the Third Twin (1996)

Jeannie began to feel more cheerful, although the prospect of spending her Sundays teaching backward undergraduates was dismal. “For an extra four hundred a week we might get Mom a room to herself with her own bathroom.”

“Then she could have more of her things about her, ornaments and maybe some furniture from the apartment.”

“Let’s ask around, see if anyone knows of a nice place.”

“Okay.” Patty was thoughtful. “Mom’s illness is inherited, isn’t it? I saw something on TV.”

Jeannie nodded. “There’s a gene defect, AD3, that’s linked to early-onset Alzheimer’s.” It was located at chromosome 14q24.3, Jeannie recalled, but that would not mean anything to Patty.

“Does that mean you and I will end up like Mom?”

“It means there’s a good chance we will.”

They were both silent for a moment. The thought of losing your mind was almost too grim to talk about.

“I’m glad I had my children young,” Patty said. “They’ll be old enough to look after themselves by the time it happens to me.”

Jeannie noted the hint of reproof. Like Mom, Patty thought there was something wrong with being twenty-nine and childless. Jeannie said: “The fact that they’ve found the gene is also hopeful. It means that by the time we’re Mom’s age, they may be able to inject us with an altered version of our own DNA that doesn’t have the fatal gene.”

“They mentioned that on TV. Recombinant DNA technology, right?”

Jeannie grinned at her sister. “Right.”

“See, I’m not so dumb.”

“I never thought you were dumb.”

Patty said thoughtfully: “The thing is, our DNA makes us what we are, so if you change my DNA, does that make me a different person?”

“It’s not just your DNA that makes you what you are. It’s your upbringing too. That’s what my work is all about.”

“How’s the new job going?”

“It’s exciting. This is my big chance, Patty. A lot of people read the article I wrote about criminality and whether it’s in our genes.” The article, published last year while she was still at the University of Minnesota, had borne the name of her supervising professor above her own, but she had done the work.

“I could never figure out whether you said criminality is inherited or not.”

“I identified four inherited traits that lead to criminal behavior: impulsiveness, fearlessness, aggression, and hyperactivity. But my big theory is that certain ways of raising children counteract those traits and turn potential criminals into good citizens.”

“How could you ever prove a thing like that?”

“By studying identical twins raised apart. Identical twins have the same DNA. And when they’re adopted at birth, or split up for some other reason, they get raised differently. So I look for pairs of twins where one is a criminal and the other is normal. Then I study how they were raised and what their parents did differently.”

“Your work is really important,” Patty said.

“I think so.”

“We have to find out why so many Americans nowadays turn bad.”

Jeannie nodded. That was it, in a nutshell.

Patty turned to her own car, a big old Ford station wagon, the back full of brightly colored kiddie junk: a tricycle, a folded-down stroller, an assortment of rackets and balls, and a big toy truck with a broken wheel.

Jeannie said: “Give the boys a big kiss from me, okay?”

“Thanks. I’ll call you tomorrow after I see Mom.” Jeannie got her keys out, hesitated, then went over to Patty and hugged her. “I love you, sis,” she said. “Love you, too.”

Jeannie got in her car and drove away.

She felt jangled and restless, full of unresolved feelings about Mom and Patty and the father who was not there. She got on I-70 and drove too fast, weaving in and out of the traffic. She wondered what to do with the rest of the day, then remembered that she was supposed to play tennis at six then go for beer and pizza with a group of graduate students and young faculty from the psychology department at Jones Falls. Her first thought was to cancel the entire evening. But she did not want to sit at home brooding. She would play tennis, she decided: the vigorous exercise would make her feel better. Afterward she would go to Andy’s Bar for an hour or so, then have an early night.

But it did not work out that way.

    Her tennis opponent was Jack Budgen, the university’s head librarian. He had once played at Wimbledon and, though he was now bald and fifty, he was still fit and all the old craft was there. Jeannie had never been to Wimbledon. The height of her career had been a place on the U.S. Olympic tennis team while she was an undergraduate. But she was stronger and faster than Jack.

They played on one of the red clay tennis courts on the Jones Falls campus. They were evenly matched, and the game attracted a small crowd of spectators. There was no dress code, but out of habit Jeannie always played in crisp white shorts and a white polo shirt. She had long dark hair, not silky and straight like Patty’s but curly and unmanageable, so she tucked it up inside a peaked cap.