The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins

  A young blond chick I recognize (I think one of Mona’s clients at Bodysculpt) swaggers by, wearing a yellow string bikini bottom and matching yellow T-shirt, with MS. ARROGANT emblazoned on it in big blue letters. SoBe remains a sun-drenched refuge for strutting grotesques and desperate narcissists. Mom’s phone goes again. — Lieb, she pleads. — I’ll take this, sweetie, then I’ll switch the goddamn thing off, I promise.

  — Cool, I say, picking up the menu.

  — Lieb, sweetkins. . . . Yes. Gotcha. . . . Gotcha. Just keep them entertained. Gulfstream Park or the like, you know the drill. . . . Check. Just keep them believing that it’s a rock-solid investment, which, to all intents and purposes it is . . . Yes, I love you . . . Her brows arch further north. — Gotta go now, sweetie, Lucy’s here. Ciao. She flicks the iPhone into silence. — Men. The toughest of them seem to need the most hand-holding. It’s so weird. I mean, he can take those squeaky assholes to a bar or a strip club. I don’t care. She shakes her head. — God, people are just losing their nerve! That investment is solid!

  — I’m sure it is.

  — But listen to me go on . . . let’s get some food, she says, then looks right into my eyes, following the line of my vision. — You were checking out my sagging jowls! Oh, you cruel child!

  — No, I lie, — I was just think of how well you look!

  Mom lets out a long, deflated sigh. As she speaks, her eyes, by turns vapid and intense, always seem to be gazing past me into the disenchantments that lie ahead. — I’m thinking of having work done. It’s just time. That and money. She shakes her head bitterly as the busboy pours our glasses of iced water.

  — Things still bad in your game?

  — Let’s not even talk about it, she says, as a hovering, Botoxed, failed model approaches and robotically grates out a list of specials.

  No, Mom’s putting on a positive face as we order, and then she starts regurgitating some self-help book she’s devoured (her personal version of Sorenson’s cakes) back at me. — Real estate . . . it’s such a bitch in South Florida. I need what Debra Wilson—have you read her?

  — No. Have you heard of Morning Pages? They’re supposed to be great.

  — Marianne Robson at Coldwell Banker says that they’re essential. I must try them, once I get to make some time for me.

  — What about this Debra Wilson thing?

  — Well, I need what she calls a “compelling personal project,” and Mom’s face creases sweetly in a smile. — Of course, my most wonderful project is my beautiful baby girls, she says, as I think: spare the fuck out of me, — but those babies have grown up now. Her brow ruefully creases. — I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Jocelyn lately?

  — Still in Darfur with the same NGO, last I heard, I tell her, trying to check out, perhaps a little too ostentatiously, a ripped surfer guy who ambles past.

  — Still doing good deeds, Mom sings wistfully. — I swear that girl shames us all.

  I feel like telling her if she actually got out of Jocelyn’s face while she was trying to do shit growing up, she probably wouldn’t be hanging out in the crappiest corners of the globe playing Mother Teresa. But Mom has gone back to her own drama. — So I told Lieb that I really need something else in my life.

  — You got real estate, I say, unable to resist it. Mom never wants to talk about anything else when the real-estate market is lively. Now that it’s dead, it’s practically all I want to discuss with her. If you aren’t put on this Earth to subtly make your mother’s life one suffering hell, then what the fuck is the point of human existence?

  — I mean, outside of work, she says as the Stepford-bound server chick brings our tofu salads. They are sorry-assed affairs, the lettuce as limp as bad-back Miles’s dick, and the smoked tofu tastes like sweaty old gym socks. Mom winces under the first mouthful. Then she gives me a piercing look. — How is your father? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I frequently google him.

  — Well, it’s natural that you’re curious. But if you google him regularly, you’ll know more than me.

  — C’mon! You were always his favorite, the sporty one.

  — Mom, he was always his favorite.

  — Ain’t that the truth! I still can’t believe it about him. She shakes her head, that lacquered mop not shifting a inch. — It’s almost like being successful with those books was your father’s last great act of spite against me.

  — C’mon! He’d always talked about being a writer!

  — Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there would not be one tree left standing on God’s green Earth. No, as soon as he left me—

  — As I recall, you left him. For Lieb.

  Mom exhales and rolls her eyes. She explains, in labored tones, as if I’m still a kid, — I physically left him, yes, but only because he didn’t have the balls to get out first. But he engineered the split. Then, after me supporting the bum for years, through all that inquiry shit with the BPD, he actually got off his fat Irish ass and wrote.

  — You get on your ass to write.

  — Exactly, that’s why it’s the perfect occupation for him, she says, then her mouth turns down as a grim thought insinuates itself. — I suppose there will be a younger woman in tow, some vacuous bimbo—

  — Several, I’d wager, I acknowledge as I raise a forkful of tofu to my mouth, hoping it’ll taste better than the last. And being immediately disappointed.

  Mom’s jaw falls as she gapes at me.

  — Well, it’s the human condition. How do you get older? You behave with restraint and dignity, and then life becomes a colossal bore. If you indulge yourself, then it looks sad and pathetic. Pick red or black, cause ain’t nobody leavin this casino with a full stack of chips, baby.

  — God, Lucy, catch yourself! You sound so like him.

  — Well, that’s a quote from Matt Flynn.

  My mother goes through the client database in her head, before coming up with a blank expression.

  — His Boston gumshoe protagonist, I tell her.

  She tuts and lifts another forkload of soggy spinach leaves to her mouth. Poor Mom, such a breadhead, and the very guy she thought would never be able to cut it, made good as soon as she fired his ass. Must be doubly hard when everything is turning to shit for her. And she lives and breathes this motherfucker of a real-estate gig. That woman will do anything, within certain parameters she says (and I have to take her word at that), to close a deal. Mom will get out of bed in the middle of the night to pick up groceries for a client. She’ll provide them with any sort of services. Yes, and where the line gets drawn there, I’d rather not even speculate. Her long-term partner, Lieb, seems all but cast adrift, lost to the dive bars of SoBe in much the same way my dad once sauced through the maze of Southie watering holes.

  Mom’s opted for a ginger sauce on her tofu and she forks up some ludicrously gloopy mix, then grimaces and drops it back onto the plate. — Yuck, a ginger sauce which is all flour. Gross! Ocean Drive: always a dining mistake!

  We fight our way through our respective messes in a stoical silence. I’m on Lifemap TM, trying to calc the useless calories in this toxic dressing. I go to say something but Mom waves a silencing hand, pointing to the cell she’s lifting to her ear. — Sorry, pickle, I gotta take this . . . Lonnie! Yes, it’s all good here! Mmmm-hmmm. . . . Yes, some people are really feeling the pinch but we’ve been very, very lucky. The super-premium market is still, well, I’d be indulging in the stock real-estate bullcrap if I said buoyant, but it’s certainly holding up well. And the property you’ve chosen is an excellent one. . . . Mmmm-hmmm. . . . Did I mention that you might have Dwyane Wade for a neighbor? A little bird tells me he just looked at a place across the way, you know, the Spanish colonial? Not a patch on your choice though, I’m sure you’ll agree . . .

  I’m watching her gesticulations, a born saleswoman. How well do I know her? Dad and Mom’s split was as complex to fathom as their relationship. I’d always
thought that Mom, flirty in the company of men, was the original infidel. It wasn’t a big surprise in my teen years when she ran off with Lieb, a Datafax TM salesman. One of Lieb’s last big jobs had been to sell the executive time-management system to senior and middle management at the insurance company in Boston where Mom then worked, and subsequently train them in its usage.

  But Lieb’s salesmanship skills were good; not only did he sell himself to her, but he also packaged the Florida real-estate explosion. — Real estate is the next big thing. I missed out on the dot.com boom because I hesitated, he’d trumpet. — Never again. I’m jumping on this train.

  So was Mom.

  When they got together, he confided to my mother that Datafax TM was a great system, but that electronic PC and Mac software programs would soon replace it. Before long, people would get used to keeping their diaries on their computers, laptops, and phones. The psychological cord tying them to a paper system would fray and Datafax would become a niche product, with some aging valued customers, but not the essential yuppie business accessory it then was. So real estate would be his, and my mother’s, golden future.

  After the split, Jocelyn and I stayed in Weymouth with Dad. The reason Mom gave for us not joining her in Miami was to avoid disruption to our schoolwork. Not that I did much of that; all I wanted to do was train and fight. I was fifteen and hated the world. The previous summer I’d fallen out with Mom and Dad, especially Dad, after a shattering incident in the park, Abbie Adams Green, that my family read wrong, and which had estranged us. I was plenty surprised when he supported my decision to quit track and field to take up martial arts. Mom was horrified. — But why, pickle?

  Jocelyn said nothing (as usual) other than regard me with her customary look of highbrow disdain.

  — I want to kick ass, I said, and I could see a silent pride blaze in my father’s eyes.

  And I did. I enrolled in tae kwon do classes at a local sports center, graduating to Muay Thai. This was a great liberation for me; I could give vent to all my pent-up energy and aggression. Right from the start it was evident that very few other girls would be fucking with me. I’d look an opponent in the eye, and watch them crumble. I loved the no-holds-barred aspects of the discipline, and I’d hit my rivals with the fucking kitchen sink—elbows, knees, kicks, fists—and I could tussle and dig like a hellcat. I was the local Thai Boxing Association’s golden girl, training with demented purpose, and fighting ferociously.

  I did well at their junior events, first at state, then national level. I was successful in three Muay Thai classics at my weight class. My best title was my first, when I deposed the reigning champion, an Asian bitch, who could grapple like a pervert priest, but couldn’t handle my speed and my knees pummeling into her snatch. Like so many of the others I fought, I saw her running tears, all the time looking beyond them, trying to get another target in my sights.

  I won more belts. Studied different fighting disciplines, karate and ju-jitsu mainly. I fought off all my rage, while Jocelyn buried herself in her books. When pushed, she’d refer to the split as “it sucks” but without conviction. Her personal withdrawal was to read, and she’d mentally left the household before anyone—if she was ever really present in it.

  In the meantime Dad took me to all my events. He drove miles with me, paid for hotels, driving back in the early morning and heading uncomplainingly into his job—by then he was back doing PE teacher work at a junior high—while I went to school or bed. We grew close, although the park incident, which we never talked about, always hung over us. But I often think that he got absorbed in my early fighting career to avoid dealing with the breakup of his marriage. On the few occasions he did talk about Mom leaving, he seemed hurt and bewildered, like a small boy.

  I’d always thought of Dad as having the bark, and Mom the bite. It was two summers later that I learned otherwise. I was remanded to Miami, at Dad’s instigation, doing community-college bullshit in order to get onto the university’s undergraduate sports science program. Jocelyn went to stay with Dad’s sister, Aunt Emer, in New York, and undertook her own prep course, to gain admission to Princeton. I moved south and in with Mom and Lieb. At first it was tough. I missed Dad. I was still learning to drive, while trying to get hooked up with a gym in the local martial arts scene. Through Mom’s indifference to them, I learned the significance of Dad’s support of my martial arts activities. One afternoon, Mom and I were sitting in the yard of her old rental that looked from SoBe over the Biscayne Bay to Miami proper. We weren’t drinking anything stronger than homemade lemonade when she suddenly locked me in her sights and said, — He wanted you down here, but you knew that, right? You know he sleeps with whores?

  I turned away and looked out across the bay. Stared at the sunlight bouncing off the slick, blue-black waters. She seemed not to pick up on my discomfort, just carried on dissing him. I shut it out; couldn’t take any more of her bitterness against my father. She didn’t know how important it was for me to see him in a certain way. If I didn’t, it was all for nothing. After a while, she wound down. — I’ll say no more on the subject, Lucy, but you don’t know the half of it, and that’s probably just as well.

  It was impossible to get a scholarship for martial arts, so I’d reluctantly switched back to track and field for the purposes of securing a general sports one, with a coaching bias, at Miami University. Some time later, in my freshman year, I decided to head back to Boston to pay Dad a surprise visit. He had long ago moved from Weymouth to a downtown city brownstone apartment, which was way cool. He’d started to have success as a writer, was living a little and seemed much less uptight. Could have done with being more fucking uptight; after opening the door with a flourish, he looked at me and clearly wasn’t comfortable. I soon saw why, as this twitchy young junkie chick showed up immediately behind me. Dad claimed that she was helping him research this novel he was planning. It was bullshit. So in that instant I went from believing that my mom had simply abandoned us, to accepting that he had a shitload to do with it.

  — Wonderful, Lonnie, just wonderful . . . Okay, I’ll keep in touch . . . goodbye . . . Mom hangs up, as a buffed-and-waxed skating fag sweeps down the street. Mom says something catty about the rollers being a “busboy’s convertible.” I decide lunch is my treat and signal for the check, waving Mom down when she protests. — Thanks, Lucy, she says sheepishly. Mom might be a snobbish breadhead but she’s no tightwad. — Listen, picks, I need a little favor.

  — Name it, I say recklessly, instantly regretting it.

  No going back now though, as we head to get her car, which she’s put in the multistory lot. On Collins, Mom suddenly locks my arm. We’ve strolled past the tourists, shoppers, diners, and drinkers, crossing to the cheapo strip between Collins and Washington, where Lincoln is all scuzzy low-rent electrical and luggage stores. Bums and mentally ill people try to outdo each other for the attentions of the bug-eyed, camera-wielding visitors who’ve strolled off the beaten track. A guy comes up to us. — I haven’t eaten for two days.

  — Well done. Stick with it, but build in cardio. I hand him my card.

  — He needed money for food, Mom ticks.

  — Oh . . . I kinda thought he was too well dressed to be a beggar . . . I can get so myopic, I concede, ushering her down the street as the bum studies the card, and growls something incomprehensible. Thankfully, we cross over Washington and we’re instantly back in high-end SoBe.

  We pick up the car, heading down Alton, Mom driving me across the great divide of Biscayne Bay, from Miami Beach to Miami proper. What the fuck is the new gateway to the Americas but a goddamn illusion? It’s a ghost town; those empty stacks of apartments. Nobody wants to be here.

  Mom smells my contempt. — It’s really picking up down here, she insists.

  I roll doubtful eyes. The sidewalks are empty enough to make most mid-rent LA neighborhoods look like rush-hour Manhattan.

  We’re driving down Bayside, to the forty-story apartment block in which Ben Lieb
erman has bought a big share, sinking in all their savings, and which Mom is managing. Practically empty, and not one single purchase. The structure, which her squeeze took off the hands of some shady Colombians (there must be another kind in Miami, but I’ve yet to meet them) when it seemed like a good idea, has four apartments on each of its forty floors. Only two are currently leased—both discounted—on the seventh and twelfth floors, one to a woman who takes clients there from the nearby offices for lunchtime sex, the other given to a local entertainment and cultural journalist on the basis he’ll write some fiction in his column about an emergent vibrant downtown scene. They are basically paying rent for the building maintenance and services, not that there seems to be much of those.

  — It will happen, Mom says in breathless optimism, her crazy eyes rising toward the penthouse on the top of this stacked pile of rabbit hutches. — I mean, Bayside is two blocks away, across the street, and the American Airlines arena is practically on the doorstep.

  — Yeah, right.

  — Lime have opened up a branch next to the new Starbucks on Flagler, she squeals. — There’s the new Marlins baseball stadium, and a new museum square planned—

  — South Florida will always be about the beaches, Mom, it doesn’t need a vibrant downtown. The city won’t spend a municipal buck on jack—