One and the Same Read Online Free PDF

the crafts tables and start to interview random twins among the displays of bandannas, wind chimes, sandstone coasters, and crocheted hats.
    Jessica and Jennifer, from New Orleans, are twenty-three and ebullient about Twinsburg. “It’s INSANE!” Jessica exclaims. “I LOVE it! All the TWINS! It’s just the COOLEST thing. I’m like a big
o
l’ tourist!”
    â€œI was thinking, I feel less odd now,” says Jennifer, “because there’s so many others like us. You immediately have something in common with someone else. You’re huggin’ someone, and you don’t even know them. You say, ‘Hey I’m a twin! Where you from?’”
    I ask them to try to describe their closeness. Jessica says, “I feel like
that”—
she points at her sister—”is just an extension of me. That’s
me
over there, experiencing something different. Like astral projection, kind of.”
    â€œShe’s my other half, you know,” Jennifer chimes in. “If somethinghappened to her, I don’t know what I’d do. It’s like slicing part of you in half. No one can make me madder; no one can make me happier.”
    What about the perennial twins question: Were they competitive? “Oh definitely,” says Jennifer. “I had to be better at it all, man.” She looks at Jessica. “I couldn’t let you beat me.”
    They even liked the same boy, and Jessica ended up marrying him. “We were freshmen in high school,” Jessica recalls. “He flirted with a lot of girls.”
    â€œHe did,” Jennifer confirms. “He was flirting with me and he was flirting with her and I got mad that he picked her, but I was happy for her. The Lord brought them together.”
    Complicating matters, Jennifer had to chaperone her sister and the boyfriend she’d lost on every one of their dates. “The poor thing had to be the third wheel,” Jessica recalls. “Because we were only fifteen when me and him started dating, and my Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us be separated. It was like, ‘No, she’s got to go with you.’”
    Every date?
    â€œPretty much,” Jessica says, a little embarrassed.
    â€œThat wasn’t fun,” Jennifer says grimly.
    I wonder if it was wrenching for Jennifer to watch her sister end up with her crush. “No, not at all,” she insists. “As soon as he asked her out, I’m like, ‘Okay, y’all were meant to be.’ I was the maid of honor.”
    These sisters seem to be lucky enough to have found romantic relationships (Jennifer has a boyfriend) despite their twinship. But for some reason, Twinsburg seems to draw a number of twins—predominantly male—who have never been married.
    â€œI almost married once,” says Sam Zarante, fifty-one, dressed neatly in a button-down shirt. “Marie, my fiancée, didn’t understand my being a twin. She thought my twin brother, Dave, and I were too close.”
    â€œI’d be over, visiting, a lot,” Dave acknowledges.
    â€œSo it would be the three of us, not two,” Sam adds. “He’d be competition for her.”
    Because she was never going to match their closeness?
    â€œShe didn’t understand it,” Dave says.
    â€œI loved her,” Sam states.
    â€œI liked her,” Dave chimes in. “I liked Marie. She was a good one.”
    â€œWe did things together, the three of us,” Sam recalls. “But after awhile, it came out: a little resentment. She wanted me to be her number one, you see. And I understand that. But I liked having him around.”
    I ask when Sam and Marie broke up. “Oh, it’s been awhile now,” Sam says.
    Nineteen eighty-four. That was the last big relationship either twin had. For years, they’ve lived together in an Illinois suburb.
    â€œNow, Abigail,” Dave says, addressing me suddenly. “I have to admit: