Trans-Sister Radio (2000) (11 page)

STEVENS:
It was a Friday afternoon, and I emerged from a grocery store in Burlington with a big brown bag in each arm. Out of the blue, this very distinguished older man--a retired banker, I imagined--raced over to me and insisted on carrying both of my bags to my car. He even opened the front door for me, once I'd placed my groceries in the back! You could have knocked me down with a feather. No, I take that back: You wouldn't have needed a feather. You could have knocked me down with a puff ball: a dandelion puff ball. Poof! And I would have been on my knees.

LINDA WERTHEIMER:
When our series continues tomorrow, Dana Stevens leaves Vermont for Colorado, and prepares for sexual reassignment surgery.

Chapter 9.

carly

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SIMPLE TO GET ON A BUS any Friday in autumn and go home for the weekend. It takes a mere two hours and forty-five minutes for even a slow-moving motor coach to slog between Bennington and Middlebury. But I didn't. I didn't want to get into the habit of going back to Bartlett anytime I got homesick or depressed, or fell into a panic because it just seemed like there was more work than I could handle.

Besides, I would have felt a moral obligation to invite my roommate to join me if I went home, and there was always that off chance she might say yes. Not likely. But it was possible. And the idea alone of having to entertain June Ramsey for a weekend in Bartlett was torture. June and I were simply not meant to live together, even in the context of college. She was very smart and--when she wasn't hopelessly unhappy--she may have been very nice. I'll never know about the second part, because I don't think I ever saw her in the mood to smile.

The problem was that she was all wrong for a place like Bennington. It was obvious she came from gobs of money--which, actually, is pretty normal for the place--but she didn't belong at a school in which a third of the students do really scary things to their hair and most of the faculty don't know the meaning of the word
requirement
. She was from a ritzy suburb of Boston, and she would have been much better off at a college that had lots of mandatory freshman courses, embarrassing hazing rituals, and parties with guys in blazers who served everyone gin and tonics.

The only reason she'd wound up at Bennington was that she fancied herself a poet, and there had been two high-profile poets in the English Department there when she'd been choosing a college in high school. Unfortunately, one of them had left by the time June arrived, and the other was taking the year off.

And so she was miserable. A couple of times I tried taking her with me to the battery factory not far from the college gates. As part of a film course I was taking, I was making a documentary on the closest thing Vermont had to proletarian factory degradation, and I thought June and I might become friends if we left the environment of our dorm room. Nope. She was every bit as angry and irritable off-campus as she was on it, even when I let her do whatever she wanted with the college camcorder I was using.

By Columbus Day, it seemed, the only thing we talked about was whether she should try and endure a second semester at Bennington or transfer to another school.

In any case, I didn't go home until Thanksgiving break. The school shut down the Friday before the holiday and didn't reopen for ten days.

I wasn't sure what to expect from either of my parents that week. I knew that both of their lives were in chaos, but they'd both been so secretive and coy on the phone that I didn't know exactly what was going on.

Certainly I had inklings: I knew, for example, that my dad and Patricia had begun to see a couples counselor, but my dad hadn't said who had initiated the sessions. And while I figured he would have told me if he or Patricia were about to move out, on the bus home I began to fear that they'd begun sleeping in separate bedrooms, and they would both be unbearable to be around.

Likewise, I knew that my mom and Dana had split up at some point in September, but it didn't sound like their breakup had lasted very long. I had the impression that once more they were an item. Yet my mom had also said she had some news to share with me about Dana, but whenever I'd tried to press her for details, she had vehemently refused to tell me a thing on the phone.

My suspicions? At first I'd surmised they were going to get married, but my mom had denied it. Then I'd asked if he was sick--cancer or MS or some weird hair thing that gave him rainbow-shaped eyebrows--and she'd said that wasn't it either. But she had paused, and so I'd wondered if I was getting close.

And when I'd finally asked her to tell me simply if it was good or bad news, she'd become downright incoherent, babbling about how it wasn't for her to say whether it was good or bad, it just ... was.

Still, it was clear to me that it wasn't great news in her opinion, and I was confident that it had something to do with whatever had occurred between them in those first few weeks after I'd left for college.

Sometimes on the bus home I would doze, and sometimes I would just watch the snowflakes floating to the ground outside the bus window. It would be dark by the time we got to Middlebury, and a lot colder than when I'd left Bennington after lunch. I realized at some point north of Rutland that I'd gone from being uneasy to being nervous: The difference, it seemed to me, was one of degree. The closer we got to Middlebury, the more uncomfortable--and awake--I became.

My mom met me at the bus, and all the way home and for much of the night we talked about college. She made me my favorite dinner (French toast that she actually bakes in this honey-pecan sauce), and she asked me all the right questions: My roommate, my classes, my movie. My friends.

But although she was pretty candid about what she knew about Dad and Patricia's problems, she was vague about Dana. Moreover, she never once brought him up. Always it was me who would initiate any conversation about the man who, it was evident by the time we had finished with dinner and wandered into the den, was still a very big part of her life.

Finally, when we were settled on opposite ends of the couch, both of us in our nightgowns, I asked, "Will I get to see Dana this week?"

"Do you want to?" she asked.

"Sure. Why not?"

She was sipping a mug of hot tea, and she placed it on the table beside her. I thought she was about to touch me--she started reaching her hands toward me, as if she was going to pat my curled knees or rub one of my ankles--but then she let her hands fall into her lap.

"Just how much has your father told you?" she asked.

"About Dana? Why would Dad be talking about Dana?"

"He hasn't told you?" She sounded almost incredulous.

"No. I don't think Dad's mentioned him."

She shook her head, surprised. "Well. I guess he really is focused on his own troubles."

"Patricia?"

"Uh-huh."

"So: What's going on? I'm a big girl, Mom, I can deal."

She smiled. "You think so?"

"That awful?" I asked, and for the first time I got a little scared. Her smile was anything but reassuring.

"Oh, I think that depends on your perspective. Dana's actually very happy."

"Good. I like Dana."

"I do, too. Very much."

"Are you in love?"

She hesitated. "With the man we both know? Absolutely. And it's clear he loves me."

"But there's a problem ..."

"If you're okay with this," she went on, as if I'd never interrupted her, "I'd like him to move in with us."

"Is that what the big deal is?" I asked, almost laughing out loud. "Is that why you've been so freaky about him on the phone? God, Mom, I don't care. It's your house! You can live with anyone you want to. Besides, I'm away at college nine or ten months of the year, I'm--"

"That's not what the big deal is."

"Oh."

"He won't move in until after Thanksgiving--if it's okay with you. He won't move in until after you've gone back to school. And he might only be here for a couple of months. He'll be in Colorado for at least the first part of January, and I don't know quite what will happen when he returns."