Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman (8 page)

That night we decided, after some debate, that we needed a couple of kids to play the two-headed little girl if we were indeed presenting a sort of biography. I was opposed, but when I lost the argument I didn't lose my usual desire for control. Somebody said she knew a cute ten-year-old, and I thought of Ellen's not-cute Justine, with her cool, intelligent look. I didn't want Ellen involved in the play, but I often can't help trying to seem more competent than anybody else, so while the others shrugged, I scribbled her phone number on a bit of paper and handed it to Katya.

Then we acted out a scene in which the mother of the two-headed baby tries nursing both heads simultaneously, one on each breast. Denise was the mother this time, and she arranged the doll on her chest. “My kids had only one head, and still I could nurse and keep private,” she said serenely. As friends and family members, we circled her, offering imaginary cushions and other props, as well as advice.

“Just nurse one head! Maybe the other will drop off!” I said. Nobody noticed what I considered my funniest lines, but I hoped that Katya's tape recorder was picking them up. We had played back some of what we'd done. Parts sounded more like scuffles and panting than speech, but Katya insisted she had plenty to transcribe. She also took notes. When she wasn't pacing, she sprawled with her back against a wall, a big drawing pad in her lap, a felt-tipped marker in her hand. She said she wrote faster if the writing was big.

“May I ask a question?” Jonah said in measured tones. The current parents had flopped onto their mats after trying a scene we all hated, in which the father (Chantal, that night) tried to persuade the mother (me) to go to bed with him, and she said, “Yeah, and get a three-headed baby?” while as a baby-sitter, Denise tried walking with the two-headed doll. Wiping sweat and patting our hair, we nodded and looked at Jonah, who had not participated so far. “What is the
meaning
?” he said.

Somebody explained the headline. We were working up to a wedding, we said. “We're searching for the story,” Katya offered, easing herself to the floor. “There will be a process of decision making later.”

“Is it about
prejudice
?” Jonah persisted. “I think it's about prejudice.”

“You mean race?” said Muriel. “I'm tired of talking about race.”

“Her race, or maybe her handicap?” Jonah said. “I'm just asking.”

Chantal said, “No, no, nothing like that. I think it's about not being able to make up your mind. Some days I feel like I have two heads.”

To my astonishment, I was suddenly angry; I felt the kind of anger that burns the veins in your arms. I almost said, “But I brought the headline!” as if that made me the boss. I knew the two-headed woman had nothing to do with indecision, and I thought she had nothing to do with prejudice either. I was surprised to be angry, because I didn't know I cared about the play at all. All I could say was “That's too simple, don't you see?” They looked at me. They did not see. “We're talking about having two heads. Don't you see how interesting that is? Having two heads is—having two heads. It's not
like
anything.” To myself, I sounded childish and obvious, and everyone looked at me with careful politeness.

“Then why do it?” Jonah said. “Nobody really has two heads. It's about being anyone who's looked down on. We need reminders about that.”

“I guess I think it's something like that, too,” Katya said.

“No,” I said from my mat, pressing my hands into my thighs. “I have no interest in that.”

“You don't think it's important that people are prejudiced?” Denise said.

“Of course it's important.” I couldn't explain further because I didn't know what I meant. All I could think of was Pekko saying that Gordon saw things as they were. I wanted to
look
at that two-headed person, at the two-headedness of her. “Comparing her to
anything,
” I said, struggling to control my voice, “is disrespectful. She's not
like
anything.”

 

G
ordon had changed our appointment so he wouldn't be late, but he was late. I thought of Ellen as I again stood waiting on steps, but this time I had no key, and the day was colder, though it was later in the spring. At last I saw him coming quickly toward me down the other side of Temple Street, past the gray stones of the back of St. Mary's Church. He was not just hurrying but running, the bottom of his jacket flapping. He crossed with a glance at the traffic and stopped, puffing, at the foot of the stairs I stood on. “It's worth it, because I have more time than I thought. I can stay a little.”

I didn't need him to stay. I had learned enough to get started, which probably meant sitting and reading at random. But once we were inside I began to talk about how I usually worked. I was unsure of myself, uncomfortable because I'd expected him to leave, and so I found myself talking about Ellen, the client who made me feel unsure and uncomfortable. “I've got a client now who doesn't
want
to keep anything she has,” I said. “She just thinks she ought to. I can't deal with conscience.”

“Conscience isn't the usual reason for clutter?” His pointed eyebrows moved up and down, and he stroked the doorjamb.

“No, avarice,” I said. I was trying to sound provocative; I had no idea what the usual reason for clutter is, but I wished I hadn't mentioned Ellen.

He said, “You're thinking I'm the greedy kind, or you wouldn't talk about her.”

“No, no.”

“So what's she like?” Gordon Skeetling said, resting against his raised arm. He was wearing not the tan sweater today but a similar blue one. He smiled and encouraged me to make a funny story out of Ellen, but New Haven is too small. He'd recognize her—he'd turn out to be her next-door neighbor. “Why does she do this?”

“I have no idea,” I said. Then, “I took something from her.”

“You stole it?”

“It was worthless.”

“To you. What did you do with it?”

“I threw it away.”

“Hmm.”

I could tell he was more curious than troubled, that he didn't care whether Ellen was deprived of her possession or I turned out to be a thief. Have I described his face? Bony planes, lots of forehead. The expressive black eyebrows moved one at a time, and the gray, straight hair flopped when he gestured. A face ready to listen attentively, and then laugh. Now he was getting ready to laugh not at Ellen but at me. At least I'd deflected his attention from her. Usually someone who looks about to laugh doesn't bestow permission here and there, as Gordon Skeetling did, but his wasn't mocking or condescending laughter. What amused him was apparently the oddness of human behavior. He seemed to exist, just then, in order to hear me, and so he satisfied a longing I've always had: to explain, as if something would be accomplished forever if someone would only listen until I was done. . . .

“What did you
take
?” His voice rose zestfully with the question.

“A sugar bowl.”

“Sugar bowl? Hmm, a sugar bowl!” Was a sugar bowl a symbol of something? The womb?

But he didn't keep on listening. He looked at his watch and gathered some papers, telling me to leave the key in the mailbox. “Take your time and don't steal anything. No, if you want to, take whatever you like.”

“I usually steal cars.”

“Then you're stuck, because I'm taking mine with me. But speaking of conscience, remind me to tell you about my dream. Oh, I'll tell you now and be late. I had a German shepherd—a lovely dog—and she grew old and died. This was a dog with a conscience. If she did something she thought she shouldn't have, she'd incarcerate herself in the bathtub, because she hated baths. So one day, after she died, I dreamed about a minister—a pastor, he was called in the dream—in Germany who was so conscientious, he threw himself out of his own church. Excommunicated himself. When I woke up, I remembered that
pastor
means “shepherd.” He was a
German shepherd.
Isn't that good? Don't I have great dreams?”

Now he hurried away, and I missed this friendly man, who I thought probably resembled his dog. He'd have a functioning conscience, not one that operated like Ellen's, without meaning, or that failed to operate, like mine. His would keep him from doing harm, and I wanted to stop stealing sugar bowls if only to please him.

In the archive I began by dusting, and then I read. I read or skimmed a stack of articles copied from magazines or torn out: an old account of an election in Albany, a recent story about the New Haven homeless shelter. I could see no unifying principle or subject. It made no sense to group them by city, except that New Haven came up often. I was interested, because around here it's a little hard not to focus on big, bold New York, which is only seventy-five miles away.

I could already see that some stories could easily be discarded. I grouped the rest by subject: poverty, public transportation, crime. At the corner of the table I gathered those that piqued my interest the most. They were invariably about New Haven, I noticed. Then I noticed that they were almost all about a death, not the predictable death of an old person with a cluttered house but the shocking death of a young man or woman who hadn't had time to accumulate much—the violent death of some young person, a violent death in New Haven.

 

W
hen I notice a selfish or unselfish act I've committed, I can't seem to help balancing it. Half the time, that is, I fail morally. After being friendly to Ellen about dead pets, I took a sugar bowl. I took a sugar bowl, so I told Gordon. I told Gordon, so I complained about Ellen on the phone to my friend Charlotte. “I guess in your field there's no such thing as confidentiality,” Charlotte said. As I add to this narrative, I'm sometimes ashamed of one detail or another, but more often I'm pleased to describe what I did, how I am, as if being an identifiable sort of person matters more than being one sort or another. Accounts like this are supposed to record a change: this is how I became different. But I didn't change. What could I be except myself?

What I don't like is rest. Only when I have a cold do I understand the wish to snuggle and stop striving. “I like to think of finding a place to rest here,” Ellen said, fluttering her hand at the confusion in her living room, where extra dining room chairs in many styles were lined up along one wall, one behind another as in a train. On them, as it happened, her children were playing train, but they stopped to listen, tilting their heads: wary Justine, who gave me the same shrewd look that had caught my attention before, and the younger one, with short, blond hair, the one I kept forgetting wasn't a boy, who'd pull his or her shirt up when thinking, baring the belly.

“A nest,” said Ellen. I dislike the word
nest
unless a bird is involved, and I loathe
nestle.
Ellen said, “I keep imagining that if I moved things just a little, I could hide properly. Wouldn't you love a curtained bed with red velvet hangings?”

“Dust,” I said. “You'd get entangled with the curtains and wouldn't be able to escape if there was a fire.”

“Or if your lover refused to perform,” said Ellen, now laughing at herself. Justine looked alert. She'd been asked to join our cast. I'd given Ellen's phone number to Katya without permission. Ellen was grateful. She approved of me too heartily. She wanted some connection with the play, because I was in it.

The kitchen, a week after the day we'd emptied the cabinets, was subtly altered. Ellen and the children had not cleaned up but had transformed the mess into an intricate domestic installation, half nostalgic, half critical of the trammels of household, something you might almost see in the Whitney Biennial. They'd washed everything, then arranged the objects in neater groups: platters, teapots (red, blue, patterned), bowls (handmade pottery, old china with pink flowers, Danish stoneware). Silverware, separated by function and pattern, was spread on a blanket under the table. The children fussed importantly, lending Ellen more direction as they explained that after meals they replaced the dishes on the floor. They tried to use different plates and bowls at each meal now. Walking from doorway to sink was tricky, and the smaller child—Celeste, she was a girl called Celeste—hopped, as if to suggest that the aisle wasn't wide enough for two feet, though it was.

Ellen didn't want help putting the kitchen back to rights. “The girls and I will do it,” she said. I knew they couldn't. They couldn't keep everything, yet everything seemed to be cherished. Ellen was transforming herself into my other sort of client, making her own the objects that had been thrust upon her. I said, “You're appalling,” which Ellen took with one of her accepting shrugs. The children disappeared, and Ellen led me to a spare bedroom. The closet was crammed with clothing.

“I suppose you want to do the same thing here?” I said.

“Let's just see,” said Ellen.

She wasn't a real gatherer, not one of my glinty-eyed, irrational but avid accumulators. Her stories were always of imposition, even about her own clothes. “My wedding gown. I never liked it. My mother chose it.”