Dar-Dar

A little short story I've been fiddling with for a long time, too long.

Dar-Dar

By Shawn Kessler

Copyright 2014

Like most brothers, Dart and Daryl shared a common pool of genes provided by their mother and father; but unlike most brothers, Dart and Daryl took it a step further and shared the exact same set of genes.

The thought of identical twins so unnerved my father that he refused to enter the delivery room until both babies were cleaned and tucked away neatly under my mother’s arms, as if not witnessing the delivery would somehow make it possible for him to believe that they didn't originate from her body. He paced the hospital floor for fifteen hours listening to his wife’s screams and moans. He was filled with joy when the doctor finally came out to tell him they were ready for him, but his joy was soon overcome by dread when he saw both boys suckling at his wife’s tits. She look loaded down like a wild animal and from that day forward he couldn't help but think of Dart and Daryl as a pair of feral dogs, interlopers lasciviously clinging to what he once thought were his wife’s greatest assets.

Before Dart and Daryl were born, Dad was home every night by six and made a point to never work weekends. We played board games in the evenings, went camping on weekends, and the house was always filled with his laughter and the sounds of his heavy feet moving across the hardwood floors. That all went away when Dart and Daryl arrived. Dad became a ghost in his own home; you would only know he had been there because his shoes had moved from the front step and an unrolled, partially read newspaper would be splayed out across the kitchen table next to an empty cup of coffee, the spoon on the table still warm from his touch. A year after the twin’s birth I assumed Dad left us for good as his shoes stopped moving and the coffee and paper ceased being consumed.

Mom never seemed to mind Dad’s departure. As far as I could tell, in her mind, two boys suckling at her breasts were just as good as one full grown man doing it. And so life in our house continued on as normal but with fewer board games, and camping trips, and the sound of laughter replaced with that of crying babies.

Any sane and just court would find that I had every right, and perhaps even a duty, to be angry with the twins, that whatever mean and spiteful ways I acted toward them and my mother would be completely justified and tolerated. However the twins were always such a novelty to me that I never thought to be angry with them (or Mom). Granted I was mean and spiteful in ways that are the prerogative of an older sibling, but I don’t believe I ever overreached precedence set by billions of siblings before us.

My fascination with them largely stemmed from their interchangeability. At birth they were perfectly identical: they weighed the same (6lbs 3ozs), they had the same blond hair, the same blue eyes, the same red birthmark above the right knee that slowly faded and disappeared on the same hour of the same day two years after their birth. The hospital put little bracelets on their wrists, each with a name and shared birth date, but the boys were in such sync that their wristbands would fall off just at the perfect moment, when everyone had their backs turned to them. The first time it happened my mother put the wristband that was closest to each baby back on its wrist but later confessed that she had no clue from that point forward which was originally Dart and which was Daryl. She still made an honest effort to see each as a unique individual and always went out of her way to make distinctions between them. She always dressed them in different outfits, but as soon as they were alone they’d switch half of their outfits, Daryl wearing Dart’s shirt or Dart wearing Daryl’s pants. She tried cutting their hair different styles, but their hair always ended the day sloppily parted to the left side. Then she had the idea to make one of them grow his hair out, but as soon as she cut one of the boys’ hair the others would begin to fall out. She’d find chunks of hair in the bathtub drain, on the pillows in the morning, and stuffed away between books and couch pillows when cleaning up in the afternoon. She hid all the scissors in the house but still the hair appeared and before the week was over they had the same short, sloppily left-parted hairs, this time with matching cowlicks on top.

When the twins went out to play they’d leave the house wearing clean clothes, each in their own unique outfit. When they arrived home hours, or even minutes later they’d both be dirty, with swapped clothes. I always imagined that the first thing they did when out of sight was to furiously rub together like two sticks trying to catch fire.

While growing up, only once did I hear one of them speak while in the others presence. If you could get them apart they would speak in brief broken sentences, usually requesting to be reunited with “my brother.” They never did well in school, although they were good at math and writing, their inability to be apart or to speak when the other was around made them unbearable to most teachers and after the third grade mother decided to home school them. It was at this point that we began shortening their names to Dar; then eventually we referred to the two of them together as Dar-Dar. By the time they were teenagers, they were both called Dar-Dar as a pair and as individuals. If one was in the kitchen with Mom and me, and she asked, “Where is Dar-Dar?” I knew that she meant the other Dar-Dar, not the one sitting in the kitchen with us, and besides, we really had no idea who was Daryl and who was Dart anyway.

The name Dar-Dar only became a problem when Mom would write letters after I moved to Chicago for college. Without the context of a shared life I could no longer determine who she was talking about. I knew she no longer had a way to communicate a distinction between the two of them, and it probably never even occurred to her that I had any trouble knowing who she was talking about (and rarely was their a distinction worth making between the two), so I never bothered to tell her about the difficulty I had reading her letters.

After college I stayed where I was and continued to receive letters from Mom. When I was thirty she sent me a short letter that convinced me to call home.

Hello My Darling,

Your brother Dar-Dar is going to have a sex change.

I don’t know what to do!

Love Always,

Mom

I was shocked! Were they both having a sex change? If not, how could only one of them want to? And which one was it? All of the sudden who was Dart and who was Daryl was of utmost importance. I quizzed Mom with these questions but she wasn't sure if both of them wanted to do it or just one. At first she thought it was just one of them because only one of them at any given time would voice the desire but then she realized she didn't actually know if it was the same Dar-Dar each day that was saying he wanted a sex change. They were twenty-four years old now and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop either of them from getting the procedure done. The procedure was scheduled for the day after I called; she would have told me sooner, but she didn't want to worry me needlessly, but it looked like it was really going to happen.

By time I found a flight home and touched down at the airport, Dar-Dar was under the knife. By time I arrived at the hospital, the procedure was done. Dar-Dar was in the recovery room, one lying on a bed asleep, and the other reading a magazine while sitting quietly in a chair next to the bed, both wearing hospital gowns. I asked Mom if they had both had the surgery. She said that they hadn't but Dar-Dar insisted on wearing the gown for as long as his sister had to. I joked that we’d at least be able to tell them apart now. Mother frowned and then cried.

After the surgery Dar-Dar went on medications to adjust her hormone levels to suit her new body’s needs. Gradually a small swell grew in her breasts but true to form brother Dar-Dar’s breasts grew bigger along with our sister’s. When it was all said and done they still looked identical: thin boys, with boyish hair cuts and slightly swollen breasts. I never saw the final plumbing downstairs, so from my point of view nothing had changed—they were still the same Dar-Dar and I still couldn’t tell them apart. After being home for two months I had to return to work. I felt bad leaving Mom alone with them but at the same time I felt that nothing had changed and the three of them could manage without me like they’d done for so many years before.

On the plane ride home I dreamt of Dar-Dar naked, rolling around together in a mass of flesh, they “ohhed” and “ahhed” and whispered “my brother” and “my sister” to each other. I watched through a window and was turned on myself. I was filled with shame, but couldn’t stop watching and enjoying the spectacle. When I arrived home I had another dream of them. This time they had hundreds of small children that looked just like them when they were young. Sister Dar-Dar sat in a rocking chair, angelic and beautiful, while brother Dar-Dar stood behind her combing her long hair, cherishing it like gold. The clone children played silently around their feet. I awoke feeling like someone was sitting on my chest, barely able to breath.

The next day I called Mom to ask what the living arrangements were going to be long term. I couldn't get the image of them together out of my head. She said she hadn't really thought about it but imagined they’d just keep on sharing the same room. I felt sick, but didn't argue with her. I stopped calling home and threw away letters that arrived without opening them. Mom stopped calling too, except once a year at Christmas to let me know everything was alright.

Dar-Dar made it impossible for me to ever want my own children, what if their condition was genetic and I had a pair just like them? I pushed the idea of fatherhood out of my head, and with it went the idea of being a husband.

Mom called out of the blue one year: Dar-Dar has cancer, he’s dying. I found myself once again on an airplane, to visit one of the twins in the hospital.

They still looked near identical, he was thinner and gaunt, but she appeared to be wasting away with him, just not as fast. He was asleep in the hospital bed when I arrived and she sat next to him in a matching hospital gown, quietly reading a magazine.

“Hello brother,” she spoke with a low feminine voice that was entirely alien to me. I didn't know what to say or how to respond to her. I told Mom I needed to go to the house and rest. While I was there, sleeping in my old bed, Dar-Dar died in his sleep. They called to tell me; I assumed that the other Dar-Dar would die too, that we’d soon be reenacting the last half of E.T.

But it didn’t happen. Dar-Dar came home; she didn’t speak to me again. She tells Mom that she’s dying, but it’s not true, she eventually lives to be eighty-one. We bury Dar-Dar in the family plot out at the cemetery. It was a hot sunny day. We were all miserable in our matching black suits and dresses. I’m pretty sure Dad was there too—though I never saw him—dressed in black or buried under some tree of his own, either way still a ghost.

I drove Mom and Dar-Dar home from the funeral. Dar-Dar cried in the back seat. Mom cried in the front seat. I was annoyed with both of them. And grateful, and embarrassed by my gratefulness, because one less twin meant that much less weirdness in our lives. No more Dar-Dar. Just Dar. I looked in the review mirror and tried it out, “I'm sorry Dar.” Although a person was surely there—I had opened the door myself and let her in, closing it behind her—the backseat was a great void, a gaping black and lifeless chasm until I completed her name, “-Dar.” She nodded her head in recognition of my condolence. I returned to Chicago. Mom and Dar-Dar moved to a house more appropriate for two people.

After Mom died Dar-Dar moved again; this time into a home where three warm meals were served each and every day by a paid and trained staff. Here she spent the reminder of her life, putting together puzzles, watching day-time television, and being appreciated by those who ran the home for her brevity and general lack of drama. I received a letter and a box after her death. It read:

As Daryl's lone surviving next-of-kin, he designated you the heir and recipient of all of his worldly belongings. You will find in the accompanying box any possessions that we deemed to hold either monetary—or potential sentimental—value . In addition, a cashiers check for $10,484.54 can be found in the same envelope this letter arrived in along with a full accounting of his expenses and bank statements for the past year. Please accept our deepest condolence and know that your brother was well loved and taken care of at The Sunny Days facility.

I hadn't seen or heard the name Daryl in the context of one of my siblings in such a long time that it took me a moment to realize that some mistaken had not been made. I searched his bank account statements and his little box of possessions for clues about how he became Daryl again, how she had become my brother again. But there was nothing. Had I been wrong about which sibling had died all those years ago? I wrote multiple letters to the home asking for clarification, but they all ended up in the trash or burnt up in the fireplace; there was no way to ask the question without sounding crazy. I placed upon the mantel the only picture that arrived in Daryl's box, a little black-and-white of Dar-Dar and Mom and a man I couldn't recognize, his arm draped across Mom's shoulder with so much familiarity, probably taken while I was in college. Across the back were inscribed four names: Daryl, Dart, Mom and Dad.