Nonfiction | July 09, 2026

The Look-Alike 

1974 was a cicada year. In Great Neck, the thumb-length insects emerged from the ground in droves, their hundred-decibel trills whiting out the more typical sounds of summer: the jingle-blaring ice-cream trucks, the lawn mowers, the soughing trees in the humid air. I’d find myself mesmerized whenever I’d spot one, newly molted, twitching on the dogwood in front of our white stucco house, or once even in the wheel well of our station wagon, its plump body as long as my Swiss Army knife, iridescent wings vibrating so rapidly they disappeared. Just as arresting were their abandoned larval exoskeletons, which resembled jagged alien invaders, and for a day or two remained clinging to their perches until the breeze blew them into the pachysandra, where they quickly decomposed.   

That was also the summer my friends and I became bike-crazy. For Marc, Chris, and me, bike riding transitioned from a mode of transportation—a way to get to school or the park—to something to do for its own sake. As fourteen-year-olds, we were still a year away from driver’s ed, so it was by bicycle that we indulged our wanderlust. With each ride, we ventured further away from home, our gangly bodies energized by the exhilaration our bicycles afforded—energy we then transferred back to our bikes in a sort of Möbius strip of teenage exuberance. 

1974 was also the summer my parents split. I learned of their intentions late one Sunday morning as I sat with my mother at our dining-room table. As per our post-breakfast ritual, I was poring over The New York Times sports section while she worked the Sunday Magazine crossword puzzle. At some point, she placed her pencil down and reached for her pack of More cigarettes, a popular brand then thanks to its feminist “Dare to be More” marketing campaign. She removed a cigarette from the pack (like her, it was elegantly slim) and lit it, exhaling a stream of blue-gray smoke that cartwheeled toward the chandelier. Then she turned to me and without preamble said, “Would it surprise you if I told you that Dad and I are going to separate?”