Angela Townsend
Vassar assigned you an ID based on your first initial and last name. Eight hours after flooding my mother’s shoulder with tears, I was shooting billiards with A_Student. Angela Townsend
A_Student’s twin brother was B_Student, and this was the first thing to make me laugh. I did not laugh when our R.A. asked if my mother was headed off to free the captives from hell, or at least New Jersey, since nothing less would justify my weeping. I did not laugh when my new next-door neighbor, a Sasquatch named Levi, told me I was the closest thing he had ever seen to one of Tolkien’s elf women. I did not laugh when my mother texted me, YOU ARE GOING TO BE FINE. GO HAVE SOME FUN WITH OTHER STUDENTS DAMMIT.
I did laugh when A_Student told me about B_Student.
“It’s a terrible thing to be a twin,” he sighed, cajoling a purple ball into a pocket.
“What do they call that ball?” It is impossible to cry and ask asinine questions in the same breath. I chose wisely.
“Huh?” A_Student scratched his chin with his cue.
“Don’t the balls have names?” When you have no idea what you are talking about, it is an excellent idea to continue talking. “There’s the eight ball, and the…the red delicious ball, and the blueberry ball.”
A_Student laughed. I made A_Student laugh. “We can name them.” He shot the blueberry ball into an unsuspecting klatch of its neighbors. “That ball’s called Biff. He’s a bastard.”
“I interrupted you.” I examined my own cue. I contemplated telling A_Student about my brief and life-threatening career as a high school pole vaulter. “Twins?”
“A terrible thing,” A_Student nodded. “First, everyone assumes hijinks.”
“I assumed hijinks,” I blurted. My mother always told me it is okay to keep some cards to your chest. But when you are a windbag, they blow away. “Like, you switched places all the time. One of you played the trombone, and one played the piccolo, and you got into a real tight spot on the day of the concert. The principal was always calling you ‘my little identical imps.’”
“Right, it was a non-stop Disney Channel movie.” A_Student pointed at the red delicious ball. “That ball’s called Omar. He means well, but has the self-esteem of a sea cucumber.” Omar dropped into the hole.
“What do you do when you run out of balls?” If I kept talking, A_Student might not notice I was not playing.
“You pick them up and start over again.” A_Student rolled the lemon cupcake ball in my direction. “That ball is Maisy. She has too many cats, but she’ll drive you to the doctor and sit in the waiting room even if it takes ten hours.” He jutted out his chin. “Shoot.”
“I’m athletically impaired.”
“Who told you that?” A_Student sat on the edge of the table and made a series of rubbery grimaces. “Look at me. I’m Paul Newman. I’m Tom Cruise. I’m a friggin’ idiot.”
“My body.” I took a shot. My stick did not even make contact with Maisy. “Voila.”
“Well, you can have a bangin’ life anyway.” A_Student rescued Maisy and petted her on the head like a baby chick.
“That’s funny, that’s what my mother says. More or less.”
It is as predictable as gravity that, within any fifteen-minute interval, I will mention my mother. I contemplated telling A_Student about the framed poem by my mother on the inside of my dorm room door, exhorting me to remain formidable. Instead, I attempted to balance my cue on my head. I was less successful than the average elf woman, but caught it before it dropped.
“Cool dame.” A_Student nodded with approval. As best I could tell, he was not equipped with disapproval.
“That’s not a word you hear every day.” I began to appreciate his eyebrows, yak pelts that moved independently. A_Student had become forty percent more attractive since we first entered this basement.
“I’m a friggin’ idiot,” he reminded me.
“Who told you that?”
He laughed, I laughed, and he pointed his cue at the ceiling. “B_Student.”
“Your hijink collaborator.” I pictured an unsalted A_Student, with no yellow in his closet and no patience for films outside the Criterion Collection. “I’ll bet I’d be able to tell you apart anywhere.”
“Yep.” A_Student gathered all the balls. He poked the white one. “That ball’s Pristina. She can’t believe she has to hang out with these fools. She wants to go home.”
“Me, too.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You could tell us apart because we don’t look related.” A_Student extracted Pristina from the class and threw her in the air. I caught her before I had time to try.
“You’re not identical.”
He nodded. “So, we’re hijink-proof. And I get to be the ugly one.”
“Who told you that?”
A_Student proceeded to pet his own head, which grew the same plush foliage as his eyebrows. “Every living creature.”
“That’s preposterous.”
He leapt into a fencer’s stance. “You’re preposterous.”
If I accepted the offer to joust, we might both end up dead. I did it anyway. “Well, let me be the first exception.”
“To what?”
“To the consensus that your brother is the better Student.” I heard my phone bleating. No doubt it was my mother checking whether I had disintegrated into my infant atoms.
A_Student reprised his Paul Newman face. “You haven’t met my brother. If we were in ancient Greece, I’d be Student the Lesser.”
“But we’re in Poughkeepsie.” I pointed at the orange ball. “That’s Ron. His license plate says RonTheBomb. He gives the ice cream man two hundred dollars so everyone’s rocket pops are free all day.”
“Even the bad neighbors?” A_Student wiggled his eyebrows, causing seismic activity all the way to my mother’s house.
“RonTheBomb never met a bad neighbor.” I had no idea what I was talking about, but I had not cried once in this basement. Angela Townsend
Angela Townsend
