Swim the Fly

by Don Calame

  Then there’s the inevitable high-pitched squawk from the corner of the room, followed by, “Assbag. Assbag.”

  “Back at ya,” I say to Sean’s parrot. Her name’s Ingrid, and she’s an African gray. Ingrid was a rescue bird that the Hances have never been able to adopt out. She rocks back and forth on the perch in her cage like she’s happy to have someone to insult.

  “Eat shit,” Ingrid caws.

  “No thanks, Ingrid. I’m not hungry.” I should know better than to get into a conversation with this bird.

  “Eunuch,” she says to me, but I just leave it. You learn after not so long that the parrot always gets the last word.

  “They do it all the time in the movies,” I hear Sean say as I enter his twin sister Cathy’s room.

  “They also have zombies, aliens, and dragons in the movies,” Coop says. “It’s called make-believe for a reason.”

  Cathy’s room is like a haunted mansion. There are gargoyles and dark red drapes and a zillion half-melted candles all over the place. Cathy used to be all pink and yellow and girlie, and then one day she went over to the dark side. No one seems too worried about her, though, because she’s an honor student and she knows three languages and can play the violin and never gets into any kind of trouble. Mrs. Hance tells anyone who asks that it’s just a phase and that you can’t stop people from expressing themselves. So no one really says anything. They just pretend Cathy is still the same old Cathy and not someone who celebrates Halloween 365 days a year.

  “It’ll work — you’ll see,” Sean says, his head buried in a dark wooden chest at the foot of Cathy’s bed. He’s pulling out all of Cathy’s old, pre–Addams Family clothes. Blouses and skirts and sundresses.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  Coop turns and smirks. “Einstein here thinks he’s got the perfect plan to see Mandy Reagan naked.”

  “I don’t like it already,” I say, looking at the girl clothes piling up on the floor.

  Sean gets to his feet and brushes off his pants. “You’ll like it when you see Mandy Reagan with nothing on.”

  “Sean’s still going on about how Mandy takes tae kwon do down at the Community Center,” Coop says.

  “So”— I shrug —“you want us to dress up like girls and take tae kwon do? I’m sure she doesn’t do the class in the nude.”

  “No, dill weed,” Sean scoffs. “We dress up like girls, a little makeup, and then hang out in the women’s locker room. When Mandy’s finished with her class, she’ll come into the change room all sweaty and she’ll shuck down to take a shower and we’ll be there to witness her oh-so-heavenly body.”

  I shake my head. “We’ll never get away with it.”

  “That’s what I told him,” Coop says.

  “You’re both wrong.” Sean turns toward the mirror over the bureau and looks at his reflection. “Think about it. It’s not like any of us have any whiskers. Put on a wig, some frilly clothes, some lip gloss, and no one’s going to look twice.”

  “My mom works at the Community Center,” I remind him. “She’ll recognize me.”

  “Let’s just see how we look before you go nixing the idea.” Sean bends over and grabs a flowery blue dress. “I’ll go first if you guys are too chicken.”

  “Are you sure no one’s coming home?” Coop says.

  “Positive. My dad’s at work, my mom’s at the dentist, and Cathy’s over at a friend’s house. We’ve got, like, two hours.”

  “All right. What the hell,” I say, scooping up a denim skirt and a pink button-down. “But if any one of us can’t pass for a girl — like, really pass for a girl — then we don’t do this.”

  “You guys are freaks.” Coop squats down and starts rummaging through the clothes. “But if it means seeing Mandy Reagan’s sweater sacks, I’d dress up as pretty much anything.”

  Coop picks up a green shirt, then puts it down again. He finds a tank top but discards that as well.

  “Just grab whatever,” Sean says.

  “No. I want to look pretty. Us plump girls need to be careful what we wear.” Coop finds a flowing violet velvet blouse and a white pleated skirt. “This could work.”

  We all strip down to our underwear and start putting on the girl clothes. This is a little weird, I have to say. The three of us playing dress-up with Sean’s sister’s old stuff. I’ve never even tried wearing girl’s clothes before, but it might be fun to see what I’d look like as my own sister.

  “What will our girl names be?” Sean says, adjusting the twisted straps on his dress. “I want to be Sierra. It’s mysterious yet sexy.”

  “We don’t need girl names.” Coop tugs Cathy’s shirt over his head. “We just need to look like girls.”

  “Sean’s right,” I say. “We need names. If someone asks, we need to know without stumbling.”

  “Fine, I’ll just use my cousin’s name. Dominique,” Coop says.

  “Nah,” Sean says. “You look more like a Fanny.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Coop pulls down on his collar to stretch it out. “And you look like a sphincter.”

  “Okay, girls, enough,” I say, zipping up my denim skirt. “Let’s just pick our own names. I’ll be Topaz because it’s my birthstone.”

  “Dude, you know your birthstone?” Coop turns around in his velvet Merlin shirt and tighty whities. “You’re already a girl.”

  Sean looks at himself in Cathy’s full-length closet mirror. He turns from right to left to right. “I’m not going to lie. I look pretty good in this dress.”

  Coop laughs as he pulls up his skirt. “I’m not going to lie either, Sierra. You look too good in that dress.”

  “We need makeup.” Sean skips over to Cathy’s mirrored bureau.

  “We need music,” Coop says, moving over to the iPod docked in a speaker system on the bedside table. “Girls always listen to music when they’re trying on their new outfits.” He scrolls through the songs and smiles when he finds one he likes. “Ah-ha. Perfect. I should have been born in the eighties.” Coop hits PLAY and rolls up the volume. There’s a streak of keyboard and electronic drums and a familiar guitar riff and I realize pretty quickly that it’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” The song is bouncy and ridiculous, and I think maybe this is getting a little too bizarre.

  Coop starts to spin around, twirling his skirt so it fans out, and Sean starts rocking his shoulders and bobbing his head as he puts on lipstick, and then it’s like, what the hell, so I start dancing, too.

  The three of us gather around the bureau and start putting on mascara and eye shadow and lip liner. Coop finds some purple nail polish and moves to the bed and starts doing his nails. All the while Cyndi Lauper squeaks out how when the working day is done she wants to be the one who walks in the sun.

  “Girls are lucky,” Coop says as he strokes his nails with the sparkly plum polish. “They can grow up and they don’t have to stop wearing costumes.”

  “What do you think, Sierra?” I say, puckering up my smudgy, dark red lips and batting my rust-colored eyelids. “Is this too much?”

  “Not with a name like Topaz,” Sean says.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “She means you look like your name sounds,” Coop says. “Like a cheap prostitute.”

  “Topaz is not a prostitute’s name.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Coop says, pulling off his socks and starting in on his toenails. “A cheap stripper, then.”

  “You should talk, Dominique.” I grab the blush and start brushing it on my cheeks. “I think I saw you in that movie. What was it called again? Waving Ryan’s Privates? Yeah, that was it.”

  “Good one.” Coop laughs and accidentally swipes the nail polish brush across his foot. “Now look what you made me do, Topaz, you bitch.”

  I stand up tall and jut out my chest. “I need breasts.”

  “Don’t we all.” Coop laughs.

  I bop over to the dresser and locate the drawer where Cathy keeps her underwear. I start pulling out different col
ored bras to find one that will match my outfit. I grab two bras — a pink one and a white one — that could work. I turn and hold them up. I’m about to ask Coop and Sean for their opinion.

  But I don’t get the chance.

  “What the hell?!” A girl’s voice — Cathy’s — screams over the music.

  ALL THREE OF US WHIP our heads around to see Cathy and her friend Nessa framed in the doorway. As usual they’re dressed from head to toe in black. They are both as pale as Elmer’s glue, and they’re both wearing black lipstick and black eye shadow. The only difference is that Nessa has about a dozen piercings and her hair is dyed blue.

  Nessa starts laughing. “Oh my God, Cath. Your brother and his friends are trannies.”

  “We are not,” Sean says through smeared wine-colored lips.

  I am completely numb. It’s like a switch has been thrown and I’m watching everything unfold but I can’t really feel it. I read somewhere that if you get shot, you don’t feel it because your body goes into shock mode and it protects you from the pain. I wish I could help Sean out right now, but I can’t because I’m not here. In this room. Dressed in Cathy’s frilly pink blouse and denim skirt. My face made up like a cheap stripper. Listening to Cyndi Lauper.

  Cathy storms over to Sean and grabs him in a headlock. “You’re violating my private space, lapdog!”

  Sean struggles but he’s no match for his sister. Cathy and Sean are twins, but Cathy got the better end of the deal. She’s smarter, taller, better-looking, more talented, and obviously stronger than Sean.

  “Let go of me,” Sean squeals.

  “Or what?” Cathy tightens her grip. “You’ll tell on me? That’s a good one. You’re in such deep shit, Sean.”

  “Ow. You’re hurting me.”

  “You’re going to get a lot worse unless you tell me what the hell you’re doing.” Cathy forces Sean to his knees.

  Nessa turns and looks at me. She smirks and raises her eyebrows. I can tell by the expression on her face that she can’t wait to tell everyone she knows all about this. Coop, Sean, and me won’t be able to show our faces anywhere, ever again.

  Sean’s eyes are bulging. His whole face is as red as the blush on his cheeks.

  Cathy twists Sean’s head farther than I think it’s supposed go. “Careful how you answer. If I find out you’re lying, I won’t stop at telling Mom and Dad — I’ll take an ad out in the Rockville Herald.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sean coughs out. “I’ll tell you.”

  Cathy loosens her grip just a little.

  Sean clears his throat. “We were going to sneak into the women’s dressing room at the Community Center. To try and see Mandy Reagan naked, okay? Happy?”

  I can’t believe he gave that up so easily. It’s a good thing Sean doesn’t know any national secrets.

  “You perv,” Cathy says, letting Sean go.

  Sean stumbles to his feet, rubbing his crimson neck.

  “Although”— Cathy looks over at Nessa —“it would serve the Virgin Mandy right.”

  Nessa and Cathy share a look.

  They smile.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Cathy asks.

  “What goes around comes around.” Nessa laughs.

  “Does your mom still have those awesome wigs?”

  Nessa nods. “She sure does.”

  “Supreme.”

  Cathy turns and looks at Coop, Sean, and me. “All right, you deviants. Today’s your lucky day.”

  Cathy starts to circle each one of us. Sizing us up.

  “What are you talking about?” Sean says.

  “Me and Nessa are going to help you out.” Cathy grins. “We’ll make you up to really look like girls.”

  “No, thanks,” Coop says. “We already look like girls.”

  This makes Nessa and Cathy nearly spit up with laughter.

  “Please,” Cathy says. “You wouldn’t fool a blind person.”

  “I’m gonna go get the wigs,” Nessa says. “This is going to be stupid fun. I’ll be right back.” Nessa turns and rushes out of the room.

  Cathy nods. “Yup. We’ll make you guys up real pretty. No one’ll even look twice. And Mandy Reagan will finally get what’s coming to her.”

  I have no idea what Cathy has against Mandy, but if she’s on Cathy’s shit list, I don’t envy her one bit. I’d rather not wind up there myself, though I’m afraid this whole situation is going to land Coop, Sean, and me right smack at the top.

  “THERE,” CATHY SAYS, putting the finishing touches of blush on my cheeks with a flourish like a master artist. It was hard sitting still for so long. My stomach has started churning, either from nerves or from all that protein shake or maybe a combination of both. “You guys look gorgeous.”

  Coop, Sean, and me shuffle over to Cathy’s closet mirror. With the new dresses the girls picked out and with the wigs and proper makeup, I hardly recognize us.

  “Holy crap,” Coop says, his eyes wide. “Sean, you look prettier than your sister.”

  “Watch it, loser,” Cathy says.

  Nessa isn’t even trying to contain herself. She’s practically barking up a lung laughing. “That is some sick shit right there.”

  “Smile,” Cathy says.

  Sean, Coop, and me turn around just as Cathy snaps a picture of us with her cell phone.

  “Hey!” the three of us shout, holding up our hands, turning away.

  “Now, I want a full report,” Cathy says. “And don’t forget the photos.” She grabs her digital camera off her nightstand and holds it out to Sean.

  He doesn’t take it. “I don’t know. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “One click and I can send this picture of you guys looking very girlie to the entire world. If you want me to erase it, then you’ll bring me back a shot of Mandy Reagan gone wild.” Cathy waggles the camera at Sean. “Come on, now.”

  Sean reaches out and takes it. “Why do you want pictures, anyway?”

  “The Virgin Mandy fooled around with your sister’s boyfriend last year, dork,” Nessa proclaims.

  “And when we hack into Mandy’s Facebook page, we’re going to need something to post,” Cathy adds.

  “Pound it, girlfriend.” Nessa offers up her fist.

  Cathy bumps Nessa’s fist with her own and they both laugh.

  “Besides,” Cathy says, “you guys are gonna want something to look at when you abuse yourselves, right?”

  This sends Nessa into hysterics. She falls onto the bed, muffling her laughter in Cathy’s pillow.

  “All right, girls,” Cathy says. “Off you go.” She shoos us from her room. “And don’t come back without the evidence. Or the whole swim team will be getting copies of your oh-so-pretty debutante photo.”

  This idea of Sean’s is turning into more of a nightmare every minute.

  Coop, Sean, and me scuffle from the room and hobble down the stairs. Walking in girl shoes is not the easiest thing. I’m lucky because I snagged the pink sandals, which are less constricting. Sean’s managing pretty well in a pair of red heels. But Coop has it the worst. He couldn’t fit into any of Cathy’s shoes, so he had to sausage his pudgy feet into a pair of Mrs. Hance’s pumps. They’re still too small, but at least he could get them on.

  Ingrid makes a loud catcall and flutters her wings as we pass through the family room. “Fresh meat. Fresh meat.”

  “Shut up, Ingrid,” Sean says.

  “Come to Papa.” Ingrid caws.

  We have to walk up to the Community Center because there’s no way we could ride our bikes in these dresses. And it’s amazing. Nobody even gives us a second look. It’s like we’re just three regular girls out for a stroll. People walk past us and cars drive by, but there’s nothing. I feel a little more confident with every person who ignores us.

  We’re about a block away from the Community Center when I get a seizing pain in my gut. I wince and grab at my midsection. Now that I think about it, it probably wasn’t such a great idea to triple th
e amount of protein powder I put in my shake.

  “Tae kwon do is over at four,” Sean says, looking at his sister’s wristwatch. “That gives us about twenty minutes. What should we do in the meantime?”

  “Let’s just go in,” I say. “I have to use the bathroom. I’ve got cramps.”

  Coop laughs. “Dude, are you getting your period?”

  “Very funny. I just need to use the can.”

  “No way,” Coop says. “You’ll have to hold it. We can’t be hanging out in the women’s locker room for twenty minutes. People will get suspicious.”

  “Let’s walk around the block,” Sean says.

  And so we do. We walk up to Woodgrove Lane and then make a right onto Redwood, and with each step my intestines feel like someone is tying them into knots.

  “You guys ever have a protein shake?” I ask.

  Coop recoils. “Matt, buddy, I like you but not nearly that much.”

  Sean splutters.

  “You know what I’m talking about,” I say. “The powdered kind.”

  “Oh, you mean for gay astronauts?” Coop says.

  Sean nearly falls over in hysterics.

  “I’m serious,” I say. “My mom had this protein powder in the closet and I drank some of it and now I think it’s making me feel a little sick.”

  “It’s probably just gas,” Sean says. “Because of your nerves.”

  “Yeah, it’s nerve gas.” Coop laughs.

  “Try to burp,” Sean suggests. “It’ll relieve the pressure.”

  I try to force out a burp, but nothing comes.

  “Not like that,” Coop says. “Like this.” He swallows and swallows more and more air and then makes a huge O with his painted lips and releases a long soggy belch that sounds like a growling bear with a mouthful of porridge. The burp goes on forever, and it has Sean practically in tears. It’s all the funnier because Coop looks exactly like a girl.

  When Coop’s finally done, he’s got a proud grin on his face. “It’s all in the diaphragm. My dad taught me that.”

  The three of us approach the doors to the Lower Rockville Community Center and as we do my stomach cramps seem to subside a bit, thank God, because there’s no way I’m letting anything get in the way of me seeing Mandy Reagan naked.