Bearded Women by Teresa Milbrodt

Author:Teresa Milbrodt [Milbrodt, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Dark Fiction
ISBN: 9781927469026
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2011-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Three

You’d very much like the three-legged man. Your grandparents might have seen him when he was still performing in the sideshow, might have told you about his act in which he kicked a ball with his third leg, danced three-legged jigs, and stood on his third leg while reading suggestive limericks. He was really quite spectacular.

The three-legged man left the sideshow when he was thirty-nine and his daughter was fifteen. He liked performing, but it got tiresome and he wanted to do something else. Be a normal guy with a house and a kid. This is more difficult with three legs than with two, but the three-legged man did an admirable job of it, though he is not sure his daughter would agree. They moved to a reasonable town and bought a small home. The three-legged man planted annuals along the front walk, tomatoes in the backyard, and had a second career as a mail carrier for eighteen years.

The three-legged man’s daughter graduated from high school and college and medical school. She was very intelligent. She became a radiologist, married a trombone-playing nurse, had a daughter, and divorced. The three-legged man and his daughter, who is now fifty-two, do not talk about the sideshow years. He invites her and his granddaughter for dinner every Sunday (although his granddaughter is young and busy and does not always come). Every other Sunday his daughter brings a bottle of wine. The three-legged man is a teetotaller. His daughter drinks the whole bottle (except when his granddaughter comes and has one glass). You would not know when his daughter is drunk because she is so neat. Never slurs. Never swaggers. Just swears a lot. The three-legged man’s former wife also liked wine too much. Remember this for later.

You’d like the three-legged man’s daughter. She smells slightly of honeysuckle, wears brightly coloured skirts, has a pleasant voice, and is good at explaining things to other people in a reassuring tone. If you happened to see her in the grocery store bread aisle and asked her advice on whole wheat versus seven-grain bread, she would explain to you reassuringly why one kind, probably the kind you wanted in the first place, was both healthier and tastier than the other. You can understand why it is good she went into the medical profession.

The three-legged man’s friend Odelle is a good artist, but she is only known locally so you would not have heard of her. She is sixty-seven, nine years younger than the three-legged man, and accustomed to the idea of wrinkles, of the aging body. It was her idea to paint him in a series of different nude poses from classical art. Michelangelo’s David. Rodin’s pondering man from The Gates of Hell. She even painted him as an old man on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, reaching out to touch the hand of God. The three-legged man particularly likes that painting. You would, too. His daughter does not. Odelle’s work is going to be shown in a local gallery.

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