Stuart Woods: Palindrome

Well, thought Liz, at least she can see him, too; he must be real.

"Come here and meet somebody," Germaine called to Liz. Liz walked over.

The man stuck out a hand. "I'm Hamish Drummond," he said, smiling, revealing what were obviously the family teeth, big and white against his tanned skin. His blond hair was neatly combed-not like that afternoon-and he seemed so… clean, Liz thought.

"I'm Liz Barwick," she said.

"Hi, Liz," he replied, still holding the handshake. "You down for the week?"

"She's down for longer than that," Germaine said. "Ray Ferguson sent her to do that book of photographs on the island he's been promising us."

"I'm glad to hear it," Hamish said, finally releasing her hand.

"I'm looking forward to getting started," Liz said, finding it impossible to take her eyes off him. He was not quite handsome; he was closer to beautiful. "It's a lovely island."

"It is that," he said.

"You haven't got a drink," Germaine said, tugging him toward the bar.

Liz followed them and found two couples there, drinking. "This is my cousin, Jimmy Weathers, and his wife, Martha," Germaine said, introducing a short, balding man and a plump, pretty woman. "This is Liz Barwick, who's down here photographing things."

"We saw Grandpapa this afternoon," Jimmy said. "You seen him yet, Hamish?"

"No, I only got in this afternoon. I'll see him tomorrow."

Another couple entered the bar, then another, and the conversation turned to the island, its wildlife, and its beauty. "I nearly hit a buck this afternoon," Liz said.

"You nearly hit Buck?" Jimmy asked.

"A buck, not Buck, Jimmy," Germaine pitched in.

"Pity you missed him, then," Jimmy said. "We could have had some of Germaine's venison for dinner."

Liz found a moment to turn to Hamish Drummond. "I saw you up at Stafford Beach this afternoon."

Hamish turned and looked at her, puzzled, then his eyes narrowed. "Did you? Did you really?" he said, more to himself than to her.

At dinner in the basement dining room, Liz found herself seated between Germaine and Hamish at a large table with half a dozen other people. As the remnants of a pate were taken away and fat trout were served, the talk turned to work. "What do you do?" a man across the table asked Hamish.

"Financial consulting."

"Who consults you?"

"Right now, a merchant bank in London. Everybody's getting ready for the big move in the Common Market in 'ninety-two. What do you do?"

"I'm a psychiatrist," the man said. "So is Ann my wife. We practice in Savannah." Hamish nodded, as if he had little interest in the subject.

"I develop resort property," Jimmy said, as if it were his turn.

"Well," the doctor said, "I hope you never get your hands on this place."

Hamish smiled slightly. "I wish I'd said that."

"Now, you'd be surprised what enlightened development could do for this island," Jimmy said. "Make it available for a lot more people to enjoy. It would have to be done right, of course. Elegantly."

"Like Hilton Head?" the doctor said.

"Beautiful development, Hilton Head," Jimmy said, looking dreamy about it, missing the sarcasm.

"Wall-to-wall development," Germaine chipped in. The table fell silent.

Liz turned to the psychiatrist. "What sort of practice do you and your wife have, Doctor?" She really didn't want to know; she had seen enough of psychiatrists over the past few weeks, but she felt the need for a change of subject.

"Well," the man said, "I was teaching at Duke University Medical School, and I retired last year. We moved to Savannah, and we both felt the need for some activity, so we started a part-time practice."

"We're working on a book, too," the man's wife said.

"A book on psychiatry?" Germaine asked.

"Not exactly," the man replied.

"We're conducting a major study on identical twins, and the results will form a book on the subject."

"Hamish has a twin," Jimmy chimed in. "You ought to study those boys."

There was something malicious in his tone. Hamish suddenly stood up. "Excuse me, please."

He left the table. There was a silence in his wake, and, again, Liz tried to keep the conversation going. "Are twins particularly interesting to study?" she asked the doctor.

The doctor smiled. "Fascinating. Identical twins have the closest of all human relationships-closer than mother and child. They enjoy a high degree of empathy, often are telepathic, know what each other is thinking. Sometimes during our work, I've had the eerie feeling that a pair of twins were the same person-or, rather, different halves of the same person."

"Is that just because they grow up together, spend so much time together? Or do you read something more into it?" Liz asked, interested.

"Something more, though I'm not quite sure what. We've studied twins who were separated shortly after birth, who didn't even know they had a twin, and there were remarkable similarities in how they had lived their lives, the choices they had made-even though they were brought up in families that were very different. I've interviewed one such pair who seemed to choose the same brands of clothes and even had identical haircuts. They both had had a fantasy twin for as long as they could remember, played with him, talked with him. Neither was much surprised when he discovered that he had an actual"

"Boy, that's spooky," Jimmy's wife, Martha, said.

"That's not exactly a psychiatric term," the doctor said, "but it's properly descriptive."

"Do twins always get along with each other?" Martha asked.

"Always," the doctor said, "at least in our study. Their mothers seem to regard them as one person, so they don't have to compete for her affection. In fact, generally speaking, they don't compete with each other over anything; instead, they seem to form a unit and compete with others, as one person."

"I've always wondered why their mothers dress them alike," Martha said. "Couldn't that warp them in some way? Screw up their individuality?"

"Some twins we've talked to resisted dressing alike as children," Anna Hamilton said, "while others chose to do so. Some of them go on dressing alike for all their lives. Twins have a bond that lasts until they die-in fact, a significant percentage choose not to marry, so that they can remain with each other, although this phenomenon seems more pronounced among females."

"Can a mother always tell her twins apart?" Liz asked.

"Usually, at least after infancy, but not always. It's very common for parents to put ID bracelets on twins so they can tell them apart. Usually, as they get older, enough differences develop that it gets to be easier. One child may have some minor injury and have a scar; one may gain more weight-something like that."

Germaine leaned close to Liz. "Did you notice that, when Hamish arrived tonight, I didn't introduce him, that he introduced himself? That's a habit I got into when Hamish and Keir were growing up-I was wrong so often." She turned to the doctor. "Twins are palindromic," she said.

"That's very good," the doctor agreed. "A palindrome is the perfect metaphor for identical twins."

"What's that?" Jimmy asked.

"That word?" Germaine spoke up. "A palindrome is a literary device-a word, or a sentence, or even a poem, that reads the same forward and backward. Exactly the same."

The group gathered around and watched. Some had flashlights, others used flash cameras, but the mother was not disturbed. The female loggerhead turtle lay over the hole she had dug with her flippers and dropped her eggs into it, dozens of them, each like a slippery Ping-Pong ball.

"We have an egg patrol," Germaine said to Liz. "We go down the beach, look for signs of a nest, then obliterate the signs. Otherwise the raccoons get at the eggs and eat them."