It was several weeks since we’d dismantled the kitchen. Ellen and her daughters still ate meals in that complicated array, that statement of the value of detail for its own sake. Everything she owned could be connected to someone in her life, some painful or joyful event. When Ellen was home, memory ruled that room, but now she was not home, and the objects themselves sat there like “the plain sense of things” as Wallace Stevens put it. “Look at that!” Gordon said, bracing his long arm in the kitchen doorway and taking in the view with some amusement. “What a conglomeration!”
He was delighted, which delighted me. He blocked the doorway, but moving up behind him, under his arm, putting my hand on his waist as if I’d done that before, and looking into the room as if he was showing it to me instead of the other way around, I saw it his way. When Ellen was home, everything was fogged with meaning—often with loss, disappointment, or betrayal. “This was the teapot my college roommate left behind when she moved out. She liked the man I was dating, and she moved out when she couldn’t bear it any longer. I hadn’t even guessed.” Ellen’s memory dulled the blue glaze even for me, but when Gordon stared at the teapot, and everything else, that glaze shone bright. Each object was simply itself, and even I could see the difference, with my partial view under his elbow. “It is as if we had come to an end of the imagination,” Stevens wrote.
I led Gordon to the spare bedroom in which Ellen and I had piled clothes. Heaps of coats, men’s suits (her father’s?), dresses, and blouses were still on the bed. I removed the piles carefully, lining them up on the floor so I could replace them. I felt a pang about the lost green print shirt, and even looked around for it, as if I might have incorrectly remembered my theft and disposal of it. Then, in that roomful of piled clothing—which Ellen was reducing to cleaner, neater, but never smaller piles—I began unbuttoning my shirt, and Gordon stepped forward and put his hands over mine. I didn’t become completely passive, though I let him do it. I knew we had to keep track of our own clothes in this array of clothes, not mislaying Gordon’s tan sweater or the silk scarf I wore. We made two neat piles, both moving unself-consciously, usefully, though we were becoming naked. I liked Gordon’s substantial but bony torso, his rounded, surprisingly fleshy ass. Standing next to our folded clothing, Gordon put his hands on my breasts. He laughed, then kissed me, a long, good kiss that made me forget everything but the tongue in my mouth.
When I drew back the old pink chenille bedspread, I found that the bed was made. We’d have to do something about the clean but slightly musty sheet we were about to muss and stain. I left the room, found Ellen’s linen closet in the hall, and returned—while Gordon looked at me with open curiosity—with a towel, which I spread between the sheets, postponing the question of what I’d do with it later. If the plan I’d made was awkward, that made the enterprise better—touchingly amateurish, like a homemade greeting card. We were laughing when we lay down, and I drew this new, differently shaped man to my body with nothing but pleasure in chance, pleasure in possibility, and my old, too-long-forgotten delight in the variety of captivating male bodies available to someone who kept
an eye open.
“I didn’t know we’d do this,” I said, marveling, after he’d entered me and we’d both come quickly, too excited to take it slow. What if we’d missed it, as people do?
“You’re married.”
“You’re not, or so you said.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, that’s good.” He had multitudes of girlfriends, of course. All right. We hadn’t used a condom. All right.
We lay companionably on the scratchy towel, and he began to talk about work, telling me with some excitement about the next article he intended to write. He was now thinking about a new way of organizing the categories in municipal budgets, and he talked fast, rising on an elbow to explain better. Like a cup of coffee, sex had awakened him.
When I laughed, he said, “Work is sex.” He kissed me again, longer this time.
“I know,” I said when we stopped. “That’s what people don’t understand. Work is sex. Good work. Putting on a conference.”
“Can you do that? Can you put on a conference?” Another kiss.
“Oh, sure, I’m terrific,” I said.
I did not steal the towel but put it in the clothes hamper, assuming Ellen wouldn’t notice an extra dirty towel. That morning, I had told Pekko I wouldn’t be home for supper, because of an appointment so late it left little time before a rehearsal. I dropped Gordon off near his car, an old black Saab (he got out without kissing me, but that was only sensible) and arrived late for that last appointment. It was disconcerting to be with a different man, someone who didn’t count, a man who chose not to clean up his clutter when he heard what I charge. Then I ate Chinese takeout in the car, irrationally elated by good food, and elated that my old capacity for mischief wasn’t gone. I walked into the rehearsal room feeling at peace in my body, as if I’d swum a long, slow distance.
With Justine away, Cindy could have joined with Mo to play the two-headed girl, but she didn’t want to. “I don’t like being squashed together with somebody,” she said.
“You think I like it?” Mo said.
“Could we record that?” said Katya. “Could you kids say that again?”
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.
As 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.”
Two 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.
Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman Page 10