Heather makes contact

I  wrote this story nine years ago!  I have just massively edited it.  Rick, the one-legged surgeon with whom Georgia is smitten and who she met in an earlier story at yoga, is now firmly in the picture.  There are some problems though that are revealed here.  I kind of painted myself into a corner with his cult involvement so I scaled it back/dropped it in later stories.  All kinds of wrong I realize.  In this piece, Georgia's previously unknown twin, Heather O'Thomas, makes contact.

Georgia has been reeling for days.  Her head, her stomach, her intestines, all reeling.  Her heart has been hitting new speeds and her hyper-flexible right shoulder is doing more popping than usual.

“I’m just reeling from this news,” she tells herself again and again as she lies in her bed, the Walmart sheets and duvet pulled up to her shoulders.

The news is Rick’s revelation of belonging to an organization devoted to saving the world from its impending doom.  These words are verbatim what the organization’s mission statement said.

“Oh,” Georgia had said as he sat in her basement suite telling her the news.  “You have a mission statement.”

Turned out the group had not only a mission statement but a confidential newsletter, bi-weekly internet conferences and code names.

“Oh,” she’d said.  “Oh, well, what is your code name, Rick?”

“Georgia, I can’t tell you that as of yet.  But I will.  It will come, I’m certain.”

He may not have been able to tell her about the name but he had no trouble explaining the celibacy promise he’d made to his mother almost twenty years ago.

“To have this work, Georgia, to really, really focus in, we all need to be celibate.  It’s similar say to a Catholic priest, I think that’s a good example.”

Georgia wondered how that could be a good example, considering that in her opinion and in the opinion of many a school-aged boy, Catholic priests weren’t, well, celibate.

“But, Rick,” she said. “You were married for four years.”

“Yes and Georgia, that was difficult.  We were both celibate for the first six weeks.  We’d sleep in the same bed and such but we were committed, so committed to the project.”

“So you had four years minus six weeks of sex?  You said you were only celibate for six weeks” she blurted out, confused.

“Well, yes, that’s true and because of that, I believe our work stalled.  My mother, the other people in the organization, they tried to talk sense into us, but-“

“But you stayed with the group?”  Georgia was floundering. She felt like a lobster being thrown into a pot of boiling water or even more apt, a frog put into cold water that was slowly heating up. 

“I feel a bit like a frog,” she said, “Ribbit.”

“Pardon?”

“Sorry, nothing I’m just – “

“Okay, well, yes, I was allowed to stay with the group.  After my wife and I split up – she wouldn’t agree to go back to the old way – she said she couldn’t do it.  She’s apparently living somewhere off the coast of Maine.” 

“Oh,” said Georgia. 

“And your mother?” Georgia asked.

“Well, as you know, my father is in a nursing home in the final stages of Alzheimer’s.  He’s been sick for years and years.  He didn’t, he didn’t really buy into the ideals of the organization which is ironic since he was the one who got us all into it way back when.

“My mother – certain people are exempt from the celibacy rule.  As her only child, as long as I subscribe to it, she doesn’t have to.”

Georgia was intrigued and repulsed by how convoluted this was becoming.  The sentence at the front of her brain was short and simple, “This man is insane.”

 She kept trying to erase the idea or at least push it to one of her mind’s back burners.  She was 61 years old.  Her knees hurt, she had arthritis in her shoulders from the hyper-flexibility, she was thirty pounds overweight, she liked to take industrial toilet paper rolls from her workplace home in order to save money, she had no savings and didn’t expect to be able to ever have any based on her salary as an ESL teacher, and she was not attracted to men over 50. 

Before Rick, her last relationship with a man had been a series of early night booty calls with a German physic student with a delightful love of older women.  That was ten years ago. They’d had no emotional or intellectual connection however.    It had been over twenty-five years since Georgia had connected with a man on more than a primal level.  There were far more single women than men in Vancouver and she knew she wasn’t the pick of any litter.  She’d trolled Craigslist personals often enough to realize that most unattached men in Vancouver were gay or simply wanted a woman who would tie him up and call him a bad boy.  She wasn’t going to do that again.  She’d begun to think about Tinder but had so far resisted signing up and swiping.

And Rick, as crazy as he may be, was intelligent, left-wing, well-travelled, kind, a doctor, a condon owner, cooked well, was an excellent listener and he liked her.  He liked what she had to say and how she had to say it.  He liked to buy her those foot-long Subway subs she enjoyed.  He liked to make tea.

“I cannot just bid this man adieu,” Georgia tells herself as she flops face down on the bed, her face buried in a pillow.

“Oy,” she says when the phone rings.  She doesn’t have call display but keeps meaning to pay the extra $20 a month just to avoid having to talk to her roommate’s mother. 

She is expecting a call from her sub.  She hates to miss work but having had a headache for three days, she has decided to take one of her four paid sick days a year and stay home tomorrow.

“Hello?”  Georgia turns and lies on her back.

“Hello, I’m looking for Georgia Gatsby?”

“Okay, yeah,” says Georgia, instantly sceptical.

“So this is Georgia Gatsby?”
“Yes, yes, I said yes. Yes.”  A tele-marketer, she thinks.

“Were you born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1947?”

Georgia sits up quickly and sees stars.

“Who is this?”  She feels her heart move erratically.  Rick, she thinks.  The organization.  Horse heads in beds flick through her mind.

“January 22^nd, yes?”

“Look, who are you?  I don’t know anything, I’ll tell you right now.  All I know is the mission statement and I don’t even really remember that.”

“No, um, no.  Don’t know what you are talking about.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Sorry?”
“What . . .”

“Look, I’m going to hang up here.’

“No, no.  Georgia.  Georgia wait please.  I just needed to make sure but, here’s the thing.”

“The thing.”

“The thing,” The woman sighs and Georgia finds herself calming down.  Just a crackpot maybe, she decides.  A crackpot who knows my birthday.

“Look, Georgia, my name is Heather O’Thomas and – “

“O’Thomas?”

“Yes – “

“O-Thomas, like Irish?”

“Well, yes my parents – well, adopted parents, were Irish.”

“Your adopted parents?  Look, I’ve never had a kid if that is who you are looking for.”  “Oh, no no.  Georgia, I’m 60 years old.”

“Well, yeah, so am I, yeah.  So.”

“We were born together.  60 years ago, in Charlottesville, at Mercy Grace General Hospital.”

“What?  Well, yeah, lots of kids were born on that day there I’m sure.  Is this about a reunion?  Cause I can’t really afford to go to anything right now but thanks anyway.”

“No, no, wait,” says Heather O’Thomas.  “I’m sorry, Georgia, this is taking me far too long to say this, I’m just so nervous I must admit.  Georgia, sixty years ago your parents had twins, I mean I doubt they ever told you that you were a twin.”

“Well, what, yeah, well, look, they did indeed.  My twin died when she was six days old.  Her lungs were underdeveloped and in those days. “Could this woman remember her twin?  Maybe she was in the incubator or incubator area with her?

“Were you incubated too?”

“What no.  Georgia, I am your twin.”

‘What the heck?”

Georgia, out of habit of hanging up on difficult or strange phone calls, presses the end button.  She lies back down, thinking what.  What what what.  The whats get louder until they seem to burst, leaving her more confused and the reeling begins anew.  Her life has become conspiracy theories, celibacy promises and bizarre phone calls. 

“Fuck,” she thinks and dials star sixty nine

It is a Virginia phone number.

A minute later, the operator is asking Heather O’Thomas if she will take a collect call. 

“You startled me,” says Georgia.  “I don’t usually hang up.”

“No problem, Georgia.  I know it’s shocking really. And, look, I have the papers, all of the legal stuff.  In 1947, Jack and Henriette Gadsby had twin daughters.  Fraternal.  One was born with a heart murmur and 60 years ago, well, your parents didn’t know what that would mean and their doctor was not helpful at all.  So they, they gave me up for adoption.  I stayed in at the Sisters of Blessed Holy Mercy for two years until the O’Thomas’ adopted me. They were older and couldn’t have kids of their own.”

“Look, how would you, I mean, why now would you?”

“I don’t know.  I’d avoided this for so long – fearful of what I would find out. But I don’t know I am getting older and I didn’t want to never have done this.  So here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“Here we are.”

“Look I don’t mean to doubt you but this is so so out of the blue. Do you have any evidence, any proof?”

“Yes for sure.  I can e-mail you it if you give me your e-mail.  It’s all there.  Well, as much information as I could get but it’s enough.”

“Okay, okay.  Have you contacted my mother?”

“No, no.  I figured she would be very old now and I didn’t want to scare her.” So the

“Okay,” says Georgia, “E-mail me what you have.”

Georgia and her sister at the pool

Out of order again!  I think I wrote this one about five years ago but just cleaned it up now.  In this story, Georgia's twin sister, Heather O'Thomas, has come to stay with Georgia.  Let us remember that Georgia hadn't known about Heather's existence until Heather contacted her awhile back.  Georgia had always been told that her twin sister had died.  Heather lives in Virginia (where Georgia is also from) and has shown up on Georgia's doorstep in Vancouver, Canada.  She says she is only visiting but shows no sign of leaving.  This story takes place before Georgia's mom, Henriette, shows up.  I believe that David, the gay ex-Mormon midwife, is her roommate as well in this one although he plays no part in this story.
Rick plays a large part.  Rick is a one-legged surgeon that Georgia met at yoga.  He has some involvement in an odd and disturbing cult so that is mentioned here.  I pretty much drop the cult angle in later stories.  I like swimming so there is swimming in this story.

Georgia is not at all sure about this.

“I’m unsure about this,” she says to a co-worker.  Rita is photocopying and Georgia is standing beside her, discussing her upcoming swimming situation.  She has just explained that Rick, her non-boyfriend boyfriend and Heather O’Thomas, her newly discovered twin sister, want to go swimming.  Heather has been visiting Georgia for five days and in six and a half days will be returning to her family in Virginia.  Georgia had been vaguely stunned that Heather could leave her children for so long, even though most of the eight are grown with families of their own.

“My husband has it all under control.  Really, it’s only Sarah Lee who needs some looking after and my son Bobby and his wife Pam are popping over a lot.”  Heather told her this on the second day.  On the third day, Georgia decided to tell her about Rick.  Despite all of Georgia’s concerns, there was no denying it, she was completely in love with him.  The way he did yoga, the way he smiled and talked, even the way he walked on his natural and prosthetic legs. 

Still she’d been uncertain about telling Heather, worried that she would have to get into Rick’s cultish (some might say, Georgia wasn’t completely decided on that term yet) involvement.  But Heather spoke so proudly of her one-legged husband that Georgia found herself extolling the many virtues of Rick.

“They’ve lost different legs,” she points out to Rita, her voice raised over the drone of the copier.

“But it seems they both love swimming and so does Heather, even though she’s large.”  At this Rita looks at Georgia and Georgia realizes that her co-worker is heavier than Heather. 

“I mean, whatever, whatever floats your boat.  Sports are good.  Indeed good.”  Georgia sways a bit, almost as if a slight wind were blowing.

“I mean I’m sure she floats just fine.  Just fine.  And Rick, he doesn’t use a prosthetic in the water.  It’s quite remarkable to watch.  And he’s pretty fast too.  I must admit the first time I saw him swimming, I thought he might just flop around or go in circles.  But no, no, no.  He swims pretty darn straight.  I thought his, well, stump might get infected but no, no, no, it’s all closed over so it’s fine.  It’s not like a gaping hole.”  Georgia takes a small breath.  “Anyway, both Rick and Heather think swimming is a great way to meet.  We’re gonna swim a few laps, then sit in the hot tub.  I sometimes get a heat rash in the hot tub but not always.  But the more I scratch, the more it itches, you know what I mean?”

“I once got a bladder infection from a public swimming pool,” says Rita, “People urinate in there all of the time.  I don’t go swimming and I don’t allow my children to.”

“Oh,” said Georgia, “oh.”

That evening, Georgia and Heather walk the two blocks to Britannia Community Centre where they are to meet Rick.  .  Rick has seen Georgia in her swimsuit once before, when they went to New Brighton outdoor pool in the summer.  Since then, Georgia hasn’t joined him again.

She liked swimming well enough and did a fairly decent front crawl.  But after the concussion she sustained at the pool after hitting the wall and the few pounds she’d gained eating some of her roommates offered lemon meringue pies and date squares, she’d begged off.

But she admits to herself that the chance to show her body in comparison to her sister’s appealed to her; she would look downright slim in comparison.  Also, the opportunity for cultish (for lack of a better word) talk would be limited, what with the back and forth laps and the public hot tub.  Rick has asked her to be discreet about his involvement in the organization and she doesn’t believe he would blab it out, but Heather does have an interesting disarming nature that causes Georgia to share things she normally wouldn’t have.  Two nights ago she’d told her about her long ago meeting with Robert Kennedy, something she rarely talked about.

“Wow,” Heather had said, “That is quite remarkable.”  Georgia hadn’t sensed any judgement, so she’d gone on to tell her about her stint as a Squeeze the Charmin lady at Walmart four years ago, something she was more than a bit ashamed of.

“How fun for you,” Heather had said. “But hard too I bet with all of your education.”  Georgia had felt somehow heard in that conversation in a way she hadn’t in a while, even with Rick.  Having Heather around was not the hardship she’d so feared, although the two of them plus her roommate were quite squished in the basement suite.

“Oh, Georgia, I had four children under five years old in a three bedroom apartment for a long time.  This is no problem

 “It’s so great that you brought your bathing suit,” Georgia says to Heather.

“I find swimming so so relaxing, I bring my bathing suit no matter where I’m going.  I used to swim practically until the moment my babies popped out.”

“Oh my,” says Georgia.  “Well that’s good but I hear that people do sometimes urinate in the pool but I guess with all of the chlorine it, uh, it cleans it out.”

“Oh, I don’t worry too much about that.  I’ve certainly had all manner of bodily fluids on me.”

“Oh,” says Georgia.

“Oh yeah, poo, pee, spit up, you name it.”

“Oh, oh, right of course, of course.”  They are at the pool now and walking into the lobby. 

“Georgia,” says Rick, walking toward them.

“Oh, hi, Rick,” Georgia says, reddening as he approaches.

“Rick this is my, uh, my uh, my sister, Heather O’Thomas.  Heather, this is Rick.”

They shake hands. 

“So nice to meet you,” says Rick.

“And you,” says Heather, smiling but not reddening, Georgia notices.

“I have a pass here,” says Rick. “But let me get this for you guys.  He goes to the cashier and pays for two drop-ins.

“Well, thank you, Rick, that’s very nice,” says Heather.

Georgia feels something like joy and pride well up in her.

“See you guys in the medium lane!”

It is in the medium lane that Georgia realizes she needs to be in the slow lane.  Swimmers are passing on her left, causing water to fly into her nose and mouth, which in turn makes her cough it back up into the pool.  Worse still, her goggles have almost completely fogged up.  Heather is keeping up the medium pace without a problem and Rick has moved to the fast lane.  Georgia stops at the shallow end to look over at Rick, enjoying the sight of his calf and thigh muscle working hard.  This is as close as Georgia has seen him to naked and this causes her to sigh.  Even with only one leg, Georgia finds Rick almost intolerably attractive.  His chest chiselled and with just the right amount of hair (Georgia is repulsed by large amounts of body hair, not that this stopped her from seducing a hirsute German tourist eight years ago) Georgia more than longs to lay her head on it and hear his heart beating.  She very much wants to run her fingers through his thick head of brown hair and touch her tongue to his.  Even his stump intrigues her.  She wants him, she wants him.

“Hey, Georgia,” says Heather, stopping beside her, “This is a great pool.”

“Oh hi, Heather, hi, hi.”  She gawks for a moment at Heather’s ample bosom.  While it is covered by a Speedo like bathing suit, it is still large and noticeable.

“Uh huh,” says Georgia, “Actually, I’m thinking of getting out, you guys can meet me over by the hot tub.  I’m gonna go dip my feet into it.”

“Oh, okay, sounds good.  I’m going to swim for maybe another half hour or so, I hope you don’t mind.  I find this so very refreshing.”

Christ, thinks Georgia, another 30 minutes.

“Geez, you must be in great shape.”

“Well, I do like a good swim.  In the summer, I swim all the time at Bopper Lake near our house.”

“Oh,” says Georgia. “Okay, well, I’ll see you over there.”

Twenty five minutes later Georgia is still sitting on the cement floor, her feet and lower legs dipping in and out of the hot tub.  She feels hot and itchy but isn’t sure where else to go.  Two elderly men and what Georgia assumes is a lesbian are in the hot tub, discussing their upcoming weekend plans.

“There’s a potluck at Ivan’s,” says the young lesbian, “Or we could just stay home and get a movie.”

Odd, thinks Georgia and then decides that the lesbian must be the caretaker of these men or perhaps their adult child.  She finds herself wondering if the lesbian has a lover and if the lover lives with them or has her own place.  Is the lover resentful of the time her lover has to spend with her aging parents?  She should be more understanding, thinks Georgia, surely they aren’t going to live much longer.  Will there be an inheritance of some kind?  Georgia thinks of her own mother, who at 83 will leave behind only a small bungalow and a 1980 Honda Civic Hatchback that has been sitting unused in the backyard since her father died 27 years ago. 

“Leave it there,” she’d kept telling Georgia, who thought they should sell the car. “It, well it seems a shame to get rid of it.  Your father loved it so much.”

Georgia is brought out of this vehicular reminiscing by the two old men and the lesbian getting out of the water.  The paler of the men puts his arm around the lesbian as they walk toward the change rooms.

‘Oh,” said Georgia as she looks toward the swimming pool.  She notices that Rick is standing in the shallow end of the medium lane, looking down.  A second or so later, Heather pops her head up and is soon standing beside him.

“Oh, geez,” says Georgia. “Geez,” and attempts to erase the image from her mind.

No, no, no, she thinks, they are just talking for god’s sake..  Rick is smiling and Heather laughing.

Rick is gesturing with his hands, something he is in the habit of doing, thinks Georgia, momentarily pleased that she is aware of a Rick habit.

She swears she seems him make the sign of the cross, something Georgia herself learned when she dated a Catholic boy named Anthony back in the 1960’s.

“Huh?” thinks Georgia and her mind rushes to remember if the sign of the cross gesture is part of the many bizarre rituals involved in Rick’s non-cult.  He had confided in her a few of the rituals over the last few months, growing more trusting.  A few even made some kind of vague sense to her, they could even be construed as having a scientific basis.  The most recent reveal though seemed to involve the planetarium, the winter solstice and four small crows.  That one was difficult for Georgia to wrap her mind around and she was more than a little relieved that the next longest night of the year wasn’t for 10 more months.

For now, Rick and Heather seem to be having a great time.  Georgia walks over quickly and jumps into the water beside them.  The displacement of water from the jump causes a child swimming laps to swallow a bunch of water and he stops, stands up, coughs mightily and begins to cry.