Which was when I realized he was thinking of his old girlfriend, the suicide.
“Herself—then everything is keeping it from happening—this is not natural—but also, everything has to cooperate to make it happen. It’s so unnatural, how could it take place otherwise? It’s a different kind of action.”
“Is that why I want to think about murder? Explain me, Stephen. You hang around art all week. You must have learned wisdom.”
“I hang around reproductions of art, in that store, but, yes. I think you are interested in a kind of choice, a very intense kind of choice that makes such a difference, that’s so risky, that nobody could do it—except people do. And when they do, they don’t seem to choose at all, it seems to happen. When Michaela died—”
“Yes?”
“When Michaela died, I was positive it wasn’t going to happen, because it just couldn’t happen. Certain things just can’t happen, or that’s what I thought when I was a boy.”
“Did you know, Stephen?” He’d told the police, over and over, that he knew nothing.
“Oh, she’d been talking about it for weeks. I was so ashamed, when she really did it. I had no idea people could actually do such a thing.”
“Do you mean, when I doubted you, I had guessed right?” I wrote and rewrote that piece, again and again and again, explaining those doubts.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know, I know,” I said. “But it wasn’t the way you said it was.”
“No,” he said. He paused. “Michaela’s been dead almost forty years,” he said. “I’ve been in therapy. I’ve talked about the truth, finally—not much to Marlene. She’s sick of it. This woman who died years before I met her, who had the same first initial. I don’t blame her.”
“Then my argument didn’t make sense,” I said.
“It made sense. It was based on a mistake, but it made sense.”
I didn’t answer. Then he said, “People who die young miss a lot of days.”
“Maybe you’d still be together if she’d lived.”
“Oh, probably not.”
“It’s true,” I said then. “Killing is so definite. Like stuffing an heirloom into a garbage can. What I do for a living.”
Marlene arrived then, as Stephen laughed, and we spoke of other subjects. Stephen hadn’t asked me why I was in New York. He wanted to drive me back to the subway, but this time I insisted. I thanked him and hugged them both, then called a cab and settled into its backseat. The driver didn’t speak.
By the time I paid my fare and climbed out at Grand Central Station, I was convinced that Gordon had invented the woman with the abortion, that he’d left to spend time in bed with still another woman or, likelier, simply left because he found me boring and stupid, me with my penchant for earthy community dramatics. I considered renting a car. I couldn’t think of anything that might make me feel better except fast driving, but there I was at the train station, where a train was departing for New Haven in fifteen minutes.
It was starting to fill up, and I walked past one car, in which every window seat was taken. I wanted to sit alone if possible. The next car looked less crowded, so I entered and made my way down the aisle. “What are you doing here?” came an insistent voice, and I looked down into Muriel’s still face, lit now by passing amusement at seeing me here.
She was sitting in a window seat. On one side of a Metro-North car, there are seats for two; on the other, seats for three. Muriel was sitting in a seat for two, and she had a dilapidated tote bag with red handles next to her and a purse on her lap. She was in jeans as usual, but she wore a denim blazer with a white T-shirt visible under it. She stared up at me as if I was a tourist attraction, her hair sticking out in all directions. After her initial smile vanished, she looked alert, with that look of hers that resembled anger. “Been having a good time in the city?”
“I went to visit my brother,” I said evenly.
“Lucky you.”
“What did you do?” I said.
“I saw my mom in Brooklyn.”
“I forgot your mother lives in Brooklyn.” I stood in the aisle, my purse and overnight bag hanging awkwardly at my side. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend almost two hours alone with Muriel, but I couldn’t endure one more dismissal. “May I sit here?”
“Of course.” She pointed up, and I took the tote bag, put it on the overhead rack, put my own bag there as well, and sat down.
“I didn’t know you were waiting for an engraved invitation,” said Muriel.
“Polite people don’t keep their luggage on the seat,” I countered. We sounded like Thea and Dora, and I was tempted to tell her the story of my weekend, just to hear her defend the play.
As soon as I sat down, I was sorry. I could have greeted her cheerfully and gone to the next car, where I’d have been alone. Just to make myself feel even worse, I’d bought a novel that seemed to be about love with a bad ending, and I could have been indulging in that misery, shutting out the glaring fluorescent lights and the conductor’s repetitive announcements. Now we’d have to talk for almost two hours. I was uncomfortable with Muriel’s apparent bad mood. Maybe she also would rather read a book than talk. I felt what I hadn’t felt before with Muriel—that because she was black, I was too nervously conscious of what I was doing, and that my nervous consciousness, which made it impossible to know what might feel natural, was racist. And of course it was. Race wasn’t an issue when we were inside that blue dress, but somehow on Metro-North it was.
At first, we talked about the play. “We haven’t figured out enough,” she said.
“You want a meaning, like Jonah? I don’t think that makes sense,” I said, too quickly.
“No. It’s just, how long is this play?” she said. “I think someone putting on a play should know how long it is. Are we at the intermission yet?”
“You mean we don’t know what we’re doing,” I said, laughing. “Yeah, a friend of mine was pointing that out to me yesterday.”
“A friend in the city? You didn’t just see your brother.”
“That’s right.”
“An old friend from your single days? Well, I don’t have a problem with that,” she said, and I didn’t set her straight. I didn’t want to ask how much of my story she’d intuited from the slope of my shoulders and the way my eyes looked, but I rested for a moment, silently, in her scrutiny.
“What’s your mother like?” I said then.
“She was never a nice lady, and she’s not one now,” said Muriel. “But she’s glad to have me come and take her out for lunch on a Sunday.”
“Are you an only child?”
“I have a brother. I had a sister, but she died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“A long time ago.” Muriel was silent for a while. “A long time ago, but my mom’s still angry that she lost her little churchgoer, and kept her little whore.”
“Oh, is that how it goes?” I said.
Her big, serious head turned in my direction, and suddenly there came from her a laugh like a bark, startling enough that someone in the seat in front of us glanced behind him. “I am still suffering from those early days you find so interesting,” Muriel said, in a voice that sounded subdued, more refined than Muriel usually sounded, as if she’d picked up, that afternoon, delicacy from her churchgoing mother, who perhaps knew how to murmur. “I am still suffering for the way I lived, and I can tell you that you may think I’m cool, making whore dolls and giving speeches, talking on the radio, but my mother and my brother do not think it’s so cool.”
“They want you to keep it a secret?”
“They believe I should pray over my shame in private. And just now it’s especially bad. And maybe I’ve said enough. Did you bring a book?”
So I stood and took the novel I’d bought from my overnight case. “Do you want anything from your bag?” I said.
“No, thank you. I might take a nap. That might be quite welcome.” Muriel tilted her big head against the wi
ndow and slept, breathing quietly like a girl, and I tried to concentrate on my book. Eventually we arrived at Stamford, the first stop after 125th Street in New York. After that the stops come frequently, and the announcers give repetitious instructions for each station. “Southport next. The head three cars will have to walk back. The head three cars will not platform at Southport.”
At Bridgeport, Muriel woke up. “My niece,” she said then, as if there’d been no interruption. “My niece, my brother’s daughter, is an unusually beautiful and bright child, with brown eyes like candles. She is my darling, but the last time I saw her—six months ago—she was dead in the eyes. Do you know what I mean?”
“How old is she?”
“Seventeen. Honor student until a few months ago. Now they can’t control her. They hear stories in the neighborhood, the teacher calls. Daisy, I spent the entire afternoon arguing with my mother and my brother—he came over—to let me see LaShonda, and they will not let me near her because I am not a respectable person. My brother is sorry he ever let her get near me. He blames me. She used to stay with me, sometimes. She is a bright child, a lovely child.”
And as I said, “Oh, Muriel, Muriel, that’s so bad,” my friend snatched at my arm, my shoulder—as if she was suddenly blinded and couldn’t find them—and then lowered her head and cried in-audibly, her shoulders shaking, into her own crossed arms. I couldn’t move or speak, watching her cry. “Is there anything I can do?” I said at last.
“Like call up my brother and tell him I’m hanging around with a crazy white lady in a big blue dress? No, thank you.”
“Is that my trouble? I’m crazy?”
“No, you’re not crazy. I’m all right.”
I offered to share a taxi when we reached New Haven, but Muriel was being picked up by her son, and she insisted they’d drop me off. We waited a few minutes outside the train station, and a big, dark car drew up. I got into the backseat while Muriel got in front and said to the driver, “Hello from Grandma. Who wonders is she ever going to see you again.”
“Why, she dying?”
“No sign of that.”
“Then I’ll wait a couple of weeks,” said the son, whom she now introduced to me. His name was Howard, and he turned and smiled at me, then reached over the backseat to shake hands. “Your friend don’t recognize me,” he said to his mother.
I couldn’t see his face clearly in the dim car—it was twilight—but he didn’t look familiar. He pulled away from the curb, and I began to tell him where I lived. “I know where you live,” he said, and laughed. “Should I make you guess? I am your substitute mail carrier. Last week you told me your dog did not bite, and I told you I’d been told that before.”
“Oh, my goodness, you’re right, I’m sorry,” I said. One more failure. I pointed out to myself that I’d seen him only once. But as far as I knew, he’d seen me only once. Now I remembered a mailman who made a joke about Arthur when I happened to come out as he sorted mail on our steps. I’d gone home in the middle of the day to get my bathing suit, just in case, though in the end I didn’t need it that day. I’d had my red suit crushed in my hand, and my keys in my other hand. Embarrassed, I stuffed the bathing suit into my bag and took the mail. Arthur barked from the house.
“Thanks, Howard. I’ll remember you next time,” I said when he drew to the curb. I hoped it was true. I felt guilty and racist and silly, too self-involved to pay attention when someone spoke to me. I squeezed Muriel’s shoulder as I climbed awkwardly out of the car, bumping myself with my bag. She had said nothing from the time she’d introduced me, as if that act of civility had used up the last of her will.
My house looked pretty in the summer dusk. I hoped Pekko wasn’t home. I was sure he’d read the whole bad story from my face: how I’d lied to him, hurrying to New York in a naïve, stupid fantasy of love, how I had not been pretty and interesting enough to keep Gordon Skeetling to myself for two days in the city, and even how I had not been able to help or comfort my friend in her trouble—the size of which reminded me of the pettiness of mine, without making me feel any better. I was ashamed of my stupid grief, but no less grief-stricken. I kept reminding myself that Gordon had not broken up with me. Probably he would, any day, and I’d blame myself then for this hysteria. After all, nothing was wrong yet.
I fitted my key in the lock and heard voices in the kitchen as I opened the door. Arthur came skidding and cavorting toward me, so I had to put my two bags on the floor and sink down to have my face licked, to grasp his muscular body.
“Daisy?” came Pekko’s voice. He sounded surprised. He must have assumed I’d have dinner in the city.
“I’m here,” I said.
“Should I go?” I heard a man say.
“Of course not.”
I picked up my possessions and walked into the kitchen, where Pekko and a man I didn’t know were drinking O’Doul’s from bottles. Pekko thinks nonalcoholic beer is pointless, so he must have thought well of this plump, middle-aged man if he’d picked up a six-pack. Or the man had brought it. He stood, a man in his forties, black hair slicked back, in a white shirt, open at the neck, and dark pants you’d wear to work. He had an eager look, a readiness to smile, as if he loved jokes but couldn’t remember any, and depended on others to tell them. “This is Edmund,” said Pekko. “My wife, Daisy.”
We shook hands. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just back from New York.” I felt unpresentable, my makeup old and my clothes wrinkled.
“How was your weekend?” said Pekko.
“It was good,” I said. “I went to see Stephen. He gave me lunch.”
“How’s Stephen?”
“He’s fine. Thinking deep thoughts,” I said.
“He does that,” Pekko said.
Edmund offered me an O’Doul’s. I wanted a glass of wine. I hesitated, not sure if bringing out the bottle would be rude. Then I was too tired to look after this person of whom I knew nothing. If he was a recovering alcoholic who suffered when he saw others drink, he’d just have to suffer. I did everything wrong anyway. I might as well do that wrong too. “What I need is Chardonnay,” I said, “and I think we’ve got some.” I opened the refrigerator, found the bottle and a glass.
Then I took my wine and said, “I need to change my shoes.” I thought I’d go to bed with my Chardonnay and stay until this man left, though I hated being in one more situation in which I couldn’t or didn’t take charge. I went upstairs, unpacked my bag, washed my face and repaired my makeup, changed my clothes. I felt unreasoning rage at Pekko for bringing home a stranger, unreasoning rage at the stranger. He looked nice, foolish and nice—just the sort of boring person Gordon might expect me to hang out with.
I didn’t want to go to bed after all. I wanted to do something to somebody, and if nobody else was available, I could demoralize this innocent former drinker by drinking. So I went back to the kitchen. As I came down, Pekko was telling Edmund about his troubles with the former contractors.
“Edmund was my assistant, when I had the bike store,” he said to me. That went back a long time. Edmund must have been a young assistant.
I poured another glass, then sat on the faded green sofa. “Do you still bike?” I said. “Pekko doesn’t.”
“Now and then,” he said. He didn’t look like an active man.
“We were thinking of going out for a pizza,” Pekko said. “Did you eat?”
I had had nothing since Stephen’s bagel. I went along with them and drank more wine at Modern Apizza. Edmund seemed unperturbed. He discovered I had a mother who lived near me and expressed envy. His parents were in New Haven, he said, and that was why he came back here from where he lived—somewhere a couple of hours away, apparently—but he didn’t see them often enough, and they weren’t doing well.
“Did you grow up here?” I said.
“We moved away when I was in high school, but my parents came back when they retired.”
I told him my mother had moved to be near me when she retired.
“That’s great. But she must be a worry, too.”
“My mother’s just fine,” I said truculently. “She has more energy than I do.”
“My mother’s not too bad,” he said, “but my father’s losing ground pretty quickly. Forgetful. I’ve just come from arguing with them about giving up the house.” As we waited for our pizza, I felt sorrier and sorrier for myself, listening to this man, who had come from an intergenerational fight about whether the old people were too feeble to continue their lives and couldn’t make them interesting. Charlotte would have made the story exciting. She often talked about the peculiarities and obstinacies of the old people she worked with, scrupulously omitting identifying details. But I didn’t like thinking about Charlotte. When I thought of her disapproval, I imagined her laughing at me, though Charlotte isn’t like that. I excused myself and left, looking for a phone. I found one, phoned Gordon, and got his machine. I didn’t leave a message but returned to Pekko and Edmund, and slid into the booth next to Pekko. He patted my thigh.
“Now, how could he say he’s a perfectly safe driver, after something like that?” Edmund was asking Pekko, who shook his head solemnly. Pekko is never bored.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked Edmund.
“I’m assistant principal of a middle school in Worcester, Massachusetts,” Edmund said, and I almost laughed, he seemed so like the assistant principals of my youth.
“He counts paper clips,” said Pekko.
“I once told your husband that one of my responsibilities is supplies,” Edmund said, “but I assure you, I spend plenty of time counting children, too. I was telling my mother,” he continued, “I don’t have trouble with the mischief makers, but sometimes good kids need attention, too, and I’m less sure of myself with them.”
“What do you do?” I said. We had meatball pizza, and I’d eaten two or three slices. I wondered if I wanted another.
“I ask them to help me count paper clips!” he said triumphantly, and as I laughed, I began to see why Pekko liked this man. “That is, I find something useful for them to do, and I hang around and start talking about some problem of my own. That gets them started. I’m not too bright, and the smart ones see I’m not too bright, but sometimes they trust me anyway, because they need someone to trust so badly.”
Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman Page 17