Our last picture as a family. Luke traced his finger across a photo of him and Beau, of him and his parents, him and Jackie, and last, just him and Jay. And this was my last picture with you…of you.
There were no others of Jay before his death. The last visual record of him was a photograph with his arm around his son. His father’s hand was on his shoulder, his body slightly turned, pushing him forward. And from Jay’s expression it was perfectly, abundantly evident—
How did I miss that you really were proud of me?
“Ohhhh Gawwwwd, here come the water works.”
Luke glanced up from the album. Tom had been sorting through documents at his dining room table for the past several minutes, but now he slipped the pen he’d been using behind his ear and grinned.
“You have your sister send that book to try to get me upset, and it’s you who bawls all over it.”
“I didn’t have her send it to get you upset. I thought you might like to see more pictures.”
“I did. Thank you.” Tom waited for an explanation to account for the two tears.
“How could I live with someone, be around someone…” Luke fumbled. “How could I live for twenty-six years—”
“You’re twenty-seven. Your birthday was two days ago.”
Luke had forgotten. Was that why his mother and sister had called him? He’d been busy that day. Tom had had a doctor’s appointment, and he never felt well after those.
“I was going to mention it,” Tom said. He was good at knowing what Luke was thinking. “I tried to hint to you. But I figured you didn’t want to think about it. Maybe you were starting to have a midlife crisis. You’re one year closer to death.”
“You’re morbid.”
“I’m allowed to be. But it suits me better if you just forgot. If you were having a midlife crisis, do you have any idea what that’d say about me?”
Tom volleyed between being preoccupied with his impending death and pretending he’d live another fifty years. Luke didn’t know why he did this, and it often put him in the difficult position of how to best respond. He’d never tried to understand a person so much. Painstakingly uncovering someone’s current mood and thought process with no benefit to himself was new. And then, whatever Tom was feeling, to adjust his own emotions—to go with it, whether he felt like it or not. Luke wasn’t used to this. But it wasn’t about him. It was about making Tom comfortable.
They smiled at each other.
“You’d still be wrong if you’d said twenty-seven though. You spent the last year in New York. Technically, you should call it twenty-five years. But I suppose the exact number isn’t the main idea. I’m able to grasp the concept of ‘long time.’ Go on.”
“How do you spend so long with someone but not know them?”
“Are we having this talk again?” Tom put his chin in his hand. “I don’t know how many more ways to explain that you did know him.”
“It’s not that.” Luke stared down at his palms. “How did I ignore… How did I not know that he was proud of me?”
“You really want me to answer that question?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want an answer.”
“Luke, you had your head so far up your own ass it’s a miracle you could see to walk.” Tom stretched his arms behind his head. “That’s the good thing about being proud of someone. It’s nice if the other person knows, but it’s not necessary. Your acknowledgment of his pride in you was unimportant. He still felt that way.”
Tom knew an awful lot about this. And as much as his sentiments were applicable to Jay, Luke knew he was also referring to himself. Though he’d made it clear that he was unwilling to share details of his life, Tom unintentionally disclosed quite a bit.
It hadn’t been much at first, but the information leaked out in the context and under the guise of Jay. Luke had to treat what Tom said as if he were looking at it through a pair of 3-D glasses. He had to close one eye to see Jay in blue and the other to see Tom in red. Because Tom made statements that moved with the truth of both together.
“It’s time for your meds.” Luke had checked his watch and put the album aside.
“It’s nice to pass on pearls of wisdom and have them cherished. I’m telling you, one of these mornings you’re going to wake up and there’ll be a line of people out the door, waiting for me to impart my knowledge.”
“I thought you weren’t a yogi on a Himalayan mountaintop?” Luke stopped and threw Tom a grin over his shoulder.
“I’m not. Yet. But you might want to start building me a temple instead of wailing over picture books. I need somewhere to receive my disciples.”
“An altar for goat sacrifices in your honor?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Luke.” Tom had said to his back. “There aren’t any fucking goats around here. I’m perfectly amenable to accepting chickens and small rodents.”
The memory made Luke smile as he stood beside his father’s grave. Beau struggled with how Luke could hold Jay so strongly as his real father but at the same time forge a deep bond with Tom. He’d tried to explain, but while his reasons satisfied her worries that he’d replaced their father, she still hadn’t wanted a relationship with Tom. But that’d been okay.
She doesn’t understand. You were the reason for everything. If it hadn’t been for you, I couldn’t have stayed with Tom. And if it hadn’t been for Tom, I never would have known you, he decided as he looked at Jay’s headstone.
Though it played a part, he wasn’t exclusively referring to his father’s “dark” secret. Luke felt better knowing more about Jay’s past. From Tom’s retelling of Jay’s experiences, he’d been able to piece together why his father had done certain things. Why he acted like he had. Why he’d been able to tell Beau the truth, but it’d been so difficult to consider telling Luke.
Since I knew you were keeping a secret, all I focused on was myself. What was wrong with me that you excluded me? That you didn’t trust me like you trusted everyone else? But it had nothing to do with me. It was always you.
Like most of Luke’s inspirations, this one hadn’t occurred with convenient immediacy. It’d taken him a while to ask Tom again why his father hadn’t told him about being transgendered. He’d been scared of the answer. But when he had assembled the courage to ask, he not only understood, but the truth hadn’t made him feel inferior or less loved. And that level of perception wouldn’t have been possible without the foundation built with Tom.
For the first few days after Tom had given permission for Luke to stay temporarily, he’d been driven to get information. Besides Tom being the only willing resource to tell him about his father’s history, the feeling that he should stay remained.
Luke noticed right away that Tom liked to talk about two things—playing the piano and Jay. He’d been cautious regarding the piano, since it verged on breaking Tom’s rule about discussing himself. But when it came to Jay, there’d been no limit. Tom loved to talk about Jay. And Luke calculated that if he could keep Tom talking, he’d continue to be interested in having Luke around.
So before he became certain that Tom wouldn’t retract his offer, Luke prompted him constantly to tell him anything he could think of about his father. It hadn’t mattered if the stories seemed insignificant. Luke wanted to know it all. And one of the first things he’d asked was to see the real high school yearbook.
✩✩✩
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“What do you need to see pictures for?” Tom had moved the fall over the piano keyboard and turned. “Jay destroyed any pictures so you couldn’t see them if you did discover it. And he wouldn’t have shown your sister pictures. He didn’t have any.”
Tom told him when Meecie died, Jay had taken the photo albums she kept locked in her trunk—and he’d burned them.
“I was on the phone with him when he did it. His mother’s body wasn’t even cold, and he was in the backyard squirting lighter fluid on those pictures. He did
n’t want you to see how he used to look.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“What makes you say that, smart ass? He forged his yearbook so you wouldn’t discover it,” Tom said. “He paid someone to edit out the other picture. And he retook his senior photo. Down to the last detail. He was twenty-five in that picture, if not older.”
“But that’s exactly why. Because he didn’t redo it to the last detail.”
Luke hadn’t revealed to anyone the full story of how he’d established that the yearbook was false. He told Tom about the class ring and the cryptic message Jay had given when Luke was a boy. In Jay’s perfectly woven tapestry, one small thread had been left exposed to be pulled and used to disentangle his past.
“I just think he expected if I did pick up on it, he’d still be here to tell me.”
Luke didn’t know if Tom agreed, but he’d conceded that Jay was a meticulous person. And he had gone to great lengths in recreating that yearbook photo. He wouldn’t have included a detail like wearing a ring he hadn’t owned in 2005 if he hadn’t meant to.
Tom left to get the real yearbook.
“And is that true? The date?” Luke called after him. He’d removed Jay’s class ring to show Tom the engraved date under the band, and he now spun it on the dining room table.
“Is that a true date? I believe that yes, there was a twenty-four-hour time period given the distinction ‘February 18th, 2007.’” Tom’s voice answered from the hallway.
“No, is that the day he purchased the ring? Or is there other significance?”
Tom reappeared, carrying not one book, but three.
“That’s very good.” He set the books on the table and took a seat beside Luke. “I don’t know when he bought the ring, but February 18th, 2007 was the day Jay started hormone replacement therapy. He took his first shot that day. I was there. He was terrified of needles, and I offered to do it for him, but he refused. He wanted to take that step himself.”
Luke nodded for Tom to go on.
“Besides being scared of the needle itself, beginning hormones was the point of no return. Starting testosterone is a permanent choice. He could’ve recanted at any time until then—changed his name back, reclaimed the damaged relationships. But he pushed aside the fear, the ‘doubts and demons.’” Tom smiled. “He rolled up his sleeve, and he did it. On his own. He never wanted to forget that feeling. It was one of the most pivotal, important moments of his life. I’d have been surprised if he recorded any other date inside that ring.”
Tom took the familiar plaid 2005 yearbook from the stack.
“Most people associate hormones with emotional teenagers and Viagra. You’ll appreciate what naturally flows through your veins when you see what power it has.” He pushed the book to Luke. “See if you can find him.”
Instead of feeling excitement and anticipation, either for getting his way or to see the real pictures, Luke felt nervous. He’d been on the verge of meeting a different side of the man who’d raised him. The side of the man who hadn’t been raised as a man himself and had spent approximately eighteen years with everyone seeing him as a girl.
First Luke flipped to the index and ran his finger along the list of last names beginning with “K.”
“Your dad changed his first, middle, and last names. You won’t find anything in the index.”
This had been news to Luke. Jay had had a different last name from Meecie, but Luke assumed Jay had kept his father’s last name after his mother remarried.
“Why would he change his last name? That has nothing to do with gender.”
“His dad was a dick and wanted nothing to do with him.”
“Dad said our grandfather went to war when Dad was in high school and never came back. He said he was a hero.”
Tom laughed. “And lightning didn’t strike him when he told you that? What a fucking lie. You want to know where your grandfather went when your dad was in high school? He went to Thailand and married another woman. He left your grandmother after she lost her job and couldn’t support him anymore.”
And Tom told him how the “happy” family of four—Meecie, “the dick,” and their two children—went to church one Sunday morning. Jay’s father made sure all their good Mormon friends and neighbors saw this perfect quartet. But he left halfway through the service. And when they’d come home, he was gone.
“That was another important part of your dad’s life, Luke. He knew he was a young man trapped inside the wrong body. And he’d been about to tell them because he needed help,” Tom said.
“But when that motherfucker abandoned them, he knew his mother wouldn’t be able to bear it. As a result, he embraced the mask to preserve what remained of his family. He tried to love it and be the pretty, popular girl his mother wanted. But that’s in these.” He patted the other two books. “What you have in front of you is after he decided that everyone, including his mother, could go fuck themselves and their expectations.”
So Jay changed everything. Not just his appearance and his name, but he’d reinvented the identity of anyone who didn’t fit with the life he wanted.
“‘You can’t repeat the past’ my ass,” Luke said.
“Ah, but you’re forgetting the close: ‘boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’” Tom motioned to the book Luke had closed as he’d been talking. “Go ahead.”
It’d been with a moderate amount of unease that Luke flipped to the section of 2005 senior photos and scanned the face of every girl in a red dowdy gown for a glimmer of his father. Not that he doubted Tom, but he scanned the page containing the “K” names with extra scrutiny. But on the fourth page in, on the second row, in Jay’s place in the forged book was another boy.
He searched for several minutes until he reached the end. And there’d been no familiar face.
“He’d be very pleased by that.” Tom passed him another plaid bound volume. “You’ll have more luck with this, and I’ll give you a hint this time—turn to the first page of the junior section.”
Luke had been unsure. He saw that, as in the 2005 book, the photos of every class except for seniors were in black-and-white. They were also significantly smaller. Though it hadn’t yielded anything in the other book, his strategy was hunting for his father’s light-colored eyes in every face. How would he recognize those in a gray-toned thumbnail? But he followed Tom’s advice and flipped to the first page of juniors. Immediately he drew back his hand in shock.
“Oh, my God,” Luke said, and Tom laughed again.
It was Beau. Or virtually Beau. Her eyes, her heart-shaped face. The long, dark hair that fell over her shoulders as she gave a saucy smile to the camera. She was sitting on the grass, her knees pulled to her chest and her arms hanging loosely over them. She wore a navy blue and red letterman sweater. And in another picture in the middle of the page, she was with four other teenagers in the same sweater. She looked like the rest of them. But this wasn’t any other teenage girl—this was his father.
The caption showed a different name with no similarity to “Jay.” A name in a crazy font next to the individual picture. A name in small crisp type under the group picture. A name on the felt patch sewn to the girl’s letterman sweater.
“I told you. Jay didn’t do any extracurriculars his senior year. But when he was trying to forget about who he really was…” Tom leaned away, hooking an arm over the back of his chair. “Your dad could teach you a lot about putting on a good show. See for yourself before I blow your mind.”
Luke turned to the index to find his father’s original name. There were a dozen page numbers indicating a photo. Jay had been involved in things Luke hadn’t known he had an interest in. Not that his participation in an activity was a sign of interest. He hadn’t been interested in staying with that identity. Yet there he was. In every picture, he seemed to be enjoying himself. He’d been a beautiful, popular teenage girl, the kind that other girls envied. And he did seem happy.
“That’s
how good of a mask it was. He was miserable. Believe me. Or rather, let me prove it to you.” Tom took the book and opened the back cover. A sheet of stiff cardstock attached to the cover created a pocket. Tom reached into it but waited to withdraw its contents. He looked at Luke.
“You love to have the spotlight on you, singing and dancing and everyone cheering. But what if you could never leave the stage? What if you were forced to stay there? To keep performing. To keep playing a character? However much the people praised and admired you, I guarantee eventually that spotlight would burn you alive.”
Luke nodded as if he understood.
“This is the pièce de résistance. This was the night. This was the moment, if you like. He’d finally decided that it was enough. He launched himself off that stage without knowing where he’d land, or caring if anyone would catch him.”
Tom removed two photographs and placed them side by side in front of Luke.
Both pictures had the same girl, but they were different from the yearbook photos. Appearance-wise, she’d been completely done up. Her dark hair was curled and styled—partially pinned with a glittering barrette. Her skin and makeup were perfect. She wore a long, pink formal dress that flared out at the sides from the tulle underneath. A necklace rested on the ivory triangle of her chest; there were diamonds in her ears, and a corsage on her wrist, but…
This is a boy in a dress.
There was so much discomfort in the rigid posture, in the face, especially in the eyes. The girl throughout the yearbook was so similar to Beau that he could’ve pretended it was her. But in this picture, if he only considered the pained, wretched expression of the eyes, this was his father. That was the look Jay had during the fight, and when Luke refused to forgive him before he walked across the parking lot to his death. It was the look of being trapped and not knowing what to do.
“Remember how proud he was of you at your final performance?” Tom asked. “That’s how proud his mother was of him on that day. She didn’t force him to do any of this, even if her instability made him feel otherwise. But this was the end for him. When Jay saw himself this way, he knew he couldn’t take anymore.”
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