The Fixed Stars Page 16

  Anywhere, he says. You met Nora in a courtroom.

  On the mirror above the bathroom sink I stuck two columns of Post-it notes, reminders of things June and I were working on.

  June’s notes, in carnation pink:

  PEE BEFORE BED

  BRUSH 2x / FLOSS

  THUMB-SUCKING

  My notes, in light blue:

  BE CURIOUS

  BE PATIENT

  THE MISTAKE IS NOT IMPORTANT; THE WAY YOU RECOVER IS

  “YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO BE BAD AT IT IN ORDER TO GET GOOD AT IT”

  The last was a quote I’d pulled from the book In the Company of Women. It was from an entrepreneur named Mary Going, intended as advice about work and business. When I stuck it to the mirror, I was mostly thinking of going down on a woman.

  Out one day, I ran into a friend of a friend. She was easy to talk to, and I mentioned my separation.

  Do you have any friends who are divorced? she asked. I’ll be your divorced friend.

  We made plans to go out for drinks a couple of weeks later. Over a plate of nachos, we traded stories. I recounted the tale of Nora, said I now wanted to date casually, full stop—caaaasually, I enunciated. She asked if I had “a type.”

  I like androgyny, I said, my first time saying it aloud. I’m attracted to both men and women, but really I like people who aren’t exactly either.

  What word do you use for yourself, for your orientation? she asked. Do you use queer?

  I guess, I said. Maybe bisexual works. But I don’t just want it both ways; I want it every way. I fished an ice cube from my margarita and crunched on it. I’ve never been into, like, American-man men. No men-men. I loved that Brandon was a composer. He threw dinner parties in college, you know?

  Ha, she said. I didn’t know that.

  I think I like softer men, I said, and harder women. I liked how this sounded in my mouth.

  I might know someone you’d be into, said my friend. She gave a smile, quick and devious, and grabbed her phone. Scrolling through somewhere, she produced a photo. It was grainy, with the ersatz orange haze of an iPhone filter, but in it was a fine-boned girl with very short dark hair, sitting in what looked like a swiveling desk chair. She was beautiful, but not like a girl. She looked like the lead singer of a boy band.

  Oh, I snorted. Yeah, I’d totally fuck her.

  Her name is Ash, my friend said. I used to work with her at my old job. Want me to see if I can set you up?

  We went out on a Thursday night. It was raining hard for Seattle, a hood-up kind of rain, and I got to the bar first, glad for a second to rearrange my bangs. I was too antsy to sit down in a booth, so I stood at the bar and made small talk with the bartender. He was the same one who’d bought me and Nora a round on our first date, but at a different bar. I tried not to read into it. At the edge of my vision I saw Ash walk in and felt my heartbeat thud, ca-su-al, down the length of my arms.

  She was twenty-nine. When I told her I was thirty-eight, it felt like a dare. Her last girlfriend, she smiled, was thirty-nine. We fiddled with the straws in our drinks, stayed for two hours, walked around the corner for Malaysian food. She’d come out a few years ago, she said; like me, she’d felt straight before that. Then a year ago she came out again, this time as non-binary, gender-nonconforming. I liked how easily she said it. When she turned to speak to the server, I gawped at her: the line of her jaw, angular and delicate, and the confident slash of her brow. At each corner of her mouth a soft crease ran perpendicular to her lips, and it gave a tiny fullness to the flesh there. I wanted to suck on it. We closed down the restaurant and walked out to my car. The rain had let up, and she handed me the paper bag of leftovers. The street was busy, cars sluicing us with rainwater as they sped by. Can I walk you to your car? I asked, depositing the leftovers on the seat. She pointed us up a side street and we went, shoulders knocking through our coats. I couldn’t look at her. When we got to her car it was raining again. There was a slope to the sidewalk, and I was below her, which was perfect, because now we were the same height. I asked if I could kiss her. We both started to giggle, shy now, and she put her lips on mine. I opened my mouth to her, searched out her narrow hips under my hands. I could feel her start to smile as I kissed her, and I pulled her closer, flicked my tongue along the inside of her cheek. I liked the taste of her mouth, like fried rice and clean water. The rain was coming down steadily, ice-cold on the back of my neck, and the nylon of our raincoats scritched-scritched. Can I see you again? she asked, and I said, Please. I pressed my pelvis against her. She whispered into my teeth, threw her head back, and laughed, did a giddy soft-shoe. I wanted her to be more aloof, hot and distant—a gun for hire, for sex. I wished she liked me less.

  When we were soaked, she offered to drive me back to my car. We clambered into hers, and the windshield wipers squeaked to life. Heat blasted from the dash, and I rubbed my hands in front of the vent. When she pulled up behind my car, I found I didn’t want to get out. I looked at her, and she turned in her seat, and like horses we nuzzled, touched our faces cheek to cheek.

  I’d told the friend who set us up that I didn’t want anything big. Maybe one night a week, I said, and waved my index finger for emphasis. I learned on our first date that Ash had low bandwidth too: she worked full-time with a long commute. I was glad to hear it. I wanted to be dating, but I didn’t want to give up my time. I didn’t want to cede the very tentative feeling that I would be all right on my own, that June and I would make it.

  I keep a picture of me and June framed in the hallway outside the bathroom. It was taken right around that time, on a Sunday morning at the neighborhood farmers’ market. Our dog, Alice, was with us on her leash. While I was picking out apples at one of the farm stands, a smartly dressed man with a vintage Polaroid camera approached, offering to take our picture for a few dollars. I felt spontaneous, said yes. June and I sat on the curb and positioned Alice beside us. June wears a pale blue unicorn-print raincoat over her Snoopy pajamas, and she’s eating from a small tub of Greek yogurt. She squints at the camera, smiles, chews on the spoon. Alice, never one for eye contact, looks off down the street. My hair is long in this photo, almost to my breasts, and it looks golden against the black collar of my coat. I look content. I look at ease, maybe more than I’d ever seen myself.

  Here’s a glaring example of confirmation bias, but I like it: “Nothing,” asserts psychiatrist Carl Jung, “exerts a stronger psychic effect upon the human environment, and especially upon children, than the life which the parents have not lived.”38

  25

  When Brandon and I separated, I had not yet come out to most of my family. I’d come out to a couple dozen friends and colleagues, mostly people I saw regularly and couldn’t hide from. I had come out to my mother in the emergency room and to a cousin who’d visited that summer, but not to anyone else. That fall, I made a list of the people left to tell. I did most of the calls in my car, on speakerphone, on days when I didn’t have June. Each call would have a predictable and finite duration, like a college exam. I would give each the length of time it took to get where I was going: from home to Delancey, the mechanic to the grocery store, Delancey to a meeting at June’s school.

  My family was kind. I knew the conversation wasn’t easy for anyone in it. But I hated the questions they asked me, the fact that they thought they could. One asked how Brandon was doing “with it all.” I seethed, though the question was understandable. Brandon’s okay, I said; we still care a lot for each other. All I can say, replied my family member, is that Brandon is an unusually good man.

  When I was straight, I did not have to come out. Like my white skin, my being straight was a convenient default. There was a nice slip to it, an absence of friction. There was also privacy: when straight, I rarely had to disclose anything about my sex life. Even pregnancy, the visible fact of a baby protruding from my abdomen, unavoidable evidence of sexual activity, didn’t say anything about my sexuality. Only those who don’t fit norms have t
o put a name to their difference. The world has gay politicians and legal same-sex marriage, but there is still a thing called coming out. Now there would be endless occasions to out myself, whether I wanted to or not. Like at my dermatologist’s office one afternoon, when he inquired about my preferred method of birth control.

  Oh, I don’t need any, I said.

  Why not? he asked, swiveling abruptly from his computer and peering at me over his reading glasses.

  I’m dating a woman, I said.

  Ah! He laughed, visibly relieved. He’d worried that I would extoll the virtues of the rhythm method or prayer. I was glad for his mirth. I wondered how this conversation might go in a less progressive town.

  I knew I was fortunate to have other concerns. I was afraid people would think I’d been hiding it, that I’d been faking my way through life. I was afraid people would think that everything I’d been and done was a lie. I had written two memoirs featuring Brandon, our courtship, and our marriage. I built my career as a writer on a certain image, because that image had been true. But now the story I have to tell seems to undo all the ones that came before, the ones people have come to know me by. How does a person write truthfully about their life, when it isn’t finished?

  I wanted to be believed, though I struggled to explain myself. And if they—family, friends, readers—did believe me, wasn’t it almost worse? Then they’d see me as some kind of a contagious illness, something they or their spouses could catch. I’d seen the thought pass over friends’ faces as I spoke. I was a harbinger of unwelcome news: Look out, straight people! This could happen to you AT ANY TIME. On a weekend getaway, a friend confessed to me that her husband had joked that she would “go off into the woods with Molly and come back gay.” We both laughed. What else was I supposed to do.

  Another family member asked how my mother was “holding up.” Oh, she’s amazing, I fumbled. I explained that I knew how hard it must have been for her, especially since she’d only recently moved to town. I was grateful for the work she was doing to accept and understand and be there for me—for all three of us.

  Well, this family member scoffed, you’ve really put her through the wringer, Molly.

  This time I had the gall to attempt a protest. Excuse me? I howled. But that’s not to imply that I didn’t agree.

  Saying that my husband and I had separated was worse than coming out. I couldn’t just say it; I was sure I should explain. Our separation was my fault, and I would announce this culpability by outing myself. On three occasions, I outed myself to staff members of June’s school. I hardly knew any of them. I saw their heads wobble faintly with the impact, watched them labor to respond. It seemed easier to pawn my privacy, to flay myself next to the playground sandbox, than to let someone make assumptions. Then they might land on the tender thing: my marriage hadn’t worked very well.

  When did I stop loving Brandon? Did I? Why would I even formulate such a question, as though it mattered in the end? “There are some people that one loves,” admits the wife in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, “and others that one perhaps would rather be with.”

  26

  Ash and I went on a second date, this time to a movie. I was running late, and I texted to say she should go ahead and get seats. I shimmied into the theater as the lights started to dim, hoped she couldn’t see how I blushed when I saw her. I sat down, and she leaned close: Are you a hand-holder? I nodded, and she put her elbow on the armrest, opened her palm. Her skin was smooth and even, like a new ream of paper. After the movie we went for tacos and made out standing against the back hatch of my car. I rubbed the seam at the crotch of her jeans, pinched her lip in my teeth, let the rear wiper dig into my back.

  The morning was overcast, and I sent Ash a text: Today is prime makeout weather.

  It IS, she replied. I can’t wait to make out with you again.

  I’m currently making granola, I typed back. This is what it’s like to sext with me. I’m also listening to a feminist podcast about menstrual cups.

  Hubba hubba, typed Ash. I haven’t had my period in almost a year.

  A beat, then she added: Not for any unhealthy reasons, thankfully.

  Oh, why not? I asked.

  About a year ago, she replied, my doctor and I decided that a very low dose of testosterone might help me feel more aligned with my gender identity, which is queer/non-binary. Does that freak you out?

  Not at all! I hope you didn’t feel on the spot. It must be wild to experience that kind of deep change in yourself.

  I didn’t feel on the spot, she said. It felt like a good way to drop that into the convo. And yes, it has been wild. I’m amazed at how much more myself I feel. I started sleeping better, feeling happier. There is growing evidence of lowered rates of depression and anxiety with hormone therapy, though most research is based on folks who are taking a dose to fully transition. The stress of living incongruent to one’s gender identity can be so harmful.

  I’m really glad for you, I said.

  People are still learning, Ash added. Myself included. The world still operates by a “this or that” framework. Even my doctor uses language implying that because I am on hormones, I want to transition. Which is wrong.

  I typed: There’s this really great passage from a book I love, The Argonauts, by Maggie Nelson. “How does one get across the fact that the best way to find out how people feel about their gender or their sexuality—or anything else, really—is to listen to what they tell you, and to try to treat them accordingly, without shellacking over their version of reality with yours?”

  I couldn’t yet tell her what the quote meant in my story. I couldn’t yet tell her about the times my husband had said I was crazy, about the time he’d tried to tell me I wasn’t gay and I’d wanted to scream this at him, every word.

  On our third date I was looking down, fiddling with my phone, when Ash arrived. She slid onto the booth beside me like an apparition, and when I turned to see why the light had changed, her face was close to mine. I put my tongue in her mouth.

  I’ve never asked about your pronouns, I said. I just realized it. I’m sorry I didn’t think to earlier.

  That’s fine, she said. I’ve been thinking about it lately. It’s kind of a shifting thing. I’ve just started using they/them at work, and it feels really good. So, they/them, I think.

  Okay, I said, great. I can do that.

  I had quietly hoped that I could keep saying “she/her.” But even as I thought it, I felt bad. Ash’s pronouns have nothing to do with me. I should be happy to call them whatever they want. The singular “they” felt strange on my lips, like practicing a new language. But I could practice, and I wanted to.

  We were supposed to see Moonlight, but we lost track of time. There was a Halloween party at Dino’s, and we stopped by. Brandon was there with someone he’d been seeing. I hugged him en route to the dance floor, and his date whispered in my ear: You two look so beautiful. Ash is like a tiny shiny Bieber lady.

  When I told Ash, I could see them flush under the low purple lights. You know I’ve dressed as Justin Bieber for Halloween, they confessed. Three times.

  Ash pulled up a split-screen picture on their phone: Bieber on the left, Ash-as-Bieber on the right. It was perfect. I cackled, doubled over.

  We walked to the car with our arms around each other. It was late, but there were lots of bars on this street, and people outside them to smoke. We were safe: this was the gay part of town, the urban gut of Seattle, where bass thumps from the buildings well after midnight. But when we walked down the sidewalk like this, arms draped over our shoulders like scarves, eyes met us with a gaze I wasn’t accustomed to. When I walk down the sidewalk alone, I pass for a straight woman. This is dicey enough: as a straight woman, I rarely feel entirely safe. Company helps, safety in numbers. A female friend can do the job, sort of; a male friend can make me forget myself. But in the company of Ash, I felt as though a sinkhole waited under the asphalt. Does Ash feel this all the time? Is this what it’s like in
the gender of their skin? The minute the wrong person sees that Ash is not a man, they’re something even worse than a woman.

  We went to my house, and at the front door I took their hand and led them down the hall. I switched on the lamp, kissed their upper lip first and then their lower. Ash tugged at my shirt where it knotted in the back. Under their T-shirt they wore a sports bra, and I slid a finger under the elastic in front, up where the skin rose gently, like a foothill, to Ash’s breast. They unfastened their watch, knelt to step out of their jeans. Ash’s breasts were small and neat, like a textbook drawing of breasts, two curves as tidy as the arc of a bow. I’d never felt the length of a woman’s body against me like this, nothing in between. I felt chosen, a woman chosen by a choosy creature, another woman. We were equal. I began to wonder then what we even were, women or just humans, and then I realized I didn’t care enough to finish the thought. We slept all night with our toes touching.

  Early the next morning Ash appeared beside the bed, standing, and bent close to my face: I loved last night. Thank you.

  I texted them later. I loved waking up next to you, I said. I felt lucky.

  Ash replied with two blushing emoji faces. Are we officially dating? they asked. I think so.

  I hope so, I said. Please? My fingers flew over the keypad.

  Yes!! they replied.

  I had a phone consultation that morning with a divorce lawyer, a man recommended by our corporate attorney. We talked for exactly eleven minutes, and it felt oddly straightforward, maybe too easy. He said it sounded like Brandon and I agreed upon most everything, which made us good candidates for an uncontested divorce. I wondered when it would feel real, the concept of our divorce.

  I went to therapy. I wanted to feel giddy still from my night with Ash, but by afternoon I did not. My head jangled, an almost audible rattle.