“He looked like a he to me,” said Liam.
“Because you were never around people like that. I spent two years helping them wear eyeliner, get fitted for bras, build a wardrobe. Not the males. The females. The half-and-halfs: pre-ops. We all had a lot of fun together.”
“I wonder why whatshername didn’t come over and say hello to you? Do you think she saw you?”
“Maybe. I know her first name is Scotti. Her last name is on the tip of my tongue.”
“Wouldn’t she have come over if she saw you?”
“She might think I’m competition, Liam. That night I showed up for the Hampton Home Benefit she fled to the little girls’ room, in tears probably. But how did I know Mario’d take a date there?”
“For starters he didn’t ask you to go with him. He gave you two tickets.” “Don’t rub it in,” Nell said.
“Are you sure he was the one who sent you that bird poem?”
“No, Johnny Depp sent it to me, Liam. John Travolta sent it to me. Whoever sent it knows good poetry”
“Like you’d know.”
“I read. I always have my nose in a book. You’re the one who doesn’t read anything but your Affirmations.'"
The bartender brought them two burritos from the microwave in die kitchen.
They were both hungry. They had come from Liam’s sister’s “open house” in Copiague. Besides a too-rich eggnog, she’d only served Pep-peridge Farm goldfish, potato chips, and pretzels. On the way back, when the snow started coming down again, Liam had pulled off Sunrise Highway at exit 65 to fix his windshield wipers. When they got to Hampton Bays and saw the bar with the OPEN sign on the door, Liam had said, “This looks like our kind of place.”
After Nell took a bite of the burrito she said, “This better not be our kind of place after January twentieth.”
“Don’t bring that up here.”
“The bartender’s watching the game.”
“Yeah,” said Liam softly. “Then someday we see him in a courtroom and he says, ‘I was watching the game but I just happened to hear her mention January twentieth.’”
“You’re right,” said Nell. But it was hard not to talk about it, and they always did, even when they agreed that they wouldn’t. Liam kept changing the MO. First he was going to use his Saab for the snatch. Then he was going to get a Ford Crown Victoria, the car police always drove. He still hadn’t decided how he would collect the ransom from Delroy Davenport or where he’d meet Fina once he had the Lucky We. Nell would just as soon not know those details.
She had never done anything this daring. Her brief criminal career had been masterminded by Jimmy Rainbow, a white-collar embezzler who specialized in bilking charities of their funds, until he got the idea to rob an old widow of all her jewelry. An old widow whose precarious heart condition had ultimately sent Nell off to prison.
Liam liked to blame Jimmy. Anything to bring him down in Nell’s estimation. More than anyone in Nell’s past Liam resented Jimmy, not only because Nell had loved him, but also because Jimmy had an education and sophistication that Liam did not have.
Liam began watching the game.
Nell didn’t know if it was the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, or what bowl. She didn’t know one from the other. She thought about this Scotti. Nell could have been wrong about her. What Liam had said was true: Nell was always thinking this one or that one was a transsexual. If she’d never done her community service at the institute, such a thought would never have entered her head.
There had been plenty who could have fooled anyone. Plenty who did. Most of them weren’t that obvious, except for the showbiz MTFs, and others who just liked to camp around.
A lot of the males who’d become female would show Nell photographs of themselves when they were men. They’d been nice-looking . . . until they became women. As women many were downright homely. It didn’t matter. They thought they’d died and gone to heaven as soon as they’d sprouted breasts.
At Cortland Correctional, Nell had a cell mate you could put a suit and tie on and take anywhere. Nobody would ever know. She’d called herself
Blackie, and while she’d never wanted a different body, if she had to wear women’s clothes she’d break out in hives.
She was a good lover, too. She beat having to take a vibrator to bed nights. After “lights out” in that place you could hear vibrators humming like a swarm of bees let loose. Some of the girls liked to name theirs and call out the names in the dark when they’d come.
At first, it struck Nell as hilarious. A lot about CCI made her laugh, in the beginning. But then it sank in that she was stuck there, with no relief from the noise in that place. Radios, TVs, shouts, farts, cruses, weeping. She’d wonder if she’d ever hear quiet again.
Liam ordered another Jack Daniels straight up at halftime, and a Dewar’s and soda for Nell.
He said, “I just thought of New Year’s resolutions for us to make.” “Like what?”
“Resolved: you never say you think someone is a tran, and I never make us spend any more time at my sister’s.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Nell said. “I don’t know why you dragged us there today. You don’t even like Gretchen.”
“When the time comes, I want her to rent the Crown Vic for me, so it’s not in my name. I want you to borrow her Pinto. So we want to stay on her good side.”
“I didn’t know she had one.” Nell looked out the window. “Don’t we have to worry about the snow?”
“The Saab has four-wheel drive.” He took a gulp of his drink and went back to watching the game.
Nell thought about her life. She often thought about the strange twists and turns that had brought her to a certain point.
When she first started work at the Allen Institute she was assigned an MTF called Virgina Loeper. Ginny was a pre-op who had been a passably good-looking male biologist, specializing in mollusks. As a female she was this frump who didn’t know how to dress, wear makeup, or do her hair.
Nell had spent months working with her, often paying visits to her Washington Square apartment, helping her with her wardrobe. When Nell returned to Haven, she would regale the others there with Ginny stories. Everyone collapsed with laughter.
One day at Ginny’s apartment she had asked Nell to help her bring her houseplants in from the terrace. Fall was coming and they would not survive a frost.
Nell had picked up a pot and seen a zillion litde armadillo-like bugs, some running, some rolling themselves into balls.
“Can you do something about these insects, Ginny?”
And Ginny, dowdy in her plaid skirt with a white bowed blouse, lipstick on crooked as always, her lashes too thick with mascara, her voice still too deep and gruff, had answered with great authority: “They are not insects, Nell. They’re sow bugs. They’re actually crustaceans, with eleven pairs of legs. They’re distantiy related to lobsters.”
Once started, Ginny continued, describing mites and springtails, root aphids, brisdetails and beedes. Before that they had always girl-talked their way through sessions. Nell had always poured her heart out about Jimmy Rainbow, with Ginny asking when Jimmy was going to hurt Nell more than she loved him. Ginny saying not to let Jimmy dazzle her, not to find herself back behind bars for that snake in a suit.
But once Ginny began talking about things from Ginny’s world, suddenly Nell saw the seriousness in the absurd, the scientist behind the freak, the crazy way an individual struggles to bloom despite common sense and ridicule. It made Nell wonder about herself, wonder if there was any time she had ever in her life fought for herself, or for anything she wanted as much as Dr. Virgil Loeper had wanted to be Ginny Loeper.
That was when she had become friends with Ginny. It was the first time she had not only found herself sympathizing with an MTF but admiring and even envious of her.
When Ginny finally left TIPS, no less a frump despite Nell’s coaching, she had presented Nell with a sampler she had sewn, a snail adorning it. The verse was from a p
oet named John Donne.
And seeing the snail, which everywhere doth roam,
Carrying his own house still, still is at home,
Follow (for he is easy pac’d) this snail,
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.
Now, sipping her Dewar’s, staring at herself in the long mirror over the bar, a wistful smile tipped Nell’s lips. Ginny was still teaching at New York University, last Nell had heard. And very little had changed in Nell’s life. A different man but another scam. The goal was still money, and the world was still her jail.
Carrying his own house still, still is at home.
Then suddenly Nell remembered the last name of Mario’s friend. House. Scotti House.
TWENTY-SIX
“So that’s my very sad story,” Delroy said, sipping the peppermint tea, noting the can of Vassilaros coffee on the counter. That must be the brand Scotti drank, which her mother complained she had to go out of her way to purchase. Delroy planned to bring a can there next visit.
Indeed it had been a very sad story he’d told Myrna House, for he had left: out nothing, including his Amish years and his sister’s elopement with the man she’d come to call Fernando. Fernando—from some old song that went “If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend, Fernando.”
But of course Delroy did not mention his first encounter with Scotti on Thanksgiving night.
Baba jumped down from his lap as Mrs. House bent over and placed her own plate on the floor. She had saved all the frosting for Baba from the carrot cake Delroy had brought. Delroy had taken it from the Lashers’ kitchen. There were all sorts of cakes and cookies bought from Citarella for the stream of friends that had come to call on Mr. Lasher that New Year’s Day. None of them even saw him. They were thanked for coming and served light refreshments after the announcement that Mr. Lasher was resting and could not be disturbed. The truth was, Lasher was on a feeding tube and ventilator. He ran his business through an electrode taped to his right cheek. The device converted the electrical activity in his facial muscles into signals that were transmitted to a laptop computer. . . . Lately Lasher was too tired to spend much time with it, and the real deal he’d worked out was done. ... As for visitors of any kind, that, too, was over. Delroy had never taken anything from the house without permission, nor had he ever requested time off as he had been doing since Christmas Eve. Now he was no longer willing to be the same trusted slave they had made him.
Mrs. House sat across from Delroy at the kitchen table, still shaking her head in amazement at all Delroy’d had to say.
“Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you,” she said. “That’s from the Bible.”
“I recognized it,” said Delroy, who knew the Bible all too well. “That’s the rich for you. You’re right about the rich,” she said.
“This is just between you and me.”
“I won’t even tell my daughter.”
“Mrs. Lasher doesn’t know what he’s got up his sleeve.”
“But she knows about the will?”
“Oh, yes. They’ve always kept the will up-to-date together. And he’s richer now, with the merger. It’s my hunch she decided who would get what. She’s known to be a tightwad.”
“He could have said something, though. He could have said, ‘Why don’t we give Delroy the house we bought for him to stay in?’ He could have said, ‘Delroy deserves more money.’”
“He could have said ‘Delroy’s my size, could wear my clothes.’ He could have said a lot he didn’t say. Yes, ma’am. He could have.”
“After all you’ve done for him.”
Delroy sighed. “I’ll get along,” he said. “I always have.”
“Let me give you another cup of tea, dear.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She got up to do it and Delroy took the empty plate from Baba, put it on the table, and patted his knee, signaling to Baba so the little dog would jump back into his arms.
He held him close and watched the old white-haired woman fuss for him, padding about in her red booties, humming “Some Enchanted Evening” to herself.
Who would ever guess that her life was not the ordinary one it seemed to be? Who would ever fathom that the little boy she had dressed in Little Lord Faunderoy suits and caps would grow up longing to be a female?
For Delroy that only confirmed his belief that a writer like Patricia Highsmidi was trying to tell her readers people were all peculiar. Nothing is as it seems to be. No one is without a dark secret or two.
Delroy would probably not be taken as a likely candidate for Meidung, a form of ostracism among the Old Order Amish. But at age thirteen he had been excommunicated and shunned. Even his own family would not eat with him or speak to him during the days he waited to be received by Aunt Sade in Sag Harbor. He was an outcast, rejected by God and man, thrown to the English to be raised thereafter.
Aunt Sade had said, “Forget all that religious bullshit, Delly You’re safe from it now.”
But it stayed stamped on his soul, so that sometimes when he slept on his stomach he felt the weight of it pressing down on him in his dreams. And in some of those dark dreams he saw his sister’s laughing face, heard Eelan crying out, “Let’s go to Fuck, Pennsylvania!” Her name for the nearby village of Intercourse.
When Delroy had been invited by Mrs. House to “drop in,” he’d hoped Scotti would be there. But even though she was not, he was becoming a part of her world, and thoughts of her had receded as he’d begun to answer all the questions her mother had asked him.
“Tell me all about yourself,” Mrs. House had said.
He knew it was not just something she had tossed out so they would have things to talk about over tea. She really wanted to know him. The Mister didn’t; Delroy knew' that now. All die while he had poured his heart out to the Mister about Eelan, Lasher’s eyes looked simpatico, and he would say, ‘Go on, go on,’ but that was what he was good at, wasn’t it? Seducing people. What was it they always said about him? They said he acted as though you were the only person there at a big party when he talked to you. You had his full attention, they said. He really listened, they said.
Mrs. House did not let anything Delroy told her go by without comment. She asked questions, watching Delroy with her light blue eyes, smiling at him, remarking, hands gesturing, exclaiming as he described Aunt Sade’s secret love affair with Mr. Witt, who introduced her to opera and art, and left Knitwits in his will “to my loyal employee Sade A. Davenport.”
Once when Delroy stopped his rambling and suggested, “You don’t want to hear all this, Mrs. House,” she put her hand over his and answered, “Of course I do. You just keep talking. I’m an old lady with all the time in the world to listen to you.”
As she cut more carrot cake, she said, “I don’t believe in suicide myself. I believe that it’s a sin.”
“Even if you were in the shape Mr. Lasher is?”
“The Lord has his reasons, Delroy.”
“I try to believe that’s so.”
‘Tt is so.”
“After Mr. Witt died my aunt said if there was a God he didn’t create a world without end, he created a world without any point.”
“Ah ha. Your Aunt Sade was a joker.”
“Not really.”
“I married an atheist, Delroy. My late husband would not even call himself ‘an agnostic.’ He would insist that he had no uncertainty about it. There is no God, he would say. That’s what I put up with. But I said my prayers every night, secretly.”
“I used to pray,” said Delroy, who still asked the Lord to watch over Eelan. But now he was ashamed of those prayers, and the old entreaties for Mr. Lasher, and the old, old ones for his father’s forgiveness. Where had it gotten him?
Mrs. House could read his mind. She said, “You probably think your prayers were for nothing, considering what’s happened in your life. Your sister’s sorry end . . . your aunt’s trag
ic accident . . . Mr. Lasher’s decline and his thoughtlessness. But just remember: the Lord isn’t finished with you yet.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a voice called, “Mother?”
She was home.
“In the kitchen, Scotti. We’ve got company.”
Delroy had planned to leave the little Ronson pocket lighter there, with Aunt Sade’s initials on it, and Mr. Witt’s inscription.
Now it was a small gift for Scotti. She would remember his mentioning it at their last meeting, outside the East Hampton Library. Delroy would simply push it to the center of the table in the kitchen and say, “You ladies will get more use out of this than I ever could, so I’m giving it to you.”
On the side it read “At least we had music and Toulouse.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Len Lasher had designed the school logo himself, a gold shield with I AM the captain OF MY SOUL printed across it in tiny black letters.
He had thought of it in the early days of his diagnosis, when he had still imagined his own “unconquerable soul” would keep him alive long enough to see Deanie enter second grade.
Invictus was located in Sandy Beach Park, two miles out of East Hampton Village. There were seven litde girls enrolled that year. There were four faculty members: a history and social studies teacher, a math and science teacher, an English teacher who also taught physical education, and a Latin and French teacher. The children were bilingual. They called out in French during their soccer, tennis, and exercise classes.
On the twentieth of January a surprise announcement was posted on the bulletin board, which was the first thing the students saw as they swung past the huge oak doors and entered the small, white, one-story building.
Invictus was going on a winter field trip to Mexico, beginning the second week in February.
Deanie had already been told, and she was not as excited as the others were. Mexico was one place she had never been and always wanted to see, for she spoke a litde Spanish, loved the food, and had learned about Indians in her art class. But Deanie was reluctant to leave East Hampton.
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