by Alan Katz
“Myron!” David yelled. “I voted yes!”
“Me too!” Nathan yelled. “Left arm, right leg, yes!”
“The yeses win!” David said. “It’s unan -i mous!”
“Perhaps you mean ‘anonymous,’ because the voting was unknown,” Myron told him. “But actually, now that you’ve told me how you voted, the balloting wasn’t secret, so I’m afraid the vote is negated and disallowed.”
The boys were mad. Furious, even.
“Speaking of which,” Myron continued, “those are perfectly fine names for you. Negated and Disallowed, please rejoin me at the breakfast table.”
Nathan looked into David’s eyes. David looked into Nathan’s eyes. And perhaps for the first time ever, each twin knew exactly what his brother was thinking about their nanny and their lives.
“I see you looking into each other’s eyes with a single thought,” Myron said. “My brother Martin and I used to do that—just like two people sharing one brain.”
Nathan and David looked at each other again. This time they were both thinking: if you’re two people sharing one brain, chances are your brother Martin has it this week!
Nathan and David each awoke with a start. They were surprised to see Myron standing between their beds.
“Guys! Guys! It seems as if you both over-slept,” Myron told them. “The clock says eight twenty-two a.m., and you’re both still snoozing.”
“It can’t be eight twenty-two a.m., Myron!” David insisted. “It’s so dark outside.”
Nathan would have agreed with David, but he’d already rolled over and fallen back asleep.
“I didn’t say it is eight twenty-two, young man,” Myron told him. “I merely told you that’s what the clock says. It is, in fact, five twenty-two a.m.”
“But you said we overslept,” David protested.
“I didn’t actually say you overslept. I said it seems as if you overslept. It seems that way because I tiptoed in here and set your clock ahead three hours so it would read eight twenty-two and make it seem as if you over-slept,” Myron admitted.
“Why did you tiptoe in?” David asked.
“Mommy shoes bowling ball,” Nathan said, talking in his sleep during an obviously stranger-than-strange dream.
“I tiptoed in because I didn’t want to wake you guys. After all, sleep is really, really, very, really important,” Myron informed David.
“Pencil and rice salad so yummy tasty,” Nathan said, still dreaming. “More, please, Uncle Pipperman.”
“Myron, I wanna go back to sleep. Please . . . ,” David said through a yawn as big and wide as the Lincoln Tunnel, which connects Manhattan, New York, and Weehawken, New Jersey.
“Well, who’s stopping you?” Myron wanted to know. “In my lifetime, I have been accused of many, many things. I have been accused of causing people to drop their trays of food in cafeterias by simply looking at them. I have been accused of causing twenty-seven-year-old doctors to forget how to swim. I have been accused of having six hundred twenty-nine items in a supermarket line that was meant for shoppers with eight items or less. But I have never, repeat never, repeat never, repeat never stopped anyone from sleeping.”
“Then don’t start now,” David told him. “Good night.”
“Good night, young da Vinci. Good night,” Myron said. “And to help you on your journey to dreamland, I will now sing a song that my mother sang to me when I was a sleepy tadpole of age four, all scrunched up in my bed, wearing my pajamas with a seal wearing pajamas with a snake on them. . . .”
Good night, sleepy tadpole of age four,
All scrunched up in your bed,
Wearing your pajamas with a seal
Wearing pajamas with a snake on them. . . .”
It was a ridiculous song, made even more ridiculous when you consider the fact that David wasn’t four and wasn’t wearing pajamas showing a seal wearing pajamas with a snake on them. But somehow, Myron’s song did the trick. David was quickly sound asleep.
And having heard the song that his mother used to sing, Myron fell asleep too; he was sprawled out on the floor between the boys’ beds. In truth, he’d been the one who couldn’t sleep, and he only woke them so he’d have the chance to sing—and hear—his favorite lullaby.
If the boys hadn’t been asleep, they would most certainly have considered this nighttime interruption the kind of ridiculous thing that Martin would have done, and they would have entered it on the Myron or Martin Evidence Chart, which, by the way, currently looked like this:
All was quiet in the kids’ bedroom at 82727294 Flerch Street in Screamersville, Virginia. Two young lads and their quite unusual live-in nanny were fast asleep, gaining all-important rest and dreaming (what was left of) the night away.
Nathan continued dreaming about Uncle Pipperman’s delicious pencil and rice salad.
David dreamed he hit a ninth-inning grand slam to win the final game of the World Series.
And Myron dreamed he made one hundred million dollars as the inventor of edible pants, using the catchy slogan “Everybody deserves a chance to own a pair of edible pants.”
All three slept and dreamed happily, until Nathan and David’s played-around-with clock struck 10:56 to alert them to the fact that it was 7:56 and time to get up for school.
As for Myron, he slept on the floor until noon. Then he woke up and tried to eat his pants, which, sadly, were corduroy and therefore very hard to digest.
It was the time of year when Take Your Kid to Work Day was celebrated, and that meant a huge problem for the boys.
Frankly, both loved their parents equally, but they knew that there were two possibilities: spend the day with their business executive mom at Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, and Glerk, where they’d get to sit in on long conferences, hear a never-ending stream of complicated contract terms, and nod a lot . . . or with their dad, the airline pilot, who would fly them to another city (and then fly right back without doing any sightseeing, though that didn’t matter).
Neither boy wanted to miss out on an exciting airline trip.
Yet neither boy wanted to disappoint their mother, of whom they were very proud.
To avoid squabbling, over the past two years Nathan and David had alternated between their parents’ jobs. Last year, Nathan went to several twenty-person meetings at J, J, J, J, and G. And David went to Boston. The year before, Nathan went to Chicago. And David went to the bathroom a lot to get out of twenty-person meetings at J, J, J, J, and G.
Based on their turns, this would have been Nathan’s year to fly. But David was looking for a way to get on an airplane too, and he had a plan. It was a pretty good plan, because while he had come up with it for purely selfish reasons, it actually appeared to promote brotherly love.
While walking to school, David told his brother, “Here’s the deal. We tell Mom and Dad that we want to stay together for the visit. We tell them that we will share more and learn more if we both go to the same place. Then, we fly with Dad to California or Florida or somewhere else terrific!”
“What about Mom?” Nathan wanted to know.
“We’ll tell her we’ll both go with her next year,” David offered. “And maybe by then, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, and Glerk will have bought a professional sports team, or a rock concert arena, or something else fun.”
“It’s a business, David,” Nathan told him. “They don’t buy things; they don’t have fun. They just have meetings. They talk about contracts, and legal things, and real estate, and lots of other stuff that adults like and kids think is boring.”
“Well, then, we’ll worry about next year next year,” David said.
David thought his plane plan was plain genius (which wouldn’t be easy to say, so he didn’t say it out loud).
That evening at dinner, the minute Mr. Wohlfardt looked at his boys and uttered his nightly “Hey, you two, what’s new?” David cleared his throat and spoke up. Fortunately, he’d rehearsed what he wanted to say so there’d be no chance of any
thing going wrong.
“Dad, Mom,” David said, “Take Your Kid to Work Day is this week, and you both have such interesting jobs. So Nathan and I were thinking: the kid who gets to go with Dad—as I did last year—gets to travel to interesting places.”
“Interesting,” Nathan said for no apparent reason.
“And,” David continued, “while one of us is flying, the other one gets to sit in on meetings and learn all about business, which is absolutely fascinating.”
“Interesting,” Nathan said again for no apparent reason. “I mean, fascinating.”
David ignored his brother and continued: “But if we each go somewhere different, we don’t get to share the experience. You want us to be close, and so, we think instead of one going with Mom and one going with Dad, we should both go to the same place. And then next year, we’ll go together to the other place.”
“That’s a great idea,” Mr. Wohlfardt said.
“A great idea indeed,” Mrs. Wohlfardt said.
“Guys, I’m very touched,” Myron said as he entered the room with a meat loaf shaped like his head (something his brother Martin had also once served).
“I’m proud of you, boys,” Mr. Wohlfardt said.
“I am proud of you, indeed,” Mrs. Wohlfardt said. “So where will you go this year?”
“Well, Mom, glad you asked,” David said. “Nathan and I were thinking that we’d—”
“Hold it! Hold it! Hold it!” Myron said. “I’ve got a great idea. Since your mom’s place of business name starts with a J, and your dad’s—Wowie Airlines—starts with a W . . . you should go to hers this year, and then you can take a flight together next year.”
“Living their lives alphabetically! Brilliant!” Mr. Wohlfardt said.
“Brilliant indeed. Good thinking, Myron,” Mrs. Wohlfardt said. “With that simple suggestion, you prevented what could have been a hard decision and a big debate.”
But but but but but but but . . . , David thought.
But but but but but but but . . . , Nathan thought.
“So it’s settled,” Mr. Wohlfardt said. “This Thursday, Nathan and David Wohlfardt will spend nine hours at the conference table at Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, and Glerk! Big business, here they come!”
Nathan and David both smiled weakly.
“And while you’re there,” Mr. Wohlfardt continued, “I’ll be soaring through the skies en route to sunny Puerto Rico!”
“Great plan, Dave,” Nathan said mockingly.
“Ugh,” David answered, envisioning their dad’s plane taking off without them.
Deep down, David couldn’t really blame Myron. After all, he knew the nanny was only trying to help.
And even deeper down, he knew that if Myron were actually Martin, it would’ve somehow turned out that he talked his way into running things at Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, Jordan, and Glerk . . . and then flying to the sunny beaches of Puerto Rico. That was just Martin’s way.
Ugh.
Or as his mother would say, “Ugh indeed.”
It was about 144 hours into the days and nights of Myron at the Wohlfardt home.
Although David was happy with the evidence chart he and his brother were keeping, he decided that waiting and watching wasn’t good enough; he simply had to step up the investigation in his special master-spy style.
Now, David knew that Myron wouldn’t fall for DNA or fingerprinting tactics. He also realized that any attempt to outsmart Myron was doomed to fail. He considered telling the nanny that he was writing a school essay on his favorite person, and since he’d picked Myron, he needed to ask him 148 important questions. But David also knew that Myron would see right through that approach. And besides, who wanted to write a school essay for no reason?
No, David realized, to truly get at the heart of the man with the triple-rhyming name, he’d have to resort to something he’d rarely tried:
The truth.
David picked an afternoon when he knew Nathan wouldn’t be around. On that afternoon, Nathan had cartooning club practice or soccer practice or some other practice. David wasn’t really sure where Nathan was, because he didn’t really pay attention to what his brother was doing—he just knew there was something Nathan definitely needed to practice, and he was just glad his brother was nowhere in sight.
Myron, sitting on a kitchen stool, was extremely busy trying to look extremely busy—though on close examination, he wasn’t actually doing anything productive. In fact, he was using bananas to try to peel potatoes, which is pretty much what Martin used to do . . . just the other way around.
“Hey, Mylo,” David said to him. “Time for you and me to have a little chat.”
“How little?” the nanny wanted to know.
“Well, not really little at all,” David admitted. “Medium. Big. Huge. Gigantic.”
“What’s on your mind, Dancerman?” Myron responded.
David took a deep breath and, speaking faster than he meant to, but not as fast as the time years ago when he had to explain to Ibi, a former nanny, why he’d squirted a whole bottle of chocolate syrup into his mouth at four o’clock in the morning, blurted out, “Well, when you got here, we were pretty sure that you weren’t Myron, but were actually Martin. We thought that for some reason you were saying you were Myron, but that you were really Martin. Not Myron, but Martin, coming back to the family.”
Myron held up one finger.
“Bathroom break. I’ll be right back,” he said.
Myron scampered away. David waited and collected his thoughts.
When Myron returned, he said, “Sorry, really had to go. But I didn’t wash my hands, so I could get back to you sooner. Please continue, won’t you?”
“Um,” David continued, “you explained to us that Martin was your twin, and that made sense, so we accepted it.”
“Yes, good. Listen, when it came to kids, my mother got a buy one, get one free special. Just like yours did,” Myron said.
“Yeah, but . . . ,” David said.
“You had Martin for a while; now you’ve got me,” Myron said. “So what’s the problemomomo?”
“As we’ve gotten to know you, we’ve seen that you really do look like Martin. You act like him. You talk like him. You dress like him. You snore like him. You treat us just as he did. And you know things only he could know, like how many months he was here and where in the house his bedroom was. So we’ve come to the conclusion that you must be Martin,” David said.
“What if I am?” Myron wanted to know.
“Are you?” David asked.
“Am I what?” Myron asked.
“Martin?”
“No.”
“Myron?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Are you Martin?”
“No.”
“Nathan?”
“No.”
“Fred?”
“Who’s Fred?
“I don’t know. Are you David?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now we know each other’s name. I’m glad that’s over.”
“Wait, Myron,” David continued. “Why do you have a different last name than your twin?”
“Why do you have the same last name as yours?”
“We just do.”
“Well, we just don’t.”
“It’s very suspicious.”
“Why would my having a different last name than my twin make you suspicious?”
“I don’t know; it just does.”
“Okay, I’ll say it one more time. Listen carefully: I am Myron Hyron Dyron. My twin brother is Martin Healey Discount, who apparently looks like me, acts like me, and talks like me, dresses and snores like me, but is a totally different person than I am. I have two eyeballs. He has two other eyeballs. I have a tongue. He has a different tongue. I have a spleen. He has his own spleen. Get it? Got it? Good. And thank you for playing America’s favorite game show,
So You Think Myron Is Martin? ”
David shrugged and started to walk away.
“Wait, I do have one thing to say. Something that’s hard to admit, but something I must tell you at this time,” Myron said.
“Yes, Myron? Yes?” David said excitedly. “What? What? What what what? Tell me!”
“I haven’t blown my nose in seven weeks. But I plan to sometime later today.”
“Good luck with that,” David said, leaving the room not knowing anything more than he did before.
So much for trying to find something out by using the truth, David thought. I’ll never try that again.
David pulled Nathan into the family’s coat closet so he could secretly tell Nathan the whole story about the conversation he’d had with Martin. Sitting there in the dark, he spoke in hushed tones, and admitted to being pretty frustrated.
“Good try, I guess,” Nathan said. “But look, it’s possible we’ll never find out if Myron is really Myron. And ya know what? Maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“How could you ever say it doesn’t matter?” David said, louder than he’d meant to. “It matters.”
“Why?”
“Because it matters. It just does,” David said.
“That’s ridiculous!” Nathan yelled.
“What’s ridiculous?” Myron wanted to know as he opened the closet and stepped inside to join the boys in the dark. “Why are you yelling? And most of all, why are you boys sitting in the closet?”
“Um, er, we’re planning a surprise party for your birthday!” Nathan said.
“Don’t make me laugh!” Myron said. “My birthday’s not until the thirty-first, and you guys never plan anything this far in advance.”
“Gee, well . . . ,” David stammered.
“Listen, guys, whatever you’re doing, this is a totally weird place to be doing it. The only time you’ll ever catch me sitting in a dark closet is when I overhear my sports coat and parka fighting with each other and I have to step in and settle things. Or sometimes if I’m practicing my harmonica and don’t want to give the houseplants a headache. Otherwise, this is not the place to be, guys,” Myron scolded.
