My Brother My Sister: Story of a Transformation Hardcover (31 page)

him know you’re not going to kill him if he’s gay.’

“As he left, he gave me a great big hug. It was wonderful— a real

validation.”

She seems more relaxed in every way this time. We can eat in the sit-

ting area which was verboten before, and don’t have to leave shoes at

the door if it’s not bad weather out. It could be because she’s imagin-

ing what I’ll say in the book, but I don’t think so.

It seems to me there is great joy in Ellen’s life, some of it from her

relationship with the natural world around her. She takes people on

hikes, thus knows a lot of history of the landscape she loves. She’s one of those rare people who’s in tune with the beauty of what William

James called “the secret life of nature,” acknowledging (in the short

book
Blindness
) a blind spot that most of us share.

There are two popular tropes in modern movies and literature:

stories about people who seek and never find, and Second Chance nar-

ratives. Ellen, falling into the second category, is one of the lucky ones.

Chevey was looking for something and Ellen has found it.

She tells me about an outing she took with some of the Mountain

Women. They were sitting around having dinner and wine, and one of

them said, “Why don’t men do this? I’m always saying to my husband,

Why don’t you go out with your buddies and have a beer? But they

never do.”

It’s because that’s the way men are, Ellen told the group. It’s the

same in the animal kingdom. The women congregate but the males—

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Looking Backward and Moving Forward

the lions, the tigers— are loners. Too competitive to join together. It’s the way evolution has designed us.

“I know both feelings as I’ve been both. Now my social side is

stronger, but I have my solitary side, too. But for my women friends,

I’m a sort of consultant on how men think. Sometimes I think I’ve

been very lucky. I’d never have thought that way starting out, but here I am— being both genders in the same lifetime. Some people might

even be jealous.”

When next I talk to Eleanor, I tell her I understand her resent-

ments, but can’t agree that Chevey was ever doing things just for him-

self. Yes, as he’s acknowledged, he often bought presents for both

wives he’d have liked for the imaginary “Ellen,” but never
just
for that: he loved Eleanor too much, was too considerate a person, wanted to

give her pleasure in dress, in lovemaking.

“I know,” she sighs. “He was very attentive and caring. He walked

into a situation where the children weren’t his and was more like a real father. I have to stop going back and second- guessing everything that

ever happened. I have to honor the memories that were there for what

they were and not readdress and rearrange them as they appear ac-

cording to the present situation.”

I talk to Ellen, having just watched the HBO movie
Normal
(2003), with Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson. The beginning is unpromis-ing, replete with dumbed-

down stereotypes and implausibilities:

they’re a good (i.e., clueless) Baptist family in farm country, celebrating their twenty- fifth wedding anniversary, when Wilkinson keels over.

The big galoot is really a woman, and can’t endure being a man any

longer. What follows is sad, funny, grotesque, sometimes straining

credulity— at one point Wilkinson, who works in a farm machinery

plant, walks into the locker room wearing earrings, whereupon his

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My Sister

macho coworkers predictably attack him. But the movement toward

acceptance on the part of the family is deeply moving, especially the

manner in which Lange reconnects with her husband, who, man or

woman, is her “heart.” I cried all through the last half, as did Ellen.

“I’ve found there are three things you can’t change,” she says.

“First and second, the hormones don’t affect the hair on your face or

the voice. That’s what the doctors all know. But recently I’ve added a

third: it doesn’t change the love you feel for people. It’s like being in love with someone and being forced to separate from them, or you’re

pushing them away from you but you still love them just as much. The

first time I saw couples on TV and one was a transsexual, and they’d

stayed together, I thought it was so strange, I couldn’t understand it.

Now I can. It has something to do with the companionship between

the two people you were, who aren’t all that different now.

“It couldn’t have worked with Eleanor, I understand that. But it’s a

sad thing. If two people get divorced, usually one wants it more than

the other, but this is a case where people get divorced and both feel

bad about it.”

At some point we take a brief vacation together in southern Flor-

ida. As I’m puttering around, a thought flashes through my mind: how

rarely I think about Ellen’s transsexualism, other than an occasional

pinprick of annoyance at a “T” moment.

For instance, once again she’s wearing “exercise shorts,” but there

are no gyms or walking paths or beaches in the vicinity. She would say

I’m looking through urban eyes at a phenomenon that is ubiquitous

and suburban; I would say I’ve been to malls and nobody wears shorts

that brief. In my view they’re not age- appropriate, but her concept of age is clearly different from mine. I am chronologically “an older person” but think of myself as late middle age. She is chronologically an

older person as well but thinks of herself as very young middle age.

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She disputes the idea of dressing for age: one should dress in whatever looks good. She wants to be an eye- catching female because she never

had the chance, whereas I had my moment in the sun of romance, and

am relieved to be out of it.

Or almost, which brings me to another slight and related irritation:

the attention we must devote to her appearance and especially to her

hair. I know how important this is to her presentation, a primary cue,

but sometimes I’d like to complain about my own hair. It’s awful (my

life is one long “bad hair day”), and although its awfulness won’t im-

peril my life or my sexual identity, it is not a trivial matter. As all women know, hair is an issue that is only superficially superficial. Perhaps I’m secretly rankled because her hair generally looks better than

mine. But how immeasurably the joys we share outweigh the sorrows

or vexations. We laugh a lot and, perhaps because we are sisters, there is great deal to talk about— not least, common aging- lady problems.

The situation is much easier for me, as a sibling, than for Eleanor, since Ellen and I seem to have been able to transition into a relationship that could almost qualify as “postgender.”

When we walk down the sidewalk or into a restaurant, I no longer

worry about onlookers, no longer give sidelong glances, checking for

quizzical or amused expressions. Nor do I hear her always- problematic

voice the way others seem to. I’m not sure why it is, but I seem deaf to the variations in Ellen’s voice, say between “masculine low,” “intersex low,” “Lauren Bacall low,” and “almost female.” It’s just a voice that is part Chevey, part Ellen, and I suppose that is what she will always be

to me.

Ellen comes to New York in May 2012 to stay at her time- share on

West Fifty- Sixth Street. Once again, a well- timed visit, as Andrew has a fall on May 14, the day before he’s meant to go to the American

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My Sister

Academy of Arts and Letters to be presented with a lifetime achieve-

ment award for criticism. There will be an exhibition of award-

winners’ work, a celebrity- filled lunch, followed by an extended

prize- giving ceremony. For weeks, we’ve been planning for the occa-

sion, worrying (me, anyway) about him sitting on the stage for three

hours. Now he’s fractured his hip and has to have surgery at Mt. Sinai

Hospital, the very day of the ceremony.

In yet another fortuitous arrival, it’s while Andrew’s in rehab at

Mt. Sinai that Ellen comes up. A year ago she’d made a reservation for

us to go on a dinner cruise around Manhattan, so I pick her up in a

taxi and we go to Pier 61, where we board the
Bateaux
, a French boat enclosed in a dome of glass. We make our way to the tip of Manhattan

and the view of Wall Street is staggering, the great monoliths of capi-

talism all lit up— or could they be the Stonehenge of a dying civiliza-

tion? The dinner is fine, but there are too many people of all ages

celebrating something or other, becoming joyfully inebriated, while

the band amps up the decibel level just to keep pace. It’s hard to talk, but I look at Ellen across the table and feel proud. The hair is less

blond, and the lipstick seems to suit her. She looks very pretty, in dark pants and a cherry red jacket. This summer colors are in! Ellen is à la mode
.

The thirtyish woman in a young trio sitting next to us, very attrac-

tive, says to me when we stand up for something, “You must be sisters!”

Ellen is delighted when I tell her. But later, after disembarking, when Ellen’s group from the Manhattan Club is waiting for a van, a man

who’s tipsy begins quizzing us in a friendly if repetitious way. Where

are you girls from? Whatever we say, he says, “Thank God for that!”

Later in the conversation, I think, but am not sure, that he refers to Ellen as “he.” Seconds later, she leans over and asks me, “Did he say

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‘he’?” We’re both unsure. And I wonder how it makes her feel. She

smiles, she expects it, she carries it off with aplomb, but it must also cut her up a bit as well. Each compliment a confidence builder, each “reading” a deflation. And a reminder of the dangers that are never far from her mind. She’s not a fearful person, yet her life, easier now by far, is still hedged in by a need for caution.

A friend asks me if she’s gotten sufficiently used to being a woman

that the gestures have become second nature— does she have to stop

and think about how she moves, sits, etc.? When I relay the question,

she reports that the feminine mannerisms she had as a man and was

always trying to suppress have become second nature to her now. “And

after six years of practice,” she says, “I hope I give the subliminal impression that I’m a woman, not a ‘man in a dress.’ Then there are a few mannerisms I turn on and off as the need arises. For example, most of

my life I observed the way women walk and I learned (and still see it

constantly) that women in general don’t walk ‘like a woman’ or, for

that matter, exhibit very many of the mannerisms we normally think of

as feminine. It’s also hard to walk that way for any distance, and since I walk considerable distances regularly, I relax my style to what may be a mixture of a masculine/feminine gait. It probably changes according

to where I am, who I’m with.” (The voice, too, seems to follow this pattern.)

“Some days I just can’t believe what I went through— all those

hospitalizations, surgeries, and electrolysis treatments. It’s as if I were possessed.”

Andrew is moved from Mt. Sinai to the Jewish Home, a subacute facil-

ity on the West Side. But the future looks bleak. He is very weak from

the hip surgery, and will probably need a wheelchair when he comes

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My Sister

home. He will probably also require round- the- clock care, which in

turn will probably necessitate my moving out of the bedroom. Our life

together, already unalterably changed and (by me) grieved over, will

become vastly worse from every point of view.

On Monday evening when I go to visit, he lights up as he always

does. Pam, a private caretaker, is with him and when I see some food

on his plate— he’s always had a robust appetite— I’m surprised. Pam

smiles. “That’s his second dinner.” But the very next day, Pam calls

and says he became violently ill during physical therapy, a “bug,” we

assume. I go to see him, get in bed with him. He can’t hold anything

down. His stomach is very distended, like he has an obstruction. He

cries out when they poke it, but otherwise seems peaceful.

I go home, watch a DVD and a movie on television, call the floor

nurse at 9:30 p.m., and ask if I should be concerned. They reply in the negative. Then at 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, I get a call from

the nurse on duty. He’s having trouble breathing, and they want to put

an IV in his neck. No, I say. Then the nurse says, You’d better get up

here, he could go in the next half hour.

I throw on some clothes and rush to the street. When I’m in a taxi,

I call Andrew’s doctor, a physician in the palliative care center at Mt.

Sinai. He agrees, Don’t let them do anything. Then I call the rehab