Every Last One

by Anna Quindlen

  "And the ophthalmologists?" I said, but it was not a day to try to jolly him.

  "I guess," Max had said when we asked him if he would talk to someone about how he was feeling. The painters had finished turning the guest room a mustard color that Ruby said might as well have been called Depression Yellow, and Max's furniture had been moved from one side of the hall to the other. He got the old bunk beds, since it turned out that he didn't care about a double bed the way Alex did. There was something so sad about those bunk beds, the lower all tumbled and untidy, the top one neatly made, waiting for the kind of sleepovers that, at least for the moment, were unlikely to take place. After only two weeks of school, a counselor had called to say that Max was a "student of concern" and that several of his teachers had reported that his homework was not complete. His cast had come off, but he still held his arm at a right angle by his side, and his handwriting was crabbed and illegible. "Did somebody go in my room?" he would say if I emptied the hamper or cleared the crusty dishes from the night table. Sometimes I swore I was in an empty house, and then I would hear the faint creak of a floorboard. The week before he had finally left his room after school to come here, to see Dr. Vagelos, to pronounce him acceptable.

  "What's he like?" I had asked.

  "He wears glasses," Max said, carrying a slice of pie upstairs. I put a hand out to touch him, and it slid along the length of his arm as though I had stroked the banister.

  Glasses, a beard, a slight stoop, a cardigan: It was all in the name. So Glen and I are both surprised when a young man in a striped shirt unbuttoned at the throat opens the varnished oak door. He smiles as he shakes hands and settles us both. Thirty-five, perhaps a very boyish forty, wearing the rectangular black-framed glasses I associate with fashionable architects. My heart sinks.

  "We've had two useful sessions," he says of Max, leaning back in his chair slightly.

  "I don't want to sound insensitive, but all this just reads like puberty to me," says Glen, lacing his fingers together in what I take for a doctor-to-doctor gesture. "I was depressed for most of high school."

  "That's interesting," Dr. Vagelos says.

  "Not clinically depressed. But you know what I mean. The girls don't like me, I don't like algebra, my parents are a pain in the butt."

  "Do you think Max might be clinically depressed?" I say. Nancy has told me the medications are wonderful nowadays, although how she knows I can't imagine. Her children run on endorphins and milk.

  "Is there anyone in either of your families who suffers from depression?" the doctor asks evenly.

  My stolid mother, his peripatetic brother, my brother the workaholic, his father the alcoholic.

  "No," says Glen.

  "Maybe," I say. "Undiagnosed."

  "Look," says Dr. Vagelos, "why don't you give me some time to really get to know Max? He and I have had two good conversations. He seems willing to talk."

  "Not to us," I say.

  "It could be he's worried about upsetting you."

  "He's upsetting us by not talking," Glen says, and I hear a slight quaver in his voice. So much for puberty, girls, and algebra. For purposes of our union, he carries the stoicism, I carry the concern. At times like this, I want what he's having.

  "He loves you both very much. And he loves his sister and his brother."

  "He said that?" I ask.

  "He did. But he also said--and I tell you this because he said I could--that he feels like a loser. Especially compared with his brother." He looks down at a legal pad on his desk. "His brother, Alex."

  "That's ridiculous," says Glen, his voice strong again. "We've never indicated in any way that Alex is superior to Max."

  "The twin relationship is complex," the doctor says, and suddenly I remember a day when I was sitting in the rocking chair by the window, trying to nurse both babies at the same time. Their legs were entwined, and each was trying to push the other away with his splayed feet. "They don't like each other," Ruby had said solemnly, standing by the side of the chair with her thumb in her mouth, twisting a curl.

  "Of course they do, pumpkin," I said. "They were inside together all this time."

  "If they like each other, then how come they're kicking?" she replied.

  "They're fraternal twins," I tell the doctor. "If you saw them together, you wouldn't even think they were related."

  "And that carries its own particular set of issues, doesn't it? In the twin relationship, issues of difference can be even more significant than issues of sameness."

  "I'm just not sure that's at the root of his problems now," I say.

  "What's your best guess?" the doctor says, looking into my eyes.

  "I think he feels like he doesn't belong anywhere anymore," I say, and, shocked and dismayed at my own words, I begin to cry. "I love him so much. I don't want him to feel bad about who he is." Glen pats my arm gently. I look, and he is crying, too.

  "I actually think he knows that," Dr. Vagelos says. "I think we're ahead of the curve here in terms of how Max feels valued by the two of you. But how the world values him may be a different matter, and that goes to how the world values his brother." Dr. Vagelos picks up a newspaper clipping from beneath the legal pad. I know what it is, even though I am still wiping my eyes. "Latham First-Year Soccer Standout," the headline says. It's a feature from the local paper called Player of the Week, and two weeks ago they chose Alex. Glen sent the clipping to his father, and his father sent Alex a copy of the story laminated onto an enormous wooden plaque.

  "Did Max tell you he plays the drums?" I ask.

  "Yes, he did. And that he's an ace computer programmer. But you should know that at some level he doesn't feel that his gifts are important. And he doesn't feel he's entitled to his negative feelings. That's another reason he doesn't feel comfortable discussing them with you. He says that he has a great home, great parents, great siblings, and that he should be happy because of all that. In some ways, he's as distressed by what he sees as the wrongness of his emotions as by anything else. I think one of the phrases he kept repeating was 'I just can't help it.'"

  "So maybe it's chemical," I say.

  "That's certainly something I'll be considering. But we have a lot of ground to cover. I wanted to talk to you, and he wanted me to talk to you, to let you know that we think we can work together."

  "We appreciate that," says Glen. "You come highly recommended. I'm impressed that you thought to clip the newspaper story."

  "I didn't see this myself, Dr. Latham. Max brought it to me, I think to show me what he was up against. He has another copy that he kept himself."

  "I swear," I say, trying to laugh, "I never dressed them alike."

  Dr. Vagelos smiles again. He has a warm smile; his whole face is in it, especially his eyes. "As I said, sometimes difference can be more of an issue than similarity."

  "You obviously have given the fact that he's a twin a lot of thought," Glen says.

  "It's my area of expertise. I'm sorry I assumed you knew that. I assumed that's why you sent Max to me as opposed to someone else."

  "I had no idea," I say.

  "It's a strange and mysterious relationship," he says, looking down at the pad again. "Think about it--both twins hear the maternal heartbeat in utero. But, because of simple positioning, one sometimes hears it more faintly than the other." And at the thought I begin to cry again.

  He stands to hand me a tissue from the box on the corner of his desk. Both Glen and I rise simultaneously, as though we were doing calisthenics. Instead of the outstretched hand this time, the doctor reaches to touch each of us lightly on the forearm.

  "I think Max and I can work together well," he repeats.

  In the doorway, Glen turns back and says, "How did you come to concentrate on twins?"

  "I'm a twin myself," Dr. Vagelos says, and he gestures to a photograph on the bookcase of two men standing side by side, their arms around each other. At this distance I can't make out faces, but it's easy to see that one is a full head sho
rter than the other.

  "Your brother taught you about differences as well as similarities?" I say with a laugh.

  "My brother has Down syndrome," he says, "so that would be a yes."

  Neither of us speaks in the car as we drive past the hospital and turn onto Main Street. Someone beeps, and we both raise our hands in a wave. "Who was that?" Glen says.

  "I have no idea." We edge around roadwork and then turn onto our street. The back of my truck is filled with mums, a blanket of yellow and orange.

  "What was he, about sixteen?" Glen says, looking straight ahead as the car idles at the curb.

  "He's younger than I thought he would be," I say. "Did you like him?"

  Glen nods. His shirt collar is askew in the back, and I pat it into place. "All I care about is whether Max likes him," he says.

  Max is responsible for our Halloween party, which has become such a tradition that when I once suggested we skip it my family behaved as though I had blasphemed in church. "Mom," Alex had said in a peremptory fashion, "if we don't have a Halloween party what will people do for Halloween?"

  Of course, everyone in town does not come to our Halloween party, although in recent years, as friends of the kids brought their own friends, and their girlfriends, and sometimes even their parents, it began to seem that way. As I drive down to the minimart to buy more ice, or some extra marshmallows for the cocoa, I see lots of families doing what we once did, many years ago: adults walking slowly down the sidewalk, sometimes with a baby dressed as a pumpkin or an angel on one hip, while ahead run princesses, pirates, skeletons, and ghosts. I can tell how long they've been out and about by the gray shadow at the hem of a white satin dress, by the slow plod as the bag full of candy grows heavy, by the tempers of mothers and fathers standing on the street: Just four more houses and, I swear, we're going home.

  Ruby loved Halloween, loved to dance up the front walk to strangers, to announce, her consonants precise, "I am Sleeping Beauty." Or the Little Mermaid. Or a ballerina. Glen and I each carried a boy that first year--one a bunny, the other a cat. "Dr. Latham!" one or two of the older people had said as they looked over Ruby's head to the two of us waiting across the lawn. "I'll see you next month."

  But when Max was four our routine altered. He would no longer approach a strange house. He stood on the sidewalk, dressed as a fireman with a hat so red and shiny you could see your own fun-house face in its surface, and refused to go farther. From time to time during the next few weeks, he would feed us a clue at the dinner table or at bedtime: We were not supposed to go to strangers' houses. We were not supposed to speak to strangers. We were not supposed to take candy from them.

  "Halloween you can," Alex said. "I got good candy, and I don't know how come I had to give you some 'cause you were too scared to go."

  "Maxie, I've been going out on Halloween for a long time, and nothing bad ever happens. It's fun! You'll like it!" seven-year-old Ruby had added brightly, in the same voice she used to tell him how wonderful school would be.

  Max shook his head. The next year, he put on his costume and stayed in the house. I stayed with him as he handed out Hershey bars to the other children. Afterward he put three Hershey bars in his own bag, then traded Alex for a peanut-butter cup. Ruby refused to trade. She had lost patience.

  Thus, the Halloween party was born. That was not how we explained it to others. A disaster provided cover. When the boys were in first grade, on Mischief Night--"which is such a lovely poetic name for horrible mass destruction," said Nancy, who had just become my friend at the time--four juniors at the high school had decided to try to bring down a lamppost by chaining it to a trailer hitch. They had indeed brought the lamp down; it smashed through the back of the truck and grazed the head of one of the boys, who went on to spend nearly eight months in a rehab facility learning to tie his shoes and recognize the alphabet. The town council imposed a Mischief Night and Halloween curfew of 8 P.M. for anyone under the age of twenty-one.

  "That so has to be unconstitutional and, like, completely illegal," some teenager will say in our kitchen at some point during early fall. But no one has done anything about it in the years since it first went into effect. The parents of the little kids, weary of complaints about sore feet and heavy bags, have them home long before then. The parents of the older kids are happy to have someone else assume the burden of getting them off the streets at a reasonable hour. The parents of teenagers are delighted that the opportunity for mayhem is curtailed by law.

  And it was a godsend for us, because it enabled us to create the Halloween party without having to explain that it was because our son was terrified of trick-or-treating. Our friends brought candy and their costumed children. There was a pumpkin pinata and apple-bobbing. We set up a benign haunted house in the basement, with an illuminated witch who cackled on a continuous loop and a ghost that swooped on a zip line. Max was allowed to see everything in daylight before the evening of the party so that he wouldn't be afraid.

  The children are all old enough to come on their own now, but most of their parents still arrive, bearing plastic pumpkins full of Milky Ways and Swedish Fish. Some of them even dress up. Glen wears a dark suit and a mask of whoever happens to be president at the time. Alex always wears what I think of as a man-of-action costume; this year he is a member of the Boston Red Sox, which hardly seems to count as a disguise. Ruby's outfit is always more of a fashion statement: This year she is a turn-of-the-century newsboy with her hair under a flat cap and knickers set off by red suspenders. She already had everything she needed in her closet.

  Max seems a little better these days, or, at least, no worse. There have been no more calls from school, and now that they are in different rooms, he and Alex seem more civil to each other, although Ruby says that Alex still ignores his brother at school. "I guess just because they're twins everyone thought they would always be friends," she said ruefully.

  "Did you talk to Max about that?"

  "He barely speaks to me, Mommy. I hope he outgrows this before I leave for college."

  I felt a terrible twinge at the thought. "Oh, Lord, I hope it happens long before then," I replied.

  I am relieved to peer out the dining-room window at dusk and see a silver robot at the end of the walk, handing out Hershey bars to small children, a few of whom pat his big boxy body. Max still likes to be the one to dispense candy to the smallest trick-or-treaters. The box costume is his specialty. One year he was a set of dice, another a box of crayons. His greatest achievement was a refrigerator, with a door that opened, although it seemed ready to tear free any minute. Inside were cardboard shelves with some empty containers--milk, yogurt, a discarded pickle jar--and, atop the foodstuffs, Max's face, peering out from what would have been the freezer compartment.

  The robot lumbers toward the house to get more candy. I wave. He raises a hand in an old ski glove painted silver. He is walking stiffly, an authentic automaton. He must have made this in the garage or the house would have reeked of spray paint.

  "Great costume," I call.

  Muffled by the box, I hear "Thanks."

  The lawn is studded with cornstalks twined together with raffia and large piles of gourds and pumpkins. There are big terra-cotta pots of gold mums on either side of the front door. I'm glad we do this. I sometimes think of having grandchildren who will believe that people always have Halloween parties, who will gently mock Grandpa in his presidential mask and wonder why Grandma doesn't wear a costume. "She never has," one of my children will say. I know this may well be a delusion, that it's possible there will be no grandchildren, or they will live half a world away, or their parents will be too busy to give more than the most cursory notice to Halloween. It's only before the realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.

  Almost as soon as I put the trivets on the table and the spiced nuts in the bowls, the guests begin to pour in, until I am not sure I know who is here and who is not. Nancy is always dressed as a witch. "Totally appropriate," she says at some
point every year, her black synthetic hair falling around her face. Sarah is dressed as a nurse, perhaps to annoy her mother. I am surprised to see Ben's mother, Olivia, with her blond hair in ringlets, wearing a girlish gingham dress. As small as she is, she looks like a child. Ben has disappeared out back with Alex, but her three younger boys surround her. They are dressed in bear suits. "Goldilocks!" I say, laughing, and hug her. "This porridge is just right," she says airily, and we both laugh. This is the first year she has come to the party, and I'm touched that she made such an effort.

  Sandy comes with Rachel, and is dressed--barely dressed--like a Playboy Bunny. Rachel is wearing a Wonder Woman costume, which is really just a Playboy Bunny costume in red, white, and blue. "Wowwee," I say to Rachel, who blushes fiercely. Here is what I know about dressing like your teenage daughter: She will always look better than you. I look around for Ruby.

  "Have you seen your buddy?" I ask Sarah, who is listening to Eric's heart with her stethoscope.

  "I think she went upstairs. Her hair keeps falling out of her hat. Maybe she's going to braid it up."

  "How's his heart?"

  Sarah listens carefully. "He doesn't have one."

  Eric says, "I gave it to you."

  "Ooooohhh," Sarah and I groan together. "You are so slick," Sarah adds.

  The macaroni and cheese is running low, and I take another pan from the oven. Glen is eating ham with his fingers. "Make yourself a plate," I say. "I'll just pick," he says.

  I carry the trash out back and see that most of the children of a certain age are standing around in the yard, only half costumed. Ben has unzipped his bear suit and pulled it down to his waist. For once it hasn't rained, the great Halloween catastrophe. "Noooo," Ruby would wail if we made her wear a slicker over her sequins and satin. Both my boys are talking to a pirate with an enormous gold hoop earring and long dark curls half hidden by a knotted headscarf. Through the eyeholes of his black mask, I see the glitter of green.