Wishbone, p.7
Wishbone, page 7
She looked at me sideways. “What do you do when you’re not controlling animals?”
I didn’t care to explain either my hobby or my mother, so I shrugged. “That’s probably the most interesting thing about me. But another passion is to open a shelter.”
“An animal shelter?”
I nodded.
“Doesn’t Brookline have one?”
“No. I rely on the kindness of the vets in town, mostly one, and he’s retiring.”
“I’m impressed. I wish you luck.”
“Luck is only a part of it. I need to get the town’s approval. It’s failed the last few years, from the recession mostly. But things are getting better. I’m hoping this is the year.”
“Evan Fielding is a town meeting member.”
“I know. You don’t happen to be best friends with him by any chance, are you?”
“Sorry. I barely know him. I should be more involved, I suppose, especially now that I have a reason to care about the quality of the schools. I just haven’t had the time.”
“You wouldn’t be against it, then?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Any chance you’d come to a public hearing and support it?”
“Maybe. When is it?”
“Hasn’t been scheduled yet. Probably sometime in April.”
“Let me know. I’ll see if I can. Might depend on her highness.” Pam nodded to Violet who had stopped by a pond. She’d dropped her bike onto the grass and was prying large rocks out of the muddy bank and hefting them into the water. Pam asked her to stop. Of course, she didn’t. I might have tried a diversion, but didn’t want to get in the way of Pam’s authority. She got to three and made Violet sit on a bench. The kid made a point of wiping her hands on her pink-flowered pants, leaving long muddy streaks.
After that, I noticed that while she rode ahead of us, no doubt liking her independence, she made sure we stayed in sight. We’d round a bend to glimpse her pretending to adjust something on her bike, then take off once she saw us. Were all kids this transparent? Had I been? It made sense that when your world could be yanked out from under you with no warning, you’d be wary.
We followed the path that wound through the park to the far side and parked Violet’s bike by a bench. I led us down a trail through dark pines and hemlocks. I didn’t tell Violet what we were looking for in case they weren’t around, but a small group of people tipped me off where to look. Up. A man pointed them out—two baby great horned owls sitting side by side on a branch high in a white pine, big round eyes staring down at us, still in their fluffy baby plumage but no longer in the nest.
“Wow. Who takes care of them?” Violet indicated the people. “Do they feed them?”
After Drumlin, she probably thought all wild animals were cared for by people. “No. Their parents bring them food and watch out for them.” Then I wanted to shoot myself. Was there no end to the ways I could point out to this kid the family she didn’t have?
“They’re so cute!” Pam said. She didn’t act like I’d said anything wrong.
The owls shifted and flapped their wings. They seemed to know they were safe from us bipeds on the ground.
After a while our necks started to cramp from looking straight up, and Violet’s attention span required us to move on. The park didn’t allow picnicking, so we snacked surreptitiously by a creek, Violet tossing bits of bread into the water.
“Did you grow up around animals?” Pam asked.
I shook my head. “I had no interest until I got a job at a dog kennel when I was sixteen.”
The owner, Mrs. Stultz, and I had battled intensely because I didn’t—maybe still don’t—handle authority figures well. She liked to yell, so I yelled back. She exiled me to the back runs where I met Bruno.
“There was this Doberman,” I said. “No one else could handle him, everyone thought he was vicious.”
“And you tamed the wild beast?”
“Not exactly. It turned out he was scared, not vicious. People don’t get the difference. He made me realize I had a knack with animals.” I fidgeted. “Maybe better than with people.”
Pam eyed me. “I feel like there’s more to the story. Are you being modest?”
I glanced at Violet. She had stilled, looking down, maybe at my reflection in the pool. I did not want to blow it again. Kids aren’t stupid. They know what you are saying even when you try to disguise it or think they can’t hear or aren’t listening.
“No, I’m not being modest. There’s no more to the story. There really are no bad dogs.” Or bad kids. “What about you? How’d you get into graphic design?”
“Both my parents were artists, so it’s in my genes,” she said. “I loved drawing as a kid, though everything’s on the computer now.”
This was the second time she’d mentioned her parents, first being about the house. “Where are they now? Florida?”
She looked surprised. “My parents? No, actually, they died.”
“I’m so sorry.” Dear God, what an idiot I was.
Pam looked off to the side, probably trying to regain control. “It’s all right,” she said finally. “It was nice to think of them for a few moments . . .”
“It must be hard.” There had been plenty of times when I wished Rosie was out of my life, but I could never imagine being that alone.
“It is. On the one hand I’m saved from the difficult elderly parents thing, nursing homes and all that. But it was too soon.”
“How? Do you mind my asking?”
She paused. “Plane crash, a few years ago now.”
“Both at once?”
Pam hugged her knees. “I know. Tragic doesn’t even begin to describe it. But I am glad they were together. So I was orphaned at twenty-nine. Though not really, since my grandparents are alive and kicking. They’re the ones in Florida.” She chuckled.
Violet came over to Pam and crawled into her lap, not saying anything. Pam nuzzled her head. A simple act of familial love and attention. It both endeared me and tore into me. It was probably what kept Pam going through all of Violet’s crazy mood swings. The day did seem to settle Violet. Maybe all of us.
Pam gave Violet a squeeze. “The plus side is that I don’t take things for granted.”
BACK AT THEIR house, I declined a dinner invite. I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. The more I got to know Pam and Violet, the more I felt pulled between wanting more and fearing exactly that. Relationships are complicated dance moves, whether friendship or more. I knew that much, if not the steps. This time, I didn’t suggest future plans and neither did Pam. We let it go, vaguely promising to get together again.
Instead, I put in a five-mile run. Maybe, like Violet, I needed to blow off steam.
MY TRIP TO Quabbin with Jeff the next day meant getting up at the crack of dawn. It would be a long day, but I’d come to appreciate the place since my drinking water came from this huge reservoir in the middle of the state. Surrounded by woods to protect the watershed, it had become an inadvertent wildlife refuge, and all kinds of critters roamed here—bobcats, coyotes, bears, fishers, porcupines—where development had crowded them out elsewhere. Jeff often described it as his spiritual home.
We met at his place in Arlington, and he drove from there. He was unusually quiet, but I figured it was the early hour, barely six o’clock. I cradled my travel mug of coffee and thanked him again for his advice on the deer. He nodded but didn’t say anything. KISS 108 on the radio filled the car with rock.
An hour into our drive out Route 2, as we passed the exits for Fitchburg, my stomach hitched a bit. I’d spent a weekend there in an emergency placement when I was nine. The farthest away from my mother I’d ever been. It had been a miserable situation, but Jeff might be right about Quabbin’s healing properties, because now each trip past those exit signs hurt a little less.
We’d lost the Boston radio station signal, so Jeff popped in a John Prine cassette.
The first winter after I’d met Jeff, and we were becoming friends, he took me out to Quabbin to see bald eagles. I’d never seen one, other than in a cage at Drumlin Farm.
We’d hiked along a plowed service road to the edge of the ice, where we sat in sun barely strong enough to keep us warm. After a few minutes, I spotted one, with that unmistakable white head and tail. A tingle raced through me, and I lost the ability to speak. I tapped Jeff’s arm and raised my binoculars.
That bird soared out of sight behind some trees, but two others appeared and flew by as though to give us a private show. Finally my arms tired and I had to put down the binoculars. I stared out over the frozen surface, eyes wet, grinning like a fool.
I turned to Jeff. He wasn’t looking over the ice or at the birds, but at me. His face had gone all soft and kind, his cheeks pink. He pulled off a glove and wiped a tear from my cheek but his hand stayed there, warm. Before I had a chance to respond or even wonder, he kissed me.
For all the time we’d spent together when he was my teacher and then after when we started hanging out, I’d apparently neglected to mention I was gay. I’d also apparently not noticed he’d fallen for me. In the euphoria of seeing that eagle, I hadn’t seen the kiss coming. I pulled back in shock and explained, but he withdrew into a shell. After that, he’d avoided me for weeks, wouldn’t tell me about his feelings until I pushed—I’d missed him. It took some time, but we’d carefully made our way back to a friendship.
This time, we stopped at The Country Store in Petersham to pick up sandwiches and drinks. The morning chill began to thaw with bright sun and little wind. Fully supplied, we drove to Gate 40, one of the many surrounding the reservoir. From the small parking lot, we walked along an old road through pine and oak woods and past empty house foundations. This gate led to the remains of the town of Dana, one of four that were disincorporated, in government lingo, in the 1930s and flooded by the waters that would be sent to Boston faucets, seventy miles away. The town center, however, sat above the water line and you could still see where the common had been.
When Jeff had told me the history of the reservoir, it seemed filled with tears. Families that had lived there for generations were forced to move. Trees grew up through cellar holes, concrete steps led to nowhere, stone walls that once outlined farm fields now wove through dense woods. Whole cemeteries had been moved. All those homeless people, all these peopleless homes.
Jeff’s quiet mood continued as we hiked. He seemed distracted, not giving the usual natural history lecture.
“You going to tell me what’s up?” I asked. We were finishing lunch, sitting under an old maple in what was left of Dana’s common.
He leaned forward and rubbed his face, letting out a long sigh. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
“Would talking help?”
“I thought so, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Jeff, are you dying?”
He looked at me, startled. “No.”
“Well, phew. Are you gay?”
“What?”
“I’m just trying to help here. Those are the two biggies. If not that, is it some illness? Are you going bald? Leaving me for another lesbian best friend?”
He laughed nervously. “Okay, none of the above.” He got up and paced back and forth.
He stopped, glanced at me then looked away. “Did you ever believe something and later find out it’s not true?”
“Like Santa Claus?”
“Worse. And for longer.”
“That DSS would help my mother so she might sober up and become a real parent?”
He faced me. “Okay, yeah, like that. Like the universe used to have an order to it, but now it doesn’t.”
“Is this a God thing? You know I can’t help you with that.”
“Not exactly.” He sat back down beside me. “More like a science fiction story where you grow up believing one thing only to find out it’s really the opposite.”
“Can you be more specific? I’m not up on my Twilight Zone episodes.”
He didn’t say anything but pulled a folded sheet of paper out of his daypack and handed it to me.
“Greg sent me this. Only he’s not—” Jeff stopped.
I unfolded it. A letter from his twin, dated from last summer. Greg wrote about their childhood growing up together, how he’d always felt different. “Is Greg gay?”
Jeff shook his head. “Keep reading.”
I did, and the next paragraph said it in much plainer language than Jeff had been able to. Greg was becoming a woman. He was transitioning. Holy shit. He, now she, signed the letter, “With love, Gina (formerly Greg).”
“Wow,” was all I could come up with. I knew only a little about transgender people. There were occasional whispers at Ezri about some butch transitioning or articles in Bay Windows. Now my best friend’s brother was becoming a woman. The fact that “Gina” was Jeff’s identical twin was not lost on me. Words, however, were. “Wow,” I said again for lack of anything better.
“Yeah, wow indeed,” Jeff said, with sad puppy eyes. “Why? How does this happen? And why not me too? We have the same genes. Identical.”
I’m no scientist, I only know what I read in Discover magazine, so I claimed no expertise, but I could see where Jeff’s thinking was heading, and it didn’t seem right. “It doesn’t say anything about you. Maybe it was environmental. Not everything’s in the genes.” I hoped he’d see that.
He shook his head and stared into space. “Maybe. But let’s face it, we were in the same womb at the same time, we grew up with the same parents, ate the same food, drank the same water.”
Without the background to assure him, I stuck to what I knew. “Do you feel like a girl?” Jeff was a sensitive guy, but I’d never thought of him as the least bit effeminate. I’d known men who were, and that was not Jeff.
“No,” he said. “That’s not it.”
“Then what is?”
He gripped his knees, hanging on as his world spun, knuckles white. “He never said anything to me. I never knew. And I should have.”
The twin thing. He’d often told my how in sync they’d been growing up. He said it would be like one half of my brain not knowing what the other half was thinking. “That’s how close we were as kids,” he’d said. “We almost didn’t have to speak to each other. We drove our parents crazy.”
To have had no sense of what Greg was going through, even though they hadn’t seen much of each other since college, threw him for a loop. It must be like looking down at your hand one day and seeing a foot and having no idea how that happened.
“How come you waited so long to say something?”
“I didn’t know how. I’m still trying to digest it. I don’t know what I’m more upset about—that he’s changing or that I didn’t know. I mean, my god, how do you just decide to change your sex?”
“It didn’t read like it was a sudden thing,” I said, handing him back the letter. “For what it’s worth, I knew there was something different about me long before I clued in I was gay. But I was different in a lot of ways, so it got kind of blurry.”
“It’s not like I’m homophobic.”
“This isn’t homosexuality.”
“I know. I just meant, I thought I was better than this.”
“It says he sent a letter to your folks too. How’d that go?”
“They won’t talk about it. Greg hasn’t been home in years. This probably explains why. He and Dad never got along. I never understood . . .”
“So have you talked to him? Her?”
He didn’t say anything and didn’t look at me.
“You haven’t.”
“I don’t know what to say. But . . . I’ve been thinking I should. He’s called and left messages. I just needed to talk to someone. Someone not him. Not yet.”
I have mixed feelings about not having brothers or sisters, and this pointed out an upside, but I wanted to help him. “What about a support group? PFLAG or something.” He looked confused. “Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. There must be other people in your shoes.”
He shrugged and nodded. “I did a search online and got a lot of clinical references. There’s not a lot there.”
