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A laugh escaped her, but it died quickly.
“Kind of reminds me of my brother Elias,” I told her.
“You’ve got brothers?”
“Yeah. Four. And a sister. But Elias is my twin. And he’s crazy smart. Like, he took all the brains inside the womb and left me with… what I got.”
“You’re a smart guy,” she insisted. “You fixed the water heater.”
“I’m smart in a mechanical way. But not like Elias. He’s a genius with numbers and everything. He was able to do college level shit when he was in junior high. People were always going on about how smart he was. Everybody. Teachers, my parents, everybody. And then they’d meet me and be like… you’re twins? Really?”
“That’s kind of how I feel,” she admitted. “Like, someday when I meet Rex’s college professors or med school friends—”
“Med school?”
“Or his poetry society or whatever. Everyone will see him and how brilliant he is and then they’ll wonder how someone like that came from someone like me.”
“You’re not dumb. I mean, look at you. You’ve… got scrubs on. I mean… that makes me think you know how to give people shots and… read charts and say things likecardiac infarction…”
“You strike me as the kind of guy who likes sayinginfarctionbecause it sort of sounds likefart.”
“Guilty.”
That made her smile. Genuinely. It reached her eyes and lit up her face. I wanted to keep that smile on her face as long as I could.
“Speaking of scrubs, what kind of nurse are you?” I asked.
“I work in the pediatrics unit at the county hospital,” she answered.
“Sounds hard.”
“It can be. But I really love it. Even on days I get a little puke on me and have nothing to change into.”
“And I’m sure you wouldn’t be able to do that job if you weren’t smart. They don’t let just anybody be a nurse, do they?” I wondered. “I’d fucking hope not, anyway.”
That got another smile from her. A more satisfied one.
“Ugh, what did you do about it?” she asked, after a minute.
“About what?”
“Your brother. The smart one. And all the comparison.”
“Oh, well, generally I’d remind him that he wet the bed until he was eight and slept with a stuffed monkey until he was thirteen,” I joked.
“That’s mean.”
I shrugged. “I know. But it shut him up.”
“I don’t think I can do that to my son,” she said. “Though he does sleep with a little plush bunny sometimes. But that’s more adorable than mock-worthy.”
She smiled again, like she was picturing it. Her son and his little bunny tucked into bed, sleeping soundly.
It made me think of how my dad would ask us kids how our days were, right before we went to bed. I always remember feeling like I could be totally honest with him. My defenses were down, I guess. I remembered telling him that I’d failed a test while Elias had aced it. Or how our teacher told Elias that he was going places and told me that I’d be lucky to get a job as a bag boy in the grocery story. I told him how I felt so stupid next to my brother.
“Why is his brain so much bigger than mine?” my seven-year-old self wondered. “How come he got all the brains when we were inside mom? Shouldn’t they be even? Fifty-fifty.”
My father chuckled and mussed my hair. He took the ratty teddy bear from the shelf next to my bed and tucked him under the covers with me.
