One and the Same Read Online Free

when she “arrives.” The truth is: I don’t want to admit that my twin isn’t coming. That would be an admission that I’ve arrived under false pretenses. I came to report on twins, but I alsobelong here because I am one. If Robin isn’t beside me, I might be an imposter.
    But Robin isn’t here, because I didn’t invite her. I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Come see other twins with me.” She’s never been innately curious about other pairs simply because we happen to
be
twins, and until recently, neither have I. Growing up, we never sought out twin friends. When you’re a twin, who needs more twins?
    We’ve never been passionate about our twinship for its own sake. We’re passionate about
each other
. I know we both feel lucky to be twins together, but that hasn’t made us seek out other twosomes, or twin events.
    So I came to Twinsburg on my own. But I didn’t expect to feel so unmoored without Robin.
    At the welcome desk, I notice two elderly men with exactly the same overgrown eyebrows, dressed in matching blue-striped shorts, blue-striped shirts, and newly purchased sneakers, which they later tell me were a fifteen-dollar bargain at Kmart.
    â€œThis is our twenty-third year!” one of them boasts to the woman at the check-in.
    When they’ve received their registration packets and stepped away from the table, I approach the stooped duo and ask their age. “Seventy and three-quarters!” says one, who introduces himself as David. “Walter’s older by eight minutes.”
    David and Walter Oliver still live together—in the same house they grew up in, in Lincoln Park, Michigan. David is clearly the talker. “Walter was too small and they had to keep him in the hospital for three weeks.” He seems gleeful about this.
    â€œI was under five pounds,” Walter adds morosely.
    â€œWe both have keratoconus in the left eye,” David reports. “We’ve both got neuropathy in our feet.”
    â€œAnd we both have diabetes,” Walter pipes up.
    And they always dress alike?
    â€œWe wear the same clothes every time we go to a twins gathering,” David explains. “It’s sort of an unwritten thing that all twins do.”
    The Olivers are suddenly joined by Janet and Joyce, seventy-six, in matching blue tops, who also hail from Michigan.
    â€œWe met Joyce and Janet at the International Twins Convention in Toronto, Canada,” David explains. “Nineteen eighty-two.”
    Janet and Joyce, who have different last names by marriage, are distinguishable only because Joyce seems more frail.
    â€œI’m the young one,” announces Janet, who wears her white hair cropped exactly like her sister’s. “We’re five minutes apart. She’s older. I’m married fifty-five years. She’s divorced.”
    Joyce pipes in: “When you’re that close to your twin, you have to make sure that the husbands are into the twin thing. Otherwise, the marriages will not work.”
    They went to their first twins convention in 1946 in Muncie, Indiana, and they’ve been coming to Twinsburg for decades. When I admit it’s my first time, they tell me what to look forward to, including the research tents in which twins sign up for studies comparing twins’ teeth, skin, sense of taste, and hearing.
    Janet: “Last year, one of the tents offered us twenty dollars to smell things.”
    Joyce: “It took too long.”
    I ask these four elderly twins why they keep coming back.
    â€œIT’S FASCINATING TO MEET TWINS!” David almost shouts. “And we’ve been trying to find females for the last fifty years.”
    So they’ve never been married?
    â€œNever.” David shakes his head. The smile vanishes.
    I ask if they think they never married
because
they are twins; maybe their unique intimacy prevented other kinds.
    â€œNo,” David says,