Klein, the Clone

“I’m Klein, the clone...”

we never thought much about it as other than a funny thing to say, a joke between brothers. We would then gravely shake hands and break into gales of laughter. That’s me, Stewart, and Marshall, my brother. My twin, identical twin, actually.

“Research shows that cloned mice develop obesity as adults.” I was thumbing through Scientific American. Marshall did not look away from the TV. My brother is big on pondering statements before delivering any snap judgments. Particularly when he was watching the Saturday morning cartoons. My news about fat mice rattled around behind his eyes like jellybeans in a gourd. He then repeated it.

“Cloned mice develop obesity as adults.” Marshall was not a reader. He had to hear things first. “Well, then, better die now and stay slim.” He made a face.

While we were at this time adults we had not as yet fattened up. But our bedroom was still a kids’ room, full of overstuffed kangaroos, lions, clowns and the Klein Boys, an unbroken rectangular box with us on the inside. The walls were decorated with three wide red, white and blue enamel stripes that started at the level of our chins. Attached to the back of our closet door, its knob painted to disappear within the blue stripe, was a full-length mirror. We would snick the door shut behind us and in the dark imagine the room left empty behind. One of us would then pull the light cord and there would be four of us. We waved and giggled at the kids in the mirror, pulling faces on them. We hooked our fingers at the sides of our mouths, pushing up our noses and seeing how funny they looked. It was nice to have visitors. As grownups we do not do this as often as we had when we were kids, though.

When we were little kids, when our grandmother was alive, we had another great twins joke.

It was my—our—grandmother’s fault, really. She started us—my brother Marshall and me—to thinking one of us might not be the real article. Lillian Musclewood was an immense presence: a diminutive woman, Lillian yowled, howled and kvetched her wonders to perform. Our Grandma’s house was pink. There was no grandfather. Ben Musclewood had died in harness at the counter of his deli on Smith Street in Brooklyn, twirling precision paper cones for take-out mustard from the big roll of Kraft paper next to the register. With the insurance payout, Lillian got the hell out of Brooklyn.

“Marshall! Stewart!” There’s grandma now. “What are you doing rooting around in my Birds of Paradise? Playing which kid’s got the papers?”

We didn’t have any papers. We were digging up the Birds of Paradise, however. They were a tough shrub with blade-like leaves, but Marshall and I had packed along the heavy artillery—two bright yellow Tonka riding dump trucks, one apiece—for the two weeks in Florida with our grandmother. Marshall and I were five years old and visiting Grandma Lillian at her cement block, glass-louvered house in the development our father called The Land of the Newly Wed and the Living Dead. Our Grandma's house was pink and lavender. Baseball was never played in the saw palmetto vacant lots where the pavement ended for there were no children in Boca Ciega. Apart from Marshall and me on those deadly vacation getaways.

“What papers, Grandma?” We thought she meant the big Sunday papers with their polychrome funnies.