by Fay Weldon
Yes. I believe there is always a They about to clean up and explain, even as they persecute. Silly old me.
I know you believe I chose Tom because he came from Minneapolis, in order to upset Minnie more. But I didn’t choose. He just happened along. A millionaire from the Midwest, a transatlantic knight in shining armour to pluck me out of the muddy swamp, detect my beauty through my tangled hair and carry me off to happiness and prosperity. His City of Exit didn’t seem too important to me. Look, there aren’t so many knights in shining armour around. Had one come along from Milwaukee, I’d have gone for him. Honest.
Minnie was a stupid name anyway. Neither of us liked it. They called me Rosamund because that was the name Frank and Tillie had chosen for their first-born. Frank and Tillie are my parents. What was that you murmured? Christ, she actually spoke. Miss Jacobs, who gets a pound a minute, actually spoke! ‘I haven’t forgotten.’ That’s what you say. How am I supposed to know when you’re listening or when you’re asleep? Whether you’ve absorbed everything, or nothing? Whether you’ve forgotten what once you knew, or whether you never knew to begin with? The permutations of your not knowing are endless. And it has been a year since I was last here. More time than you’d need to forget.
Nothing is making me angry. What makes you think I’m angry? I’m upset, that’s all, lying here again, having to push and shove amongst your other patients, waiting for a cancellation. What do you think that feels like? Do you understand my humiliation? I thought I could cope and I can’t. I’m unhappy. I loved Tom. Where am I ever going to find another man like him again? He’ll never speak to me again. Everything was organized: a wedding ceremony in a chapel of love with the kind of service Americans love: bits and pieces of poetry and flute solos, and his parents, and his grandparents, and his friends and their friends and apple pie; and I couldn’t, I couldn’t. I said I wouldn’t. It was the moon. Oh Christ. Can I go to the loo? I suppose I’m allowed?
Where was I? Oh yes, Minnie being Minnie and me Rosamund. How could Frank and Tillie have done it to her? To me? Something else for her to moan about. The first and final straw. Minnie the afterthought. Well, she was, wasn’t she? Out she popped after me, completely unexpected, two pounds lighter, two inches shorter, for all we were meant to be identical. People in the States seem to think there are degrees of identical: but how can that be? Monozygotic is what it says. One cell split. Same genes exactly. Except it isn’t like that, is it? I reckon between us Minnie and I have a hundred per cent of various qualities and we share them out, not necessarily evenly. Niceness, for example. I have seventy per cent. Minnie has thirty per cent. Envy. I have twenty per cent. Minnie got the eighty per cent. Minnie’s envy has killed me.
Other children spend their lives saying, ‘It isn’t fair. It isn’t fair.’ I have to spend mine saying, ‘I can’t help it.’ I can’t help being prettier than her (I reckon that’s another kind of quality, nothing to do with actual looks: a lot to do with self-image: I had sixty per cent, she had forty per cent), cleverer than her, fifty-five: forty-five (but enough to get me to college, her not), luckier than her (well, look at her children!), funnier than her (eighty: twenty), more sociable than her (sixty-five: thirty-five). The friends came to see me: she tagged along, sulking. But I loved her, Miss Jacobs. That made it worse. She knew I loved her, and she couldn’t even do that: love me back. She resented me too much. Capacity for love: Rosamund ninety per cent, Minnie ten per cent. She made my life miserable. If I passed an exam, fell in love, had a baby, bought a house, I couldn’t rejoice. All I could think was, oh my God, will it upset Minnie? How can I hide it?
When Peter and I discovered our first house had dry rot and it was going to cost thousands to repair, the first thing I thought was, thank God, that’ll make Minnie feel better. When Peter was killed in his car accident I remember thinking, at least now I’m a widow, that’s something. But all she said was, ‘My, you do look good in black. Is that why you’re wearing it?’
Going over old ground? You actually remember the ground we trod? Good Lord! I left suddenly, didn’t I? I didn’t think you’d notice. You sent me a massive bill and a kind of note. It registered pathetic, the way notes from former lovers do; all the energy drained away. What was once important no longer is. You ought to come back, you said; you left too soon. Finish your treatment. It sounded like Minnie-talk to me. The reproach there, even if others don’t hear it. Ought, ought, ought: never enjoy, love, live! Minnie, murderer of my life. Sharer of my womb. I never complain that she took my nourishment from me: she’s always going on about how greedy I was, pushing past her at the post. They said I was lying further back than her: by rights I was the one who should have been born second. She would have been first, would have been given ‘Rosamund’, the great prize: I would have been Minnie. And I’d still have been me, and now would be living in Minneapolis. Minnie of Minneapolis. Why in God’s name didn’t she have the guts to elbow me out of the way? Because she’s so feeble, that’s why.
Minneapolis is a twin city. Did you know that? I didn’t, till we were on this aircraft and the captain said, ‘Fifty thousand feet and on our way to the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul,’ and I said to Tom, ‘What does he mean, what does he mean?’ We were flying First Class. Have you ever flown First Class? I shouldn’t suppose so. It’s so comfortable. You feel better than anyone else in the world. I was surprised Minnie hadn’t somehow got herself on to the flight, Economy Class, of course, pushing her head through the curtains with the snarl she uses for a smile, saying, ‘Hi, Rossie.’ She’d never call me Rosamund. Since she didn’t have a Minnimund equivalent, she wouldn’t. Whenever I really wanted to wind her up I’d call her Minnimund. And Frank and Tillie would be there in Club Class looking uneasy and doing nothing to stop her except saying, ‘We love you too, Minnie; you’re very dear to us. All the dearer because you were unexpected.’ Lies, lies. Rearing twins is hell. They never had any more children after us: they couldn’t face it. I reckon Minnie, by being born, deprived another two or three putative children of life, I really do.
Anyway Tom said, ‘Why, they’re twin cities. The Mississippi divides them. They’re rivals. Minneapolis is the modern, go-getting, thrusting city. St Paul is the older, ramshackle one. It kind of limps along behind, but always feels superior.’
‘But that means,’ I said, ‘they’re only half a city each.’ He pretended not to hear. Anything he didn’t understand he pretended not to hear. It was his one big fault. I could have lived with it.
St Paul, limping along behind. Minnie’s first child, Andrew, was born with a dislocated hip and her husband Horace didn’t believe in doctors so he grew up dragging a leg behind him. And Lois, Minnie’s little girl, wasn’t the greatest beauty ever born, and Minnie made it worse by calling her Uglymug and saying, ‘Just my luck!’ As if it was her misfortune, not poor little Lois’s. And of course Minnie’s kids didn’t get to good schools, because Horace was a socialist; and Andrew has personality problems and Lois is just hopeless: and I got all Peter’s insurance money, and my two got a proper education, and now they’re on their way to college. They were both born bright and beautiful. I couldn’t help it. And I am a widow. Minnie sees that as more of my good luck. I think she hates Horace, really. I loved Peter. That’s why I could love Tom. I had a good experience.
To those that hath shall be given; difficult to hand it back, saying I don’t deserve this. But that’s what I did, Miss Jacobs. That’s why I lie here: a corpse in mourning for itself.
Minnie and Horace live in this horrible little house and don’t drink, and Tillie’s had a stroke and Frank has cancer, and Minnie looks after everyone—and me, I flew First Class out of it all, with Tom. But you can’t escape, can you? God stretches out his skinny hand. Minneapolis, the twin city. Minneapolis and St Paul, divided by the river Mississippi, overlapping, interlinked. Tillie and Frank need me to slip them a drink when Minnie’s not looking. Lois needs me to keep her on a diet. Andrew needs me to take him to target
practice when Horace isn’t looking. The only people who don’t need me are my kids. They do just fine without me.
I don’t know what you think, Miss Jacobs. I don’t know which way you want me to be. Where does moral and mental health lie? In looking after yourself, casting off the past, saying I’m well and truly grown-up now; I have a mature, adult, un-neurotic relationship with a totally suitable person: goodbye, family: Minneapolis here I come! Or in saying, well, I’m a person who likes to be liked, who hungers for approval, I’m that kind of person. I accept it, and it’s mature and grown-up to say, ‘Minnie, count on me. Goodbye, Minneapolis.’ Minnie being part of me, however much I rage and scream.
Was what I did an advance into health, or a retreat into unhealthy habit? I have no idea.
I met Tom’s family. I played tennis with his brother, bridge with his mother, met the friends, chose the marquee, made out wedding lists. I was the bride from Europe, a little more mature than expected, but okay. I tried not to think of Minnie. They asked me if I had brothers and sisters. I denied her. I said I was an only child. It was my new view of myself. Sooner or later the lie would catch up with me. I didn’t care. It was worth it: a holiday, however short, from being twinned, divided, cheated, chained. Rosamund, I said, only daughter of Frank and Tillie, retired general medical practitioners, a couple now living in perfect health and harmony, buoyed up by the respect of the community. They couldn’t come over: air travel made Tillie’s legs swell up, I said, and Frank wouldn’t be separated from his wife. Well, that was true enough. Eternal lovers. The children of lovers are orphans. What did I owe Frank and Tillie? The truth? Why? Who wants women around bringing tales of dissidence and trouble?
You don’t approve of this, do you, Miss Jacobs? You don’t think people should live by lies. You believe in truth, dignity, self- knowledge, pride. Well, you won. Minnie won. Here I am. The night before the wedding Tom and I walked down by the Mississippi. To the left rose the elegant new towers of Minneapolis outlined in blocks and spires of light: symbols of wealth, aspiration and progress. To the right, across the river, huddled the brooding clutter of St Paul. Unequal twins, growing more unequal day by day. St Paul has the problems: race riots, poverty, squalor. Minneapolis makes sure of that—just heaves them all across the water. If there’s a block where the addicts hang out, it bulldozes it flat and builds a shopping mall or a parking lot. A half-moon hung over the river, oddly unsatisfactory as half-moons are. You can’t tell if they’re waxing or waning. I said as much. Tom pretended not to hear. He liked me to be fanciful, but not too fanciful.
‘I’m not going to marry you,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ he asked, when he could find the words.
‘Because the moon’s not full,’ I said. ‘If this were a film the moon would be full; not that stupid thing hung up there neither one thing nor the other. I expect it’s always like this round here—just plain halved. Minneapolis gets one half, St Paul the other. It will never be right!’
He tried very hard not to hear, but finally he had to. I was not going to marry him. He wept. His parents kept a stiffer upper lip than Frank and Tillie ever managed. He flew me back Club Class. He did not kiss me goodbye. That was the end of it.
Minnie just said, ‘Oh, you’re back. Made a mess of it for once, did you!’ but this I registered as a kind of acknowledgement. And I do the hospital run with Frank and Andrew, and Lois has moved in with me, and we both go round to Minnie’s and try to make Horace laugh, and—Miss Jacobs, am I just a fool? Or was this what you wanted for me?
I believe you are asleep: the clicking has stopped. I can hear you snoring; little snores or little sniffs. You might even be crying, for all I know. In pity, or pleasure, or just because there was a half-moon over Minneapolis, catching its skyscrapers in miraculous light, while St Paul lay low, dark and brooding. And it wasn’t fair. God makes nothing fair. It is up to us to render it fair.
My fifty-minute hour is up. Your fifty pounds is earned. Thank you for giving me this cancellation. I wonder whom I replaced. And why? Do they have flu? Did they die, or take themselves off unexpectedly to someone more talkative? I have suggested to Minnie that she come along to see you: serve as my replacement on this couch. She says she’ll think about it. No. I’m not going out the back door as if you were ashamed of me. I’m going out the front. I don’t care whom I meet. I am fed up with etiquette I do not understand. I came in dead, I go out living. As I say, thank you.
Un Crime Maternel
WHAT DID THEY CALL you? Miss Jacobs? I find that very strange. Only a mother, surely, can understand a mother. What is their purpose in having me see you? If anyone is crazy, it’s the law, not me. If it asks for psychiatric reports, which frankly I see as both demeaning to me and damaging to my children, it might at least find someone competent to do the reporting. Or do they have to scrape the barrel for people such as yourself? I don’t suppose it’s a barrel of laughs, coming here to Holloway and sitting in this horrid little airless green room smelling of cabbage with a locked door and not even a window. In fact the room is rather like the inside of my head used to be before I battered my way out of it, made a hole to let in the air and the light.
Fortunately I can wear my own clothes, being on remand; I don’t have to wear their nasty dingy dresses. There isn’t an iron available but I keep my skirt beneath my mattress overnight, so the pleats stay in. I like to be smart. I am in the habit of being smart. It’s so important to set an example to the children, don’t you think? But I suppose you wouldn’t know.
Now listen, Miss Jacobs, I will have to make do with you since you’re all I have to work with. It is absolutely imperative, do you understand, that you declare me of sound mind. It would do Janet and Harvey no good at all to believe that their mother was insane. It would be too big a burden for them to bear. They are already having to cope with the loss of their father, and Janet’s birthday is tomorrow—she will be eight—and she will be disturbed enough that for the first birthday ever I’m not there by her bed when she wakes to say ‘Happy birthday, darling.’ She may begin to worry, or doubt what she’s been told; which is, very sensibly, that I’m on holiday in Greece getting over Peter’s death and will be back soon. When I’m out of here I’ll be able to talk the whole thing through with the pair of them. It’s so important to tell children the truth: if you do, their trust in you is never diminished. Time passes so slowly for children: it is vital that I get back to them as soon as possible: that all this silly and unnecessary fuss comes to an immediate end. They’re with Peter’s parents, and though Graham and Jenny are not quite as child-centred as I’d like them to be, for people of that generation they’re not bad. I can be confident they’ll have the sense not to let Janet see the newspapers and of course Harvey isn’t reading yet. I used to worry about Harvey’s slowness at letters—Janet read at four, and he’s already six—but I admit it has its advantages, however unexpected. Crime maternel must be recognized in this country, as crime passionnel is in France. To kill for one’s children is no crime: rather, it is something for which a mother should be honoured. I want a medal, Miss Jacobs, not to be had up on a murder charge and remanded without bail for psychiatric reports. I did what it was my duty to do. I chose my children’s interests over my husband’s interests. Their lives, after all, were just beginning. We do give children this precedence as a matter of course.
It is imperative that I stand trial as a sane person and am properly acquitted, Miss Jacobs, because then the children can deal with it. It may mean moving house and changing schools and names afterwards, of course, but that is nothing compared to the avoidance of trauma. You must see, Miss Jacobs, that I did the only thing I could, in the circumstances I was in.
I had a troubled childhood myself. A father who molested me, a mother who let it happen. I was fostered when I was twelve by a very kind and pleasant family. I know there is good as well as bad in the world. I always wanted to have children, and to give them a perfect life. What is there more important
in the world than this? I became a nurse and did well in my profession, but always with my future role as a mother in mind. I am not bad looking, and could, and indeed would, have married on several occasions, but each time I felt the man involved would not make a good enough father. He would have to be loving, kind, genial, patient, intelligent, sensitive to children’s needs, and able to provide the proper male authority role within the family group. I began to think I’d never meet the perfect father. I could settle, even happily, for less than perfection for myself, but not for my unborn children!
