in the city
‘loved’ him
and ‘practically’ offered him a teaching job on the spot.
Mom clears the plates.
Dad’s cell phone rings.
‘Yes. Yes. OK.
I understand.
Thanks.
Yes. OK. Yes.’
Dad studies his phone
then fires it across the room.
It hits the wall
and smashes,
bits of black plastic and glass
raining down on the kitchen countertops.
‘Another job will come along, son,’
Grammie says,
and Dad replies,
‘Don’t patronise me, Mom.’
It is the last thing he says
for three whole days.
Hitchcock
Three crows land in the yard
and peck at our tiny square of lawn.
They are joined by a magpie who
scowls at us through the patio doors.
Tippi points. ‘Not good,’ she says.
Tippi is not superstitious,
but she’s an Alfred Hitchcock fan
and squirms at the sight of more than one bird.
She caught the bug from Mom and Dad, who started dating
the same week a Hitchcock season opened at Film Forum in
New York City.
They snuggled together
in the back row
on red velvet seats for two weeks
becoming Hitchcock experts and
falling in love.
So when they found out we were twins
it was a no-brainer to name us
after two of Hitchcock’s biggest stars,
Tippi Hedren and Grace Kelly,
who were so beautiful it sometimes feels like a cruel joke.
But in any case, Tippi loves Hitchcock
and has seen every one of his movies.
So while I make notes on the Whitman poems
we were given for homework,
Tippi watches Psycho and mouths Vera Miles’s lines
telling me not to worry about her or the assignment,
that she’ll read the SparkNotes online
and be just fine.
Preparing for an Apocalypse
A hurricane threatens
the East Coast
and we are sent home early from school.
The weather reporters warn that
the storm will bring
flooding and power outages,
so we prepare our
ground floor apartment
for an apocalypse.
Dad clears the patio,
puts everything in the hall,
Mom piles sandbags
by the backyard doors,
and Grammie sends Dragon to the store
for canned fruit and toilet paper,
then makes Tippi and me
fill the tub and every jug we own
with water
just in case.
Maybe I should be worried,
but I’m just disappointed
that the weather is stopping us
from being at The Church with Yasmeen and Jon
where I feel
free to breathe.
‘Can we go to the waterfront?’
Dragon asks,
and Dad barks back an angry
‘No,
it’s dangerous, dammit.’
Maybe he’s trying to be caring,
but he has a crappy way of showing it.
And so with nothing else to do
we watch out the window
with Dragon
and wait for the
great tide
and furious winds
to devour our city.
In The Dark
Tippi is snoring
next to me
while the wind whirls and whistles outside,
and I want to get up and see what’s happening,
but I’m too scared to wake her
in case she screeches,
complains she can’t get back to sleep.
So I lie quietly
and listen
and try to imagine what the
hurricane is like,
and how it might be
to get up and look
out our bedroom window
all by
myself.
Palpitations
I do not know what I dream,
what the nightmare is,
but it wakes me
and I find myself
panting,
my heart palpitating,
my head a fog of grey words and swollen pictures.
Tippi opens her eyes.
‘You all right?’ she croaks.
‘Yes,’ I tell her.
‘Go back to sleep.’
The View from Hoboken
Before the city is quite awake,
Tippi and I slog
up to Stevens Institute,
the highest point in Hoboken,
to look down at New York City
across the river
and see for ourselves
how resolutely rooted to
the ground the skyscrapers have remained.
All is as it should be:
The Empire State Building is standing up straight
and Chelsea Piers is
already open for business,
the golfers slamming balls
against high-rise nets to stop them
dropping into the Hudson River
and sinking
down
down
to the bottom.
‘I guess the hurricane changed its mind
about visiting New York,’
Tippi says.
‘I don’t blame it.
That city stinks.’
And she turns away
to head down the hill,
pulling me toward
home
and breakfast.
Storm Apples
The only damage the storm managed was to
rip a ton of ripened apples
from the tree in the middle of our yard.
Now they’re lying on the grass
like forgotten red billiard balls on green felt.
I’d been trying to
knock them down for days
—banging a broom on the branches
and throwing
Dad’s football at the biggest of them—
the ones highest and fattest and really red.
Tippi never helped.
She hates baking and knew that’s all we’d do
if I managed to get any down.
She huffed and yawned and said,
‘Can we go inside now, Grace?’
until we did just that.
Now all the apples are
a bit bruised and traumatised
but OK
for pie.
Tippi says,
‘You know we could buy pie for a few dollars at the
store and save ourselves hours.’
Which isn’t the point.
I want to hear the clean slice of
a sharp knife through the apple’s flesh.
I want to roll the pastry flat and lay
it over the filling like a friendly blanket.
I want to watch the clock
and check the oven
and feel anxious about the results.
‘Can’t you pretend to be pleased?’ I ask,
and Tippi sniffs.
‘I can pretend,’ she says,
which is a lie:
I’d be asking too much
for Tippi to pretend
anything,
ever.
Pie
Dragon spends her free day at the dance studio.
Mom heads into work.
Grammie goes downtown to see a friend and
Dad just disappears.
We are alone
with nothing to do.
So.
Reluctantly
Tippi makes the flaky pastry
while I core, peel, and slice the apples,
and together we bake a pie
stuffed with cinnamon and sugar and definitely
better than anything you could
buy in a store.
When Tippi tastes it,
she concedes—a little:
‘It’s good,’ she says,
pouring cream over her portion
and snaps a picture to post online
so everyone can see what we’ve done
with the flotsam from the storm.
Tippi looks into her licked-clean plate
and then at her phone as it buzzes.
‘Yaz liked the picture of the pie,’
she says.
The phone drones again.
‘And Jon, too.’
‘Great,’ I say quickly,
and serve myself another slice,
wondering what I was doing
when Tippi friended them online.
Beautiful
Jon is
leaning in
toward Yasmeen
and doesn’t see Tippi and me
come into the common room
and perch
behind the piano
on an unsteady stool.
I suck up the
last dregs of my green smoothie through a
straw and the slurp
almost drowns out
what Jon is saying.
But not quite.
‘It’s shitty because they’re so damn pretty,’ he says.
‘What a waste.’
Yasmeen looks up and flushes all the way
from her collar bones
to the tips of her silver-studded ears,
so we are in no doubt
who they are talking about.
Tippi stands, dragging me with her,
kicking the stool away
and shouting:
‘A waste?
We’re a waste?’
Fury boils our blood and
our bodies pulse with rage.
Jon stands up, too,
tries to take my hand
but I pull away and glare at him,
daring him to say it again
or to defend his words
with ones that would be just
as hurtful.
‘I didn’t …
I didn’t mean …’
His voice is quiet,
his eyes
hard and defiant.
‘All I mean is that you’re beautiful,’
he says.
‘That’s all I mean.’
I want to believe him,
talk to him,
let him
say more,
but Tippi
drags me
along the hall
to hide in a classroom.
And I hate it.
I hate hiding here
where I normally feel
safe.
‘I thought they were different,
but they’re just as ignorant
as everyone else,’ Tippi says.
I don’t respond.
All I can
hear in my head is the word
beautiful
and it’s as much as I can do not to
weep
with joy.
Yasmeen’s Explanation
We weren’t gossiping
we were just saying how happy
we are you’re both at Hornbeacon
and we weren’t wishing you were any different
we were just saying how hot you are
come on we wouldn’t hang around with you if
we didn’t think you were cool
we hate almost everyone here but we don’t hate you
and coming from us that’s a fucking miracle
so stop being moody and let’s go to
The Church for a smoke.
Jon’s Apology
Yasmeen explained why I was wrong.
And I promise it was me who said it,
not her.
But I’m so sorry if I made you sad,
even for a second.
Because I didn’t mean anything by it.
And I think you’re both perfect.
But I know how it sounded.
And I want to be friends.
So please forgive me.
And let me make it up to you.
Because the only
waster is me.
But
I meant what I said.
You’re beautiful.
You know that,
don’t you?
Punishment
Tippi and I work with each other in class,
away from all the other students
including Yasmeen and Jon.
During free periods
we stay away from the common room
and wander around the school grounds
looking for somewhere to sit
without getting stared at.
At lunch
we fend for ourselves in the cafeteria
and take our trays out to the quadrangle,
where we eat on a bench and watch
grey squirrels
scampering up and down
the chestnut trees.
during study hall.
I use the time to draw little stars along my fingers
with a Sharpie
and Tippi cleans out her backpack.
In the halls between lessons Jon tries to talk to me,
grabs my arm and whispers rushed apologies.
Yasmeen sends Tippi one hundred texts.
But we stick to our guns.
We stay really mad at them
until it’s pretty obvious that
they aren’t the only ones being punished.
Skyward
Dragon is in an amateur production of Swan Lake.
She is playing the Swan,
dressed first in
wispy layers of white netting
all puffed up like a French pastry
and then from
head
to
toe
in raven frills and feathers.
At the theater,
sitting in the back row
where no one can leer at us,
I am mesmerised by her feet,
by the black ballet slippers bound to her
and how they
seem never to touch the stage.
I am mesmerised by Dragon’s
legs and arms
and the way she can spin
and hold herself up so
high she seems suspended in the air—
not a galumphing dragon at all but a
dragonfly,
a butterfly,
a bee.
I am amazed and for a moment
I am jealous
because before Swan Lake
I never knew
that this is what other people
could do
if they only took the time
to train—
I never knew that normal people
could fly.
Out of the Spotlight
After the show
Dragon poses for pictures
and hordes of proud parents
huddle together
holding out their phones
and snapping photos.
But Mom and Dad
have vanished.
‘Where did they go?’ I ask Tippi.
‘Dad went to get the car,’ she says.
We shuffle toward the stage
but by the time we reach it
we are too late:
the group is breaking up.
Dragon is already out of
the spotlight.
Thin
At Malibu Diner on Washington Street
where we all go for a celebratory dinner
after Swan Lake,
Dragon says,
‘I want to dance Romeo and Juliet with Nureyev.’
‘Who?’ I ask.
My family dive into a plate of nachos.
‘Oh, no one. Nureyev is dead
so there’s no chance of dancing with him.
But he was the greatest in history.’
Dragon nibbles
like a gerbil
on the edges of a taco
and I notice, suddenly,
how skinny her fingers have become—
like twigs with knots for knuckles.
‘You’re so thin,’ I say,
taking her wrist and wrapping my
thumb and forefinger too easily around it.
Mom orders more soda.
Dad another beer.
Tippi is tucking into her taco.
‘I know,’ Dragon says,
and flushes,
quite delighted
by what she sees
as a compliment.
A Joke
Dragon is teaching us the five basic ballet positions,
letting us use chairs for balance but
tipping a ruler against our backs to get them straighter
and under our chins to lift them.
Tippi and I haven’t exactly got
the bodies of ballerinas
nor the discipline
and end up giggling so hard we topple over.
And she is laughing and laughing
until she realises that I am not—
that I can hardly breathe,
that every ounce of air
seems to have been sucked from the room.
Dragon shrieks and runs.
By the time Mom and Dad have arrived
Tippi is panting, too.