She's Not There

by Jennifer Finney Boylan

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, I thought it was a kind of manipulative thing to say, for a ghost. Like he isn’t going to watch out for me anymore.”

  We drove on in silence for a while.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “I think you’ve got that all wrong, Jennifer.”

  “What do I have wrong?”

  “About how he meant that, about him not looking out for you anymore.”Tex looked at me with his kind, well-lined face. “The way I see it, he was saying, Jenny, once you’re a woman, he won’t have to.”

  Sabbatical over, I returned to Colby in the fall of 2002. I resumed my academic career as the co-chair of the English Department, a job I assumed along with a brilliant, charming colleague named Peter Harris, whom I had once almost killed during a hike along the Knife Edge trail up Mount Katahdin, although not on purpose. Peter had never quite forgiven me for nearly allowing him to fall to his death on that occasion, which I felt ensured that we would probably have a good relationship as the department’s co-directors. It’s hard to trust anyone you haven’t nearly murdered, at least in academia it is.

  The week before school started, a young woman appeared at my door. She had short hair and big clunky black boots.

  “Professor Boylan?” she said.

  “Yes?”

  She came into my office. “I’m Diane Bloomfield?”

  “I’m Jenny Boylan?”

  “I wanted to know if I could ask you to sponsor me for this independent study I want to do?”

  I invited her to sit down.

  “I’m a double major in women’s studies and English? And I had this idea to do a project on women in contemporary American novels, and how they, you know, transcend our understanding of the archetypes of femininity and womanhood?”

  I nodded. “That sounds interesting,” I said. “But you know, I’m a professor of creative writing, a novelist. You really ought to ask one of the Americanists, like Cedric or Katherine.”

  She looked alarmed. “But I want you!” she said. “I mean, I’ve put together this whole reading list! And I have a sample of a paper I wrote, last year, for you to look at if you want. I’m a good writer. I mean, you’re the perfect person to do this project!” She paused. “Please?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Diane,” I said, “is the reason you want to work with me because I’m . . . well, you know, because of my history, because of my issues?”

  She looked uncertain. “What do you mean?” she said.

  “You know,” I said. “Because I’m transgendered—or because I used to be. Is that why you think I’ve got some particular insight into these works?”

  Her forehead crinkled. “You’re trans . . . what?”

  Diane looked at me like a pitcher shaking off bad signals from a catcher. Then she looked embarrassed. “I don’t know anything about that. I just thought—”

  “Wait,” I said. “You didn’t know? You hadn’t heard?”

  She shrugged. “No.” Then she added quickly, “Not that it makes any difference or anything—it’s just—”

  “Well, why me, then? Why not one of the American literature professors?”

  She shrugged. “Everyone says you’re a good teacher, that’s all. I just wanted to work with you. I didn’t know anything about the other stuff.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Everybody says you’re funny.” She smiled hopefully.

  I nodded. “I’m funny all right,” I said.

  When Diane finally left my office—I convinced her it’d be in her best interest to approach my other colleagues first—I sat there for a moment, in wonder. I looked up at the poster on the wall. Groucho, Harpo, and Chico.

  Whatever it is, Groucho sang, I’m against it!

  I picked up the telephone and dialed information.

  “In Freedom, Maine? The last name is Brown, Stacey?” I wrote the number down. A moment or two later, I listened to a phone ringing.

  “Hello?” said a woman’s voice.

  “Stacey?” I said.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “You probably don’t remember me,” I said. “But my name’s Jenny Boylan. I picked you up last year, when you were hitchhiking, you and your roommate. I drove you over to that guy Speed Racer’s house, when you went to buy the pit bull?”

  “Oh, hi!” said Stacey, as if we were old friends. “How have you been? I saw the Roy Hudsons playing in a bar a couple months back, thought about you. Are you still playing with them?”

  “Actually, I haven’t played out with them since that time I picked you guys up. I should call them sometime.”

  “Well, it’s great to hear your voice,” she said, and started coughing.

  “I was calling about your roommate, Lee—I was wondering if she was there.”

  “Oh, no, she doesn’t live here anymore. She moved in with Mike last winter.”

  “Mike?” I said.

  “Yeah, you know, her old boyfriend. They let him out of prison early, for good behavior, if you can believe that.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, okay. It’s none of my business anyway. I just wanted to encourage her . . . you know, if she wanted someone to encourage her . . . to go back to school, finish her degree.”

  “You know, she was talking about that when Mike got out. I don’t know if she’ll still do it, though. Mike’s got all kinds of plans. He wants to get married, have kids, you know, all that.”

  “Well,” I said. “Whatever. It’s none of my business anyway. It’s just that the last thing she said to me before she got out of the car was that she wanted to talk sometime. I didn’t know if she really meant it, or whatever, but I wanted to encourage her, as best I could, you know?”

  “Oh,” said Stacey. “Man, well, that’s awfully nice of you. I mean, it is true that it’s hard to find people to talk to sometimes—”

  In the background, there was a deep growling. This was followed by the sound of something hitting the floor and breaking into lots of small pieces.

  “Hey, Jenny, I have to get off the phone, okay?” She sounded annoyed. I wondered if she’d made the mistake of leaving a remote control out where the dog could see it.

  “Hey, wait,” I said. “Is that the pit bull? You’ve still got her?”

  “Yeah,” said Stacey. “I got her. Like I said, I gotta go—”

  “Let me ask you something—I know you have to go, but can I just ask you one more thing?”

  Stacey sighed. “Sure.”

  “What did you name the dog? Remember when you picked her up, we forgot to ask what her name was?”

  The dog barked again.

  “Spike,” she said. “We named her Spike.”

  In the fall, the band played at a bar in Mexico, Maine, called Mrs. Whatsit’s. The bar was not far from one of the largest paper plants in the state. Even inside the tavern, you could smell the mill. We took a break at ten, and I went to the bar to get a drink. As I waited, a man with a mustache came up to me and put his arm around my waist and announced, “You’re a beautiful blonde.”

  I took a step backward and gave him his arm back.

  “Thanks,” I said with contempt.

  Jake the drummer, who was leaning against a pole and watching this interchange, laughed quietly to himself.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” he said. He gave me a strange look I hadn’t noticed before. Now that I thought about it, Jake the drummer was cute. He had sparkling eyes and a peg leg.

  “C’mon,” said Jake the drummer, and finished his beer. “Let’s play.”

  Back on stage, sitting down behind the keys of the synthesizer, I felt safe.

  Jake, who was sitting closest to me on stage, leaned over and said, “Hey, Jenny.”

  “Hey what?”

  “She’s not there,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “No,” said Jake. “The song. ‘She’s Not There.’” It wasn’t a song we usually did, but Jake counted it off
and sang.

  We were tearing down the equipment. Mrs. Whatsit was walking through her tavern, giving the malingerers a particular look she’d perfected. This expression made it unnecessary to shout, “Closing time.” When Mrs. Whatsit gave you that look, you put your coat on. No one knew what would happen if you didn’t. In all the years that she had been running the bar, no one had ever risked finding out.

  On stage the band was disassembling the lights, putting all the guitars back in the cases. Shell collapsed the tripods that held up the PA speakers. I detached the music stand from the Kurzweil and looked out at the dissipating crowd. My ears were still ringing. It had been a good night.

  A man named Pete, who wore a T-shirt that read “Desert Storm Vets,” came over to Nick, holding a pint of Shipyard. “Here you go, Nick,” he said. “Last beer in the state of Maine.”

  Pete had known me as a guy, years ago, and had heard the rumors I’d been sick. He didn’t recognize me now.

  “And who is this?” he said, looking over in my direction.

  “That’s Jenny,” said Nick. “Jenny, this is Pete.”

  “Hi, Pete,” I said.

  “Well, hel-lo, Jenny,” he said.

  “By the way,” Nick said, “I don’t think I told you, I finally found out what was wrong with Jim Boylan.”

  “Yeah?” said Pete. “And what was that?”

  My friend took a deep draft of Shipyard before answering. He looked at me and smiled.

  “Not a damn thing,” he said.

  One winter night, Luke swallowed a marble. I called Poison Control. “How is he, ma’am?” the woman asked. “Can he breathe? Is the object lodged in his lungs?”

  “Luke,” I said, “can you breathe?”

  “Of course I can breathe,” he said, annoyed. He looked up from his Game Boy.

  “He says he can breathe,” I said.

  “Can he talk?”

  “Luke, can you talk?”

  “Maddy . . . ,” he said, annoyed.

  “He can talk.”

  “Well,” said Poison Control, “he sounds all right. You could take him to the doctor, but if you want my opinion, you can probably just wait for it to come out by itself.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I had a pretty good idea what she was getting at.

  When Gammie died, she’d left me her good silver. This was just before she gave herself to science. I kept the silver in its wooden box on the lowest shelf in the hutch. There were dozens of salad forks and demitasse spoons and pie slicers in there, all engraved with an ornate B.

  In the days that followed, I found a new use for the silver serving fork, one unimagined by my grandmother. Each evening I examined that which Luke produced, using the fork as my instrument. I felt like a California forty-niner during the leanest days of the gold rush. Patiently I searched for Luke’s marble, but each night my panning efforts proved nugatory. I decided, after a while, that I probably wouldn’t be seeing that marble again. The thought made me restless, though. What had become of it? Is it possible for things to just vanish inside us? That hadn’t been my experience.

  Then we awoke one morning to find the ground covered with snow, all the color taken out of the world. Pieces of lawn furniture and sandboxes nudged above the surface, like the dorsal fins of sharks. The snow crystals sparkled in the sun. Grace came into the bedroom with two cups of coffee, and we sat on the edge of the bed, looking out the window at the changed world.

  That evening, my efforts bore fruit. The marble rolled around the metal bowl I was using as a sieve. I washed off the marble and held it in the palm of my hand. It was small, the marble. It was surprising how small it was.

  It was late at night, and I was the last one up. I’d set the coffee robot for five-thirty A. M. I’d made the children’s lunches for school, put them into the Jimmy Neutron lunchboxes, and placed these in the refrigerator, next to the Go-Gurt bars and the juice boxes and the cheese sticks.

  I walked into Luke’s room, a forty-four-year-old woman with bifocals, and I sat on the edge of my son’s bed. He was already asleep, and his long eyelashes fluttered in dream.

  I ran my fingers through the blond mop of his hair. Luke looked a lot like I had when I was eight. I remembered the moment he was born, Grace hearing the cry and whispering, “That’s amazing.”

  The house was full of sleeping creatures. Patrick lay in his Buzz Lightyear sheets, clutching Big Pig and Big Pig’s friend Mystic, a unicorn. Lucy, the dog, lay on the floor of Patrick’s room, barking in her dreams. Grace was upstairs, the New York Times crossword on her stomach, a pen in one hand, her eyes shut. The fish swam in their tank.

  The chimes of Aunt Nora’s clock rang from the living room. There were faint embers glowing in the fireplace.

  Luke opened his eyes and looked at me. “Hi, Maddy,” he whispered.

  “Hello, Luke,” I said.

  We stared at each other for a moment.

  “You’re a pretty great kid, you know that?” I said, my voice catching slightly.

  He smiled. “So . . . are you in here for any particular reason?” he said.

  I opened my palm. “Does this look familiar?”

  He sat up. “Whoa,” he said. “Is that the marble?”

  “That’s it all right.”

  “But wait. Maddy?” He looked confused. “This isn’t the one I swallowed.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “Believe me, it’s the one you swallowed. Unless you swallowed two.”

  “But this marble isn’t blue,” he said. “It’s red. The marble I swallowed was blue.”

  We sat there for a moment, thinking things over.

  “Well, somehow it changed, inside you,” I said. “I can’t explain it.”

  Luke looked at me with his wide, young eyes. The winter wind blew against his window.

  “Maybe it’s a miracle,” he said.

  I kissed my boy. “Maybe,” I said.

  Afterword: Imagining Jenny by Richard Russo

  September 2002. “Don’t worry, Russo,” I said. “We’ll always have Paris.”

  I.

  Jenny had been given to understand she’d have a private hospital room in which to convalesce. The next day she’d be operated on by Dr. Eugene Schrang, who’d pioneered “gender reassignment surgery,” a term that still cracked me up (if it didn’t work out, you’d be reassigned again, this time to the motor pool). I don’t know if Schrang was the one who actually came up with the idea of using a penis to create a vagina, of turning one highly sensate organ in upon itself to produce another, but if so, he gets points for imagination in my book. Either that or he just lived through the Depression and, like my maternal grandmother, hated to waste anything. He was also very expensive, though as Jenny herself pointed out to me, if you’re in the market for new genitalia, you really don’t want to shop in the bargain basement. Still, I had some doubts about the good doctor. His Web site featured a giant vagina on its home page, and I’d begun to think of him as “Big Pussy,” like the character on The Sopranos. One thing was for sure. He had a thriving practice. Dr. Schrang did some eighty male-to-female gender reassignment surgeries a year, and June had apparently been a particularly busy month. When we arrived in Egypt, he had a wardful of postop transsexuals, which meant that Jenny would have a roommate.

  Her name was Melanie, and to Jenny, she couldn’t have been more encouraging. “Don’t be scared, hon, you’re doing the right thing,” she counseled in a southern drawl from behind the drawn curtain that divided the room. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, I thought, wishing I could whisper this advice to Jenny, who shared my devotion to The Wizard of Oz. Over the last two years there’d been plenty of tense, strained moments in our friendship, and lately we clung to laughter like drowning men (sic) to an inner tube. It usually wasn’t long after an argument that I’d get an e-mail from Jenny that would restore our equilibrium. One such said, “Russo. I’ve come up with a title for Larry Fine’s autobiography. It’s Moe,You Bastard,You Basta
rd, Moe,You Bastard.” Reading it, I found myself grinning from ear to ear, and not just because at age fifty-three I still took pleasure in the Three Stooges. It was, of course, the way Jim and I had communicated right from the start—that is, elliptically. To be Larry Fine was to be poked in the eye, cuffed in the head, knocked down, ridiculed, and buffeted by a malicious force of nature over the course of a lifetime, and never to know why. By the time you came to writing your autobiography, all you’d know is that you’d had enough. Moe, you bastard.

  Melanie’s operation had gone well enough, but her recovery had been dicey. Since her catheter had been removed, she explained to us, disappearing into the small bathroom located on Jenny’s side of the curtain, she actually had to stand on the commode to pee. How the added elevation could possibly help in this enterprise I neither understood nor wanted to understand. When the door closed behind her, we could hear the seat drop and Melanie climb aboard. “It’s worth it, though,” she assured Jenny ten minutes later as she limped back to her own bed, bathed in sweat from the fruitless exertion. “It’s so worth it.”

  In what sense? was what I wanted to ask, but I bit my tongue. Jenny, herself in a hospital gown now, was beginning to look panicked, all too ready for the sedative she’d been promised. Grace sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. “How do you feel?”

  “Terrified,” Jenny admitted, her voice all but inaudible. “Brave. I couldn’t do this without you.” Her eyes shifted, kindly, to include me. I searched for something to say, failing utterly, and not for the last time in Egypt. It was language—easy, thoughtless words between friends—that I’d most felt the loss of over the long months. We value our friendships in part, I suspect, according to their ease, and Boylan and I had hit it off from the start. Ten years earlier he’d been the very first visitor to our rented camp on Great Pond, where we were staying until we could find a house in Waterville. He’d arrived, bearded then, with a six-pack of beer by way of a calling card, to welcome me to Colby College after I’d been given a job he himself had applied for. He might have been coming to check me out, the way you’d look over the guy your wife left you for, but by the time we’d shaken hands, I’d known this wasn’t the case. By the time we’d drunk half of that first beer, our feet up on the railing of the deck, before I’d read his two sad, hilarious companion novels (The Planets and The Constellations ) about souls adrift in the wide universe, I knew I’d made a friend. Here was a man (I thought) who spoke my language, to whom I would seldom have to explain myself, who was predisposed to give me the benefit of every doubt. By the time we’d finished that beer, we’d formed, it seemed to me, an unspoken pact, the exact nature of which we’d figure out later, the details being unimportant. It’d be easy. And until recently it had been. Now, though, I had to watch every word I said, especially the pronouns, not because Jenny got upset when I messed up (she never did), but because my mistakes, especially public, social ones, caused her both pain and embarrassment. Worse, such blunders were evidence that I missed my old pal Jim and wanted him—and our old, thoughtless ease—back again. Which I did.