by Nan Higgins
4. Get married.
5. Volunteer at least once a week to help people in need.
6. Have a dog named Chowder.
If London had been asked to do this exercise even a few years later, it would have looked very different. She knew that. What bothered her was that she couldn’t remember ever feeling this way or wanting these things, at least not all of them. Volunteer work and a dog with a weird name? That she would totally be down with even today. Hell, she already donated ten percent of her profits to Compass, an organization that worked with at-risk LGBTQ youth. Many of the kids associated with Compass had been put out by their families because they were gay.
And she loved animals, so having a dog certainly was never out of the question. In fact, she and Reggie had talked about adopting one from the shelter, but they lived in such a tiny place with no yard. Besides, they both worked long hours and had to travel occasionally for their jobs. A dog was something they decided could wait a few years until life settled down a bit, and they could give an animal the attention it deserved.
Still, both of those items were at least feasible. But those first four goals really maddened her. Who was that child? It was easy to say she’d been trying to conform to what her parents and their peers expected, and she was sure that was definitely a contributing factor. Had there been others? Had she truly ever wanted to put on a pinstriped suit and head off to the office every day? Had she ever envisioned putting on a white wedding dress and making vows of obedience and honor to someone, while “Pachelbel’s Canon” played softly in the background? Those seemed like the kinds of things Diana really loved. How many times had her twin wanted to play wedding, trying to get London to put on a fluffy dress from their dress-up chest so they could pretend to have a double wedding? Diana had always been the perfect picture of the kind of daughter Grace and Frederick wanted.
And then there was the whole “falling in love with a really awesome boy” thing. She distinctly remembered feelings of embarrassment and bewildered gross-out that year when many of her friends started having crushes on boys. When her hormones finally caught up, it was never boys she was interested in. So what was up with the boy thing?
“Are you doing okay?”
London jumped and craned her neck to look behind her, pulling a muscle in the process. She hadn’t heard Jasmine step into the back room.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“No, it’s okay.” Her skin flushed. “I’m fine, really.” She massaged her neck. It was probably going to be sore for a few days.
“Tate is here. He said you weren’t expecting him.”
“I wasn’t, but he can come on back.” She’d barely gotten the words out when Tate popped his head in behind Jasmine.
“What’s up, buttercup?” he asked.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Jasmine said.
“Thanks, Jas.” He walked over to a stool in the back corner, dusted it off with the arm of his jacket, and pulled it to where London sat on the floor.
“This is a surprise,” she said. “You could’ve just texted me back.” She’d texted that morning asking if he’d made any marketing connections in his career because she was considering looking into corporate jobs.
“I could’ve, but there would have been a higher chance you’d get mad at me if I didn’t respond in person.”
“I won’t get mad if you think I’d suck at marketing,” she said. “I know it’s a long shot.”
“Not at all. In fact, I’ve got a contact name for you.”
“Really?” She stood, dusted off the back of her pants, and hugged him. “How could I be mad about that?”
“The method, my dear,” he said. “My method might drive you to madness.”
She pulled back. “What did you do?”
“Well, as much as I want to help you on this project you seem to need to pursue, I can’t be of much assistance in the connections department. All my contacts are in IT. But I knew someone who would be a huge help.”
She shook her head. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“I did, and she came through.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Reggie reached out to one of her connections, and you have an interview with Joan Robinson, executive director at Compass.”
“Tate, no,” she said, and even to her own ears, she sounded whiney. “If I wanted her help, I would’ve contacted her.”
“I know you guys are on the outs right now, babe. But Reg is the one who has the right connections, so just take this and go to your appointment.” When she didn’t take the paper, he leaned over and stuffed it in her pocket. “Stubborn.”
He sat back down, avoiding her glare, and started scrolling through his phone. She went back to work, and they sat in silence for a while, her pretending to be mad, and him pretending to ignore her. The silence broke when he burst out laughing.
“Check this out.” He handed his phone to her. “Remember this?”
She saw he was looking at his Facebook memories. Three years ago, he and Grant had taken a quiz to see what their baby would look like, as a joke, and the picture was the scariest-looking child any of them had ever seen.
“I’m so glad I never reproduced,” he said. “I would’ve had Rosemary’s Baby.”
She laughed. “Not necessarily. Facebook quizzes don’t predict the future as much as you might believe.”
She scrolled down a little farther in his memories and saw that she and Reggie tagged him in the picture of what their much less frightening baby would look like. “Meet your godson,” Reggie had said. London handed the phone back, and when he saw what she’d been looking at, he put his phone deep in his pocket.
“Sorry.”
“There might not be a baby in my future anymore,” she said. “Not if Reggie splits for good.”
“Did you two really want to have kids?” He sounded surprised.
“Yes. We wanted to adopt, though, give a baby or a toddler a home who really needed one.”
“You never told me.”
She shrugged. “It was all just late-night conversations. I would’ve told you when we got serious about it.”
Here was another loss she had to face, one she hadn’t thought of until now. If Reggie was truly done with their relationship, she probably wouldn’t have a child. The idea had been Reggie’s, and something they’d been talking about the last year or so. She felt overwhelmed at the thought of having something else taken from her.
She turned back to her work, picking up different spools of thread and holding them up against a dark gray piece of fabric.
“Hey,” he said, “when do you visit Ross again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Sounds like perfect timing. Tell him I said hi, okay?” He stood and headed to the door.
“You’re out of here?”
“Better go before I cause more trouble,” he said. “You coming over after you see him?”
“I always do.”
He grinned. “My place, then. I’ll have a horrible selection of snacks for you to choose from.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
Chapter Five
London walked up the cobblestone walkway toward the old brick house, careful to make sure the heels of her stilettos didn’t get caught in the cracks between the ancient stones. German Village was an historic area just south of downtown that was perfectly preserved. Wearing anything with a heel in GV could be hazardous and should only have been done with extreme caution.
Inside, she walked into a classically decorated and understated room. Ross appeared in the doorway from the next room and smiled. “London!” His booming voice filled the entire space. “It’s been a few weeks. I’m glad to see you.”
“Hi, Ross,” she said. “Sorry I had to cancel last week.”
He waved a hand. “No, please don’t worry about that, not with everything you had going on.” He motioned to the room behind him. “Come on back.”
She went into th
e room with the two couches facing each other, went to the couch she liked best—she let him sit on the leather sofa; she felt more comfortable on the older one with the soft, worn corduroy fabric—took off her coat, and sat.
He looked at her with the steady gaze that used to rattle her when she first met him. He rarely looked away, and that took some getting used to. She’d been coming to therapy for six years now, and most of the time, she didn’t even notice it anymore. She felt a little exposed today.
“This is a different look for you,” he said after a few moments.
She smoothed her pants a little. She’d gotten a jump on her Christmas shopping this morning and had somehow ended up in the women’s section of a department store. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought clothes that weren’t from a thrift store or made by a fellow independent artist. She’d bought a few suits and was wearing one now.
“I’m trying something new.” She felt so vulnerable without the comfort of her normal clothes in this place where she was always in her rawest state.
He folded his hands over his lap, a sign he wasn’t going to ask another question because he wanted her to speak about whatever was on her mind.
“I emailed copies of some stuff from my mother’s lawyer to you yesterday,” she said.
“I got them.”
“What do you think about them?”
Ross smiled. “What do you think about them? Based on your clothing, it looks like you’ve definitely had a strong reaction to those letters.”
“You’re my therapist,” she said. “You know all about my relationship with my mother. It’s probably seventy-five percent of what we talk about.” She was accustomed to the tears that had pricked at her eyes the last several days, but these spilled onto her cheeks and fell on the lapel of her new suit. “What are we going to talk about now?” She buried her face in her hands and bent over, shaking with sobs. They started to wind down, and when she looked up, she saw Ross had gotten a box of tissues and stood over her. She took the box and started crying all over again.
Something about being in this office with him made her feel free to let go of all of her protection and barriers she’d built to keep from feeling things she didn’t have time or energy or tools to feel. She’d refused to let herself cry since her mother died…except that wasn’t quite accurate, was it? She had been unable to cry. Now, on this brown corduroy couch, she was an undammed river.
She wept unabashedly, knowing when she finished that Ross would be there, his hands in his lap, his expression compassionate and calm, waiting for her to be ready to speak without pushing her to say anything until she was ready. As if they had all the time in the world. A cynic would say that of course they had time; he made a steady profit with every pause she made, every unfinished story, every unresolved issue that would need to wait until her next session. This was true, but she didn’t care. It had taken her years to get to a place where she could even go to therapy and then a few tries before she found one she felt comfortable with.
“Wanna know what my first thoughts were after I got the call that she died?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I thought I wasn’t going to get emotional about it.” She laughed coarsely and wiped her nose. “I thought she’d been out of my life so long, and I’d mourned losing her so much already that there wasn’t any sadness left to feel about her dying. Is that crazy?”
He leaned forward. “You know I don’t care for that word. And no, I think it’s neither crazy nor unusual that you would mourn the death of your mother, no matter how long it’s been since the two of you last spoke.”
“Even though I’ve already been grieving for years?”
“Yes. Your mother isn’t just gone from you now; she’s gone from the world. Any chance of reconciliation is gone. If that’s not worth mourning, I don’t know what is.”
London considered that for a while. Ross waited.
“Do you think it’s…” She paused before she said the word “crazy” again. “Do you think it’s unreasonable for me to want to try to do some of the things I wrote in that letter?”
“That depends. You’ve always presented to me that you’re a lesbian. Do I recommend that you marry a nice straight man? I’d be a pretty poor therapist if I did.”
“No, not that,” she said. “Not the boy part. This isn’t about my sexuality; it’s about rediscovering who I was then, how I felt, and why those feelings changed.”
“Maybe.” He nodded slowly. “I suspect it’s also about something else.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think the truth is in what you said when you first got here. What are you going to talk about now? We’ve spent years combing through every wisp of your relationship with your mother. Many of our sessions have begun and ended with conversations about her.”
“So? Isn’t that what therapy is for, dissecting mommy issues?”
“Sure it is; that’s a lot of it. It’s for whatever issues people want to tackle, and issues with parents are usually pretty high up there. My point is, this is a conversation you’re not ready to stop having. And if you start trying to cross items off this list, like some postmortem scavenger hunt, you won’t have to stop. As long as you’re trying to achieve some level of happiness set out for you by your mom, you won’t need to stop talking about her.”
“Whoa.” London wiped her eyes. “I guess this is why you make the big bucks, huh?”
Ross shrugged and tipped his head to the side.
“Does that mean you think I shouldn’t do this?”
“I think you’ve already made up your mind to do it. And that’s fine, as long as you take some precautions to keep yourself safe in the process.”
“Like?”
“Well, we’ve already touched on one. Don’t mess with your sexuality. It’s not worth sacrificing who you are to become some beacon for heteronormativity.”
“I won’t. What else?”
“Don’t jeopardize your business or your relationships to make these changes. If those things begin to suffer, that’s a red flag you’re taking things too far. And of course, I’ll always encourage you to keep me aware of the changes you’re making so we can talk about how it feels to try on different things.”
“Okay. That makes sense.” She began to relax a bit. His guidelines brought some structure to the chaos that had been her emotions. She knew she could explore the items on the letter without going against his rules, and it was a relief to feel like she could move forward.
“Oh, and one last thing.”
“What?”
“If you get a dog, please consider naming it something besides Chowder. The poor thing will get bullied at the dog park with a name like that.”
* * *
“Oh my God, did he actually say ‘postmortem scavenger hunt’?” Tate choked out his smoke mid-drag.
“Yeah.” London giggled. “He did.” They sat on the postage-stamp-sized patio outside his studio apartment. It made London a little claustrophobic every time she was there, but he loved it. He hated cleaning and the accumulation of unnecessary stuff. He basically had one room to clean and no space for collecting material possessions.
“Jesus. My therapist mostly just says shit like, ‘and how did you feel about that?’ and then takes some notes on his legal pad.”
“I couldn’t deal with that. If it didn’t feel like I was just talking to one of my friends for an hour every week, I wouldn’t be able to go. I hate doctors, and I’m glad he doesn’t feel like one.”
“I get that. Is he taking new patients?”
“I’ll ask him.”
“Good. This run-in with my own mom has had me pretty messed up.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Please stop apologizing. You didn’t invite her to your mother’s funeral. You had nothing to do with it.” He tapped some ashes into the ashtray on the table between them. “It’s not like my mom ever needed a special occasion to let the cray-cray out.”
/> “That’s the truth.”
“It’s cold out here.” He smudged out his cigarette. “I’m done; let’s go inside.”
They stepped in and hung their coats on the rack by the front door. London almost tripped over Tate’s bike on her way to the couch.
“You want anything to drink?” He moved over to the kitchen side of the room. “I’ve got vodka and white wine.”
“To drink together?”
“If you like.”
“How about some water?”
“Water it is.” He pulled two glasses from the open-faced cupboard.
London realized how long it had been since she’d seen him with a short-sleeved shirt. She walked to the makeshift kitchen island and stood across from him. “Let me see your arms.”
He grinned and held both arms out for inspection.
She held on to his wrists and slowly rotated his arms to see what they looked like all the way around. “You’re so hairy!”
“I know. You should see my armpits.”
“Show me.”
Laughing, he pulled up his shirt so she could get a good look.
“Wow! You have man pits.”
“I know!”
They sat on his couch. London took a long sip of water and carefully placed the glass on a coaster. Tate’s fastidious nature meant she’d never hear the end of it if some water stained his table. He took immaculate care of his few pieces of furniture.
“Are you going to get more hair?”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ve been on testosterone for almost a year now, and things seem like they’re kind of leveling out.”
“Coming out of that second puberty must be a relief.”
“You have no idea.” He grimaced. She’d been with him at doctor’s appointments when he’d been warned that taking testosterone would put him into a state of puberty, but nothing could have prepared him for the embarrassment of being a man in his thirties with a voice that cracked and squeaked as it deepened or acne that sprouted up on his formerly clear face. “But I have a new set of issues now.”
“What’s wrong?”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened an app, and showed it to her.