25

On the subway, Will isn’t thinking of Jennifer, or of Mitch and Elizabeth, or Mitch and Lisa, or even Mitch and Carole, but of the first Halloween that his brother refused to wear the mask he’d chosen for himself. Their mother had never dressed them in matching clothes or encouraged them to regard their being identical—nearly—twins as special or even interesting, and they’d never worn costumes that were even slightly similar. Typically, Will was the grotesque of the two—not the kind of monster whose external ugliness cloaked virtue but one whose face represented a malignant soul. That year he wasn’t any recognizable miscreant, not Mr. Hyde or Count Dracula or Dr. Frankenstein’s terrible mistake, but a freak of his own making. Hunchbacked under ragged clothes topped by a repellent werewolf mask guaranteed to frighten the smaller children, he had green rubber gloves covered with putrescent warts and lumps.

Mitch was to be Clark Kent, not yet Superman but the earnest reporter on the verge of becoming Superman: the phone booth moment of transformation. He had on a suit that was a little too small (it had been purchased for a cousin’s wedding the previous year) and a white shirt torn open to the waist to reveal the superhero’s big red-and-yellow S emblazoned on his true-blue chest. Over his own face, Mitch wore a mask with Superman’s blandly handsome countenance, with its cleft chin and iconic squiggle of black hair, hair too filled with vigor to remain tamed by brilliantine or whatever it was that supposedly kept the rest of it in place.

“I want to trade,” Mitch suddenly said.

“No way.”

“Come on. Please.”

“No,” Will said. “I hate being the good guy.”

“I’ll rake tomorrow.”

“Unh-uh. No deal.”

“Come on, Will, please. Did you see how many leaves there are? It’ll take all afternoon.”

“No.”

“I won’t go unless you trade.”

“Fine. Don’t go. What do I care?” Will took off his gloves to tie a shoelace that had come undone.

“Come on, Will. Please.”

“No.”

“All the raking, then. Not just tomorrow, but after, when the rest of the leaves come down.”

“No,” Will said. “No, no, no.” Stalwart until Mitch cried, something Will couldn’t stand and on which he tried and failed to turn his back. The sight of his brother giving up against his grief, the suddenness of Mitch’s losing the ability to hide it: this had always had the power to dismantle Will. When Mitch cried, Will felt guilty and cornered and like he had to do something—anything—to stop it.

“Okay,” he said, “here.” He handed Mitch the mask, the gloves, the hunchback from last year’s Igor costume, a cushion to which their mother had sewn two loops of elastic, one to go around each arm and hold it in place, and the ragged, grave-moldered cloak inherited from another year’s vampire.

Will put on the Superman shirt and over it the dark suit; he adjusted the plastic do-gooder face. Without talking, he and Mitch went downstairs, stood patiently and listened to the usual cautions, and received quick hugs, each getting the embrace meant for the other brother. Will felt something different in his mother’s arms, a communication that wasn’t meant for him: an extra little squeeze of protective love and what was almost a tremble of maternal hope, the bodily equivalent of a prayer—please, please don’t let them tease him. That’s okay, Will told himself under the mask as the two of them went out the door and down the walk. That’s okay with me. I don’t mind because he needs that. Mitch needs more—more love, an extra cookie, a longer good-night kiss—a little more of everything. Still, he was stung—jealous enough that he knew he wouldn’t have been able to hide it, and grateful his face was hidden.

They joined the neighborhood boys on the corner. As if by agreement, neither of them told the other kids that they’d traded costumes but continued under their masks to pretend to be each other. For Will it was a night of silent watching; he learned how seldom other children interacted with his brother. And it must have been, he imagines, a night of discovery for Mitch as well, jostled amiably, joked with, spoken to.

Later, at home, they dumped out their pillowcases to compare hauls, made a few trades, and argued with their mother about exactly how much candy they were allowed to eat that night, only Mitch complying with the limit she set. Then Mitch went up to their room, probably to sort through his baseball cards, shuffle past one after another hearty, handsome face, while Will stayed up with his father, watching Creature Features’s Halloween Marathon, and making his way steadily through his candy, methodically unwrapping and chewing what seemed imperative to get rid of and yet was too valuable to just throw out. It took until midnight to make himself good and sick.

“Well, that’s a first, just about,” his father said, holding Will’s head over the downstairs toilet. “I can’t remember the last time you threw up.”

Will wonders how old he was that fall. He remembers that he’d felt very sorry for himself, so much so that he cried before he got sick, cried because he knew he was going to be sick and that it was his own fault. He didn’t understand what he’d done to himself, or why.

The following year Halloween fell on a Friday, and the school held a party in the gymnasium. Will went; he convinced Stacey Davis to come with him to the stairwell, where she poured the contents of a red PixieStix onto her tongue and then let him lick it off before it melted away. Mitch stayed home and handed out candy. He wore a rubber political mask—Richard Nixon, Will thinks it was.

Mitch, his twin, the solitary swimmer, champion of the rights of manatees and hair seals, a man who can withstand whole days in the ocean. Does he remain the boy who traded ten or fifteen hours of raking and bagging leaves for one night of wearing the ugly mask instead of the handsome one? Did he hate Will already by that Halloween, or did that come later, the next year, when he stopped going out in costume, seemingly content to stay home?

Will’s parents had done what his father called “their level best” to offset Mitch’s antisocial nature. They pushed him into chess club, debate, Young Scientists of America, anything the A- and B-list kids, who filled the yearbook staff, football team, pep squad, and band, left to the losers and dorks, unfortunates who Will and Mitch’s parents assumed would be less likely to focus on Mitch’s face. Neither of them anticipated that the pariahs might be crueler than their pretty, popular classmates. They didn’t understand that one untouchable resented being forced to make do with the damning company of others, that they were all venomous in a way that the luckier, more likeable kids never were. Always, Mitch capitulated to their mother’s relentless goading—she called it “enthusiasm.” He’d go to these gatherings once, only once, and then refuse to return.

And now, a new picture to add to the others, the image of his brother masked and slipping through the night to steal not just another girlfriend but his wife. An act of hatred? Of desperation? Would it even be possible to parse out one from the other?

So we’ve both lost a son, Will thinks, referring to himself and to his father. Scenes flash through his head like snapshots—or maybe they are snapshots, images he remembers from the old family albums. The three of them, Will and Mitch and their father, playing touch football in the backyard. Sitting together on the beach, shading their eyes with their hands. Will mugging from behind the wheel of the old station wagon and Mitch sitting on the hood, his turtleneck sweater pulled up so that only his hair showed.