Friday Night Flights

by Susan X Meagher

  “Your mommy thinks you’re going to have your first beer at twenty-one,” she said, using a funny voice that usually entertained Lisbet. “Ha ha is right. I’ll sneak you over there when you’re about sixteen. How’s that?”

  “You’re going to have to wait for your own kid to fill her up with beer at sixteen,” Avery teased.

  Casey gazed into the baby’s deep blue eyes, seeing so much interest, so much intelligence, so much wonder at the world, that for the first time in a while the loss of never having a baby of her own hit her hard. Before she’d had time to censor herself, she said, “I’d have had one in a second if I wasn’t pretty sure it would freak me out.”

  In a moment, Avery was sitting next to her, a very concerned expression on her face. “What? Why would it freak you out?”

  Annoyed with herself for going down this path, she tried to slough it off. “It’s hard to explain. I just know myself well, and I know it’d be hard for me.”

  Avery didn’t give up. She stayed right there, gazing at Casey thoughtfully. “I know how much you’d love to parent,” she said, her voice so gentle it was like she was physically stroking her. “Tell me why you think it would be too hard. If we talk it through you might be able to figure out a way…”

  “I don’t think I can.” She hesitated for a moment. “Either to have a baby or explain why I don’t think I can.”

  “No pressure, but talking might help. It always makes things more clear. At least it does for me.”

  “It’s not a talking thing,” Casey said. “It’s a feeling thing.”

  “Okay. How do you feel.”

  Casey blew out a frustrated breath. “Do you mind if we put Lisbet on the floor? She’s getting antsy because we’re not paying attention to her.”

  “Sure.” Avery lifted her from her highchair and put her on the living room floor. There were some toys lying there, and she scooted over to them and started grasping each one and banging it down hard. Her grip wasn’t very strong, and she couldn’t direct the toy very well, but she was making progress. While devoting her attention to Lisbet, and not making eye contact with Avery, Casey felt a little more freed up to talk.

  “Here goes,” she said. “I don’t have a word for how I feel, but I know I’d hate to be pregnant. Um…I’d hate to be a mother, if I’m being honest. But I want to have a baby.” She met Avery’s gaze for just a second. “See what I mean? It’s fucked up.”

  “No, it’s not. It sounds like you’re describing something you don’t fully understand. True?”

  “Pretty true. I’m glad I’m a woman,” she said, certain of that fact. “I don’t feel like a man, and I never have. But I don’t feel a hundred percent like a woman, either.”

  Avery nodded slowly, not looking even mildly surprised. That was one good thing about having a friend who’d lived in Brooklyn. She’d probably seen every variation it was possible for human beings to be. “A lot of people are somewhere other than at the poles of the gender continuum. There’s no spot you have to be at.”

  “Try that again. In English,” she said, finally able to joke a little.

  Avery’s smile was warm and Casey relaxed a little when she reminded herself of how patient she was. “I just mean that society tries to make women one hundred percent one way, and men one hundred percent the other way. A woman’s role is nurture the children, a man’s is to hunt for sustenance. You know. They’re opposites.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get that. I guess that’s what I mean, but it only really comes up when I think about having a baby.” She finally met Avery’s gaze head on. “It would freak me the fuck out to nurse a baby. I can’t imagine my…revulsion would change if I gave birth.”

  “Do you find it revolting when I—”

  “No! Definitely not. I think it’s awesome, and I mean that in the ‘fills me with awe’ way. I like having breasts. I like having an adult woman do whatever she wants to them. I’m all in then. But having my body change in all of the ways it would have to in order to give birth just seems…wrong. For me,” she stressed.

  “I can tell you’re often touched by the way Lisbet and I interact,” Avery said softly. “I know you don’t think motherhood’s weird for other people.”

  “Not at all. But I want my wife to be the mother. I want to be the…other person who’s also not the father.”

  Avery smiled at her, without a hint of judgement. “Last summer, we had an intern who was a trans guy. I talked with him a few times, and he told me he was three when he realized he was a boy.”

  “I’m not trans—”

  “I’m making a different point,” Avery said. “This guy identified as a man, and had for basically his whole life, right?”

  “Sounds like it. Three is pretty young, and if he never changed his mind…”

  “He never did. He was a guy. But some days he came to work in a woman’s blouse, or wore fairly dramatic makeup.”

  “Like…women’s makeup?”

  Avery smiled at her. “What’s men’s makeup?”

  “Um…” She let out a laugh, realizing some of her tension was leaving her body. “I don’t know. So you’re saying this guy wore makeup and women’s clothes?”

  “Once in a while. But he always had a five o’clock shadow. He spent a lot of time making sure his scruff was perfectly trimmed, so it was clearly important to him to show that he was a guy, no matter what he wore or how he ornamented himself.”

  “So sometimes he wanted to look like a woman—the body he was born into.”

  “Well, no, I think he wanted to look like himself. He didn’t always want to signal that he was one hundred percent male.”

  “Um, you’ve probably guessed this, but that wouldn’t fly at the brewery. At all.”

  “I assume he’d have trouble fitting in lots of places. Actually, I’m glad he worked in a creative field, and that he lived in a very accepting place. With all of the violence against trans people, calling attention to yourself can be awfully dangerous.”

  “If I was a trans guy, I’d try to pass.”

  “That can be dangerous too, but I think I’d do the same. But this guy wasn’t looking for safe. He wanted to present the self he felt to the world.” She looked very serious when she said, “I’m talking about my intern just to make the point that we’re starting to look at gender without as many rules as we used to have. When you allow people to choose whatever option feels right, they sometimes choose ones that aren’t common.”

  Casey let that sink in for a few moments. “I’ve never talked to anyone about this. Not in detail, at least. I’m not sure this is a gender thing, and I have no idea if anyone else feels this way, so I’ve pretty much tried to ignore it, which I’ve been able to do as long as I’m not thinking about being pregnant.”

  “That’s my point,” Avery said earnestly. “It doesn’t matter if there are a million other women who feel like you do, or if it’s just you. You have every right to own your feelings.”

  “But I feel like a woman,” she insisted. “A woman who can climb a ladder with a fifty pound sack of grain on my shoulder. If I had to have the guys at work do half of the stuff I currently do because my body had changed, it would…” She looked at Avery, at a loss for how to continue. “I don’t have words for how I’d feel, but I know it’s not a good idea to get pregnant if I worry I wouldn’t be able to tolerate it.”

  “You don’t have to.” She put her hand on Casey’s knee and gave it a squeeze. “Just accept who you are and take childbirth off the menu.”

  “I guess I have to.” She shifted to lie flat on the floor, then held herself up by her forearms so she and Lisbet were looking right at each other. “A while ago your mommy made me realize I couldn’t have a baby, and I bet she didn’t even realize it.”

  “What?” Avery asked, lying down next to her, then turning onto her side to look up at Casey. “How did I do that?”

  “You told me you felt like every bit of testosterone left your body when you were pregnant.” />
  “I didn’t mean—!”

  “It’s okay,” Casey soothed. She smiled when Lisbet backed up a foot or two to pat Avery’s cheek. It was more like a tiny slap, but it was clearly meant to be affectionate. “That’s pretty much what I assumed pregnancy would feel like. Having all of that estrogen flooding my system is what I wouldn’t be able to tolerate. Having my hormones fluctuate when I get my period is bad enough. I hate it when I get more emotional, or feel like crying at work. Hate it,” she stressed.

  “Mmm. That’s just a tiny preview of the roller coaster ride your hormones take you on when you’re pregnant. It was a pain in the butt sometimes, but those hormones make you love your new baby so much you feel like you’ll explode. It was awesome.”

  “For you,” Casey said. “I want the feeling an adoptive parent gets. I’d love that, I think.”

  Avery put her hand on Casey’s lower back and let it rest there for a moment. “Why don’t we assume that your brain registers at almost a hundred percent woman, but it simply didn’t choose the motherhood option from the dropdown menu.”

  “You think there’s a dropdown menu?” The image lodged in her brain of herself as an embryo, refusing to tick the motherhood box.

  “Why not? Almost everything we are and everything we’re capable of comes from a hormone or a gene or something. You got the ‘awesome at sports’ gene. Maybe that filled up the slot that the motherhood option would have gone in.”

  Casey finally let out a laugh. “You didn’t take a lot of biology, did you.”

  “The bare minimum,” she admitted. “But I know enough to realize gender and identity is complex. And deeply personal.” She let her hand slide up and down Casey’s back for a minute, the touch strikingly intimate. “I think you’re perfect, and I truly hope you get the chance to be ‘an other person who’s also not the father.’ You’d be awesome at it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Avery was kind of moping around her house on a cold, windy Saturday in January, feeling like winter might last the whole year. She would have parked Lisbet with her mom and gone into the city, but she’d taken her scout troop on a tour of a local distillery. Avery had found that a little odd, but her mom insisted the process was interesting, even though the girls wouldn’t be able to sample the product.

  Avery was a little behind on her work, and could have used today to catch up, but she couldn’t muster the enthusiasm. She ached to do something fun, but when the shutters were banging against the house, the thought of a long walk seemed daunting, and she couldn’t think of anything to do indoors that would really get her motor running.

  Glumly, she thought of all of the things she could be doing if she were a single woman in Brooklyn. But she’d chosen a different path, and moaning about not being able to go to a hot new play or a museum was just stupid. You couldn’t have everything wasn’t just a saying, it was the absolute truth.

  Her phone rang, and she got up to answer it. “It’s your best friend, Lisbet,” she said when she saw the screen. “Maybe Casey’s going to entertain us, huh?”

  “Hi there,” she said. “I hope you’ve got something exciting planned. We’re bored.”

  “Um, I kind of do. Since Lisbet’s birthday is on Wednesday, I thought I could celebrate with her a little early.”

  Avery replayed the sentence in her head, noting the pronoun was “I” rather than “we.”

  “All right… What did you have in mind?”

  “I was hoping you’d let me take her to the Children’s Museum. We’d be gone for hours, which would give you a rare Saturday to yourself. What do you think?”

  Ignoring her slightly hurt feelings, Avery tried to think of what she could do with a few hours to herself. Given she truly craved free time, it was stupid to refuse such a great offer. “Where is this museum? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Poughkeepsie.”

  “Really? That’s like an hour from here, isn’t it?”

  “About that. If Lisbet likes the museum we’d be gone for about five hours. You could grab a book and go to that bookstore-bar in Hudson, or one of the espresso shops.”

  “Now you’re talking,” she said, feeling her mood brighten at the prospect of carving out an afternoon very much like she used to enjoy. “I’ll have her ready to go within a half hour. Swing by whenever you want.”

  “Great. See you both soon.”

  Avery hung up and bent over to pick Lisbet up and cuddle her. “Your friend wants this to be a girls day out. No mommies. Are you cool with that?”

  Lisbet slapped her on the chest and laughed. She wasn’t very verbal yet, but she seemed to understand when Avery was teasing her. Or she was just frequently silly. Either way was perfectly fine.

  ***

  Casey knocked on the front door, waited a few moments, then tried the handle, with the heavy door gently swinging open. As she tuned her ears, she realized that Avery was speaking with someone, and it definitely wasn’t Lisbet. Then Avery appeared at the top of the stairs, holding a finger up. Casey was going to go into the living room, but then she heard Lisbet say something. It wasn’t words, but when Casey looked up she was sitting right at the top of the stairs, with Avery trying to herd her back into the bedroom while she continued to speak on the phone.

  Casey walked upstairs, swept Lisbet into her arms and played with her for a second, whispering, “We’re going to get a baby gate put onto those stairs pronto. I know your mommy’s always watching you, but that’s not good enough. I’ll add that to your birthday present.”

  The baby was only half-dressed, and Casey took her into her room to finish up. From there, she could hear every word. Surprisingly, Avery sounded a little aggravated, and Casey couldn’t stop herself from listening carefully.

  “I have a long list of reasons why I’d prefer to avoid as many cliches as possible, Aspen. I generally find them anathema to clear, concise, original writing.”

  Casey rolled her eyes, quietly saying to Lisbet, “Your mommy’s red pencil would be getting a workout if she read my writing. I don’t even know what some of those words mean. Good thing I don’t need to use them, huh?”

  Avery was getting a little worked up, and her voice gained some volume. “No, I’m not saying all cliches are deadly. Using one where you flip the phrase slightly or finish it with some creativity can be exquisitely memorable. I read a piece just yesterday where the writer was recounting a trip to Sweden in the middle of the summer, and she said something like “at the end of the day…which I waited, and waited, and waited for, downing glass after glass of akvavit …” See what I mean? ‘At the end of the day’ is a cliche that’s too tired to appear in a good piece, but I thought she’d tweaked it enough that it added something.”

  Avery listened for a minute, then jumped back in. “Right. That’s exactly my point. We want to encourage our writers to stretch their imagination to encompass the world as they experience it at this moment in time, not to euphemistically harken back to language that requires neither the writer nor the reader to actively think.”

  She stopped again, and Casey could hear her start to pace across the room. “I’m hardly saying that. I’m not, in any way, suggesting we require nothing but neologisms before a piece merits publication. That would be absurd. What I am saying is that there’s no room at Ad Infinitum for hackneyed expressions, and I’d place this ‘low hanging fruit’ reference squarely among them. In my note to you, I was simply pointing out that I’d like you to catch things like that, along with the other weaknesses you mentioned.”

  Casey got Lisbet’s tights on her, and pulled down her cute little yellow sweatshirt with the baby ducks decorating the front. Then they crossed the hall and she poked her head in.

  Avery waved them in, then held up a finger again, indicating she’d be finished in a minute.

  She was sitting again, and she rested her hand on her desk, thrumming her fingers against it quickly. “No, Aspen, we’re not teachers. If you want to simply reply with a standard rejec
tion letter, you have that right. But the submission came from a woman who participated in one of our long-term mentoring projects for non-native speakers. Why not be a mensch and edit out the things that made you decide the piece wasn’t up to our standards? That will give her feedback she might take to heart.”

  Casey laughed as Avery held the phone against her ear to use both hands to mimic strangling someone. “You’re perfectly correct. Saying the writer might take it to heart is, in fact, a cliche. Do you know why we all use cliches in speech?” She paused for just a second, not allowing whoever this Aspen person was to respond. “Because we’re trying to express quick thoughts. In speech, we’re not working our language like a sculpture, whittling away everything superfluous until we have a spare, curvy, beautiful suggestion of the clunky thought we’re trying to convey.”

  Avery rolled her eyes. “Yes. I already said that a standard rejection letter was acceptable. But make sure you sign your name, not mine.” Her foot was now tapping, with the rubber of her soles squeaking against the wood. “I realize it’s time consuming to suggest edits that will show someone why you’re rejecting their work, but I guarantee your editing takes less time than her writing did.”

  Aspen must have said something snotty, because Avery’s tone got very sharp. “Your internship might let you decide if you’re called to do this kind of work, but I guarantee you’ll come to hate it if one of your primary goals isn’t helping other writers improve.”

  Aspen was allowed to speak again, then Avery shook her head. “I’d hoped you’d take the hint and be kind to this woman, but clearly that’s not going to happen. Send the piece to me, and I’ll make the editing suggestions.” She paused just a second, then cut in again, “Yes, the point of your job is to make my job easier, and I’d have to say you’re missing the mark.”

  Casey met Avery’s eyes, with a smile slowly covering her face. “Yes, you can correctly assume I’m trying to help you exactly like I wished you’d done for this writer. But at this point I don’t trust you to give it your best effort.”