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❛THE DUALITY OF MAN❜
THERE WERE TWO DISTINCT REACTIONS to learning your wife was pregnant with twins;
1.Delight. Two children at once? It had to be a gift from God. The man in the sky had to have looked down at the parents-to-be and seen two faithful believers who would make wonderful parents.
2.Dismay. Two children at once? It had to be the work of the Devil. Nothing was natural about two beings sharing one womb. Besides, who could cope with two babies crying out for attention? Two toddlers climbing each leg with their grubby little hands. Two teenagers teaming up to rebel.
Alvin Marsh, however, seemed to be a mix of both. That day, after Elfrida returned from the hospital with her grin stretched from ear to ear ready to deliver the good news, Alvin had spent the rest of the night sitting with a glass of whiskey watching football on the musky beige couch-- the one littered with small brown marks, bruises of past spilt drinks. Twins, he thought over. Two more mouths to feed. Two more leeches to care for. Two more obnoxious voices to block out.
It wasn't until Elfrida revealed one blessed detail that Alvin found twins might be a blessing in disguise. One little boy, one little girl. From this point on Alvin was ecstatic, planning out their upbringing silently in his head as he laid next to his sleeping wife.
A young man, raised to help bring in the cash until the fateful day he finds a pure, submissive wife to marry and produce intelligent children of his own.
A little girl, raised to serve her father and learn the ways of a woman before she is married off to her husband, who will provide her with the finer things in life when her father no longer can.
Alvin stuck to these ambitions. It was why he named his children so-- well, Elfrida also had a say in the names by agreeing to everything her loving husband suggested.
Beverly; friendly, loving, social, and most importantly loyal.
Christopher; intelligent, charming, respectful, and most importantly masculine.
In a way, Alvin's wishes would come true. Beverly was a bright beam of white teeth in a cheeky smile, at least to those who got to see it, and her loyalty to her brother and friends would never waver. Chris was intelligent, never too much to make him arrogant, but enough for teachers to adore him, and almost everyone who encountered the boy would say they were charmed by his charismatic attitude.
They were mostly intrigued by his blue eyes. They were bright blue, the kind of blue that children loved to colour with, colouring until just the stub of a crayon was left. But the blue wasn't dull like a crayon. It was glistening, like a fortune teller's crystal ball at one of Derry's annual Canal Days festivals. You take one long gaze in and swear you can see your future.
His eyes were all Chris had to remember his mother by. Not that he ever knew her. Beverly and Chris lost their mother early on, and Alvin's grief for his wife and anger at the two crying children would never cease. Chris may have never known his mother, but sometimes, late at night, he would stare into the murky bathroom mirror, his face illuminated by the single lightbulb that occasionally flickered above him. Staring into those blue eyes, he swore he knew his mother.
Maybe in another life, he had grown up with the blue-eyed woman nurturing him. Maybe, his eyes were hers, passed down from what was lost to what was born that dismal February. No matter, he still insisted he knew his mother. She was kind, warm, loving, and no one else could change his perception of her.
He missed her dearly.
Beverly and Chris had a bond like no other. While they wouldn't exactly consider the other their friend, they held care so sacred in their hearts it was painful to see the other hurt, both emotionally and physically. When it came to school, it sometimes seemed as if they weren't even related. Both were loners, but they were never loners together.
Beverly spent her lunch often in the bathroom, hiding from the likes of Greta Keene or other tormentors out to ridicule her over false rumours. Chris however, rarely found himself bullied, with only occasional teasings over his quiet, reserved nature, most coming from Henry Bowers.
Chris's lunch was often spent behind the school, lounging uncomfortably against the brick wall as the building's chilled shadow swept over him. More times than not his eyes were trained on following the words of some novel from the library-- Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and he had just finished Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.
Chris had to cherish the moments at school he could dedicate to reading. His father not only ridiculed him for the foolish, feminine act, but the Marsh man had taken it upon himself to force Chris into a part-time job, the boy's free time that would normally be spent reading or writing by the quarry now dedicated to the stuffy, sticky arcade placed awkwardly in the Capitol Theater.
It wasn't all that bad. Chris's manager, a forty-something-year-old man, who had more chub and hair on his body than care in his heart for the underpaid teenager, spent more time either asleep in his office or out getting drunk during working hours than he did actually checking up on Chris.
This was a blessing for the boy, meaning no one could taunt him for reading-- except the snotty-nosed boys who spent every hour hiding from the sun and burning their retinas fighting men made of pixels just to gain an ounce of self-respect watching their initials climb the leaderboard.
Chris was still a good employee; he still promptly exchanged coins for tokens, cleaned up spilt cherry-soda, and powered down the machines when the arcade had closed hours after his shift was supposed to end, his manager still nowhere to be seen.
Over the months that Chris had worked at the arcade, having started immediately on his thirteenth birthday, he'd come to recognise most of the regulars.
There was the fifteen or sixteen-year-old, covered practically head to toe in burning red acne, who was almost always the first to arrive in the afternoons after school. The thirty-to-forty-year-old man who came in every two weeks or so and stood in the corner, his piercing gaze making Chris' knees subconsciously jitter in discomfort. The girl who dressed, acted, and could probably pass for any of the boys who passed through, her irritated look and snappy attitude never once faltering.
Then, there was the Tozier boy. Known around the school as 'Trashmouth' Tozier, Chris had seen Richie in the arcade on most days, whether it be after school or on the weekend. They'd rarely interacted aside from the exchange of silver coins for gold tokens and occasionally a large Cola. Still, Chris was intrigued.
'Trashmouth' was all he'd ever heard. In class, it was always "Stop talking to me, Trashmouth."
When he'd once tried to hit up Jenny Logger it was "As if, Trashmouth!"
Even once Chris had heard the boy's friends call him Trashmouth.
Why was this so intriguing? Because the Richie that Chris had come to observe was not a trash mouth. Sure, he punched the Streetfighter buttons a little harder than necessary, but he never raised his voice in anger. He never interacted with those at the other machines, he didn't swear profusely like other players when they lost their games, and he always used his manners when ordering his drink-- a large Cola, never any different.
Chris had once inquired about the boy to his twin sister, whose reply contained the word 'Trashmouth', immediately being of no use to Chris. So, he would remain behind that front desk in the arcade, occasionally glancing from his novel to watch the game's pixels reflect in colourful glints on the boy's glasses, forever wondering which version of Richard Tozier was true.
