Is "et al." acceptable for citations with exactly two authors?

Question

I have a bunch of information from a source, but the authors names are particularly long; is it acceptable (in MLA) to use "et al." for exactly two authors, e.g., > “The Corpus juris not only preserved Roman law for later generations but, after the twelfth century when it came to be known and studied in western Europe, provided inspiration for most European legal systems.” (Lehman et al. 4)

Answer 1

No, et al indicates more than two authors. You need (Lehman and Smith 4). If you want to avoid the citation, you can name the article or whatever in the paper and just put the page number in the citation.

According to the article "This is the Answer" by John Lehman and Susan Smith, "No one knows the real answer" (4).