Mrs. Fletcher

by Tom Perrotta

  Her offense against Amanda was clear-cut, easy to define: it was sexual harassment, as much as it pained her to use the term—a violation of trust, a misuse of authority, the kind of thing you could rightfully lose a job over. With Margo, the betrayal was a bit murkier, more private and indirect and possibly more forgivable, though it didn’t actually feel that way at the moment, probably because the transgression was so fresh in her mind.

  It had happened the night before, right after she’d come home from class. All she’d done was google the phrase “transgender woman.” She’d told herself she was acting out of simple curiosity—a perfectly reasonable impulse—except that she didn’t end up clicking on the sober informational links that would have led her to helpful articles on hormone therapy, Adam’s apple surgery, antidiscrimination laws, or anything else decent and aboveboard. Oh, no. She’d gone straight to the smut, as usual, to the Hot Brazilian Trannies and the Slutty Thai Ladyboys and the Dirty Chicks with Dicks, insisting to herself the whole time that she was disgusted by what she saw—the exploitation of vulnerable people, the reductive sexualization of something that went way beyond sex—though not so disgusted that it stopped her from sampling several videos, and then watching an eight-minute clip called Tranny Seduces MILF three times in a row, despite the fact that the characters were speaking Portuguese with no subtitles, though in Eve’s defense, they weren’t saying much besides Oy! and Deus!

  It was pretty hot, she had to admit, though in a very uncomfortable way. A true jolt to her system, one of those mind-expanding moments when you found yourself aroused by something that had never even been on your erotic radar. A beautiful dark-haired woman with an erect penis speaking a mysterious foreign language. There was something almost mythological about it.

  On a moral level, Eve was pretty sure that she hadn’t done anything truly wrong. She was just a human being watching other human beings do what humans sometimes did. She’d wanted to know, and now she did. Oy! It was nothing personal. Deus! It had nothing to do with Margo, and nothing to do with herself.

  And yet, at the same time, she knew it did. Tranny and MILF. MILF and Tranny. They were just labels, a shorthand to organize the chaos of the world. But the labels have a funny way of becoming our names, whether we agree with them or not. Margo and Eve. Me and you. She must have looked puzzled or upset, because she was suddenly aware of a strange silence in the room. She looked up and saw both of the friends she’d wronged staring at her with concerned expressions.

  “Eve?” Amanda said. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.” Eve mustered a businesslike smile and clapped her hands once, softly. “Guess we better get this show on the road.”

  * * *

  Julian was worried. November always felt like a setback, what with the clock change and the sudden onset of darkness, the bitter wind and that ominous sense of falling behind. It reminded him too much of last year, the paralyzing sadness that had set in with the cold weather, day after day when he saw no reason to get out of bed, not even to take a shower. That was rock bottom, flopping around like a hooked fish in the tangled sheets, smelling his own sour stink and not caring enough to do anything about it. He didn’t think it was going to happen again, not with these new meds, but you never knew. That was the scary part. You never knew.

  It was a chilly night to be out on a skateboard, with a damp headwind that made the air itself feel like an obstacle. By the time he rolled into the parking lot, his face was pretty much frozen in place. He hesitated for a moment, exhaling vapor clouds and staring at the front of the building, which was bigger and more impressive from this angle than it was from the road. Several old people were making the arduous journey from the parking lot to the well-lit front entrance, moving in super-slow motion.

  Julian picked up his skateboard and joined the herd. He understood just how pathetic this was—he had no intention of mentioning it to Ethan or to anyone else, even as a joke—but he also accepted the sad truth of his life: he literally had nothing better to do. He was eighteen years old and had come to the fucking Senior Center in search of a good time. Only fifty years ahead of schedule.

  Dr. Fairchild had mentioned the lecture yesterday, and invited the whole class to come out—it was free and open to the public—if they weren’t already sick of the sound of her voice. It’d be nice to see some friendly faces in the crowd, she’d told them. Mrs. Fletcher would definitely be there—she ran the Senior Center and had organized the whole thing—and Dumell said he was hoping to make it, too, but only at the tail end, because he had a class on Wednesday nights.

  Julian was hoping that maybe they’d all go out for a drink afterward, though he promised himself that he wouldn’t get sloppy drunk like the last time, when he’d ended up on all fours on Haddington Boulevard, barfing into the sewer while Mrs. Fletcher rubbed his back and told him to let it all out. He’d emailed her the next day, apologizing profusely for the inappropriate comments he’d made about her body—not untrue, but totally out of line—and she’d assured him that there were no hard feelings.

  He entered the lecture room behind a bulky old man in a windbreaker and baseball cap. The poor guy had a bum leg that he dragged along behind him. Every step he took, it was like he was drawing a new line in the sand.

  The room was pretty full, probably close to a hundred people. Julian glanced around, hoping to spot one of his classmates—Russ or Barry, or even Mr. Ho—but all he saw was a bunch of white-haired geriatrics craning their necks and squinting in his direction, as if they’d ordered a pizza an hour ago and were wondering if he might be the goddam delivery guy.

  The man in front of him limped into a row with two empty seats on the aisle and Julian followed, because an aisle seat seemed like a smart idea, in case he felt the need to make a quick exit. He bent down and stashed his skateboard under the folding chair. Straightening up, he noticed that his neighbor was watching him with an amused expression.

  “Don’t see too many of those things around here,” the old guy observed. His nose was swollen and veiny, and his baseball cap said U.S.S. Kitty Hawk.

  Julian nodded politely, not wanting to get into a big discussion while they waited. The old guy stuck out his hand.

  “Al Huff,” he said. “I live on Hogarth Road.”

  Julian was sorry he’d sat here.

  “Julian Spitzer. Sanborn Avenue.”

  They shook. Al’s hand was soft and dry, weirdly puffy.

  “You here for the lecture?” he asked.

  Julian couldn’t help himself. He glanced around, then spoke in a confidential tone.

  “Who cares about the lecture? I came for the ladies.”

  Al’s laugh was loud, but a little wheezy, half cough.

  “Me too,” he said. “Maybe one of us’ll get lucky.”

  Julian said the odds were on their side, but Al wasn’t listening anymore. He was twisting in his seat, trying to look over his shoulder. Julian followed his gaze and saw that Dr. Fairchild had entered the room, along with Mrs. Fletcher and a younger woman, and the three of them began moving toward the stage in single file. Except for the absence of music, it felt almost like a wedding procession, the audience watching in rapt silence as the guests of honor made their way down the aisle. Mrs. Fletcher nodded to Julian as she passed, and Dr. Fairchild’s face blossomed into an expression of happy surprise at the sight of him. The younger woman—she was short and a little heavy, but kind of sexy—gave him a puzzled glance, as if she wondered what the hell someone his age was doing there. When Julian turned back around, he saw that Al Huff was scowling and shaking his head.

  “What a shame,” he said. “What a goddam shame.”

  * * *

  Margo took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. It was a good crowd, bigger than she’d expected, at least two-thirds women. She hadn’t even begun her speech and one elderly gentleman was already snoring in the second row, making a soft gargling sound that came and went at random intervals.

  “Good evening.�
�� She tapped her fingernail on the bulb of the handheld microphone. “Can everyone hear me okay?”

  The response was mostly affirmative, though there was some disgruntled murmuring scattered through the room, probably due more to individual hearing impairments than any problem with the sound system. Margo glanced at Eve, who gave her a thumbs-up from the front row.

  “I’ll try to speak slowly and clearly,” she said, scanning the crowd for allies. She was glad to see Julian Spitzer—extra credit, not that he needed any—but she made a conscious decision not to look in his direction for moral support. He was an outlier in this group, totally unrepresentative of the demographic she was hoping to connect with. Instead she found an equally encouraging face to focus on—it was a trick she’d learned in public speaking class—in this case, a plump, pleasant-looking woman in a lavender turtleneck, sitting in the fourth row, dead center. She wasn’t smiling, exactly, but she had a patient, benevolent expression, like a proud grandmother at a piano recital.

  “Thank you so much for coming out tonight. You’re the first group of seniors that I’ve ever addressed.”

  Usually Margo spoke to young people, mostly high school students, because they needed to be exposed to transgender role models, and if not her, then who? She remembered how lonely she had been as a teenager, detached from the world by a secret that she could barely admit to herself, let alone her parents or teachers or friends. What she wouldn’t have given back then to hear a trans adult tell her that she wasn’t alone, that happiness and wholeness were possible, that you could find a way to become the person you knew in your heart you truly were, despite all the undeniable evidence to the contrary.

  The teenagers she spoke to were usually on pretty good behavior. They laughed at her jokes and applauded politely when she was done. But Margo wasn’t fooled. She knew the bullies were out there, smirking and muttering insults under their breath, hating her because hating was so much fun, and feeling superior was its own reward. It always took something out of her to stand in front of them, to offer herself up for their condescension and mockery, but she did it. She did it because those kids were the future, and even the worst of them could have a change of heart, or at least be shamed into silence.

  But these old people in front of her tonight, they weren’t the future. They belonged to the past, and Margo had learned from bitter experience—not just with her mother, but with a whole generation of aunts and uncles and family friends and neighbors and acquaintances—that very few of them were willing to examine their fundamental beliefs about gender, let alone revise them so they could make room for trans people in their hearts and minds. It had gotten to the point where she had stopped even trying to argue with her older relatives; it just wasn’t worth the effort and the heartache. You just had to wait them out. They’d be gone before too long, taking their narrow-minded, uncharitable ideas along with them.

  That was why she’d initially declined Eve’s invitation to speak at the Senior Center. But then Eve had performed some tricky PC jujitsu, calling Margo out for ageism and hypocrisy, for doing to seniors what society had done to LGBT people for so long. She reminded Margo that older people were a vulnerable and often stigmatized part of the community, and that it was both morally wrong and politically counterproductive to write them off as a lost cause. After all, they vote. And they have children and grandchildren, the power to give or withhold their love and approval.

  Margo looked directly at the woman in the lavender turtleneck. The woman didn’t resemble Margo’s mother—she seemed soft and easygoing, where Donna Fairchild had been sinewy and judgmental—but she was about the same age, and shaped by the same social forces. She could have been her mother’s friend or co-worker. It was close enough.

  I’m talking to you, Margo thought. I hope you’ll listen.

  “Good evening, everybody.”

  She stepped out from behind the podium, letting the crowd take a good look at her body, giving them time to register all the particulars—her unusual height, her pretty hair, her full breasts and narrow hips, her long muscular legs. It was something she was still getting used to, this need people had to scrutinize her from head to toe, as if all of life were a beauty pageant, and every woman a contestant. She even did a little twirl, because the judges liked to see your back as well as your front. It wasn’t fair, but Margo knew better than anyone that fairness and gender rarely intersected.

  “My name is Margo Fairchild,” she announced, “and I used to be a man.”

  * * *

  Julian was trying to concentrate on the slide show, a series of photos that documented Dr. Fairchild’s early life—baby pictures, the bright-eyed toddler, birthday hats and Halloween costumes and presents on Christmas morning. Cub Scouts and Little League and a smile with a missing tooth.

  “I was an adorable little boy and a very good son,” Dr. Fairchild explained. “Everyone said so.”

  Al Huff let out a groan of despair.

  “It’s a mental illness,” he said.

  Al had been delivering this sort of commentary for the entire lecture, in a loud voice he seemed to think was a whisper. It was a huge disruption, but no one in the nearby rows seemed to mind. They acted like it was perfectly normal, like Al had a God-given right to express every single thought that passed through his mind, no matter how stupid or offensive.

  Julian glanced around, checking for empty seats. A few were available, but none of them were near the aisle, and he wouldn’t be able to move without forcing a bunch of old people to stand up and let him pass, drawing a ton of attention to himself in the process.

  “I had a growth spurt in seventh grade,” Dr. Fairchild announced, and you could see it in the pictures. All at once, Mark was a gangly adolescent with pimples, braces, and a mortified smile. “There were times when I woke up in the morning and could tell from my pajama pants that my legs had gotten longer while I slept. It was a nightmare. People kept telling me, You’re turning into a handsome young man, which was the last thing I wanted to be. But there didn’t seem to be any way to stop it from happening. It had a biological momentum of its own, like my body was telling me, You’ll be a man whether you like it or not.”

  Julian’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw that it was a text from Ethan, who’d been bugging him to come to Burlington for the weekend to smoke some weed and check out the campus, in case he wanted to transfer sophomore year.

  Julian put the phone away without responding. It was cool that Ethan had invited him, and it should have been a no-brainer to say yes. Why wouldn’t he want to go away for the weekend, sleep on a dorm room floor, get a taste of real college life? But for some reason the thought of the trip made him anxious, all that pressure to be normal and have a good time with kids his own age. In Julian’s experience, guaranteed fun usually just left him more depressed than he’d been in the first place.

  “Good Christ,” said Al. “I can’t even look at this.”

  The picture on the screen showed young Mark in a basketball uniform, looming over his scrawny teammates.

  “The only good thing that happened to me in junior high was that I started playing basketball in a serious way,” Dr. Fairchild observed. A flurry of images followed, documenting Mark Fairchild’s career as a high school superstar. Some of the photos came from newspapers and yearbooks; others were candid shots taken at school or home. In every one of them, even those taken in classrooms or on a living room couch, Mark was wearing a basketball uniform or a warm-up suit with long pants and a zippered top.

  “I felt like myself on the court. That was the only place. Everywhere else I felt like a big mistake.”

  To illustrate this point, a prom photo appeared, Mark Fairchild tall and handsome in a classic black tuxedo, his arm around a pretty girl in a shiny pink gown. The girl was beaming with happiness, Mark not so much.

  “I remember that night so clearly. I was miserable in my tux. I wanted to be in a gown like the one my date was wearing, to feel the skirt
swish against my legs while I danced. I just wanted to feel pretty on my prom night, to be seen for who I truly was.”

  “That’s wrong,” Al muttered. “It’s unnatural.”

  Julian had finally had enough.

  “Dude,” he snapped. “Could you please be quiet? People are trying to listen.”

  Al wasn’t offended. In fact, he seemed genuinely interested in Julian’s opinion.

  “Do you think that’s natural?” he asked.

  “There’s nothing natural about gender,” Julian informed him. “It’s a social construction.”

  Al shook his head. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Julian was sorry he’d opened his mouth. Luckily his phone buzzed, saving him from further explanation.

  “Excuse me,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

  It was Ethan again, reminding him to bring a sleeping bag.

  I’m not coming, Julian wanted to write, but he couldn’t think of a good excuse.

  I have plans?

  I hate the bus?

  I don’t want to sleep on the floor?

  He was still staring at the empty text bubble when he noticed that someone was crouching beside him in the aisle. It was the young woman in the polka-dot dress, Eve Fletcher’s employee. She was looking at him with a sour expression, as if he were the troublemaker who was ruining the lecture for everyone else.

  “Excuse me.” She nodded toward Al, who was ranting about a man being a man and a woman being a woman. “Could you please tell your grandfather to keep it down?”

  * * *

  Eve was trying not to cry; it didn’t seem like something the executive director should do at a public event. It was hard, though—the slide show was breaking her heart, the inexorable progress of a child moving through time, changing with every picture, yet somehow remaining the same person. Mark Fairchild had been a beautiful boy—so confident, so happy, or so it seemed. But there was Margo standing right beside the screen, insisting that it had all been a lie and a more or less constant torment, a nightmare she didn’t know she could escape until much later in her life.