Chapter Text
There’s a funny phenomena among twins, Molly had observed, every pair she had met tended to, personality wise be either remarkably similar or polar opposites, Anthony and herself had been the former.
Molly had been four years old when she’d first learned that this was not acceptable.
For their fourth birthday, Molly had been gifted a number of porcelain dolls, previously owned by her mother. She was enthralled immediately by their beauty, all intricate dresses, delicate lashes and careful ringlets. She held them like they were precious.
Anthony had been given a large tin car, he didn’t like it, he didn’t fuss but she knew. They always knew with each other.
He’d spent the whole occasion spinning the wheels, hardly looking at it, too busy eyeing her dollies.
And so, when the festivities were finished and papa let them leave the table she handed him one.
He’d looked down at it with big eyes, a matching expression of awe to the one that she’d worn earlier.
‘She’s so pretty! I wish we had dresses like those.’ He’d babbled.
‘Yea! We should call her Pearl because she’s wearing a pretty pearl necklace like the one Mama wears to parties.’
And so began an elaborate game in which the twins enacted the adventures of Pearl, a princess and her socialite, flapper friends Gloria and Minnie as they travelled in their big, tin car. There were three dolls but they didn’t bother asking Arackniss if he wanted to join, he always made fun of their games, calling them babyish and girly.
When mama told them it was time for bed, Molly said:
‘You can keep Pearl in your room if you want, she’s your favourite, sharing is caring, ain’t it?’
He’d beamed at her, hugging the doll as they left to their respective rooms. When Papa came to tuck Molly into bed nothing had seemed out of the ordinary, however, when he left to tuck in Anthony she’d easily heard yelling through the thin walls.
On her tiptoes Molly had crept across the hall, in her patterned pyjamas to Anthony’s doorway and peered in. Horrified by what she saw.
Papa was holding the doll by her hair, waving his arms about erratically. Molly worried he’d drop her.
Anthony was sobbing, pressing himself against his metal bed-frame. Papa was shouting.
‘Stealin your sister’s dollies?! You a pervert or a fag Anthony, which one, huh?!’
Molly didn’t understand the words but jumped at the tone, frightened.
‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Her brother wept.
‘Stop crying!’ Yelled Papa.
He only cried harder.
Molly cried a little too, from where she was peeking through the doorway, but no one heard her.
Papa crouched down and smacked Anthony across the face, the crying stopped immediately, his big, wet eyes went wide, his lip was cut where Papa’s ring had caught it.
Papa turned to leave and Molly, terrified, hurriedly scurried back to her room before she could be spotted.
She pretended to be asleep when Papa placed the doll back in her room. Her tummy hurt. She didn’t have the words yet to understand what she was feeling.
Anthony never wanted to play dolls with her again. Molly didn’t really want to play with them either. She broke Pearl on purpose one night, because her presence at the end of Molly’s bed had been giving her bad dreams about scary men. She pretended it was an accident.
-
Molly rolled her eyes.
Anthony was staring at the window cleaner again. Sprawled dramatically on a sun lounger in his swimming togs, sucking an ice pop and ogling this guy, as if anyone would pay attention to some scrawny twelve year old boy.
The window cleaner was a tall, youngish man who never wore a shirt.
Molly didn’t totally get why her brother wanted to catch his attention so badly, she reasoned he just really admired his work and wanted to be a window cleaner too when he grew up.
One time Anthony drew a really awful drawing of the window cleaner with no shirt on and left it on the coffee table in the parlor, for some reason everyone assumed Molly drew it and started mocking her and telling her she was ‘all grown up’.
She didn’t correct them, even though they laughed, even though she wanted to say she could draw way better than Anthony.
Some part of her understood that Anthony didn’t really want to be a window cleaner.
-
When they turned fifteen, Papa decided it was time Anthony participated in the family business.
He was already entrenched in it, they all were. They’d had to hide in the safe room during shoot outs in the house more than once. They both knew how to shoot a gun and where to shoot to kill. But neither of them had ever been put in charge of anything before.
Unlike Arackniss, their big brother, who Papa trusted with the more important weapons black market, Anthony was assigned to managing the distribution of Phencyclidine in Boston, a new drug on their streets.
Molly had been jealous, at first, upset that her twin wasn’t her equal anymore, he’d been granted the status of made man while she remained her parents little princess, tasked only with finding a suitable husband.
The jealousy faded when she started to see the implications of a fifteen year old with problems being put totally in control of the purest form of a highly addictive drug.
The jealousy gave way to fear. She was frightened. PCP made Anthony act strange and unpredictable. She’d find him standing in the dark, staring at his hands. She’d find him walking in circles, counting nothing. She’d find him crawling up the stairs muttering about how his legs weren’t real.
Her twin was losing it and no one else seemed to notice.
One evening at supper Anthony spent half an hour having a loud, nonsensical argument with his plate of risotto before pouring his glass of water into his lap, announcing how happy he was and proceeding to pass out, falling out of his chair.
Papa pulled him out of that job after that, assigning him to ‘clean up work’ instead. While he wasn’t good with addictive substances he was very good at schmoozing clients and he was very good at shooting them. It was a little too late though, He was hooked and retained all of the connections he needed to acquire as much angel dust as he wanted.
‘Why do you do it Anthony?’ Molly had asked him once, when he was lucid enough to talk but high enough not to take offense to the question. ‘It just makes you go crazy and black out, you’re obviously not having fun.’
‘It makes me feel like I’m not here.’ He’d replied, staring through her, pupils blown. ‘Don’t you want that too Molly? To be anywhere but here?’
-
‘Want me to kill him?’ Anthony had asked her, when, at eighteen, Molly told him Papa’s plan to strategically marry her off to some thirty something year old sleazeball rival.
They were sitting on the balcony, looking out at the smog polluted streets of the hub, Molly with her knees tucked into her chest and a magazine she’d been pretending to read in her hand, Anthony, hungover, nursing a bowl, in case he threw up again.
‘I’m dead serious. I’ll do it Molls, I’ve got wicked good aim and a loaded gun under my bed.’ He added.
‘No way. I think dad would actually kill you for real if you tried.’
‘So what? Let him. It’s not like I’m the one with an actual life ahead of me.’
Something inside of Molly snapped at that. If her day hadn’t been shitty enough, her brother had said another stupid thing to remind her that he didn’t intend on getting better.
‘What the fuck Anthony.’ She sniffed, wiping at her eyes. ‘Why do you always have to say shit like that?!’
‘Awh don’t get all upset Molls, you know I’m joking.’
‘This is supposed to be my time to be upset because I’m the one getting sold off to some dirty old man and you’re saying concerning bullshit, again, making it about yourself, like you always do!’
‘I-I wasn’t trying to-‘ He stammered, reaching for her shoulder, only succeeding in aggravating her further.
‘Don’t touch me! It’s fucking ironic that you, of all people would care what a man does to me! You’re awful to your girlfriends.’ Molly yelled, remembering how her brother used to bitch about that poor girl Dolores.
‘Molly, you don’t get it I-‘
‘You’re the one who doesn’t get it Anthony! You create your own problems! Papa’s never forced you to be with someone even though everyone thinks you’re a queer!’
As soon as the words left Molly’s mouth Anthony ducked his head and gagged into the bowl, spitting out bile.
‘Sorry…’ Muttered Molly, rage forgotten at the pathetic display. ‘That was too far.’
‘It’s fine.’ He said. Voice echoing in the metal bowl. ‘It’s true anyway.’
‘Which part?’
‘Fuckin- all of it I guess.’
She knew what he meant.
Clearly, it was difficult for them to stay mad at each other because minutes later they were crying and clinging to each other, legs swinging on the ledge of the balcony as life went on below.
-
It was finally happening. The thing she’d had nightmares about since she was four years old. Twenty years later Molly’s father had decided to kill her brother.
It wasn’t in the way she’d always fretted over as a child either. He hadn’t done it by hitting him over the head a little too hard or strangling him a little too long, instead he’d simply had the mob’s personal doctor sign a little slip that stated that Anthony was fit to go to war.
Anthony who’d been on the streets for over a year since he’d pawned Mama’s jewels. Anthony who was 110 pounds at 6’1 and kept listing sideways when he stood up too fast. Anthony who was currently curled in on himself in the parlor in withdrawals. Anthony who, even without all of this would’ve been excluded from the military by any other doctor in the area for being a well know frequenter of the YMCA shower rooms.
A veteran himself, Papa reckoned ‘real hardship’ would do his son good, he’d deluded himself into thinking it’d get him ‘back on track’ and had refused to listen to Molly or Mama’s opposition. Even Arackniss, who’d agreed to sign up at the same time seemed uncomfortable at the prospect.
‘Pops.’ He’d said, gesturing widely in the direction of the sofa. ‘Look at him, he can’t fuckin sit up straight. I’m not tryna bitch at you or anything but the recruiters are gonna think I’m fucking with them if I drag him up there and show them that note.’
To that Papa handed Arackniss a bribe to go alongside the note, just in case the recruiters tried to pull anything. Arackniss just stood there, exasperated, shaking his head.
Molly sobbed, clinging to her mother as her brothers walked out the door, one holding the other up.
-
They both came back. Being involved in violence your whole life, is, apparently an advantage in a war zone.
Neither of them seemed quite right anymore, family gatherings seemed to have lost their joviality. Everyone just sat around the table, solemn.
Papa at the head, silent and cold, Mama looking dejectedly at their unfinished plates, Arackniss snapping and flinching and hurling insults, Anthony rocking back and forth, looking at nothing, only answering questions in scripted, robotic sentences.
Anthony had come back addicted to at least three new things, he was always at least a little sick, unable to afford enough of any of it.
He hadn’t been allowed back in the house other than for events like this and last she’d heard he was squatting in some abandoned apartment with a couple of other addicts doing god knows what with his days.
Molly’s husband didn’t like her talking to him. Thought he was dangerous. She wasn’t exactly in a position to challenge him after the ‘mulled wine’ incident last thanksgiving.
She’d snuck Anthony into the house one night though, both Papa and her husband were out working, it was below freezing and she’d found him folded over himself in a telephone booth.
‘Hey! Look!’ He’d said, trailing his hand along the wall of his childhood bedroom. Molly lingering in the doorway.
‘You remember this right?’ He’d asked, grinning, holding aloft the tin car he’d received for their fourth birthday. It seemed so much smaller in adult hands.
Molly was struck with a wave of revulsion, standing in this doorway, a fuzzy memory of adult hands being used against small children forming in her head.
‘Wanna finish out the game? I don’t remember much except that the ending was sooo lame.’ Said Anthony, eyes suddenly totally clear.
‘I broke your favourite doll, didn’t like her in my room, she was giving me dirty looks.’ Confessed Molly.
‘Doesn’t matter, there are only two of us, what would we need another doll for anyways?’
And so, Anthony and Molly sat on the carpet and played make believe with a small tin car and two small dolls, one last time, like they were four again and not in their thirties, they played like they were still unaware of the weight of living for one last night.
Two weeks later Anthony snorted ten lines of Phencyclidine and died alone behind a trash barrel. Their mother found his body a day later.
For the first time in her life Molly got it, she wanted to be anywhere but here.
-
The funeral was all black outfits, Christian songs, Bible readings and formality. Anthony would’ve hated it, he’d always been vocal about how boring he found attending church when they were kids.
Fuck this, thought Molly, standing over the open casket.
The body’s thick, blonde hair was gelled back in a way he never would’ve worn it in life and his dark suit was stiffly buttoned to his chin.
When no one was looking she clipped a black choker Papa had always hated him wearing around his neck, under the collar of his shirt where it couldn’t be seen by the other mourners and slipped a crude drawing of their old window cleaner under his pillow. Better, she thought, that would’ve made him laugh.