Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family (5 page)

When they were at McDonald’s they usually let the kids tumble around in the play area. When it was time to leave Kelly or Wayne would have to call out, “Wyatt, Jonas, it’s time to go!” That’s when Kelly and Wayne would notice the puzzled looks on other parents’ faces. Kelly ignored them. For Wayne, though, every public encounter with a stranger’s confusion jabbed at him. People weren’t just judging Wyatt; they were judging him and Kelly.

What does it matter? Kelly would say. It isn’t anyone else’s business, and we don’t have to explain our situation every time we meet someone. Who cares?

But it did matter, and he did care.

One night, before the move, the Maineses were invited over by Jean Marie and her husband, Roscoe, to see the improvements they’d made on their house. Wayne and Roscoe were cut from the same cloth—they both grew up loving sports, hunting, and enjoying what they called “rustic carpentry”—building things without the need for absolute precision. Wyatt was playing with Leah when the two of them tumbled downstairs, giddy and flushed and both wearing dresses, heels, earrings, and full makeup. Everyone laughed, even Wayne, but it was a tight laugh, and it caught in his throat. Roscoe invited Wayne out on the porch for a beer.

“What am I going to do?” he said to Roscoe.

They both knew what he was talking about.

Roscoe looked at Wayne, not sure what to say, and took a swig from his beer.

“I don’t know, Wayne. I don’t know.”

“Kelly thinks I’m a jerk, but I just don’t know what to do.”

The two men were quiet, unable to think what more they could say to each other. Wayne’s pain and confusion were palpable, but they were Wayne’s to bear, and as he stood there next to Roscoe he let the cool night air wash over him.

“D
own east” is how many people refer to Maine, although to Mainers, down east is more specifically the coastal sections of rural Hancock and Washington counties, from Penobscot Bay on the west to the Canadian border on the east, with the Atlantic Ocean defining the southern side of the region. Spiritually or culturally, down east means you are never far from the sea, with islands, peninsulas, coves, and bays giving the jagged coast of Maine its distinctive character. The origin of the term “down east” dates to the time of the sailing ships. When traveling from Boston to Maine, in a northeasterly direction, ships were often rewarded with a wind at their backs, which meant they were sailing downwind. Likewise, on their return trip to Boston, these same ships would often be sailing upwind, which is why Mainers often say they’re “going up to Boston,” though geographically Boston is about fifty miles to the south of Maine’s southern border.

A New England ethos runs deep here. Generations of the same families have refused to be dislodged by bad weather, bad business, or bad fortune. Mainers make do, no matter what, and it’s not hard to understand why. Battered by the push and pull of ancient glaciers, beaten by the wind and weather, the coast of Maine is as ornery and stubborn as the people who settled it. Generations of the same families populate the rural cemeteries and the property records of Maine, where anyone not born in the state, no matter how long they’ve lived here, is referred to as being “from away.”

With 95 percent of Mainers identifying as Caucasian, only Vermont is whiter, and even though Orono is a college town, it is still 93 percent Caucasian. In other ways, though, Orono is a peculiar hybrid. Straddling both land and water, it lies at the mouth of the Stillwater, a tributary of the Penobscot River. The Stillwater breaks away from the larger river twelve miles to the north and drains back into the Penobscot downstream. Marsh Island was created when it was encircled by the two rivers. Orono occupies part of the island and part of the mainland—the University of Maine is one of the only colleges in the country located entirely on an island that is not also a state or a city—and its founding predates the American Revolution. Orono was named for the chief of the Penobscot Indians, the same Indians the Europeans eventually pushed out of Orono’s rich fishing and hunting grounds. After the Revolution, lumber mills dominated the town, and while they no longer do, Orono is very much a product of pragmatism and reinvention, a place where very little is ever thrown out and everything is capable of being repurposed, including its stores. A sign for the Orono Pharmacy & Ice Cream Parlor hangs from a rusty pole out front, even though the Ice Cream Parlor is long gone. So is the video store that replaced it, as well as the walk-in medical clinic that replaced the video store. Now the front of the pharmacy is inhabited by Layla’s Bazaar, an international grocery store.

Despite a few urban highlights, including the Sunkissed Tanning Salon, the town has retained a rural character. When the farmers market opens in the warm weather, many customers arrive by canoe or kayak. Part of Marsh Island, where the university sits, is open every year to bow hunters in search of white-tailed deer, and along Orono’s thirty-nine miles of roadway grow a hundred varieties of shade trees, Norway maple, eastern white pine, red oak, green ash, and black locust. American elm trees still line the byways of Orono, as well as serviceberry trees, so named by New England’s first settlers, who planned their funeral services around the timing of the tree’s bloom, because it signaled the ground had thawed enough for graves to be dug.

The Maineses’ new house in Orono was a four-bedroom with cedar sides, a three-hundred-foot-long driveway, and a one-stall barn. The front yard was heavily wooded with oak, spruce, and hemlock that were so close to the house, Kelly said, she felt she was suffocating. Eventually, Wayne cut a few down, not because of Kelly’s complaints, but because
he
suddenly decided they were crowding the house.

With six acres of mostly woodland, there was a lot for the twins to explore. Wayne cut down forty trees to build a one-room log cabin for the kids. Kelly bought a zip line for the backyard and in the winter fashioned a bobsled run that stretched from the back deck down the stairs and across the yard to the edge of the woods. The kids seemed to adjust well, but Kelly wasn’t happy. The house was too boxy. It was too dark inside from all the shade trees; it was overrun by ants, and the water pipe to the well was cracked. But the home wasn’t too far from town or school or Wayne’s new job as safety director at the university, so even though Kelly complained she knew they weren’t going anywhere else anytime soon.

With the boys about to begin the first grade, the family decided to hold a “Get to Know the Maineses” party for the neighborhood. It was a cool, cloudy autumn day as guests streamed into the house. Kelly was still in the kitchen fixing platters of food, but with the party starting Wayne went looking for the two boys. He found Jonas in the den, then Wyatt appeared at the top of the stairs, smiling down excitedly at his father. There he was, his parents’ sweet, irrepressible, chestnut-haired boy—wearing his favorite pink princess dress from Toys R Us.

“Wyatt, you can’t wear that!”

Wayne’s harsh tone cracked through the party chatter, and Wyatt’s little body jerked, then froze. Kelly, who heard her husband’s strained voice from the kitchen, knew something was wrong and rushed out.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Wyatt cannot—”

“What did you say to him?!”

Kelly followed her husband’s eyes to the top of the stairs. One of Wyatt’s tiny hands grasped the banister; the other clutched a glittery wand. On his face was fear and confusion.

“Are you going to let him wear
that
?” Wayne asked.

Kelly didn’t answer. Instead, she raced up to Wyatt, hot tears now streaking his face, took him by the hand, and led him back into his bedroom. It was, she knew right then and there, the worst moment of her life. It wasn’t so much the reaction of the people at the party, who were mostly stunned into silence—that was Wayne’s issue—but rather the hurt her son was experiencing, and for no good reason other than that he wanted to wear his princess dress to the family’s party. How could she explain to him that he’d done nothing wrong when his father had just scolded him? She didn’t think she was ready for this, and yet she knew it was just the beginning.

“This isn’t really the right time,” Kelly gently told Wyatt, persuading him it would be better, for now, to wear pants and a shirt.

“I can’t be myself,” Wyatt said, a mixture of sadness and anger in his voice. “Jonas gets to wear what he wants. Why can’t I?”

Kelly knew it was true, and that it wasn’t fair.

“Let’s just try to get to know people first,” she said.

Still dazed, Wayne remained downstairs, enveloped in a kind of concussive quiet. The world where he was a father and husband in an ordinary, hardworking, middle-class family had just blown up. He stood there stunned, unable to hear whatever was going on around him, as if deafened by the psychological explosion. Was everyone at the party looking at him right now? He felt strangely alone, and, worse, unmasked. As if the hunter, the fisherman, the air force veteran, and the Republican had all been stripped away and the only thing left was the father—but father of what and of whom? Yes, he was a happily married man and the parent of two beautiful boys, but it was also true he was embarrassed by one of them—and he’d just broken that little boy’s heart.

Nothing seemed to help Wayne make sense of Wyatt, not his small-town background, not his time in the military, and certainly not all that education. How could Wyatt and Jonas be identical twins and be so different? There was no question Jonas was pure boy, and his very existence seemed to put the lie to Wyatt’s insistence he was female.

Wayne had shared his fears, confusion, and anger with no one, not even Kelly. She knew he was disappointed in Wyatt and even angry, but he held it inside and instead continued to put distance between himself and the family—working late during the week, running and swimming and exercising for hours at a time, doing chores outside that allowed him to be alone with his thoughts. There was a stubbornness to Wayne and also, at times, an inability to see beyond the walls of his own experience. Kelly had learned that lesson up close. One day, early in their relationship but before they were married, Wayne announced he was going hunting. Kelly thought, how nice, he’s going to go off and do his male thing, so she made him a sandwich and kissed him goodbye. When he came home in his dirty camouflage fatigues, a deer was splayed inside his Chevy Chevette, its nose on the dashboard and its feet sticking out the back. Kelly was aghast.

“What’s that in your pocket?” she asked, noticing a rather large bulge at Wayne’s waist. He pulled out the deer’s heart and proffered it to Kelly.

“Oh my God!”

Kelly couldn’t believe what she was looking at. What had her husband done? What kind of person was he? Actually, Wayne had properly gutted the deer in order to preserve its meat to bring home to be cooked, and the heart was particularly delectable to hunters and meat eaters. Flooded with all the wrong images, however, Kelly was suddenly furious with her husband and took off in her car. She drove for three hours—all the way from Morgantown, West Virginia, to Pittsburgh and back—trying to calm down. When she finally returned home, Wayne had cleaned up, but he told her they needed to talk, to work this out, because hunting was important to him—it was part of who he was. She told him she just hadn’t been prepared for exactly what that meant. She was fully capable of seeing beyond her own experiences and she knew she’d have to adjust. She just wanted him to know that it had been upsetting to her and that in the future, there would be no dead deer in the house. Period.

K
ELLY WASN’T SOMEONE WHO
needed to have a lot of close female friends, but those she did have, she confided in. One of them was Chris, whom she met when she took the kids swimming at a local pool. Chris was homey, down-to-earth, and very matter-of-fact. She had four kids of her own, one the same age as the twins. Another friend and neighbor Kelly often talked to about Wyatt was Allison, who also had children the same age. On Friday afternoons, Kelly and Allison would unwind at the breakfast bar in Kelly’s kitchen, drinking Cosmos and eating veggie snacks, because they were both watching their weight. Allison was a kind of sounding board for Kelly, especially when she complained about Wayne. Everything was so complicated with him, she told her friend. He just didn’t understand, or want to understand, Wyatt, and he was so shut down she’d pretty much given up even trying to talk to him about their child.

“Have you ever thought about divorce?” Allison once asked Kelly.

“Oh God, no,” she replied. “I’d never think of asking for one. I’d be scared he’d get custody of the twins.”

In truth, sometimes Kelly
was
afraid Wayne would leave her because she was “allowing” Wyatt to act like a girl. When he went out on one of his long bike rides, she thought maybe he wouldn’t come home. More than that he would leave her, though, she was afraid he would take Jonas and Wyatt. The bottom line was, she couldn’t count on Wayne. She also wasn’t about to run away or hide or rant or cry, either. She just needed to be a good mother to Wyatt. And right now she wasn’t sure how. What she was sure of was that Wayne wasn’t helping. No matter what she said to him, even if it was just wondering out loud if maybe Wyatt was gay, she knew what Wayne’s answer would be: “No, that’s not it,” he’d say, and then turn back to what he was doing.

Despite his inability to talk with Kelly, divorce wasn’t in Wayne’s vocabulary, although he sometimes worried
she
would leave
him.
Wayne was also trying to make sense of Wyatt, in his own way, but mostly he was hoping these were all things his son would simply outgrow. He didn’t want to think about his son being gay. It was fine if the sons of other fathers were gay, because he had no problem working with gay people or his children having gay friends. He just didn’t want that for his son. It would be too hard his whole life, and Wayne was afraid he wouldn’t know how to be the kind of father Wyatt would want—or need.