What He Offered

Chapter Two: Women Leave

The first sheet of the document was a cover page of sorts with a few words, well-centered in bold-faced type. Bones laughed out loud at the title and author attribution:

A Tale of Twin Booths

by Andy Lister (with Phillip Cameron)

She grabbed a number 2 pencil from the jar, and noted in the margin: very amusing! There were another couple of lines beneath:

Dedicated to Dr. Temperance Brennan, "my first, my last, my everything"

She smiled fondly, recognizing in this gesture an oblique reference to the books she had dedicated to him over the years. It had always meant so much to him. She wrote: Thank you, Booth. As a matter of curiosity, why the quotation marks?

She then set the page down carefully on the open desk top, and began to read in earnest.

A Tale of Twin Booths

Anyone meeting the Booth boys for the first time as adolescents would not have guessed that Vic and Tim had started off life as identical twins, but it was true just the same. For their first few years, they were indistinguishable both in character and in appearance; even their parents could not tell them apart. Their first language was not English, but rather a jibber jabber all their own in which they would hold long, involved conversations complete with jokes, if their periodic shouts of laughter were any indication. In those years, the boys were the best of friends, rarely if ever apart, and when they were separated, each appeared to know, even at considerable distance, what the other was feeling. On one memorable occasion, while out shopping with his mother, Vic tripped over his own feet running in the parking lot and scraped his knees and palms bloody on the rough pavement. At that exact moment, Tim, who had been playing placidly at home under the supervision of his father, burst into noisy tears and would not be comforted until he and Vic were reunited. As toddlers, as kindergarteners, and later still as schoolchildren, the Booth boys went everywhere, did everything together, and there was never, as the song goes, a "discouraging word" between them. They were as happy as the proverbial two peas in a pod.

Then, shortly after their seventh birthday, disaster struck: their mother, whom they both loved dearly, packed her bags one night and was gone by morning. The signs of trouble had all been there — the angry voices, the smashed dishes, the bloody tissues, the tear-stained cheeks — and yet, the twins were shocked and devastated by her sudden absence. It had never once occurred to them that she would leave them. Leave their father, yes, that they understood, but her boys? They both took the news very hard, but for the first time in their life, they didn't react the same way. Vic was beside himself with fury; he felt betrayed, deserted. He would not forgive their mother, even when Tim argued that she'd had no choice, she'd had to save herself, she couldn't deal with the beatings. Tim promised that she hadn't abandoned them forever: she'd come back and take them away someday, maybe soon: they had only to be patient and endure. But Vic would not be consoled. He had made up his mind about their mother, and he hardened his heart against her.

Where Vic was angry, Tim was only sad. He missed his mother terribly, and couldn't stop crying, not even when his brother jeered at him, and called him a baby and a wimp. It just hurt too much. The constant tears got on Vic's nerves, and he warned Tim several times to shut off the waterworks or he'd do it for him, but Tim had to weep, there was no controlling it. Finally, Vic could take no more, and, in his frustration, tried to beat his brother silent with his fists. He was sorry afterwards, and Tim forgave him, recognizing, in his soft heart, that violence was Vic's way of venting the grief they both felt but that only he, Tim, could express openly.

In time, Vic found a healthier channel for his rage: competitive sports. He had lost his mother, but he was determined never to lose again, if he could help it. Like everyone else, his years were divided into seasons, but his were named baseball, football, basketball and hockey, and when he and his teams had no opponent to pulverize, he competed against himself, pushing himself to set personal bests in running, swimming and weight-lifting. As a result of this endless training, he became a physical specimen: straight, strong, lean and well-muscled.

Tim watched his twin's transformation with a mix of concern and admiration, but he had neither the energy nor the desire to follow his example. He was more drawn to quiet, solitary pursuits. He spent his time reading the graphic-novel adventures of super-heroes, learning magic tricks, playing King's Quest on his computer, and watching TV game shows or animated features like The Sword in the Stone. Vic scorned these passtimes as dorky, and his pale, physically under-developed twin as a dweeb.

When they reached adolescence, Vic discovered a brand new outlet for his energy: relations with the opposite sex. He had natural advantages in this arena: a handsome-enough face, an excellent physique, an outgoing personality and a reputation for being cool. Girls were attracted to him, and he might have had his pick, but Vic invariably fell for the girls generally held to be the cutest, smartest, most influential in the school: the cheerleaders, the brainiacs, the class officers, the trend-setters. So long as the girl was seriously in demand, Vic found her irresistible. He wasn't put off by initial rejection, quite the contrary: he reveled in it. The more she resisted, the more he thrilled to the chase. He bent his not-inconsiderable charms to the task of winning the elusive object of his fascination, and in every case, sometimes swiftly, sometime after a long, hard pursuit, he succeeded. He'd lost his virginity by the age of sixteen.

Vic's relationships tended not to last very long, however. If he didn't tire of them first, his girlfriends eventually grew dissatisfied with him. He had a lot going for him, they allowed: he was fun, good-looking, confident and personable, but he was absent, somehow, and shallow; everything was a joke to him. One night, Vic had an epiphany: he and Darla, a girl he wasn't ready to lose, were having a fight about what she called his emotional distance, and he lost it. He couldn't bear her complaints and recriminations — he had to shut her up — so he grabbed her, and crushed his mouth to hers. Soon, they were both breathing hard, fumbling with each other's clothes, fevered, mindless… sated. In the aftermath, as Darla smiled at him in satisfaction, Vic had a life-altering revelation: having great sex was pleasure, but giving great sex was power. He never forgot.

If Vic had girlfriends, Tim had friends who were girls. Years of sedentary activities and little physical exercise had left him soft and out of shape, with a body that appeared shorter than it was due to his perpetually lowered head and drooping shoulders. He was almost pathologically shy, and was happiest when he could pass through the school corridors observing the action around him without attracting any attention himself. There were times, however, when he could not avoid interacting with other students, and it was during these group sessions or partner activities that girls would discover that Tim was really quite nice. He was a good listener, and didn't lose patience when they went on forever about their problems with other girls, or their parents, or their boyfriends. He let them talk, and if he couldn't offer them solutions, at least he seemed to understand and sympathize with their feelings. In time, he gained a reputation for being that very rare thing in a boy: someone you could trust with your pain, a "real sweetheart." Even Vic's disgruntled girlfriends would sit with Tim and open up about his brother's callousness and flippancy. "He could stand to be a lot more like you," they'd tell him before heading off, inevitably, with Vic.

Tim was no more immune to falling in love than Vic, but unlike his twin, he was drawn most powerfully to damaged girls, girls who needed comfort, needed saving: the wallflowers, the introverts, the socially-awkward or outcast. The more precarious the girl's situation, the more irresistible Tim found her. During his adolescent years, Tim had a number of very close 'friendships,' but none of them lasted. They invariably ended on or about the day when Tim, after weeks or months of providing a shoulder to cry on, poured out his heart in turn. He confided his own private misery, his soul-deep suffering in the hope of having conferred upon himself the inestimable balm of acceptance and compassion. But after a few brief 'there, there nows' and some half-hearted pats on the arm, the girls would discover they suddenly had less time for him, and then finally, none at all. From these experiences, Tim drew an important lesson: unburdening yourself to another is a great relief akin to pleasure, but listening to another empathetically is power. When Tim graduated from high school, he was still a virgin.

In this period, the twins' relationship more closely resembled an uneasy truce than either outright war or amity. Vic continued to show contempt for his nerdy brother but never let any harm come to him, and Tim was pained to see his brother act like such a jerk but always prayed he would find a measure of true happiness. In an attempt to be helpful, Tim would sometimes take his brother aside and plead with him. "You should be kinder to her," he would say about the girl Vic was currently dating. "Show her you love her. It doesn't have to be much. Just little things…"

"Or, what?" Vic would invariably snort in derision. "She'll leave me? Take it from someone who has a lot more experience with the ladies than you, little bro: sooner or later, they leave you, every one of them. 'Happily ever after' is just for fairy tales."