Two of a Kind Read online

  And it was senior year and everyone was getting all bent out of shape about college. Oliver wanted to go to college—sort of—but he couldn’t seem to summon the energy to do anything about it. He considered cutting the rest of the day. He’d say he felt sick and go home. He’d sit out on the terrace and take long, soothing hits while he watched the sky get dark. But then he thought of Oceanography, where they were going to watch a documentary about all these really amazing creatures—the anglerfish, which was able to produce a bright light that glowed at the end of this weird appendage just above its mouth; the barreleye fish, with its transparent head; the wrinkled fangtooth; the lionfish; the blobfish, which was nothing but a mass of gray, quivering jelly. Class would have started a couple of minutes ago, but he could slip in quietly, take a seat in the back, and no one would really care.

  He entered the building through a seldom-used basement door and went up the stairs. But just as he was reaching for the doorknob to the science room, he was stopped by the huge, meaty paw of the headmaster, Mr. Cunningham. “You’re a little late today, aren’t you, young man?” said Cunningham.

  “Yeah, sorry. But if I go in now, I won’t miss very much.”

  “And I heard you were not in English either.” Cunningham had bushy eyebrows that sprouted from his forehead.

  “No, I wasn’t feeling well and—”

  “But you didn’t go to see the nurse, did you? I checked and she said she hadn’t seen you all day.”

  “I was in the student lounge.” Oliver was getting a little nervous. So he cut class. Why was Cunningham making a federal case out of it?

  “The student lounge is being renovated and not open this month. Remember?” His eyebrows—thick pelts of gray and black—wiggled ominously.

  “Oh yeah. I meant the—”

  “Oliver,” said Cunningham. “Let’s stop this little charade right now, shall we? I think we need to continue this talk in my office.”

  Resigned, he followed the headmaster and, when they reached his office, took a seat across from Cunningham’s big, battered desk.

  “Now, when we spoke last June, I thought we had an understanding, Oliver. An understanding. I trusted you. I believed in you.” Cunningham folded his big hands together and let his massive head sink to his fists. “But you’ve let me down, Oliver. You let me down, you let your father down, you let Mr. Pollock down, and you let Ms. Warren down. But mostly you’ve let yourself down.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Oliver said. The sir had worked before; maybe it would work again.

  “I’m afraid sorry isn’t going to do. Sorry isn’t sufficient.”

  Oliver chafed miserably. This office was so hot; why did they keep the thermostat turned way up like that? It was, like, such an energy drain. He unzipped the bowling jacket and was about to put it on the chair, when suddenly one of the bags he’d just bought from Keith slid through the bottom of the jacket. The hem must have been ripped through and he didn’t even know it. Oliver looked in horror at the bag of weed as Cunningham rose from behind the desk and looked down on the floor.

  “Oliver,” he intoned, as he stepped from behind the desk to pick up the bag. “Oliver, Oliver, Oliver . . .” He reached over and in that second, Oliver had the mad impulse to dash from the room and the school. But he remained in his seat as Cunningham patted the pockets of his jacket and pulled out the other two bags. “I am sincerely hoping that these bags do not contain what I think they contain,” he said. Oliver was mute as Cunningham laid two of the bags on his desk and opened the third. He thrust his nose into the bag, and inhaled deeply. Maybe he’d end up with a nice little contact high and he and Oliver could smoke a joint together before a very chill Cunningham sent him on his way with just a slap on the wrist. Then the deep, sonorous voice of the headmaster snapped him back to reality, like, in a hurry.

  “I think you know what this means, Oliver,” he said. “I think you know as well as I do.”

  “Please, Mr. Cunningham, sir. It’s not what you think. I mean I—”

  “And what is it that I think, young man? Can you read my mind?”

  “You think I’m using that stuff. Selling it even.”

  “I had not even thought about your being a pusher, Oliver,” Cunningham said. “Though now that you bring it up, I won’t rule it out. And as for using—well, yes, that certainly seems to be the case.”

  “It’s just a little now and then, sir. Totally recreational, no worse than a beer. Really, it should be legal and in some states it already is—”

  “Enough,” said Cunningham. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to come with me.” So Oliver followed him down the hall and to his locker, where Cunningham watched while he emptied its contents into a cardboard box. “You can take what you can carry now,” said Cunningham. “The rest will be in my office; you can arrange to have it picked up. I’ll telephone your father.” Oliver said not one word while all this was going down; he just filled his backpack with what seemed most essential—which was, like, nothing—and waited. Then he walked behind Cunningham to the doors. “Oliver, I don’t know if you will believe this, but I am truly, deeply sorry.” To which Oliver wanted to reply, Fuck you and your hairy-ass eyebrows. Was it cowardice or self-preservation that kept him from saying it? Anyway, it didn’t matter anymore. He was out of there. He was gone.

  An hour later, Oliver was on the number one train, headed to the Bronx to see his Grandma Ida. How she would react to his news, he didn’t know. But he figured she’d find out soon enough anyway; he might as well be the one to tell her. Besides, since Cunningham expelled him, he really didn’t know what the hell to do with himself. He’d taken the weed, of course—We’re not going to press charges, but you do understand I’ll have to confiscate this—so now Oliver didn’t even have that as a consolation prize. It didn’t seem like a good idea to try to contact Keith about getting some more. The shit had already hit the fan; no need to turn it on full blast.

  At the 231st Street station, he got out and boarded a bus that dropped him practically in front of the yellow brick apartment building where Ida lived. She might not even be home. No big deal. He’d just wait, that’s all. But when the doorman buzzed, he heard her words clearly, even through the static. “Send him up right now, José!”

  “Have you had lunch?” was the first thing she asked. He shook his head. “Come in and sit down, then. I’ll make you a sandwich.”

  Oliver sat at the Formica table in the kitchen. The television was on and Judge Judy was yelling at someone. She yelled at everyone. What would Judge Judy say to him if he ever appeared in front of her? Oliver watched, mesmerized, as the tiny woman—she was, like, no taller than a thirteen-year-old—made all these people look so meek and ashamed. Meanwhile, Grandma Ida was bustling around her kitchen, clearly happy to have this task to perform. He noticed she was all dressed up—black-and-white checked pants, black turtleneck sweater, gold bracelets, necklace of gold, black, and bright blue; the beads were as big as gumballs. In a few minutes, she presented him with a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, handful of chips, and glass of apple cider. When he bit into the sandwich, he could tell it was made with those slices of American cheese his dad wouldn’t even permit in their home; it was delicious, all melted and gooey. “Thanks, Grandma.” He took another bite, and then another. “Thanks a lot.”

  She turned off the television, pulled up a chair, and faced him. “So what’s going on?” Her eyes, alert and focused, sought out his. “I don’t usually get a surprise visit, and on a weekday no less.”

  “I’m in trouble,” he said simply. “Big trouble.”

  “Then you came to the right place.”

  Oliver told her the whole story then, mentioning the head shop on St. Marks, Jojo and Keith (though he did leave out the bit about Raven; he thought it might scare her), the weeks of pot smoking, culminating in today’s big-ass purchase in Riverside Park and the subsequ
ent expulsion by Cunningham. She listened intently and did not say one word until he was done. Much better than Judge Judy, he thought.

  “So that’s it,” he said. He took a big gulp of the cider. “They kicked me out.”

  “Does your father know?”

  “Not yet.” In fact, it was kind of weird. Shouldn’t his father have spoken to Cunningham by now? Maybe there was some crisis at the hospital, some woman delivering, like, quintuplets.

  “Tell me something, Oliver. Do you want to go back to school?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, before anything else gets said or done, you need to figure that out first. Because if you don’t want to go back, that’s one path. And if you do, that’s another. But only you can decide. And once you do, you can figure out what you need to do next.”

  “Do I have to decide, like, now? This minute?”

  “No, you don’t. Think about it for a while. But don’t take too long.” She eyed his empty plate and glass. “How about another sandwich?”

  He nodded gratefully. “I’m so hungry,” he said.

  “Like your father,” she said, rising from her seat and patting him affectionately on the head. Oliver leaned over to turn on the television again. Maybe Judge Judy would be done for the day. He hoped so. Clicking the remote, he found a nature program called Mysteries of the Deep. He wondered whether it was anything like the movie he had missed in Oceanography today.

  His grandmother served him the second sandwich and another glass of cider. She did not ask any more questions about school and she did not rag on him about getting expelled either. They watched the documentary and then she brought out her ancient Scrabble set whose box had been repaired, like, a hundred times with pieces of now yellowing and brittle tape, and set up the board on the table. Grandma Ida had a perfectly fine living room, with a fat, burgundy velvet sofa and matching armchairs, a coffee table, and a forty-five-inch flat-screen TV. But she seemed to spend most of her time in the kitchen. With its yellow-and-white-checked curtains and souvenir plates from all the places she’d visited plastered all over the wall, it was a comforting place. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing Scrabble; first he beat her by making zodiac on a double word score and oxen on a triple. But in the second game, she trounced him with the seven-letter advisor. The sky outside the kitchen window grew dark.

  “Well, I guess I should be going,” he said. Now it was, like, positively spooky that he had not heard from his dad and he began to dread the encounter more for its having been delayed. Andy was so into status markers; this would, like, kill him. And although Andy had gone to City College, Oliver knew that he was expected to go to a much more prestigious place. Too bad about that one, Dad. Guess that plan’s been effectively fucked.

  “How about a cup of hot cocoa before you go? It’s almost hot cocoa weather.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. He remembered how she used to serve it with animal crackers.

  When the cocoa was ready, she put a handful of mini-marshmallows in each mug, and sat down with him again. “Let me ask you something else,” she said. “I want to know about this woman, this Christina person, your father mentioned.”

  “What about her? Dad hired her to redecorate the apartment.”

  “Is there something wrong with the way the apartment is decorated? I happen to think it looks very nice the way it is.” She blew delicately on the surface of the cocoa.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought at first too. But you know, I think Dad thought it would be a way to move on . . . after Mom and all. And you know what? He’s right. Christina is making the place a little different, but not, like, too different, you know? And she’s got this really cool plan for what used to be Mom’s office; it’s going to be a guest room for when you stay over.”

  “It’s hardly like I need a guest room.” Ida looked down into the mug as if she were deeply interested in the swirled pattern created by the melting marshmallows.

  “Whatever. Anyway, I like her. I didn’t at first. But now I do.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Grandma Ida pounced on those words.

  “I thought she was going to, like, erase Mom from the apartment. But she doesn’t want to do that at all. She said she wanted to honor her.”

  Grandma Ida made a face that said, Oh really? I don’t believe it for a second.

  Oliver finished his hot chocolate, brought the mug to the sink, and ran the water to rinse it.

  “Go away! I’ll do it myself.” She shooed him off. Grandma Ida was an obsessive cleaner. No one, but no one, did a good enough job for her and when she came to visit, she was always puttering around the apartment, not only pointing out all the things she thought Lucy had missed, but fixing them herself. Standing at the sink, she scoured the cocoa mugs and placed them in the dishwasher—not that they needed it now. But she said it was a way to sterilize them. Then she walked Oliver to the door. “You’ll think about what I said, won’t you?”

  “I will.” Oliver felt sad about leaving. The afternoon had been a respite from his real life. But now he had to go back home and, like, deal.

  “Here, take this,” she said, pressing a small brown paper bag with a neatly folded edge into his hands.

  “What is it?”

  “Just a little nosh for the ride,” she said.

  Oliver opened the bag. There, inside, was the familiar red and yellow box. Animal crackers. He bent down to kiss her cheek, inhaling the scent of her face powder, and the supersweet cologne—it was like air freshener or something—that she always wore. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  “For nothing,” she replied, and her thin arms enfolded him in a surprisingly powerful hug.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When the call from Cunningham came in, Andy’s latex-gloved fingers were thrust deep in Xiomara’s vaginal canal, delicately testing her cervix. Of course he didn’t know the call was from Cunningham; though he’d given the headmaster his private number, the phone was on vibrate, and buzzed almost imperceptibly in his pocket. “You can get dressed now,” he said to Xiomara when the examination was completed. “I’ll see you in my office.”

  He left, closing the door quietly behind him. Back in medical school, Andy endured the ribbing—some of it playful, some less so—from his male classmates about his choice to go into gynecology and obstetrics. He’d heard his share of crude jokes, tolerated the nickname of Pussy King; none of it fazed him. Though he was appreciative of women’s bodies in his personal life, the women he saw professionally did not elicit the same response. He viewed the female body as a miraculous ecosystem, both powerful and fragile, and it was his job to see that this system functioned at optimal levels at all times. Andy was not so much detached as he was awed by the ability of his patients to conceive, gestate, and give birth to new life; by comparison, the male contribution seemed random and puny.

  Sitting at his desk, he waited for his heart rate to slow. Xiomara upended his carefully honed sense of professionalism. She was almost six feet tall, with a full, well-proportioned body that pregnancy had only enhanced. Her belly was a ripe melon; her breasts were magnificent. Once, while palpating them in a routine exam, he’d actually gotten a hard-on; this had never happened to him in all the years he’d been examining women, and he was shaken afterward, like some sacred trust had been broken.

  There was a light tap on the door. “Come in,” he said. She wore leather pants, and a shawl with long, lush fringe. Her husband, a professional basketball player with the LA Lakers, was not with her today, which ought to have meant the paparazzi threat was slightly reduced.

  “Everything’s all right, then?” she asked. “You didn’t see any problem.”

  “Not a thing,” he said firmly. “The sonogram shows the baby is developing normally; your cervix is nice and tight. How are you feeling?”

  “All right . . . Some days, good. Lots of energy. Other days, like I w
ant to fall asleep while standing up. And I’m so hungry! I bought cheese at Dean & Deluca and I couldn’t even wait to get home to eat it; I tore the package open with my teeth, right there on Prince Street! Thank God there was no photographer around to catch that!” She laughed, a rippling, melodious sound.

  Andy smiled too. “All perfectly natural, everything on course. Eat when you’re hungry, though I want you to make every calorie count. And take naps. Lots of them.” He stood and extended his hand.

  “I’ll see you, then, Dr. Stern.” She took his hand, then covered it with her other one, so that for a moment, his fingers were cradled by the warmth of hers. “I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done.”

  “You’re the one doing all the work,” he said, flustered by her touch. “I’m just your shepherd here. Your guide dog.”

  “Woof,” she said softly and her white teeth—a small, sexy gap separating the front two—gleamed in a smile. “Woof, woof.” Then, gathering her shawl and her bag, she left. Andy stood there a moment, trying to collect himself. Fortunately he had another month before he saw her again; maybe by then he would have figured out how to deal with this maelstrom she set off in him.

  Walking into the waiting room, he was distracted by shouts from the street. He moved to the window, which faced Park Avenue and was open; his office was on the ground floor, so that the drama was literally unfolding before his eyes. There was Xiomara, clutching the shawl around her as she attempted to fend off the greedy swarm of paparazzi that had descended. How did these people manage to track her? Had someone implanted a GPS chip under her glorious brown skin?

  Cameras clicked, and a crowd began to gather. Putting a protective arm around her shoulders, her bodyguard started to get rough—pushing the reporters back, guiding her toward the waiting car. A camera was shoved into her face; the bodyguard knocked it out of the photographer’s hand. It went shooting into the street and bounced off the windshield of an oncoming taxi. The taxi swerved, people shrieked, the bodyguard used the distraction to push Xiomara into the car, and the driver sped off. Andy watched in a state of mild shock. When the car was gone, he turned and there was Joanne. “Did you see that?” he said. “Jesus.”