Bad Marie (16 page)

Five Novels I Have Compulsively Read and Reread

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s
Tender Is the Night
(1934)


Josephine Humprey’s
Rich in Love
(1987)


Mona Simpson’s
Anywhere but Here
(1992)


Antonia White’s
Beyond the Glass
(1954)


Joy Williams’s
Breaking and Entering
(1988)

An Excerpt from Marcy Dermansky’s Debut Novel,
Twins

M
ARCY
D
ERMANSKY’S DEBUT NOVEL
,
Twins,
was named a
New York Times Book Review
Editor’s Choice and was called a “brainy, emotionally sophisticated bildungsroman-for-two”
(New York Times Book Review);
a “witty and slyly subversive take on the teenage American dream”
(Daily Mail on Sunday);
and “compelling, dark, and like a traffic accident that you try to look away from, only to find your gaze returning with odd fascination”
(Denver Rocky Mountain News).

SUE

I wanted tattoos for our thirteenth birthday. Chloe didn’t. Chloe refused. I told her I did not know what I would do if she kept saying no.

“Tattoos are dirty,” Chloe said.

Chloe was four minutes older. She was an eighth of an inch taller. She was smarter. She was prettier. We were identical twins, but Chloe had turned out better. She was the better twin, she had the better name, and I was desperate to hold on to her. Horrifying girls like Lisa Markman were inviting Chloe to their parties and offering her cigarettes and beer and birth control.

My childhood had passed in a golden bubble of happiness. I adored Chloe and Chloe adored me. We didn’t need our parents; we didn’t need our brother or friends or parties or separate bedrooms. Chloe and Sue. Our hair was blond, our eyes were blue. For twelve perfect years, Chloe and I lived and breathed each other. We took baths in the same bathtub, shared the same rubber bath toys. Now Chloe took constant showers, all by herself.

We needed tattoos.

“I won’t,” Chloe said. “You can’t make me. No one in the eighth grade has a tattoo.”

She was right. No one did. We were from the suburbs. I hated every single person in the eighth grade. They were all morons, out to steal my sister. Chloe was much too good. She was too eager to please.

I sat on my bed, staring at Chloe, waiting for her to crack. Chloe wanted her own room, but there were no extra rooms in the house. It was a stupid idea. We were meant to share a room. We were identical twins. We had no secrets. Chloe picked up a hairbrush and started brushing her hair. She was obsessed with being clean. Chloe was always taking showers, smoothing her hair, washing her face, washing her hands, looking at herself in the mirror.

“You want to be like everybody else,” I said. “But they’re all boring.”

“Who is boring?”

“Everyone.”

“Everyone?” Chloe said.

I reached for her hand. Chloe laid down her hairbrush on the bed and squeezed my fingers.

“There is no one like us,” I told her.

“Everyone is boring?” Chloe repeated.

I picked up Chloe’s brush and threw it against the wall.

Chloe bit her lip, looking down at her hands.

“Our tattoos won’t be dirty,” I said.

I’d explained it to her. I had found someone who didn’t care that we were underage. I had paid in advance. Everything was planned. Our tattoos would be simple. Chloe would get a SUE tattoo. Mine would say CHLOE. If Chloe ever got lost or made friends with someone who was not me or had sex with some strange, awful man, she could never forget who we were. Who we belonged with. It wasn’t enough that we looked the same. Chloe could put a rhinestone barrette in her hair and she became someone else. She would get upset with me when I put a barrette in my hair too.

Chloe looked at her brush. It had left a dark mark on the pale pink wall.

“I can’t get a tattoo,” she said.

“You have to,” I said.

Chloe shook her head.

“We could get our ears double-pierced,” she whispered.

“No,” I said. “Tattoos. It’s all planned. It’s already paid for.”

Chloe crossed the room, picked up her brush, and started brushing her hair again. She was so beautiful. Wherever we went, people stared at Chloe, they stared at us. I knew that I looked like her. Technically I was beautiful too. But when I wasn’t next to Chloe, I didn’t feel right. I tripped on my shoelaces. My hair tangled easily.

“Three letters,” I said. “To make sure we are never apart. No matter where we go. You won’t do that for me?”

“It’s enough to be twins,” Chloe said. “It’s practically tattooed on our faces. We look the same. Why isn’t that enough?”

We had been having the same conversation for days. Chloe wanted friends, boyfriends. She wanted to blink her eyes and imagine me gone. I sat down on the floor and cried. I cried until my chest hurt and then I coughed. Snot dripped down my face and my head started to ache. Chloe sat down next to me and put her hand on her own head, like it hurt her too. For a while, she did nothing, just watched me cry. I’d blink through my tears, wipe the snot on to my sleeve, and watch her, watching me.

“Sue,” she said. “Why do you do this?”

And then Chloe wrapped her arms around me. She rocked me like I was her little baby. I was miserable, but I felt wonderful, rocking. We rocked back and forth. Chloe and I were miserable together. It was the middle of the night. I could hear our older brother, Daniel, in his room down the hall, strumming chords on his guitar.

“We are underage,” Chloe whispered. She kissed the top of my head. Our age didn’t matter. The appointments were made. The tattoo guy had taken my money and told me how to come in the back door. I had been slipping twenty-dollar bills from my father’s wallet for months.

One day, Chloe would be glad. One day we would be old, we would be thirty, and Chloe would thank me.

Chloe’s interest in other girls was temporary. It was adolescence. The tattoos, I knew, would keep us safe.

“We could get a computer,” Chloe said. “Or leather boots.”

“No,” I said.

I stretched across Chloe’s lap and reached over to open her schoolbag. I took out her pencil case and removed a freshly sharpened pencil. Chloe liked her pencils sharp. She loved multiple-choice tests, filling in the small circles with all the right answers.

“What are you doing?” she said.

I stuck the sharp tip of the pencil into my arm. A bubble of blood spurted from the spot. It was more brown than red. I touched the blood with my finger, smearing it over my skin.

“Why do you have to be so dramatic?” Chloe said.

If I was lucky, the lead from the pencil would make it into my bloodstream and I’d die an early death.

“Stop crying,” Chloe said. “You make my head hurt.”

I wanted to die. Chloe was the better twin and I was not necessary. She did not need me and soon, any day now, she would pretend she did not know me.

“You should clean up your arm,” Chloe said. “You’re bleeding.”

I shook my head. I hoped the lead would spread quickly. I closed my eyes. If I was dead, Chloe would no longer be an identical twin. She could cut the pictures in half, and no one would know I had ever been born.

She got up. I could hear her walk into the bathroom, hear the water running from the sink. She was washing her face, scrubbing her hands. That’s what Chloe did. But then she came back to the room with tissues, a Band-Aid, antibiotic cream. She wiped the tears from my face. She put the cream on my cut. Chloe was a good nurse, but she wouldn’t become a nurse. She’d be a doctor, a neurosurgeon. I prayed that she would not want to be a lawyer, like our parents. Our parents were miserable shits. Our parents were raging bores. They were divorce lawyers.

“Stop crying,” Chloe said. “Please. Please stop crying.”

I would not stop crying.

“Are they safe?” Chloe said. “Tattoos? Are they hygienic?”

I nodded, still crying. I was winning. I knew I had won. “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

Chloe bit her lip.

“Everything is sterilized?” she said. “Clean?”

“Of course,” I said. “One hundred percent clean.”

I didn’t know. I had no idea. For all I knew, we would get hepatitis B and die. That would be fine. We would die together.

“I want mine to be pink,” Chloe said.

“Fine,” I said. “Pink.”

I hated the color pink. The walls of our bedroom were pink. Most of Chloe’s clothes were pink. Most of mine were too. I didn’t care. I reached for Chloe’s hand. I squeezed it tight.

She looked sad. She shook her hand out of my grip, but I couldn’t stop grinning.

“You are such a drama queen,” Chloe said.