The perfect shape

Once Robert had regained the ability of coherent speech, he said, 'Absolutely fantastic.' Full sentences were still a bit of a challenge at this point.

'Do I have your attention now?' I asked.

'Full and undivided. Bloody hell.'

'So can we talk now?'

'Don't you want me to make you cum first?' he asked.

'No,' I said, and I didn't. In fact, I just wanted him to hug me. I slid off him and on my side, my back towards him. 'Hug me,' I told him.

He put one arm around my waist, and the other under my neck. I scooted back, until we were spooning properly, his entire body touching mine. The feeling was so intense, of feeling completely safe, and loved, and cared for. I pulled his arms closer around me and held on to them, so that he could never ever run away from me.

'This is nice, too,' said Robert. He had no idea. I was chuffed to bits. For all I cared, Judgement Day could come there and then. I was in my perfect cocoon of warmth, love and tenderness.

'So... what is it that you want to talk about again?' he asked.

At that moment, I didn't want to talk. I wanted to be a little kitten, sleeping in this position for 20 hours a day. 'Actually, don't take this the wrong way,' I said, 'but could you shut up for a couple of minutes and let me enjoy this?'

'Um... OK.'

Good. We would have to talk, but if we talked now, I would ask him to ask me to marry him, and that was simply not going to happen. The thought was nice, though, and made me smile. He would look so smart in his suit, and I could wear a pretty white dress. And our mother would most definitely be crying.

***

As I slowly descended from the Elysian Fields back to the sofa, I felt ready to talk. 'Look, Robert,' I said. 'I want you to know that I'm perfectly happy and that I want this to last forever.'

'Same here,' said Robert. 'You make me complete, if that makes any sense.'

'I think I understand what you're saying. But we've certainly made things pretty difficult for ourselves. To the outside world, we can be either brother and sister, or a couple. We can't be both. They would never accept us as such.'

'So basically,' he said, 'what you're saying is that we have to hide who we are. Pretend that we're something other, or somebody else, from what we really are. Like we've always been doing.'

I didn't say anything, because if I did, I would start crying.

He heaved a sigh before continuing. 'Our entire lives we've been pretending to be something that we aren't, just to be accepted by society, or whatever. And it still doesn't work. We have to work so damn hard to come across as sociable, and it's still no good. We don't have it built into us, so we use software emulation. And it's still full of bugs.'

Dear Robert. Trust him to use a computing metaphor.

'And it's tiring, you know. Well yes of course you know. All the time, having to work so damn hard at something that is so damn difficult. So if again they expect us to be something that we are not, or pretend to be that something, I don't know if I have the strength for that.'

That broke my resistance. The tears were coming thick and fast now, I couldn't stop them. The sobs shook my entire body. I curled into a ball and cried hard, so very hard. All those years, all those disappointments, all the betrayal, all the frustration, all the hurt, it all came flushing out. My brother's words had ripped open an old wound that had never fully healed. He may be the one sitting quietly in a corner at a party –if he gets invited to one to begin with– but his analytical skills are devastatingly accurate.

He stroked my hair and whispered in my ear. 'I know, I know. I understand. But I'm with you. I'll always be with you, whatever happens.'

We lay curled up for several minutes, with Robert trying to console me, until I had recovered enough. I felt a bit better. A good cry does that to you.

'You know, you're right,' I said, my voice still unsteady. 'If anybody has a problem with us, they can bugger off. I'm tired, too, so very tired. I'm quite happy to have our own little family together.'

'Minus the children,' he observed. I could have sworn there was something in his voice. Almost like regret.

A mental image came before my eyes. Robert and I, walking in the park. I was pushing a pram, and Robert a pushchair. I forced the image from my mind. It could never be.

'Yeah,' I said, 'wouldn't be a good idea. Apart from everything else, a baby would drive us up the wall.'

Deep inside, however, I felt sorrow, that this was yet another thing where we couldn't be normal. It was so unfair. What nature gave with one hand –intellect, musical ability, and if Robert was to be believed, looks– it so cruelly took away with the other. Less than a week ago, I had declared that I'd never want children, and combining my brother's and my own gene pool would be a recipe for a disaster of epic proportions. But less than a week ago, I hadn't know yet that the love of my life had always been right before my eyes.

'We could get a pet, though,' said Robert.

I hadn't seen that one coming. 'A pet?' I asked.

'Yes, a pet. Proper families have pets. So we should get one as well. Probably a cat.'

'A cat?'

'Yes, a cat. Felis catus. Small, furry, pointy ears, meows a lot.'

'I know what a bloody cat is,' I said. 'But why a cat?'

'Well, it's simple really. We can't have a dog, because it can't stay on its own all day. And anyway, all dogs have ADHD. Cats have Asperger's.'

'What?' I asked. This conversation was getting increasingly absurd, and severely affected my ability to form sentences of more than two syllables.

'Isn't it obvious? They don't get along very well with other cats, unless they grew up together. And they don't like being touched, except on their heads. They're not that different from us, you know. Dogs are like "Oh, the boss is home! I'm so excited, it's the boss! Woohoo! Let me get my toy! And my other toy! I've got to run around and jump! Can I lick your face? Let me lick your face anyway! Can we go for a walk? I haven't seen you for at least five minutes! I'm so happy!"'

He was jumping around and waving his hands while doing his canine impersonation, and I half expected him to start humping my leg. Fortunately, he didn't.

He continued in a much quieter tone of voice. 'Whereas a cat is more like "Yo, 'sup." If it can be arsed to acknowledge you in the first place.'

'And that's why we should get a cat? Because it's like we are?'

'Basically, yes,' he said. 'It's a start, anyway. There are a lot of things that we can't do. And we'll never be average. But we can try to be a bit more average, see if it makes us happier. Let's start with a cat and take it from there.'

Fair's fair. I had reasoned for him to sleep with me, so his reasoning for getting a cat made sense, in a twisted sort of way.

'Fine,' I said, resigned to the fact. 'Let's get a cat then.'

We never had pets at home. Mother didn't like them, said they would make a mess and leave hair and dirt everywhere. The prospect of having a little creature to care for was strangely exciting.

***

So we had decided to get a cat. We hadn't decided what to do with our lives, though, which was perhaps a more important issue.

Both Robert and I had taken a shower. We'd become more than a bit smelly from all the sex that we'd been having, and I really needed to get clean down there. My brother, in a rare display of gentlemanly behaviour, had let me use the shower first.

At breakfast in the kitchen, I brought up the subject again. 'Okay. We're a couple now, and whether or not we're going to go public with that, sod it. But are we going to... move in with one another?'

He gave me a strange look. 'We're already living together. How could we move in?'

There are plenty of times that I detest my inability to read between the lines, to understand what's not being said. Right now, I felt like throttling Robert with an apron because of his own inability.

'Sweetheart,' I said patiently, 'what I mean is that we both have our own rooms. Are we going to sleep together from now on? We can't very well sleep on the sofa all the time.'

He got that infuriating stupid grin on his face again. I threw my spoon at him, which missed him by a wide margin. Accurate aim has never been one of my fortes. He didn't even bother ducking.

'Robert, this is serious,' I said as I got up to fetch my spoon from underneath the cupboard. 'Because you know how edgy I get about you being in my room. And how edgy you get from me being in your room and rearranging things. We would have to...'

Another unbidden mental image presented itself. Robert had left his clothes all over the floor in my room. He had moved my things about. He had left shaving foam on the dressing table.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to speak. 'We would need to... compromise. Both you and I. Because really and truly, we still largely lead our separate lives.'

'Iris,' he said, 'you have a tendency to go bonkers if I stay in your room for more than 30 seconds. You've got the bigger room and the big bed, so it makes sense to make it our bedroom, but frankly I'm a bit afraid.'

'You're afraid? Of me?'

He didn't answer that. Some of the things he didn't say were 'Of course I'm not afraid of you' and 'I was only joking'. OK, point taken.

'Look,' I said, 'I know it's going to be difficult for me, but I will try. And I will manage. I'll deal with it, some way or another. Because it's worth it. You're worth it. I want to fall asleep and wake up with you next to me.'

'Fair enough,' he said. We could turn my room into a study and guest room.'

Indeed we could. For those guests who didn't care what was going on between my brother and me.

Robert kneeled in front of me and took my hands in his. He made the effort to look me in the eyes, and therefore so did I. For a few moments, we said nothing. We didn't need to. Non-verbal communication had always been elusive, but here, between Robert and me, we had it going.

Finally, he spoke. 'It's difficult for you, I know that. It's your room, your place, and I'll be intruding. I'll do my best to make it as easy on you as I can, OK? I'll try... I'll try not to be me.' He looked away as he said that.

'Oh Robert,' I said, pulling him up and hugging him tightly, because I didn't want him to see my eyes. 'Never say that again! I want you to be you and nobody else. Promise you'll never say it again. You have to promise it!'

He was silent for a while, as we caressed each other's hair. 'OK,' he said, his voice sounding hoarse. 'I promise I'll be me. No more hiding.'

We hugged, as little wet patches formed on our shoulders.

***

I'd asked Robert to give me a bit of time to arrange my room so that he could move in. Everything there had its own place. Everything was a memory. I'm very visually oriented, and the various items and trinkets each signified an event in my life. Often happy, quite a few times sad. Together, they formed a history of my life, a painting that only I understood. And now I had to tear it all down. It hit me then that my life, as I knew it, had ended. It was a scary thought.

What to take away? Here was my small collection of toys from Kinder eggs. We got them only occasionally, and I treasured those silly little toys. Especially since Robert had always given his toys to me.

And here, Mr Bear. He and Robert had been my only friends. Mr Bear looked the worse for wear these days, but he reminded me of an age that should have been one of innocence. For Robert and me, though, there had been many dark corners as well.

It was useless. I couldn't choose what to leave, and what to take away. I went back to Robert. 'I'm sorry,' I said, 'but I can't do it. These things, my things, they're all memories. I don't know what to do.'

'I've got an idea,' said Robert. 'I'll take photos from every corner and angle of your room. Then I'll turn it into a 3D image. So you can always go back to it any time you want on your computer. How about that?'

'Would you do that for me?' I asked, and hope must have sounded in my voice. I had felt like drowning, but Robert had appeared with a lifebuoy. A proper knight in shining... wetsuit.

He grinned at me. 'Anything for my big sister.'

In the end, Robert helped me put my things away. The most important, such as the Kinder toys and Mr Bear, had obviously remained. And I decided to focus on the positive memories. There was no point to wallowing in self-pity, or being stuck in the past. There had been plenty of happy moments as well, most of them with Robert. Either way, my old life was gone, and a new one was just beginning.

Robert was extremely considerate, which must have been a momentous effort for him. He let me choose from his room that would go into my room –no, our room– and where they would be placed. I chose, and placed, and moved, and moved again, until I had found a balance that felt just right.

It was difficult to explain. Without things in their proper place, it just felt wrong. Like you walk outside and you notice that the sky is green instead of blue. I was doing my own version of feng shui.

'It's ready,' I announced. 'It's exactly how it should be.' It made me feel better, more secure, like I actually had some sort of control over my life, which seemed like it was rapidly spinning out of control.

Robert, who was standing next to me, put his arm around my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek. It was a gentle, brotherly kind of kiss. I lifted my hand, and touched his, the one that was on my shoulder. He was still my brother. But he had become so much more than that, in a way people would only whisper about behind your back. I didn't care. Actually, that wasn't true: I cared a great deal. But I wouldn't let the taboo change anything.

It occurred to me that I hadn't bothered to ask Robert what he thought of it. It had to be our room now; we both should feel comfortable there.

'Are you... do you like it?' I asked.

'Love it, sis. It's perfect.'

Perfect. That would have to do for now.

***

While I finished up some final small things, Robert had returned to his old room, playing with his synthesisers. Our parents had insisted that we take music lessons, and for once fortune had gifted us with something, which was musical talent. I had a quite good soprano voice, while Robert was a tenor. He was also pretty good at playing the keys.

It made for interesting combinations. We could sing Au fond du temple saint from the Pearl Fishers, but an octave higher. We even did the Flower Duet from Lakmé, and pretended that Lakmé went out to pick flowers with her brother rather than her servant. After the events of yesterday and this morning, though, I wondered if Lakmé would get a good rodgering by her brother every now and again. Probably not, but then again, you never know.

Today, Robert was playing the silver synthesiser. He has a black one, a blue one, a red one and a silver one. He had also patiently explained –more than once– their names and the differences between them. It was useless. To me, they were black, blue, red and silver, but I let him explain every time, because I knew it made him happy.

He was browsing absentmindedly through the sounds, until he reached an organ sound. And he started playing the unmistakable notes of 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

Ah, Serge Gainsbourg. Enfant terrible of French popular music. The man had died a couple of years before we were born, but we knew his music through our parents. His work was full of double entendre, and while this was still the case with 'je t'aime', the song was also exquisitely explicit. 'I come and go between your loins' – it left absolutely nothing to the imagination, although one would need a solid understanding of French to catch all the little word plays, such as the more generic term of 'va-et-vient', which can mean different things in French, having to do with a back-and-forth movement. But the obvious meaning here was the back-and-forth movement of a man inside a woman.

Good old Serge. The first version of this song he had recorded with Brigitte Bardot, with whom he had an affair at the time. Bardot couldn't sing even half-decently if her life depended on it, but she didn't have to, being the quintessential 1960s sex kitten. That version hadn't been released until almost 20 years later. The version that everybody knows he recorded with Jane Birkin, with whom he had an affair at the time. Bit of a recurring theme there. Birkin could sing, but being English, her French accent wasn't exactly what you'd call 'comme il faut'.

Gainsborough had even written the winning entry of the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest, and while on the surface it appeared as yet another forgettable Eurovision song, it was probably one of the most intelligent. The man had been brilliant. A bit of a pig, but brilliant nonetheless.

I hugged Robert as he was playing. 'Je t'aime, je t'aime, oui, je t'aime,' I whispered to him. I love you, I love you, yes, I love you.

'Moi aussi,' he said.

The sweetheart. He changed the lyrics because he couldn't get himself to sing what would more or less translate as 'neither do I'. Instead, it became 'so do I'. I could kiss him for that. In fact, that's just what I did. 'Oh, mon amour,' I purred. Oh, my love.

We finished singing the song, all the while with me hugging him. No va-et-vient for now, though. I'd probably kill him, not to mention that it had left me feeling sore. In a good way.

I was getting seriously hooked on hugging, though. Touching Robert gave me a warm, fuzzy tingling where we touched. 'Does it feel the same for you?' I asked.

'Does what feel the same?'

'Hugging. Does it feel the same for you?' I nuzzled my face into his delicate neck.

'Sis,' he replied, 'how on earth would I know what it feels like for you? But I can tell you what it's like for me.'

'So tell me,' I said.

'Well, it's almost like electricity flowing. I have to make an effort not to pull back at first, but then it becomes a soft buzzing. Really soothing.'

I remained silent, because otherwise, I would cry again. Not of sorrow, but of happiness. But I wasn't sure that he would understand, and I didn't want to upset him. So I squeezed my eyes shut, and hugged him tightly, and let the electricity flow.

***

'Shall we?' Robert asked when I came home the next Friday. We both were out early that day, which left the afternoon free.

'Huh? What are you on about?' I asked.

'To get the cat from the rescue centre, of course,' he said.

Ah yes, the cat. I'd almost forgotten about it, but Robert certainly hadn't. Typically, it didn't occur to him that it wasn't immediately obvious to me what he meant.

'Um, yeah, OK, I suppose so,' I said. After all, it was the next step in us becoming a little family. The cornerstone of society, as they say. The first step we'd already taken, many times over in fact. We'd been at it like the proverbial rabbits, and if I got more testosterone dumped in me, I'd run the risk of growing facial hair. Well, figuratively speaking anyway.

'Good, let's go then,' he said. And he took me by the hand and dragged me out the door.

'Whoa, bro,' I said. 'Take it easy, those cats aren't going anywhere.'

'Sorry sis,' he apologised. 'I'm just so excited about it.'

'You don't say,' I remarked.

'Yeah, it's like more real, you know? It'll be you and I, and the cat. Our own family.'

He was really into it, my brother. I thought it was cute to get a pet, but he was practically obsessed by it, as if getting a cat was going to solve all our problems. In a sense, it was both endearing and a little sad.

The rescue centre was just a ten minute walk from where we lived, so we went on foot. We didn't even think about it that we held hands all the way. It had become second nature.