When the surgeons were preparing to cut the band of flesh that joined me to my brother, Sarah Ann was the one who stopped the operation. She and her sister had traveled by train to Philadelphia, two farm girls in the big city.
We were on the operating table when Sarah Ann stormed into the College of Physicians, dressed in her Sunday best and shouting in the voice she used to summon hogs to feeding. “You can’t do this! You’ll murder them both! You can’t.” Adelaide trailed in her wake, as always, following obediently.
The College of Physicians was no match for Sarah Ann. The distinguished head of surgery threw up his hands when she said she would accuse him of murder if he attempted the operation. She threw herself into my arms and swore that she loved me as I was, that I did not have to change for her, she would marry me as I was. While Sarah Ann shouted, Adelaide stood quietly at my brother’s side, watching her sister’s hysterics.
That afternoon, my brother asked Adelaide to marry him and she accepted. We married the next day. I don’t believe that I ever directly asked Sarah Ann to marry me. But after she said that she would marry me as I was, it was understood that I would marry her. There was no more discussion of that matter. So we had a double wedding.
I don’t know when it was that I fell in love with Adelaide. Perhaps it was on her wedding night. My brother and I had drawn straws to determine who would celebrate his wedding night first and my brother had won. So he would spend the night with Adelaide; the next night, I would spend with Sarah Ann.
I remember my brother’s wedding night better man my own. The lantern burned with a steady light on the bedside table. Adelaide was leaning over to blow out the flame when my brother said, “Leave that. I want to see you naked.”
He was smiling lasciviously. As he spoke, he was unbuttoning his own shirt, fumbling with the buttons on either side of the thick strip of flesh that joined us. He dropped his shirt on the floor and loosened the tie that fastened his pants.
Adelaide stood in the light, her hands clasped before her, her eyes cast downward. My brother stepped toward her, and I was pulled along. He unbuttoned her dress, exposing the lace of her chemise. He groped at her breasts drunkenly, cupping one in each hand, then leaned forward and rubbed his face upon them, nuzzling the nipples through the thin fabric.
“Husband,” she said, her voice soft. “Get into bed, and I will come to you.
My brother kicked off his pants and we sat on the edge of the bed together, then we swung our legs up and lay down.
Adelaide had her back to us. She had taken off her dress and wore only the chemise. The lantern light shone from behind her, revealing her body through the fabric — the soft curve of her waist, the gentle swell of her hips.
“Take that off and come to me,” my brother demanded.
I lay still on the bed, watching as she lifted the chemise over her head and stood naked in the lantern light. She turned and the light shone from behind her, casting her breasts into shadow. My brother was fondling himself; I could feel an echo of his touch, like a ghost hand touching me, arousing me. With his free hand, my brother reached out and grasped Adelaide’s arm, then pulled her toward him. As she came onto the bed, she glanced at me and I looked away, trying to give her what privacy I could.
I could smell her scent, delicate as night-blooming jasmine; I could hear her breath catch as he roughly pushed his hand between her thighs. I could imagine that my own hand felt the tickle of pubic hair, the slippery wetness of her.
She cried out when he penetrated her: a high note, like the alarm call of an exotic bird. He moved his hips against hers, and the note repeated, a sweet song of pain and pleasure. My brother grunted beneath her, and I closed my eyes, feeling the rush of his lust. My hand moved of its own accord and I stroked myself, echoing his thrusts. I could not help myself. But I made no sound; I kept my hips still.
My brother groaned like a boar servicing a sow, a base animal sound. And he moaned as he came with a rush, flooding her with his semen.
When it was over, my brother’s breathing grew steady. He slept, drunken and sexually sated. I watched the lantern light flicker on the ceiling of the hotel room. The straw tick mattress rustled as Adelaide stood to blow out the lantern. In the moment before darkness came, I saw that her cheeks were wet with tears.
“Adelaide,” I whispered in the darkness. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” she said softly. “Not really.”
“Why are you crying?”
She was silent for a moment.
“Tell me, Adelaide. I’m your brother now. Tell me why you are sad.”
“My mother wept at the wedding. She is sorry that I am moving away.”
“Not so far away,” I told her. “Just a few miles.”
“A few miles. So far. I’ve never been so far from my family.” A moment of silence. “You can’t understand how far that can be. You are never more than a foot away from your family.”
I could feel my brother’s heart beating, through the flesh that joins us. “That is not always a good thing,” I said.
“At home, I always knew what they were doing. I could hear my mother in the kitchen when I was falling asleep. I could hear my brother’s snoring from the next room. Sometimes it bothered me, but now I miss it. I could hear my sister, beside me in the bed.”
“I will do my best to snore for you, sweet sister-in-law,” I said, “if that will make you feel at home.”
“You are a sweet brother to me,” she said, her tone lighter.
I remained awake after Adelaide fell asleep, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing and my brother’s snores. I wondered what it would be like to be so far away that I could not hear my brother’s breathing, not feel his heart beating in rhythm with mine. I could not imagine it.
The next day, before my wedding night with Sarah Ann, my brother and I drank toast after toast with people who had come to wish us well. I was not accustomed to drinking and I was drunk by the time the others left. I vaguely remember joking with Sarah Ann as I pulled her dress over her head. I remember seeing my brother grinning at her naked body. She laughed as she tossed a corner of the blanket over his face to hide his staring eyes. I pulled her onto me, driving myself into her, overcome with my own animal nature.
“Let us go to bed, my husband,” Adelaide says. The children have already gone to bed and she does not speak to me. My brother and I quarreled yesterday. He wants to buy more land and I think we already have more land than we can handle.
We began by talking about land, but in the end, it went beyond that. He had been drinking again and I lost my temper. I told him he was a fool and a parasite and he told me I was a coward. I told him that he had no soul and he told me that I had come into the world with my head tucked between his legs — that was the story our mother had always told. “Your head was between my legs when we were born, and I’ve protected you ever since,” he said. I said I would not sign my permission to buy the farm that adjoins mine, and he has not spoken to me since. He would be angry with Adelaide if she spoke to me. So she does not speak, though she acknowledges me with a glance.
Adelaide walks to the bedroom ahead of us, holding the lantern to light the way, her dress pale in the yellow light. My brother is clumsy in his drunkenness, and it is all I can do to keep us upright as he stumbles down the hallway. He curses under his breath, but he does not address me.
He is watching his wife’s hips sway as she walks ahead of us. Though she is old, though she has given birth to many children, she is still slender and lovely. Her beauty is not just a beauty of the body, but a beauty of the soul. I think about the soft touch of her hand and I know my brother is thinking about that too. But he is too old and too drunk to act on his desires.