Our greatest fear must have been with us always because even before we went to school we did play at holding to our own fortress. We imagined war with the other family on the orchard. We considered it a siege more than a war, the standoff with our relatives, with our cousins who in ordinary life were our friends. It wasn’t until we were seven and eight, though, that we were first frightened in real terms about the farm, both of us just beginning to suspect that the future, that empty wide forever, might contract, it might narrow and start to spin, it might touch down, sweeping us into itself.
We were on our way to Minnesota to visit our forgetful, wandering grandmother when we got the inkling. It was rare that we took a vacation all together, and more than anything we were excited about the seven-hour drive. The backseat of the van had been made up like a pasha’s tent, beautifully draped and soft with our blankets and pillows, a box of tapes in alphabetical order, books on a makeshift shelf, magnetic games, a full tub of markers and new pads of paper, enough supplies to entertain us to the West Coast if for some reason that became our destination. Even though it was winter we got in the car an hour before departure to anticipate the pleasure of the trip, wrapped up and sitting mindfully in the tidy splendor. William had his red toolbox, something he couldn’t travel without, construction always in progress of a mixed-race quadruped, part Lego, part Capsela, a few mutant Erector Set parts for the personality who might someday speak to us, gestures and all. We were only slightly ahead of the age of handheld electronics for every boy and girl, and yet how impossibly old-fashioned we sound already. The thermos of hot chocolate, that timeless delight, and the basket of apples and cookies and nuts were by our side.
We liked the setup so much William said, “Let’s pretend this is our house, Frankie. This is where we really live.”
I loved that idea.
For most of our lives we’d been mistaken for twins. I was as tall as William, and we both had light-brown hair, his softly sprouted and growing in a swirl as if from a single originating point at his crown. Mine was cut in a pageboy, thin and blunt. Looking at William, I always knew I was not ugly. We seemed for a time to have the same plain standard-issue child noses, his turning up slightly. Whereas I dreamed we were twins, Siamese even, conjoined in utero, attached at an easy juncture, the little finger shared, or just a sliver of the hip—whereas I often believed this had to be so—it would never have occurred to my brother to consider altering the details of our birth.
At first as we drove west to the Twin Cities we were happy. My mother up front did her imitations of her patrons at the library, where she worked, and my father opened his mouth as if he were having a dental exam and howled. No one made him laugh as hard as my mother. She’d say the amusing line and then sit back to watch him at the enterprise of enjoying her little story. She had a black heart, she once said to him, the result of smoking, had she ever smoked? Could she have been so stupid and so terrible? And yet that shriveled charred heart somehow beating was a feature my father found funny, and therefore we must try not to worry.
For a while we sang along to one of the folksingers on our tape, songs about baby whales and delightful banana pickers and abandoned ducklings, songs we were getting too old for but nonetheless they were our favorites. We weren’t self-conscious about singing, not quite yet, unable to help ourselves, belting out the quack quacks and the Day-os. Daylight come and me wan’ go home. Somehow William was able to sing and at the same time even in travel draw on paper tacked to a board across his lap, the artist making boy-type inky castles, tight lines, extreme architectural detail, the dungeons equipped with outlets and computer stations.
Halfway across the state my mother took the wheel and soon after we both must have fallen asleep.
“What are you saying?” She was speaking quietly to my father but urgently, the blast of her t, the incredulity in the word what the sound that woke us. We didn’t move, both of us lodged against our windows, a little damp, a little drooly.
“I want him to be able to carry on the business, Nellie,” my father said. “To make it as easy as possible for him to keep going. You’d want him to do the same for me.”
“Carry on the business,” my mother said, leaning forward, her face practically to the dashboard. “As easy as possible for him,” she repeated.
“You’d better pull over.”
“I’m not going to crash the car.”
My father said, with deep apology in his voice, “I shouldn’t have brought it up. We need a will, that goes without saying. I’m thinking out loud—”
“I just want to get it straight, your plan.”