CHAPTER 2

MY TWIN

I was a twin. I don’t know how I sensed it without anyone ever telling me, but one day when I was six or seven years old I asked my mother if I’d had a twin brother. But instead of telling you what my mom told me happened to my twin, I thought I’d let her tell the story because she was there:

We lived in San Pedro (which is part of Los Angeles) on Seventh Street in a little Spanish-style house right down the street from my office, where I had a legal practice. I was in the middle of a trial, but for some reason I needed to go to the house and either I’d forgotten my key or the key didn’t work. There was a side window that I’d always left open a crack, so I decided to climb in, not even thinking that it was a foolish thing to do considering that I was three months pregnant. The window was maybe four feet off the ground and I’m only five feet tall, so it was a bit of a struggle to get up to the window, and I slipped and fell.

It wasn’t until I had some spotting and bleeding later that day that I realized there might be a problem. So I called my doctor, John Roller, who was a dear friend. In fact, he’d delivered two of my mother’s children. He said, “You need to come in right now.” And I said, “I’m in trial, but I’ll come in after court today.” Sometimes I think about my behavior at that time and wonder, Was I nuts to wait? But I waited and once he examined me he told me I was having a miscarriage and that he wanted me to go to the hospital for a D&C (dilation and curettage, which is a procedure to remove any remaining tissue from the pregnancy). I said, “No, I can’t, I’m in trial.” As you might imagine, I was extremely upset and was probably in denial about what was happening to me and by focusing on the trial I didn’t have to think about losing my baby.

So the doctor said, “I’m going to give you a prescription that will at least slough off the majority of the lining of your uterus, and I want you to promise me you’ll get it and take this medication tonight.” I promised I would and I did. I don’t know how I managed in the days and weeks that followed, because I had just lost this child and went through a postpartum depression of sorts, but I dealt with the trial, and looked after my two young daughters, and kept going.

Approximately four months after this miscarriage, I was still feeling like I was pregnant and called John. He said that he thought I was just going through a difficult time after the miscarriage and needed more time to grieve the loss. But at five months I still had that feeling, so I called John again and said, “I know you think I’m crazy, but I think I’m pregnant.” He said, “Well, maybe you got pregnant again. Weirder things have happened.” So I went to see him and after examining me he said, “You are pregnant.” I said, “How far along?” And he said, “Five months!” I had no idea that I’d been pregnant with twins. In those days they didn’t do routine sonograms, which would have shown two heartbeats before the miscarriage and one after. So I remember thinking, Oh, my gosh, what if I’d had the D&C? I would have lost the second baby without even knowing it.

After telling me how incredible this was John got very pensive and said, “Because of the medication I prescribed for you the baby may have birth defects.” Both my doctor and I were Catholic, which is one of the reasons we were so close. He told me that he wouldn’t perform an abortion, but that I might consider consulting with another physician and discussing this option, which I never did. I told him, and I don’t think he was surprised, that I was “looking forward to having the baby and whatever gift the Lord gives me.”

Through the rest of my pregnancy I was extremely worried and I prayed, “Please Lord, you’ve given me this child, please take care of him and protect this little boy.” Then on Mother’s Day, May 12, 1987, Robbie was born. John was there to deliver him and he was overjoyed and pranced around the room with this child in his arms, and said, “He’s perfect! Everything about him is perfect!” And then Robbie urinated on him and John added, “Everything works!” Later, John told me that he’d kept a secret from me. He said, “The last time I delivered a baby on Mother’s Day, the child was very malformed and passed away, and I didn’t want to share that with you until after the birth.” No wonder John had been so relieved.

I never said a word to my children about Robbie’s twin, so I was shocked when Robbie asked me about his twin brother. He said, “I was a twin, wasn’t I?” I’d probably pushed the memory so far down that it took me a moment before I realized what Robbie was talking about. In a way, it was so eerie.

So that’s the story of my unnamed twin. But there was one other thing I told my mother when I first asked her about my brother. I said, “I know I had a brother and before he died, he gave me his speed.”