The Wrong Twin
Category C: Highly Commended (2023) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Linda Grace
My body is beyond exhaustion, yet my brain turning constantly goes into overdrive. I wish my brain would forget to wake up, but it keeps remembering. And it will until I take my last breath.
Light fills my room, making it impossible to sleep past sunrise. When my phone pings my heart hammers. I brace myself, but for what I don’t know. I peel back the doona, drag a deep breath into my lungs and push my feet into empty slippers. My unsteady body sways with nausea.
There’s a stillness that feels more like dread than peace. And then I remember. The punch of it. Mother’s incomprehensible words now impossible to unhear – something has happened to Jack - and my heart plunging so hard I thought it would stop altogether. My body wasn’t ready for the blow. The rest of that day is a blur until 6pm when Jack’s death led the news with police asking the public to come forward with any information. Trolls scrolling through news bytes are still feeding their curiosity of what went down.
The light in the bathroom shines impossibly bright. What now? What now? I ask the face leached of colour in the mirror but not wishing to know the answer.
The stab in my head is an intolerable migraine. I pool water in cupped hands, swallowing Aspirin for my head and a Serepax for the tremors, a poor substitution for Smack.
An extravagant purchase over two levels, this apartment has always been too big. Jumping at street sounds expecting a threat, I double-bolt the front door, an occupational habit firmly entrenched. I turn on the TV only for the distraction it offers. I pour a strong black instant and chain smoke by the window. The thought crosses my mind I could easily jump out. St Kilda Road is buzzing with trams and peak hour activity, but it doesn’t feel right. Jack is dead and the whole world is still turning.
Text messages and emails are still flooding in. Every new message makes it harder to breathe. I stop reading them. I’m not ready to tell the whole story.
A suit shiny and brand new is waiting for my body to fill it. The shirt is box fresh. The effect on me when I lay my clothes out is acutely physical, but I need to hold it together. I have a eulogy to give and Jack’s funeral today should be all about Jack.
We shared a pulse, me and Jack before we took breath. Jack was my double. I was his trouble. Like two different sausages squeezed in one skin, Jack was the one to go places. Jack made friends easily and excelled at everything. The only thing he failed at was teaching me how to be Jimmy without him. I’m still wrapping my head around the horror of that.
My brother was wise and intuitive. I was the one with an earned reputation. I never knew where the line was drawn until I crossed it. Diving into danger headfirst, I lived at full speed and full volume. As a cocky and willing participant, I was the bad company parents warned their kids not to play with.
My grades were low but I was determined to excel at something. Jack was drawn to law and completed his degree with distinction. I, on the other hand, was drawn to breaking it.
“I worry about you, Jimmy,” Jack confided multiple times. “Life doesn’t always deliver the one we imagine.” Of course, I shrugged him off. Told him not to be such a dream-crusher. But the day your life changes, does anyone see it coming?
Eventually the cracks began to widen between us, but it was Jack who stood by me when old friends turned away. He offered no judgment. Just a loving heart and an arm around my shoulder when I needed one. Tethered by an invisible, unbreakable twine, he knew when to pull me back in if I went too far. Something I didn’t value until it was too late.
I wanted a big life. To rake in the dough without breaking a sweat. I was curious. And game. The big end of town is cashed up, I thought, so why not me? Seduced by easy money, I chucked in my job as a sales rep and joined the underworld of supply and demand. Suddenly life began to move at a deliriously high speed. I rose to the level of low expectations. I became a drug dealer. And not a very good one.
Invisibility is my weapon, they warned me. Discretion, my protection. They were small jobs at first. The big fish made it sound easy. And it was in the beginning. There was status and glory. It almost felt like a game, unreal and without consequence. They delivered on their promise with eye-watering wads of cash in thick rubber bands. Heady stuff for a twenty-two-year-old sales rep. The rewards kept flowing like rivers of gold.
Dealing my way up the trafficking ladder I thought I was living in the kingdom of invincibility. It didn’t feel dangerous, but that was my addiction making the danger feel less real. Deep down I knew danger was an occupational possibility, but I never confronted it. Any signs that were obvious I simply buried. But the system is rigged against you. The shelter of drug money is an illusion. I learned this from those who were claiming to protect me. Their modus operandi was violence towards anyone threatening their enterprise. Hardening myself to a criminal life, I saw a man - whose debt was settled in violence - get brutally beaten. Some people are born to it, but violence doesn’t come naturally to me. It was a bridge too far and I crossed it. I was no longer better than them. I was one of them.
So not surprisingly, most of what I earned I plugged into a vein. I promised I would stop using - always tomorrow - but when nerves verses need, it’s an impossible promise to stick to.
I feel watched, accosted by eyeballs judging me for who I am. Filling awkward pauses with awkward conversations, I’m surrounded by old friends who have become strangers, but they are not to blame for the distance between us. For this I am to blame. I tried not to change, but everything has changed. The Jimmy they used to know has long since disappeared in an amphetamine fog. Condolences roll off their tongues but their words fail to touch me as Jack will be dead forever. And dead because of me. Nothing illustrates this more just how distant I’ve become from my raising, by having to bury my twin brother. I thought I had prepared for every eventuality, but not this one.
The air is musty-sweet with century-old layers of wood polish and candle wax as mourners flow into the church. A cluster of white lilies draped over Jack’s coffin is an agonising juxtaposition of elegance and grief. Dappled in sunlight is a cross with a message that reads Jesus Loves. A meaningless statement when I think about it. Aching in a way my heart has never ached before, I am yet to open myself up to the Holy Spirit. Perhaps I never will.
Whispers fade into heavy silences as mourners shuffle into seats. The church is full. Several people gather at the rear of the church as there aren’t enough pews to seat everyone. There’s not a person in this church who doesn’t love Jack.
Vivid mind pictures of Jack drained of colour still haunt me. I imagine Jack’s final moments and the terrified innocence on his face. I wish I could chase them out of my head. But I can’t roll back life. Things, once done. Are done.
Memories are forced open when a time capsule of his life – our life - whole and happy, plays like a movie on an overhead screen. All eyes are watching identical twin boys in short pants and sandals racing paper boats on the river. Pretending to be stunt men, we dive-bombed off the pier and held our breath underwater. We burned and peeled and added to our freckles. We slept to the rhythm of the other one’s breathing. Not even different paths broke that bond. I never expected these memories would carry pain.
Heads turn as I sit next to Mother. Their eyeballs I feel in the back of my head like arrows. She looks pale. A serenity masks Mother’s fragility. Behind oversized dark glasses, her eyes are fixed on the ground. Grappling with the unfathomable, Mother’s body is rigid, scarcely seeming to breathe. Grief is the bond that sits shapeless between us.
Reverend Murphy cuts an imposing figure. Dramatic in the length of his pause, his words swirl around in my head like a marble until he reads from a passage that resonates with me. “A good heart never settles until things are set right with the truth.” There is no saliva left in my mouth. Guilt is the beast that is going to destroy me.
My shirt sticks to my back. Mother’s hands are cupped in her lap. Her eyes don’t blink. Feigning calmness, though feeling none of it, I place my clammy hand on hers, thin and softly fleshed. With the smallest of gestures, Mother retracts her hand. A gesture that feels like a warning. The atmosphere between us has shifted. Her demeanour is unsettling. There is something in her face I can’t read. I wonder if she knows. Knows more than she is sharing with me. Mother’s always do. I wish I had the courage to tell her, but our relationship of late has been uncomfortable to navigate. My cowardice overrules as fear robs the truth from my mouth.
Planned, yet poorly executed, it wasn’t Jack who took matters to unspeakable places. Jack was bright and beautiful and twice the man I will ever be. I deserve to be cast aside from family. I replaced what matters with a life laced with drugs and corruption. My shame will go on, long after Jack has been lowered in the ground.
Following my eulogy, Reverend Murphy prays for the safe journey of Jack’s soul. We all rise. Heads are lowered as we carry Jacks coffin in a honey-coloured hue to the waiting hearse. I’m resisting the impulse not to slide in beside him, if only to release me from my irreversible self-loathing that never loosens its grip.
But rules are rules. I am in over my head and I know it. I doubt I’ll ever escape the agony of that. Tense and alert, my eyes scan the crowd searching for men in dark glasses. I half expect to be ambushed. Half expect to be cuffed and caged like an animal. Death has a warrant and until my debts are settled, the hunt for me is still on.
*
The mystery of Jack’s death ran for weeks selling papers, but Jack is not a story looking for an ending. He deserves one. Deception is hard work and I can never fully exhale until things are set right with the truth.
And exactly as Jack had predicted, life didn’t deliver the one I imagined. The worst thing that could have happened, happened. My brain spins over and over but the ending is always the same. I did not kill my brother, but through my actions I helped him die. I am condemned by this. And I must live with this. There are not enough pills to fix it.
What happened that day happened fast. When they found Jack there was no heartbeat. In a random act of violence the dailies reported, he was left to bleed out.
But there was nothing random about it.
Jack was out jogging when the wrong twin was gunned down in a hail of bullets that were meant for me.
end