Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (14 page)

They couldn't remember what they'd said. “That you don't like being too close . . .”

“I don't want you breathing on my face,” Cindy said. “I don't want to be in that dress with anybody.”

“There's nothing wrong with my breath,” Mo said and blew into Cindy's eyes, so Cindy's lank, brown hair flew up. She had a tense little face like her mother's, and she looked as if she might cry, but then I saw she was trying not to laugh.

We were different people when involved with a two-headed person. Maybe I had become different in the rest of my life as well. Gordon didn't know about the play but had been the source of the idea. Maybe I wouldn't tell him. Right then, being in the play felt like a magnificent urban act. It was art being made by the untaught but well-intentioned wit and instinct of plain people. I liked considering myself one of the plain people, though sometimes I caught myself faking it, adopting an attitude and even a vocabulary that weren't mine. That night, with Justine away, we worked on scenes in which the child TheaDora was not present: first a conversation about her between her mother (me) and a social worker who believed in mainstreaming, played by David, and then a conference with her teacher. The scene with the teacher, played by Muriel, was hard, and we did it over and over, changing it.

“Madam,” Muriel said, “your daughter is so busy arguing with herself she can't color. If one head says red, the other says blue. I don't know what to do with her.”

“Don't
your
heads ever argue?”

“My dear lady, I have only one head.” The teacher turned it slowly in my direction—her good, big head.

“I'm sorry to hear it, but I shouldn't hold it against you, because I too am not all there in just that department.”

“The other day they had a fight about whether she needed to go to the bathroom, and then she wet her pants.” The teacher had been sitting in a chair, but now she stood and paced, while I folded my arms stubbornly and twisted in my chair each time she passed me.

Then she said, stopping, “Oh, that's not the problem. I'm afraid of your daughter.”

“What are you afraid of?” I said, turning as she strode past.

“What am I afraid of?” the teacher said. She stopped walking. “I'm afraid of anger. I'm afraid of love. I'm afraid of sex. I'm afraid of white people. I'm afraid of black people.”

“I understand why your fear of black people and white people makes you afraid of my daughter,” I said, “because she is both black and white, but why does your fear of sex, love, and anger make you afraid of poor TheaDora?”

“I don't know,” Muriel said, no longer sounding like the teacher.

“I know,” I said. “Anger comes out of the head. Love is all in the head. Maybe even sex is all in the head, I don't know.”

“So if you have two heads . . .”

“More anger. More love. More sex.”

“Does she eat twice as much as other people?” asked the teacher, resuming her role. Now she stood still in front of me.

“Maybe not twice,” I said, “but a lot. Both mouths are always busy. You can see she's fat.”

“Do you like having a two-headed child?”

The mother answered, “I like having a child of any sort. I never thought I'd have a child.” The mother teared up at that point. “It's good to have somebody to love!”

“Don't you love your husband?” asked this nosy teacher.

“Oh, him,” I said. The rehearsal was over, and Muriel and I grabbed each other. Hugging was big in this group.

 

I
decided I'd go to bed with Gordon five times. Once was not enough, twice would give the second occasion a dolorous weight, and three times, I thought, would have the same effect, except that both the second and the third would acquire that sentimental portentousness. I don't like the number four; I prefer odd numbers. Five beddings would constitute a short affair, not just an indiscretion, but more might cause difficulty: I'd need to tell others, or he would, or I'd get bored, or we'd become careless and someone—Pekko—would find out. I was more comfortable embarking on a limited series of sexual meetings, rather like my limited run on the radio, also a series of five. I considered discussing the number five with Gordon but decided not to. I did say, the next time I was in his office, “That was lovely, the other day. I don't want to make a habit of it, but that doesn't mean I'm through already.”

“Fair enough,” he said. That was our only reference to what now felt, as we conferred on work issues, like a different existence that didn't overlap, as if we knew each other two ways. I was glad we didn't rush off to Ellen's house or some other place that day, but also glad when, the next time we met, he said, “I have a towel in my car.”

“Well, that's remarkable!” I said.

“Is today a good day?”

Ellen was back, but surely she was at work. It was eleven in the morning, and the kids would be at school. I'd ring the doorbell, and if somebody was home, I'd make up an excuse for being there. Of course, somebody could come in while we were there. That felt so scary, so exciting, that I was glad we were doing it, and glad we'd do it only five times altogether: limited suspense, like suspense near the end of a movie. Maybe we'd think of another place pretty soon. We went, we were brief—Gordon understood the danger, and like me was stimulated by it, not repelled—and we were back at Clark's Pizza, eating souvlaki, talking about work, before the lunch rush was over. This time, in bed, Gordon did something I particularly liked with his tongue, which was long and flexible, comparable in its way to his arms.

 

A
s April turned into May, as I bought a few flowers and tomato plants and forgot to plant them, I contentedly made lists to myself of Pekko's good qualities and Gordon's, and how the two men were different, what each would never do or never say. Pekko would never say “Good haircut”; Gordon would never keep silent, as Pekko did habitually. They were different about dogs. Pekko regarded Arthur as his responsibility; Gordon spoke of that German shepherd as if she'd been his drinking buddy, a coconspirator. I was fascinated by his curiosity. One afternoon in the office, he came uninvited to sit on a table in the archive. “Tell me about your brothers,” he said.

I'd mentioned them. He even remembered their names. “Which are you closer to, Carl or Stephen?”

“Stephen.”

“I don't just mean in age.”

“Neither do I.”

“What does he do?”

I told him Stephen worked in the shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

“Running away from something.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It's so indoors.”

“Like a store in a mall?”

“Further in.”

“I need to concentrate,” I said, “I don't have much more time today.” And he apologized genially and returned to his own desk.

Knowing we'd have only five times together, I was glad they were spaced. “This is the solution,” I said to Arthur, as we walked by the river one morning, sidestepping birders with binoculars. Now the leaves were out: light green. “I'm too old and independent to be married, unless I have a lover from time to time. Maybe every spring.” I wondered if they'd always be so easy to come by, or so nice.

I noticed that my habits changed slightly during this time. I was messier, and might leave a pile of laundry half folded to cut up vegetables, then leave them for some third task. I didn't take up a craft, though I believe crafts often arise out of sexual complexity. Two women I've known started making stained-glass hangings when their marriages were in trouble, and I think pottery has to do with sadness, if the shapes have enough space inside to contain darkness. Women knit when their lives are changing, and make patchwork when they are trying to reconcile contradictory urges.

I don't know what makes people weave baskets, and I kept forgetting to ask Ellen if she'd woven some of the baskets in her house; the rough, chunky ones looked homemade. Ellen came home from vacation full of resolve to change her life (though she didn't seem to be knitting). She'd dyed her hair blond like mine, and she wanted to spend more time with me, even though she had to pay for it. I'm firm about hours, and the customers pay for talks that take place while I stand on the porch, ready to depart, as they think of one more question. I try not to prolong the conversation, and I look at my watch and write down a number when the door closes.

The first time I went to Ellen's house after being there with Gordon, I was scared. She might have known I took the sugar bowl, she probably suspected I took her green shirt, and how could I be certain Gordon and I hadn't dropped something revealing? What if she'd sniffed the towel? I scolded myself for repeatedly risking the disapproval of someone who wasn't important.

Ellen was glad to see me and had no accusations. I'd pictured her more determined and angry than she was likely to get. She fluttered and shrugged and led me to still another room, the dining room, which contained more baskets and several big bookcases. The baskets were filled with magazines, and additional piles lay on the floor. Beyond an elaborate mahogany table, windows overlooked Ellen's big backyard—full, I was sure, of shrubs and budding stalks that had also made their way into her life unbidden. An old oval mirror hung to the left of the windows, and when I glanced into it, for a moment I thought Ellen, with her new light hair, was I.

“I met someone,” Ellen said, and I almost said, “So did I.”

“It's the first time in years,” she said. “I met him just before I went away, but we talked twice while I was gone.”

I suddenly felt uneasy lest Ellen's new boyfriend, somehow, was Gordon, so I murmured, “Tell me,” but she didn't.

“I apologize for bringing this up,” she said. “I'm letting you know because it explains my distraction.” I wanted to say that, though I too had met someone, I was not distracted, but I said nothing. Then she said, “No, you're just a good person to talk to.”

Then she wanted to tell me her thoughts about the play, which were numerous. “I shouldn't always stay,” she said. “Justine should have time there to herself, so it's not as if I'm a friend of the adults. She's the friend. Of course I know she's not your
friend,
but—”

“She's part of the troupe,” I said impatiently.

“And I'm not,” she said. “I ought to find something comparable to do, but I keep wanting to help. Katya needs help.”

“Help how?”

“I'd direct. I'd be the assistant director.”

“Well, ask Katya,” I said. Katya couldn't say no to anyone.

“But then Justine wouldn't have her experience—”

“I see,” said I. “Maybe talk to Justine first.”

“Maybe
you
would? She'd be honest with you.”

“I guess I could do that.” I decided I'd encourage Justine to say no.

In the meantime, we turned to the magazines. Presumably because she'd acquired most of them herself, Ellen was willing to consider disposing of them, although not without looking them over pretty carefully. For once our morning felt useful, and we produced a good bit of material to be recycled. I stayed longer than I'd meant to, and as we worked, the phone rang, and Ellen went to answer it. Alone in the dining room, I stood and stretched, staring into her yard. I could hear Ellen's voice, though not individual words, but then she must have turned as she spoke, because I did hear. “Louie,” she said, “get your ass over here and fuck me.”

 

T
wo days later, I called to Gordon from my desk to his, “You want to do that again?” It would be our third time, and the little affair would be more than half over. I'd be better off, I thought, moving things along.

“Mmm.”

“When?”

“As soon as possible.”

He lay on top of me, an hour later (of course he liked being on top), again in Ellen's house. She had told me, when she got off the phone, that she and her lover were going to New York for the day, two days later. Gordon lay over me, and I delayed letting him go when we were done, holding his buttocks, though his weight made me breathless. Then I pushed him off and kissed him lightly, swinging my legs out of bed, reaching for my bra. I felt free as I never had with a man before, despite all my experience. I liked getting my clothes on and getting back to work, while he told me with excitement what engaged his mind that day. I liked knowing we had only two more times together, while he didn't know. Nervousness about Ellen—she might have changed her plans—added to my haste, but also to my pleasure.

“Help me pick out new glasses?” he said as we got dressed.

“But you don't wear glasses.”

“I wear contacts. Sometimes my eyes get tired, and then I wear glasses.”

It felt disconcerting not to have known I'd been kissing eyes with little disks in them. I didn't want to do anything more with him, just get back to the office, have a cup of coffee from his pot, and resume work. I'd started planning the conference, and sex stimulated my brain, too. But I thought tenderly of Gordon with tired eyes, long, knobby, gray-haired Gordon wanting me to look at him in glasses, some of which wouldn't look good. It was a nice lovers' errand: nobody would suspect, if we met anybody at the optician's, a block from Gordon's office. We'd be a man taking advice from a woman he knew and worked with. So I accompanied him. In the car, I asked him, “Do you imagine going to bed with me before we do it?” For me, the imagining was particularly delectable.