One and the Same (29 page)

Harris, a sixty-eight-year-old grandmother of four and former writer of textbooks about developmental psychology, in effect upended Freudian orthodoxy when, without an advanced degree or academic title, she immersed herself in virtually every child development study and concluded that there is zero scientific evidence that parents are our authors, role models, or puppeteers. Journalist Malcolm Gladwell deftly conveyed the shock of Harris's findings when he wrote about her in
The New Yorker
in 1998:

“The child's parents and siblings (along with his genes) influence the way the child behaves at home,” Harris tells me in an e-mail. “Other people—especially peers—influence the way the child behaves outside the home.”

Reading Harris's conclusions felt like cracking the case for me personally. When I think about what marked the fork in the road for me and Robin, why she's reserved and I'm gushy, why she cares less about being liked and I care way too much, it rings uncannily true that our peer groups—friends who are, for the most part, long gone from our lives—made all the difference. Surely I can credit those merciless years of seventh and eighth grade—when my life was like an after-school special, when I was rarely at the center of the action and had one precious friend who was unapologetically uncool—for making me seek too much approval from the “in” crowd, even now.

And Robin was almost certainly imprinted by those years when she entered a new school late (tenth grade) and had to break into established cliques, warm up to students who simply weren't as warm, find a niche despite the fact that her interests didn't match the majority's.

Mom recalls the changes in both of us: “You were full of self-doubt,” she tells me, “and easily deflated.” And about Robin, she says, “She used to be much more of an open book, more vulnerable and expressive, but she eventually got defended and distrustful. Along the way, somehow she learned that she couldn't just be herself and thrive in that school.”

I ask Ms. Harris for her take on my own situation: “I think all the things you described for you and Robin—different sorts of groups, and different experiences within these groups—played a role in widening the differences between you.”

And the differences led us here, to where we both have some sense of deficit: I want more of us; she needs more of herself. The peer theory might indeed explain the outcome—why I, who handled my adolescent disquiet by connecting with others, should feel so betrayed
when Robin disconnects; and why Robin, who withdrew from others in acquired distrust, now challenges herself to “claim” new relationships, while pulling away from her oldest friend.

Twins with the same DNA can have different fates. But sometimes DNA encodes a common heartbreak.

Identical twins Charlie and Tim Lord assumed that The Big Coincidence in their twinship would be that they had fallen in love with—and married—two college roommates who were best friends. They could never have guessed that they would also share in common a devastating event: Within six months, each lost a baby.

It's the fall of 2006 and Charlie and Tim Lord are sitting in my living room in New York, looking handsome and disconcertingly duplicate. Lanky and sandy-haired, they're sipping glasses of diet Coke. Tim lives just blocks away from me on the Upper West Side, with his wife, Alison, and their two grade school–age daughters, Annie and Mary. Charlie is visiting from Boston, where he lives with his wife, Blyth, and their two daughters, Taylor and Eliza.

As we start talking, I make my first mistake, asking Tim if he had any misgivings about attending the same college as his twin brother. “I didn't,” he replies, correcting me. “I went to Brown.” Oh, right. Twenty years after college, I'm still convinced that Tim was also in my Yale class, when, in fact, only Charlie was. Probably it's because Tim visited so often.

I do remember thinking the Lord boys were interchangeably winning in those days: Rangy and smart, with a kind of poetic aspect, they exuded a kind of authenticity and kindness. But the truth is, I never got to know them all that well, as my early fumble clearly shows.

The Lords grew up in various countries because their father opened pharmaceutical plants for Squibb, then switched to being a school headmaster, first in Ohio, then in Baltimore, then in Washington. Their mother, a teacher specializing in art history, taught at Washington's Sidwell Friends School.

“One of my first memories at age four is of being just walloped in the playground when we were living in Guatemala City,” Tim recalls.

“I was trying to get to you and they were holding me down,” Charlie adds.

“The two of us tried to protect each other,” Tim continues. “There was this intense realization even then that it doesn't really matter what all else is going on, because the two of us are a team.”

The Lord boys were never dressed alike, but Charlie often wore brown so friends and relatives could tell them apart by remembering the comic-strip character Charlie Brown. Tim wore blue.

The Lords say they can't distinguish themselves in childhood pictures. “I actually pretend I can,” Tim admits. “Like when I'm with my daughter, I'll make something up, just because it's too weird not to know yourself in a picture.”

The Lord parents didn't do cutesy, twinny things with the boys, but Tim admits, “They did some stuff that was a little icky.”

Like what?

“We had to perform a song together at one of their cocktail parties.” He remembers the lyrics: “‘Everybody knows I look just like my brother, but I just want to be me.' It was a rewrite of something.”

They shared the same room, same birthday party. Charlie says sometimes they had to share a present.

“I don't remember that; really?” Tim is incredulous.

Charlie nods. “There was only one plastic Tarzan knife with a sheath and we had to take turns.”

Tim recalls fighting over clothes. Both agree that they were not fashionable youngsters.

“We were not well dressed,” says Charlie.

“We were not well groomed.” Tim laughs.

I ask them about their earliest awareness of being twins.

“I do remember actually realizing that not everybody had one,” Charlie says, “but then feeling sorry for the people that didn't. I had a realization when I was probably six or seven that not everybody had this person whom they were
this
close to and whom they played with all the time.”

“And later, I just remember that distinct feeling of ‘I'm at my most relaxed and happy when the two of us are together,'” says Tim.

“I don't have a memory that doesn't include you,” Charlie interjects.

They will do this a lot—step on each other's sentences—but neither seems to mind. In fact, they seem used to relying on one another's memories to tell a complete story.

“It's very interesting, as you get older,” Tim continues. “Because you absolutely love that you have this great closeness, but sometimes it's almost scary.” He turns to look at Charlie. “Sometimes it's one of those weird things when you don't let people see that, because it's almost too much for people to understand.”

What exactly does he hide?

“How totally close you are,” Tim answers. “You do reveal it when it's just the two of you. But when you're out and about, you don't necessarily share it.”

I remember that impulse: to downplay our connection in public, so that people didn't feel there was some impermeable fence around us. I know some friends still felt there was no getting close to our closeness.

“I don't remember anyone being frustrated by our friendship,” Charlie says, “but I do know that my closest friends in the world recognize that my relationship with Tim is in a totally different category.”

I ask how they each deal with being mistaken. Robin has a much lower tolerance than I do. “I went through a phase where I really couldn't be bothered with people who mixed us up.” Tim laughs almost apologetically. “I'd just say, ‘I'm not Charlie,' and walk away.”

Charlie, on the other hand, was never irked by being confused; he says he knows a mile away when it's about to happen. “I know the Look,” he says. “And if I see the Look—the perplexed look—I always go up and say, ‘You must think I'm my twin brother.' But there's plenty of times when I don't see the person noticing, and people have later said, ‘Why didn't you say hi to me?'”

“I had one incident recently,” Tim chimes in, “where a woman came flying down a subway car, and I said to the two guys I was talking to, ‘You're about to see a Twin Moment.' They said, ‘What's that?' And I said, ‘Just watch.' The woman threw her arms around me. So now, she was going to be embarrassed not only about the fact that she got the wrong twin but that she'd given me this big hug. I said, ‘I'm not actually Charlie; I'm his twin brother.' People's faces just rearrange. Because there's a reality shift.”

I tell them that it can be particularly awkward for me when an acquaintance at a cocktail party compliments me on my writing in the
New York Times
, where Robin is a reporter. It's not that I can't accept the praise on her behalf; it's that the person usually looks stricken when I explain that the
Times
writer is my twin, and tries to recover by quickly offering me a similar compliment. Except that they don't necessarily know what I do. And if they have to ask, it makes them feel even worse when I tell them I'm a writer, too. They clearly think they've hurt my feelings because they don't know what I've written. So then they
ask
me what I've written, and suddenly I'm in the pathetic position of having to recite my résumé so that they feel better about having made me feel bad, which they truly haven't. If they only knew how many times I've endured this particular moment; it's fleeting but strained every time. So nine times out of ten, when someone compliments the
Times
articles I haven't written, I just say, “Thank you so much,” and head for the bar.