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

can’t do fuck all, it’s Samuel who’s the whole man with the limbs and organs, and I’m nothing but this turd he carries around on his shoulder. But what the doctors don’t know, what even Samuel doesn’t know, is that I’ve developed my brain to the point that I’m a master of extrasensory manipulation.
    There have been a couple of times I’ve played Samuel like remote control. One night I was really cooking. He was on his way to a fellowship meeting, and I think, “Hang a left,” and suddenly he turns left. I think, “Cross the road,” he crosses. “Now go right,” he goes right. I had him turning on a dime that night. We went to the pool hall, took in a movie. I tried to get him into a massage parlour, the one at the corner of First and King, but no dice—sex is one area where I can’t get through. It kills me. Women are always coming on to us so they can say, I made it with the two-headed man. But Samuel doesn’t believe in premarital sex. And his taste in women, it’s enough to turn you into a fag.
    A couple of years ago he got the hots for a dental hygienist. Six foot two, skinny, no chin, glasses. She’s cleaning our teeth, acting like there’s nothing unusual going on, and if there’s one thing that burns my ass, it’s people pretending there’s nothing unusual going on. I mean, we’ve got two heads here! We’ve got show time!
    Samuel’s heart starts pumping. It makes me sweat. What does he see in her? I don’t know. I don’t care, either, because he’s never asked anyone out. But fuck me if he doesn’t invite her to a fellowship meeting!
    I’m sweet as sugar. Give him the impression I like her. I’ve decided I want to see what happens. He buys a new suit, blue.
    What happens is nothing. They go to the meeting, walk home, talk about the meeting, sit on the porch. She keeps trying to draw me into the conversation. It starts up that pressure above my left ear. Finally I tell her. “Show us your skinny tits or shut up.”
    “I beg your pardon?” she says.
    “Samuel’s getting hard,” I say. “Samuel wants to fuck you in the ass.”
    She grabs her purse and runs off. Know something funny? From the back she reminds me of Jill St. John.
    For most of my life I considered Simon inseparable from myself—my cross to bear, as I’ve said. And yet I had faith that one day the cross wouldn’t weigh down so heavily. Foolishly I believed that Simon would come to accept his lot, as I had accepted mine.
    He fed this belief. By remaining virtually silent and submissive for days, sometimes weeks, he would raise my hopes and nurture in me a feeling of profound pity. Our mother thought that he entered visionary dreams during these silences. In her mind he was a temperamental genius, and despite knowingthat “temperamental” was much too benign a word to ascribe to his tantrums and crude outbursts, I made an effort, while she was alive, to see him through her eyes.
    It was very difficult. I witnessed far more than she did. I saw that he lied to her face. I saw that the control he exercised in her company was entirely self-serving. Never would it have occurred to him that she was capable of loving him even at his most vile.
    She was a true martyr, our mother, and in her gentle way she encouraged me to be one, too. When she cooked chili for him, I was meant to suffer in silence the inevitable heartburn. Until she died I never had to feed or groom him—she was devoted to these tasks—but it was understood that I would always serve his whims. I endeavoured to do so, taking my strength from her. There was no one more patient and humble.
    Except, I regret to say, when she drank. Then, she was another person, Simon’s confederate. The change in her personality was truly frightening. But I do not sit in judgement. I have read that alcoholism is a disease, and in any event her resistance was constantly under siege. He stormed at her to get out the bottle. He damaged my liver.
    I have just added that