Spring Rain (17 page)

“When the girls went by the cluster of gays, the guys called out their traditional, ‘Show us your shoes,’ and the girls raised their feet from their cars to show their shoes. Some had a special pair of shoes that they waved at the guys, duplicates of what they were wearing. One even threw her extra shoes to them. I was halfway laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing when suddenly there was Ted in the middle of these men. In fact, he was the one who caught the shoe.”

Mom looked into middle distance, recalling the evening. Her face was full of sorrow.

“I must have made a choking sound because your father looked up from his newspaper and asked what was wrong. All I could do was point at the TV. Miss New Jersey was passing the guys, her leg raised as she twirled her shoe for them to see. They were clapping and cheering for the hometown favorite, and suddenly there was Ted again, raising his captured shoe in salute.”

Mom returned to the present. “We were so mad at him, Clay. We were. How could he do this to us? How could he ruin our Christian testimony like that? After all we’d done for him.” She rose from the table and began pulling out baking ingredients. “Talk about pride! At that point, while we cared about Ted, we cared more about ourselves.”

She measured flour and shortening and began to cut the shortening into the flour for a piecrust. “But that was long ago, Clay. We’ve made peace with the Lord about our responsibility, if any, for the situation.”

“You don’t have any responsibility!” Clay was vehement. “You were great parents, and don’t let anyone ever tell you differently. You supported us, loved us, and trained us in Christian values. You didn’t just take us to church and Sunday school; you lived those principles in front of us every day. You couldn’t have been better examples.”

Mom smiled her thanks as she began to roll the dough. “Maybe. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s the past. That’s one thing we learned. The past can’t be undone. If we were wrong, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t change it. But we also learned that the past doesn’t have to control today. I’m not angry at Ted. I love him and have forgiven him for the hurt he’s given us.”

She turned to Clay and laid her floury hand gently on his cheek. “You need to do the same, son.”

Clay made a muffled snort of sound that could have meant anything.

Mom smiled sadly. “I know you’re mad at him for the sorrow he’s brought us.”

Clay thought that was an understatement if he’d ever heard one.

“Have you ever asked yourself if what you feel is misplaced anger?”

“What?” He stared at his mother.

“Maybe you’re really mad at God for letting your twin be the way he is, for not ‘fixing’ him.”

Clay felt poleaxed. “Come on, Mom,” he managed. “Where’d you ever get that idea?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? The Holy Spirit?”

Clay watched her walk from the room, his mind in turmoil. She was right, at least about the forgiving Ted part. He had to do
something. He couldn’t let Ted die without making peace with him. He knew he’d wither and die himself if that happened.

But what did he do with this anger he’d been harboring all these years? How did he say Ted’s choice was all right when it wasn’t?

He wasn’t really mad at God, was he?

Oh, God, help! What should I do?

What he did was take a long walk on the beach. The sun was bright and almost warm. He was glad for the sweatshirt he had on and equally glad for the sunglasses. Terror trotted beside him, leaving little paw prints in the sand. When a seagull dived toward them, Terror ran back toward the house as fast as he could go, memories of Mama undoubtedly driving him.

“My hero,” Clay called after him.

“You were breaking the leash law, you know.”

Clay glanced up and saw Clooney walking toward him, metal detector in hand. The two men shook hands.

“Glad to see you home.” Clooney lifted his baseball cap and ran his arm across his forehead. His gray hair was drawn tightly back into a ponytail, and a gold hoop dangled from his left ear.

Clay wondered absently if Clooney had found the hoop with the detector.

Clooney slapped his hat back in place. “Remember when I couldn’t tell you two apart?”

“We used to love to tease people who got confused. And that was almost everyone.”

“Couldn’t confuse you now,” Clooney said sadly, staring out to the horizon.

“No,” Clay agreed, staring toward infinity himself.

Clooney shrugged. “To each his own, I guess. Sort of sad it turned out this way for him though.” He turned and looked up at the Wharton house. The deck outside Ted’s room was just visible above the dunes. “I see him sitting out there in the lounge chair, all bundled up in blankets and stuff. He always waves.”

Clay nodded. It was all he could do with the pressure in his chest at the picture of Ted waving to Clooney. Ted who used to follow the man around begging for a chance to try the detector; Ted who loved the tales Clooney told of World War II treasures he found, especially the live bomb about three feet long; Ted who
saved all his money the summer he was twelve to buy a detector of his own and ended up buying Clay a football and cleats instead. Neither of them ever mentioned that a football in Clay’s possession might as well be in Ted’s too.

Clooney shook his head, his gray ponytail shimmying across his back. His dark eyes were confounded as he turned to Clay. “I just can’t imagine liking boys instead of girls.” With that, he swung his detector with its digital readouts out over the sand and walked off.

The high tide line was littered with broken shells—fan-shaped clam, bumpy oyster, ridged scallop, the occasional black mussel, and slim razor clam. Seaweed, air bladders still intact, and sea grasses whisked from the dunes by the tides lay in untidy clumps among the shells. The tide was low, so he walked on the hard sand, watching the foam-flocked waves tumble gently a few feet from him. His mind skittered before him like sandpipers before the waves.

He loved Ted. He was his twin, the other half of himself. They had started life as one, sharing egg and sperm, then splitting to become an identical pair. They had wrestled for room in their mother’s womb and jockeyed for attention all their lives. They had supported each other, applauded each other, encouraged each other, competed with each other. How could he not love Ted?

And they had loved God together too, at least until Ted turned away from all they’d been taught. The indescribable twinship they shared was what made Ted’s betrayal of their training and background so corrosive, so excruciating, and that betrayal fueled an anger that got in the way of the love.

He stood, feet apart, staring across the inlet to Atlantic City. His heart ached, and his head hurt as a great vise tightened, tightened, constricting, squeezing, killing. It was a great surprise to taste salt at the edge of his mouth and realize he was crying. Leigh’s comment last night in Ted’s room came back to him.

“Tears are falling as often as spring rain around here.”

Too true, he thought as he brushed at the wetness on his face. Unfortunately too true.

C
LAY TOOK THE
chair beside Ted’s bed and smiled at his brother. He knew if he was to learn to love Ted again, that meant spending time with him.

During his walk on the beach, he’d promised himself and God that he’d sit with Ted at least twice a day. He’d have nice, quiet conversations with him and get to know him all over again. He’d find out how Ted thought, how he felt about dying, about God and Jesus. Clay would not lecture, preach, or reprimand in any manner. He’d listen and learn.

He smiled mentally as he found a firm example for his actions. He’d be Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement.

When Clay sat down, Ted just looked at him, saying nothing, giving away nothing. Clay’s smile quickly became strained. Where should he start? What topics were safe? Did they have anything in common anymore?

“Beautiful view,” Clay said, looking out the French doors beside the bed. Scenery ranked right up there with the weather when you were desperate.

Dutifully, Ted looked out the windows. “Yeah. That’s why I don’t want to move downstairs.”

Clay nodded. “I was out walking earlier and bumped into Clooney.”

Ted almost smiled but caught himself just in time. “Strange duck.”

Clay nodded. “But nice. He feels bad about your illness.”

“I guess that’s better than feeling good.”

Conversation ground to a halt as Clay tried to decide whether Ted was sending him a not-too-subtle message that said Get Lost. Both brothers looked out the windows again.

The white dunes with their winter-browned grasses waving in the ocean breeze reared up behind the house; snow fences threaded through the sand to help fight erosion. The dunes themselves were artificial in that they were the creation of the Army Corps of Engineers rather than the hand of God.

The whole New Jersey coast was one huge battleground between the sea and the humans determined to hold on to the prime oceanfront land. Hurricanes and winter storms battered the beaches, eating tons of sand, only to have Mother Nature’s temporary victory reversed by the huge pumps and pipes that brought sand from offshore or the bay to the beaches. Never mind the millions of taxpayers’ dollars pumped into the reclamation. Everyone wanted wide beaches, time in the surf and sun, and homes on the water. New Jersey wanted the tourist dollars.

Beyond the dunes the beach became flat, the pale, sugar-fine sand above the tide line soft and shifting underfoot. The beach washed by the tides was packed firmly, scrubbed of personality by the constant ebb and flow of the water. Today the waves were gentle in the early afternoon sun, and here and there people walked the beach enjoying the slight foretaste of summer’s warmth.

One of the nicest things about the point where they lived was that it wasn’t the touristy area of town. Full-time residents occupied most of the houses in the neighborhood. The boardwalk was a couple of miles away, a huge distance by tourist reckoning. Even in high summer, their beach wasn’t crowded.

“Yep, there’s nothing like the beach and the ocean.” Clay smiled. That was a safe beginning. He pointed to the small image of a pony-tailed man with the metal detector working the sand a couple of blocks away. “You’d think he’d get tired of looking after all these years.”

“Did he show you his new state-of-the-art digital detector?”

Clay shook his head.

“Quite the machine. He can set the depth of his search or the type of metal to search for.” Ted smiled as they watched the man bend and dig a small hole in the sand with a child’s red plastic beach spade. Clooney straightened and brushed sand off something in his hand. “Wonder what he just found.”

Clay leaned forward. “Remember when our highest goal in life was to get a metal detector of our own and discover buried treasure?”

Ted nodded. “Why should he have all the fun and all the money? Quarters, Kennedy halves. Remember the day he found the silver dollar?”

“You almost had a detector.”

“Yeah, but I got tired of saving. I bought you a football and cleats instead.” He was quiet for a moment. “Bad choice, considering how well we both played football.”

They grinned at each other, then overcome with uncertainties, they both turned back to watching Clooney. Safer, Clay thought.

“Remember the day he found that diamond ring?” Clay asked, his eyes firmly fixed on Clooney as the man dropped his newest treasure in the fanny pack about his waist.

Ted nodded. “Buried in the sand down by Eighteenth Street. He advertised in the
Seaside Gazette
, but no one ever claimed it.”

“That’s because it was part of a pirate’s treasure. Everyone thought it belonged to some shoobie who cried all the way home, but we knew better.” He grinned at Ted. “The rest is still waiting for us.”

“Shoobie,” Ted said. “I haven’t heard that word in years.”

“That’s because no one takes the train to Seaside for the day with their lunch packed in a shoe box anymore. They all zip down the Atlantic City Expressway and the Garden State Parkway with their Igloos snuggly tucked in the backseat.”

“So we should call them Iglooies?”

Again came that momentary connection blown away all too quickly by pride and the past. They turned back to Clooney.

“You want to find pirate’s treasure,” Ted said. “I’d rather find some World War II artifacts myself.”

“Like the shell casings Clooney finds.”

“Like that live World War II bomb he found when he was a kid.”

Clay watched Clooney wave his detector back and forth. “With our luck all we’ll find is money.”

“Yeah, and not even halves and silver dollars either. Just quarters and dimes and pennies.” Ted sighed. “Another dream bites the dust.”

They sat quietly for a minute, actually comfortable with each other.

“Can I have some water?” Ted asked.

Clay held the cup with its bent straw out to his twin and watched as Ted sucked down half the cup.

“Thanks,” Ted said, sinking back on the pillows. “I was just too lazy to get it for myself.”

Scared more than he wanted to admit by Ted’s willingness to be waited on, Clay said, “You’ve never been too lazy to get what you wanted in your whole life.”

Ted smiled in recognition of that truth. “Sort of like you.”

Clay nodded. “It’s the twin thing. We can’t avoid being alike.”

“In some ways,” Ted agreed.

“We’re both handsome dudes.” Clay looked at his brother’s gaunt face.

Ted grunted. “Sure are. We’ve always had the girls and the boys panting after us.”

Instantly, Clay felt uncomfortable. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Ted asked, all innocence.

“Please, let’s just talk. Innocuous things. Noncontroversial things.”

Ted looked at him, defiant now in reaction to Clay’s discomfort. “How can we just talk? You refuse to acknowledge who and what I am.”

Clay shook his head. What had happened to their ease? Why had Ted deliberately destroyed it? “I acknowledge what you are all right, but we’ll never agree on the subject, so let’s drop it.” He looked directly at his brother. “I don’t want to argue.”