Love's Awakening (8 page)

*
stunned
silence
*

Here
is
a
book
you
might
like
to
read.
Some
information
I
printed
off
the
Internet.
Here’s
a
support
group.
I
love
you,
Celia,
no
matter
what,
and
you’re
the
most
important
person
in
my
life.
You’re
my
wife,
and
I
don’t
want
that
to
ever
change.

Celia stopped at that point. The truth was, she had no idea how she would have reacted. She did know that back then, she loved David fiercely. She would have done anything in her power to make sure David was happy. David should have told her. He really should have. He should have given Celia a chance. That was what marriage was about. Trust. Faith. Love. Poor David. Celia tried to imagine her husband’s suffering, but her own anger got in the way.

She cancelled her next appointment with Dr. Lucas. She needed time to digest the information before she could tell anyone. She kept slipping DVDs into her laptop and kept reviewing pictures of cows. Her brain told her to let it go, she and David were done, but she still demanded answers. Concrete answers, not disturbing emotions.

She read Oliver’s letter many times. Perhaps
read
was the wrong word. She studied it, maybe. Admired it—the black ink, Oliver’s no-nonsense penmanship, the way Oliver couched some phrases. He had to have typed the letter before handwriting it; the letter was too perfect otherwise.

Celia:

I don’t know where to start. Maybe six months ago, when I found out Dad was a woman in a man’s body. He walked into Azizi. Midnight, Wednesday. The bar was pretty empty.

“Just water,” Dad said, but I knew that.

I took a break, and we sat on a bench in front of Chili’s. Wasn’t too cold. We had our jackets.

“You’re not answering your calls,” Dad said.

“I’ve been busy. Work. School. You know.”

“Celia is pregnant,” Dad said. “About two and a half months.”

I said something like: “Oh. Congratulations. I guess.”

Dad’s chin trembled, and his eyelashes wavered. “I never meant for it to happen.”

“A surprise baby, eh?”

“Oliver.” The misery in Dad’s voice was so acute that it caused me to really pay attention.

“What?”

“I love you.”

I could not say the words back. Couldn’t remember Dad ever telling me he loved me.

“She’s the one. Celia is the one. The love of my life.”

“Congrats.”

Dad ran a hand through his hair. Tugged at his tie. “I have to tell her something, and I’m afraid I’ll lose her.”

I stood. Wasn’t in the mood to play games. “I have to go back. See you later.”

You have no idea how it was for me living with Dad when I was in middle school and high school. He had several live-in relationships. They all started great. Went sour eventually. Dad would break up with the women, and I was usually the one who had to comfort them.

This situation with you was giving me that same awful feeling, hence me wanting to get away.

Dad grabbed my arm. “I’m like your friend Sebastian. You treat him like he’s normal. I love you for that. More than you will ever know.”

I did not understand at first. The realization dawned gradually, a brain cell here, a brain cell there. I sat back down, my chest heavy. I thought about touching Dad, some gesture of comfort on his shoulder, but we don’t have that kind of relationship.

Tears sprung to Dad’s eyes, and I shifted away from him. I had never seen him cry and did not want to start now. “I was going to tell Celia. I went to the mall to buy her a gift. To sweeten her up. I saw a baby book instead and thought: ‘Let’s have a baby.’ And then Celia became pregnant. We…we’re done. Our marriage is over. I can’t tell her.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“I don’t know,” Dad said. “But I see how you are with Sebastian. He’s—he’s normal to you.”

The next day, Dad and I met Sebastian for lunch. Dad was in tears most of the time, hot, wet, wild tears in this upscale Italian place, people staring at us, and all I could do was plan my escape route. I stared and fidgeted and thanked God that Sebastian was able to hug Dad. I sure as hell couldn’t.

This strange person who looked like my father was doing…this. Being human. Crying. Instead of acting like a god.

Dad told his story and listened to Sebastian’s story, which was similar to Dad’s. Several suicide attempts, two for Sebastian, and for Dad, three, all shortly after my mother died. I so did not need that information about Dad. He can’t be distant my entire life then suddenly let me in with a flood of information and expect me to be his best pal.

Anyway, Sebastian’s story had a happy ending. “Yours can too,” he told Dad.

“I’d lose my job. My parents would be devastated. And Celia…”

“She deserves to know,” I put in. Basically my first comment of the lunch. “She’s your wife.”

“I know she’s my wife!” Dad said, and his nose went
dripdripdrip
.

Sebastian spoke up: “I’ll go with you to your first therapy appointment. We’ll figure out a way to tell Celia.” People considering sex changes are required to undergo at least ninety days of therapy before they start hormones. They have to be fully resolved to their new identities and tell their families.

Sebastian and Dad met a few times on their own. Fine with me. Let Sebastian deal with him. Sometimes Dad came into Azizi while I was on duty, sometimes to talk to just me, sometimes to Sebastian.

I made a conscious effort, first in my thoughts and later in my conversations with Sebastian, and with Dad, to refer to him in the feminine. But I couldn’t call her “Mom.” David Hall is my father. Therese Hall was my mother. Dad didn’t want me to call him “Mom,” and I was glad. I’m going to try again with the feminine now that hopefully you’ve had time to absorb this information.

I apologize if the rest of this letter is a confusing mix of she/her/him/his. I slip a lot.

I would like to say that Dad’s secret brought us closer, and apparently she thought it did. We spent more time together. Inside, though, I was just…I don’t know. Scared. More compartmentalized about my feelings for Dad.

So, fast forward to Almond’s, the day of the wreck. Dad told me about the fight with you. You wanted to know why she was freezing you out. You thought perhaps she was cheating. You wanted a separation if things would not change.

Dad told me some things he had done to you. Criticizing your everything, even the way you walked, your shoes making a
squeek
squeek
.

“I’m leaving Celia,” Dad said.

I stayed quiet. Dad had rejected her girlfriends before they could hurt her. She would do the same to you and lacked the guts to explain why. I went to the bathroom and hoped Dad would be gone when I got back. No such luck.

At last, I said: “You’re a coward. Damn right you’re a woman. You don’t have balls.”

Dad grimaced. “I know,” she said. She gulped down a glass of water. Got up to leave. “You coming to the hospital after the baby’s born?”

“No.” I wanted nothing to do with Dad anymore.

“Please understand, Oliver. I can’t lie to that baby. I can’t look into that baby’s eyes and be a fraud for yet another person. I can’t lie anymore. Celia is going to need you after I—” he cleared his throat. “After I leave her. I’d really appreciate if you…”

“She’d understand. She’d try to, anyway. She loves you. I see it in her eyes every damn time you’re together! If she’s the one, what the fuck are you doing?”

Dad smiled. “You’re wrong. She wouldn’t understand.”

“You won’t know until you tell her.”

Dad studied me, her gaze dark and intense. She hugged me. Cried a little.

Guess she knew it could be our last hug. The last-ever hug of her life.

“I love you, Oliver,” she said, and yet again, I could not say it back.

I wonder what was going through Dad’s mind when he pulled into the street. Maybe something like this:

He had made it fifty-six years as a man. He could make it another fifty-six as a man.

Or: He was an unmoored mess. The plan to continue being a man would never succeed. He looked left one last time and on impulse, pulled out. The actions he had to take were clear. The Lexus was sturdy. Great air bag. Firm seat belt. The truck wasn’t moving fast. He would survive. Be very banged up, probably. But he would survive. I would find the “suicide” note in my coat and tell y’all that he was a woman. You and Grandma and Granddad and the law firm would be so relieved he was alive, y’all would forgive anything. You would stay with him.

I really don’t think he meant to die—and maybe he won’t, who knows. The wreck was a cry for attention, and I wish I had told you way back when that Dad was transgender. The wreck could have been avoided. All this could have been avoided.

Whatever happens, you can do so much better than Dad. I should have encouraged her to leave you from the start, when you were two months pregnant, because you do deserve much, much more.

-Oliver

Chapter
Seven

Oliver lay in bed, unable to sleep. As usual. As always—since the car wreck. He had just gotten off the phone with Malcolm and Sherelle. Dinner next week at an Applebee’s in Silver Spring, the six of them: Oliver, Shannon, Malcolm, Sherelle and the children.

Oliver had never asked Sherelle and Malcolm for alone time with the kids. Shannon had—and got permission. She’d never lost touch with Erin and Paul. They’d had Shannon, had known Shannon all their lives. Oliver was someone who disappeared when the kids were two years old, only to resurface from the morass of college, Europe and young adulthood when they were ten.

He was a worse father than his old man.

Oliver willed Paul Joseph and Erin Elizabeth out of his mind. He checked the supply of tissues in the Kleenex box on his nightstand and applied lotion to his hands.

Cock time.

Stroke squeeze stroke.

Ahh.
Yes.
Oliver arched his back. Stroke stroke stroke.

ComeonComeonComeon…

Dad’s
in
a
coma.
Oliver saw the labyrinth on his father’s head and twisted his hand away from his cock. He took a few deep breaths, trying to clear his mind.

Instead, Celia popped into his head. Oliver had fantasized about her several times when he jacked off. Okay, more than several times. He’d fantasized about her too during sex with Lori.

Oliver applied more lotion to his hands. He closed his eyes and imagined Celia mounting him. Celia riding him, Celia looking down at him with that little lopsided smile. Celia purring: “I want to fuck you all night, Oliver.”

Celia’s breasts. Breasts Oliver had actually witnessed. Who cared if the nipples were extra big? That was temporary, and even if it wasn’t temporary, Celia was so—she was Celia.

Strokesqueezesqueezestrokestroke

Furious rubbing.

Oliver grabbed a tissue. There it was. The proof of his XYness. Maybe now he could sleep.

*****

Celia began practicing in front of the mirror. She would smile, more of a beam, really, and say: “Hello! How nice to see you again. I’d like you to meet Davina, my wife.”

Wife.

Wife.

The word did not feel too bad on Celia’s tongue, but she was alone. If she said it to a real person…who knew.

It felt wrong when she rocked Caleb and said: “Davina is your mother.”

Your
mother.

Your
mother.

Davina
is
your
mother.

That did not feel right.

Celia had to admit she knew next to nothing about transsexualism. She did not have transgender friends. She did know that it was easier to go from male to female because constructing a vagina and clitoris out of a penis was much simpler than making a penis out of a vagina.

Google was her friend. Celia typed the search words “Transgender male to female.” She clicked on a few random links until she got to TSFAQ.info. One section discussed common reactions and feelings about transition, such as the transgenders’ loved ones being fearful that these people’s inner core would change, that they would become like strangers, that their body changes amounted to mutilation, that they, the loved ones, would never let go of their preconceived idea of the people being a certain sex.

David had been nowhere near the point of transition. Nowhere damn near.

Celia worked on a reply to Oliver’s letter, their kiss humming in her mind all the while.

Oliver:

You know how windows get when it rains hard? The rain drills down, the water runs together, and if you look outside, all you see are big blurs. Especially when you’re driving. Smudges of red, blue, patriotic smears like it’s the Fourth of July, or whatever.

I went to church with your grandmother last Sunday. I’m not religious, but she wanted to go. She’s getting to be a foxhole believer. Anyway, so we drove to a Methodist church. Shirley went straight to the altar and kneeled. I was more roundabout. I ran my hands over the columns. They were rough. I liked them. They reminded me of your cast. Which I forgot to sign, by the way.

Anyway, once the service started, Shirley was all cocked ears and vigorous, agreeable nods. The pastor had a unibrow. A unibrow. I could not focus on anything except his black fluffy caterpillar, waving, weaving and straining with the fury of the Lord. The pastor caught me gawking. Several times. To avoid him, I looked at the one stained-glass window. Rain pounded the window, and the angel was a blur. That’s not supposed to happen. Rain isn’t supposed to change the image in stained glass. Right?