Micky never seemed real. I thought he did. For most of my life.
I was so excited when Mother came home from the doctor's office, grinning from ear to ear and practically shouting, "Guess what! I was right. There were two babies on the x-ray!" She'd already told everyone she knew that she was going to have twin boys on her birthday. Nobody had believed her. Even if it was twins, her birthday was six weeks before the baby was due. She was right about twins. Now I figured she probably would have them on her birthday like she said she would.
When we went to bed that night, Bobbie started talking about the twins. We talked for a few minutes before I told her to be quiet so I could go to sleep. She finally did, and then I spent about an hour thinking about it some more. I didn't figure I could hold more than one baby at a time, so Bobbie could hold the other one, and we wouldn't have to fight over them.
Then I thought about telling everyone at school. I practiced just what I'd say the next morning. We didn't call it "Telling Time" anymore in fifth grade. That name was okay when you were little, but we were fifth graders, way too big for that kid stuff. Now we had "news" first thing in the morning. I carefully rehearsed how I'd hold my hand up real casual — not frantically waving it like a show-off — I'd keep my elbow a little below my shoulder and sort of look down at the back of the chair in front of me while I waited to be called on. Then, when it was my turn, I would say, ever so calmly, "My mother found out yesterday that she's going to have twins." Boy, Mary Beth wouldn't have anything to top that news! I went to sleep thinking about what to wear.
I waited longer than usual to leave for school the next morning. I stalled around in the bathroom getting my hair just right for nearly half an hour, because I knew I'd spill the beans if I had to hang around the playground before the bell rang. I wanted to save this news for the formal announcement. Bobbie kept bugging me to leave, so I told her to just go on without me. I practiced my announcement all the way to school, and got there just as Mr. Peters opened the door. Just about the time I got to my desk, Mr. Peters ruined everything. He boomed out, loud enough for the whole school to hear, "Well, Cindy, I guess you're pretty excited about those twins, aren't you?"
Sometimes it just wasn't fair that my mother was the school secretary and sometimes it seemed like the teachers knew more about what was going on at my house than I did. Actually it turned out okay that way though, because the boys pretended like they didn't hear, and the girls all flocked around, buzzing with questions and giggles, before Mr. Peters made us all sit down.
After that morning nobody else thought much more about it at school. But I sure did. Mother's belly kept getting bigger and bigger. I didn't see how she could keep from popping. She'd made these skirts with U-shaped holes in the front with strings to tie the skirt around her growing tummy. After while the strings were barely long enough. By Valentine's Day she'd let us put our hand on her belly and feel the little guys wiggling around in there. We always thought of them as "the little guys," because we never doubted that it would be the two boys she told people she'd have.
Just before my birthday in the middle of April, she had to go to bed and stay there so the babies wouldn't be born yet. It was way too early. She kept reminding us though, "They won't come until my birthday." While she waited in bed, we sewed piles of little flannel nightgowns for the babies. Tiny nightgowns that fit my larger baby doll. It was hard to believe that real babies could be that little.
Granmother Rene and GranddaddyCub, Mother's parents, came for her birthday, which just happened to be on Saturday that year. After breakfast, Daddy took Bobbie and me to town to buy birthday presents for Mother. I got her a neat butter dish. It was pale green on the bottom, and the top looked like an ear of corn. There were six sets of tiny corn cobs with it that had little prongs on one end to stick in an ear of corn so you could eat it without getting your fingers messy. After we got our presents, Daddy said, "Well, I guess we'd better go home so I can take your Mama to the hospital." I was amazed that he'd taken us to town if he knew she needed to go to the hospital. I decided he was probably guessing about that, since she'd always said that she'd have them that day.
Sure enough, when we got back to the house, Mother was ready to go. Daddy picked up her suitcase and put it in the car, and then he and Grandmother Rene helped her down the stairs, down the three porch steps, and down the sixteen front steps to the car. Off they went.
Granddaddy Cub stayed at the house with Bobbie and me. We were so excited we couldn't see straight. Cub made us eat some baloney sandwiches for lunch, and then I felt like I'd explode if I had to stay in the house another minute. Bobbie and I ran around like crazy, ringing doorbells and telling whoever answered, "I just thought you'd like to know that Mother just went to the hospital." I was so excited I went to houses where I'd never even talked to the people.
Then we ran back inside to wait for the phone to ring. It seemed like it took forever, but I think it was really just a couple of hours. Granddaddy Cub was grinning when he hung up. "The first one's a boy. Three pounds, thirteen ounces." We were off like skyrockets, ringing those bells again. "The first one's a boy!" we yelled, hardly waiting to finish before we were off to the next house, then home for the rest of the news.
Granddaddy Cub was waiting for us at the door. "Two brothers," he said. "This one was three pounds fourteen ounces." A little breathlessly, we were off yet again for a third round of knocking.
Later on, when Daddy and Grandmother Rene got home, we found out the babies' names were Michael Alan and Richard Wayne. I knew Michael had been named for Mother's baby brother, who died of flu when he was just nine months old. Michael was also Granddaddy Cub's middle name. Alan was just a name Mother liked. Ricky, short for Richard, rhymed with Micky, short for Michael, and of course Wayne was for Daddy and his father.
Since they were so tiny, they had to stay in the hospital in incubators. Bobbie and I were dying to go see them, and the next day we got to. Usually kids couldn't visit anyone at the hospital until they were twelve, but since Micky and Ricky wouldn't be coming home for a long time, the nurses rolled the incubators over to the glass window in the nursery and let us peer through from the hall. Sure enough, they were the same size as my baby doll. They were red and wrinkly and sort of ugly. They just lay there with their eyes closed.
Mother came home in a couple of days. It felt funny having her home without the babies, but she wasn't home all that much. She kept running to the hospital to pump her breasts so the babies could drink her milk instead of formula. Micky was already gaining weight and everyone was pretty excited. But then he upchucked and they found out all of it had been staying in his stomach. All of a sudden everything changed. The grownups all got funny squinty looks on their faces and whispered a lot. I did hear that Micky had something called pyloric stenosis, which meant he didn't have an opening between his stomach and intestines. Food was going into a dead-end.
One night a few days later I'd been in bed awhile, and Bobbie was already asleep. Daddy wasn't home, and I heard Mother talking on the telephone downstairs. I slid out of bed and tiptoed out to the head of the stairs. I crouched down and listened real hard. I didn't know who she was talking to, but I heard her say that the doctor had thought about operating on Micky to open his stomach, but decided not to. She said something about his pancreas and cystic fibrosis. I could tell that Mother knew he was going to die. Man, that was creepy! I snuck back to bed and lay there with that awful secret, feeling like one shoe had dropped. Then I remembered that Ricky was okay. We'd still have one baby. Things could be worse.
Finally, on Friday, when the babies were almost two weeks old, Bobbie and I got home from school at the same time. Daddy was home when we got there. I didn't have time to wonder why. He and Mother met us in the hall by the front door. Daddy said, very quietly, "Well, your little brother Micky died today." The other shoe had fallen.
"Oh," I said solemnly, at a loss for words. All I felt was relief that it was over, but I knew I was supposed to be sad. Daddy put one arm around me and one around Bobbie, and Mother did the same, and we all stood there in a quiet little circle for a minute or two. That felt good. We ought to do this more often I thought. Then we stepped back — no point in overdoing things. Our family didn't go in for that mushy, huggy stuff.
"Do you have any questions?" Mother asked.
"Yeh. Can Bobbie and I go to the funeral?" I was afraid they'd think kids didn't belong at funerals, and I didn't want to miss it. I'd only been to one funeral, and that was old Mrs. Will's. We got there late because we'd had to drive all the way to Albuquerque. It seemed like it was over before it started, so I thought I might have missed something. I didn't need to worry. They assured us we could go. It would be on Monday.
The weekend was busy. Grandmother Rene and Granddaddy Cub came back, and so did Granddaddy Pop and Grandmother Clara. On Monday morning Uncle Dudley showed up, and Bobbie and I got to ride down to Santa Fe with him in his MG convertible. That was really exciting, because he drove so fast he nearly skidded around the curves on the side of the cliff going down from town. I wanted him to put the top down, but he said it wasn't warm enough.
I remember everything else, but I don't remember the funeral. I think it was in some chapel that was sort of dark, and I think maybe Mr. Rayburn was the minister who said a few words. I kind of remember seeing a teeny-bitsy baby wrinkled like a prune and not even as big as a cat, lying in a blue satin casket not much bigger than a man's shoe box. I don't remember going out to the cemetery, but I always remembered he was there when we drove by it. After the funeral, we all went to lunch at the Mexican restaurant on the Plaza. I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich.
I was surprised when nobody at school asked me the next day where I'd been. I'd sort of wanted to tell people about the funeral. Since it had been a weekend, I hadn't even been to school since he died. But nobody asked, and I didn't know how to bring it up. I mean, it would be pretty weird to hold your hand up for news time, and say, "Guess what. My baby brother died yesterday." One day at recess a few weeks later, Sondra Blackwood, the class creep, told me that Mr. Patri had told the class about Micky dying, and then he told them not to talk to me about it, because it might make me feel bad. I thought that was stupid, but I understood why he'd done it.
After that I didn't talk much about Micky — it just didn't come up. Before long, Ricky was big and strong enough to come home. Then he became real and I sort of forgot about Micky. He became a phantom brother. Sometimes over the years when Rick (who had now outgrown the childish Ricky) did something outrageous, Mother and I would joke, "What in the world would we have done with two of him!" but the idea always remained abstract.
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In July, forty-five years after Micky and Ricky were born, my husband and I went on a vacation in the southwest and stopped in Santa Fe for a couple of days. On the way into town, we passed a cemetery.
"Oh! I think that's where Micky's grave is!" I exclaimed. "Maybe we should go in and see if we can find it." Several people in the family had gotten into genealogical research, and nobody knew exactly where Micky was buried. This was a golden opportunity to track the information down and document it for them.
The next day we set out to find him. Ed thought he should be in the Veteran's Cemetery, since Daddy was a veteran and entitled to a plot for him. I agreed to try it, even though I was sure it was the wrong one. Sure enough, he wasn't listed, so I went into the office to ask about the cemetery on Cerrillos Road. The man there was most helpful, and put me in touch with the caretaker at Fairview. She looked Micky up, gave me the plot number, and confirmed that there was a marker.
After we left the Veteran's Cemetery, I began telling Ed about the day Micky died. Suddenly I couldn't continue. Remembering how Daddy had told us, and how we'd stood in that circle. . . . I choked up. After forty-five years, the tears I'd never shed began to flow. In a flash, I understood that I really had had another brother. He had breathed and cried, if only for a few days. Though I never noticed their grief and hadn't shared it, Mother and Daddy must have been devasted at the loss of their other little boy. How proud they had been to have twins! It had also become clear over the years how much they valued having even one son — after nine years with only daughters.
At first I didn't want to go to his grave. I've never been one to visit graves. After all, "they" aren't there, so why bother, I've always thought. The next morning, as we headed out of town and neared the cemetery, I changed my mind. "I do want to stop!" I exclaimed. Ed hung a quick left, and went to the corner the caretaker had described. The cemetery was badly overgrown. We wandered through several rows, poking in the grass without finding Micky. I had given up when Ed finally nudged some overgrown grass aside, and there it was, a tiny marker, reading MICKY BROWN. I gasped at the sight. I fell to my knees and quickly pulled away as much of the grass as I could, brushing soil off the brass with my hands. I found a twig and scraped around the letters. This much I could do, for my brother's memory.
As I worked, I experienced déja vu. I remembered a sunny summer day forty-five years earlier when we had come here to make sure the marker had been placed properly. I remembered feeling sad, and I was glad we didn't stay long. When the little brass marker was clean as I could get it, I snapped a picture to give Rick a tangible memento of his twin brother.
It was time to leave. I sank back into my seat in the car, suffused with the peace of completing long unfinished business. I had finally found a long-lost brother and put him properly to rest. Micky had become real.