It wasn’t what the woman wanted; separating them would make her job easier, but the captain made her swear, and she, a failed mother herself, agreed.
During the following years, as infants, toddlers, young boys, then teens, Silas and Abe moved across the Midwest, from Kansas to Iowa to Indiana, coming to rest in Illinois. Their various foster parents, four sets in total, all of good cheer, made sure the boys had plenty to eat, warm comforters on their beds, books to read and television to watch, basketball hoops for H-O-R-S-E, and the benefits of fine public-school educations. And they were good boys—both blond, sunny, and light—handsome boys popular at the schools they attended, and with the girls who sidled up. Sweet and shy girls liked them too, not just the fast ones whose hips molded early into sensuous curves, whose breasts jiggled inside red or black bras.
For the past five years, Silas and Abe had lived in a three-story house in Chicago. Of all the houses they’d lived in, this one felt most like home. Their foster parents were an accountant and his piano-teacher wife. Short people from hardy stock, although the hardy stock was unclear because both wore thick glasses, were blind without them. The boys called them Frederick and Shirley, but when talking about their days at school, about their nightly and future dreams, sometimes their minds slipped, and to themselves, they replaced Frederick with Dad, Shirley with Mom. That was how close the twins felt to them.
On their eighteenth birthday, they crashed down the stairs for Shirley’s annual birthday-king breakfast—pancakes, waffles, omelets, thirty strips of bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Bottles of boysenberry syrup and maple and a jar of Marshmallow Fluff on the dining-room table, along with an enormous sheet cake sprouting twin sets of eighteen candles. Streamers decorated the room, and from the ceiling, a homemade sign read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! YOUR FUTURE AWAITS!
When the platters were emptied, the orange juice finished, the cake plates smeared in frosting, Shirley shooed them into the living room. Silas and Abe resisted. They had been raised well by all their fosters, to bring their manners with them wherever they were, to help out. “We’ll clean up,” the boys said, and Shirley shook her head. “Not necessary. We have a gift for each of you, the kind of gift that gives and gives.”
Under the arch that led into the living room, they slipped off their shoes, Shirley’s rule: No shoes on the carpeting. But she surprised them. “Not necessary this time. Tie those tennis shoes back up right now. Keep ’em on, you’re going to need them. Now go and sit on the couch.”
The boys retied their laces and tiptoed over the carpet, looking at each other sideways, acknowledging silently the freakishness of being allowed to do the forbidden. They sat on the couch, just inches apart, and in came Frederick and Shirley, both barefooted, each wrestling a large present in their arms. They placed the wrapped packages just beyond Silas and Abe’s tennis-shoed feet.
Shirley sat down at the baby grand and played the birthday song. Frederick clapped his hands and sang along. Then Shirley twirled around on the bench and said, “Ready? All right, go! Rip those bows right off, tear through the paper. We’re not saving any of it this time.”
The boys looked at each other again. What was meant by all these new instructions, the breaking of her inviolable rules? Shirley had a trunk in the basement filled with used wrapping paper, ironed precisely, and bows, second-, third-, and fourth-hand, that she kept in plastic bags.
They shrugged and did as instructed.
When the wrapping paper was off, standing before them were brand-new rolling suitcases, the fabric in army green. The suitcases were nice, but not what the twins had been hoping for, which was one of two things: to be adopted by the Jacksons or given a used car they could share.
“Thank you very much,” they each said.
“That’s just the first gift,” Frederick said.
“Yes, like we said, this is a gift that will keep on giving,” Shirley said. “Go on, boys, unzip the suitcases.”
Inside the bags, each found new T-shirts, socks, underpants, jeans, and pajamas, and at the bottom, underneath the everyday attire, the boys pulled out black suits, crisp white shirts flat in their store packaging, marked 13 ?-inch neck, one tie each, in the same design, Silas’s in red, Abe’s in blue. The boys were confused. Shirley had recently taken them shopping for the summer clothes folded away upstairs in their shared room. They had not worn suits to their high school graduation and wondered why they would be given them now, when summer was just starting, when they would be lifeguarding at the public pool, in swim trunks and flip-flops all day long. They were looking forward to marking themselves with zinc oxide. Their faces in tribal patterns.
“Thank you, Frederick,” said Silas.
“Thank you, Shirley,” said Abe.
“You’ve been so generous to us,” Silas said.
“Why suits?” asked Abe.
The Jacksons did not answer, but Frederick said, “Now put everything back in and zip up the suitcases.” Which the boys did.
“Now roll them over here, to the front door,” Shirley instructed, and the boys obeyed.
When the twins were at the front door, with their suitcases beside them, and Frederick and Shirley facing them, like short tackling blocks, Frederick said, “Put out your hands for the last birthday gift.”
Two white envelopes. They peeked inside; a wad of crisp bills, marked by Shirley’s iron.
“That, boys, is a thousand dollars each,” Frederick said, and Shirley reached between them and opened the front door. The boys turned their heads and looked outside. The four of them stood there in silence, staring through the open door, down the walk lined in daisies, to the street, where cars were neatly parked. A little girl on a yellow bike rode past and beeped her horn.
“It’s the way it works,” Frederick said at last. “We really are sorry.”
“Wait, what?” Silas said.
“What works what way?” Abe asked, his eyes wide, never moving off Frederick’s face.
Then Shirley said, “You’ve been selected, so there’s no reason to delay the inevitable. Anyway, we need your room for the next set of needy kids.”