“Dead serious, actually,” Ivan said.
Iris took a moment to digest this development so she could figure out the best way to bring her twin back to reality.
“Why?” she finally asked, so she’d know what to argue against.
Ivan shrugged his narrow, pointy shoulders. “Why does anyone play football? To make friends. Be on a team. Be a part of something.”
He might as well have slapped her. “You are a part of something.”
He stared at her blankly, clueless. Iris felt the back of her throat begin to burn.
“You and me,” she said. “You’re a part of us. We’re our own team. You don’t need a bunch of meathead jocks to give you that. You were born with it.”
Ivan sighed and turned to leave her bedroom. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. From the kitchen, they could hear their mother crashing around, probably looking for another bottle of the cheap booze she loaded up on each week. Iris wondered if they could buy alcohol in bulk at Costco. Of course, then they’d have to get a Costco membership, but it might still save them some money, which they needed. Anita had been fired (she preferred to say laid off, but that wasn’t the truth) three months ago. Money was tight. She liked to remind them of that at least once a day, even though she never gave them any money. Iris used the cash she earned babysitting to pay for lunches and school clothes, and more often than not to buy groceries for all three of them. She was lucky their neighbor paid her fifteen bucks an hour and liked to go out a lot, otherwise they’d all starve.
“Mom’s drunk again,” Ivan said, speaking more to himself than to Iris, but she responded anyway.
“Yeah, the sun must have risen this morning.”
Ivan looked back at her; his eyes were like those of a person at a funeral. Watery. Fighting to maintain control.
“We’re not normal, Iris,” her twin said.
She nodded, sort of proud. “I know.”
“I want to be normal.”
And then came the news that stole Ivan from her. He didn’t even tell her himself. She had to find out in the worst way possible. From their mother while she was blackout drunk.
It was summertime, the heat in their house oppressive. The air had weight, slowed everything down. The air conditioner had died, and Anita said they didn’t have the money to get it fixed. Iris assumed that was why Ivan had been spending so much time away from the house.
Then she started to notice he was getting a tan, and that his waify, garden hose arms had filled out a bit. She wanted to ask her twin if he’d been working out at the gym, if maybe she could join him, even though she hated working out. But she was lonely. Iris did not have friends. She’d never needed them, because she’d always had, and always would have, her brother. Why bother with superficial relationships when she had such a unique bond with another human being? How could any other friendship compare?
Iris was in her room one evening, reading something she couldn’t pay attention to and wondering when Ivan would be home and what, if anything, there would be to eat for dinner, when Anita burst through the door. She had a bottle of five-dollar rotgut vodka in one hand and a piece of paper in the other.
Iris sat up, dropping her forgettable book, suddenly afraid. Her mother had never hit her, but she was vindictive. Anita reveled in emotional torture when she could find a way to get at the twins, like it was revenge for them being two people, for ripping her insides apart in their attempt to vacate her body.
Anita waved the piece of paper in Iris’s face. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. He didn’t tell you, did he?” Though she was stumbling around the room like she was on a ship going through rough waters, her voice was surprisingly clear. Not a trace of her usual drunken slur. She was obviously trying hard to be articulate, over-pronouncing each word. She didn’t want Iris to miss anything.
“Guess what this is. It is a fucking bill for the football gear your brother is going to need next year. Ha! Who knew that delicate little boy of mine would ever become a jock. I expected him to spend a lot of time in locker rooms, but, you know…on his knees.” She cackled at her joke. She’d been insinuating that Ivan was gay since he was eight years old and she had caught the twins playing dress up as each other. Ivan looked just like Iris when he put on her dresses, but after Anita ridiculed him, he never wanted to play that game again.
Iris snatched the paper from her mother’s hand and read it carefully to be sure. She had to be sure.
And now she was.
Outside, her window lit up as heat lightning flashed somewhere close by. The thunder wasn’t far behind.