The tension grew to the point where Dee said, “I’m thinking of flying home.” I didn’t want that. “This is my vacation,” Dee explained. “It’s my chance to come out of the closet, to experiment. It’s important to wear makeup in order to let people know that I, at least, think I’m a woman. And you’re so mean.” At one point, in the car, when Dee had taken out a little pot of lip gloss and a brush to apply a fresh coat while I was backing out the driveway, I slammed on the brakes. I thought it was funny.
I felt bad and said I would try to do better. Our mother was coming home that night, and Dee was nervous. “It’ll be the first time I see Mom,” Dee said. Actually, it was the first time Mom would be seeing Dee, but I didn’t say anything. To mark our truce, we went out to dinner at the Great Lakes Brewing Company. It was crowded, and we had to stand in the bar area until a table was available. In the old days, it was easy to be in a bar with my brother; I just stood there and he went to the bar and got drinks for both of us. But now I became aware that I was no longer with my brother. This person thought she was a woman. I tried seeing Dee as a woman: Tall, deep-set eyes, narrow face. Kind of ragged eyebrows and terrible teeth, but those things could be taken care of. A delicate face, with a fine complexion. My complexion. Our mother’s complexion.
Finally, we got a table and ordered, and I was chattering away, feeling relieved in spite of myself, when the waiter arrived with our order. “Cheeseburger?” he said.
“That’s his,” I said, and picked up my fork and started to renew the conversation. But something was amiss. Dee seemed to have no appetite. “What’s wrong?” I asked. Maybe the waiter had forgotten the sliced raw onion. Dee looked away. Were those tears? What was there to cry about?
“It feels so hopeless,” Dee said. “You say ‘That’s his’ and don’t even know you’ve said it.”
I was aghast. I had thought we were getting along, and a mere pronoun had landed like a cannonball between us. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to change my pronouns—words I had used confidently since childhood. I could never say “he” or “him” or “his” without driving my sibling to despair? It was like speaking a foreign language, always having to think ahead to the next bit of gender. Even when I saw how it hurt Dee’s feelings if I referred to her as him, it took a huge effort to get the pronoun out right.
Maybe the waiter did think Dee was a woman, and with a single thoughtless word I had stomped on her dream. To me, at the time, it was a dream. I didn’t think anyone would ever seriously take Dee as a woman. But gradually Dee pulled it off. “Ladies!” the host would greet us when we walked into a restaurant. At first I thought that everyone had been hoodwinked, but in the end it was I who saw someone who wasn’t there.
Mom came home that night. She was very sweet to Dee. In the morning, while Dee was taking her time in the bathroom (our drive through Pennsylvania would call for full evening makeup), I went out for doughnuts. “You look nice,” Mom said to Dee when she came downstairs. They talked clothes a little, which thrilled Dee—she was dying to talk girl talk with some female member of the family. Mom said, “I wish I could see all your new things”—Dee’s thrift-store buys were packed in two huge Hefty bags—but I was all for hustling us out the door. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was going to have to drive Dee through Manhattan, all the way to her door, with her new wardrobe. Mom even admired the shoes: “They make your feet look smaller.” It was just what Dee wanted to hear.
“He looks kind of cute, doesn’t he?” Mom said to me.
“She,” I said, as Dee beamed. “She looks kind of cute.”
Chapter 4
BETWEEN YOU AND ME
WHEN I WAS IN GRADUATE SCHOOL, living on my own in the Vermont countryside, I decided I should learn how cars worked. I wanted to be self-reliant. I drove a ’65 Plymouth Fury II, in dark blue-green. It had a huge expanse of windshield, which was great for scenic drives and winter sunsets, and a V-8 engine, which meant nothing to me. I knew how to pump gas and check the oil and change a flat tire, but that was about it. My father had discouraged me from learning anything about the workings of the internal-combustion engine. When I said I wanted to learn how cars worked, he said, “It’s easy. I’ll tell you everything you need to know. You put the key in the ignition and you turn it.”