“Hey!” I screamed. “Help! Your door –”
Is crushing me!
I was going to die. I mean, I really was.
For my crime of stepping into my new next door neighbor’s garage…I was sentenced to death. Not kidding. I’m small, yeah, but no weakling. Their garage door had come loose. It was crushing my shoulder and threatening to cut me in half.
So young to die such an idiotic death, they’d say.
The door froze. The furious, insanely heavy door stopped.
Maybe they had a remote control after all, because I didn’t hear anyone approach.
But – surprise. A long-fingered hand gripping the edge of the door.
“It’s on a pulley,” the boy attached to the hand said.
He looked embarrassed. He even shook it back and forth to show it was under control.
“See?”
Ellis. There was an Ellis and an Ellen, and he was Ellis. My shoulder throbbed but, yeah, I was pretty seriously relieved. And now I was embarrassed. How easy it was not to get squashed, if you only knew the trick.
But…
“Why was your door set on kill?” I demanded. Gratitude could wait.
Ellen had finally appeared. I looked her way, hoping for some support.
I guess in a way I got it. Ellen – and Ellis – were now looking at me like it was Christmas morning and the tree was piled to the top.
“You must be Ronnie!” Ellis said, face lit up.
“Of course she is!” Ellen said. “And don’t call her Ronnie without permission.”
Yes, the more mature older twin spoke. But Ellen was just as excited as he was. More, maybe, because it was now confirmed that Ronnie was a girl.
Ellis let the door down easily. Before the pulley track decided to treat me like a trespasser, I got a little look inside. Hardly worth it. Just workout equipment, mostly weights, a medicine ball…professional quality mat. And, they installed a set of rings in the rafters.
Rings? Oh yeah, weightlifters used them for isometrics. And why not, if you weren’t going to use your garage for, say, cars.
And there they were. The Twins your age, as Ma had promised.
Two weeks ago. In Chicago. Six weeks into the semester.
Before I could stop myself, I gave them the half-second look the New Trier High School ninety percent good looking, rich, and superior kids give to the other ten percent. Wearing their special glasses and reading from a secret list, they see what you are. And they are never wrong.
Me, Erika Veronika Zeigler: short, generic brown, Mexican, Jewish, frizzy hair down to her butt. Special Ed. Theater Department weirdo.
Ellen and Ellis Foster?
Tall, both of them.
White and pale, even with Southern California sunshine.
Very dark hair. Ellen’s maddeningly straight. Hair maybe was cut with kitchen shears.
Ellis, handsome in a pretty way. Slim, well-muscled. Clothes absurd. Dork.
Ellen, no makeup, not even trying. Clothes really absurd. Dork.
But, wait. I don’t give people the look. But this is different, I said to myself. Something’s off. Even without what you’d call traditional smarts, I figure things out. I don’t miss much.
Okay, the clothes wereridiculous. Homemade. No one around here couldn’t afford decent clothes.
The arms.
And then the half second was up.
“Hi!” I said. “Yes, I am Ronnie. Definitely call me that.”
Their faces got brighter, if that was possible.
“Or even little troll. That sometimes works.”
“Don’t you dare, Ellis,” Ellen said primly.
Ellis had an I would never dare look on his face already.
Whatever was going to happen next was interrupted by a woman who, in an instant, I recognized as the mystery seamstress and the architect of the now-obvious social awkwardness infecting the Foster twins.
Their mother.
Nice German lady, according to Ma.
“Do not let me ever hear she got the rude girl treatment from you.”
Mrs. Foster was a very tall, uncommonly beautiful, and young woman, protected by a full-size kitchen apron and armed with more German sentimental enthusiasm than a chocolate commercial. She charged out the front door, a thick pony tail bobbing behind her and practically crushing me with a hug. My head squashed her boobs.
I don’t think she spoke any English. She spoke fast, her only-in-German phrases coming out almost like a single word:
“Ronnie it is so good to meet you we are going to be the best of friends now tell me truly did my children introduce themselves properly? Ellen Sara and Ellis Seth Foster did they remember their manners?”
At some point there was a pause, and Ellis jumped in.
“We were about to, Mami.”
That’s Mommyin German. Ellen rolled her eyes.
We took the tour of the Halloween yard signs that Ellen Sarah Foster and Ellis Seth Foster should have given me, if they had been polite. Then I saw a four-level back yard that must have been awesome when they were little kids.
“Look there is their swing set the children still use it.” Another one-word report that confirmed my thought that they were still little kids.
They blushed so easily and, I guessed, quite often during their mother’s narrations.
But apparently there was very much cooking to do for tonight and, with the swings promised for another time, we were deposited in the den. Big soft leather couch. Hilariously, Ellen deliberately cut Ellis off and sat in the middle, meaning he couldn’t sit next to me.
A faded photo of a stately older man, identified as Grandpa Schultz, kept watch over us while we played on a new Atari console.
“You let the girls have a turn,” Mrs. Foster said. She appeared noiselessly, carrying a hugetray of steaming hot home baked pretzels. Plus a gallon of lemonade, also amazingly fresh.
“She makes everything,” Ellen complained.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Nothing in the world was better than a freshly baked pretzel. Beat a bag of stale Rold Golds. For laughs, I was going to ask Ma to bake us some snacks.
But – Mrs. Foster poked her head in, holding onto a phone receiver with a remarkably long cord.
“Oh, there is great news! Portia says Ronnie can stay for dinner.”
The twins practically cheered. I almost laughed out loud. Ma would let me eat out of a dumpster if it wasn’t private property. But I was a good sport and cheered along.
“Portia,” I confirmed after Ellen asked. “Pa – my dad’s – name is Roman, if you can believe that.” Matched thirty years ago by German rabbis having a really off day. How it turned into “Ma and Pa,” no one, not even my brother Ben, had a clue.
The twins were talking about turning sixteen and arguing about their learner’s permits when I took a quick bathroom break. On my way back from the Gäste-WC, or “powder room” to the English-speaking world, I got a look at Mrs. Foster’s domestic domain.
Indeed, a very busy place. Like she was cooking for an army. And everything she had was in this military gray green. Stamped with something…oh. It was DGR. The not so long-gone East Germany. This stuff was here before the Wall fell a few years ago, but…who would lug kitchen stuff around?
And I know I saw that exact color, just recently.
Oh, yeah. It was almost one of my last sights on Earth.
The garage. Ellis’s weight lifting equipment.
His half of the garage, Ellen told me during our tour.
“He has the sweaty old gym stuff,” Ellen had explained. “But I have my lab.”
East German workout equipment and a “lab,” which I must have missed. Okay, just another totally improbable thing, like moving cross country and living right next door to not one, but two, kids my age who also speak German. I mean, the odds?
Ah. Hold on.
Ellis’s weights were in kilograms.
So, say, he was pressing, what, five hundred pounds? Few grown men are anywhere near that strong. And Ellis was big but not huge.
The arms.
They were a little off. Forearms, mainly, just a bit too big.
And Ellen, maybe that was why she wore long sleeves on an insanely hot October day.
Wasn’t sure I believed the pulley story now.
And if Ellen had a “lab,” I sure didn’t see any test tubes or anything like that.
I went back to the den, under Grandpa Schultz’s watchful eye. Ma gets a promotion that yanks us from Chicago to L.A. with, like, no warning. A very strong boy and a very smart girl.
Nothing to see here.
I gave Grandpa Schultz the fish eye. Even he looked wrong to me.
About two hours in, and we mostly just watched Ellis blow away enemies on the Atari. It was more fun watching him. All of a sudden he jumped up.
“Dad!” he announced. “And Manny!”
Ellen jumped up too. This had to be one of their biggest days ever. The much-awaited arrival of Ronnie, and now someone named Manny.
Oh, and Ellis heard them coming. Like he heard me scream for help.
Nothing to see.
“So you’re Ronnie,” Mr. Foster said. He was maybe twenty, maybe thirty years older than his bride, very obviously not the twins’ father. Had a huge sense of humor, you could tell. The kinda guy who could pull a coin out of your nose and actually make you laugh. (And…I kinda got the sense the two of them were the real deal as a couple.) “Welcome to Hollywood!”
I smiled and shook hands. Manny who looked to be literally a giant, but a nice one.
“Dad’s an Oscar winner,” Ellen gushed.
He called her Daddy’s Princess, he really did. Mrs. Foster was Mami, Ellen was a princess. And I wasn’t sure I could even say what Mrs. Foster called Ellis.
Schöner Junge. “Beautiful boy.”
I sat next to Manny. He was very cool. I’m Jewish, too, he said. That was nice. Otherwise Manny had the deep voice I expected but not like the kind that made you want to hide in a closet.
“Watch this,” Manny said. “So, are we taking Ronnie to Carnaval Midway for her birthday?”
The ruckus that ensured – yes, I was going with them to whatever Carnaval Midway was.
And so, again, the twins celebrated a victory. Now it was like Santa Claus himself delivered their driver’s licenses five months early. Yes, we were going to Carnaval Midway on Saturday. Yes, for Ronnie’s birthday. Yes, we’d stay past midnight. Yes, yes, yes.
I had no clue what they were talking about.