Free The Two-Headed Man: Short Story by Barbara Gowdy

The Two-Headed Man
    M y memory is photographic, in living colour. I’m flooded with memories, mostly images from dreams I’ve had. A leather jacket with four tulips, eating blueberries half blind and having blueberries scattered on the ground, growing limbs that turn out to be tree limbs, useless.
    I remember all my nightmares, they come back twice as horrible. My heart stops.
    My heart stops at the back of my throat. Anger hits me above my left ear, there’s a pressure there, like a finger pushing. Fear is between the eyes. Instead of my guts turning over I feel a popping at the bridge of my nose. After a few seconds the sensation, whatever it is, turns into a burning sensation, a slow smouldering that can last up to five minutes. Sometimes I’ve got half a dozen of these fires going on at once, all over, overlapping.
    What’s happening is that my brain messages aren’t getting through. My brain works like anybody else’s, it sends out messages to the body. But in my case the messages hit a roadblock at Samuel’s collarbone. They are all fuelled up for a long trip, and then they have to reverse into my head and park with their engines idling until they burn themselves out.
    Inside I’m a mess of burn tissue. Scientists can’t wait for me to die so they can open me up and get a good look. Just a couple of days ago a woman researcher wrote me, asking would I donate myself to her lab. I thought of writing back, “Anytime you want me to give you head.” I had Samuel write her and ask for an eight-by-ten. If she looks anything like Jill St. John, I’m hers.
    An entire week, and not a word from Karen. I suppose I attributed to her a courage she never had. I have always known that I was meant for unhappiness, and yet the human heart yearns. Did not the Son of God yearn? And did He not weep to be forsaken?
    It occurs to me that the physical agony Christ suffered on the cross served to distract Him from the more terrible agony of abandonment. God’s subtle mercies … with which man interferes! I am offered excruciating pain by God, and a painkiller by the nurse. A painkiller! I have thought of saying to her, “If it were that easy, do you think I’d have used a saw?”
    My lawyer has warned me about my wry sense of humour. She has urged me to list all the ways Simon persecuted me. So far I’ve written:
    —Biting my ear, provoking numerous chronic infections. Also yelling into that ear, eventually causing deafness.
    —Regularly assailing me and everyone around us with the most despicable imprecations.
    —Depriving me of sleep. Waking me in the middle of the night with his howling.
    —Depriving me of love by tormenting my beloved.
    —Libelling me. Telling people that I stuck him with pins, punched him and burned his eyes with Javex.
    Nobody believed Simon’s lies. If I caused him pain, it was never intentional, our mother having instilled in me a conviction that he was my cross to bear. It was not until our mother died that I understood God’s intention was not that I should bear him but that I should cast him off. And even then Ithought of “casting off” only in its figurative sense—ridding him of his power to hurt or influence me. At that point I was naive enough, pompous enough, to imagine that I could subdue him. For the first time in our lives I raised my voice at him, and for the first time (in spite of what he claimed) I gagged him in order to compel him to listen.
    Sure, Samuel’s going to waste me. I’ve always known that. The question is, how. And when. When is soon, now that the old lady has kicked the bucket. How? I’ll tell you one thing, it won’t be poison.
    Everything I eat or drink, he siphons off. I used to have the old lady spike my coffee. It was hilarious. I’m guzzling gin and coffee, feeling nothing except maybe a nice sweet shimmer, and Samuel’s sliding off his chair.
    The way I look at it, you’ve got a brain, you’ve got all the power you need. Doctors will tell you I