Free Ordinary Love and Good Will by Jane Smiley Page B

icing. As I put the cake in the refrigerator, the noise of the lawnmower dies, and a second or so later, Joe throws back the screen door. I think of what I might say—I need to go to the bathroom, the store, K-mart, next door, anywhere, right now. Let me evade the coming confidences. It is a physical urge, a shrinking—not from Joe himself but from what I will become in the next fifteen minutes—reassuring, objective, soothing, fat somehow. It is a way I have always been with Joe more than the others. Each of them has approached me with a different request—Ellen’s has always been, “What is true?” and to the best of my ability I have always been relieved to tell her. Daniel’s has always been, “Is it okay if I do this?” and I have always been able to say “yes” or “no.” And his response has always been that he was going to do it anyway. Annie’s every look and gesture says, “Can you see me yet?” and so she is flamboyant and prickly and hilariously funny. Michael has had the simplest request, directed only at me, and that has been, “Do you love me best?” and my answer, directed only at him, has been, “I can’t.” We know where we stand.
    But Joe, Joe’s question is directed everywhere, and it is unanswerable. It is, “Am I okay? Tell me that I am just okay, and that is enough for me.” He is okay. He is smart and thoughtful and nice-looking. He is doing well in a prestigious program at a good school. When he wants a date or a girlfriend, he can get one. “You are okay,” I say. “You have to say that, you’re my mom,” he says, or, I imagine, “you’re my girlfriend, you’re my major adviser, you’re my friend.” Nothing can induce him to believe that he is okay. How did I overlook him when he was a baby? I remember praising, hugging, paying attention, taking delight. Were there simply too many? But we thought we were doing them a favor, giving them lots of others besides ourselvesto learn from and get close to. Pat had six brothers and sisters, and spoke rapturously of the family fun-fair, of the delight he took in listening to his mother address him as “Tim-Jackie-Joe-Jimmy -PATRICK !”, as if he shared in all the qualities that he adored in his older brothers. I thought my aunts and uncles, who spoke fondly of their adventures on the farm as children, had had a much more exciting time than I was having by myself. Old justifications. Five kids in five years is a lot of kids. Nobody would approve today. In 1963, when Ellen pushed a grocery cart with one twin in it and I pushed the other and Daniel and Annie trailed behind, everyone smiled at us. Fifty 1963 dollars handed over at the checkout stand? A figure to be proud of.
    Joe says, “There’s nothing there. We don’t think alike anymore. I am on my own now.”
    “You seem to be getting along fine, honey.”
    “But we thought alike. We thought the same thoughts. We both always used to say that. You know that character on ‘Sesame Street,’ the two-headed Russian guy who’s always arguing with himself?
    “Joe—”
    “That was us. We used to laugh like hell at that, and run around the TV room shouting in mock Russian.”
    “Joe, you’re grown men. Do you want to be like those twins who dress alike and cultivate their twinship forever? I know you don’t!”
    “You don’t want us to, Dad doesn’t want us to, Michael doesn’t want to, but I DO !”
    “Honey—”
    “Isn’t that awful? I’m a man! How can I say that? Just to say it fills me with self-loathing. I wish we were girls or something. I know some girl twins. None of this comes up with them. Separate identities is just one option with them. With us it’s the only option.”
    “But it’s not healthy for any set—”
    “How do you know that? How does anybody know that who isn’t one? Ma—”
    “What?”
    “Tell me this isn’t any big deal.”
    “I don’t know if it’s a big deal. In the first place, Michael couldn’t possibly be himself