Gaze Upon My Works And Emote

Melanie bit her lip hard and buried her face in the crook of Jon’s neck. It was…stupid. They were grown—well, nearly grown—well, they at least counted as adults when it came to things like making their own medical decisions and buying beer. They were siblings, they were twins, but even if the same blood, or some of it anyway, ran through their veins, they were still separate people.

But the undeniable fact remained that they hadn’t slept in separate beds in almost sixteen years.

They’d tried. Melanie still remembered how excited she’d been to get invited to Sophie’s slumber party for her sixth birthday, and how funny she’d felt when she found out there were no boys allowed, and how hard she’d cried at bedtime and begged to be allowed to go home. It hadn’t exactly helped her reputation, although she’d fared better than that one girl she’d forgotten the name of, who’d wet her sleeping bag and eventually been pulled to go to the Catholic school because Diana had led such a successful bullying campaign. She’d tried again a couple of years later, been horribly anxious and homesick again, and ended up staying awake all night; when she’d got home, she’d found out that Jon had sat up all night in their window seat waiting for her.

They hadn’t tried a third time. Boys didn’t do sleepovers and neither of them had ever been interested in Scouting, so it wasn’t like it would ever happen the other way around. And especially after…the incidents…neither of them had wanted to spend a night away from home without the other. There’d been about a six month period after that where Melanie hadn’t wanted to let Jon out of her sight, to the point that she’d had what had been classed at the time as a temper tantrum but she now recognized as a panic attack upon finding out they had initially been assigned to different classrooms. It had just been fortunate that her teacher had shamed her about it in front of their parents when they came to deal with the issue and their mum had indignantly taken Melanie’s side without asking further questions.

They’d never told their parents what had happened. They’d never told anyone what had happened. Melanie was one hundred percent certain their parents would have believed them, but that was kind of the problem. Their mum would have been just as likely to storm down to Bournemouth, find the door Andy Young had disappeared through, and gone in to do battle with Mister Spider herself. And while Melanie, at the age of eight, had believed Gillian Ng Sims-King to be the fiercest and bravest warrior in the history of the world, she had known that she wouldn’t win against something like that. They’d already lost their mama and their papa; they hadn’t been ready to lose their mum, too.

They hadn’t exactly been ready to lose her four years later, either, but at least it hadn’t been to a monster.

“Remember that stupid shirt Mum had?” she asked suddenly, her voice only slightly muffled by Jon’s pajama top. “The one that said something like ‘the only thing strong enough to kill me is me’?”

“The Team Immunodeficiency one. I remember.” Jon chuckled slightly. “Mama gave that to her when they were teenagers, she said.”

“Is that why she kept it?”

“Yeah. Well, it’s why she pulled it out after she started getting sick again, to wear to her dialysis appointments. She said it was like having Mama there.” Jon was quiet for a moment. “Okay, I give up, I can’t follow that one. What put that in your head?”

Melanie couldn’t help but laugh. Jon was usually good at following her leaps of logic and trains of thought—often better than she was—and it took a lot for him to admit that he couldn’t keep up. “I…started with how much I don’t want to sleep apart from you, and then I was thinking about the meltdown I had when I found out you’d been put in Mr Fitzroy’s class while I was in Ms Porter’s because I didn’t want you to go where I might lose you and then I thought about why I was so afraid then—”

“The nightmares, or the actual thing?” Jon interrupted.

“The actual thing. Although I am not looking forward to those coming back either,” Melanie muttered. “Anyway, I was remembering that we never told Mum or Dad because I was so sure she’d…”

“Go after Mister Spider armed with a blunt object and never be seen again?”

“Something like that, yeah. And I know it’s a stupid thing to be afraid of, but—”

“It isn’t,” Jon interrupted, quietly but firmly. “I had nightmares about the same thing for months.”

“You did?”

“Mm-hmm. Sometimes it was her breaking down the door and just hearing her scream, but when we went in after her, there was nothing. Other times I was reading the book, and I turned the page after the ‘Mister Spider wants more’ page, and there was another knock, and when he answered—” Jon broke off. “Never mind.”

Melanie pushed herself up and leaned her elbows on Jon’s chest, glaring down at him. There wasn’t a lot of light in their room with the curtains drawn, but there was enough for her to make out the outline of his face. “Uh-uh. Nope. You don’t get to ‘never mind’ me there, Jonathan Andrew Sims-King. ‘Knock, knock. Who is it, Mister Spider? It’s—’”

“‘Master Crane,’” Jon whispered, and even in the dark she could see the tears welling up in his eyes. “‘And he’s brought you his family.’”

“Oh.” Melanie swallowed against the lump in her throat, then collapsed onto Jon again and hugged him tight. “You know I know you’d never do that, right? You’d never be so scared of something like that that you would just…feed us to it to save your skin, right?”

“I know. And I know I’d never be so—so stupid that I would think it would actually save me. That never really made the nightmares easier.” Jon sighed. “There was only one thing that ever did that, really, and I think you know perfectly well what it was.”

“Yeah. Same for me.” Melanie groaned. “God, this is going to be the worst. Are you sure we can’t do like Mum and Mama did and find somewhere halfway between the two?”

“We could, but it would be two hours on a train and several changes each,” Jon said dryly. “Which might put a damper on our social lives. And would be fairly expensive. Would’ve probably been easier if we’d both gone to Saint Andrew’s, but…”

Melanie shuddered. “I’m not staying in school an extra year. Especially not without you. And letting you turn down three years at Cambridge would be madness.”

“I still think I only got in because of Mama.”

“If that was true, I’d have got in because of Dad. You got in on your own merits and you know it.”

Jon grunted, clearly not wanting to concede the point but conceding it anyway. “At least we don’t have to share a room with anyone else. God, that would be embarrassing.”

Melanie couldn’t help a small laugh. “Because of the nightmares, or because you might wake up in the middle of the night cuddling an unwilling stranger?”

“Genuine nightmare fuel. I’m not even joking,” Jon added, and Melanie frowned in the darkness, because she could tell from his tone of voice he was dead serious. “You’re different. I mean, you’re my sister, and you’re…safe. Not just…I mean, you make me feel safe. And, well, you’re my sister. Whatever That Fucking Woman thought, neither of us were ever going to…do anything. So sharing a bed with you, I don’t have to worry about any, ah, expectations.”

“You don’t want to?” Melanie asked, surprised. “Not with me, obviously, just—in general?”

“No. I really don’t. It’s not even an ‘I’m saving myself for the right person’ or a ‘come to your wedding night a virgin’ thing or anything like that. I just…the entire idea genuinely creeps me out. I am less interested in…that…than I am in quantum physics. It certainly made that game of Seven Minutes in Heaven we played at Sophie’s birthday party miserable.”

“You could have opted out.”

“Or I could have done what I did, which was pray to whatever gods might be listening that I would land on Sam on the grounds that he’s so straight you could use him as a plumb line and we could just sit in the closet and talk.” Jon huffed. “You’ll notice I never asked about your seven minutes. Either of them. It’s because I genuinely do not want to know.”

Melanie turned that information over in her mind. In a way, it was startling, because she hadn’t thought she and Jon had any secrets. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly a secret. There were plenty of clues, if she’d ever bothered to pay attention to them, but, well, as he’d said, it wasn’t like they were ever going to do anything with each other, so why would she bother? It also wasn’t like she was in a hurry to set him up with someone.

“Well,” she said finally. “At least Dad won’t have to worry about you making him a grandfather before you have your degree.”

“Does he have to worry about you?” Jon asked pointedly. “Because I don’t know that I’m ready to be an uncle either.”

“No,” Melanie grumbled. “Arse. I’m taking at least one term off from dating anyway, but I’m going to be smart about it when I do start. I don’t really want to be a mum right now either.” She paused, then added, “Maybe not ever. I don’t want to pass Mum’s kidney problems on.”

“You don’t seem to have them.”

“Seem to, is the key phrase there.”

“Mum said she knew when she was a little kid. It’s how Mama knew when she got really sick that she had a chance to be a match. You’d know by now, Melanie.” Jon tucked his chin over Melanie’s head. “It’s not something we have to worry about now, anyway, since we’re not going to have kids any time soon. But you know if you do I’ll be right there with you, right?”

“I know.” Melanie stifled a yawn and snuggled a little closer to her brother. “Just like I’ll be right there with you if you have kids.”

Jon hummed. “You know you’re allowed to go to sleep, right?”

“If I go to sleep, tomorrow comes faster,” Melanie said. “And unlike when we were six and waiting for Christmas, or nine and waiting to come home from Bournemouth, I don’t want tomorrow to come.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jon said. “I don’t really want it to come, either. But…I mean, it’s not that long until Christmas. And you know we’ll be so busy we won’t even notice.”

“You’re a rotten liar.”

“I am a fantastic liar. You just know what I’m really thinking because you’re thinking it too,” Jon shot back.

Melanie sighed heavily. “I mean, it’s not like we’re going to the ends of the earth or anything. It’s only a couple of hours from Leeds to Cambridge, and, you know, phones exist. Email exists. We can keep in touch.” She reached up and touched Jon’s bicep. “And we have these.”

“We have these,” Jon echoed. He rubbed his thumb over the exact same spot on her other shoulder. They’d got the money for their eighteenth birthday, but held off on actually making the appointment until they’d finished their exams, which had also given them time to decide on a design—a floating red lantern of the kind they had always released with their mum on the New Year, inscribed with carefully drawn Chinese characters that, thankfully, the artist had traced exactly. He hadn’t asked for details and had probably assumed it was either some generic good luck thing or random characters that stupid people thought were special, but Melanie and Jon had kept up with their Cantonese. It did mean that they occasionally giggled behind their hands at people, largely white people, who did think they had tattoos reading “PEACE” or “BAD BOY” or whatever but actually had things like “STUPID FOREIGNER” or “SMELLY OLD MAN” or even just nonsense words. It also meant that they knew what their own tattoos said.

The characters, quite simply, were their names. Or, well, their nicknames. Xiao E and Xiao Hua, Little Moth and Little Flame. They’d been called that as long as either of them could remember, in English, in Cantonese, occasionally in French or Latin if their dad or their mama had been feeling particularly silly. In a way, it meant they would always have a little piece of one another with them, no matter where they went. And since neither of them were planning on serious academic careers, it wouldn’t hurt anything to have the ink.

In an effort to lighten the mood, Melanie added, “And we’ve probably got thirty pounds of cat hair each, whether we want to or not.”

As if on cue, the mattress dipped as Cosy heaved herself onto it, making both of them laugh. She made her way, slowly and painfully—she was going on sixteen and her weight hadn’t done her joints any favors—up the bed, then curled up on top of the two of them. A moment later, she began purring, still as strong as ever.

Jon stroked her head gently. “You’ll look after Dad while we’re gone, won’t you, old girl?”

Cosy purred louder. Melanie sighed. “At least he’s holding steady for now. And he’s got people looking in on him…and the systems seem to be helping. And we’ll be back at Christmas.”

“And like you said, we’re not that far away. Relatively,” Jon added. “Bit much for a day trip, but…you know, if we need to come back in a hurry, we can. It’s going to be okay.”

“I know,” Melanie murmured. She rubbed Cosy’s cheek briefly. “I still don’t like it.”

“Me, neither,” Jon confessed. “But we’ve got to go through with it now. It’s going to be all right. We just have to get through.”

“Yeah,” Melanie said. “We’ll make it. We always do. We’ve got each other.”

Jon tapped her tattoo quickly, one two three, charging it up, she supposed, just like the hand squeezes. Melanie tapped the same rhythm out over Jon’s tattoo and felt him sigh with silent relief.

And then, suddenly and abruptly, sunlight was filtering through the gap in the curtains and the alarm clock was ringing cheerfully across the room and it was time to her to face the fact that, for the first time in their lives, the deal wouldn’t hold and she couldn’t go where Jon went, nor he with her, and it was time to confront the adult world.

Jon and Melanie crossed the platform and hugged him. He hugged them back just as tightly as ever, but Jon couldn’t help the slight surge of anxiety. He tried to keep his voice neutral, though. Lately their dad had been a bit quicker to anger than usual, and since they hadn’t had a lifetime of keeping ahead of his moods, he wasn’t sure what would touch him off. “What are you doing here?”

“I was already in Manchester, so I thought we should go out to dinner to celebrate the end of term,” their dad said. He pulled back from the hug, one hand on each of their shoulders, and looked down at them, his smile fading. “And, since I know you’re both intelligent enough to work out something is wrong, I need to talk to you about something important, but I thought we’d do it over a nice meal.”

In that moment, Jon knew that whatever was wrong was going to be something that would affect their lives forever. The last time they’d gone out for a “nice meal” and a serious discussion had been when the doctors dropped the news that dialysis likely wouldn’t keep their mum going long enough for her to get a new kidney even if they found someone willing to directly donate, what with the time it would have taken for compatibility tests to come back, and their mum had made the decision to go on hospice. Mouth suddenly too dry to respond, he simply nodded and, as they walked off the platform with their dad’s arms around their shoulders, reached behind his back to take Melanie’s hand.

She clutched it tightly, which meant she was having the same thoughts.

Jon held his tongue to keep from asking where they were going, since he didn’t recognize the route their dad took; he was a bit surprised when they wound up at one of their favorite restaurants in Manchester, one that normally didn’t take any time at all to get to from the station. Maybe he’d made reservations for a specific time and was killing time before they got there, although normally he would have said something first. Instead, he simply led them inside and spoke to the hostess on duty, who grabbed three menus and three rolls of silverware and led them to a nice, discreet table in the corner. The restaurant wasn’t particularly full this time of day, but it was still nice to have a modicum of privacy.

They ordered drinks and an appetizer, and once the waiter had gone off to fetch them, Melanie leaned forward. “I’m guessing this isn’t about work. Or about our schooling. Please tell me it’s one of the aunts.”

“The aunts?” their dad repeated with a puzzled frown. Suddenly his expression cleared. “Oh—in Sheffield. No, they’re all fine, as far as I know. We should write to them tonight. They’d like to hear from you.”

“Did they write back already?” Melanie asked.

Their dad paused in the act of unrolling the silverware. “Write back?”

“We posted letters to them Tuesday,” Jon reminded him. “For Easter, and for Auntie Liz’s birthday.”

“Christ, that was this week,” their dad murmured. He sighed and rubbed his face. “I had completely forgotten.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately,” Jon said, not quite under his breath. Melanie kicked his ankle under the table.

“I have,” their dad agreed, which was a surprise. Jon had expected him to vehemently and furiously deny any such thing. “And I know I’ve been a bit…short with you both.”

“It’s—” Melanie began.

Their dad held up a hand to stop her. “Don’t say it’s all right, Little Moth. It isn’t and we all know it. You’re old enough to deserve to be treated like adults.”

Jon couldn’t help but smile. “You’ve always treated us like adults. Or, well, like people, I guess, which is…kind of the same thing, honestly.”

Their dad chuckled. “You’re not wrong about that.”

The waiter came back with their drinks, and they paused the discussion while they gave their orders. Once he had departed for the kitchen, their dad continued. “It was the temper that was worrying me. The forgetfulness I put down to just trying to keep up with the two of you as you got older, but I’ve never had a temper and it was a bit concerning, especially after I took it out on another barrister. I made an appointment with my doctor, just to…rule out any issues. I assumed it would come back as nothing, maybe stress and a bit of grief combining to finally boil over, and I’d just wind up seeing a therapist.”

Part of Jon was tempted to ask when he was going to start therapy. The bigger part of him, the part that was reading ahead in the Psychology textbooks, knew better. “So…what did the doctor say?”

Their dad was quiet for several moments. Finally, he spoke softly. “We’re not…entirely certain. There are a few more tests still yet to come back. But the preliminary diagnosis is some form of dementia.”

Melanie stared at him. “Dementia? Like Alzheimer’s? You’re not old enough for that!”

“There’s an early onset type that can run in families, but I don’t think that’s it,” their dad said, which was less reassuring than it could have been. “It’s possible, though. My mother officially died of pneumonia, but, well, she had dementia as well, which is how she got caught out in a rainstorm without her coat and hat in the middle of winter. That’s one of the things they’re testing for—Alzheimer’s—but it could be any number of genetic factors. Or it could just be bad luck.”

Jon bit his lip. Several questions crowded his brain, but he tried to think rationally. “So what’s the plan, then?”

“Well, that’s part of what I wanted to talk to you two about,” their dad said seriously. “You’re adults—well, practically adults—you’re certainly mature. And you’re my closest family. I’m not asking either of you to be responsible for me—none of us are ready for that—but I would like you both to participate in the care planning. I want you to be part of the conversations around treatment and care. If you’re up for that.”

“Dad, of course,” Melanie said swiftly.

Jon nodded seriously. “We couldn’t help with Mum, but…we want to help you. And it’s best if we understand, right?”

“Right.” Their dad smiled. “I knew I could count on you two.”

The conversation turned to other matters, and they actually managed to have quite a nice meal. Their dad was encouraging about their end of term marks, and he shared a few details about what he’d been working on around his appointments. Jon could almost have fooled himself that it was just any old ordinary night out for dinner with his family, except for two things. First, their dad forgot where he was three more times over the course of the conversation. And second, Melanie’s expression every time he did got a little more scared.

“Who wants to practice their driving on the way home?” their dad asked brightly as they exited the restaurant.

Jon exchanged a glance with Melanie. Both of them realized that it was almost certainly because he didn’t feel confident in his ability to drive home. Since Melanie didn’t look like she was in any shape to follow the rules of the road—and their dad either wouldn’t say anything or would explode at her, which would make her yell back and make him start yelling at both of them—Jon held out his hand. “I will.”

Their dad fished the lanyard with the keys out of his pocket and handed them to Jon, who led the way to the car. If the Harlequin ever gave up the ghost, he mused, their dad would never be able to find their car again. Melanie climbed into the backseat without protest, and Jon tried to concentrate on the lessons he’d been taught as he carefully backed out of the parking space and onto the streets. He’d always had a fairly good sense of direction, so he was able to maneuver them the relatively short drive home without too much trouble.

As he pulled into the driveway and switched the car off, Melanie spoke, in a quiet, carefully controlled sort of voice. “Dad?”

“Yes, Little Moth?” Their dad twisted around to look at her with a faint smile on his face.

“Are Jon and I going to need to be tested for…whatever it is you’ve got too?”

Jon had to confess that that exact question had been worrying him most of the evening. Their dad’s face grew serious immediately. “Yes. If this comes back as a genetic condition, I am going to insist both of you be screened for it. In the first place, at least one of them might show up even earlier in successive generations, so if you did get it you need to be prepared. And in the second place, there’s always a chance you could pass it on to your own children, and I want you both to know that’s a possibility before you start considering it.”

Jon bit his lip and glanced over his shoulder at Melanie, then turned back to their dad. “Dad, I’m…you and Mum adopted me, remember?”

“I remember,” their dad said, patting Jon’s hand. At least he didn’t look annoyed or upset at the reminder. “But…well, you might as well know now. There’s a chance you and Melanie share the same paternity after all. Your mothers and your papa and I were, well…maybe you don’t need that many details, but I think you get the picture. You could both be mine. Or you could both be Paul’s. It’s why we were always so adamantly against having you tested for compatibility to donate a kidney to your mum. Not just because you were really too young, but because we were never sure what Mabel Sims would do, or try to do, if she found out.”

It was probably the first time he hadn’t called her your grandmother, and something in Jon relaxed, even as it conflicted with the new tension from this revelation. “Isn’t it more likely that, if we’re…I mean, I’ve got Papa’s eyes. The color at least.”

“My da had green eyes, too,” their dad said gently. “I agree that it’s more likely, but, well, I’d rather be safe than sorry, so if anything comes back as hereditary, we’re getting you both checked. And since I’m on the birth certificate, nobody will think twice about it.” He unfastened his seatbelt. “Come on, let’s go inside before the cats figure out how to work the oven.”

Jon hung the keys carefully on the designated hook, doubling up the lanyard so Skimbleshanks wouldn’t try and play with it. Melanie went to the kitchen to feed the cats, while their dad collapsed onto the sofa with a sigh. Jon started for their room, hesitated, then turned back. “Dad, do you mind if I practice piano for a bit?”

Their dad opened his eyes wide and stared at him. “Of course not! Why would I mind? Don’t answer that,” he added, holding up a hand. Either he’d seen something in Jon’s face or he’d guessed from their earlier conversations. “Go ahead, Little Flame. I’d love to hear you. It’s been a while.”

Jon and Melanie had both taken lessons when they were small, and Jon had continued on up until the previous year when he’d needed more time free to study, but he hadn’t played much since then. Partly due to time constraints, mostly due to their dad irritably shouting for him to knock off that racket. Tonight, though, he needed the calm of routine.

Scales, arpeggios, rhythm exercises—Jon went through his usual warm up and fundamentals, then pulled out the sheet music for the Chopin piece he’d been working on when he’d stopped taking lessons. He wasn’t exactly going to be playing at the Albert Hall anytime soon, but he did all right, or so he’d always been told. Anyway, wasn’t like anyone was going to be critiquing him. So he played. He stopped and started, went over a few passages to be sure he was getting the rhythms down, but then he went back to the beginning and managed to play through the entire first movement in one go without his tempo altering.

“Your mothers would be proud of you,” their dad said when he had finished. “I know I am.”

Jon couldn’t help but smile. He definitely felt more centered than when he’d sat down. “Thanks, Dad.”

Melanie pulled out the Parcheesi board and they played three rounds before having hot cocoa and biscuits, like they usually did at end of term. Melanie spent a long time in the shower when they went to bed, and when she came out, Jon was sitting up in bed trying to interest himself in a book their English Literature teacher had said he would enjoy. The opening pages were dry as dust and he hoped it got better, but he wasn’t so stubborn that he bothered pretending to be annoyed when Melanie tugged at the top of the book to lay it on his lap out of his way.

“It’s bad, right?” she said quietly. “This is bad? I’m not just making things worse in my head because I’m associating dementia with old people and assuming that means he’s going to die?”

Jon sighed and set the book on his nightstand. “It’s bad. Maybe not ‘he’s going to die tomorrow’ bad, but definitely ‘we’re going to have to take care of him long before we thought we might’ bad.”

“We’ll have to look into universities closer to home. He’ll never let us not go.”

“He also won’t let us give up on a good school just to stay close. I think he still feels bad we didn’t do Eton and Harrogate.”

Melanie grunted, then grunted again as Cosy, who was getting extremely fat these days, jumped onto the bed and walked over her lap to her accustomed spot. Paddiwack, slim as ever, followed, and the two cats curled up together as they always did, Cosy with her back against Jon’s hip and Paddiwack with his against Melanie’s. Jon stroked Cosy’s silky head. “Well, at least we know he’s not too terribly bad.”

“What do you—oh. Because she’s in here with us still.” Melanie pet Cosy, too, then rubbed Paddiwack in the spot under his jaw he liked and was rewarded with purrs that practically shook the bed. “I remember. Whenever Mum was sick, she’d sleep with her, and she was there all the time at…at the end.”

Jon nodded. “And…you know, he’s young, and he’s strong. He’s probably got ages yet. And maybe now that they caught it early they can…at least slow it down.”

Melanie sighed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be something reversible.”