The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos

Author:Jack Gantos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Published: 2012-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

NOT SO FAST

“And like you, I did go back there, but for different reasons,” she said. “I was pregnant, and Greensburg went right out the window. I denied my condition at first, but after three months there was no getting around it. I wasn’t nauseous, and wasn’t showing yet, but I hadn’t had a period so I went to the doctor and told him as little as possible about the circumstances. He confirmed my suspicions.

“You can’t believe how nervous I was when it came to telling my parents. And really, the worst part wasn’t telling them that I was pregnant, but I just knew that when I told them it was by one of the old Rumbaugh twins—and I didn’t know which one—they were going to flip.

“And they did. My father was furious. After he called me a few names, he called an attorney and wanted to have them both arrested for statutory rape. But I was eighteen at the time, so I was of age and the sex was consensual. The only issue was of paternity and child support. My attorney wanted to know which one it was. But I didn’t know for sure. And of course when the attorney confronted the Twins, they denied it. They were innocent, they claimed. Hadn’t laid a glove on me. They even submitted to a blood test, but it was inconclusive.”Well, this is going to be a hard case to win,“the attorney said to my father. “Do you want to go through with it?”

“They’re grown churchmen,” my father reasoned. “They’ll tell the truth under oath.” I didn’t think they would. When my father left the room, I pulled the attorney to one side. There is one thing, I said sheepishly. I told him about seeing the Twin’s rear end in the mirror, with the little red A scar or tattoo on his right cheek. The attorney wrote that down in a black notebook. I didn’t know it then, but country doctors always left some secret scar on identical twins so they could be told apart. Usually they put the scar where people could see it, like behind an earlobe or on an elbow, but for some reason this doctor put it on the rear end.

“Well, before a trial was called there was a probable cause hearing and the Twins were submitted to examination in the judge’s chamber. My attorney thought he had an ace up his sleeve because of the scar I had seen. But when they were examined, an A was found on each of them—both on the same side!

“I’m sure they somehow worked out a way for the one with the A to be examined twice. I remember that they had to keep the drugstore open because of all the hospital needs, and so they were examined one at a time by the judge. And even though there was an A, both of them denied doing it, just as they did with that diuretic prescription years back. And once again

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