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Gudrun was cooking soft porridge for their supper while Pemberley lay swaddled in a huge old quilt on the couch, propped up so she could see everything. Gudrun hummed Heartbreak Hotel and her humming broke into singing, unguarded and easy for once, her voice loud and bright in the close green humidity of the forest, the color, at last, strong and warm in her cheeks. She sipped Cold Palace Brand No. 1 Silver Needle Tea from a red mug between verses.
“Ruby!” shouted Pemberley suddenly.
Gudrun dropped the red mug. It shattered on the floor like a supernova.
3. Slumber Party Sweet Sixteen
Published 1962, Belladonna Classics, 119 pages
Johnny Abalone lived alone above his father’s store. He’d always meant to get somewhere in life, but somewhere ended up being right back where he started. He’d come around to being more or less okay with that. Old Jack Oskander once told him, as he bought another massive stack of dirty magazines: kid, nobody really gets anywhere in this life. Everybody just picks someplace to hunker down and barricade themselves in. Some of us just got better bricks than others.
And Johnny thought that was pretty much on the mark.
The envelope arrived with the afternoon mail run. He almost didn’t notice it in the small hurricane of invoices and junk ads. It just said Johnny on it. No address. But everyone knew who he was. It wouldn’t have been any puzzle, even for a new
mailman, which Sam Frisk was not. Johnny Abalone pulled out an old, faded Christmas card. It had a snowman on it. Corn cob pipe and everything.
If you wanted to come and see me on Thursday, that would be fine. It’s my birthday. Here is $400. I think that’s enough for a color TV. If you could bring it when you come that would be as good as a present. Only you have to promise not to freak out if you see something that would be hard to explain if anyone asked you about it. But probably no one ever will.
I drink my tea straight. Silver needle doesn’t need anything extra.
P.S. Bring cake. Lots of frosting.
—Gudrun
2. The Girl Next Door
Published 1950, Fig Leaf Press, 104 pages
Pemberley learned words quickly. After Ruby came Murray, water, potato, book, tea, want, moon. And others less predictable, less simple, less clear where she found them. Dirty. Formaldehyde. Fallout. Radon. Military industrial complex. Poison. Death.
Snow.
Gudrun didn’t know what she expected. She supposed she ought to stop expecting entirely at this point. She had only just managed to adjust to the reality of having been cut in two like an orange. She didn’t much feel like dealing with this new problem. Because Pemberley was her in every way, just the same, by definition, by ontological necessity. But those hadn’t been Gudrun’s first words. She’d said Mama, like most children. Then hello, bottle, help, up, outside, kiss, and Minnesota.
Once, at night, while Pem snored softly next to her with her fists balled up under her chin, Gudrun wondered if, having been bisected so cleanly, she was missing something now. If she was no longer whole. If she was still 100% Gudrun and not diluted somehow, alloyed with some new substance. 90% Gudrun and 10% radon, fallout, formaldehyde, snow. Or 50% Gudrun, and 50% of her now lived in a completely unattached body that she could never glue back together with the rest, a new warm body put away gently on the other side of the cabinet from her old cool one, divided by spoons and sugar and the inevitable separateness of everything, sucking its thumb vigorously when it had bad dreams.
Pemberley never learned to say hello. She just said goodbye for everything. When she saw Gudrun first thing in the morning. Goodbye. When Murray came lumbering over the potato patch. Goodbye. When soft, black and white people came on the television to talk to her. Goodbye. When she wanted to tell Gudrun she loved her.
Goodbye.
1. Snow Bunnies at the Sex Chalet
Published 1963, Red Light Limiteds, 122 pages
Johnny Abalone pulled up into the driveway just as the afternoon sun was throwing its weight around, battering red and gold against the mango trees, the brambles, the teak slats of Pemberley, the garden stakes, the fat wild turkey warming his big belly in the dirt, the rippling creek, and two Gudruns. True to his implicit promise, he did not freak out. She must have a twin, he supposed, though you wouldn’t think Ruby could hide another daughter all those years. But he did wonder which was his Gudrun. One wore a clean blue sundress, one wore a red one, but beyond that he could see no difference, except that the one in blue seemed oddly clumsy, and kept laughing at nothing and trying to eat butterflies like soap bubbles.
He unloaded the TV and the cake from his truck. The TV was a nice new walnut cabinet number. It had cost a lot more than $400, but Johnny didn’t mind. The cake was chocolate, because, he figured, everybody likes chocolate. Vanilla or red velvet was a risk, and he couldn’t afford risk just now. The cake said HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUDRUN in pretty turquoise icing with bright orange sugar flowers on it. He also brought beer and the grill from his back deck (no way Gudrun would have one) and a cooler full of burgers and individually-wrapped cheese slices. They stocked good sharp cheddar and brie and all that at the store, but Johnny always loved the undemanding, familiar taste of industrial cheese-like product and he was too old to go changing now.
“Hi Johnny,” the red Gudrun said. “I’m glad you came.”
“Goodbye!” chirped the blue Gudrun.
They installed the TV together and hauled the old black and white out into the garden. Red Gudrun pried off the cabinet top and filled it with dirt and rosemary and basil plants. Johnny hooked up his grill and fried them all a nice meal while the blue Gudrun stared at the new set, mesmerized. She flipped through all three channels and stopped on one where the President was talking, gazing earnestly out into America the way he always did, those movie star eyes always looking apologetic somehow, wistful, wishing things were other than they are.
“That’s where we come from, Pem,” the red Gudrun said. “That’s who we were supposed to be.”
The girls ate like animals, ripping into the red, dripping meat like they’d never tasted it before. Attacking the cake like it’d done them wrong. It was sort of pretty, when they did it.
