by Miranda July
Backles?
Yeah.
She touches your back like this?
Yeah.
No offense, but your mom might be a pervert.
No she’s not.
Backles is actually called foreplay, and it’s to get you in the mood.
What mood?
Reckless abandon.
That night in bed Lyon handed me the Gaia pendant. Backles was never directly affiliated with the Pleiades, but I performed it religiously for months, dangling the necklace first from one hand and then, when that got tired, from the other.
The Pleiades had real staying power; at age twelve, Lyon was still of the faith. She had forsaken the pendant and the more familiar rituals for a series of mystical practices, as Jews sometimes pursue the kabbalah. One night she carefully ripped three flowery sheets into wide strips and asked me to swaddle her like a mummy in celebration of the Day of Hooray, which was like the Pleiades Christmas.
Tighter.
I think that’s as tight as it can be.
Okay. Thank you.
She lay armless and inert, staring at the ceiling.
What if you have to go to the bathroom?
I’ll go in here.
Okay.
All right. Good night, Deb.
Good night. Happy Hooray Day. Hooray!
Hooray.
In the middle of the night, I was woken by her yelling, which might have been expected, I mean my God, how uncomfortable. I unwound the pee-soaked strips while she sobbed to the point of coughing.
I thought I was going to die.
Well, I never should have let you do it.
Don’t say that!
But look at you, honey, you’re freezing, you’re upset and crying.
That’s the ceremony! That’s the end part of the ceremony!
Okay, well, great. Hooray.
Hooray! I’m okay!
In the fall of 2001, I met a man named Ed Borger. We all did, actually, the four of us met with Ed Borger once a week; he was our family counselor. This was the year when Lyon had acute allergies, a rageful year spent entirely in my care. The counseling was Tom’s idea; I think he hoped this professional outsider would be stunned by our mess and blame Sarah, the mother, for it. But Ed wasn’t fazed; in fact, he suggested the dynamic had served each of us well. Something in the way he said this gave me the feeling that the dynamic was moving on, perhaps down the block, where it would serve some other confused family. And we would be left dynamic-less, four people alone with all the wrong feelings for one another.
The first few sessions were familiar to Lyon and me: we watched while Tom and Sarah slaughtered each other and then rose from the dead to love each other and then became bored. Lyon rolled her eyes at me and even attempted to mouth, Let’s get frozen yogurt after, okay? which I ignored for Ed Borger’s sake. Ed was, in my honest opinion, a wonderful man. I was paying my one third of the $150, and I wanted to be transformed by him. In time, Lyon and I were encouraged to talk more. Lyon gave a gorgeously self-centered speech in which she enumerated her emotional needs.
I need peace and quiet and no fighting when I’m doing my homework and sleeping. I need a black JanSport backpack—
Hon, that’s not really an emotional need—
I need Mommy to shut up and let me finish my list because who is she to say if it’s an emotional need or not. I need to stay at Deb’s house when I feel like it.
Here Ed gently pressed her.
Do you prefer living at Deborah’s house?
Yeah, but my mom doesn’t like it.
(Mom opens her mouth and then shuts it.)
Why do you think she doesn’t like it?
Because, you know, Deb and my dad.
(My left hand grips my right; Tom looks at the floor.)
What about Deb and your dad?
You know.
No, I don’t. Do you feel comfortable saying what you are thinking?
They used to be married. That’s why Deb’s, like, my other mom.
(Tom gasps, Sarah laughs, I speak.)
We were never married, we’re just friends! We’ve always been friends.
Oh. But what about—
What?
Oh, I don’t know. I thought … I don’t know. Well, thanks for telling me, everyone. Now I feel dumb.
And we all rushed in at once to tell the child that she was not dumb, she was the opposite of dumb, she was insightful and sensitive and possibly even clairvoyant. Perhaps she was remembering something from a past lifetime? We laughed; maybe she knew something we didn’t! Maybe that’s why we were such good friends in this lifetime! Ed Borger observed us from a kind distance, clearly not buying any of it but not judging, just watching the dynamic serve us another round, just one more round, please.
I was premenstrual on the day Ed Borger finally forced me to speak. But I did not speak. Instead, I wept at various different pitches and velocities, using my wail to describe a devastating unhappiness that surprised us all. After the session, my three people hugged me, and within their tangle, I felt safe. Lyon held my hand, and Tom asked if I wanted to talk about my feelings. I looked at him and his child, and for a fraction of a second, I could see the spell that bound me, like a spider thread catching the light. Cast upon me long ago, at an age when I longed to be ensnared, it now spanned generations. Sarah rubbed my back with a chilly palm, the vision disappeared, and I felt certain I had nothing to say.
We had seen Ed for a whole month, nearly five sessions, and we all felt he had helped us a lot and we were ready to stop family counseling. Some of us (Sarah) had been ready to stop since before we started, but now we had consensus; Lyon’s acute allergies had gone away.
When Lyon’s eyes and skin did become red and inflamed, Sarah was prone to saying things like, Is this your way of seeking attention? Allergies? That’s the best you can do? Ed taught Lyon to say, Mom, I need you to take care of me, and he taught Sarah to respond without yelling. They had tried the technique in my living room; Lyon said her line perfectly, and Sarah had mastered the gentle tone but veered somewhat off course, whispering, Tell me how I can help my little girl, my big little girl, do you really want me to talk like this? Doesn’t this make you feel like a baby?
Thus it may have been in self-defense that Lyon’s aggravated preteen body replaced itself with an unaggravated, rather amazing woman’s body in the summer after her freshman year of high school. I thought this elegantly bubble-bottomed response was brilliant; I could not have said it better myself.
Ed had also suggested we work our way back to joint custody, so Lyon begrudgingly began to sleep at home two nights a week. It was hard to know what to do with myself on these evenings. I wasn’t used to sleeping alone, though I’d long since stopped having boyfriends. The first night I usually spent cleaning, but the second sent me into a spin. After a while I learned to clean more slowly, spreading it out over two fairly pleasant nights, which were always punctuated by a call from Lyon.
Mom is out with Juan, and Dad is in the garage talking on his cell phone.
What are you doing?
I don’t know, I might call Kevin and ask him to come over here and lick me.
Lyon.
What? I talked to him today.
No, you did not.
Yeah, in seminar.
What happened?
He said—
He initiated? That’s good.
I know.
Okay, go.
He said, I bet you’ve already read the whole book—
—My Ántonia?
Yeah. And I said, No I haven’t even finished last night’s pages. And that’s all.
That’s good. He thinks you’re smart.
I know. I’m going to masturbate thinking about him now.
Okay, you do that.
I’m kidding! Like I would tell you if I was going to.
By the time I ran into Ed Borger at Trader Joe’s, Lyon was living at my house only half the week. Which is something Ed and I talked about
with loaves of bread in our hands. He thought this was great progress. I said we owed it all to him. He said his bread always got moldy before he could finish the loaf. I said he should freeze the bread to prevent this problem. He said, Won’t that ruin the bread? I said, Not if you’re making toast with it. He said, You can just toast it frozen? And I said, Yep.
We put our groceries in our respective cars and guessed that we had about forty minutes before our perishables perished, enough time for a cup of tea.
Back when we were in family counseling, I used to daydream, what if Ed only wanted to hear what I thought, what if the rest of the family weren’t even allowed in the room, what if I could just talk and talk and talk and what if when I was done Ed told me I was a genius and the rest of the bunch were loony tunes and then what if Ed said he had always been attracted to me and what if he took off my clothes and I took off his clothes and we held each other for more or less the rest of our lives. I will admit this thought was in the back of my mind while we sipped our tea. Mostly, we talked about Lyon.
I think she’s going to become a terrific woman one day.
She almost already is! She’s grown a lot since you last saw her.
She’s taller?
Yeah. And she’s more developed.
Developed.
Yeah. Which seems to have calmed her allergies. Do you think that’s possible? Medically speaking?
Well, anything’s possible, medically speaking.
I feel the same way.
What do you mean?
That anything’s possible.
Well, not anything. Pigs can’t fly.
Yeah, but for some reason, sitting here with you, I feel like they can.
Can?
Fly.
Oh.
I’m sorry, am I being ridiculous?
No, no, you’re not, no.
Ed Borger put his yogurt in my refrigerator and asked me to remind him to get it before he left. Lyon was at her parents’ house, but her clothes were all over the bed. I picked them off and put them on the dresser. I turned out the light, and we did not take off each other’s clothes, but we each took off our own clothes. Before we did anything, Ed asked if he had permission to cry, and I said, Permission granted, and he settled his face between my breasts and moaned. When he was done, I noticed that his face wasn’t wet.
That’s because I cry dry tears.
Oh. Is that an actual term? Dry tears?
Well, I have a theory that men don’t actually cry less than women, they just do it differently. Since we never saw our fathers cry, we are each forced to invent our own unique method.
My dad cried.
He did? Wet?
Yeah. All the time.
Is it possible that his father cried? And thus taught his son?
Well, maybe, but also my mom had a sixteen-year affair.
I went to the bathroom and washed my vagina in preparation. I paused in the hallway before returning to the bedroom; I could see him kneeling on my big square bed, staring fiercely at the lamp. He was bringing his penis to an erect position by choking it with both hands. It was easy to remember him sitting in his chair in his office, observing, nodding, producing a hard-won chuckle. I decided, right there in the darkness of the hallway, that I wanted this. If you’ll be my man forever, I’ll be your woman, Ed Borger. He suddenly stopped his furious hand movements and turned his head directly toward me in the shadows. As if he had heard me, as if responding to my vow. I waved. But he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking behind me. I knew before I even turned around, it was Lyon.
Four excruciating interactions immediately followed this moment; the fifth was the drive to her parents’ house. Lyon refused to sit beside me in the passenger seat.
Why should I?
Because it makes me feel like a chauffeur when you sit back there.
But you are a chauffeur.
Lyon.
What? Aren’t you basically a babysitter chauffeur? Isn’t that what my parents pay you for?
You know they don’t pay me.
Well, that’s your problem, not mine.
Lyon, we’re a family.
No, actually, you are not related to us, you are just a person who used to help us the way Ed used to help us. It’s really perfect that you two should fuck. All the hired help should fuck each other. I am in favor of it. We’re all in favor of it.
Please don’t tell Sarah and Tom.
Duh.
Duh you won’t or duh you will?
Just duh.
But she didn’t. She also didn’t spend the night at my house again. She treated me like a friend of her parents, rushing past the three of us with her boyfriend, shouting, Bye, y’all, with a wave. This change was buried among all the other changes, the learning to drive, the perpetual sarcasm, the feminism. Tom and Sarah assured me that she ignored them, too, that we were all in the same boat, the one we came in on. But I knew. I blamed myself for all of this so-called individuation; it had sprung from a single moment. The guilt was crushing; it was the kind of thing I really should have talked to a therapist about. In moments I thought of calling Ed, as a professional. But would he be an objective outsider? He would not. The more I thought about this nonobjectivity, the more I wanted to call.
Dr. Borger.
Hi, Ed, it’s Deb.
Deb, hi.
So, we haven’t talked in a while.
What’s on your mind?
Well, you never called me back after that day.
I didn’t think it was appropriate to pursue a relationship after what happened.
Lyon doesn’t even sleep at my house anymore, so it’s not like she would even know.
Do you miss her?
Yeah, of course.
So this isn’t really about me, is it?
Well, it is, in a way. You were involved.
Deb?
Yeah?
I hate to do this, but I need to call you back when I’m not in my office. Do you want me to call you back?
Do you want to?
If you want me to, I do.
But if I don’t want you to, then you’re totally fine with not calling?
I think it might be best if we let this go.
Inelegantly and without my consent, time passed. My relationship with Tom and Sarah became occasion-based: I was invited to Lyon’s high school graduation, Tom’s birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner. Lyon didn’t come home from college for Christmas, but she sent the three of us UBCO sweatshirts from the University of British Columbia at Okanogan. She went faster and farther than I had imagined possible; who goes to college in Canada? Under financial duress, she came back for summer vacation, lived at home, and got a job at a lesbian-owned-and-operated organic produce market. I shopped there more than was necessary, but I didn’t ask if she missed me, I didn’t try to get back together, I kept the conversation light.
Excited to see you have the Saturn peaches in.
Don’t thank me; they’re not my Saturn peaches.
Well, technically, they are. Isn’t this place worker-owned?
Yeah, but you have to work here for more than a summer and, like, eat the manager’s pussy or something. Do you want a bag?
I joined PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). I bought books by and for lesbians and their supportive, surprised parents. When she went back to school I imagined her sitting in a dorm with her arm around a young woman’s waist, perhaps a young butch woman. I had read about the butch/femme dynamic and was sure that Lyon would be the femme. I wondered if Tom and Sarah knew about Lyon’s preference; my guess was that they did not because they were still quite self-involved. They probably had fewer dalliances, but a bitterness had replaced the mania; the past now looked almost carefree. In December, Tom called to invite me to Christmas dinner.
Lyon will be there. She’s coming home.
Oh, great.
And she has a new boyfriend. You’re going to flip out when you meet him.
I quit PFLAG
and moved through the next few days in weepy wonderment. I knew nothing about her. It was really over and I really was not her mother. I was really almost fifty. I really did not feel okay about any of this, and there was really nothing I could do about it. Somehow losing the lesbianism, the butch girlfriend, the need for tolerance, was worse than losing Lyon herself, years before. Or, more likely, I was still feeling the old loss, just in a new way.
I arrived late. Lyon wasn’t even there; Tom and Sarah said she would show up by dessert. I talked to their other friends, some of whom I knew from our college days. I marveled at their nonchalant relationship to Lyon. One man thought she was still in high school. Just as we sat down for dinner, the doorbell rang. Someone in a puffy down jacket stumbled in, unwrapping his scarf. It was Ed Borger. He waved and said, Hi, everyone. And then he said, Lyon’s coming, she’s finishing a phone call.
These words were lost on me because I was consumed with Ed’s shirt. It was a particular kind of modern dress shirt, a reproduction of a dress shirt that would have been popular in the sixties but had been modified to appeal to people who could not remember the sixties. Therein lay the problem, because Ed Borger would remember the sixties, he would remember being a teenager in the sixties, and he would avoid such a shirt because it would not seem retro to him, it would just remind him of a time before he had really gained social confidence. So someone else must have bought this shirt for him, a person who could not remember the sixties. My thoughts were interrupted by Lyon’s entrance, her hand gently rubbing Ed’s back as she said her hellos. Tom poured a glass of wine for Ed.
So, how’s the family counseling business?
I can’t complain, Tom.
We ate quietly, those of us who knew Ed and those of us who only knew there was a funny feeling in the room.
I guess that’s true, you really can’t complain, can you?
We ate our yam casserole and our scalloped potatoes and our baked ham.
What are you saying, Tom?
Ed placed his hand over Lyon’s hand; we all looked from Ed to Tom. Tom looked at Lyon; we all did. She was staring intently at Sarah, who slowly looked up from her plate and at her daughter. And then, casually, Lyon slipped her hand out from beneath Ed’s and passed me the potatoes, though I had not asked for the potatoes. I took the dish and she did not release the dish and we held the dish together for a moment, it hovered over her parents’ dinner table. My eyes ventured slowly from the dish, to the front of her blouse, to her eyes. What did I fear I would find there? Meanness and gloating? Slyness? Shame? They were sparkling with the old love, the greatest love of my lifetime. And they were triumphant.
