The tangle the paradox created in Finn’s head became a tangle in his feet, and about halfway up the ladder he slipped, proving motion is indeed possible and extremely painful as he hit the ground.
He laid there, stunned, the wind knocked from his chest, his eyes on the sky. It was unclear and the air felt wet and heavy as he struggled to pull oxygen into his deflated lungs. You couldn’t see stars in Southie. He wondered if you could see the stars in St. Louis, where his father was moving. The thought made him angry, the anger clearing the muddle from his head better than the fall from the ladder.
“Since when have you ever listened to anything Dad says, Fish? And you are going to fall,” Finn shouted, and struggled back up the ladder, wondering if he was already too late. He hadn’t heard anything.
Fish was sitting on one of the little gables above the two windows that overlooked the front yard. Finn made his way gingerly to the other, straddling it like he was taking a turn on the mechanical bull at O’Shaughnessy’s, and the roofline swam and bucked a little, making the comparison even more apt. The alcohol in his belly sloshed and rose in his throat, and Finn realized that the bull was going to throw him if he didn’t hold on. He lay against the shifting shingles and gripped the edge of the dormer weakly. But instead of getting tossed he did some tossing of his own, throwing up the contents of his stomach, watching as it waterfalled over the side of the roof and down onto the front walk. He was pretty sure he hadn’t made the eight second whistle.
“You throwing up already, Infinity?” Fish laughed. “For someone who soaks up so much shit, it’s amazing you can’t soak up a few shots.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Finn mumbled wishing he could take a shot at his brother, but knowing he probably should just hold still. Very still. “Why are we up here, Fish? You wanna die?”
“Nah. I wanna live. I wanna live!” Fish shouted into the fog, and laughed, raising his arms and throwing back his head, his balance seemingly unimpaired by the alcohol. Finn shut his eyes, wondering how in the hell he was going to get back down.
“You’re trying to kill me,” he groaned.
“Nobody said you had to follow me up, little brother.” Two hours separating their births officially made Finn the little brother.
“Of course I have to follow you. We’re a pair, remember?” Finn sighed, willing the world to settle so he could climb down.
“Are we really? Let me tell you the paradox of the pair o’ dicks, my young friend. If a pair of dicks can piss, screw, and stand up all by themselves, what’s the point of being a pair?”
Fish impersonated their father so perfectly, his tone of voice so thoughtful and serious that Finn couldn’t help but laugh, and he decided to play along.
“If you lose one, you have a spare.” Finn offered a solution to the ridiculous riddle.
“Ah, but that’s the paradox.” Fish stroked his chin just like their father did, as if he had a little goatee. “We’re a pair of dicks, but we’re nothing alike. So are we really a pair? And if you lost me, would you truly be my spare?” Fish shook his head in a very professorial manner, tsking like Finn wasn’t trying—something else their father did sometimes.
Then he answered his own question, but he abandoned the impersonation. “You are Infinity, and I am Infinity’s opposite.”
“Infinitesimal,” Finn said. “Infinitesimal is the twin of infinity.”
“Oh, that’s rich!” Fish replied. “Infinity means immeasurably large, and infinitesimal is immeasurably small—I know that much math.”
“Exactly,” Finn smiled, going in for the kill. “I mean, we are talking about our dicks, right?”
Finn smiled at the memory, the humor banishing the discomfort he’d felt at William’s uncanny question. Fish had laughed so hard he’d almost fallen off the roof, and they had ended up helping each other down the ladder in what could have been a disaster instead of a sweet memory. It was just one of many close calls leading up to the ultimate disaster six months later.
Finn looked at Bonnie and pondered Fish’s question—did Finn exist because he was a reflection of Fish? Or had Fish existed because he was a reflection of Finn? Maybe neither. Maybe both. One egg, two people. Maybe in the beginning they were one, but that day had long since passed. He didn’t dare pose the question to Bonnie. He wondered if she still thought she existed as a reflection of her sister.
William snorted in his sleep and another large, smelly foot found its way onto the console between them.
“He’s a little crazy, isn’t he?” Finn sighed, turning his attention to the problem at hand.
Bonnie shrugged. “I don’t know. What has he really said that’s so crazy? People like to throw words like crazy and emotionally unstable around when people are just . . . different. It’s a way to shut people up. It’s a way to control. Nothing scarier than someone who is bat shit. Nothing more intimidating than someone who is ‘mentally ill.’” Bonnie lifted her hands and made quotations in the air. “Slap that label on someone and it’s over, whether it’s true or not. Their freedoms and their credibility are gone forever—little notations on driver’s licenses, little files that follow them through life, closed doors, suspicious looks, ready medication. I say let William preach. He’s not hurting anyone.”
He’d touched a nerve. Bonnie was a little too vehement and ready in her argument, like she’d had it in her own mind a hundred times. He wondered again about her relationship with her grandmother, about the road that had ended on a bridge a little less than a week before. Bonnie wasn’t mentally ill. Bear had said it right. Her spirit had been broken. Maybe not entirely—she still had more light and personality in her little finger than Finn had in his whole, big body. But she had sustained some pretty serious fractures.