Suit (The Twin Duo #1)(62)

“We’re almost there. Hang on,” my mom said. Her head turned to me, sitting in the passenger seat. Her smile was instantly contagious. I knew what came next before she ever did it. The first couple of beats coming from the speakers was a dead giveaway. She smiled, beaming with joy when the song came on the radio. Free bird. Her song. She sang to the top of her lungs as she drove us right into downtown Chicago.

I hadn’t even realized our surroundings had changed until Izzy tapped me on the shoulder. I climbed over the seats and sat with her, elbows locked, looking straight up. The buildings were tall enough to touch the sky.

“What are we doing here?” Izzy yelled over Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“Why does it smell like that?” I questioned. My scrunched nose looked to Izzy’s crinkled face.

“That, my Clydes, is city air,” she explained. My mom went into great detail about how important it was to take care of the earth. “You know how I am always telling you to take care of your temple? Your body? Our planet should be the same way. People don’t respect their bodies, or their dwellings. It’s the nature of a human to want more, have more, do more. You just can’t get caught up in that, girls. You hear me?”

She was always preaching stuff like that. We may not have understood it at the age of eleven, but we were no doubt used to it.

“It doesn’t matter what the neighbor has. Let him have it. That’s not what life is supposed to be girls. That’s not your purpose here. You don’t need stuff.”

“I like stuff. I’m going to marry a man and have two kids. Twins like me and Izzy so they have someone to play with. My car is going to be a white one with two backseats. And my house is going to have a swimming pool and a swing set and a sandbox,” I rattled on while we drove through the city, mirrored windows and skyscrapers everywhere.

“I’m going to drive a blimp,” Izzy put it simply.

I could see the sadness in my mom’s eyes when she looked at me. I couldn’t help it. I did want a house with a yard and pool. No way was I going to grow up and live in a thousand places. Maybe I would live in California or Oklahoma. We stayed at a ladies house there once on a horse farm. Izzy and I wanted to stay there, but my mom wouldn’t let us.

“That’s why people eat animals, ya know. If people would have been happy with what they had, animals wouldn’t have to die. It’s a cruel pleasure. One that you don’t want, Clydes,” she assured us with great intent. “The world would be a better place if everyone could stop wanting more. God gave us what we needed and our egos wanted more. You don’t need stuff to be happy. You remember that. You hear me, Clydes?” She didn’t acknowledge us through the mirror, so neither of us answered.

“Where’re we going?” Izzy asked at precisely the same moment I said it. We did that a lot. Saying things at the same time, or finishing each other’s sentences.

“Remember a few months back when we met Brice? The guy with the big dog?”

“Yes, his name was Pluto,” I said as I remembered the dog. His head came all the way to my chin. I liked Brice. His tent was close to ours when we stayed on the beach.

The car got quiet once my mother started to concentrate on the directions scribbled on a McDonald’s bag. Izzy and I felt out our surroundings with a knowing look toward each other. She didn’t feel right either. I read it in her face.

We parked on the street in the middle of a slum neighborhood and walked up four stories. The elevator was broke. We both complained after the first flight.

The feelings Izzy and I shared in the car continued throughout the evening. We mostly watched Nickelodeon on a musty stench mattress thrown in the corner of the room. My mom, along with Brice and two other guys, smoked weed and drank out of the same bottle of booze. We got one piece of pizza each before we went to bed, on the dirty mattress. My mom kissed us both goodnight, promising to move on first thing in the morning.

She knew we weren’t in a good place, and she felt guilty for putting us there, but she still did it. Every single time. If there were men, drugs, and alcohol she was there. Especially if they were free. Not that they were ever really free, not even that night.

Izzy and I never talked about it, but we knew what went on in the next room. We knew our mother didn’t go into a room with three guys to sleep. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.

“I hate it when she does that,” I whispered to Izzy while we pretended to be asleep. Brice flipped a needle in the air while my mom held out her arm. Instantly, her head fell back and she sucked in a deep breath.

“Fuck, yeah,” she called out.

“It’s okay, Gabby. We’ll leave in the morning. She said so. She promised.” Izzy held my hand and I held hers, never taking my eyes off my mom. Ten minutes later, and all three guys were touching her. She let them. She even kissed them on the lips with opened mouths and all.

One of the guys put his hands inside her pants and she moaned, but only for a second. She made him stop long enough to take them to the bedroom. Away from Izzy and me.

I closed my eyes and tried not to hear the noises. Try not to focus on what I knew went on behind the closed door. What Izzy knew. This wasn’t our first go-around, but it would be our last.

One of the guys started yelling and we knew it was at our mom.

“What the fuck are you doing? Get in here!”