Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (27 page)

Jonah appeared, chased Chantal, and caught her. He led her offstage, and the next scene was the trial.

Denise was the judge, Jonah was the prosecutor, and David was the defense attorney. Chantal was the defendant. TheaDora was the witness.

“Do you recognize the defendant?” said the prosecutor.

“I do,” said Dora.

“Well, I don't!” said Thea.

“See,” said Jonah. “She does.”

“Objection!” called the defense attorney. “Half of her doesn't!”

“Where were you at the time of the murder?” the prosecutor asked.

“I was right there,” said Thea. “I was looking at the map. But I'd have seen a murder. I didn't see anything.”

“But we have the body,” said the judge. “The question is, Is the defendant the person who killed her?”

“Couldn't say,” said Thea.

“Yes!” said Dora.

“I have a confession to make,” said the defendant.

“So do I,” said the judge.

The defendant confessed to the murder. She had never intended to do it, and would never get over it. She was prepared to spend her life in prison, where she would dedicate herself to the welfare of her fellow prisoners.

“Now it's my turn,” the judge said. “I used to be a doctor. I quit and went to law school, and later I became a judge. The reason I quit was that I was the doctor who delivered TheaDora. TheaDora, I didn't think. Later I was sorry, and I tried to find you, but your parents had moved.”

“What are you sorry about?” said the defense attorney.

“I said you were one baby, but I was wrong. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that two people can live in one body. Thea and Dora, you're twins!” The judge banged her gavel on a table we'd set before her.

“In that case, we can both marry her. Marry them,” said David. He explained that law was a second career for the prosecutor and him as well. “We were the carpenters who fell in love with you. It was an intolerable situation. To distract us, we quit carpentry and went to law school.”

Thea had been in love with David all this time, and Dora in love with Jonah.

“Doc says she's twins,” said Hydrangea.

 

L
iving in New Haven, one is never alone—though not in the way Thea and Dora were never alone. Wallace Stevens writes about the difference between “New Haven before and after one arrives,” and I think he means that New Haven is in your mind before you get there; when you do, there's the real New Haven and the imagined one as well. But I think “New Haven before and after one arrives” also means we change it by arriving, because it's just small enough that everyone matters—or seems to—though not as in a small town in which you can keep track. It's a city, but not an anonymous one. If you cry on a street corner, someone you know will drive by, or walk past, looking. On vacation, I like going to a place where I know nobody.

Daphne had left the rehearsal early. Ellen said Cindy was sleeping over at her house and added her to our group. As we were walking to the car, a little sweaty, Ellen said quietly, “It's all right not to tell me. I like secrets—I mean, secrets I don't know. I know you have a secret, and I'll help you own it, even though you don't want to talk to me about it. You can lie to me, too, you know. I don't mind lies.”

“My friend Charlotte can't stand it when I lie.” I laughed and looked at her more frankly than I had in the past.

“That kind of friend is useful too,” she said.

I dropped them off and drove home. Arthur met me at the door. As I had the night I came home from New York, I heard voices, but these were the voices of a man and a woman. Daphne and Pekko were sitting in our kitchen, Daphne looking small and accused on the big sofa, clutching a glass of what looked like water, Pekko at the table with his own glass. “I'm sorry,” Daphne said when she saw me. “I meant to be gone by the time you got home. How was the rest of the rehearsal?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“It better be okay. The performance is in a month.”

“More than a month.” Mid-October, after the conference.

Daphne stood. “I guess we've said all we have to say, Pekko,” she said.

Pekko stood too but said nothing. I stood in the doorway, my hand playing with Arthur's curls. I took a step toward the hook where the leash hung. I'd walk him, so I wouldn't have to find out what Daphne and Pekko had been discussing, and so I could be alone for the first time in hours, persuading myself that more times with Gordon would come.

So I reached toward the leash, and Arthur was starting to wag, when Pekko said, “Wait.” He raised his hand and let it fall. “Wait, Daisy.”

“What?” I said, and he didn't answer.

Daphne said, “I tried to be fair. But he's not listening.” She wore a skimpy tank top that wrinkled over her flat chest, and shorts that were quite short, though the weather was cool. Daphne never wore bright colors, and her clothes often seemed chosen to match her
no-color hair, yet there was something appealing about her. “I want results,” she said. “I want results that already happened.”

“You want what nobody can give you, Daphne,” Pekko said. “Free rent—”

“I
said
I'd earn it.”

“You can't earn it. You think you know what you're doing, but you don't.”

“Look, I'm going,” Daphne said. “That isn't the important part, anyway. The important part is the condition of the building.”

She walked toward the door, and neither of us followed her. Then she turned and said, “Just so you know, Daisy. We're having a rent strike, starting tomorrow. Nobody's paid the September rent, and nobody's going to. We'll be picketing this house in the morning. The
Register
's covering it, and maybe the
Advocate
and Channel 8.”

Arthur saw her to the door. She left it open, and I followed her to close it, then returned to Pekko in the kitchen. He was still sitting, drawn up to the table as if to eat a meal. As so often, I was looking at his back. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“I'm a slumlord. That's what they're going to say. All over the paper.”

“You're not.”

“Of course I'm not.”

I sat down and put my hand on his big, muscular arm with its gray hairs. “But, Pekko,” I said. “What she wants— Can't you do some of what she wants?”

“Which puts her in the driver's seat. Which lets her say I
admit
I'm a slumlord.”

“Nobody will take it that seriously. There's a lot wrong with that building. You could send in a crew tomorrow. There's bad plumbing. Bugs.”

“I'm not a slumlord, Daisy.”

“I know what you're doing. You're stretching yourself thin so you can take care of all these people. Daphne. Edmund. Is Edmund living in that building?”

“He just needs a base there, so he can help his parents. Please don't tell anybody. Did Daphne tell you?”

“I happened to see him there.”

“You were there?”

“Yes,” I said. “I was there. I wanted to see for myself.”

He pushed his chair back, so he was farther away from me. “And what did you think?”

I stood up. There were a few dishes on the drainboard, and I began putting them in the cupboard to give my hands something to do. “I didn't like what I saw. You're not a slumlord, but you seem like one. How do you expect people to understand what you're doing? You make no effort to explain yourself. And I think you could do a little better. You don't have a lot of money, but you can fix the place up a little better than that.”

He didn't say anything. There was a tiny nod, as if to acknowledge the answer to a question. “She's organized my other buildings,” he said.

“I don't even know how many buildings you own,” I said then.

“You don't?”

“No.”

“Well, four. You didn't know it was four?”

“I suppose I could have figured it out.”

“You don't seem like my wife, Daisy,” he said. He stood up, slapped his knees, and began to leave the room.

I was enraged. “I don't seem like your wife! How can I sympathize with you? You never say anything. You are secrets piled upon secrets. You know who committed a murder twenty-five years ago, and you don't go to the cops—you have no—”

“You're not going to the cops, are you?” He turned faster than I'd have thought he could move.

“Of course not. Of course not—if you don't—” I said. “But why is it a secret he lives in your house? If he does? If nobody knows, why can't he just stay anywhere, like anybody?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I know it's important to him.”

“I don't believe that's the whole story,” I said.

“Sometimes you have to trust me. Why did you marry me,” he said, “if you don't trust me?”

I stopped shouting. I put the plate in my hand on the table, as if I were setting the table, and then I sat down at my place and said nothing more.

Never being alone means you are part of what you didn't agree to and responsible for what you didn't do. I knew why I married Pekko. I'd always liked sex with him. I recognized his goodness. I was titillated by his mysteries. I felt huge affection for him, when I wasn't exasperated. But I didn't marry him in the way my mother married my father. I didn't open a joint account with him—not at the bank, not metaphorically either. After a while I stopped sitting there and went to bed. I didn't walk Arthur, but Pekko did. He came in late, and I woke for only a moment when he got into bed.

In the morning, Pekko was not in bed. I lay listening. When I came downstairs in my robe, he was filling the coffeepot. “Are they here?” I said.

“They're here.” He was dressed and had brought in the
Times
.

I went to the window. In front of our narrow Goatville house, on our undistinguished street, three women—one small white woman who, when she turned, was Daphne, two black women, one big, one small—walked wearily back and forth on the sidewalk. Daphne held a poster in her hands. I couldn't make out the words.

“They look tired already,” I said.

“They got up early.”

“How long have they been here?”

“Six or so.”

“What are you going to do?”

“There's nothing to do.”

While we ate breakfast, a reporter called. I answered the phone and handed it to Pekko, then listened as he refused to comment.

“I can't stand that,” I said, as he hung up.

“What?”

“You want me to behave like your wife. All right. As your wife, I object to your saying nothing.”

“If I don't want to be quoted, it's a good idea to say nothing.”

“They'll say you refused to talk. Call her back and say
something.
”

“What? What do you want me to say?” he said, pushing away his coffee cup and standing. “I'm going to the office.”

“Are they picketing that, too?”

“I suppose.”

All I wanted then was to stop him. I put down my bagel and cup of coffee, and stood, putting my arms around him, holding him so he couldn't leave.

“What is it?” he said.

“I love you.”

“I know,” said Pekko. “I love you, too. But let me do what I have to do.”

“What do you have to do?”

He wrested himself from my arms. “Look. In a city like this, if all the apartments are beautiful, a lot of folks will be homeless. I do what I can.”

“Can't you tell them
that
?”

“No. I can't. Partly because I don't want anybody looking over my books—and partly because I don't want anybody looking at Edmund, thinking about Edmund, noticing Edmund.”

“But why should they?”

“I don't know, but I'm sorry I told you about him, and I'm not going to talk to any media people and take any more chances, whether that makes sense to you or not.”

Pekko drummed his knuckles on the table vigorously, and Arthur thrust his head into his lap. “Daisy,” he finally said, his voice sounding odd, with less resonance than usual, “will you come with me?”

I almost said no. I had two appointments that morning, and I had hoped to get through them quickly so as to go to Gordon's office, because I had plenty to do, and because I was always hoping for more with Gordon—more sex, more fighting, more disappointment, more anything. And I don't believe in agreeing to do what you don't want to do. I could make lengthy arguments having to do with the uselessness of unwilling sacrifice, even when it's small. And there's my habit of doing right every other time. Or, better, my belief that I'm half good. I thought Pekko should fix up his houses. I thought he probably should have gone to the police about Edmund, so even if it happened to be one of my good moments, I wasn't sure I should stand by his side in this instance. I didn't quite respect his decisions, even when I didn't think them morally suspect. I thought he could limit the charity and look after his image.