by Nan Higgins
“Right.” She took out the green construction paper again. “But you did know me; you knew me better than anyone. Diana was my twin, but you were my family. Do you remember me being the kind of person who wanted the things in this letter?”
He rested his hand on her knee. “I remember you being the kind of person who wanted to make her parents happy. At least when we were really young.”
“That’s true.” Her heart broke for the ten-year-old girl who wanted so desperately to be accepted by a family that never really let her be a part of it. She’d spent so many years working to numb herself to the feelings she had about their rejection. Those feelings rushed to the surface when she remembered always trying so hard to be what they wanted. It made her realize how hurt she continued to be. “I guess that’s all it was.”
“You shouldn’t have had to bend over backward to make them happy. You were a kid that any parent would be proud of. Still are.”
“Thanks, Tate.”
After several moments of silence, he said, “Hey, you wanna play a game? Get your mind off things?”
Despite herself, she smiled. “What game did you have in mind?”
“For Times Three?”
London couldn’t remember which of them had invented the game with the funny play on words, but she had a feeling it had been Tate.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me something.”
Tate thought for a moment. “KC mocha chip cookies.”
“That’s easy. Forever.” If Tate had named something she liked but didn’t love, she would’ve said, “For now.” If he named something she couldn’t stand, she would say, “For never.” She had forgotten all about the game and was happy he had jogged her memory.
They played For Times Three the rest of the way home, and London didn’t think about her mother, father, sister, or the letters she’d read at the attorney’s office for the remainder of the ride.
* * *
London’s apartment felt emptier than she expected. She’d brushed off Tate’s offers to stay with her a few nights. “It’ll be good for me to be by myself for a while,” she told him.
The emptiness was punctuated by things gone missing. Reggie must have gotten more of her stuff when London was gone. The stack of books on the end of the coffee table, the scarf that had been hanging on a hook by the door since last February, and the blanket on the back of the couch, knitted by Reggie’s gran, were all absent. Reggie wasn’t just out, she was moved out.
London sat on the edge of the couch and opened the file to take yet another look at its contents. Unpacking her suitcase could wait until later. She picked up the construction paper and traced the orange letters with her fingers.
Wear business suits every day. She’d never owned a business suit. She wore ripped jeans and graphic T-shirts with the occasional skirt and fishnet stockings thrown in. And she never left home wearing anything on her feet besides combat boots.
Without knowing exactly what she was doing, London walked to the bedroom. The closet door stood open from where Reggie had taken more of her clothes out, but she hadn’t taken all of them.
London pulled a white button-down shirt out and held it to her face, inhaling Reggie’s scent. Sandalwood and patchouli and Reggie. Before tears could fill her eyes, London laid the shirt on the bed and turned back to the closet. A stylish gray suit Reggie had worn to speak at an equality rally hung near the back. London pulled it out and walked over to the full-length mirror on the adjacent wall. She held the suit in front of her. It was hard to get a clear image of how it would look.
Before she knew it, her clothes were in a pile at her feet, and she was slipping into the white shirt and gray suit. She looked back in the mirror.
Reggie’s suits were all immaculately tailored to fit her. London was a little shorter and more than a little thicker, but it wasn’t so far off that she looked terrible. She looked at her reflection and tipped her head to the side. Most of her tattoos were covered under the conservatively cut suit, but her blue hair and nose ring and eyebrow piercings seemed to stick out even more next to such a neutral canvas.
“What the hell are you doing? Have you lost your mind?”
London jumped and screeched. She whirled around to see Grant standing in the doorway to her bedroom, his mouth open in horror.
“What are you doing here?” she yelled. “You scared the shit out of me!”
“Me? You’re the one dressing up as Corporate Barbie.” He huffed. “Am I interrupting your identity crisis, sweetie?”
“Not exactly. Come with me.” Taking Grant’s hand, she led him to the couch and handed him the file. “Read.”
He stared at her for a moment, nodded, sat, and began looking through the papers. London left to make coffee. When she returned from the kitchen with two full mugs, Grant had closed the file and gazed at her, shaking his head.
He took the mug she offered. “Is that what this business suit is about?”
“No. Yes.”
“Well, which is it?”
She sipped her coffee and pondered for a few moments. “No, it’s not about the money. Yes, it’s about the letters, I suppose.”
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me?”
She leaned back into the thick cushions of her couch and used her free hand to squeeze the bridge of her nose. “I have no memory of being the girl who wanted the things on that list. Did I want them? Was I trying to just make my parents happy? When did I stop wanting those things and start wanting the life I have now?”
“If this is about your sexuality—”
“No, it’s definitely not. I’ve known I was gay for a long time. I don’t think I had the verbiage for it when I wrote that letter, but I knew something was different about me.”
“What then?”
“It’s everything else. Coming out was that proverbial last straw, the final blow that pushed my family from blatant disapproval to cutting me off completely. I didn’t dress the way they did or want the kinds of careers they had. I never wanted what they wanted, and they barely kept their disdain in check. When I came out, they stopped trying to keep me in the family. That’s when they decided I wasn’t worth it anymore. We all have our coming out stories, you know? And mine is that I came out and was ostracized from my family. That’s true, but it’s also not that simple.”
“I get all that.” He rested a hand on her knee. “What I don’t get is what you’re trying to accomplish now. Were you just trying on Reggie’s clothes, or is there more to it than that?”
“I don’t know yet.” She’d been on edge since she’d read the words on that construction paper. She had a dizzying pins and needles sensation in her head, the kind that usually indicated a part of her body was waking up after a brief sleep. It seemed as if her mind was trying to come into focus after having been settled in a hazy slumber. “A part of me feels like…if I can get back inside the mind of that ten-year-old who wrote the letter, I’ll be able to make some sense of things.”
“Your mom dying after a decades-long estrangement is never going to make sense.”
“I know. But maybe if I can put together pieces of who I was then and who I am now, I’ll get some closure.”
“Listen, do your experiment if it makes you feel better. Get a corporate job, volunteer at the library. Hell, get a dog and name him Chowder. You suffered a terrible loss; you’re trying to figure things out with Reggie. You’ve earned the right to do something crazy for a little while.”
“But?”
“But implementing all these changes to try to figure out what went wrong with your family puts the responsibility and blame on you. You can try to get in touch with your inner child as much as you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that your family failed you. Their job was to love you unconditionally; no matter what you wore or where you worked or who you loved, their job was to love you and to be there. They failed. They failed, London, not you.”
“Thank you.” She leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. “I needed that.”<
br />
“Any time. Now go change out of those clothes; it’s time to go.”
“Go where?”
“Drag Queen Bingo.”
Her mouth dropped open. “I just got back. You don’t really think I’m going out for bingo night, do you?”
He fidgeted with the sleeve of his shirt. “I know it’s not the best time, and I wouldn’t ask except…I need you there tonight. Please? If you’re really not up for it, I’ll understand, but if you can possibly be up for it, I’ll be your best friend.”
“Fine.” She stood and headed toward her bedroom to change. “I’ll go. Having you as a best friend is too hard an offer to turn down.”
Chapter Four
As much as London hadn’t felt like going out, she was glad to be at Cavan. She and Grant got there early, got their boards and drinks, and grabbed their favorite table in the back before all the festivities started.
She sipped her beer. “It’s good to be home.”
“Good to have you home,” he said.
“All right, boys and girls,” boomed Lotta Lays from the front of the bar. “It’s about that time! Grab your wood and take a seat because it’s time to play bingo. If you’ll look to the front to see our prizes for this evening, my gorgeous assistant will pull them out. That’s right, you pervalicious freaks, I said pull out!”
Marcus’s husband Bill, dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, went on the stage with a basket filled with goodies for the night.
“Three people will win at bingo tonight,” Lotta said. “They will get to choose from these fabulous prizes.”
Bill pulled a black T-shirt out of the basket. The shirt had sparkling rhinestone letters across the front in a bold font.
“The prizes tonight all come from London Craft and our friends at Hell in a Handbasket,” Lotta said, raising her glass to London. “The first prize is this gorgeous ‘BadAss Bitch’ T-shirt. Prize number two is a set of ‘Fuck the Patriarchy’ postcards.”
Bill raised the shiny package of postcards above his head, then dropped it back in and held up the basket itself.
“Last but certainly not least is the basket, which gave the shop its name. This beautifully made basket in brown and black is classically designed. The handle reads, ‘We’re all going to hell…we’re gonna need a bigger handbasket.’”
The crowd laughed and cheered.
“London Craft is here tonight at that table in the back.” Lotta raised her glass again. “We’re always lucky to have an artist like her in the Cavan family. Thank you for sponsoring bingo and donating these prizes tonight.”
She raised her bottle back to Lotta and took a long swig of her beer.
“I didn’t know all this was happening tonight,” Grant said. “It was fortuitous timing for me to drag you out on the night your goods were the main event.”
London laughed. “Lotta’s bingo is the main event. I’m the opening act, at best.”
“Still, it’s amazing, what you’ve done with your business. I’m proud of you, you know that? I don’t know if I’ve ever told you.”
“I do know.” She smiled. “Thank you.” Grant nodded, and London looked at him carefully. “Do you want to tell me why you dragged me out? I’m happy to be here, but I know there’s a reason besides the desperate need to lose at bingo.”
“Hey, we might not lose.”
“We always lose. Besides, now that I know they’re using the stuff I donated, it’s probably best if we don’t even play. I don’t want us to win merch from my own store.”
“Good point.” He fiddled with the switches on his bingo board.
“Grant?”
He raised his head to face her, tears in his eyes. “I cheated on Thomas.”
“What?”
“Don’t make me say it again.” He hugged the bingo board to his chest and stared down at the table.
“Okay, I’m sorry.” She pursed her lips and tried to think of an appropriate way to dig into this conversation. “When?”
“About a week before Reggie’s birthday. I was going to try to find a way to pull you aside and talk to you about it that night, but…well, you know how things went down. I know you have so much going on right now, and you shouldn’t have to deal with my problems too, but I just can’t sit alone with this anymore. I can’t.”
“It’s okay, you don’t have to.”
“Do you hate me?” He wiped his eyes with the back of his clenched fist.
“I could never hate you. Come on, let’s go out to the patio and talk.”
The chilly October air hit them the moment they stepped outside. London zipped up her black leather motorcycle jacket—she didn’t own a motorcycle, but she rocked the clothes—and Grant put on his knit hat and gloves. If it was already this cold now, they were going to be in for a frigid Ohio winter.
When they were seated at a table in the tented corner of the patio, London took Grant’s hands in hers. “Tell me what happened.” A jagged sigh escaped his lips, and she squeezed his hands. They were almost twice the size of hers and fleshy, matching his round physique. “Come on. Talk to me.”
“Thomas and I…we’ve been having problems. We both work long hours, you know. Lawyer hours. And we’ve been bickering a lot. It started out small, mainly about whose turn it was to do chores and stuff. We’re both exhausted when we get home, and I think we both were hoping the other one would pick up the slack.”
“That all seems typical. I’m pretty sure all couples have those kinds of fights.”
“True. But we never resolve it, and things keep building. We fight and agree to work things out the next day when we’re both calm and rested, but we never do. The next day comes, and we’re busy and tired, and then we have another fight.”
Grant paused and took a long drink from his beer. “One night, we made plans to have some quality time. I made him this beautiful candlelit dinner, and I waited. I waited over an hour and finally called his office. His secretary told me his boss had scheduled a last-minute dinner with clients. He didn’t even text to let me know.”
Grant looked over to the other end of the patio where a group of friends had stumbled outside, singing “Bodak Yellow” by Cardi B.
“What happened next?” London squeezed his hand.
“I went over to AWOL and got trashed. My friend Damon was bartending that night, and as soon as I finished with a drink, he’d set another one in front of me. I closed the bar, and Damon said he’d drive me home in my car and Lyft back to his place. He took me home, walked me up to the door, and before I went in…we kissed.”
“And?”
He glared. “What do you mean, and? We kissed. Not a peck on the cheek, either, it was a long, make-out kind of kiss. It lasted a few minutes.” He looked miserable. “Thomas was asleep right inside.”
“I am going to kill Damon.” She pulled out her phone and began looking through her contacts.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for Damon’s number.”
“Oh God, no! I don’t ever want to talk to him again, and I don’t want you to, either.”
“That asshole. He’s always had the hots for you, and he knows you and Thomas are together. I bet he was thrilled to see you come in alone and upset so he could get you drunk and make a move.”
“London, stop. I mean it.”
The force of his voice made her set her phone down and look at him.
“I did this,” he said. “Yes, I was drunk, and yes, Damon probably took advantage. But I had a bunch of choices that night, and I made all the wrong ones.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
Grant put his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. What do you think?”
“I think you need to tell him.”
He lifted his head, tears spilling onto his cheeks and down to his chin. “I could lose him.”
“I know,” she said softly.
“How can I tell him knowing I might lose him?”
“How c
an you move forward with him knowing you’re keeping this kind of secret?”
“Fuck. You’re right. I know you’re right. I just don’t know how to even have the conversation with him. He’s going to be so hurt. He’s the best man I’ve ever been with. Of all the shitheads I’ve dated who deserved to have their hearts broken, I go and cheat on the only one who doesn’t deserve it. How big a fuckup can I be?”
“Listen to me. Yes, you made a mistake, and yes, your relationship might not survive it. I’m sorry about that, babe, I really am. But we’re all fuckups in our own ways. You are a decent, compassionate human being, and you don’t deserve to be judged solely on your mistakes. Nobody does. You screwed up, you’ll learn from this, and you’ll move on. Whatever happens, you know I’ll be here.”
“Yeah? You promise?”
London extended her last finger. “Pinkie promise.”
* * *
The next day, she sat on the floor in the back room at Hell in a Handbasket surrounded by fabrics, thread, paper stock, and paints. She was supposed to be working on her designs for spring, but she kept opening the file from Larry Kopp. She had added the folder to her bag that morning almost as an afterthought, thinking she wouldn’t even get a chance to look at it. Two hours into her day, she’d barely looked at anything else.
She read the letter from her mother again. What had she hoped to accomplish with this scheme? Did she truly think that after all these years, London would turn straight and narrow and be the kind of daughter Grace wanted her to be, all for some money? It was a lot of money, and they hadn’t known each other well for years. Still, hadn’t her mother realized she would always choose happiness over wealth? Indeed, hadn’t that been where most of their disconnect had occurred?
London set Grace’s letter aside and picked up her own. Her eyes went directly to the middle portion, where she had made the list of things she planned to do before she was forty:
1. Wear business suits every day.
2. Get a job in marketing.
3. Fall in love with a really awesome boy.
