James Gang Ch. 01: Mean Darbie

"So why were you so shy when I asked why you didn't have a man? Don't tell me it it's just because you're sheepish!"

"Well, maybe," she admitted. "It's just . . . there was always a guy I liked, but I never said anything to 'im until it was too late. Then he moved on, and I never thought to bring it up again."

Now I was curious. Who was this mystery crush of my sis's?

"Got a name for lover-boy?" I asked.

She ignored the question and looked down at her dresser, glancing at the picture of all eleven of the family, back when we were all together.

"You remember this, brother?" she asked me.

"Of course I do," I told her. "That was probably the best time in our family . . . right before Dwight fell out of the treehouse and everything else went to hell."

She smiled wistfully. "Dwight laid in our backyard for half an hour with his skull fractured before Mom found him. Dad blamed her for not watching him, and Mom couldn't cope with the guilt. They got divorced a month or so later, and Mom moved in with Benny Hines, the railroad engineer. Dad took to boozing and it was up to Grace and Sarah to really run things on their own."

"Things got worse until Dad got arrested for being drunk and disorderly," I continued. "A few months later, Mom moved back in and the two of them reconciled, but I think it was just for us. I don't think they've had many happily married days since then, but they hide their pain fairly well."

She glanced at me with a soleful expression. "Do you think Mom . . . y'know . . . still sees him? Mr. Hines?"

I shrugged. "Who knows? Carol seems convinced, and she's the only one of us that lives there. But, I'm not going to pry."

"It just pisses me off," Darb said through clenched teeth. "He's married now and she got back with Dad. Why would they continue to see each other behind their spouses' backs?"

"Some folks are just built different than others," I told her. "That's assuming that Mom does it at all, I mean. Maybe she still loves him, and he still loves her, even though they're forced to endure their marriages for the greater good."

"The 'greater good'?" she said incredulously. "'Big brother', please tell me you don't believe in compromising your morals for something like that!"

"Like I said, not my place to judge," I told her, "but I don't have to agree, either. That's largely the reason I never settled down, either. When I find the one, it'll be her—just her. And no force on Earth is going to keep me from her. And I don't aim to court in secret, either. I plan to take the woman I marry for walks through town, and hold hands by the lake. Love ain't worth nothing to me if you can't do it right."

Darbie was smiling at me as I said my piece, but her eyes still looked sorta sad. I wondered what she was thinking at that moment. Was her mystery man someone that she wanted to approach, but couldn't? She'd said that he'd moved on, so maybe he was someone she would only be able to love in secret, away from his wife and their family?

There were lots of messages being sent through that forlorn glance of hers, but I could hardly pick out nary a one of them.

Then, her eyes went to the second picture—the one of her and me as kiddies. "I think I'm the only one of us that kept THIS picture. This one was from when Mom and Dad were apart, and big sisses were in charge."

"I remember," I said. "If I recall right, you did a pretty decent job of holding us together, too."

"Noooo," she denied modestly.

"No, seriously. You made all of us get along. When Chelle and Clo used to start fighting over toys and whatnot, you used to break them up."

"Yeah, but they were just four and three!" she said.

"And we were just five!" I persisted. "Yet you knew that if we were going to make it as a family, we had to pull together to help Dad. Grace and Sar wouldn't have been able to maintain the household without you there doing the peacekeeping and changing Barb and Carol's diapers every so often."

"Oh yeeeeeah," Darb said thoughtfully. "They DO owe me for that."

I chuckled. "Good luck finding Barb. She's probably off to Katmandu by this point. And you better hurry up with Carol. If she decides to up and leave home, you might never get another chance."

We both shared a chuckle and Darbie stared into my soul with those soft blue eyes of hers. "Thanks, brother. You've really been looking out for me."

The way she looked at me then, never had I felt so strong and confident in myself. But it also made me reevaluate the relationship I'd had with my twin sister over the past twenty or so years. We hadn't always gotten along, and there had been segments when we were hardly even speaking to each other. Heck, before she called me about her place, I hadn't spoken to her in over 15 months, even though we lived just a few miles from each other.

I wondered if I had really done right by my sister. She had been living alone in some pet shop squalor for all these years and not once had I even dropped in to check on her. I just assumed that if she needed help or anything, she'd call as she did with this emergency. But, there were degrees of 'help' that people didn't like admitting to. Plenty of people felt trapped by everyday life and needed someone to help them break out of it, but were either too proud or too scared to ask for it. I assumed that Darb was a little of both. Underneath that 'spitfire' exterior, there was still the same sweet Darb I had known all those years back.

"Darb, if you ever need me for anything," I told her. "Anything at all, I'll be there. I know I don't say that to you much, but—"

She smiled and lightly rose a hand to my cheek. "It's okay, Kenny. If you're thinking you've been a bad brother to me, you haven't. You've always been good and sweet and kind. That's why I knew I could depend on you to help me with this. If anything, it's been ME that's been in the wrong all this time, and I should be the one apologizing for deceiving you all these years."

"Huh? Deceiving me?" I asked. "What do you mean?"

Darb bit her lip and stepped away. "Nothin'. I don't mean nothin'." I could see her withdrawing from me again, and I saw the layers of the 'Mean Darbie' shell coming up as a defense.

"Don't do that!" I shouted, keeping myself in her personal space, not allowing her to back off from me, physically or emotionally. "Tell me what's wrong. You know that I'm gonna love you no matter what."

"Just, shut the fuck up and let it go, 'big brother'" she snapped. Darb tried to fight, but I grabbed her shoulders and wouldn't let her go. No matter how much she struggled or cursed me, I made it clear that I wasn't going nowhere until she came clean and told me what was on her mind.

Finally, she caved, and she sat down on a chair as she began opening up.

"Well, I meant it when I said that it wasn't YOU who had been the jerk all this time, and that it was me who'd been lying to you. But, what I was saying was that I intentionally changed my attitude toward you. I intentionally put up that 'Mean Darbie' side—as you used to call it—and directed it almost completely at you. Just you."

I had always suspected as much, but I never thought that Darb would outright admit that she'd done it on purpose. So, in the end, I was only left with one question.

"Why?"

"I don't know exactly when it started. When we were kids, maybe. When you used to beat up guys who tried to tease me or hit me. I eventually wanted to learn to take care of myself, and not rely on you. I wanted to become tougher and meaner, so that you wouldn't always have to come running when little sister was crying."

"That's what big brothers d—"

"Shhhh. Don't interrupt," she told me. "I'm on a roll, and if I don't get this off my chest now, I may never have the courage to do it again.

"Anyway, I truly started putting it into practice when we got to high school. That was when I decided to become 'Mean Darbie' to you all the time, and intentionally provoke and antagonize you."

She could sense that I was going to ask why again, so she got right to it.

"You were always dating girls. Bimbos. Floozies. Just anyone who you could hook up with for a few months, get what you wanted, and then kick to the curb. I hated seeing that. I hated them for being such cheap whores, but I hated you more for caving to them. To being something that was beneath you. You were better than that, and in my own way, I was trying to show you."

My eyes met the floor—Darbie was telling the truth. I was a real cad in high school, largely because of what Dad had told me. 'Break some hearts' he said. Of course, I was taking the advice of a drunkard with a failed, loveless marriage, so I really shouldn't be surprised that some odd decades later, I was still single and dateless.

Not to mention that it seemed that when I was out there 'breaking hearts', the one I broke the most belonged to the sister who looked up to me.

"I'm sorry, Darb," I said weakly. "I was an idiot back then."

"And you're one now, too, if you keep interrupting me," she said, unshackling 'Mean Darbie' for a fraction of a tick. "God, I'm trying to make a confession here, and you're not making this any easier."

"Sorry," I said.

She took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair. "Okay, Kenny, what I'm about to tell you is something that I've been living with for the past twenty or so years of my life, and whatever issues I have buried deep inside are going to rely upon me coming out and saying them now. So, here goes."

She sat in the chair with her hands folded, looking soulfully into my eyes. "Kenneth . . . I have been madly in love with you for over twenty years."

The words hit me like a kick in the nuts. I had to echo them two or thrice times more before they finally truly registered.

"W-What . . .!? Darb, what the hell are you talking about?!"

She stood and walked around the room, hugging her arms around herself, obviously becoming a greater nervous wreck the more she thought about what to say.

"I told you that there's a guy that I'd had my eye on for a while, right? A guy who 'moved on' without me? Well . . . that guy was you, up to the day went to college. I know you were only a few towns away, and you visited often, but to me it felt like you were that much farther. While the rest of our sisters were looking for ways to get out of this town and start their lives elsewhere, I felt compelled to stay here—to wait for you to return. Lucky for me, you decided to stay here after all, because if you had moved away . . . I don't know what I would have done. I probably would have just found some excuse to follow you."

I couldn't believe these words were coming out of my sister's mouth. "Darbie, this . . . this is crazy talk you're sayin'. Just tell me that you're jerkin' my chain right now so that we can end this foolishness."

But she only looked at me with those same solemn eyes. She didn't burst into laughter and yell 'gotcha' or shrug her shoulders and say that she was only foolin'.

It took me a few minutes more to realize . . . she was dead serious.

My sister was standing in my house, confessing her love for me.

"It's okay if you don't like it," she told me sadly. "I've been preparing half my life for that likely outcome. But, it won't change how I feel. I've come to grips with this for a loooong time. I can't think of you without longing. I can't look at you without fantasizing your arms around mine. I've tried so hard to look at you as just a 'brother', and not the man that I love, but I just can't. When that didn't work, I tried to drive myself to hate you . . . to be as mean a sister to you as I could be so that you wouldn't even want to be near me. But that has backfired, and you've only made me love you more. So now, I've accepted that I'm going to love you . . . I'm going to pine for you . . . for the rest of my days, and I'm happy with that.

"Like you said, you need to find some woman whom you can love openly. Someone whom you can showcase to our friends, our family, the whole town and say: 'This is my woman!' I will totally support you when you do that, even as I long for what could have been. I will love your wife like a sister, and your kids as my nieces and nephews . . . but you will never be just 'my brother'. For me, you will always be my soulmate . . . the one that God teased me with the day we were born together, but wouldn't let me have. The one that, in another lifetime, I could have met on some expensive yacht, far from home, and lived happily ever after with."

She sank back down into her chair. "If that's my lot in life, then I accept it. I've been in love with you for twenty years, and that isn't going to change."

I didn't say anthing at all. There was nothing I could say to that. That was a far more candid, more honest, and more HORRIFYING confession than I'd expected from my twin sister, and there was nothing in this world that could have prepared a response to it. I walked out of the room and went into my den, where I immersed myself amongst all of my carpentry books and personal power tools. Sinking into my chair, I thought about everything I'd just heard.

I had no clue what I was going to do—I still hadn't even processed how it made me FEEL yet. On the one hand, for the first time in my life, a woman had confessed undying love for me. It was something I had dreamed about, fantasized about, every day of my adult life. There she was—this gorgeous, strong-willed beauty, telling me the words that every man wants to hear. I'd take her in my arms, tell her how I felt, and then we'd race off to the church to be wed. And here I was, with that first step just becoming reality for me.

Except that it was from my OWN DAMN SISTER!

I was torn between two conflicts: telling my sister that it was unacceptable for her to feel this way about me, or just ignoring it and attempting to pick up our lives as it used to be. In my mind at the time, those were the only two realistic options available, but I wasn't sure which one would work out best. The first might break my sister's heart, or even worse, it'd cause her to never open up to me again, leaving me to deal with something much like 'Mean Darbie', except even more unsettling. The second was, apparently, what Darbie seemed prepared for, but I wasn't so sure *I* could handle it.

We lived in a small town, so we were bound to bump into each other in the future. What if I DID find another woman, and Darbie wanted to come meet her and the kids? Do I try to ignore what she told me? Ignore the fact that seeing me and another woman make the happy family she always wanted would tear her apart inside? Could I really do that to my own sister? Could I shut my sister out of my life completely? Taking away the one person that she says matters most to her?

And was my sister even as strong as he claimed to be? It might be easy to SAY that you can bury feelings, but to do so over years and years . . . feeling thousands of pangs of guilt, remorse, loss and jealousy for the rest of your life . . . few people were really prepared to deal with that.

I decided to take a shower and go to bed. I needed to do a lot of thinking—more thinking that I could do in one night.

******

I went to work early and my crew and I did some measurements and planning for how best to go about Darbie's reconstruction. The whole time, my mind was elsewhere, and I was hardly any help during the heavy lifting. I almost threw my back out one or two times trying to move some crap that I had no rights moving, and at the end of the day, I returned home sore and miserable. Even worse, I knew Darbie would be there, and I still didn't know what to say to her.

Again, there was an amazing smell coming from my kitchen, and Darbie was there, with an apron over her flannels, finishing up a full course meal.

"What I said doesn't change anything between us," she told me. "I intend to have a hot meal waiting when you come back from the site everyday, until I go back to my regular life."

I said I understood, but I was still conflicted. Eating her food seemed like I was abusing her feelings now, but my stomach wouldn't let me complain. Darbie was a damn good cook, and a miserable day at work sure as shit works up an appetite.

Afterwards, I retreated to my den again, and I didn't see Darbie the rest of the night.

This went on two more days, until I finally began to figure out what I wanted to do. Telling Darbie to stop feeling how she did wouldn't solve anything. She'd probably just lie, and if she tried to move out of town or put some distance between us, I'd feel guilty if she ran into trouble far from home.

I wouldn't ignore her feelings, either. What she had said couldn't be unsaid, regardless of what I may have wanted.

So that left me with the only feasible option: just getting on with our lives. Darbie said that nothing would change between us, and I didn't intend for it to, either. She was still my sister, and I would still love her—one way, if not another. Things would be awkward for a while . . . possibly forever, but we would work through it like we always have . . . as a family.

When I got home that day, dinner was waiting just as always.

"Hey Kenny," she said, placing a plate of beef roast on the table.

"Hey, Darb," I said, ignoring the delicious meal and crooking a finger at her. "Follow me for a sec, wouldja? We gotta talk."

"Sure," she said, defeatedly. I guess she had been waiting for this moment ever since the day she confessed.

We sat in my den, and I gathered my thoughts. I had prepared a careful speech in my head and now, it was time for me to recite it. Except I hadn't had this many butterflies in my stomach since giving a my final presentation in speech class.

"Darbie, I started," deliberately pacing myself. "I thank you for telling me what you did. That took a tremendous amount of guts on your part, and I can't imagine how much pain you had to have been in all these years. I only hate that I wasn't able to notice it before, and maybe help you through it before it turned into something that hurts you as much as it does today."

She nodded, but she waited for me to continue.

"You're my sister, and I love you, but what you're telling me . . . it's just not right. I can't tell you how to feel, but I want to urge that you at least TRY looking elsewhere. There are plenty of great guys out there, in this town especially, and any one of them would be lucky to receive even a TENTH of what you've shared with me these last few days. I want you to be happy. That's my first and main priority as your big brother --" I decided to make a last-minute alteration to that part "—as your TWIN brother who loves you and wants the best for you. I think that, in time, you will see that there are better men than me for you, and you can put all of this completely behind you."

I finished, feeling slightly proud of myself for remembering the whole damn thing.

When she knew that I was finished, Darbie nodded again. "Thanks, 'big brother'," she said, completely ignoring the alteration I had made, "and I guess all I can do is try. But, before we go and eat dinner, there was something else I wanted to say to you, too."

"Oh god," I said with a smirk. "It's not 'GOTCHA!', is it?"

She smiled, but didn't humor me. "I just wanted to tell you . . . thank you, for being such a wonderful man. And one day, you're going to make some lucky girl really, really happy. But, until that day, I don't think it'll ever really settle into my head that you're not my soulmate. I can try to meet other guys, but as of right now, I have absolutely no interest in anyone but you. Call it selfish of me, but as long as I'm able to, I want to pretend. Until the day you slide a ring on that lucky someone's finger, I want to look at you and think 'My Man'. I want to think of you and fantasize.