The Resurrection of Joan Ashby. Cherise Wolas

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      Silas and Abe were left in a wicker basket at a firehouse, to the right of the red bay doors, found by the captain, who looked beneath the tattered blanket and discovered twins, nametags pinned to their onesies. A cooler bag was next to the basket, diapers on top, nursing bottles below. When the captain pulled out a bottle, it was full. All the bottles were full, each one labeled Fresh Breast Milk in fluorescent pink ink, and dated; the one in his hand dated that day.

      The captain carried the basket and bag into the house, and his husky men, who threw themselves into fires, cooed over the babies, made goo-goo faces and trilling sounds, changed them and fed them while he called Children’s Services.

      The woman from the authority arrived and said, “At least they’re infants. That’s the key. They’ll be placed in a heartbeat.”

      The captain said, “Please make sure they’re kept together. Hard enough start to life, without them having to go it alone. They’ll always be looking for each other, if you don’t do the right thing.”

      It wasn’t what the woman wanted; separating them would make her job easier, but the captain made her swear, and she, a failed mother herself, agreed.

      During the following years, as infants, toddlers, young boys, then teens, Silas and Abe moved across the Midwest, from Kansas to Iowa to Indiana, coming to rest in Illinois. Their various foster parents, four sets in total, all of good cheer, made sure the boys had plenty to eat, warm comforters on their beds, books to read and television to watch, basketball hoops for H-O-R-S-E, and the benefits of fine public-school educations. And they were good boys—both blond, sunny, and light—handsome boys popular at the schools they attended, and with the girls who sidled up. Sweet and shy girls liked them too, not just the fast ones whose hips molded early into sensuous curves, whose breasts jiggled inside red or black bras.

      For the past five years, Silas and Abe had lived in a three-story house in Chicago. Of all the houses they’d lived in, this one felt most like home. Their foster parents were an accountant and his piano-teacher wife. Short people from hardy stock, although the hardy stock was unclear because both wore thick glasses, were blind without them. The boys called them Frederick and Shirley, but when talking about their days at school, about their nightly and future dreams, sometimes their minds slipped, and to themselves, they replaced Frederick with Dad, Shirley with Mom. That was how close the twins felt to them.

      On their eighteenth birthday, they crashed down the stairs for Shirley’s annual birthday-king breakfast—pancakes, waffles, omelets, thirty strips of bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Bottles of boysenberry syrup and maple and a jar of Marshmallow Fluff on the dining-room table, along with an enormous sheet cake sprouting twin sets of eighteen candles. Streamers decorated the room, and from the ceiling, a homemade sign read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! YOUR FUTURE AWAITS!

      When the platters were emptied, the orange juice finished, the cake plates smeared in frosting, Shirley shooed them into the living room. Silas and Abe resisted. They had been raised well by all their fosters, to bring their manners with them wherever they were, to help out. “We’ll clean up,” the boys said, and Shirley shook her head. “Not necessary. We have a gift for each of you, the kind of gift that gives and gives.”

      Under the arch that led into the living room, they slipped off their shoes, Shirley’s rule: No shoes on the carpeting. But she surprised them. “Not necessary this time. Tie those tennis shoes back up right now. Keep ’em on, you’re going to need them. Now go and sit on the couch.”

      The boys retied their laces and tiptoed over the carpet, looking at each other sideways, acknowledging silently the freakishness of being allowed to do the forbidden. They sat on the couch, just inches apart, and in came Frederick and Shirley, both barefooted, each wrestling a large present in their arms. They placed the wrapped packages just beyond Silas and Abe’s tennis-shoed feet.

      Shirley sat down at the baby grand and played the birthday song. Frederick clapped his hands and sang along. Then Shirley twirled around on the bench and said, “Ready? All right, go! Rip those bows right off, tear through the paper. We’re not saving any of it this time.”

      The boys looked at each other again. What was meant by all these new instructions, the breaking of her inviolable rules? Shirley had a trunk in the basement filled with used wrapping paper, ironed precisely, and bows, second-, third-, and fourth-hand, that she kept in plastic bags.

      They shrugged and did as instructed.

      When the wrapping paper was off, standing before them were brand-new rolling suitcases, the fabric in army green. The suitcases were nice, but not what the twins had been hoping for, which was one of two things: to be adopted by the Jacksons or given a used car they could share.

      “Thank you very much,” they each said.

      “That’s just the first gift,” Frederick said.

      “Yes, like we said, this is a gift that will keep on giving,” Shirley said. “Go on, boys, unzip the suitcases.”

      Inside the bags, each found new T-shirts, socks, underpants, jeans, and pajamas, and at the bottom, underneath the everyday attire, the boys pulled out black suits, crisp white shirts flat in their store packaging, marked 13 ½-inch neck, one tie each, in the same design, Silas’s in red, Abe’s in blue. The boys were confused. Shirley СКАЧАТЬ