Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (21 page)

That evening I told Pekko about my afternoon at Hammonasset. “I should do it more often,” I said. “It was too hot to work.” It's a long, wild stretch of beach, with skinny, rocky peninsulas, and I told Pekko that going there had been a terrific idea. It's crowded on weekends, but on that weekday afternoon I saw mostly suburban women with kids. Pekko nodded noncommittally; he doesn't like to swim. But I was no more persuaded than he was. I had thought my afternoon at the beach would soothe and comfort me, but it didn't, and I began to feel a sense of irresolution that made it impossible
to sit still, or do anything useful. All I wanted to do was phone Gordon. And then I did, while Pekko walked Arthur. Gordon wasn't home, and I left a message: “Don't call me, I just wanted to say hello.” I regretted leaving any message as soon as I'd done it, as if I'd left something of value he might alter to his own purposes. What would prove Charlotte wrong would be a happy affair, the one I'd described to Arthur in that walk at the river. I'd stayed away from Gordon that afternoon so as to prove to myself I was free, to prove the affair was fun.

The next day I went to his office, and after I'd sat tensely for a while, trying to work as Gordon had incomprehensible phone conversations, I walked past him to the bathroom, and when I returned he followed me into the archive, talking in his light voice about the heat (“Can't think, can't
think
. . .”), then grabbing my arm, then becoming quieter and gentler, but no less insistent, as his gestures became caresses. But as I was chiding myself inwardly for my nerves—and wondering what I'd do for a bathing suit, since I'd forgotten to return the red one to my bag—he dropped his arms at his sides, shook his head, and said, “Not a good plan today. Another day.”

“Okay,” I said lightly, but I minded. As usual, his shirt—short-sleeved, striped blue and white—had worked its way free from his pants, and he stuffed it back where it belonged, and returned to his desk.

In some ways the weeks that followed, through July and into August, were better than the start of the affair—just because I
do
like irresolution. Gordon made me as uncertain as an adolescent, needy for the phone or the touch of a hand. The last person who could make me wait that way was Bruce Andalusia. Gordon didn't ordinarily call me, because we couldn't talk much—and anyway, he didn't see any point in discussing sex—but now and then he'd have a professional question, and I anticipated those times too intently. I experienced anew the convalescent feeling (when he
did
want to leave the office with me, when he
did
phone) that makes minor illness such a pleasure for the young: pain succeeded by euphoria when pain goes. Identifying to myself what made me happy now, I recalled with pleasure even menstrual cramps, because of the moment when after hours of pain enough pills loosened the body into sleep, sleep and comfort. Postmenopausal, in July I became a connoisseur of pain that will dissipate, postponing even glasses of water in the heat, aspirin for headache, until I could no longer bear waiting for pleasure. I didn't want Gordon to swivel his chair around and start up with me at work, because I wanted to prolong hoping he would.

I couldn't stop suggesting afternoon encounters, but I was no longer natural about it. I'd lost my sense of rhythm. I always wanted to do it, and twice he said no and didn't change his mind. Then one afternoon, his back to me, Gordon said from his desk, “Can you go away for a weekend?”

“Me?”

“Who else?”

“Sure,” I said, before trying to figure out how that might be possible. Eventually I decided to tell Pekko I wanted some time alone, away. Pekko likes cool-weather vacations in cities with lots of jazz. He wouldn't want to come.

“New York?” said Gordon.

“Not the country?”

“I live in the country.”

New York in summer wouldn't have been my first choice, but Gordon said, “Hotels are air-conditioned.” I told Pekko I wanted to sleep alone in an air-conditioned hotel for a couple of nights, visit my brother, and see a drawing show in SoHo I'd read about. My plans didn't sound quite plausible to me, but he made no objection.

 

O
ur weekend took place a couple of weeks after we first discussed it. In the interval, one hot afternoon Ellen lured me into her backyard with iced tea. She talked about her married boyfriend. “It would be simpler to have this out of my life,” she said. “I picture having picnics in the park with the children. Of course I could do that whether I'm seeing Lou or not—I don't see him every day—but I know I won't.”

I didn't say anything.

“If I go on a picnic, something terrible will happen to the children. A punishment for dating a married man. I'll take them to the top of East Rock, and they'll fall off the cliff and get killed.”

“The monument on top of East Rock,” I said, “looks like an erect, circumcised penis. With a woman on top of it.”

“That's true, it does,” said Ellen. Then she continued, “Remember when I told you my neighbor saw you going into my house with Gordon Skeetling, and you explained how he loves houses and wanted to see the shape of my dining room?”

“Yes,” I said, startled that she'd remembered Gordon's name. I swallowed some tea. Maybe now I could get her to come inside and work.

“I didn't say so at the time,” Ellen said, “but she saw you go in with him twice.”

I said, “What do you want, Ellen?”

“You're going to tell me about it sooner or later, so why not now?”

“I don't have time,” I said. “Sorry.” I put down my glass and left by the driveway, without returning to the house.

That night or maybe the next, Daphne called when Pekko was out. “I called to talk to him,” she said. “Some of the neighbors are pretty impatient. But there's something I've been meaning to tell you, too. Your mom feels bad about you. She keeps telling me she's worried because you haven't dropped in. She thinks there's something wrong that you're not telling her.”

I called my mother and yelled at her for talking to Daphne about me. “I don't tell her any secrets,” my mother said. “I don't know any secrets.”

I never told my mother secrets, because I told so many people the history of my progress in and out of men's beds that
secret
wasn't the word, but my mother was one of the people I told. I don't think I talked about Denny to anyone but Charlotte, and I lied to her, minimizing the affair, but I talked about everyone else. As for Roz, she was never great at the comforting remark, but in my single days I did like dazzling her with a carefree tale of my recent exploits, reassuring myself as well that
carefree
was the right word. I'd point out to myself that if I were in love—meaning needy and at risk—I wouldn't talk to Roz. Now I hung up without persuading her she shouldn't have talked to Daphne. I might have been in her kitchen, bending my legs around her table leg, drinking iced tea or iced coffee (preferably iced coffee, but she didn't make it on purpose; she had it only when there was leftover morning coffee), and talking, giving myself daughter points for being there. I missed that happy woman, that me.

 

M
uriel and I got the part of TheaDora, though we were older than the other women, older than TheaDora. But we were the same height, and finally everybody thought that mattered most, as it did with the children. In the dress we looked most like one person. Cindy, now TheaDora's little sister, Hydrangea, tormented her. Cindy chanted, “You have two he-ads, you have two he-ads.”

“So what?” I said. I was Dora.

“Now, Hydrangea, honey,” said Thea, “I want you to think about what you just said. How do you think I feel?”

“We'll be late for work,” Dora snapped.

Thea kept talking, but in practice, if I hurried, she fell into step. Dora's consciousness ruled. “We have to go to the bathroom,” I said once, just to see what would happen.

“You think I don't
know
that?” said Thea.

TheaDora worked as a carpenter. Invited by Ellen, Daphne came in from the corridor, where she lurked, to provide technical advice. Ellen was a brisk assistant director, quite different from the Ellen I knew at home. She wanted the play to be “right,” as she put it.

“I'm more interested in spontaneity,” Katya said.

“Up to a point,” said Ellen. As TheaDora staggered around the stage, enormous in her blue dress, the others tended to pair off and shout back and forth.

All but Hydrangea, a loner. “You're
always
late to work. Why should today be any different?”

Daphne listed carpentry terms for us to use. “One-by-four. Mortise and tenon.”

TheaDora was hired by Jonah, a foreman on a construction project who advocated affirmative action and was delighted to see her. “You are not only a woman,” he said, “you are of mixed race!”

“We are two women,” I said as Dora.

“No, dear, we are a woman,” said Thea.

We took our place in a line of people hammering. Jonah hammered, David hammered, and I hammered with my right hand while Thea held the nail with Muriel's left hand. As we hammered, Jonah said, “Well, you certainly are a pretty girl!” and Dora said, “It's nice of you to notice, although we're two girls,” but Thea didn't answer.

“What do
you
think, Thea?” called Ellen.

“He's fresh,” Thea said. Thea liked David, but Dora liked Jonah.

“We need a little more going on in this story, not just love and work,” said Ellen, as Muriel and I climbed out of the dress at the end of rehearsal.

“TheaDora could witness a murder,” I said, since murder was always on my mind these days. “One head sees it, the other doesn't.”

Denise offered to murder Hydrangea.

“I don't want to be murdered. Then I can't say anything,” said Cindy.

“You'll say plenty before you're murdered,” Katya said.

“Can I die slowly?”

“We'll think about it.”

 

W
hen we went to New York, Gordon insisted on driving—that is, he didn't merely insist on going to the city by car instead of by train, he insisted on taking his own car, which he'd drive. I protested, then left my car at home. It was a Friday afternoon, and I took a cab to Gordon's office. I found myself trying to decide what I'd do if he wasn't there, but Gordon was answering
e-mail. I waited in his extra chair rather than start up some project of my own. I hated waiting. At last he picked up a briefcase and an overnight bag. He looked different. He was wearing glasses, the glasses we'd chosen together. The frames were darker than I remembered. “You're wearing your glasses.”

“Sometimes the contacts bother me, so I don't use them for a few days.”

“Are you bringing work?” I said.

“Laptop.”

“Why?”

“Didn't you?” he said.

“No. I thought this was a lovers' tryst, not a business meeting.”

“Sex makes me want to work, and I expect to spend a lot of time on sex this weekend. And the hotel is expensive. If I do a little work I can take it off my taxes.” He'd made a reservation at the SoHo Grand, after I'd mentioned the drawing show.

Now we got into his Saab. Again he turned down my offer to drive. The traffic was bad all the way to New York. Gordon kept NPR on. We reached the city so late I was starving. I'd imagined falling into bed, but we checked into the hotel, washed our faces, and looked for a restaurant where we wouldn't need a reservation. We ate at a little Italian place in the West Village. Good salad. I had looked forward to unlimited conversation but—oddly shy—couldn't think of a subject. I talked about salad.

Then he said, “Want to see a show tomorrow night?”

“I'd like that.”

“Maybe we can get tickets. We should have planned.”

“You said we'd just be going to bed and working on your laptop.”

“Sorry, sorry. I don't like the theater,” he said. “Not true. I only like what's extremely good, and I don't like taking risks. Maybe that's why I didn't suggest it.”

“You don't like the theater?” I said, picturing our grubby troupe of amateurs, our endless conspiracy about the implications of the headline I'd first seen in Gordon's office. “You know,” I said, “it's time I told you something.”

“What's that, you're an actress?”

“In a sense,” I said. I ordered a second glass of Cabernet. “You may not remember this,” I continued. “The day we met, you showed me your favorite headline.”

“My favorite headline? I have a favorite headline?” He looked at me, knife and fork poised above his plate, ready to disagree and be amused and amusing. I couldn't get used to his glasses.

“Two-Headed Woman . . .”

“Oh,
that.
”

And so I told him about Katya, the players, and huge TheaDora in her blue dress with white buttons. When I'd told Charlotte, she'd listened with increasing glee, and I was proud of myself for getting involved in such a mess—such a quintessentially New Haven mess, both naïve and sophisticated. Its ethnic variety, as always in New Haven, was in part self-conscious and in part too ordinary to notice. I was proud of the play, too, as an effort of the imagination. I hadn't believed in it, but then I did. Not all the time. Sometimes I thought it was stupid.