra, would scoop up all the rebounds with her long arms and pass the ball back to me.

  “Our Chloe’s on fire,” the coach said. He had stopped calling me Swiss Miss.

  We won the game with an eighteen-point lead.

  “A blowout,” Kendra called it.

  Mr. Markman sat in the front row. He had dressed for the high school gym just like he had for the Knicks game, wearing a dark suit and a pastel tie. He sat up straight, and he clapped proudly every time I made a basket.

  Sue had also come to the game. She sat by herself in the back of the stands. She was dressed all in black, her hair pulled back tight. She never clapped. One time, after I scored an easy layup, I snuck a glance at her. She was staring directly at me, but she didn’t acknowledge me when I waved. I missed my next shot, flustered, angry that she had ignored me. I decided then never to look at her again when I played. I had to think about what Mr. Markman had told me and shut out the chatter in my head. My parents had not come to the game, though my mother had made a point of writing down the time and location in her yellow legal pad. I had called my father’s assistant and given her the information as well.

  At the end of the game, Mr. Markman came down on the court, and in front of everybody, he kissed me on the forehead.

  “Nice game,” he said. I heard the clicking of a camera, someone taking our picture. “Would you like to go out for some ice cream to celebrate?”

  I looked up into Mr. Markman’s dark eyes. I nodded, pleased, too excited to say yes. And then I noticed Sue, slinking down the steps, her hands jammed in her pockets. Mr. Markman turned to follow my gaze. “Your twin,” he said.

  For a second, I was surprised that he had recognized her. Lately, I had begun to feel so far removed from Sue I was startled by the fact that we still looked alike.

  She stood next to me on the court.

  “Would you like to come out for some ice cream with us?” Mr. Markman asked. “To celebrate Chloe’s first game?”

  Sue rocked back and forth on her heels.

  I stared at her, willing her not to come. We stared at each other. The gym was beginning to empty out.

  “Hot fudge sundaes,” said Mr. Markman, an innocent, still believing that Sue and I could go out together and eat ice cream. I wondered if he remembered that it was Sue who had broken Lisa’s nose. I looked at her, waiting, afraid she would break out into tears and Mr. Markman would have no choice but to comfort her.

  “Well,” I said. “Yes or no?”

  I didn’t want to worry about Sue. This was supposed to be my night.

  “We were supposed to be on TV,” Sue said, like she was spitting the words. “None of this basketball bullshit.”

  She held up her middle finger to us both and then ran out of the gym.

  Mr. Markman sighed.

  “You two are nothing alike, are you?” he said.

  We walked to his car, and we drove to the restaurant in silence. Mr. Markman shook his head when I tried to order a scoop of vanilla ice cream. “We’re celebrating,” he said, telling the waitress to bring me a hot fudge sundae with wet walnuts. It was much too big for me to finish, but I made myself eat the entire sundae, just for him.

  Sue

  I had taken a Percodan and finished two beers when I asked Lisa Markman to shave my head. My pretty blond hair had started to bug me. Lisa wanted to fool around, but she bugged me too.

  “You want me to shave it off?” Lisa said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Cut it all off.”

  I had always liked Lisa Markman’s shaved head. It was the one cool thing about her. I ran my fingers through the tangles of my hair, disgusted. It was Chloe’s hair, and I hated Chloe. I did not want to be pretty or have friends. I had spent my whole life hating those boring girls at school. I didn’t want to join them now. I would rather be miserable. I hated Lisa Markman. This, I decided, would be the last time I spoke to her. She could forget about touching me naked.

  “Go ahead. Shave my head.”

  Lisa nodded.

  “I’ll shave it,” she said.

  “Shave it,” I said.

  “I will shave it,” she said, laughing. “And then we will look like twins.”

  “Shave it already,” I said.

  Lisa ran to her closet to get her tools.

  “I’ll have to use scissors to cut off the long part first.”

  “Great,” I said. “I
want you to.”

  Finally, I wasn’t bored. While Chloe became a local basketball star, I’d been taking pills with Lisa. We had a big pool of pharmaceuticals: Lisa’s celebrity pills, the anxiety pills I’d stolen from my mother, the superstrong pain pills Lisa took from her father. Sometimes, when we were high, I almost believed that I liked Lisa.

  She brushed my hair back into a ponytail. I closed my eyes, feeling her hands on my hair, pretending it was Chloe, that it was Chloe about to trim my bangs. Chloe, who used to be able to make everything all right. With one sharp cut, the scissors went right through my ponytail.

  “That felt so fucking cool,” Lisa said.

  I kept my eyes closed, blocking out Lisa’s voice, stupid, boring Lisa. She put the ponytail in my lap. There it was, my hair, laying there like a dead animal.

  Chloe and Sue.

  We were blond.

  We used to be golden.

  Identical twins.

  Without even looking in the mirror, I knew it was over. Anybody could tell us apart. I’d be the one with the bald head. The freak. The outcast. The loser.

  Lisa cut closer and closer to my head.

  “I’m going to shave it now,” she said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m shaving,” Lisa said.

  I closed my eyes, kept them closed. When we were children, Chloe and I would go everywhere together. If I was sick, Chloe was sick. If I fell and scraped my knee, Chloe gave me a Band-Aid. While Lisa shaved, I reached around to touch my tattoo. My hair didn’t matter. I had Chloe’s name etched in my skin. My name was imprinted on hers.

  “Holy shit,” Lisa said, laughing. She dropped the shaver on the floor. She covered her mouth with her hand, she was laughing so hard.

  I made myself look. I was bald. I wasn’t stylish or edgy or interesting. I looked sick. It was more than just hair. I could see my collarbones jutting from my chest. My skin was so pale that I could see the blue veins coursing beneath. I saw how my shirt fell straight down over my flat, flat chest. I looked like one of those twins that crazy Nazi doctor my brother once told me about had used for his twisted experiments. I looked like death.