Gina Willner-Pardo

Evie and Dolores Bissell lived in the family home on Kiep Avenue: a two-story, redbrick Craftsman with cement steps and a serviceable front porch in front of the parlor and dining room windows. The lawn was shamefully overgrown for all the world to see now that Father didn’t do the mowing, and the sunflowers were weedy. Evie paused on her way to the bus and thought about paying one of the neighbor boys—Jimmy next door, or Bud Wheatley over on Water Street—to spruce it up a bit. 

            Dolores had her hands full with Father, who was touched in the head and liked to wander. 

            Evie and Dolores were fraternal twins, a fact that seemed extremely important to other people when they were children. They were oohed and aahed over, especially when they wore the matching dresses Mother sewed. “You’d think no one in Joliet ever heard of twins,” she liked to say when old Mrs. Jamison made a fuss and fished for candy in her apron pockets, but Evie could see she took pleasure in the attention. Dolores, though, blushed and looked at the sidewalk, too shy to take the Slo Poke from Mrs. Jamison’s spotted hand. Evie would take both lollipops, saying, “I’ll give it to her later,” and when Mrs. Jamison said, “Don’t you be keeping it for yourself, Evelyn,” she reddened at the accusation of self-interest. 

            “Evie will take care of you,” Mother assured Dolores when they were out of earshot, and Dolores would nod, relieved. Mother would sigh. Sometimes she would add, “It’s a good thing you’re the pretty one.” 

            She died just before the war ended—“the big C,” everyone whispered, as though anyone who uttered the word in full would be its next victim—and Father missed her terribly. Now he woke up most nights convinced Adlai Stevenson was in the parlor droning on about Taft-Hartley, and Dolores came down to breakfast with dark circles under her eyes. Evie made sure to fry her extra bacon so she’d have something to look forward to every morning.

***

            Evie went to Illinois State Normal after high school. If someone asked her if she’d always dreamed of being a teacher, she said no. It was important to see a little of the world, though, and being almost one hundred miles away from home was appealing. Most of the girls she’d known in high school had a steady or were already engaged. Dolores was sure Joe Denovellis would give her a ring by Christmas. 

            At college, she rented a room from Frank and Edna Bailey. Their son Benji lived with them and cut hair at the barber-shop in town. At first, Evie made sure to smile whenever Benji told a story at dinner or passed her in the hall on the way to his room, but after a few days, she saw he wasn’t the marrying kind. Mother might have said to give it more time, but Evie could just tell.

            Instead, she concentrated on her classes and made friends with a few of the other girls. Sometimes they would have a custard at the drive-in after church. On these excursions, Evie noticed how boys from the local high school seemed impossibly young and foolish, and anyone older already had a girlfriend or a wife.

            Somehow, she had missed her opportunity. Life was a frenetic, dizzying game of musical chairs, and she had been left standing.

***

            Dolores was still engaged to Joe when he joined the Navy in 1939. He died in 1941, four days after Christmas, aboard the USS Canopusin Bataan. “Buried at sea!” Dolores screamed when his parents showed her the telegram. She collapsed on the porch then, in Evie’s arms. 

            Evie, already possessed of her two-year degree, was a new second-grade teacher at Keith Elementary (where she and Dolores had gone to school themselves) at the time. She extended her Christmas vacation to make beef noodle casseroles and scalloped potatoes with ham for visitors who came to pay respects. She and Dolores took long walks along the Des Plaines River, wearing heavy coats and earmuffs to ward off the five-degree chill.

            A few days after New Year’s, they were strolling south toward Rockdale. Evie supported Dolores’s arm firmly in one hand, not yet sure she wouldn’t swoon if a memory of Joe came suddenly to mind. They passed an elderly couple walking arm in arm in the opposite direction. The gentleman tipped his hat. A moment later, Evie heard the woman say, “Spinsters!” to her husband, who shushed her with pointed exasperation.

            Dolores seemed to totter. She looked at Evie. “We are, you know.” Her skin had gone pale, without the rosy spots of color that made her appear always to be blushing, something Joe had found enchanting. 

            “Nonsense,” she said, holding tighter to Dolores’s arm. “You’re twenty-two, for heaven’s sake. Beautiful red hair, a good figure—”

            “Stout. We’re both getting stout.”

            “Lovely skin. A kind disposition. Everything a man wants in a wife.”

            Seemingly bolstered, Dolores nodded. But after another minute of walking, she asked, “Don’t you want to?”

            “Want to what?”

            “Get married. Be with a man.”

            “Oh, golly, I don’t know,” Evie said, pulling her collar close under her chin. “Seems like an awful lot of trouble.”

            She matched her stride to Dolores’s, hoping to signal with that and her firm hand how she would always be her sister’s fierce protector, a role she had long assumed without question.

***

            What with Mother’s death and Father’s strange new ways, that walk on the river seemed to have happened in another lifetime. Now Evie was teaching fourth grade instead of second and was unofficially a vice-principal, which meant Mr. Mullen let her punish the truants. “No extra pay in it,” he’d told her, “but those monsters respect you,” which was his way of saying he wanted to continue to be the one they liked.

            She knew a lot of the boys in the neighborhood, having taught most of them and disciplined a few. Seeing Mr. Wheatley opening the door of his car, she waved hello. When he smiled, she called out, “Do you have a moment?”

            “Sure, Miss Bissell.”

            She stood on the sidewalk as he approached, hoping he didn’t remember the phone call she’d made four years ago when Bud had been found smoking in the drainage ditch during school hours. Mr. Wheatley had sighed and said a bad word, and she had had to say crisply, “I must ask you not to curse.”

            “What can I do for you?” he asked, removing his hat.

            “I was wondering if Bud might like to earn a little money on Saturdays. Our yard needs tending and my father isn’t well.”

            “I’m sorry to hear that.” 

            “We just need some mowing and pruning. I’d be able to pay him fifty cents, twice a month,” she said, surprised at the knot of tears at the back of her throat. 

            “Well, I think that sounds very fair,” Mr. Wheatley said. “I’d like for him to have some chores to do. He’s been struggling again.” He leaned closer and she could smell a whiff of unfamiliar masculinity: Burma-Shave. “Since his mother passed.”

            “I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I hadn’t heard.”

            She remembered Mrs. Wheatley as pale and thin, with wrist bones as prominent as knuckles. At Back-to-School Night all those years ago, she leaned heavily on Mr. Wheatley, who, if Evie recalled correctly, had helped her into the chair at Bud’s desk and then rubbed her shoulders as he stood behind her. 

            Now he said, “We thought we’d have more time,” and she felt a pang of sadness for him. 

            “You were robbed,” she said.

            His eyes—light blue, they were—opened wide. “I tell people that all the time. And they always say, ‘She was robbed,’ as if I’m being insensitive to her.” He swallowed and his Adam’s apple quivered. “Perhaps I am.”

            She had the odd sensation of bones cracking and shifting within, organs rearranging themselves, making room. 

            “I don’t believe that. But wherever she is, I think she knows your heart.”

            He was looking at her strangely: She felt he could actually see the way her innards were repositioning themselves. “Miss Bissell, may I give you a ride to school?” he asked. 

***

            On the short drive, Don—he insisted—told her that he worked at the brewery as an accountant, that the yeasty smell of the place had turned him off beer and spirits generally, and that he belonged to Richards Street Methodist. “And you?”

            “First Presbyterian.” 

            He smiled. “Lovely people there. I play pinochle every Wednesday with Bob Sherman and Phil and Dick Evers.”

            “My sister and I called the Evers ‘the other twins,’” she said. “A few classes ahead of Dolores and me in school. They’re the only other twins I know.”

            “Twins! Isn’t that wonderful!” he said. “Are you identical?”

            “Fraternal.” Without thinking she added, “Dolores is the pretty one.” Then she winced inside. No man wanted to think he was being called on to give a compliment.

            Don pulled the car up to the curb. “Evie, if you’re passing by the house tomorrow, I’d be happy to give you a lift.”

            Her name on his lips, as well as the fact that he hadn’t asked her permission to use it, made her begin to understand things about which she had only read.

***

            He gave her a ride every day that week. On Friday, as she was preparing to get out of the car, he asked if she’d like to take in a movie on Saturday. Bend of the River was playing at the Mode. “I’ll pick you up at 3:30,” he said, and she understood that if all went well, they might get a bite to eat after.

            That evening, as she and Dolores were tidying the kitchen, she said, “I may be out for a while tomorrow.”

            “Oh?” 

            “A friend of mine from college.”

            “What friend?” Dolores wiped her hands on a dish towel and crossed her arms.

            “Helen Whiting. Did I ever mention her? She lives in Kankakee, but she’s coming into town for the day.”

            “What for?”

            “Some shopping, I think. We might see a movie.”

            “What movie?”

            “Well, for heaven’s sake, Dolores. I don’t know. Honestly,” Evie said, forking leftover pot roast into a bowl, “you’re as bad as Mother used to be.”

            Instantly she was sorry. Invoking Mother reminded them both of how it was to live in a house where love was heavily seasoned with ridicule and suspicion of others. “That Lizzie Sprankling looks like a Gypsy!” she often said of the girls’ high-school classmate, whose ears were pierced. And when Lizzie invited them to a slumber party, she shook her head. “You won’t be getting any sleep over there,” she declared, as though the Spranklings lived next door to Joliet Boiler and Welding.      

            She wanted her girls to appreciate the tender attention to fit in their handmade blouses, wanted them to get a good night’s rest so they would look and feel their best. Her love was unquiet, apprehensive. Now that she was gone, her daughters often communicated by glance and touch, not trusting the words they uttered, which became shorthand—a kind of code—for what really needed to be said. 

            Evie didn’t want to lie: Lying was something cowards did. But I want to go, she thought, and I don’t want her to know. She covered the bowl with aluminum foil. “I’ll ring you up if we’re going to be out late,” she said.

            She knew Dolores wanted to ask about the last bus back to Kankakee, but she only nodded. “Father and I will finish up the roast, then,” she said.

***

            In the dark Evie made herself small in her seat. She didn’t use her armrest and said no to Don’s offer of popcorn or a Coke. She hadn’t been on a date since she was seventeen and was unaccustomed to movie theaters. It horrified her to think that anything about her behavior might telegraph eagerness. 

            Onscreen, horses thundered over dusty trails and men behaved badly in saloons. She struggled to follow the story. Her heart was pounding; her arm burned when he accidentally touched her sleeve. 

            The beautiful actress said, “But when he meets a woman and falls in love with  her—” and James Stewart—his eyes so blue!—answered, “I see what you mean.” Don reached for Evie’s hand. He held it on his thigh until the credits began to roll and the lights came up. 

            In the car he turned to her, and her heart thrilled the way it did when he called her “Evie” without asking. His lips on hers slowed the cogs and wheels in her brain; her thoughts disappeared, except for one: that she was born knowing how to do what she had long believed a man would have to teach her.

***

            Frying bacon the next morning, she rehearsed in silence what she would say: She and Helen had had hamburgers at the Dairy Queen. They’d split a chocolate milkshake. Helen had spent the night with an aunt who lived over on Florence. 

            She was afraid Dolores would see right through her. She would know, the way twins did. The way Evie knew that Dolores had never done with Joe the things she had done with Don, in the backseat of his Chevy Fleetline, under cover of night and shadow. And this troubled her because she seemed to have achieved something meant for Dolores alone. Stolen it from her, Mother might have said, as though that had been her aim all along.

            Which was nonsense, of course. She’d never intended to end up in the back-seat, dress unbuttoned, breasts spilling out of her brassiere. Don breathing, “Ohh,” with a kind of wonder, relieving her of the need to explain that she’d been planning to reduce.

            But it had happened. And now, having taken stock of the enormity of her indiscretion, she assumed Don would regret the evening and fumble his way into gentle distancing, a quiet backing-up.  

            When Dolores and Father came down, Evie asked, “What would you two like? Orange juice or V-8?” It was what she asked every morning, and in her own ears, her voice sounded the way it always did. 

            They were dressed for church: Dolores in a somber tweed, her tan Juliet cap already on, Father in a suit he’d owned since the late ’30s, wrinkled and shapeless now. He refused to wear a tie and rarely spoke.  These days, his words bore no relation to visible reality. 

            “You’re not going, Evie?” Dolores asked, eying her housecoat.

            Evie poured orange juice at the counter. “I’m a little under the weather.”

            “Well, that’s too bad.” She waited until Evie brought their glasses to the table. “How was your evening? And your friend? Ellen?”

            “Helen.” She explained about the hamburgers, the milkshake, the hospitable aunt. But it was too late. She knew from Dolores’s tone—and from the way she patted her lips with her napkin after swallowing a bite of pancake—that she grasped the gist, if not the specifics, of Evie’s recklessness the night before. 

            It was the thing about being a twin that others didn’t know: You were never alone with your own anguish.

***

            After Dolores and Father set off for church, Evie cleaned the breakfast dishes. The deeply familiar rhythms of washing and drying freed her mind, which returned to that backseat, its leather furrows uncomfortable under her bare backside. Above, sweetgum leaves had rustled in a steady breeze. The car windows were foggy with breath. 

            When they sat up—disheveled, unable to meet each other’s eyes—Don had said, “That was lovely,” and then, “I’ll get you home now.” 

            There had been no talk of love.

            She dried her hands on the dish towel.  She knew that with time, she would forget the details—the smell of Naugahyde, Pilcher Park’s unholy darkness, the bleary joy of kissing until she could not bring to mind how good girls were supposed to behave—and remember only the disappointing return to what she knew.

            She realized someone was knocking at the door: Bud Wheatley, dressed in dungarees and a T-shirt.

            “My dad says I’m to come help,” he said. 

            She took him round to the shed where the mower and pruning shears were stored. “It should take you about an hour. Come knock when you’re finished and I’ll pay you what your father and I agreed. Fifty cents if you get to all those sunflowers,” she said.

            She watched him, standing back from the parlor window so he wouldn’t see. He had his father’s blue eyes, but he was built like his mother: reedy, tall. Her heart hurt—now more for Bud’s pain than her own—while she watched him push the mower from one side of the lawn to the other and back again. It occurred to her that Don sending him over was a kind of consolation prize, a way of saying there should be no hard feelings between them. As though a mown lawn and tidy flower bed were sufficient compensation for her trouble. She trembled with indignation. 

            But certainly it wasn’t Bud’s fault. When he knocked on the door, she splashed water on her face at the kitchen sink and retrieved her coin purse from the front table.

            “There you are,” she said, handing him three quarters.

            She watched to see what he would do.

            “You gave me too much,” he said, handing one of the quarters back.

            “No. You keep it. You did a good job.”

            He was silent for a moment. Finally he said. “I ain’t smoking no more.”

            “‘I’m not smoking anymore.’” She couldn’t help herself. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

            “It’s ’cause of what you said then.” He looked at his sneakers. “That I should follow the rules. Respect myself.”

            She felt tears welling in her eyes, then blinked them away. “You come back in two weeks,” she said. “There’ll be more work for you then.”

            “Yes, ma’am.”

            Quickly he turned and ran down the steps.

***

            After supper Evie had just settled herself in the soft chair in the parlor when Dolores entered the room.

            “He’s in bed early,” she said as though it was her custom to report on Father’s habits. “What are you knitting?”

            “A scarf.”

            Dolores nodded and lowered herself into Mother’s old rocker. “I want to ask you something.”

            Evie put her needles down. 

            “Do you think you’ll be visiting your friend in Kankakee soon?”

            The lamp bathed the room in dull yellow light, almost sepia-toned, like a photo of long-dead relations.

            “I don’t plan to,” Evie said.

            “If I was you, I’d go,” Dolores said. “I’d stay a while, maybe. Get out of this damn place.”

            Evie was silent as Dolores’s words tumbled around them. After a moment she said, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

            “If I could, I would.” Dolores blotted her cheek with her hand. “I hate that you can choose to and I can’t.”

            “Maybe in a year or two, after Father—”

            “That’s too long!” she cried. “It will be too late! It’s probably already too late!”

            Everything unsaid hung in the air between them.

            “Choice or no choice, I’m not going,” Evie said, her cheeks flushing red. “I’m staying right here. And that’s the end of it.”

            Dolores nodded. “All right, then.” And after a moment, “I’d better be turning in.”

            Her relief was unspoken, palpable.

***

            The next morning, Evie was locking the front door when she heard a honk from the street. 

            “Did you have a nice weekend?” Don asked as she opened the passenger door.

            They were silent for most of the drive. About a block from the school, Evie said, “He did a good job yesterday, your boy. He’s honest, hardworking.” She paused. “He says what he means.”

            Don pulled the car swiftly to the curb and turned off the ignition. “He is better at that than I am,” he said, hands still on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road ahead. 

            Just like that, he became known to her. She thought, I will not give this up, even as she realized that for all the rest of her life, she would have to work to become an expert in his language, to coax meaning from the odd transmission, the garbled communique inadvertently intercepted.

              She knew he wanted to kiss her right there, just yards from Keith School, all the children walking past on their way into the building. She might have encouraged him, leaning slightly forward, but for the weight on her heart. She knew she would have to craft just the right explanation for those she loved—brief, clear, devoid of sentimentality or anger long buried—would have to say, in so many words, that she never meant for any of this to happen.