Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (10 page)

“What rules did you tell Daphne?” I asked Pekko, interrupting Charlotte.

“Mostly no extensions on the rent—that's the problem with friends. I'm not worried she'll trash the apartment.”

If Daphne did fail to pay the rent, I thought, Pekko might let her get away with it. I sensed an unusual distraction in him. The very fact that he'd told Charlotte and Philip what he'd done: he was less protected than usual. I didn't trust Daphne because she penetrated barriers, and that thought reminded me of Gordon Skeetling.

“I'm working on a rubbish heap at the Yale Small Cities Project,” I said now to Charlotte. “I had a fight with the director.”

“I never heard of that project.”

“One guy in a row house on Temple Street.”

“Yale has hundreds of tiny kingdoms,” Charlotte said. “Some do evil, some good.”

“What did you fight about?” said Philip. By now we were eating our main course. I probably had seafood curry.

“He's in favor of reducing funding for foster care.”

“A reactionary?” Charlotte said, the lines around her blue eyes deepening.

“He says he's a sensible lefty.”

“He's a pile of shit,” Pekko said. “I was on a board with him. He's one of those people who's too damned clearheaded. No feelings.”

“Oh, he definitely has feelings!” I said, remembering Gordon's reaction to the clipping about the murder. I wanted to see if by chance Charlotte agreed with him about foster care—I wanted to see if I'd been arguing on the wrong side—and she agreed heartily that, as Gordon had said, the state is a bad parent.

“Maybe it
would
be better after all . . . ,” I said.

“If kids were left with abusive parents?”

“Or their relatives had to take them in, instead of having foster care as an option.” I was arguing Gordon's position, I saw to my dismay. “Terrible things do happen.”

“But mostly not,” Charlotte said with authority. She works with the elderly, but she knows about all parts of the system. She wanted to talk about Olivia, though. Her older daughter, Amy, is easygoing, but cranky Olivia has always been the one who can get her mother's full attention. That week she'd called late at night, exhausted from long hours at the hospital. At first Charlotte was delighted to hear from her, but she was sleepy, and Olivia got angry when Charlotte insisted on hanging up.

“I recognize her,” I said ruefully. “That's what I do to my mother. I need her too much, so I'm mean to her.”

“I think Roz doesn't mind, in the last analysis,” Charlotte said. “I don't.”

“She moved here, near me, not near my brothers.” The oldest of us has lived in Chicago for a long time, but the brother I think about—my younger older brother, I call him, Stephen—is still in New York, where we all grew up.

“Correct,” said Charlotte.

Philip sat back, looking at me. I've known him now for twenty-five years, and he looks his age. “You're still a handful, Daisy,” he said. Maybe he aged worrying about me.

I've probably made mischief all my life so as to hear that loving remonstrance in people's voices. When Philip's or Charlotte's disapproval became real, I was wretched. Now I looked at Philip and felt gratitude—I love his attention—and a resolve not to make further mischief. And then I found myself wanting to check my date book, to see when I'd work at Gordon Skeetling's office again. We had set up a series of appointments, so I wouldn't be tempted to come at other times. Maybe I could have another fight with him, a fight that would make his shirt come partway out of his pants once more.

“He doesn't want me to come when he doesn't expect me,” I said to my friends. “Does that make sense?” I told them what he'd said. I liked watching them listen.

 

I
was just wondering,” Ellen said on the phone. “Did you notice an ugly green print shirt? I can't find it.”

“What do you need it for if it's ugly?”

“I like thinking about the woman who left it here. She forgot it after she stayed overnight, and when I offered to send it, she said, ‘Keep it.' It wouldn't fit me—and it's ugly—but I thought of her when I saw it, and I want that to happen again.”

“I'll help you look,” I said.

“Oh, never mind, the kids will help,” she said. “I just thought you might have noticed it.”

 

S
o how much truth am I going to tell, and how far back need that truth go? And, maybe more important, to whom am I telling this truth? When I began writing this story, if it's a story, I had a half-formed idea that I would write it all down, put it away, and someday read it. I was writing for my future self, assuming I'd forget, or forget how it felt if I remembered the events. I wanted to preserve the good parts of what happened and also preserve the bad parts, and I'm still hoping to demonstrate to that future Daisy, Old Daisy, that what I felt was as good as I will claim it was, and as bad.

So will nobody but me ever read this document? Someone could break in and steal my computer. A floppy disk could fall out of my bag onto the street. Or I could change my mind. I could show what I've written to a friend, or even to a stranger.

More likely, I'm doing something I did before. I wrote and published a magazine article. It began as a hundred-page essay about something that happened to my brother Stephen, but in the telling, because I was telling it, my reactions and feelings were central. I wrote it over and over, for years, and each time it became shorter, and contained less detail about me. There's no need to say here what it was about. The point is that maybe I'm doing that again, maybe I'm writing another publishable five-page article or, more likely, a couple of thirty-page pieces about New Haven, and maybe this is how I do it. In that case I can be as revealing as I like, risk-free. The final version won't have the word
I
in it, or it will, but
I
will just gracefully personalize a serious subject. “When I myself had the opportunity to participate in community theater . . .”

Well, if there's going to be a scrubbing of secrets before anyone reads this, I can write down something I suddenly understood some pages back. I know why I wanted to learn about prostitution. It's because there was a time that I paid for sex, or almost did. I'd begun an affair with a student twenty years younger than I was—I was in my forties. He cleaned houses for a living. He'd been to prison. He was slight and dark, and he resembled Peter Pan—about to slide into the air on an invisible wire. He would come to my house—talking fast and cleverly and oddly—we'd go to bed, I'd pay him for not cleaning. I went on the radio, talking about prostitutes, to find out if the
customers
are ever not pathetic. The young man, Dennis Ring, has been dead for years. He was crazy and difficult, and I still miss him.

 

T
hree girls came to the next rehearsal: Justine; Daphne's daughter, Cindy; and a bustling, bossy kid named Morgana and called Mo, a black girl with a head full of barrettes. Of course Katya hadn't been able to say no to anyone who called. She thought they should watch for a week before two of them began playing the two-headed girl. “The third one can be her friend,” she said. Ellen also watched, sitting in a corner on a folding chair. I was constantly aware of her. I was angry with her because I'd thrown away her shirt, as if her mildness had forced me into wrongdoing.

But I liked Justine, who laughed quietly, with an adult laugh, at moments I wouldn't have thought were funny, so we became funnier. We were a series of baby-sitters and day-care workers trying to look after the two-headed baby. Then Jonah was a minister who baptized her TheaDora. He did a parody of a preacher, which seemed strange for a real preacher, but maybe he wasn't trying to be funny. When Justine laughed, I noticed, Mo kicked her, and she pushed Mo's shoulder. Then Jonah delivered a sermon. “We must examine our thoughts about this child,” he said. “We must destroy any prejudice in our hearts.”

Playing the baby's mother, I said, “Reverend, I am not prejudiced against the baby.”

“The one who's prejudiced,” said Chantal, who was playing the father, “is Uncle Fractious.”

Muriel volunteered to be Uncle Fractious, who said, “The baby is an abomination in the sight of God. She is too much trouble. Let's sacrifice the whole child or cut off one of her heads!” Muriel stepped forward briskly as she finished, then resumed her vigorous striding, being both Muriel herself in her men's blue jeans, with her hair sticking out in all directions, and the equally energetic Uncle Fractious.

There followed a debate by the parents, the doctor, and the director of the managed-care plan—David, nodding rapidly, as was his habit in any role though not when he wasn't acting. “The parents' insurance does not cover cutting off extra heads,” he said.

“I love both heads!” Chantal screamed.

“How can you leave these parents with this monster?” said Denise, who always seemed to play the doctor, no matter how much we meant to trade roles around.

“No child is a monster,” said Jonah, who was not in the scene and was seated cross-legged on his mat at the edge of the open area where we worked, his big knees sticking up. It didn't matter; the managed-care company was adamant.

Later, Jonah played the minister again, and as the mother I found myself giving him a species of confession, explaining how hard it was to love my husband and our peculiar baby, how my husband was afraid of me now, as if I was a witch. Jonah encouraged me to pray.

“He's ashamed to be seen pushing the carriage,” I said.

“Because of her deformity?”

“People will think it's his fault.”

“TheaDora may be a punishment for all our sins,” the minister said.

“She's a sweet baby, Reverend. Both heads laugh. Thea is starting to talk. Dora has three teeth.” Getting into the car after the rehearsal that night, I had a momentary feeling of panic: I'd left my baby behind.

The following week, when we moved ten years forward in the life of this family, different combinations of the three girls tried playing TheaDora. Muriel had made a red calico dress with two necklines, and we had two girls at a time try it on, quickly discovering that it hung correctly only when the girls were more or less the same height. Justine and Mo, then, became TheaDora, while Cindy, who was smaller, was their friend. We all laughed the first time our wide little girl, with Mo's confident black face and Justine's sly fair one sticking out of the great big dress, moved toward us, a dark brown left arm and a light-skinned right arm slapping the air as they tried to balance, while four sneakers stepped on one another. The girls stumbled and fell in a tangle but soon were rehearsing out in the corridor, coached by Ellen, while the rest of us reworked baby scenes. Intertwining their hidden arms and counting softly, they were able to walk. By the following week, Muriel had added a flounce to the dress. Their feet concealed, Mo and Justine became a two-headed girl. I watched Muriel watch them, first critically, then with a look of astonishment and pride. Cindy, who commented on everything while twisting or sucking on strands of thin, brown hair, played with TheaDora, teased her, argued with her. “You're not my friend. I don't want a friend with
two heads.
”

 

P
ekko thought he might buy a pickup truck from a dealer in Watertown, and on a Saturday late that month I drove him there. Beside me on the front seat of my car, he talked in a slow, steady voice about what he could do with a pickup. At such times we might talk on and on, back and forth, making obvious remarks like a real married couple. Arthur barked too often in the backseat, and Pekko told him to be quiet. The stretch of Route 63 that was our destination was ugly, nothing but car dealerships. While Pekko examined the truck he'd seen advertised, I walked Arthur along the edge of the road. The day was sunny and warm, and we'd seen tulips in every yard. Arthur yanked on the leash, and I yanked back.

“Did you know that the first act of the first New Haven government was a trial for murder?” I said when we drove off again together, since Pekko hadn't bought the pickup. I suppose I wanted to give him details about my work, too: an even exchange. I'd read this fact in Gordon's office. Then I interrupted myself. “Let's take Arthur to a park.” I remembered a nature preserve in Litchfield I'd visited with a former boyfriend, and without waiting for an answer, I made a U-turn and drove north.

“It wasn't well-maintained,” Pekko said. “I want a truck that belonged to someone who appreciates trucks.”

“Right,” I said. “Did you know that the first act of the New Haven government, when they set it up in the sixteen hundreds, was a murder trial?”

“And what does
that
mean?” said Pekko, suddenly paying attention.

“What does it
mean
?”

“What are you implying?”

“I'm not implying anything,” I said. Gordon had been away at a conference that week, and I'd read for hours without a plan, obeying impulse. The archive included pages photocopied from a history of New Haven. Its government, I explained to Pekko, had been modeled not on the English common law system but on one derived, somehow, from the Bible. It was based on a system that had been established for Massachusetts but never used. New Haven—briefly called Quinnipiack—was established while an Indian named Ne-paumuck awaited trial for murder. Once the state was set up, he was tried and decapitated.