Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 30

by eds. Kelly Link

  As I look into Shelly’s glass someone turns on the lighting system and the basement is flooded with laser lights. Mostly greens with a few red ones thrown in for variety’s sake and it helps that they are decoys of the laser sites from the sniper rifles which they bring out just often enough to keep the bar in the papers.

  They want you to feel the danger. They want you to ask the questions. Is that little red light just a little red light or is it a laser sight? Am I a bystander or a target? Is everything okay or is this the end? This place is all about that edge.

  Shelly introduces me to a girl who is dressed like a soccer mom. The girl smiles demurely when Shelly tells her I live by the river and says, “I hooked up with a river rat last night.” Tiny green dots wash over the right side of her face. “Dick so big I had to lube my lips just to get it in my mouth.”

  Everyone laughs. Soccer Mom, you’re incorrigible. But I can only think of my mom. I want her. I want to call her even though I know she will say she doesn’t know who I am. My mother has always believed that twins were bad luck.

  Once, when I was seven, or maybe eight, a woman who worked at the factory took some time off and stayed home with me. It was summer and there was no school and she was very pregnant. Her case was complicated and I brought her toasted marshmallow-y bread and cool wet compresses because she was not supposed to get up much. To reward me for being such a good helper she would let me lie next to her, my head on her kicking belly and she would tell me stories. I loved her and hoped that she would stay with me forever.

  But all pregnancies end, in one way or another.

  Hers ended at night, when she was at her own home, so her husband took her to the hospital instead of me (we’d practiced how when she cried, “It’s time,” I would get her suitcase and call a certain cab driver). In the morning, my mother told me I would have to be a big girl and stay home alone because my friend was in the hospital recovering from the birth. She told me I wouldn’t be seeing her anymore. She told me that my friend had twins and that, though we should never be unkind to her, it was safest for everyone if we stayed away.

  My friend, my mother said, was to be pitied. The twins were to be avoided. It was not my friend’s fault, my mother said. Sometimes unlucky things just happen. What can a mother do?

  There is green everywhere and somehow the crowd has doubled. A red laser beam stops in the center of some guy’s forehead. I think of the sniper taking aim. The guy has no idea and keeps dancing. It occurs to me that I should bring Brigid here.

  The basement is transformed and I see red dots everywhere: the fleshy part of a girl’s arm, the DJ’s chest, some guy’s pockmarked cheek. I follow the red beams back to their source, to a place high on the back wall. The place where the sniper sits. Maybe they will choose me as tonight’s sacrifice to the god of adrenaline. “The girl in the earthtones,” someone will whisper and the sniper will nod and that will be the end of me and the little twin. “At least you’re going down with me,” I tell her.

  I stare straight into the laser. It’s okay, I think to the sniper. He can only hear in lights, the twin almost says. She makes less sense by the day. She tricks and lies.

  “Almost time for you to go away,” I tell her, certain the sniper has understood. There, between my ultimate and penultimate ribs. On the right side. You can do it. You can do it.

  I’m waiting and then there she is. Fucking Brigid in her fucking mask. In a flash of green light I see her. All birch and smiles. All tricks and lies. She should have a little twin.

  There is a shot and a wave of screams.

  And now she has done it. Brigid the Damned has broken my concentration—my mind wave conversation with the sniper—and he has made his shot, but not at the twin. There is not a single drop of blood pouring from any part of me. Life is unfair. What is a host to do?

  Over the din, I hear a shout of “Fuck yeah!” and can see Soccer Mom pumping her fist in the air. She is already on a crisp blue stretcher being carried from the premises. She is met with rallies and cheers. Everyone loves Soccer Mom! She is grinning and bleeding from the forearm.

  The twin twists and laughs. You’ll never get me.

  It occurs to me that to understand the twin and to understand myself I might need to understand the factory. This is where my parents worked. They may still work there. I don’t know. We lived snuggled up next to it. Even though the factory was big and industrial looking, the smell of the bread made everything in feel cozy. Sometimes, I think back on it and say to myself, “How quaint.” But quaint is all wrong because that factory had every modern convenience. The bakers (my parents and about eighty of the parents and grandparents of my schoolmates) dealt with the dough from the sponge to the end of the second rise. The dough wasn’t hand kneaded, of course, big mechanically muscled arms descended from cranes to fold and punch the dough under the bakers’ discerning eyes. Once the dough was in the ovens everything was automated. The only thing left was for the checkers to make sure that the machines had baked and sliced and bagged the beautiful white loaves to the company’s exacting standards.

  In the factory, my parents are special. On both sides, their parents worked at the factory and their parents before them and their parents worked at the bakery that preceded the factory. They fell in love over a plank of rising dough. Yeast scented their first kiss. Flour was tossed over their heads as they ran down the church steps. But they wanted something else for me. I was supposed to see the world.

  They are disappointed when I stay in the city and go to college. They are devastated when I take a job in an office just one quadrant from the factory. I wrench their hearts when I take an apartment down in the stench of the river. They break off from me entirely when I call them to report the discovery of the twin.

  “What?” says my mother when I tell her.

  I repeat myself. The line goes dead. When I call her back she pretends I have the wrong number.

  “Mom,” I scream.

  “No,” she says. “I’m afraid there’s no one by that name here.”

  At noon, a knock at my door. It is a man, middle aged, trim, well-dressed. The twin starts to spin at the sight of him. Twisting round and round in agitation. She hurts me but I grit my teeth against the pain.

  “I wonder if I could speak to you for a moment,” the man says in accented tones.

  A week has passed since the fourth. At work, I have avoided speaking to Brigid, but have stalked her through the hallways. I am not yet following her home, but this seems like the next logical step.

  Problems: I worry Brigid has spotted all this sneaking. I worry this man is a cop. I worry he is here to tell me to leave Brigid alone.

  “Speak,” I say. I do not open the door further. On the floor I see another handful of crumpled, buttery pansies.

  “My name is Dr. Arr,” he says and immediately I see it. He’s not wearing a white coat, but he may as well be. There’s no one on the face of this plane who has ever exuded doctorness more than this man. “I am a senior fellow at the Institut der vorgerückten internen Medizin in Bern and I have heard about your case.”

  At this, I open the door a little wider, stoop down and pick up the pansies. I have been drinking a little and am unsteady on the upswing. He watches me with the doctor version of amusement.

  “Might I come in?” he asks.

  I open another beer and ask if he wants one. He hesitates, then says, “Yes, I think that would be all right.” He thanks me as he opens it, moves to the table by the window, and looks at the drying butter pansies as he takes a sip. “Ah,” he says. “Very good. Very cold.”

  We sit down across from each other. He crosses his legs at the knee and smiles at me. I tuck up my legs and scowl at him.

  “My branch of the Institut is particularly interested in unusual cases. There is a great variety in life, so many conditions of living. This is fascinating to my colleagues and certainly to myself. We seek out persons who have been touched by this variety and try to understand the comp
onents behind the aberrance. And also to help these people. Sometimes the conditions make their lives difficult. We try to rectify that.

  “We attempted to contact you through your hospital, but the doctors there are proprietary. Even when we said we could help you, improve your way of living, they refused to let us speak to you. It was decided that I would come here and appeal to you directly. I hope you will excuse the breach of protocol, but it was decided that there was no other way.

  “What we propose is an operation that would remove the parasitic twin from your body. We believe we can keep it alive in a device that is more or less an artificial womb. It is possible that we can induce growth, perhaps even bring it to maturity. Make it an autonomous life.”

  Here is the thing: Here was someone offering me exactly what I wanted. There are, I know, many kinds of people who could refuse such an offer. People who could say: “Sounds too good to be true” and “I don’t accept gifts from strangers” and “What are the risks?” I am not one of those kinds. I am a suspicious animal, wary of tricks and traps, but not immune to the powerful draw of wish fulfillment by a mysterious third party. How could I say no?

  “I’ll have to look into this a bit,” I say trying to sound warier than I feel. “Consult a few people, but it sounds like something I might be amenable to.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful,” he says.

  We discuss things for a while, and before he leaves, he gives me all kinds of contact information and brochures on the Institut, and he stops by the pansy table again. “This is very interesting,” he says of the pansies.

  “You seem awfully interested in those,” I say suspiciously. Has the Institut been sending me pansies? Does that even make sense?

  “Yes. As I said, they are interesting.”

  It was the hair my father first fell in love with. Two long braids, gathered up and wrapped around her head, wrapped around each other, curling and bending in an astounding feat of coiffure, their choking tightness a metaphor for something—my father looked at them and saw love, saw a battle. In the sterile tundra of the factory her braids were a thing of wonder.

  When I was little my father told me that one day I’d have braids like hers and that boys would behold me and promptly fall to the ground, so overcome with love at the sight of the braids their legs would give way and down they’d topple. My conquests would litter the streets. I fell asleep with the pleasant anticipation of power. But my mother never let my hair grow past my ears. “It is good to be sleek,” she told me once as she took scissors to my hair. “That way you can keep moving. Nothing to tie you down.”

  From the brochures I see that Bern is beautiful, that the Institut is clean, big, rich. It seems like the perfect place to lose this thorn in my side. Too perfect? What does that mean? I wait two days, so as not to seem over-eager, then call up Dr. Arr and say I need to bring someone with me. “No problem,” he says. “No problem at all. Just give me the name and we’ll arrange a ticket.”

  Here I stop. Who to bring? Shelly seems like an obvious choice. She has a strong sense of self-preservation and if there is anything hinky about Dr. Arr and his plans she will sense it. But Shelly works hard. Takes her job seriously. I can’t see her jetting off to Switzerland with me for something so half-cocked. I can’t see her listening to this plan and not finding reasons to object.

  And, well, there’s Brigid, who is in fact kind of my enemy (or my second enemy after the twin), with not even a quarter of Shelly’s powers of suspicion, but she’ll come if I ask. “Yes, yes! Let’s be friends!” she’ll cry. And it seems like a good way to get her away from Dr. Ruxin for a few days.

  Maybe absence will make the heart forget.

  In any case, if it turns out Dr. Arr is some psycho slaughterer and all this is an elaborate murder scheme I’ll feel less bad about getting Brigid killed than Shelly. I give the doctor Brigid’s name and we hang up. I smile. Convincing Brigid will be a cakewalk.

  In the enormous eggshell of our office, Brigid has always seemed normal-sized. On the roofdeck, I was able to see for the first time that Brigid is twice the size of anyone else I know. Her limbs are especially long. She is like a walking tree. She is awesome to behold and for just one tiny moment as we pass through the sliding doors of the airport I do not resent Dr. Ruxin for loving her. I, myself—I, who hate her—have to stop myself from falling at her feet and worshiping at the altar of the Brigid-goddess. But I am plagued by a worry: Will she fit in the airplane seat? It seems entirely likely that her door hinge elbows will send the armrests flying and those long silver legs will knock away the seat in front of her. How could something so great be squeezed into a space that small?

  But here we are, tucked into our seats so nicely. How she managed it I’ll never know.

  Brigid and I sit snugly in first class. There is pink champagne. There are oatmeal cookies. There are throw blankets in tartan plaid. There is also a young woman with a blonde French Twist sitting in the row across from us who has been watching me like a tiger watches a trainer, pretending to tame, but waiting for the opportunity to kill. In the terminal, she kept close. While we ate streusel-laden plum muffins and drank orange soda, she drank black coffee and chopped on an enormous carrot. As she neared the thick top and was really straining to get the thing into her mouth I thought of Soccer Mom with her emergency lube at the ready. In a way, she was Soccer Mom, Euro Edition. She was what Soccer Mom would be if Soccer Mom knew more than one language and had an unnatural fondness for yogurt.

  When we boarded, French Twist followed right behind us. I suspect she is from the Institut, here to make sure I really go to see them and am not just a scammer after a free flight to Europe. Brigid, of course, didn’t see a thing.

  But, once we are settled on the plane, Brigid (or the Brigid-goddess who has the clever, belashed eyes of a giraffe) sees something I don’t.

  “Look,” she says. And, “Isn’t that . . .”

  I follow the line of her eyelashes to a seat in front of French Twist. There, relaxing comfortably on these remarkable airplane chairs (manufactured by our global giant, the SwivelR Corporation) is none other than the real Mr. Tall McGiven. Not a doctor who bears a more than passing resemblance to Mr. Super-Rapid Hair & Muscle Growth Formula IV. No, no. It is the man himself. He is looking especially meaty. And hairy, in a carefully monitored sort of way. He is someone whose surfaces have been fussed over. This is not a man who would’ve lived two decades with a parasitic twin between his ribs without somebody noticing. It wouldn’t have taken him flopping onto the minimart floor like a boa constrictor and screeching with all the repetitive charm of an early car alarm for someone to say, “Why, I think something may be amiss with that young person.”

  Brigid and I giggle together at the sight of him. I feel a swell of friendliness toward her and for just a second hope that Dr. Arr doesn’t murder us. Tall McGiven must’ve heard the giggle because he turns in his wonderful seat and winks at us, sending a look that says he’d be more than happy to nail either of us in the first class bathroom.

  I wonder if I can convince Brigid to have lavatory sex with Tall McGiven. Surely Dr. Ruxin would flee from such a person.

  “You should talk to him,” I whisper.

  “Eww,” she says.

  “Oh, he’s just famous. That’s how famous people act.” If Brigid’s jaw muscles are any indication, she’s softening toward the idea.

  French Twist sniffs her disdain and I shoot her a look that says, “I know you’re watching me, but that doesn’t mean you can interfere with my plots and schemes.” It is a look fierce enough to send her poking around in her purse for yogurt coated raisins.

  “Just think about it,” I tell Brigid, and, always one to follow directions, she does.

  She falls asleep before I can convince her. When the attendants bring around lunch I wake her and try to slip more champagne down her gullet, but she’s more interested in eating. When I uncover my own tray I know I will not be able to get a bite down: not an egg to be
found on the sectioned plate.

  There is, however, a helpful drawing with explanations of what is in each section. In the upper left oval is pineapple-carrot custard. In the upper right oval are two cabbage leaves stuffed with vegetables. In the big bottom oval is a turkey sandwich made with the fluffiest white bread in all the land. I see it and worry I will cry.

  Brigid sees my face and bites her lip.

  “How are you feeling about all this?” she asks.

  “Amazing,” I say staring straight ahead.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” Brigid says. “She’s been with you a long time. Your life has revolved around this for a long time. And it’s normal to wonder what things will be like when you don’t have to spend all your time and energy worrying about this. I mean, think of all the things you might do if you weren’t at a hospital all the time.”

  “What are you talking about?” I say way too loud for an airplane.

  She shivers against my rage. “I just . . .” she starts, but she trails off and loses the will to try.

  The flight attendant comes by and I throw the bread toward him, missing the trash bag he is holding. He scowls at me as he picks it up and I scowl right back. Why must this bread follow wherever I go?

  My parents’ histories are wound up in the factory, tied together like a braid of challah, which, of course, the factory does not make. They specialize in the fluffy stuff, the powdery whites. The formula a guarded secret. Marshmallows envy this bread. So do I.

  In front of the Institut are two flower beds not pictured in the brochures. They are L shaped, and seem somehow like two crooked arms reaching out to you and if you’ll only step a little closer they will hug you to the Institut’s body and you will feel safe and loved. The beds are filled with butter colored pansies and nothing else. The sight of them makes me suspicious and scared, but also, I want to be hugged.