SECOND IN A SERIES.
Almost 10 years later, Art Powell is by himself in his garage, looking through storage bins when he finds a lavender envelope, palm-size and almost square.
Following news of Osama bin Laden's death by the U.S. military, visitors to the Pentagon Memorial remembered those who lost their lives on 9/11.
He had been sifting through old photographs of himself and his identical-twin brother, photos of them together as babies in matching outfits, together in high school, together in a band after college, together in a studio producing music, together in the apartment they shared until American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon.
He sees the envelope, his name written on the front: “Art.” He pulls out the paper and reads the first words: “I apologize for intruding at such a painful time . . .”
Art slips the letter back in the envelope, walks inside to the sunroom and hands it to his wife, who says, “Gosh, that looks like my horrible handwriting.”
She looks closer. “Oh my goodness.”
Stephanie Powell wrote that note on Sept. 19, 2001, when she was Stephanie Dawson and didn’t know Art nearly as well as she knew his brother Scott. Almost 10 years later, she reads the note. She reads it again and turns to Art.
“My tears are in here, somewhere,” she says. “Dried up.”
*
Everyone who knew them mourned Scott when he died at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Everyone worried about his twin brother, Art.
To see one was to see the other, as it had been nearly every day of every week of every year since they were born 15 minutes apart in 1966, the youngest of five children.
If one died, how could the other live?
“I’m okay,” Art likes to tell people. He smiles when he says it. “I’m good.”
What does it mean to be good, though? What happens when you lose the only other person on Earth who could be you?
What does it mean to be okay?
They had shared a room as babies, rattling their cribs until they were close enough for one to climb over the railing to be with the other. By age 2, they were banging pots and pans in the kitchen, then drums in the basement where their father played guitar. When they were 5, their mother took them to Port-au-Prince, where she studied dance and they played with master drummers. Back home in Pittsburgh, they drummed on a children’s television show.
They looked so much alike that no one bothered with their names, not even the twins themselves.
“My brother and I . . . ” they would say.
“How come you don’t dress alike?” friends and strangers would ask.
“If I hit one, will the other feel it?”
The twins had their own questions.
“Who’s who?” they’d ask, daring anyone to figure out what made them different.
*
Stephanie Dawson was 14 when a friend told her about the brothers who were getting lots of attention at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in D.C. They were musicians, well-mannered, clean-cut, good-looking and cool.
A double date was arranged. Her friend matched Stephanie with Scott, and the two of them became good friends. Stephanie confided in Scott. She went to movies and concerts with him. She went to see his band perform.
The twins left for college, and Stephanie moved away. She didn’t see Scott again for more than a dozen years, until July 2001, and only because she bumped into him on the Metro.
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