by Jane Smiley
Isabel didn’t quite know how to respond to these remarks. Paul had been friendly to her without seeming to be trying to gain her approval, and he was a vegetarian, apart from the yearly organ-meats thing, and he was always helpful around the kitchen. Besides that, he seemed to be neat, very clean, and so self-contained that Isabel suspected that Zoe found him a little frustrating, which was good. She said, “I like him,” by which she knew she meant, and she knew Stoney knew she meant, He suits my purposes with regard to my mother.
“Doesn’t look like he has much money. Your mom could have her pick of guys.”
“I think she’s tried that,” said Stoney, and this remark, too, made Isabel a tad uncomfortable. He added, “You know, deep down this is a pretty straight-arrow town. I don’t think Zoe ever wanted to be a corporate wife, which would have been the typical thing to happen to her. They don’t look like it the way they do in, let’s say, Bloomfield Hills, but it’s more or less the same lifestyle.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Charlie.
“He’s got his own gig, anyway,” said Isabel. “Lots of middle-aged actresses end up with much younger guys who are so clearly on the make. That’s so embarrassing. I mean, before Paul met my mom, he was hiking the seven holiest mountains in China.”
“Do you believe that?”
“He’s got a slide show.”
“I’d like to see that,” said Charlie.
“Actually,” said Stoney, “I would, too.”
“Mom saw it. She said it was great.” Now that she had begun defending Paul, Isabel could feel herself warm to it. “I guess he was the only person hiking. Every Chinese person he ran across was driving.”
“He has very strange-looking feet,” said Charlie.
“I hadn’t noticed,” said Stoney. Isabel had noticed, though, and Paul’s feet were strange-looking—horny and flat, with splayed long toes. Just that day, Isabel had watched him dive off the edge of the pool into the deep end, and his feet had seemed to grasp the edge of the pool and then launch him. She said, “I guess if you go barefoot a lot your feet don’t look like other people’s feet. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except,” said Uncle Charlie, “beard, feet, is this sexy? Frankly, that’s what I wonder about. Look at her. She’s maybe the sexiest woman in the world. She’s sexier in person than she is on the screen, and that’s saying something. Just having her around the house gives me a little shock each time I look at her, and it doesn’t matter what she’s wearing. She could be wearing a pup tent. You kids know what a pup tent is?”
“I can figure it out,” said Isabel.
“But he looks to me like a gargoyle.”
“You know what?” said Isabel. “I need to put on my clothes. I’m getting cold. I guess we should stop pretending that we weren’t doing what we were doing, and that you weren’t watching.” She stood up and started to pull on her underwear. Charlie, she was glad to note, did look the other way. After she put on her underwear, she pulled on her jeans and sat down again, but only preliminary to saying, “What time is it? I’m about ready for bed.”
“I left my watch in my room, but it was way after midnight when I came out,” said Charlie. She noticed that he did not say that he wasn’t watching. Stoney cleared his throat. He said, “I guess that would mean that I should go home, too.”
“I thought your floors were being refinished,” said Charlie.
“Well,” said Stoney, “I’ve been going in and out.”
Good save, thought Isabel.
Charlie stuck with them all the way up the steps onto the deck, and even into the main part of the house, where, when Isabel followed Stoney to the front door, Charlie went and opened the refrigerator. Everyone else had gone to bed. She followed Stoney out to his car, the old Jaguar that she disapproved of—though, every time she thought her disapproving thought about old emissions standards, she remembered that any new and less polluting car would have to be manufactured of many polluting materials, so that was a trade-off, and a conundrum, global-warming-wise. Stoney was chuckling. She said, “Why are you laughing? This is not good.”
“Maybe not, but it is funny.” His voice was so familiar. That was its greatest appeal. Its sound in her ear gave her a feeling like she was going to cry, but she didn’t cry. Rather, she threw her arms around him and laid her cheek in the crook of his neck. There was a pause, during which he held her tightly. Then he kissed her on the lips, folded himself into his car, and drove down the hill with a wave. She ran up the outside stairs to her aerie. She could feel the press of the wind now, and when she got to her room, she saw that she had left a window open, and papers had blown around the room. She closed the window and stared down the hill. She could see his taillights for one moment before he disappeared around the corner. She got into bed with her clothes on, and pulled the covers over her, but she didn’t go to sleep—she sat up and watched and listened to the windows rattling in their frames. It seemed as though she and Stoney were in a different movie now—no longer one in which his presence was familiar and sometimes inconvenient, like a large object that had to be shifted from time to time so that she could work around it, but, rather, one in which he could disappear at any moment, one in which any ignorant word or careless gesture on her part could blow him up. Something, maybe the wind, maybe that thought, made her shiver.
It was still windy when Isabel awoke in the bright glare of her room; she was still clothed, too, though she had kicked off the covers, and she had no idea of the time, because she couldn’t find her watch and her clock had stopped. She could tell nothing by the light in the room. There was always light in her room. When she got down to the kitchen, she was not happy to discover that Paul and Zoe were forking cantaloupe from the same wedge, Simon was eating some multicolored cereal, her father was buttering toast, Elena was spreading her toast with roasted-garlic hummus, and Delphine was eating an omelet with, it looked like, some bits of ham in it. Charlie had a bagel, split open and smeared with cream cheese. It looked all too busy and convivial to Isabel, who had planned to sleep until everyone was gone, grab a cup of coffee, and sneak out. By the clock on the microwave, she saw that it was only seven forty-one. Elena, Delphine, and Zoe all looked at her, and Zoe said, “You okay, Isabel?”
“Oh, I didn’t sleep,” she said, and from behind her hair she saw the quickest ghost of a smile cross the lips of Mr. Charlie Mannheim.
Cassie was reading aloud from the paper. She said, “Okay, I’ll start over. ‘A transgender prostitute who pummeled a 78-year-old retiree during a scuffle in the man’s bedroom was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter Thursday after jurors rejected a more serious charge of murder. James Cid, 31, who uses the name Jamie, wept as the verdict was read in Ventura County Superior Court. Prosecutors had sought a first-degree murder and robbery conviction for the slaying of widower Jack Jamar, arguing that Cid deliberately beat Jamar and stole his wallet before fleeing the area. Cid was apprehended in San Diego County after the March 10, 2000, assault, and admitted in a police interview to hitting and kicking Jamar in the man’s east Ventura home.’”
“Tell me what ‘transgender’ means again,” said Charlie, biting into his bagel.
Isabel said, “He’s had a sex change from woman to man.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Charlie, chewing. “This is such a California story.” He picked up his napkin and wiped his lips.
“There are transgendered individuals everywhere,” said Isabel. “It’s not a California thing.”
“Shh,” said Delphine.
Cassie went on: “‘Outside the courtroom Thursday, three jurors told reporters that prosecutors were unable to prove premeditation or malice, and that the elements for robbery were not proved beyond a reasonable doubt. But jurors also decided the evidence did not support Cid’s claims of self-defense based on the testimony of a crime-scene expert who found blood spattered on the bottom of a bedroom dresser, suggesting that Jamar was on the floor during at least part
of the altercation. “There was spirited discussion over what was self-defense,” juror Denise Barnett said. Barnett said that after seven days of painstaking deliberations, during which the jury asked questions and heard testimony over and over again, the group agreed the evidence pointed to manslaughter.’”
“What does that mean?” said Zoe.
“He didn’t intend to kill him,” said Max.
“‘It also found Cid guilty of petty theft instead of robbery.’”
“Robbery,” said Max, “is when you violently steal something, using a weapon or some other sort of intimidation. Theft is just taking possession of something that isn’t yours.”
“‘Barnett and juror Tina Dwyer said they all had different opinions and theories and worked hard just to develop a list of facts they could agree upon. In the end, they said, it was still not clear what actually occurred in Jamar’s bedroom….’”
“This makes no sense to me,” said Charlie. “Was Jamie the prostitute a male or a female?”
“I think he’s a male,” said Simon.
“That’s funny,” said Zoe. “I thought she was a female. I thought she had been James the male but now she was Jamie the female, and that’s why the old guy brought her home.”
Cassie cleared her throat and continued to read: “‘At the trial, West tried to show that Cid beat Jamar, a retired businessman who was known to pick up prostitutes, into a coma and took his wallet after Jamar brought Cid to his Varsity Street house for sex. According to testimony, police officers responding to a possible robbery found a seriously injured Jamar in the bedroom, bleeding from head wounds and wearing only a T-shirt. Jamar’s injuries were so severe, West told jurors, that “officers initially thought Jack was shot in the head.” Jamar, whose teeth were knocked into his stomach….’”
“Oh my God,” said Elena.
“Maybe he just swallowed them,” said Max. “‘Knocked’ is a pretty loaded word.”
“‘…knocked into his stomach during the assault, later died, and prosecutors charged Cid with murder and robbery. But Sheahen told jurors his client, whom he described as a nonviolent individual who suffers from a gender-identity disorder, acted in self-defense after being attacked by Jamar.’”
“See,” said Charlie, “the article said ‘individual.’ My guess is no one knew, or was prepared to say during the trial, whether the perp was a male or a female.”
Isabel found this whole discussion irritating. She said, “It seems obvious to me that Jamie had been a female, was now a male, and was taken home by this career john. Boys can call themselves Jamie. The old guy got violent, and Jamie defended himself a little too strongly, and then the old guy fell and hit his head and died. He had probably already given Jamie some money, and that’s what they said he had stolen. In the picture he’s a man.” She found some bread and slid two pieces into the toaster.
“But did he kill the old guy as a man or as a woman? Would a woman really have the strength to do that kind of damage?” said Charlie. “I mean, if she started out as a woman, let’s say five eight or so, which is pretty good-sized for a woman but not so big for a guy, would the sex-change operation really endow her as a man with enough strength, not to mention the killer instinct, to beat the guy’s head to a pulp and knock his teeth down his throat? But let’s say she started as a man; then it makes more sense that there would be residual strength even after the operation for that sort of thing.”
“That’s what I think,” said Zoe. “Don’t you agree, dear one? The way I picture it is kind of like that movie The Crying Game. The old guy picks up someone he thinks is a regular female prostitute, and when he gets her home, he pays her and she takes her clothes off, but then he doesn’t like what he sees, and gets violent—”
Paul opened his mouth as if he meant to say something, but Cassie, looking at the paper, interrupted him: “It says he said the old guy was raping him.”
“And what does that mean?” said Simon. “How do you rape a prostitute? Doesn’t being a prostitute imply consent? I’m not suggesting anything.” Isabel saw him glance at her. “I was just curious.”
“Unless,” said Paul, “Zoe’s right and she was going out as a woman, and she was consenting to vaginal intercourse but not to anal intercourse, and so the one would be consensual and the other would be rape.”
“That reminds me of a story I saw on the news once, years ago, back in Chicago,” said Elena. “A guy was convicted of rape because the woman he slept with had multiple-personality disorder, and only one of her personalities had consented to having sex. That wasn’t a California story.”
“I think we should just read what it says and take it at face value,” said Isabel, thinking that this discussion was going to drive her crazy.
“It doesn’t have a face value,” said Max. “The jurors couldn’t figure it out, either.”
“It would be interesting to know what the defense lawyers knew,” said Delphine, who had been reading over Cassie’s shoulder. “I mean, they had a choice. Do they send their client into the courtroom as a man or as a woman? Maybe they realized that if the jury couldn’t figure it out, then they would have to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Didn’t one of the lawyers say that this proves that the system works?”
“Yes,” said Cassie.
“Maybe that’s what they meant. I mean, Jamie knows what happened in the bedroom. He’s the only one. So he’s the only one who knows whether it was murder and robbery or manslaughter and theft, and the only sign of his reaction to the verdict is that he cried. Did he cry as a man or as a woman? Did he beat the old guy as a man or as a woman? How can anyone know?”
Silence descended around the table, and Isabel’s toast rose out of the toaster. She reached for the hummus, which was in the middle of the table. Cassie rattled the paper and turned the page.
Zoe picked up one of the inside sections of the paper, and Max picked up the A section, the dangerous section. Isabel didn’t have to look closely to notice that there was plenty of Iraq news. She saw that Elena noticed, too, and consciously turned away. Simon got up from his seat, took his plate to the sink, and then rummaged in the cabinet by the sink for a moment and came up with four circular black-and-white cookies. Before Elena said anything, he exclaimed, “Mom, they’re Newman-O’s. See? Taste one. They’re incredibly crisp on the outside and fabulously luscious on the inside.” He held one out to her, but she waved his hand away. He said, “I’m sure the frosting is a nutritious mix of tofu and naturally bleached carrot pulp—”
“Yes, Simon,” said Elena. “Now, is your filming winding up today?”
“Yeah—”
“Do tell,” said Max, folding down the paper, “what scene are you filming today?”
“Well, we might have to do the bartender in the neoprene suit again. The breasts were kind of flat yesterday, and they looked more like flaps than boobs. I think the girls were going to stuff them with something last night. Other than that, there’s only one scene left, and that’s the men’s naked tap-dance. We’ve been practicing all week, even though it’s only about a minute long. All we have to do is step and turn and step and turn, and then tap around in a small circle, and then jump up and land in, what is it, second position, you know, where your legs are apart and your chest is up and your shoulders are back. The director picked the cast for equipment size rather than dancing ability, and I guess I would have to say that a sense of rhythm doesn’t seem to correlate with equipment size. And it seems like the more we rehearse the smaller the equipment gets, so he wants to get it on the first take.”
“That stands to reason,” said Charlie.
“Filming always presents unexpected challenges to the original conception,” said Max with a smile. He went back to his paper.
“So you’re going back to Davis tonight?” said Elena.
“Well, no,” said Simon. “They rented everything for another day, and I don’t have to get back till Sunday.”
Elena looked at him skeptically.
/>
“If then. Mom, I’m up to date in my classes, I’m refining ideas for my thesis, and there’s no problem. I promise. Don’t you enjoy having me around? Everyone else is here. I’m helpful and entertaining. I did the dishes last night, right? And I did a good job, didn’t I, Cassie?”
“He did a good job,” said Cassie.
“Do you enjoy having me around, Cassie?”
“I do.”
“Do you enjoy having me around, Delphine?”
“More or less.”
“See, Mom, from Delphine, that’s very positive—isn’t it, Delphine?”
“Very positive.”
“Because Delphine has high standards, don’t you?”
“Very high.” She smiled.
Isabel saw Zoe smile to herself. Isabel felt the tiniest little prick of something at this smile—what was it? She had never had a sibling, of course, and so she was spoiled rotten, of course, and in fact it hadn’t occurred to her that Simon could be a rival for her family’s affections, and anyway, she was twenty-three years old and beyond caring about that sort of thing, of course, but she cleared her throat and went over to the sink with her plate, and decided that, yes, Simon would be better off back at college Sunday night.
Then Zoe said, “Dear one, we should go see this show at LACMA.” She pushed the paper toward Paul. “It’s a show of Middle Eastern art. It says, ‘But even as art historians and archeologists are warning against the possible destruction and looting of important sites, the L.A. County is preparing a landmark exhibition of historic art and artifacts from the region that includes present-day Iraq.’ I’d like to see that.”
“I would, too,” said Paul, and then Elena said, “Having a war there is like, oh, I don’t know—”
“Bombing Dresden?” said Cassie. “Here’s a piece about whether analogies between American attacks on Iraq and Allied attacks on Germany during the Second World War are appropriate. It’s interesting.”