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identities, disguises, kept pretty much to himself (unless Mr. Trouble a.k.a. the idiot cat came to hang around). Superman was two guys who were one guy. Popeye ate spinach and became a different/same Popeye. And then there was
Winky-Dink and You,
which was really Winky-Dink and him: Equipped with his very own Official Winky-Dink Kit, he could draw directly on the TV screen—with magic crayon over green cellophane—so as to interact with (and often make fun hiding places for) his cartoon pal with the star-shaped head. As such, essential lessons in friendship and in persona had washed over him and stuck deep. “It seems to me that he took so many of those programs very seriously,” Stanley would say. “They gave him ideas that he never forgot.”
    Lessons at school were less intriguing. He was disinterested in his studies, always would be, would always be thinking of other things instead. “He didn’t work hard at all,” his father recalled. “He didn’t work any harder than he had to. He got average marks without studying. He was a very, very smart kid, but he never wanted anyone to know it. For whatever reason. It was always my impression that whatever his ability was, he didn’t want it to be known. It was his secret.” Thus there wereteacherparentconferences unending. He hated Mrs. Sanders of the second grade. “He would make faces at her, drive her crazy,” Cathy Bernard recalled. “He mimicked her. She was the type who said,
‘You do this, you do that!’
There was no room for anything other than what she told you to do. For someone like Andy, that was the perfect foil.”
    Eventually, the debut was at hand.
The time had come.
“At school,” he said, “every week or two, I was bored with being myself.”
As such.
“I’d go off into fantasyland.”
Always nicer there.
“Sometimes I’d be my twin brother Dhrupick.”
Of course.
His father had traveled to Japan on jewelry business and returned with kimonos for the family. And so it was that Dhrupick, finally, flamboyantly, officially, came out of his closet. “One day, in second or third grade, I was looking in my closet and saw the kimono and I decided to wear it to school. I forgot I had it on. When the teacher asked, ‘Why are you wearing that, Andy?’ I said, ‘I’m not Andy. I’m Andy’s twin brother Dhrupick.’” He remembered being immediately sent to the school psychologist … or was it just that the teacher shrugged, rolled her eyes, as usual, and let him be? Or was it both? Or did it ever happen at all? Well, that was how he remembered it anyway. He always liked the kimono story. Everyone seemed to like the kimono story. It was a good story.
    Meanwhile …
    Janice would become pregnant with Carol. The house on Robin Way would begin to shrink. Always there was ruckus. Michael broke Andy’s neck. Well, they liked to say that—it was a bad strain, really. They wrestled a lot. They imitated the Spanish wrestlers on TV. Margaret watched her gospel shows and the boys made fun of her and switched the channel over to the wrestlers whenever she turned her back. Andy was in traction for maybe three weeks with the neck. It never hurt all that badly. He was very very proud. He liked the traction thing, the ropes. He liked the broken neck thing very much. Once he and Michael stole all the newspapers from everyone’s front stoop, then threw them down the sewer. Stanley went crazy (yell-yellyell), went out and bought the neighborhood new papers, deliveredthem with beet-faced apology. Andy liked blaming Michael for everything. Like the time he snipped all the buds off the rosebush in front, then said Michael did it. Stanley went crazy (yellllll); Michael got spanked. Perfect crime. The brothers decided to repaint the living room furniture one Christmas to surprise their parents. Wood, upholstery, everything. Some great-aunt gave them the paint kit. Redyellowgreenblue, everywhere. Stanley went crazy (yellllllllllllllll), rolled each son into a