Duet

by gay walley

  “Of course I won’t. But do you really?” Ann said, incredulously.

  “It’s just a freak of nature.”

  “I never heard of that,” Ann said. “I mean I guess it doesn’t make any difference…”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Do you have two periods?”

  “No.”

  “That’s kind of good. You could have double pain.”

  “I don’t.” Now Duet was regretting opening her mouth. What made her think Ann would not open hers? Was she crazy?

  “Well, what other differences?” Ann asked, in a quiet voice as if she was scared of the answer.

  “None, I guess. You can’t really even see it unless you’re looking…”

  Ann stared out the window. “Plenty of guys are going to be looking –“

  “Yeah,” Duet said sadly. “Maybe I’ll be a lay nun.”

  “Guys might like it,” Ann said optimistically.

  “A lot of guys are frightened of normal girls’ parts. They call it “down there.” Imagine this,” Duet said grimly.

  “Yeah,” Ann said.

  They both were silent for a minute.

  “Well it’s my fate. If I can’t get a job, people can pay $10 to look at me. I could sell a double issue of Penthouse. There’s lots of possibilities.”

  Ann said, “Don’t be silly. It just means you’re destined for something special.”

  “Yeah, a man with two penises!”

  They laughed. But their mood had considerably dampened and Ann was struck by how life, at her young age, was full of the uncontrollable. Anything could happen. She could be hit by a car and soon have one leg. The danger of it was terrifying. Anything could happen and make your life miserable. Duet would always be odd. If something happened to Ann, she would be odd too. It had been bad enough not having breasts and not being as pretty as the other girls. If something really freakish happened, how could anyone live? Who would be your friend? Who would be your boyfriend? She wouldn’t be able to stand it. If she was Duet, she would kill herself. The anxiety of it all was too much. Ann was getting a headache. Soon Ann made up some excuse and Michelle drove her home.

  “You’re quiet, Ann,” Michelle said, as they wound themselves toward the highway and to exit 17 where Ann lived. Her father also was a lawyer. Michelle had often been pitted against him in court.

  “Stuff, nothing serious,” Ann said looking out the window. She felt terribly embarrassed. How could she talk to Duet’s mother anymore knowing this. How was Michelle built? Maybe their house is the Adams Family and just looks normal on the outside, like the Stepford Wives.

  Michelle looked at Ann and wondered if Ann had just lost her virginity. Funny how girls reach a certain age and you can get nothing out of them. Teenage girls should all be conscripted for covert CIA operations, Michelle decided. Nobody would know what the hell was going on. Why hadn’t the Israelis thought of that?

  Duet turned over in her single bed, and stared at the ceiling. She was trying to sleep. But how could she? She could still feel the humiliation.

  She had gone to school the next day after her revelation to Ann and, put simply, as she walked down the hall, nobody would look at her and, if they did, they hugged the wall. Or they would smirk. Or she caught the boys studying her to see if she was different in other ways,too. She could see they were frightened of her. A monster. And she knew, she knew, as she sat alone at lunch, she who had always been popular, girls who don’t want to be popular are often the very ones who are, as she sat alone, she knew Ann McNichol had told someone and from there a wildfire had spread.

  She rubbed her nose and started thinking of ways to commit suicide. Might as well do it now. But, looking back, she wasn’t the type. She was the type to fight in her own way. Maybe that was good. She had to admit that to herself, now that she was watching the horror movie of her teenage years. She had left the school right after lunch, no classes for her ever again, and walked home slowly. She decided she could take a bus to New York where all freaks went and she would eventually have to live there anyway, why not go now, or she could take her savings and move to Copenhagen, socialize with herrings, and never speak to anyone again, or she could …what? What could she do? There was no getting away from this. She couldn’t leave her body behind. And as she realized this, she sat on the curb of the street and cried. She sobbed and sobbed and when cars slowed down, “You alright?” she nodded, lying, and, she just sat there, too embarrassed to even get a coke or an ice cream soda, and she was still sitting there when it was dark, with a lassitude she didn’t know she was capable of, when her father came to pick her up.

  He rolled down the window. “Get in the car.”

  “I am going to die here,” she said.

  “Is this an opera?” he asked.

  “No, this is my life. I am a freak and the whole school knows it and I am never going back to school or out in public again. I am going to be either like Emily Dickinson and live in my room or like David Copperfield and go to sea or –“

  “Maybe we could talk about this in the car.”

  Her legs did hurt from sitting so long. And she was hungry. He saw it.

  “What if we have your last meal together before you join the French Foreign Legion?” he said. “You can choose the restaurant.”

  “Okay,” she said. She did love her father. That was one thing in her life, even if everything else was all wrong.

  She sat next to him, the streets in shadow, and she said, “I told Ann and she told the school and no one would look at me or speak to me and—“

  “I get the picture, honey,” he said.

  “No,” she said emphatically. “Do you get the picture that I have to live with this all my life?”

  “With what?”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “With one leg? With a glandular problem that makes you 400 pounds? With an IQ of 8?” he asked.

  “Dad, I am not going back to school. I am not kidding.”

  In a way, he saw her point. “What are you going to do? Become a recluse?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you have to get back on the bicycle,” he said. “Not run away.”

  “Forget it.”

  She was his daughter, but he knew enough about women to bring this up another time. “I’ll do you the favor, “ he said, “of buying you dinner in another town.” And so they drove to an Italian place he liked in Essex and Michelle called his cell phone and he told her Duet was fine, which was a lie, Duet pointed out when he clicked off, and eating her French fries she explained what had happened. He listened and didn’t argue. She was getting tired. Even of complaining. A good sign.

  But even better was one of the boys from her school, who was also out with his parents having dinner at Lanza’s, waved and, as they were leaving, popped by and said, “Hey Due, you going to the track meet this Friday?”

  She couldn’t speak or look at him and just shook her head. He left, humiliated and bewildered, in that way teenage boys have of wondering what the hell are they going to do with the rest of their lives and the incomprehensibility of girls.“That was rude,” her father said, “and I don’t think he knows.”

  “He will.”

  “He might not give a damn. One of the terrible things about your age, is that you think everyone cares about you and your private life. They don’t. They care about themselves. You will be old news soon.”

  “No I won’t. It’s sexual, dad. Sexual news never becomes old news.”

  She had a point. How do they get so smart?

  “People adjust,” her father said, “to war, prison, loneliness, the unexpected. All of which is much worse than what you have. People who know you and love you for you won’t give a damn.”

  She wasn’t listening. And he decided to bag this talk because, deep down, he knew he would be giving this speech for the rest of her life.

  She did finish school, but only because Michelle gave her an option: school or studying wh
ile living in a psychiatric wing.

  And there was another development.

  Her first day back at school after two weeks, she walked into class nervously and as she sat down, everyone clapped. “Why are they clapping?” she asked Brenda in the first row.

  The teacher smiled and wrote on the blackboard: “You’re wonderful Duet and beautiful inside and out as you are. And you’re going to be far sexier than any of us.”

  Duet smiled and sat down, pretended she wasn’t interested in the blackboard, and opened her book as if none of this was going on. It was a message to them: Never bring up the issue again. She gave the same message to her parents, friends and teachers. She treated it as if they had assigned her a case of false identity and her response was to be proud and inviolable. The message she gave, even when walking or just sitting, was: No trespassing.

  Eighteen:

  Daisy had been a beautiful woman. Everyone, including herself, said so. She had a pert nose which Duet had inherited, and lively dark eyes. Her cheekbones were high and in her day she might have been a Viennese Audrey Hepburn. The difference was that Daisy’s eyes were quicker, not liquid and innocent like Audrey’s, and if you were as quick as Daisy’s scanning of the world about her, you saw the pain.

  Duet, with the sensitivity of a child and a child who was not normal, saw.

  When she went to the hospital, Duet was shocked. There Daisy was lying on the hospital bed, a flimsy white sheet over her. Incomprehensible machines next to her. Daisy’s eyes were not sharp. They were dulled. Maybe it was morphine. She seemed to suck in every breath she took, laboriously. Yet she was not unconscious. She made no motion of recognition toward her daughter, Michelle. Michelle, embarrassed, did not know what to do. Here it was, her mother dying, and still rejection.

  Duet said to Michelle, “I want to be alone with her for a bit. I want to talk to her.”

  Why? wondered Michelle, but was glad to leave the room. She could make some business calls. Michelle’s life, she knew, was not in this room.

  “Daisy,” Duet said, holding her grandmother’s tiny, frail arm. Duet turned the arm so the inside was facing her . No number. . .

  “Daisy,” and Daisy turned to look at her with dulled eyes. Duet could see she was frightened. A child again. Oh please, Duet thought, nobody hurt her now.

  “I know you lived through hell,” Duet said. “I just want you to know….that I live through it too. I know Michelle never told you but I am not normal. “

  Daisy closed her eyes as if these American self-revelations** are best to be ignored.

  “I mean I am deformed.”

  Daisy’s eyes were still closed.

  “I mean,” Duet continued, “ I am kind of a monster. Because I have two vaginas. I think you should know that your granddaughter who was born a circus clown only had happiness when we went to the Ice Capades together or when you gave me advice on men which I can’t recall now (and in this she was being like her grandmother – in other words, baldly honest). I mean what I mean is your whole aegis was that life is ridiculous. That one should love, I got that, but not expect anything. I mean you could expect to be loved, but not expect that it would work out.”

  At this, Daisy did flicker her eyes. Who was this young girl talking? She looks familiar. Daisy smiled, just in case this was a nurse and she might need her.

  “Oh Daisy,” Duet said, “you were right. Everything is crazy. You had the camps and god knows I can’t imagine that but I have this. Do you see what I mean? We are the same. And you went on living, maybe out of anger, or maybe you wanted to live for the sake of your murdered parents, and I am doing the same. I am going to live. And I remember you said your mother played the piano. I do too. “ Duet moved closer on her chair and kept holding Daisy’s arm. She stroked her grandmother’s wiry hair and soft face. “I know you can hear me. I too am going to go on, even though I too got stamped, I too was selected, it’s not the same, I know, I am not at the mercy of brutality, but …I am also not like others. Like you were not. You could never believe in goodness. I can, I guess, Daisy, but I also know we have no choice. Life happens to us.”

  Duet knew she was not making sense. She better quit. “Daisy, you were so hurt you had affairs, but could you commit to anyone? No. Because you knew you would get hurt if you committed your heart to them. I am trying to tell you I can’t either. I can’t trust anyone with where I have been hurt.”

  Daisy’s eyes shot awake. Who is this idiot talking? She had too many drugs in her to respond, but if she could, Daisy would have said, “Forget trusting. Just live for god’s sake. Just live.” And then she fell asleep.

  Nineteen:

  Michelle had to get to the office, she told Duet, once she had wrangled with various messages on her blackberry, so Duet took a taxi home from the hospital. Already she felt her body slowing down from New York, and settling into a gentle, langorous new internal lushness. Suddenly she had sensual appetites. She made the taxi stop as she ran into a small store she used to love and got an O’Henry bar, something she would not allow herself in New York. She thought she might even have a drink tonight, just to relax. She felt more in her body, without the persistent cacophony of the city. She remembered a professor in college saying, “Nature brings out libido.” And it was true, even here with her grandmother dying. Her mind switched to Daisy and she hoped her grandmother knew she loved her so much as to have come all the way out here, and as Duet swung open the door to her house, she heard an unmistakable, strong male voice.

  She walked in, smiling. It couldn’t be true.

  “You came,” she said, as she saw Oskar sitting in the living room, legs crossed, as always blue jacket perfectly pressed and vibrant. The precision of his clothes was almost energetic. He looked as comfortable as if he was ensconced*** in his own penthouse in New York.

  Her father stood up. “We were just talking. Oskar kindly brought me this bottle of Glenrothes 12 year old and we were covering single malt scotches we’ve known and loved. You got here in the nick of time before we began opening them all.”

  She smiled. “How’s Daisy?” Oskar inquired with seeming sincerity, although he had not yet met her, which struck Duet. It was sensitive.

  “She’s out of it. Michelle went to the office,” she said to her father. “She can’t handle it.”

  “Your mother is grieving not only the loss of her mother, but the loss of ever being able to have one.”She didn’t want to begin analyzing Michelle in front of Oskar. A little too self-focused.

  “Were you close to your mother?” she turned to ask Oskar.

  “Somewhat. And, strangely, she was not close to her own father and mother. In fact, she would not speak to them. What’s even stranger is my father would not speak to his father either. You’d think they were all Irish.”

  “Why wouldn’t they speak?” Duet asked.

  “Politics. I don’t know exactly. You know those Europeans. No airing your laundry. Who knows? The war. The war made everyone someone who didn’t know who they were.”

  “Not everyone,” her father said. “My side is English. They knew who they were.”

  “Chamberlain knew who he was?” Oskar retorted amiably.

  “Chamberlain knew who he was. He just didn’t know what he was doing and he acted like the word g-u-l-l-i-b-l-e wasn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary.”

  “Maybe he did know,” Oskar said. “In fact, I would say he did.”

  “Well, let’s not get into this,” Duet mediated, well aware Oskar was of German extraction and god knows what they might find out. There was a time when Michelle wouldn’t speak to Germans and even now everyone in this house refused to buy a German car.

  Oskar’s American, she said to herself, still in shock that he was actually here. Would they sleep in the same bed? How odd, she quietly pondered, to sleep with her lover while her parents slept under the same roof a couple of** dozen yards away.

  “Where are your things?” she asked.

  “I put the
m in your room,” her father said.

  She looked at him. “You’re getting very avant garde.”

  “I might always have been and you didn’t know it,” her father said.

  He might, she thought. Seems everyone in this family has secrets, including herself. Although Oskar knew her secret. And he was here. So it can’t make that much difference to him. Was that what she so liked about him? He just didn’t seem to care.

  “Want to go for a walk?” she asked. “We could even saddle up some horses.”

  “Not today,” he said. “It’ll make me miss polo.”

  Her father’s head shot up. Oskar explained, “I had a string of Argie thoroughbreds and was an avid player. Loved it. But I broke my foot and didn’t want to push my luck anymore. The next fall could have led to a concussion and double vision doesn’t mix with finance.”

  “Sometimes it seems that’s exactly what they’re working with on Wall Street,” her father answered. He paused and then said, “I’m going to call Michelle and take her to dinner alone. She must be a little shook up. You guys go out somewhere special. Duet, you know the “hot” places,” and he grinned at the sarcasm of the idea of “hot” places being anywhere in the vicinity.

  Her father threw her his Lexus keys and she caught them and smiled, then raised her brows at Oskar, and off they went into the fading evening.

  He was looking around at their garden, at the big oak, maple and plum trees, at the three wild flower beds that lined the driveway, which her father tended himself, with she as resident weeder when she was a child. The snapdragons and hydrangeas still made the garden look like a festival. She thought, My God, maybe Oskar likes me.

  As if he heard her, he said, opening the car door, “You know I don’t really like Middle America. Which is what I consider everywhere outside of New York. But I didn’t want to leave you alone.”

  “But you never even call me!”

  “So what does that mean?” he said and got into the car. Talk about Socratic questions, she said to herself.