The Mark of Cain

Two spouses: one great, one terrible. A capable short story by Roxane Gay.

My significant other is not a kind man and with him, I am not a decent individual.
Some of the time I wake up amidst the night and he, Caleb, is bowing over me, his fingers following my neck. I put my hands over his, the harsh skin, the swollen knuckles. I crush.
I wear overwhelming eyeliner and dull lipstick on the grounds that my significant other once said that he generally needs me to look the way I did the night we met in a bar, intoxicated and numb, searching for inconvenience before it discovered us. He can't remain to see me some other way, he said. He wasn't being nostalgic.
I stress over the day when he abandons me, torn separated on our bed, sitting tight for him to assemble me back once more.
My better half has an indistinguishable twin, Jacob. Some of the time they switch places for a considerable length of time at once. They think I don't have the foggiest idea. I am the sort of lady who wouldn't fret reveling the misdirection.
Here and there they switch places for a considerable length of time at once. They think I don't have the foggiest idea.
My spouses have a father who was neither a decent father nor a kind man. When he passed on, shot in the head by a lady he had beaten one time too much, Jacob and Caleb, then fifteen, quickly pardoned their dad his trespasses—the drinking, his substantial clench hands against their young bodies, the way he free them of their mom. With every passing year, the siblings modified their past until they had glorified their dad's memory. They each have a tattoo of their dad's resemblance on their back. The ink, Caleb let me know on our first date, was blended with their dad's fiery debris so he would dependably be with them.
It is about difficult to distinguish Caleb and Jacob one from the other. They have a similar physical make-up, a similar hair style, similar idiosyncrasies. Neither of them wheezes. They are both left-gave. They have dull hair, blue eyes, long, sharp confronts, high cheekbones. My spouses cooperate at the engineering firm they began, so whether it is Caleb or Jacob who returns home, they have a similar story to inform me regarding their day. I wedded Caleb yet I lean toward Jacob's organization. Whenever Jacob and I have intercourse, there is a miserable generosity to his touch. I never stress over being left apart.
Jacob has a sweetheart, Cassie, who is truly Caleb's better half. She is unconscious of the qualification. The four of us are at supper. Jacob, putting on a show to be Caleb, and I are clasping hands. Caleb, professing to be Jacob, and Cassie are clasping hands. There is a light in his eyes that isn't there when he takes a gander at me. My spouses are completing each other's sentences, amusing Cassie and me with stories about an especially troublesome customer. Jacob arranges another jug of wine, and we proceed to drink and talk and work on being ordinary. His arm is substantial over my shoulders and now and then, he inclines in and brushes his wet lips against the spot on my neck that makes my back curve strongly. At that point he grins at his sibling and his sibling grins back. This is the point at which they are taking care of business—when they are as one, having a similar minute. There is security, for them, in the number two.

Cassie is a graduate understudy in exhibition hall examines. Caleb let me know this in bed after she and Jacob initially began dating. He enlightened me regarding how Cassie arrangements to clergyman cutting edge craftsmanship shows, how she has a one of a kind stylish, how he supposes she might be the one for Jacob, yet what he's truly letting me know is that she's the one for him. I lay by Caleb, let him talk, followed his dad's picture with my fingernails. I let him know I was glad for Jacob however I was truly cheerful for him.
At the point when it's a great opportunity to settle the check, Cassie and I go to the washroom and we eye each other in the mirror as we rouse our lipstick. "It must be hard being hitched to a twin," she says. I begin to believe that she might be more brilliant than I suspected. I say, "It resembles being hitched to two men."
Jacob takes me home while Caleb takes Cassie to Jacob's home, five houses down from our own. Amidst the night, they will switch spots and I will know in light of the fact that Caleb will possess an aroma similar to another lady. Cassie won't see since she is the sort of lady who doesn't focus on subtle elements or who picks not to focus on points of interest. On the commute home, I follow Jacob's knuckles and the modest scars on his fingers, all from design school, making little models of excellent thoughts with sharp blades. I let him know how I wish each night could resemble this night. He gestures and says, "We should go for a drive." I recline in my seat, commence my heels. Jacob takes me to the site of a venture he's taking a shot at, and we take the development lift to the top floor, his arms wrapped firmly around me as the derrick gradually squeaks upward. There's no roof yet on the top floor, so when we escape the lift, it is muddling, seeing the city sprawling around us and nothing keeping us from falling into it.
I clutch Jacob to consistent myself and afterward I giggle and maneuver him into a moderate waltz, gazing up into the night sky. When we stop, the world continues turning, so we drop to the solid floor and sit with our knees pulled against our trunks. What I need to state is that I know his identity and that I would pick him, I would dependably everlastingly pick him, however I additionally know his first love is his sibling, so I say nothing. I pull my shirt over my take and slide off of my skirt and I lie back on the cool floor, coarse with earth and sawdust. I go after Jacob and murmur when he lies on top of me. We kiss, delicately, and he shuts his eyes, blowing air along my neck, over my shoulders. At that point I'm detaching his shirt, pulling him against me, opening myself to him the way he needs me to. I let him know the main genuine thing I can. I say, "I adore you."
At the point when Caleb drinks excessively, where an excessive amount of is much else besides one drink, he overlooks the new history he and his sibling have cobbled from their recollections of their dad. After he and Jacob have exchanged spots, Caleb moves into bed smelling of wine and tobacco smoke. He barks at me to wake up. I pull the sheets over my head since I am pondering Jacob and the opportunity of tall structures, and falling into stars while the spouse I cherish most is moving over and in me. Caleb pulls the sheets away, turns on the lights. I sit up, shuddering, alone with the spouse I don't love most.
He begins recounting to me a tale about himself and his sibling sitting in the rearward sitting arrangement of their dad's Cadillac while the old man got a sensual caress from a lady who was not their mom, and how their dad had that lady give his children penis massages too. As he recounts to me this story, his voice becomes coarser. His components turn out to be less unmistakable. Caleb snatches me by my midsection, straddles me, and slaps my face. "Absolutely never accomplish something to that effect," he says. "Try not to be a fucking prostitute." Then he's flipping me onto my stomach, his unkind hand planted against my skull, holding me to the bed, treating me like the prostitute he doesn't need me to be. I consider Caleb's rooster, smooth with Jacob's seed. I consider the amount I loathe and consequently cherish the spouse I'm with in light of the fact that I feel sorry for him and possibly I feel sorry for myself. I come radically. Caleb nods off lying on top of me. His body is substantial and soggy, his odor new.
In the morning, Caleb and I abstain from looking. He gives, imagines he will work, goes to his sibling's home, sends Jacob back to me. I am at my dressing table, attempting to cover the furious purpling wound spreading over my face. Jacob remains in the entryway and grins so sympathetic that I get to be distinctly disgusted. "What's going on with you?" he inquires. At that point he sees the bend of broken veins underneath my eye. His hands hold into tight clench hands as he methodologies me. When he puts delicate kisses along the edges of the hurt, my face begins to throb more profoundly than it ever did underneath Caleb's clench hand. "I'm so sad," Jacob says, boring the weight of his sibling's wrongdoings.
When I miss my period twice in succession, it is Jacob who discovers me in the lavatory, sitting on the edge of the bath, wrapped in a shower towel, holding the pregnancy test in one hand. He tumbles to his knees, overlap his hands over my thighs. He grins, pulls my towel open, abandoning me stripped, and leans his face against my bosoms. I run my fingers through his hair, tenderly rubbing his scalp. I envision both of us gathering a little bag, purchasing a modest auto, driving west on I-80 until we achieve something better. I say, "Do you think your sibling will be glad?" He says, "I don't care at all what my sibling considers." For a while, I permit myself to trust him.
I am six months pregnant when Caleb goes to a physical checkup with me. He is cranky, practically unconcerned, there simply because Jacob had a meeting he needed to go to. Nowadays, I for the most part observe Caleb late during the evening, when he takes back to his own home, when he is irate and needs something no one but I can give. He sits in the seat with the hard plastic arms by the exam table, arms crossed firmly over his trunk. As the specialist skims the sonogram wand over the lower round of my stomach, she turns a handle on the machine. "Do you hear that?" she inquires. The room is noiseless yet for the indistinguishable shudders of two heartbeats.