Under the Rainbow

by Celia Laskey

  “Carla.” I lower my voice. “If you had pushed, I could have gotten you more than five percent.”

  “Oh.” She dips her pinkie in the food, then licks her finger. “Well, it’ll still really help out.”

  “I could get you more. I could tell them you reconsidered.”

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” she says. “I’m glad for the five percent.” She sits down at the plastic folding table and takes a bite of her Alfredo while flipping through an Us Weekly, her mouth moving in small, efficient circles.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I DON’T KNOW how you do your job,” Tegan says. We’re at Applebee’s for happy hour, and I’m drinking my third blue agave ’rita. A midsummer thunderstorm pounds the roof.

  “Being a vegetarian helps.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking about it, after hearing all your stories,” says Tegan.

  I let out a long sigh and signal the waitress for another round of drinks. “Tell me something terrible from your day.”

  “You know how I told you that someone from town came out to me a while ago? And I was so excited for them to tell their family and finally start living their truth?”

  I cross my arms. “I still can’t believe you won’t tell me who it is.”

  “Well, I’m realizing I’m probably the only person they’re ever going to tell. They said talking to me about it is ‘almost as good’ as being fully out. I was, like, you know what’ll be really good? Having a dick in your ass!”

  I laugh, then gasp. “So it’s a man!”

  Tegan clamps a hand over her mouth, then slowly lowers it. “I’ve thought about just coming out for him. Getting on a loudspeaker and letting the whole town know.”

  “You wouldn’t.” I cock an eyebrow at her. “Would you?”

  “No,” Tegan says. “Most days I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.”

  I look out the window. A shelf cloud that looks like a round cake with piped white frosting hangs in the dark sky. On the TV above the bar, a weather alert for a tornado watch cuts into the Jayhawks game.

  “Should we leave?” Tegan asks, her face turning slightly pale.

  “We’re fine,” I say. “A tornado watch just means it’s possible. They’ll issue an actual warning if we need to leave.”

  Tegan peers out the window nervously as the waitress delivers our next round. “I’ve never lived somewhere with tornadoes. It feels so apocalyptic.”

  “Relax.” I push her drink toward her. “Have another ’rita.”

  She takes a deep breath in and out. “What were we talking about?”

  “Our jobs.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says. “Would you say you like your job?”

  “You say that like you’re asking if I like diarrhea.”

  She laughs. “Sorry. Do you like your job?” she asks again, brightly.

  “I’m really good at it.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  I take a drink and try to think about if I like my job. “Climbing the corporate ladder is kind of fun.” I mime climbing a ladder.

  “You’re so Type A,” says Tegan. “And so drunk.”

  “What about you?” I point my finger in Tegan’s face. “Do you like your job?”

  “Uh-oh, the finger’s coming out,” says Tegan. “I’m cutting you off.”

  “Answer the question.” I guzzle my ’rita until the straw sucks at the bottom, just to spite her.

  “I don’t like it, but I think it’s important,” she says. “Is that the same thing?”

  I shrug. “Maybe liking things is overrated. Maybe I don’t have to like being a mother. I know I’d be really good at it.”

  “You would be,” says Tegan. “Your kid would, like, grow up to be the president. Or at least secretary of state.”

  “That’s probably nice,” I say, “watching your kid grow up and achieve things, and knowing you had a part in it.” My head spins, a carousel of images flitting by: reading The Giving Tree before bed, sitting in the stands at the debate championships, ripping open the acceptance letter from their first-choice college. My heart swells, then I burp, sour ’rita rising in my throat.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” Derek asks after Tegan drops me off and I stumble in, soaked from the rain. He’s sitting on the couch with his arms crossed, a repeat of Seinfeld on mute. Another weather alert flashes across the bottom of the screen.

  “I was out with Tegan.” I stand in the hallway between the living room and the bathroom, trying not to hiccup. I hiccup.

  “You’re drunk.”

  “Yup.”

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with her lately.”

  “Yup.” I hiccup, then take a big breath and hold it in. Thunder cracks so close that I imagine the sky splitting in two. By the time I’ve breathed out, Derek hasn’t said anything else, so I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  He follows me and stands in the doorway, watching me squeeze an inordinate amount of Colgate onto my toothbrush.

  “What?” I say.

  “I just wonder if Tegan’s been putting this no-kids idea into your head.”

  “Why?” I say through a mouthful of foam. “Because I couldn’t possibly have put it into my own head?”

  “No, because she talks about it all the time. How kids are life-ruiners and shit machines and all that.” He makes air quotes around “life ruiners” and “shit machines.”

  I spit. “So she has strong opinions about it. But it doesn’t mean she’s influenced me. If anyone’s trying to influence me, it’s you.”

  “Jesus Christ, I’m not trying to influence you. I’m just trying to follow through on what we’ve talked about for years. I want a kid, and if you actually don’t—”

  I grab his mouth and press his lips closed with my fingernails. “Do you want to do it right now?” I pull him into the bedroom, my fingers still locked around his lips. I let go to whip off my wet clothes, then jump on the bed and lie on my back, legs splayed. “Come on, honey, let’s see how fast your little guys can swim!”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m serious. All my doubts are gone now. I’m so ready. I’m wet just thinking about making a baby with you.”

  His face flashes from annoyed to angry to scary as he unbuckles his belt and looms above me. He grabs my hands and holds them above my head, the bones of his wrists pressing into the soft skin of my inner forearm. His mouth is a flat line. In the half-light of the room, his pupils have subsumed his brown irises, turning them black. All at once, I understand this is it. Unless I agree to this baby, he will leave. His desire for a certain kind of life will outweigh his love for me, and he’ll change. Just not in the way I expected or hoped. The flash from a bolt of lightning pulses through the room, catching us in a freeze-frame. Derek blinks and lets go of my wrists. He sits back on his haunches and covers his face with his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I never would have—”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We were upset. We didn’t mean it.”

  I spend all night in the bathroom puking, and when I wake up in the morning, my face indented with lines from the tile floor, the sky is blue and calm. Derek makes eggs and we never talk about that night again.

  * * *

  • • •

  TEGAN AND I meet up for lunch like the old days. She claims I’ve been avoiding her, but I knew I wouldn’t go through with it if I talked to her about it, and if I saw her, I wouldn’t be able to not talk about it.

  “Holy shit,” she says as I approach the table. “You’re pregnant.”

  I nod and sit down, pulling my cardigan across my stomach, finally rounded at fourteen weeks.

  “I knew it,” she says, shaking her head. “I knew that’s why you disappeared.”


  “Don’t say congratulations or anything.” Everyone else I’ve told has gotten so excited, like a few weeks of lying with my legs in the air after sex is some huge accomplishment.

  Tegan smacks my arm lightly. “You know I’m happy for you.” She picks up a piece of straw wrapper and rolls it between her thumb and pointer finger until it forms a pea-sized ball. At my first ultrasound, my doctor told me the baby was the size of a pea. “A little sweet pea!” she said, giving me a saccharine smile. She stood there, holding the lubed-up wand, waiting for me to coo at her adorable analogy. Instead, I said, “Don’t you think it’s weird we compare the baby’s size to fruits and vegetables? It makes me feel like I should chop it up and put it in a salad.”

  “Are you happy?” Tegan asks.

  “I am,” I say. “I really am.”

  “Good,” she says. “Because I’ve already planned its first Halloween costume.”

  “Kim Jong-il?”

  “I’m leaning more toward Steve Buscemi, with the bug eyes and jowls and receding hairline.”

  “So my future kid is fugly.”

  She shrugs. “Some would say Steve Buscemi is the male ideal.”

  I laugh. “I’ve missed you. I’m sorry I was MIA. I just needed some time to figure things out.”

  “I get it.”

  “I really am happy,” I say.

  “I can tell,” says Tegan. “Scientists say your pupils dilate when you’re happy, and yours are taking up almost your whole iris.”

  “Really?” I squeeze my eyelids shut. In the pulsing darkness, I wait for something to take shape.

  Elsie

  Outside the large window in the common room, cars full of families pull into the parking lot of Manor Pines, the scorching summer sun reflecting off their windshields. As they walk toward the door, some holding flowers or baked goods, resignation hangs on their faces. But I don’t want to visit Nana, the small children might have protested. Their parents probably promised them ice cream or extra television time to get them in the car. My own children, Jillian and Kyle, live far away and are too busy with their own families to visit—though not too busy to take vacations to Fort Lauderdale or Vancouver or the Bahamas. But I can’t say I blame them. Who would choose to spend their time visiting a dying, crabby old woman in a urine-scented long-term care community?

  Harley, I suppose, who’s been visiting me every Sunday for almost two years. Harley came to Big Burr with the task force, so at first I assumed volunteering at Manor Pines was part of AAA’s outreach. Then I learned that Harley came on their own time, for their own reasons. Originally I had no idea what those reasons were, but now I think they come because they see me as a friend. In the beginning, I had a hard time with everything about Harley. I had heard of transgender people, so I wondered if Harley really wanted to be a man but was too afraid to go all the way with it. Everyone has to be something—you can’t just float in the middle. After I said something to that effect, Harley stopped visiting, saying they wouldn’t come back unless I got better about everything. They left me a book called Beyond the Binary: A Handbook for Families and Professionals, and even though I don’t know if it was Harley’s intention, I took the gift to mean they considered me family, so I read the whole thing. Then I read it again. I called Harley and told them I’d do my best. A lot of people at Manor Pines do brain teasers or crossword puzzles to keep their mind sharp—try calling a single person “they” for a few days and you can practically feel your brain doing backflips. I messed it up almost every time for the first few weeks, then every other time, until eventually I got down to just a few random slips here and there. I still can’t say it feels entirely natural, but maybe someday it will.

  Here Harley comes now, walking with their back slightly hunched as usual. They sit down next to me and set a box of muffins from Dillons on the table. “They finally had peach,” they say, taking a muffin out of the box and pulling the wrapper away from its sides. A middle-aged woman I’ve never seen before gapes at Harley, no doubt trying to figure them out. I used to get embarrassed when this happened and wish Harley would try to blend in, but now it just annoys me. I stare at the woman until she looks away.

  These days it seems funny to me that Harley could have ever been considered one gender or the other: they seem so perfectly placed between the two, like the fulcrum of a seesaw. They have short, half-kinky hair that frizzes out from their head in unpredictable peaks and swirls, and their cheekbones cut a diagonal line from the middle of their ear down to the corner of their long, wide lips. A few weeks ago a movie about Bob Dylan was screened in the common room. Different actors played him at different times in his life, and when Cate Blanchett appeared with that equilibrium of slack-jawed masculinity and discreet femininity, I thought: Harley.

  When the muffin is free from its wrapper, they hand it to me. I take a bite. It’s too sweet, like grocery store muffins always are, and the peaches are canned, but I tell Harley it’s good because it’s the thought that counts.

  “Can you believe last night’s episode of Looking for Love?” Harley says. I was surprised when Harley first mentioned they watch the show, too—a dating show didn’t seem like something they would be interested in. “I watch it ironically,” Harley said, which I think is just something young people say when they like something but are too embarrassed to admit it. I only started watching the show because my daughter Jillian lives for it and I figured it would give us something to talk about on the phone.

  I click my tongue. “I knew Ashley L was only in it for the fame.”

  Harley shakes their head and smiles. “You’re so cynical, Elsie.”

  Rose’s daughter paints Rose’s fingernails a bright pink, the chemical smell of the polish rudely filling the room. Thea’s granddaughter Lizzie rubs her pregnant stomach and shows Thea pictures of the soon-to-be nursery. “We decided Derek is going to stay home with the baby,” Lizzie says. “He’s more maternal, anyway. If only he could carry the next one!”

  “Do you think there’ll ever be a gay contestant?” I ask Harley.

  Harley shakes their head decisively. “No way.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  “Try to picture someone from Big Burr watching that. Men making out with men? Women making out with women?”

  “Well, maybe they just wouldn’t show all that.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  I chuckle. “I guess you’re right.”

  Sid’s son sits with him at the computer, flipping through photos on Facebook. A fat-cheeked baby covered in birthday cake. Relatives all wearing the same green T-shirt, posing next to a tractor. Sid’s son holding up a very big fish. Sid nods politely at each picture—he has dementia, so he has no idea who the people in the photos are.

  Harley looks at their watch and groans. “I have to leave for work in a few.”

  “How has it been lately?”

  Harley looks down at the table, sweeping muffin crumbs into their palm. “It feels so strange knowing our time will be up in a month. I don’t know whether I’m happy or sad.”

  I blink. Harley told me, when they first started visiting, that they would only be in Big Burr for two years. Has it really been that long?

  I wonder if the task force actually made things any better here. I think of the stories Harley told me over the past two years, like when stores around town put up signs barring task force members from shopping there, or when someone tried to light the Acceptance Across America billboard on fire. The worst was when Harley’s neighbor took Harley’s cat to a faraway kill shelter. Can you even imagine? But there were bright spots, too. Linda Ivingston, a woman from town, started working for the task force. Harley said Linda is going to move to D.C. to work at Acceptance Across America’s main office. My roommate Shirley told me her great-grandson came out and that he never would have done it without the task force. Shirley didn’t mean that as a po
sitive, but I decided to take it that way. Big Burr High got one of those gender-neutral bathrooms a few months ago. And the town finally let AAA put up a new billboard on Main Street that says HATE IS NOT A FAMILY VALUE over a photo of two smiling children.

  I force myself to smile at Harley. “You should be happy. Where will you go?”

  “I’m thinking about San Francisco,” they say. “My friend is the editor of a magazine there and said she might be able to hire me as a writer.”

  “The world is your oyster,” I say.

  * * *

  • • •

  IT NEVER FELT like there was an oyster for me. I was nineteen when I had Kyle. His birth moved me to a different plane of existence: a deep sea, without light or oxygen, and it took all I had to struggle back to the surface. In those years no one talked about stuff like that. You were supposed to cry in the bathroom, powder your eyes, and come out smiling.

  Kyle was only four months old when I got pregnant again. My whole body vibrated with no no no no no. I’d always assumed I’d eventually have another child, but at that time it felt inconceivable. Phillip said the baby was a gift from God and we should be grateful. I called my best friend Faye, who once whispered to me that her cousin had “a procedure” after a married man got her pregnant. Faye wasn’t any help—she said her cousin was forbidden from ever contacting that doctor again, and in any case, she had been blindfolded during the procedure and was never told his real name. “You’re married,” said Faye. “Why wouldn’t you want the baby?”

  I had no one else I could ask—no friends I trusted enough; no coworkers, because I didn’t work. It had never occurred to me how cut off from the world I was, how powerless. I drove for hours until I reached Wichita. I turned down streets aimlessly, until I spotted a few women wearing heavy makeup and dresses with higher-than-usual hemlines sauntering up and down a particularly dicey-looking block. I asked if they knew someone who could help me end a pregnancy. One of them told me to follow her down an alley, where she whipped out a Swiss Army knife from her bra and stole my purse. Back home, I drank paregoric and ran into the corner of the dining room table until finally I accepted I was having the baby. After I had Jillian, I learned to track my cycle and make up excuses during certain times of the month. I stared down the long path of my life and understood there would be no off-roads—at least none of my choosing.