Wedding of the Two-Headed Woman by Alice Mattison Page B

the Italian market. People who hadn’t seen her decided after she died that maybe they had. Marie Valenti had been a student at Wilbur Cross, a reporter on the school paper—and she’d just been accepted at Yale. Her body was found on the green at nine on a Tuesday evening, a couple of weeks before she’d have graduated from high school. I’d lived in town just a few years then. I hadn’t seen Marie Valenti playing on the floor of the grocery store—which had closed when the highway cut through its neighborhood—but I remember the headlines.
    I said much of the above as I drove, talking more to myself than to Pekko. In my peripheral vision I saw Pekko holding himself tightly next to me, as if gathering his strength to strike—or keep what he gathered. He became more solid, more compact. He didn’t speak.
    I knew it made no sense to find him funny, yet I coaxed, as if he were four, “ What? ”
    He shook his head. When I slowed, driving into the park I remembered—a wooded nature preserve—Arthur whined. In the parking lot, I opened the back door for Arthur, reaching past him to take hold of his leash. But Pekko had detached it when we left Watertown, so now the dog bounded out of the car and took off across a meadow.
    Young and disobedient, Arthur ignored my shouts, cantering toward the nearby woods. I couldn’t help delighting in his poodle, squared-off directness, his pleasure in motion. I hurried after him, and Pekko followed me at a steady pace, snapping the folded leash against his leg. Pekko is the sort of powerful man who looks more natural on a ladder than walking in a forest.
    A family with children and a small white dog came out of the woods, and Arthur and the dog ran off together. I called Arthur once more, but on his way to me, he veered off and put a paw on the shoulder of a little child, who fell down and began to wail. Pekko came puffing up behind me, shouting, “You damned dog, get your ass over here!”
    The father of the child had picked him or her up—it was one of those indefinite stubby children, recently a baby—but didn’t look concerned. I rushed to apologize, but the people were untroubled. Now Arthur let himself be put on the leash, and we walked into the woods, where the trees were evergreens but the undergrowth on either side was all but ready to leaf out. In the oxygenated quiet, I began to calm down. I’d been afraid the family would be angry, and I might have become angry myself in response, though the mishap was my fault. As I grew calmer, I remembered that Pekko had been angry with me, and I’d laughed at him. I didn’t know why he was angry.
    It was new for us to walk like this. Ordinarily one of us walked Arthur alone. “So why don’t you want me to be curious about murder?” I said. “Are you afraid I’ll become a murderer?” I felt tender toward him, ready to get along with him, to compromise, as if that relaxed family had argued his case.
    â€œYou don’t know why?” he said.
    â€œI don’t know why.”
    â€œNew Haven,” he said, gesturing at the woods that were not New Haven, apparently imagining New Haven superimposed on them. “I’ve been there longer than you have. I was born there.”
    â€œThat’s why I married you,” I said. “I was bored with people who complain about New Haven.”
    â€œThen why spread bad news? Penney Serra. Christian Prince. Haven’t we been criticized enough?”
    â€œBy we you mean the citizens of New Haven?”
    â€œWhat else would I mean?”
    â€œWhy would my curiosity make people criticize us?”
    â€œNext thing you’ll be on the radio again, talking about New Haven murders.”
    I hadn’t had such a specific idea yet. “It’s a thought,” I said, “but wouldn’t it be possible to present it in a such a way that—”
    â€œNo, it