My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (26 page)

. . . . . . .

I have a gig at the Westhampton Fine Arts Theatre; they’re showing

Agora
, with Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, the beautiful mathematician who lived in fourth- century Alexandria, and I’m to discuss it afterward with the series’ regular host. Ellen and I take the Jitney out; this will be her first time at Round Dunes as Ellen. Chevey and Eleanor

had visited in 2000, staying at a nearby bed and breakfast. It was the

summer Andrew and I had had the automobile accident— how often

Chevey’s visits seemed to coincide with emergencies— and it was Elea-

nor who noticed the wayward gait that signaled the second massive

brain injury.

They’d met a few friends at the time, including our neighbors the

Deutsches, so I’m full of the usual mixed feelings: nervous about how

Ellen will be perceived, exhausted from the aftermath of Andrew’s

disastrous fall, but relieved to be getting away and having time with,

and help from, Ellen. She will wear a bathing suit, go to the beach,

we’ll have dinner with Nola and Stephen Deutsch, who are among the

few who knew Ellen as Chevey.

And yet, I realize, I’m so much less nervous than I was a few years

ago. The summer following the revelation, I lived in dread that the

news would come to Round Dunes and spend the summer as Number

One topic on the pool- to- beach grapevine. Now— joy unconfined— I

care little for public opinion. Ellen in a bathing suit, fine!

I take her over to the Deutsches’ apartment. “Present” her. The

Deutsches aren’t shy about asking questions. “Who are you attracted

to,” they asked, “men or women?” and Ellen, unflappable, says both.

I’m pleased with how it goes, but afterward they all challenge me.

“You said, ‘I want you to see my sister!’ ” they later tell me. They

tell me she said, “What am I, a carnival sideshow?” I’ll have to take

their word for it, as it lines up with earlier reports, namely with the

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My Sister

way Patty and Lily thought I’d handled (or mishandled) their intro-

duction to Ellen. My forcing her to talk about her experiences, and the differences between male and female physiognomy. So despite my best

efforts to be casual, my deeper anxiety apparently manifests itself in

what I say and how I say it. Being “open” and “unembarrassed” is my

way of dealing with it, yet how much of a pose, a performance, is this?

Later, with others— for example when someone asks me what I’m

writing about— I can’t just avoid answering, but instead of having a

scripted answer (“a personal memoir about a family secret”) I will

drop it airily into the conversation (“My brother is now my sister!”),

then rush on, my speed to get it over with a sort of preemptive defen-

sive maneuver that doesn’t fool anyone. And doesn’t even discourage

the questions I’m trying to avoid.

(I’m relieved when Ellen later tells me that, far from feeling I

treated her as a freak, she was totally comfortable in both situations, that she’d never have said that about a carnival show except possibly as a joke, an icebreaker. “I know I’m a curiosity, probably the first transsexual most people have met, so it comes with the territory. It’s true I want to blend in, but I also feel that the best thing I can do for transsexuals is to make the kind of good impression that might help their

family and friends to accept and understand.”)

Later during the Quogue visit, when Ellen is elsewhere, Nola, a

keen analyst of human behavior and not one to keep her opinions to

herself, asks me why Ellen wore such bright colors, the fuchsia lip-

stick, the turquoise jewelry, and why so blond? Is this Southern, she

wants to know. Stephen was bothered by her muscular arms and

“buff” look. Why would she wear sleeveless shirts? he wonders. I can’t

answer.

The next evening, the four of us are having dinner out. By this

time we’ve gotten used to having Ellen among us. It’s a festive occa-

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sion, very relaxed, and a wonderful break for me. At one point Nola

says, “For siblings, you two are very different; you have very different interests and styles.”

Ellen agrees readily. “Molly likes dark clothes,” she says. “I guess

it’s a New York thing.”

My heart leaps with relief, Ellen has liberated me. It wasn’t just

what she said, but the way she said it. There was clearly no envy or

sense of inadequacy on her part. Not only does she
not
think her own way of dressing inferior, but she actually feels a little sorry for me in my drab urban ensembles and my less- is- more approach to makeup.

This was what Stephen and Nola and I hadn’t understood: that she

liked and cultivated her own look, was proud of her body, buff, bright, a little shiny— and didn’t want to hide it. In thinking of this, I’m suddenly reminded of my friend’s reaction to the transsexual regarding

herself with adoration in the store mirror. “Women never love their

bodies like this,” she said. I agreed at the time, but now I think it

isn’t— or isn’t
quite
— that they love these bodies because they are
beautiful
, but because they are, finally, women’s bodies.

In any case, from this moment on, I feel free to write about her

taste and attire or anything else on which we might disagree. I’ve been sprung from some kind of shame or embarrassment, the need to treat

her with kid gloves. I can’t “hurt” her because she rejects the grounds on which my judgments might be formed. I might think of myself as a

semistylish cosmopolitan New Yorker, but she has staked her ground

as someone not particularly impressed by my taste and style. If I were

condescending, the flaw, the failure of vision, would be in me rather

than in her. She is not only my “equal” but my superior, for could I, in a similar situation, ever muster the confidence or self- acceptance she exudes?

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Suddenly, it seems as if gender identity and its mutability is all anyone talks about. Women are playing “action heroes,” men clueless schlubs

who need to be coaxed out of adolescence. Transsexuals are celebrated

in the novels of Jeffrey Eugenides and John Irving.

Strange things are going on in nature. In the Potomac River and its

tributaries, in Virginia’s Shenandoah River, male bass— so- called “in-

tersex fish”— have been producing eggs. The high rate at which these

fish are acquiring female sexual characteristics has raised concerns

that pollutants might be causing the problem. In a scary bit of accelerated evolution, science writers note that the Y (male) chromosome is

shrinking so rapidly that it could affect the activity of genes.

In the city, now without Ellen, I am on my own with Andrew. His

memory has sprung gigantic leaks, his speech is hesitant, he has only

one ear that can hear at all, he can barely walk, yet he manages to re-

sume teaching in September. Far from making motions to remove

him, Annette Insdorf, the valuable and indefatigable professor of film

and one- time head of the film school, says they still want him at Co-

lumbia. He continues to be a draw for the film school— the last of the

humanist- film scholars— and the students adore him, or at least seem

willing to put up with his infirmities, but for how much longer? And

he will need help just to get there and back.

In early October, I’ve planned to go for three weeks to VCCA, the

writers and artists colony in Virginia, but have to cancel. Andrew is

diagnosed with an aneurism behind the knee, and goes into Columbia-

Presbyterian for surgery. I take over some of his classes as do other

generous members of the teaching staff. While he is recovering in re-

hab, I go to visit Ellen. It’s getting easier and easier to be with her.

There’s less of an inward shudder when I first see her, more pure plea-

sure.

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I’ve never known anyone so orderly, and generally when I come, I

have to review my checklist of what to do and what not to do. The

kitchen is always pristine, as if unused, and the order extends even to the stacking of plates. There are eight and she rotates them from the

dishwasher, latest washed on the bottom, so that one doesn’t get used

more than another. Put potholders under anything that comes out of

the microwave; use the red chopping board for meat, the other for

vegetables and fruit. Take off your shoes at the door. I use the guest

bathroom and I’m instructed to leave the light on if I’m going in and

out, as it uses more electricity, after a lifetime of being taught the opposite by conservation- minded citizens like my sibling. (It’s about fluo-rescent versus incandescent.) The place is small, no storage, she has

just what she needs and no more. Yet, I feel a little less constrained this time; I don’t know if it’s me or her.

I’m amazed not only at how many friends she seems to have, but at

how they come from all walks of life. She’s on first- name, even confi-

dential, terms with the Julie who’s her manicurist, massage therapist,

and also housekeeper; Toney, the man who was maintenence supervi-

sor when she rented out Beth’s apartments near the university; a

woman tenant in the same complex who’s suffered misfortunes on a

biblical scale, and who, I suspect, is assisted by Ellen.

The best news is that there’s also been a thawing of relations with

Eleanor. She had decided to sell the Richmond house (hers in the set-

tlement) and move to California to be near her daughter. Ellen had

first seen her during the previous Christmas, when Eleanor casually

said, Why don’t you come on by.

Now in the summer of 2010 they’ve had to go through the arduous

and heartbreaking process of emptying the house. In a notoriously

bleak housing market, Eleanor sold it right away, so the job had to be

accelerated. Ellen would come down often, sometimes there and back

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My Sister

in the same day, carrying furniture or books or paintings that had to

go to Pine Mountain. She and Eleanor never stopped working, sorting

through their worldly possessions, packing boxes, dividing up, throw-

ing out. Because the process was so hurried, they were losing track of

what they’d sold, lost, kept. The relentless focus on work, Ellen told

me later, kept the emotions under the surface. But as soon as the task

was over, and the two sat lost in the empty house they’d put so much

of themselves into, they broke down and cried. (Ellen still cries when

she describes this scene.) But Eleanor could no longer keep Ellen at

arm’s length, and at least some of the sorrow was shared rather than

recriminatory. And finally, she agreed to travel with Ellen. They’re going to come to New York together in December to stay at Ellen’s time-

share unit.

It seems that time, so often a thief and a scourge, was on their side.

We talk about her social life now. One thing I wanted to know:

what does it mean when you are a heterosexual woman? Do men “turn

you on?” Are you sexually attracted, or is it just a matter of compan-

ionship?

“You always wonder. Not having had sex with a man, I can’t really

be sure other than I know that I’m attracted to them . . . but I can’t get rid of my attraction to women. You’re in this land where you think you

feel a certain way, but there are so many cross feelings.

“I would really like to have a relationship with a man, more than

just one date, in my lifetime, but if I don’t I’ll be disappointed but not devastated. We all know women who are incomplete without a man.

I’m at the other end. I love my women friends, love going out with

men, especially taking trips together. I have no interest in getting married, but I do enjoy men. If I don’t have a relationship, it would be fun to go out with two or three men, dating them casually, since they don’t like to feel tied down. That’s true of me, too, because I know how they

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are. Men have antennae out for women who are desperate for a man. If

one developed into a relationship, fine, but I’m independent about so

many things. I don’t know where it comes from.”

It looks like Ellen is more like Mother and me than those mythical

other transsexuals or the typical male. She wants her independence,

but she’d like a man: health, intelligence, and humor primary, sex sec-

ondary. Or— as I imagine it— a kind of virility more important than

carnality.

“On the other hand,” she continues, “the idea of going on a date

terrifies me. What do you do, what do you talk about?” (I suggest her

transsexualism might be an opener.)