The Invisible Twin: Epilogue

 

 

            When Amy entered the house, no one was home. She looked around and noticed everything was as tidy as a museum; this wasn’t at all like the cozy home it had been when she and her younger twin brothers were growing up.

            The only thing besides the worn, folded blanket on the back of the sofa that spoke of a lived-in home was the book on the side able. She looked at the title, and recognized the book Kit had forgotten from his visit. Since she’d be in Cardiff at the end of the week, he’d asked her to stop by for it. She had deliberately chosen a time when her mother would be out and her father was still at work.

            While she loved visiting her parents, today she had quite a bit to do, and simply didn’t want to be delayed.

            As she picked up the book, what looked like a letter fell out of it. She stooped to pick it up and saw, “To Brynn Michael Evans from Christopher Morgan Evans, Bangor, Wales.” scrolled across the empty back page . The handwriting wasn’t the scrawl of his childhood, but his adult penmanship.

            She wondered when Kit would have even needed to write to Brynn. She couldn’t think of them ever being apart for more than the length of a class in school or one of Bryn’s football matches. Once Kit left for University in 1983, Brynn was gone.

            Curiosity got the better of her, and she opened the pages and read.

                                                                       

 

                                                                                                            17 April, 1990

Dear Brynn,

            To anyone reading this, I must surely seem mad. I was told by wiser heads that in order to move on, I need to confront my demons.

            Strange as it is for me to even think this, much less write it, you have been my demon for the last seven years. It’s only now that I can tell you what has disturbed me since the accident.

            Of course, regaining consciousness after my injuries to find you had not survived was the most exquisitely unbearable pain. For several days, despite my hopes and dreams for the future, I had no desire to remain on this earth since you were not on it.

Your hopes and dreams had been crushed by a vehicle driven by one who had no business behind the wheel. There was no satisfaction in knowing that driver had also perished; he had led a long and distinguished life.

My lack of desire for life was no match for the medical prowess of the doctors. Their refusal to allow me to give up kept me alive.

But before the hospital, before the crash, the two of us were happy knowing our own secrets, suspecting each other’s. I hoped a certain girl I’d met at the party where you lost your virginity – I knew that before you admitted it – would be at the one we were going to that night. Having read some of your journals since, I know you had similar expectations of seeing someone that night. Whether or not our expectations would have been met, I’ll never know.

            As the headlamps hurtled toward your door, I screamed, not from pain – yet – but horror at your being mangled. What I never told anyone, no matter how they pushed or why, was that you screamed, too. Your head was turned toward the car bearing down on ours. The doctors said that was why your spinal cord was severed. An internal decapitation, they called it. But in the seconds before impact you screamed, “Duw, dwi ddim eisiau marw! Kit, helpa fi!”

            I didn’t understand why you said, “God, don’t let me die! Kit, help me,” in Welsh. You seldom spoke Welsh, even to me.

            And in the interminable instant just before impact, we both reverted to our secret twin speak, the language everyone insisted we’d left behind before we started nursery. But we both know better. Simple phrases, the odd word, remain with us, even today. Someevie – our expression for “I love you,” came out of both of our mouths – or perhaps we only thought it to each other. I can hear, even now, your 17-year-old voice saying it. Someevie, Kit. Someevie, Brynn. Ekee nom: Be awesome.

            But as toddlers, we didn’t know the word awesome. Ekee nom was “be the whole world.” Only when we were older did ekee nom mean “be awesome.” You told me that every time before I went onstage. I still hear you say it every opening night, or before the first table read for a film or telly show.

            And as I was slammed against the side of the car, and you were crushed by the attacking car, I knew the instant your soul left your body, even though I told everyone I didn’t remember what happened. There was a horrid attempt for you to take a breath that couldn’t come because the nerves that allowed it had been severed, the moment you knew you were dying. A broken rib punctured one of my lungs, and as I tried to take a breath, I had a similar experience, although not from the same cause.

            And in that instant, my head was flooded with more twin speak words than I thought I knew, yet I understood it all. Someevie, Kit. Ekee nom alegat. Be awesome for us both.

            There was much more, far more than anyone outside the two of us would have accepted as possible in that instant. Yet, it was like someone was trying to fill a pitcher with the tap opened full, trying to fill it before the water was cut off. I know the things you said, and they were not things I would have thought to say. It’s still too painful to recall it all at once, much less translate it from twin speak.

            Your insistence at my being awesome likely had a good deal to do with my failure to die in the first few weeks.

            Surviving without you, trying to figure out a way forward, was sometimes more painful than my physical injuries. Mr. Mac, the psychologist I went to, was a great help. Yet, despite his having also been a twin who lost his other, sometimes he simply didn’t know what he was talking about. Actually, I was surprised Mam and Da even allowed me to seek psychological help.

            I started to read your journals to try to learn what I didn’t know about you as well as to find meaning in everything you poured into the instant before you died. If only I’d read certain entries early on, I could have avoided some emotional pain from others.

            I made the mistake of being taken in by Tegan Davies, your twin groupie nemesis. Had I only known about her from your experiences, I could have avoided her. Still, she burrowed in when I was most vulnerable, so any kindness, no matter how evilly intended, I drank in without a second thought.

            Even when I seemed to be moving forward, my desperation to protect you made me make the most egregious mistakes socially. But then, we both know I was the one without social skills.

            It took a few years of walking into emotional walls before I realized I was angry. Mr. Mac knew it – he’d gone through the same loss under different circumstances – and tried to get me to examine who I was angry with.

            I thought it was Mam – you were her boy as I was Da’s – and she was never comfortable with the things I did to heal. I frequently made her cry, although I didn’t mean to. 

            Sometimes I thought it was everyone. Perhaps Tegan. Perhaps a girl at Uni who did something similar to what Tegan did. But the girl at Uni was reacting to my cavalier behavior. In hindsight, I’m not proud of the way I treated her.

            But the anger stayed long after I’d healed from those experiences. Mr. Mac proved to be right in that instance. I was angry with you.

            I was angry with you for dying. I was angry because I felt I didn’t know you as well as I should, especially when several people – including Mam – said things about you that I didn’t think were true. And I began to doubt my understanding of you at all.

            I couldn’t tell any of those people the twin speak things you’d said. I began to doubt you’d said them at all. It might have been simply wishful thinking on my part. Maybe you didn’t say them. Perhaps you’d simply stolen my soul and left me with nothing.

            No, you were never like that in life. You couldn’t be that way in death, a death over which you had no control.

            When I recognized that, I finally started to heal.

            I confess I didn’t come to those conclusions on my own. Nancy made me recognize that.

            I don’t know if you knew Nancy. She’s the girl you teased me for snogging at the infamous party. She came back into my life at the end of Uni, and has continued as my Cariad to the present. No one else knows, but I intend to propose later this year.

She was supposed to be my date to the BAFTAs, but had to have an emergency appendectomy the day before. I asked Mam to go with me, but she didn’t think it was appropriate for a boy to take his mam. So, I asked Amy, and after some coaxing, she agreed. It turns out she wears the same size clothes as Nancy, and was, as she put it, going elegant in Nancy’s gown – Nancy insisted. Oh, and I won the BAFTA – for my first film, too – in case you were wondering.

            So, now I think I’ve got over being angry with you. None of it was your doing. I’ve been trying to make my life something of which you would be proud – since I’m living for us both.

            Do you remember when we used to laugh when people would ask us what it was like to be a twin? We always said we didn’t know what it was like not to be a twin. Well, now I do.  I can’t say it holds a candle to being a twin. I don’t know if singles-from-birth feel the loneliness. That’s the hardest part. It’s a loneliness that no one else can fill.

            You were the best brother. Diolch yn fawr.

            And in case you didn’t know, Someeve, Brynn. Ekee nom.

            Love from this side of the abyss,

            Kit

 

            Amy folded the pages of the letter, and returned them to the back of the book.

            She thought, after Brynn’s death, that she and Kit had become closer. Some people even suggested she was a surrogate for Brynn. Now she knew they were wrong.

            Kit’s openness in what he’d written – perhaps believing that no one would ever see it while he was alive – was shocking. She wasn’t sure she could take it all in. And she’d have to pretend she didn’t know these things. He wouldn’t tell anyone, especially if he hadn’t told Mr. Mac.

            She did wonder why he’d committed this information to paper. Brynn had been so good at keeping a journal, and Kit had been so rubbish at it. Perhaps bursts of candor were the closest he could come.

            Armed with the book Kit had asked for, she left the house.

           

An Open Letter

 

Sometimes I wonder if I’m the only one in the world who is bothered by seemingly insignificant things that happened in childhood. I remember some very forgettable incidents, often ones that embarrassed me at the time. The thing is, remembering them, I am as embarrassed by what I did or said as I was at the time.

For me, time doesn’t really heal. It doesn’t make the truly bothersome little details fade.

No, I don’t remember everything that ever happened in my life, but people have frequently remarked, when I’ve told them something from my childhood, “How do you remember that?”

Well, I do because it still bothers me. And sometimes these things make me think that really I’m a bad person.

I remember happy things as well, or funny things. How do people not remember things they did when they were four? That was one of the best years of my life!

So, this month I thought I would attempt to exorcise a ghost from my past. It’ll probably give some a chuckle to think that I could recall something anyone else would have forgotten about by the week after it happened, at the latest.

Here is my open letter to my third grade teacher.

 

Dear Miss Betty,

When you dashed into the classroom and asked, “Who screamed?” no one was more shocked than I was. I had no idea what you were talking about. I did not hear a scream. I thought you were crazy. Perhaps it was something that happened outside in the hall, where you were, monitoring students lined up to get on the next school bus.

Here’s what happened in the room: Everyone waiting for the other buses was chatting quietly with those around them. We were standing or sitting. No one was being loud or running around.

Since it was the first week of school, we weren’t wearing uniforms yet. The sash on my dress had come undone. I couldn’t tie it behind my back. I wasn’t that good at tying yet. I asked Debbie to tie the sash. She did. She said something funny, and I laughed. I didn’t think I laughed very loudly.

Then suddenly you were in the room asking the question. Debbie looked at me and said I did it. I didn’t know why she said that. No one screamed that I heard.

No one admitted it, and Debbie was the only one looking at me. In fact, everyone else looked as confused as I felt. I was the last person you asked, so I assume you thought it was me anyway, and were giving me a chance to admit it. But I didn’t scream, and I didn’t hear anyone else scream. All I did was laugh. That’s why I didn’t admit it when you asked.

Why would I admit to something I didn’t do? But you asked everyone else and they all said no. The fact that Debbie kept saying I did it was the only reason I said yes when you asked. I didn’t scream. I just got punished for something I didn’t do.

I thought telling an eight-year-old to write a 100-word apology was a bit much. Quite a bit much. Writing 25 times, “I’m sorry,” and whatever else you wanted to make the sentence longer, would have been sufficient. I’m sure you not only didn’t count the words, you also didn’t even look at it. I’m certain that as soon as we were all out of the room you threw it in the trash. So much for overseeing a punishment.

I wish I’d explained it to my mother and she’d written a note on what happened. I wouldn’t have been able to write this letter when I was eight. I didn’t have the words. As it was, it took the entire weekend to write the apology.

Even if I’d had to write a punishment anyway, perhaps having me write a paragraph or two explaining why I had done what I did would have been both a punishment to me and a bit of enlightenment to you. Perhaps it would have alerted you and my parents that something was going on in my head that I wasn’t aware of, and perhaps needed attention. I doubt anyone would have done anything about it, though. I do know something similar has happened to me several times since, over the course of my life.

I have been carrying the resentment of the stupidity of the punishment, the certainty that after this incident you did not trust my honesty, and probably didn’t like me, ever since. I have also carried the desire to explain to you what happened all these years. There have been times when the memory of this incident has been part of what kept me up at night, knowing I could never set the record straight.

I liked you as a teacher. I thought, other than on this one occasion, that you were fair. I thought you taught me well. But I have always felt that this one incident put a wall of misunderstanding between us.

I’ve occasionally thought about what it would be like if we ever met once I was an adult. I know I’d bring up the incident. It was probably nothing to you. You’d probably say you didn’t recall it. But I’d have the chance to let you know how much of an impact it had on me, how much of a burden it’s been to me for all of these years. It might shock you how much it has continued to bother me. It shaped my beliefs about my teachers.

When people ask me about school, about favorite teachers, etc., I tell them I don’t think any of my teachers liked me. I don’t mean that they hated me. I mean that I was nothing to them. To some I may have been an annoyance. I think I was that to you. But I was never in anyone’s top 10, or even top 25 out of 50 students in their class. I really doubt that most of my teachers even remember me. I was that invisible.

Maybe this isn’t true.

I had the opportunity to contact a seventh grade teacher once, many, many years after seventh grade. I wanted her permission to dedicate one of my novels to her. She was the person who got me started writing.

She made us keep a journal. We had to write at least two pages each week. I usually wrote many more pages than that. And I would put a note in asking her to read my work. That was my favorite assignment. I’ve kept that journal and read parts of it from time to time. The pieces were awful. Perhaps it wasn’t so awful considering a 12-year-old wrote it, but some of it is embarrassing now.

But it lit the flame for me.

What I started as an assignment in seventh grade has continued to this day.

No, I’m not a famous author. I probably never will be. I doubt that anyone follows my books, or looks for new ones.

I don’t write in one particular genre. I simply write stories that I’d like to read. I write the books I can’t find in the bookstore.

And I’ve read my stories. I like them. Maybe I’m the only one. But there’s satisfaction in being able to tell a story, with befriending characters that are the people I always wanted to meet and never did. Most of them are people who, in real life, probably wouldn’t have me as a friend.

But my seventh grade teacher started me down that road, and I wanted to publicly recognize her for that gift. As I spoke with her by phone – she was an elderly nun in a nursing home – she gradually remembered a few things about me. She asked what my maiden name was, and when I told her, she did seem to remember me. So, perhaps I wasn’t as forgettable as I thought.

Maybe you would remember me. You might even remember the incident. But I doubt it left the imprint on you that it did on me.

Perhaps I’m too sensitive, and should have let it go years ago. But I never could. I needed to explain, and was never given the opportunity.

Some experts say that writing down something that preys on your mind will help you to let it go. I’m hoping that may happen from this letter, even though there’s no way to send it. I don’t even know if you’re still alive. But I don’t really have any expectations from this exercise. I’m just finally taking my turn.

Yours truly,

The little girl with the untied sash from the 1963-64 third grade class.