Scott Nicholson - Disintegration

"So you felt inferior to him?"

"At first. Then, when I decided that I was going away as soon as I was old enough to live on my own, it didn't bother me anymore. Mom died and everything changed."

"You felt abandoned?"

"No. I felt relieved. Dad was just distant and reproachful. Mom actively despised us."

"Were you… physically abused?"

"No." Jacob's eyes fixed on the floor. "That would be too simple."

"Jacob's never been violent with me," Renee said. "He wouldn't spank Mattie. I always had to be the disciplinarian."

"Does that cause you resentment?" Dr. Rheinsfeldt asked her.

"Maybe, but let's focus on Jacob," Renee said. "I think he needs it more than I do right now."

"Tell me more about Joshua," the doctor asked Jacob.

"I went away to college, determined that I was never coming back here. I even toyed with the idea of changing my name. I just wanted to forget that I was a Wells, especially after Dad put all this pressure on us to follow in his footsteps."

"How did he do that? You said he was aloof."

"He had his ways. He was a slave master, a plantation owner born in the wrong time. He was a conqueror, not a father. With him, it was all about winning."

"And Joshua pleased him more than you did? Or, you at least perceived it that way?"

"Joshua had a way of… I don't know, dodging responsibility, shifting blame. If a lamp was broken, it was always my fault. If the newspaper was rumpled, I'd be the one who had no respect for the property of others. A bad report card, and I'd be the one not performing up to my abilities, even if my grades were better than Joshua's."

Renee leaned forward and touched Jacob's knee, encouraging him to continue. He was exposing his inner workings, the ones he'd always hidden from her. He was serious about wanting to start over. And getting the story straight was important.

"I started getting headaches, mostly when I was around Joshua," he said. "We'd always shared the same room, though we lived in a big house. I think it made Mom happy. She liked the idea that her sons were close. Gave her a feeling that she had done a good job of raising us."

"Did she?"

Jacob looked at the window, not seeing the curtains or the sliver of outside world between them. "Who knows? I suppose you judge your parents by how your own life turns out."

"Do you blame your mother for leaving you?"

"I'm not angry with my mother," Jacob said. "I guess I was angry at Dad. That's why I tried so hard to get away. If it wasn't for Renee-"

The sorrow slipped out of his eyes, replaced by a glint of determination. He would do it for her and their future together. Maybe one day they could start a new family. She loved him.

"She's the one who turned me around, cleaned me up, made me take some pride in myself," Jacob said. "It sounds strange, but she made me understand what it means to be a Wells."

"Do you think you turned Renee into a mother figure?"

"I don't think so," Jacob said. "Renee is different from my mother in most ways."

"Except the cleanliness," Renee cut in again. "You always said we were both neat freaks."

"But that wasn't what attracted me to you," Jacob said, talking to her now as if the doctor wasn't in the room. "It was your atmosphere, the way you carried yourself. Like you knew what you were about."

"And, being a bit scattered yourself, you saw a chance to impose some order on your life," the doctor said.

"Maybe," Jacob said. "That, and the conversation."

"Sex," Renee said. The sex hadn't been great at first. Jacob had been tentative, restrained, as if carrying a burden of guilt. It had taken months before he really opened up and became considerate and expressive. It had started with the night he'd come home drunk and taken her forcefully, with an animal passion that receded into such deep tenderness that she had wept during her final round of orgasms. The night that Mattie had been conceived.

"I was trying to come off as a gentleman."

"Remember that we only have one rule in this room," the doctor said. "Absolute honesty at all times."

Renee nodded at him. Jacob had never been a good liar. Despite his success at business, despite the long Wells tradition of deception, despite his hatred of his parents and twin brother, Jacob's blood had never turned cold enough to qualify him as a sociopath. She knew him better than he knew himself. She gave him a smile of support.

"Let's go back to your adolescent fugue states," Rheinsfeldt said. "What happened during them?"

"I would experience periods of forgetfulness. Most of the time they would only last a minute or two. Like I'd be in school, listening to the teacher start a math problem, then all of a sudden I'd hear the bell ring and all the kids would be getting out of their seats to change classes. The chalkboard would be full and I'd look down at my paper and see all these notes to myself. Notes that had nothing to do with the class work."

"Notes?"

"To my brother, mostly. We used to play a game called 'Wish Me.' Just a silly game where you wish something impossible. Except Joshua always made it scary."

"Scary?"

"In our room at night. He'd hide under my bed and be the Sock Monster. Put a sock over his hand and sneak up and pinch me. I'd say, 'Wish me away from the Sock Monster.' But he'd say, 'Wishes don't come true for rotten little boys.' And he'd twist my ears or snatch my toes or claw my face."

"No wonder you harbor anger toward him," Rheinsfeldt said, tapping the unlit cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. Renee was sure the doctor would be delighted to have the twins in the same room. Though she'd never met Joshua, Renee couldn't help loathing him after all the pain he'd caused her husband. And, of course, he might be dangerous in other ways. He was a rival.

"I covered up for him," Jacob said. "He was the black sheep, always getting in trouble, messing around with girls, disobeying Dad."

"And you were the responsible one?"

"Not always. But"-he looked at Renee, eyes unreadable-"he made me pretend to be him sometimes."

The doctor straightened. "During your dissociative disorder?"

"Nothing serious," Jacob said. "He'd skip a class and make me cover for him. So I would be the one who was marked absent. He had a Saturday job as a carpenter's helper, and if he had a date with a girl, I'd have to fill in. And the carpenters would get mad at me because I didn't know how to do the work. We were so identical that no one ever caught on. Except Josh is left-handed, so I had to learn to be ambidextrous."

"Did you ever pretend to be Joshua at home? Did you try to fool your parents?"

"Dad could always tell us apart. Like I said, Joshua always was his favorite, the one he finally decided would carry on the family tradition. I was the afterthought, even though I was born first. Mom seemed to ignore both of us equally. I don't think she cared enough to learn our individual mannerisms."

"After you left home, how did you feel?"

"Liberated. Like I could finally breathe for the first time in my life."

"And your fugue states?"

"I didn't have any after that. But there was one I still worry about."

"Really. Please tell us."

The room's cloying sweetness gave Renee a headache. Jacob had kept so much from her. She glanced at him, at his eyes that would always remind her of Mattie's. She studied his features more closely but saw nothing of Christine there. Christine had been hers, if only for two months.

"Joshua used to torture the guinea hens," Jacob said. "Dad kept them around so he could pretend to be the gentleman farmer, but we never collected their eggs. They mostly just ran wild around the woods. Joshua would corner them in the barn and shove things inside them-cigarette butts, pieces of corn, pencil erasers. He always made me watch."