Beth’s dogs, Baron, are the same dog, in essence. He’s many cocker spaniels stitched together by time, by the faults of memory, and by my sister’s unbowing force of will. He’s been a constant in my life, and, though distant, a comforting one: no matter my own troubles, no matter the noiseless wave about to tumble me, there’s always a Baron at my sister’s heels; always a Baron for her to croon at from the other end of our phone calls; always a Baron to be let out, let inside. It’s a fact as sure as our mother’s drinking, as sure as Beth’s and my identicality.
When a Baron dies, my sister never tells us. The first time was unsettling—one summer I saw him stiff and graying around the maw, and by Christmas he was a puppy. She never mentioned the difference, as though she could fool all of us, including herself, into thinking that it was the same exact Baron we’d always known. And that’s how it’s been ever since, one Baron after the other. I don’t even know how many dogs my sister’s had, but I would guess at least five, and their unmarked succession always disturbs my conception of time. In one memory, my father is alive and Baron is twelve. In another, my father is dead and Baron is two. Baron has fluctuated in age, weight, complexion, and temperament, but in the end it is the same dog, the same beige shadow, the same wet nose under the table—even if it isn’t.
It’s clear to me, though, that this Baron will be the last of them. Beth calls to tell me that she’s going to put him down on Saturday. “Is that something you plan in advance?” I say. “I don’t know,” she says—as if it’s something she’s never done before—and asks if I will be there.
I arrive by train to Schenectady (“Schen-ect-ady,” sings the man as he scans my ticket); I ride past fields of wheat and bare trees and industry. My mom picks me up at the station because naturally Beth is in the middle of making arrangements.
I ask Mom why Beth is doing this memorial thing when she’s never done it before. Mom says it’s normal, she’s losing a piece of herself, she’s holding space. This has been my mother’s go-to phrase for years now—holding space—and I’ve long given up trying to point out that it doesn’t make sense. She says it for everything—if I’m sad, I just have to hold space; if something good happens, we just have to hold space—as though emptiness were something one could aspire to, hold in one’s hands, in the body. She parrots it, I know, from her yoga instructor, who always somehow appears at family gatherings, who will be saying a few words at the ceremony this afternoon, and isn’t that wonderful, isn’t that kind of him.
We trudge to a clearing just up the hill, about a ten-minute walk from the family house. A small crowd gathers—mostly neighbors who have nothing else to do, a dogsitter, a few friends from Beth’s work. My sister hangs back in the distance, Baron at her side. Like all of his predecessors, time has compressed him, grayed him—and unlike them, it seems, he will not be reborn. He appears stoic in the face of death, and I feel something move in my chest. It’s as though his death is the death of them all, and it’s as though he understands the responsibility of this.
The yoga instructor, a balding man with wrinkles around his eyes, says a few words about loss. My sister brings Baron forward, who looks out at us all. She hugs him, a vet gives him a shot, and we all shuffle with the brown grass as a long reign of Barons falls before our eyes.
I’m used to fielding the typical questions when people find out I’m a twin. Are we identical? Yes. Are we close? Not really, not anymore, no. Do people confuse us? I’ve made sure they can’t.
That last one usually elicits a few laughs, and I smile, and the conversation shifts. But it’s true: Once we surpassed the childhood years of matching outfits and family members who couldn’t tell us apart, I did all that I could to distinguish myself. Beth went to college here, and I went out to the West Coast. Beth gained weight in young adulthood, and I got skinnier. Beth cut her hair short, and I grew mine long; she got glasses, and I switched to contacts. I didn’t make any of these decisions consciously, I suppose, but in time I’ve come to realize that my instincts and vain attempts at control move me in this strange, polar-magnetic dance opposite my sister.
In our middle age, Beth has decided to let herself go gray; silver strands pepper her black hair. I, of course, have dyed mine. She’s talking to a small crowd back at our house after the memorial; we’re in the backyard by the old picnic table, a few lights glaring from the side of the house, and the hint of spring feels like a hot, rude cough in the face.
My mother is holed up in the corner with her yoga instructor, whose name is Peter. I know she’s drunk, though I’m probably the only one who notices. She’s good at hiding it, but I can always tell: her eyes soften, her body loosens, as though unhinging at the joints. She’s leaning against the side of the house, one hand on Peter’s shoulders. She drifts away for another drink.
“I was just telling your mother how special it is that you and Beth are twins,” he says to me when he catches my eye. He says it as though he’s accusing me of something, as though he’s resentful. “You’ve never been alone. Your whole existence. Not once.”
The crabapple trees are just shirking winter’s frost. The woods out back will be cold, slippery from thawing and recent sleet. It was around this time of year that Beth and I went skating once, foolishly thinking the lake was still frozen over. Falling through ice is like being born in reverse: the world goes silent, your body goes silent. When Beth pulled me out I was embarrassed and angry at her for saving me, and the lukewarm world hurt my blue skin.
Mom is saying something now to a few more onlookers. “My husband only had sisters,” she says gravely, as though this is a tragedy. “And we only had two daughters. The family name will die with them.” She turns to me. “You and Beth, dear. You’ll be the last of the Walshes. And then we’ll be gone.”
I don’t know if the illusion of life is better than life. My sister has gone to great lengths to will her dog into continued existence. When my father passed, they painted his lips and cheeks red to make him look less deceased. I don’t know if it’s a good thing that I enjoy the idea of fake life, fabricated life—that I find the makeup better than a blush, the shrinking dog better than the new one.
That spring and summer Beth is hardly in touch, and as I am never the one to initiate our phone calls, I let the months march on. I hear from her again in October, when she calls to say she’ll be staying with me that weekend, if that’s all right with me. She comes with two massive suitcases, but I’m starving when she arrives, so I don’t ask. We go out to her favorite Japanese restaurant on the corner.
“Are you doing anything for Halloween?” she asks, her short hair falling into her ramen.
“Do I ever?”
“Well, don’t you go out with friends?”
“What friends?”
This is not a joke, and we both know it, so neither of us laugh, not even politely. We continue to slurp at our soup.
“And work’s good?”
Actually, work has been a shit show. There’ve been rounds of unprecedented layoffs and department shrinkages and shuffling people around, and I am in a dreaded position of knowing there will be more. But I say, “Yeah, fine.”
Beth suggests we go to a pub next door, which she has never suggested before, and I assume she just means it as some sort of gesture toward middle adulthood because her mineral water pales next to my vodka tonic.
“Mom’s been weird lately,” she says. I can tell she’s worried.
“Mom’s mom.”
“I mean, different weird.”
I order another.
“So why did you kill Baron?”
“I didn’t kill him. He died.”
“But you didn’t replace him.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
I sip expectantly.
“I didn’t get another Baron because I’m going to move in with you. To your second bedroom.” I raise my eyebrows. “I’m serious. You need me.”
“Did you hear Mom say that we’re going to be the last Walshes? What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s just you and me.”
“Beth.”
“I mean it.” She’s speaking with a low intensity that startles me. I haven’t taken my sister seriously in decades. I’m paying attention. “Before, I was taking care of Baron,” she says. “And now I will take care of you.”
I laugh. She doesn’t. I pay the tab.
I make her bed in the guest room. She’s already unpacking all of her suitcases. I don’t say anything. I pour myself another drink after she goes to bed. For the first time in my life, I consider having children. People around me have been doing it for years—they multiply, replace themselves. Now I get it. They create something that will outlive them. Maybe that’s the whole point.
It’s too late, though. In the hallway mirror I see my gray roots, which I’ll need to get touched up soon. My hands look like Beth’s hands, which look like our mother’s. Why had I never gotten married? There were a few contenders over the years. Despite myself, I think of my mom saying “holding space.” Whatever I’d enjoyed of sex, it was that—the feeling of being filled up, swallowed up by another, larger body. Maybe marriage was that, could be that. Why had I not let that happen, let that kind of pleasure fill all of my unseen gaps? Why had I not thought of this sooner?
Beth’s door is slightly open and I peek inside. Seeing her asleep, I pretend I’m her mother checking up on her. I tuck the blanket around her, which is sort of like tucking a blanket around me. I take a hot shower and the water burns my skin. I see myself in the mirror and I’m angry because I’m the real thing, I’m all of it, pink and shivering and falsely lulled by this lukewarm world that will not heal.
