Duet

by gay walley

  “Mom –“ and she ran upstairs.

  “Let her be,” her father said. “She’ll adjust in time. From what I hear, teenage girls are nuts whatever is going on.”

  Michelle looked upstairs worriedly. She felt something terrible was going to happen. She just wasn’t sure how it would manifest.

  Duet took the elevator up to Dr Lee’s office on 43rd and Vanderbilt. He was a young man, maybe only two or three years older than she. What she liked about him was his honesty. She’d gone for yearly exams since living in New York and he had commented, when he examined her, on her difference but mostly asked if there were any problems or if she hurt anywhere. Other doctors had wanted to use her as the frontal piece of their practice, articles, lectures, tour her around like it was Barnum and Bailey. She was not Dumbo. She refused.

  Dr Lee seemed too busy for that and not vulgar enough to be interested in making his name off hers.

  She waited in the little room the nurse had placed her in. She sat up on the reclining chair with the stirrups, cold in the paper gown.

  “Hi,” he said. He wore an open necked shirt, and slacks. No white coat. As if they were meeting on a patio. He was carrying her file.

  “Anything new?” he asked.

  “Well,” she said, “I’ve had a few boyfriends.”

  “Great,” he said. “Anything serious?”

  “Not really.”

  “Soon,” he said.

  “Which brings me to asking you about childbearing… can I?”

  “Of course, “ he said. “I mean I would have to monitor you closely to make sure one uterus doesn’t crush the other –“

  “But I only have periods from one.”

  “The blood isn’t flowing to both. Obviously your anatomy is a bit different from other women so you would have to be watched and operated on if anything obstructed the growth of the baby – but why not? Women who are over sixty are having babies, why can’t you?”

  “What about plastic surgery…?”

  “Bad idea to stop up anything natural. And it’s not like it’s unsightly or going to ruin your career in any way.”

  She laughed sardonically. “No, I guess not.”

  She stared at the wall. He did check, she noticed, both for her pap smear. Two clamps. Other women had one clamp. She had two. Why did she get this fate?

  “Have you ever seen this before?” she asked him.

  “Nope,” he said. “And I doubt I will ever see it again. It is not in any of the medical books. I looked it up.”

  “Then why did it happen to me?”

  “A freak of nature. Not sure. Something tampered with in your chromosomes.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Definitely unique,” he said.” But you know, I don’t think it would put people off.”

  “What if you had two penises?”

  “Judging by how materialistic most women in New York are, I think I would probably be the toast of the town. ”

  She smiled. “You can say that because it’s not the fact.”

  “Perhaps.” He had finished now and was standing up, washing his hands. “I wouldn’t let it get you down. And the main thing is you are healthy. If you’re not, now that’s a real problem.”

  She nodded. She noticed he had premature grey flecks in his black hair. He really was attractive, she noticed.

  “How is your life going?” she asked.

  “My wife is away for two days, so I’m able to get out in the prison yard a bit,” he said.

  She smiled.

  “Are all women phenomenally jealous?” he asked, sitting down to make notes in her file.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I see,” he said.

  She liked that he was open but she was curious that he must have been a player if he has such a jealous wife. Now he stood up and began labeling bottles of specimens from her. “Are you the jealous type?” he asked. “I wouldn’t think it of you.”

  Dr. Lee thought of Duet as unusually well balanced. Most women with her predicament would be living in Bellevue Hospital.

  “I am just as needy as all women,” she said. Then she wondered if female jealousy was just because women tended to be insecure. Or was it we just know men are not naturally faithful. She had asked David the other night over the phone what he thought about infidelity in marriage. He said he didn’t believe in it, even though he had been unfaithful in both his marriages. He said, “But look at me now. I’m faithful to you and we’re not even married.” But she had surmised that was because he didn’t want to be bothered with women. Or maybe he just liked having sex with anonymous women. Who knew the truth?

  Dr Lee smiled. “Since you’re thinking of getting pregnant, do you want me to draw you a diagram of your uterus, vagina, ovaries? You probably should see and also that will maybe allay some fears.”

  “Okay,” she said. “You know you are the only doctor I would do this with. It’s because you don’t treat me as a freak.”

  “I find,” he said, “a lot of the behavior I see in this office a whole lot more freakish. Believe me. ” Particularly some nurses, he was thinking, but he kept that to himself. It seemed these nurses were on a trajectory to get him divorced. Did they have any idea how much that would cost him?

  He sat down and began making a drawing.

  (Drawing of Duet’s configuration)

  Then he handed it to her. She looked at it. Yes two uteruses, two vaginas. “How many ovaries?”

  “The normal amount.”

  “Oh. I’ll probably have ten thousand fibroids when I’m older.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that now.”

  She stood up. “Okay. If someone wants to have a child with me, and they are brave enough to risk it, maybe I’ll try. You’ll have to do the whole thing in this office so no one ever sees me. I don’t want to become tabloid news.”

  He laughed. “Okay, you got it.” Then he stood up and ushered her out into the hallway and said “I’ll see you next year,” and out he went. Now she knew she could have a child.

  Fourteen:

  The stars must not have been aligned very well over the next few weeks because three events happened that seriously began destabilizing all their lives.

  Paula moved into Hell’s Kitchen, nearby Lars. Lars lived on the 17th floor of the World Wide Plaza building in an enormous, modern, big windowed apartment. The kitchen was all new glistening chrome aluminum appliances, the view was of Times Square, and the lobby was entirely marble. Paula’s apartment was in an old walk up brownstone nearby on 49th Street. Duet could not understand why Paula would choose to move to an apartment that was less attractive than the one she had previously rented in Tribeca. Why did she have to be a block away from him? And, Lars, strangely, was beginning to not be as ever present as he used to be. He cancelled dates. He said he had to travel more. He did not call as incessantly. One day he did not even call at all.

  Paula went mad without the calls. She was used to the constant contact, the being central to someone’s world. Without it, there was too much emptiness. She began spending her lunch hours at the office making up little gifts for him, such as a journal and paperweight for his desk, and then going to his office and leaving them there. She texted him incessantly. She could not stand his silence. They had to be in the river of constant touch.

  “Paula, they like you better when you’re not on top of them, “ Duet said as Paula began scouring the internet for any information she could find on Lars.

  “Maybe he’s in Opus Dei,” Duet said, joking. “Or some right wing voodoo cult.”

  Paula said, “Maybe” in a desultory voice and kept searching. She found nothing out of the ordinary on Lars which, in its way, Duet respected. “Well, at least he hasn’t done anything wrong,” she said to Paula.

  “I could be more aloof, I know that,” Paula said, “but I want him to know I love him. I want him to see it is safe to come toward me because I have made these moves for him. That I am committed.”


  Duet nodded, thinking, He should be making those moves for her.

  “Do you see him at all?” Duet asked.

  “Yes, occasionally we meet for coffee.”

  “Do you sleep together?”

  “Yes, of course,” Paula said.

  “Then I guess everything is okay,” Duet said. Maybe relationships go through these constant shifts of intensity and attention. Maybe this is normal.

  “Do you have your story for the writing group tonight?” Paula asked.

  “First you talk me into dating men and now I have to attend your writing group.”

  “It’s fun. Come on. I’m writing about an obsessional love affair.”

  “Where’d you get such an original idea?” Duet asked, smiling.

  Paula ignored her. “What are you bringing?”

  “Something totally fictional,” Duet said.

  “Cool.”

  Duet nodded.

  Paula added, “If I didn’t have this way of getting my feelings out about the whole thing with Lars, I would die. Writing is energy you know. The Masters told me. Actually the Plaiedians, who are multiverse energies, said it, too.”

  “Multiverse?”

  “All the universes.”

  Duet nodded again. Maybe Paula was a Plaidean, herself.

  “I sometimes think,” Paula said, “this whole relationship with Lars is to help me write. It brings me to my knees and makes me a writer. I have emotions that I can explore.”

  Duet nodded again. Oh boy. “Music is where I express feelings.”

  “Lots of musicians can write, Duet,” Paula said. “You write at this job. It’ll be fun. Anyway these people…wait till you meet them.”

  The writing group met in Sophie’s apartment, a studio, in Brooklyn. There were three other women, Vicky, Lydia, and Annette besides Duet and Paula. Also, one older man who had a grey brush cut and was dressed mostly in black, Ethan. Each of them had brought work. Duet, to say the least, was nervous. This was worse than music. With music, you provoke feelings. With writing, you give them fully drawn pictures. You expose yourself. With music, you simply give voice to the music that already exists in the ether.

  Vicky went first with ten pages from a book where a character shipwrecked a boat of fishermen by standing over a cliff and lifting her skirt and exposing herself and the boat crashes on a rock. Her father, a seaman, was on the boat and dies. The rest of her Odyssey followed the lives of the girl and her sister. Duet found it boring but it certainly gave her courage to submit her own work.

  Annette had a story about a divorced couple. Witty dialogue but of course we’d all seen those stories about one million times. Duet was definitely thinking that music was a better career. Even derivative work in music has some beauty to it. Paula went forward with her tale of a woman, utterly besotted, moving into midtown to be with a man she had fallen in love with and there were some pretty passionate scenes about this woman’s love for this Danish man and the group were very admiring of the romance in the pages. Paula was pleased.

  Ethan said he was writing his book purely for money. The book was called MARRIED SEX and he proceeded to read an endless monologue chapter of which Duet could not stand the preening. No wonder his wife didn’t want to have sex with him. Lydia came next and, as she read, Duet kept focusing on Lydia’s leather Birkinstock strap that appeared to be hanging by a thread. She really had large toes, especially the big toe, but at least they were polished with an orangey creamsickle nailpolish. Duet kept her eyes on Lydia’s feet because she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The main character had gone to a bar, picked up a Fortune 500 ***stock optioned and vested man, brought him home, and this man had run out on her over something inconsequential. The characters in Lydia’s story, like Duet had experienced not so long ago, also drove to the protagonist’s apartment in a limo with a chauffeur.

  However the difference was that the following day after the aborted sexual interlude the doorbell rang twice at the female character’s apartment and there stood the chauffeur. This chauffeur apparently made Daniel Craig look effeminate. He had returned, ostensibly, with her lipstick, Chanel Rouge Absolu. She let him in and one thing quickly led to the other, till he left, both of them quite glowing. She said to him at her door as he was leaving, “One thing. I don’t wear Rouge Absolu. I wear Pretty in Pink,” whereupon he smiled and laughed with her, only to return the Rouge Absolu to a box of different lipsticks which he kept in his car just for such occasions. He started the limo up and thought maybe he had guessed wrong on her color but not on her libido.

  The group loved the story and Lydia received their praise with the self-confidence of a James Joyce.

  It was Duet’s turn. She pulled out her pages. Her ten pages posited a woman with two vaginas. She was getting dressed for a date –

  Lydia interrupted, “Are you kidding? There’s no such thing. Maybe this is fantasy?”

  Paula said, “Lydia, we don’t judge the work before we hear it.”

  Lydia said, “But she’s writing in a tone as if it could happen.”

  Vicky said, “Maybe it could.”

  Lydia said, “I’m a nurse and I know it could not. Anatomically.”

  Ethan spoke up, “I think it’s a very provocative topic,” and he gave Duet a special smile that some might confuse with a leer. “I would say it’s even an important topic.”

  Lydia said, “Why important? It’s just vulgar and overstated.”

  Duet wondered if Lydia was maybe missing a vagina because she was getting so heated up and Vicky said, “Lydia, let Duet read her story…”

  Lydia said, “I’m sorry. Go ahead,” and she tucked her foot under her other leg.

  Duet tried to continue but instead her cheeks began to flush and she felt too embarrassed and finally she just stopped and said, “I’m really not a writer. I’m sorry. I came with Paula. I am a musician. Let’s just skip mine. Maybe it is too stupid…” And the writers all very apologetically understood and got back to discussing their own work voraciously within milliseconds.

  Duet excused herself and went to the ladies room. She stood at the mirror trying to calm herself down when there was a knock on the door. Duet opened the door, thinking it might be Paula come to comfort her, and there stood Lydia. Lydia raised her two arms up defensively and said, “I apologize. I overreacted. But you know, Duet, it just can’t be so. Two uteruses but not two vaginas so it seemed an unstable premise, to my mind. Maybe I was being too literal. I tend to be too literal.”

  Duet didn’t know where it came from, maybe years of having to be so repressed about the hand she had been dealt, but she said, “I can be too literal too” and she lifted her skirt and said, “Lydia, look --“

  And that was when Lydia ran out of Sophie’s apartment like a fireman when the alarm bell rings and went tearing down the stairs and, in retrospect, when Duet thought about it, it wasn’t surprising that the sandal strap finally broke without a peep and Lydia stumbled and then careened down the stairs first with a high pitched scream and then it sounded like someone had rolled a large pumpkin down the stairs with a staccato stomping sound for punctuation. As she fell, Lydia thought she could hear her mother, “Watch out, watch out” but it was too late.

  Suddenly, they all heard a heavy thud when she hit the first floor landing. Paula, who immediately ran down to see, reported later that Lydia lay there perfectly still and soundless except for the laboring of her heavy breaths, but her neck was twisted in a bizarre angle that no gymnast would ever want to duplicate.

  Lydia was rushed to the very hospital she worked in and Duet wondered if it was she who was responsible for that fall. If she had indeed incited it. If she was, and she wanted to get literary about it, then she might be a killer. That was if Lydia died. Which she didn’t. But she did wear a neck brace for the next six months and could not speak for a long period of time. However, she was able to write.

  Duet never read any of Lydia’s stories, having sworn off writing groups fo
r the rest of her life. Paula thought it was rather Greek that Lydia had insulted Duet and then lost her voice. Duet always felt guilty about Lydia, but strangely, it was Lydia, in a postcard, who apologized to Duet for hurting her feelings. For the next six months, Duet made sure to send Lydia fruit baskets and books, as gifts to encourage her on, but she never wanted to visit Lydia. Nor did she ever want to write fiction or its facsimile again.

  Strangely, the same night that Duet was going through her writing initiation, Oskar couldn’t sleep. This was not infrequent for him, particularly when he slept alone. His mind began reeling about the stock market going lower and lower, past girlfriends still being in touch and wanting him to listen to their daily struggles without wanting to sleep with him. However, he never fretted about his family. That part of his life he had successfully shut down. Usually, he took to reading a book or sat in his Brookstone massage chair when he couldn’t sleep but tonight it was warm and humid and he decided to walk.

  He began to walk down Fourteenth, not exactly sure why, but he had been reading Jim Thompson and some part of him was a little attracted to the seamy side. At 3 a.m., few people were out. He decided to walk all the way to the East Side where the old Con Ed building was. They had closed the Fourteenth street exit off the FDR after 9/11 and that area was now even more remote and bleak than before. No cars, no people, just the old electricity plant and its out of date compressors. Maybe he should look into buying this property and renovating it. It would cost a fortune but then again it would be worth a fortune. It’s these kind of ideas, he thought, the bold ones, that pay off.

  Of course, when he got there, the place was locked up with heavy chains. Should he just continue down to the river? Water is calming, might help him sleep. Why not? So he began walking by the plant and could hear someone else walking very closely behind him. He turned quickly. A young man. Skinny. Muscular. Maybe this was a gay pick up area and Oskar didn’t know it.