She's Not There (21 page)

And I want to say,
Fuckin'-A it's hard.
Now I am shaking as I cry, and little black rivulets of mascara are coursing down the sides of my cheeks, making me look like Tammy Faye Bakker.

After a pause I say, “Trudy, I don't know if my saying this will make any difference to you at all. But you can't just assume things will always be like they are now. There are all sorts of miracles in the world, and you have to have faith in them.”

“Why?” says Trudy.

There's a long silence as everyone waits to see what I'm going to come up with. No one is more anxious to find out what I'm about to say than I am.

“Because,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Because life is better than death.”

There is another long pause as everyone mulls this over.

“For you, maybe,” Trudy says quietly.

Andrea slips into social work mode. “Trudy, are you on medication right now, for depression?”

“Yeah,” says Trudy. “They got me on Wellbutrin. Except I can never remember to take it. I keep forgetting. I got ADD, you know, or whatever they call it.”

“Mm-hm,” says Andrea. “Well, see, if you don't take it, it can't help you.”

“I don't know if I want it to help me,” says Trudy.

“I tell you what,” says Andrea. “Why don't you agree with all of us here that you'll take your medication for one month? Take it every day, like you're supposed to. At the next meeting, we'll see how you feel. But will you agree to not kill yourself for just the one month? And take your meds in the meantime?”

It is a brilliant move, and I suspect heartily that this intervention is taught in social work school. Instead of suggesting, as I was trying to do, that Trudy change her entire view of the world, Andrea is merely trying to buy a month.

“Okay,” she says.

Now we are all up on our feet and we are hugging and kissing and we check the clock and the time for the meeting is over. So we all put on our coats and go out to a local Japanese restaurant and drink sake.

We are an interesting party, the five of us—Ted, me,Trudy, Milly, and Victoria. (Andrea never goes out with us, having, as Woody Allen once said, “previous commitments on the planet Earth.”) What's interesting is that the five of us look pretty much like three normal women and two normal men—since Ted, Trudy, Milly, and I all look like the sexes we are presenting as, and Victoria looks like a relatively normal man, except for the fact that he is named Victoria, which you wouldn't know just by looking.

We sit at the sushi bar and the chefs say,
“Hei!”
to us and carve off raw fish and create spectacles on our plates that are so beautiful, it seems a shame to eat them. Raw fish, I think, is an unusual medium for expression, and I am grateful, among the many other things that I am grateful for, that I express myself through ink and not tuna.

“Listen, Jenny,” says Trudy, salmon roe rolling down her chin. “I wanted to thank you for what you said in there. I mean, you didn't have to say anything.”

“Yes, she did,” says Ted, who is sitting on my right. “You know she can't help herself.”

“What do you mean, Ted?” says Milly.

“Aw, you know the professor, it's always blah blah blah.”

“Thank you, Ted,” I say. I know he means this nicely.

“Well, I'm grateful, okay?” says Trudy. “You don't have to worry about me.”

“Hey, Trudy, can I ask you about something?” I say. “When you were talking about getting fired from the paper plate factory, you mentioned something about how you had to go and take your vending machine with you. Did I hear that right? What does that mean, you had to take your vending machine?”

“I got a line of vending machines,” Trudy says. “I got about fifty units. Gumball, soft drink, encapsulated prizes, snacks. I had a soft drink unit at the mill, and they told me I had to take it with me.”

“Wait,” I say. “You've got your own line of—vending machines?”

“Yeah,” says Trudy, and suddenly this look of complete happiness comes over her face. The sushi chefs look at each other and exchange comments in Japanese.

“I
love
vending machines,” says Trudy. “I've
always
loved vending machines. I fell in love with them when I was fifteen, and it's only gotten more intense since then. I love everything about vending machines! The sound the quarter makes when you put it in the slot, the clicking it makes as it falls into the mechanism, the efficiency of the delivery of the product when the machine is working right. I mean, there's nothing in the world like a vending machine that's tuned properly.”

I sip some sake. “You tune them?” I say. “Like a piano?”

“No, no, it's more like a car. You know, it takes a lot to keep them running right.”

“Wait,” says Milly. “How much money do you make from a vending machine each week?”

“Well, depends on the unit, and it depends where it's placed. Sodas are very high maintenance, and there's not a lot of profit margin. People know how much a soda is supposed to cost, so they won't put in much more than a buck, a buck twenty-five, for a can of soda. Gumballs, though, you can ask anything for a gumball, and people just shovel it in. Plus, a case of gumballs only costs like ten or twelve dollars. And you don't have to refrigerate them. Profitwise, all vending machines aspire to gumball.”

Trudy's face is full of light. Her eyes are focused somewhere far off.

“There's this one machine,” she says, “called Gonzo's Wild Ride. Have you ever seen those, like, pinball machines in airports where a single ball rolls through a whole series of, like, channels, bounces off of drumheads and xylophones, gets carried up a ramp, and so on?”

“There's one of those in Logan,” says Victoria.

“I saw one at the Museum of Science,” says Ted.

“Right. Well, in Gonzo's Wild Ride, for a dollar you send a jawbreaker on a journey like that, it rolls all the way through this whole obstacle course before it gets vended out to the consumer. It is the Mercedes of vending machines. A dollar, for a jawbreaker! It's totally beautiful, it's just one of the most beautiful things I know about.”

As I look at Trudy, I can't help but think that for the first time all night, she seems completely animated, full of life.

“Do you have that one?” I say.

“No,” she says. “Not yet.”

“Trudy,” I say, “did you hear yourself? You just said ‘yet.'”

“So?”

“So that's the first time you've talked like there's a certain future, and that you're going to be in it.”

“Well, duh, Jenny,” says Trudy. “Do you really think I'd kill myself before I get Gonzo's Wild Ride? I mean, get real!”

Get real, I think. It sounds so easy.

“I don't know how long I have to live,” says Trudy. “But I know I'm getting fuckin'
Gonzo
before I go.”

Drunken Noodles

(January 2002)

On New Year's Eve 2001–2002, I played with the band at Scooters in Skowhegan, the same place Trudy used to go with her dead friend, Melanie, after they got finished working the deep-fat fryer at Arby's. Halfway through the first set, Shell announced, “All waitresses on top of the bar,
now
!” and a moment later, they were.

I wasn't crazy about playing out on New Year's Eve, but Grace had encouraged me to go. She and the boys had been invited to the house of our friends Frank and Sandra, the same couple who had had the millennium party two years ago. I remembered standing by the frozen lake with Luke in my arms, watching the distant fireworks, his breath coming out in clouds.

Shelley worked the bar's large, raucous crowd and declared her intention of crowning someone “Baby New Year.” She soon found a willing volunteer, whom she diapered with a giant Depends, an oversize baby bonnet, and a small sign that read “Happy 2002.” For his humility the band gave the young man—a University of Maine at Farmington student—a George Foreman minigrill as a token of our gratitude. Ten minutes later, though, he and his grill had stolen out of Scooters and into the night, perhaps forever scarred from his moments before the cheering crowd in a giant diaper. It left the rest of us asking plaintively for the ensuing hours, “Hey, man. Whatever happened to Baby New Year?”

The band launched into “Psycho Killer.” In the midst of this a guy came up to me and started
lurking
in front of the keys. “I'm in looove with your haaair,” he explained, and reached out for me.

The bouncer, a very large man in a white T-shirt and a shaved head, pulled him away from me.

The band sang, “Fa fa fa
fa
fa-fa,
fa-
fa
fa
fa fa.”

A moment later he was back, closer this time. He explained things again. “I want to
play
in your
haaair
.”

He reached out for me. Less than two seconds after that, the bouncer had him. Mr. Clean hauled the young man halfway across the bar, at which location the young man was dropped onto the floor. The bouncer stepped on the boy's neck with his large black boots. Shortly after that, my suitor was outside in the snow.

During the break, I said to the bouncer, “Did you
have
to hurt him like that?”

He shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, ma'am,” he said. “It's our policy.”

At nine A. M. the next morning, Grace said, “Jenny, wake up. It's next year.”

I opened my eyes to see her standing bedside with a very large pile of pancakes and syrup. “Hi,” I said. My voice was hoarse. My hair smelled like smoke.

“Here, eat these,” she said. “We're climbing a mountain in fortyfive minutes.”

I ate the cakes.

Forty-five minutes later we were ascending French's Mountain in Rome, Maine. We'd done this with our friends Loretta and Dave every New Year's Day for a couple of years running. By midmorning we were at the summit, and we looked around at the lakes shimmering with ice and the snow-covered hills that surrounded us. The kids threw snowballs and fought with icicles as if they were swords.

Loretta talked about the first time she'd climbed French's Mountain on New Year's. “This old woman I know, Mrs. Voron, used to climb up here with all her women friends every year. The time she took me, she handed us all little squares of paper. When we got to the top, everybody made a wish, and then the wind came and blew the paper away.”

Loretta paused to look out at the frozen lakes.

“Then, at that moment,” Loretta said,“a red-tailed hawk swooped down,
whoosh
, just like that, and right after
that
, a sudden snow squall passed through. It was totally freaky.”

Our children climbed trees as the grown-ups looked out at the horizon and handed around a thermos of hot cocoa. Lucy the dog stood at the edge of the precipice, gazing at the abyss.

When it was time to go, I picked up a handful of powdery snow and held it in my mitten. I thought about the coming year, the year of finally having surgery, of all the trials that lay ahead. I closed my eyes and wished that my family would be protected from the world by our love for one another.

The snow blew out of my hand.

That night, Grace and I got a baby-sitter and went out for Thai food and a showing of
Lord of the Rings.

I asked Grace how she felt about the year to come. She was eating drunken noodles and spicy chili fish, along with a side dish of plad mun.

Grace looked at me and said, “I know you always ask me how I feel, but there are times when I think it doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters,” I said.

“Jenny, shhh,” she said. “This time you listen.”

She poured herself some tea.

“You're good at asking me how I feel, Jenny, about trying to have a conversation about your transition, but you know what I think sometimes? I think,What's the difference. Since day one you've pretty much had an idea in your head of exactly what you wanted to do, and when you'd do it. All I've ever said all along was,Wait, please, stop, slow down, and to that you've responded with all sorts of words about your suffering, about what you've been through, about how you don't have any choice, about how this is mostly a medical issue and all that. It seems like no matter what I say it doesn't matter, because it's all been decided a long time ago. You've just been on a freight train for two years now. You're going where you feel like you need to go. For me, it's just like I'm standing here watching.”

Tears filled Grace's eyes, dripped down her face, and fell into her drunken noodles.

“Do you believe,” I asked her slowly, “that all of this is necessary for me?”

She wiped her eyes.

“Yes, I suppose so,” she said. “But you can't expect me to feel the way you do about this. I can't imagine what it's like for you, even now. I'm not the one who's trapped in the wrong body, in the wrong life, in the wrong place. At least I didn't used to be. No matter what happens from here on out, I lose.”

Her lower lip trembled.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“I know you're sorry,” Grace said. “But what can I say to you? You don't want to be the person I married.” She shrugged. “I do love you. But this isn't what I signed up for. This isn't what I had in mind, when I spent the last twelve years, building something.”

“It was something I built, too,” I said.

We both sat there for a long time then, not saying anything.

“For all that,” Grace said,“I still believe that being together is better than being apart. I still want to be with you.”

I said quietly, “No, Grace. What you want is to be with Jim.”

“No,” she said. “What I want is to be with
you
.”

We were silent again for a little while.

“But being with you can't mean what it used to mean. I'm always going to miss my boyfriend, the person I married, the person I love. The fact that all of this is necessary for you doesn't make that any less hard for me. But I know I want us to be together. I know I will always be close to you, Jenny. I'm just not sure . . . how near.”

“Do you want me to move into the guest room?” I asked. “Do you want me to move out of the house?”

“No,” she said. “I don't.”

We were silent again for a long while.

“But,” I said, “that doesn't mean you ever want to have a relationship with me again? That just means we're like
sisters
, for the rest of our lives?”

“I don't know what it means, Jenny. I'm not sure what we are. It's like you get to be happy, and me—well, we all just wait for me to get over it. But I can't get over it. I'm always going to feel betrayed by you, abandoned, like our little family was not enough. You know how I feel? Gypped.

“You asked me if I thought this was necessary, and yes, I do. I think it's taken incredible bravery and courage for you to be the person you need to be, and I'm not going to stand in the way of that. I would never keep the person I love from being who she needs to be. But I can't be glad for you, Jenny. Every success you've had as a woman is also a loss for me. I mean, I'm proud of you—you're a beautiful woman, you've come so far. But all of that success for you just feels like failure to me. I can't feel the way about your transition that you do; I'll never feel that way. All of the good things that have happened to you—your acceptance at Colby, with the band, with the school—to me, they all just mean one more thing I've lost.

“And I didn't get to participate in this at all. I didn't get to choose when you started hormones, or when you went full-time, or when you'll have surgery. I mean, you consulted me, you included me, and we talked about it all again and again and again—but it didn't
really
matter what I said about any of it, did it? I mean, really?”

The waitress came by and asked if there was anything she could get for us.

We said that we were fine.

Later we sat in a darkened movie theater watching
The Lord of the
Rings.
About an hour into the film I found my eyes suddenly filling with tears, and the next thing I knew I was sobbing uncontrollably.

It was the scene at the end of the Council of Elrond, when Frodo accepts his burden.

“I will take the Ring,”
he says.
“I will go to Mordor. Although I do not
know the way.”

I wept so hard that people in the next row glanced over at me. I reached out and held Grace's hand. I held it for a long time.

Then my tears stopped for a while.

They started again when Frodo reunites with old Bilbo Baggins in Rivendell and Bilbo tries to get Frodo to show him the Ring. For a moment Bilbo seems transformed into Gollum. Then he diminishes, and a look of exhaustion and horror comes over him.

“I understand now,”
Bilbo says.
“Put it away! I am sorry. Sorry you
have come in for this burden, sorry about everything.”