BEAUTY AND THE EGG

Dewey beat me into this world by sixty-three minutes. I tried to follow in his wake, but I just wasn’t strong enough. In 1979 they still used forceps on babies like me. See that spider-shaped dent guarding my left temple? That’s what Cerebral Palsy looks like on the outside. Dewey grew up and won a gymnastics scholarship to UCLA. I grew up with regrets that come and go like full-moon tides.

I’ve always lived here at the beach with Mom. Dad died just last year while on a business trip to Stockholm. He kissed my forehead before he left---like he always did---and I would have gurgled something more poignant if I’d have known he wasn’t coming back. Our tears eventually quit because that’s what tears always do. After that, Mom and I spent infinite hours just sitting and starring into the cold Pacific, neither of us caring to speak. Dewey, who lived hundreds of miles away during those hard days, said he’d often start thinking about waves and sharks and sand, right in the middle of his workday. We all agreed he was probably there ‘with us’, even though he wasn’t. We come from the same egg, Dewey and I.

The last time Dewey came home he brought his fiancé, Candice. To say she was beautiful is like saying the Grand Canyon is “grand.” Hardly anybody looks at me for the first time and hides their shock completely, but she did.

“Hello Dylan, Dewey’s told me so much about you…It’s good to finally meet the other half.”

Her smile was so damn gorgeous and perfect it nearly killed me on the spot, and when she bent down and gave me a big hug, the whole room smelled just like the outdoors does after a good rain. I fell instantly in love, and later when I told Dewey, he didn’t seem mad or jealous at all.

“That, my young friend, is what separates us from the apes.”

Dewey ‘gets’ me you see, always has.

That night, after Mom had gone to bed, we drank a bottle of merlot and smoked a few bowls. I’m a great storyteller, especially when I’m stoned, and if you can understand me, I’m actually quite funny. Dewey filled in the gaps for Candice, translating as needed while I made my way through our childhood. A delicious euphoria colored the evening.

“Once, when we were twelve”---jeez, I’m really slobbering tonight---“I tried to wiggle my way into the surf. Dewey made me one of those stretcher-things like the Indians used to pull stuff with, and he’d tow me down by the water so I could watch him surf. The waves were pretty big that day and I actually made it into the beach break…ended up almost drowning, but our neighbor Carl came running from his house and pulled me out. Dewey saw me crawling into the water and started paddling toward shore like mad to stop me.”

“You looked like a sea turtle returning to the ocean after laying her eggs, or maybe a wounded walrus.”

We all laugh at these images, and then it gets quiet like it sometimes does when everybody’s wasted.

Then Candice jumps up and does a ballerina slide toward the kitchen. “Anybody hungry?” she coos.

Dewey grins at me and says, “Corn nuts are so good when you’re stoned!”

“No dude,” I argue, “anything made by Little Debbie is the stuff when you have serious munchies.”

Candice emerges from the kitchen just then carrying an ancient tin I recognize because it’s been in our cupboard for as long as I can remember. She holds it out and says in her best hillbilly accent,

“I’d kill for a Spam sandwich right now, but I guess caviar will have to do.”

We erupt in a spontaneous laughter that only the stoned and insane understand. Drool spills from my mouth in glistening, unbroken strands. But in the midst of these shenanigans, Mom appears from the back of the house, sneaking up behind Candice like some damn Ninja. She doesn’t say a word, but her look demands quiet. It’s like, all of a sudden, there’s an elephant in the room, and it smells like ganja.

I watch Mom’s silent retreat with dismay, my bubble sorely burst. Such sparkling ‘magic’ is a rare thing in my world. Candice walks over, looking radiantly mischievous, and uses her sleeve to wipe away my drool. She smiles “Sorry” at me, and my love blooms anew. Dewey helps me into the bathroom and then to bed.

“We’re triplets Dewey…Candice gets me, she REALLY gets me!”

Dewey leans over and looks right into me like he always has, and says just what I need to hear,

“Besides you Dylan, she’s the best thing in my life.”

He kisses my forehead and starts to leave, but I need to say one more thing.

“Dewey, I’m glad you’re my twin, you know…so I’m never really alone.”

“Same egg dude, nothing will ever change that …Anyway, we’re up and out early, long drive to ‘Frisco tomorrow…we’ll be home for Christmas though. Take good care of Mom…sleep well younger brother.”
I will, I think. Dewey has Candice, and I have them both.

That night, I’m assaulted by dreams I can’t recall. I awaken horribly hung over and filled with foreboding. It’s already eleven a.m. when then phone rings. The specter of some ugly menace flashes within my being. By the second ring I know what awaits Mom as she answers…The part of me that will always share the egg was there, with them…I feel the collapse of her spirit cascading down the hall as I hear the receiver drop…They’re gone, just like that, my forever-twin and his soul mate…I already know.

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It’s late February and our tears have finally stopped. I want to tell her the wrong son died, that it should have been me…but I don’t. Instead we sit side by side, day by day, quietly starring into our own private abyss…both of us slightly more than half-dead.