“It’s me.”
“But you were…”
“Dead?”
“Yes. I went to the funeral.”
“Let’s talk inside,” Jake says.
We sit down on the couch, though I would just as soon go upstairs to lie down for a while. Coming back from the grave really tires me out. Tess sits across me and studies my face. Maybe she wants to see if it’s a mask.
I decide to pull the Band-Aid off as quick as possible. “I wasn’t really dead before. I was living right here, with you and Jake. As Stacey Chance.”
“How is that possible?”
“Remember that drug Dr. Ling shot Maddy and I up with?”
“Yes, but Stacey isn’t Chinese, or at least she wasn’t at first.”
“The original drug didn’t have Chinese DNA in it, so it didn’t do that to me. It just turned me into a girl.” While Tess listens and kneads her hands, I tell her about the robbery at Lennox Pharmaceuticals, Artie Luther injecting me with the needle, and then me waking up as Stacey. “I’m sorry about lying to you, but Jake and I thought it would be best to leave that out.”
She turns to her husband. “You don’t trust me? Is that it, Jacob?”
“We thought it would be safer for you not to know anything,” Jake says.
“And you went on lying to me for five years?”
“I’m sorry, Tess. Really, I am. But you have to know I did love you like my aunt and my grandma.”
Tess doesn’t say anything to this. Jake tries to take her hand, but she pulls it away from him. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says. “It was for your own good.”
“For your own good, you mean.”
“Teresa, please—”
“What are you going to tell that poor man?” she asks. “He’s already called here three times looking for Stacey.”
“Tell him you don’t know anything,” Jake says. He clears his throat. “Steve’s going to need a place to stay until we can get things figured out.”
“Of course Steven can stay here, but don’t expect me to participate in your cover-up.” With that she gets up and goes upstairs. We hear the bedroom door slam a couple of minutes later.
“She’s really pissed,” I say.
“No kidding. Looks like I’m sleeping on the couch tonight.”
“I can take the couch. You can have my old bed.”
“I’d rather you stay out of sight as much as possible,” Jake says. “I imagine your husband is going to be paying us a visit soon enough.”
“He’s not my husband.” I get up and march up the stairs as indignantly as Tess. I slam my bedroom door closed and then collapse on the bed to sleep.
***
When I wake up later, I hear the door creak. I figure it must be Jake to drop off some clothes or something. Then I hear Maddy’s voice call out, “I’ll just be a second, Grandma. I forgot my—” Her sentence ends with a scream as she turns the light on. “Daddy?”
“No, I’m not your father,” I say.
“Then who are you?”
“An old friend of the family.”
Maddy’s a smart cookie, smart enough to close the door and lock it before Jake or Tess can hurry in here to interfere. Tears sparkle in her eyes. “You are him. You’re my father.”
“I’m not your father, kid. You got the wrong guy.”
“You don’t think I know what he looks like? What he sounds like?”
“Well you’re wrong.”
She greets me about the way I always figured she would: she slaps me across the face hard enough to turn my head sixty degrees. “You son of a bitch! I thought you were dead. You were hiding all this time, weren’t you? Playing dead somewhere, right?”
“I was hiding. In plain sight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I was Stacey. All that time, I was her.”
Someone pounds on the door and then I hear Jake shout, “What the hell is going on in there? Madison, open this door right now.”
“I’m just talking to your friend in here,” Maddy says with a sneer. To me she says, “You really expect me to believe you’re Stacey? She’s nothing like you. She’s nice and sweet and shy. She’s my best friend.”
“It was me, Madison. Go on and ask me something only she would know.”
“OK, where did Stacey and I first meet?”
“At the Krappy Koffee. I ordered a couple of cappuccinos for Tess and me. You asked if my clothes came from Grace’s. You asked me to share my discount with you.”
She slaps me again. And again. I don’t do anything to stop her. It’s what I deserve. “You son of a bitch!” she shouts as she hits me. When she tires herself out, she collapses against me and sobs. I pat her back, which only makes her angrier. “Don’t touch me!”
“Madison, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Then what did you mean to do?”
“I don’t know. Everything just happened. I didn’t seek you or Grace out—”
She slaps me again. “You slept with Grace. You slept with my girlfriend. You selfish son of a bitch. It wasn’t enough for you to ruin my life when you were a man, you tried to do it when you were a woman too.”
“Maddy, please—”
“I hate you! I don’t care who you are; I never want to see you again!” she gives me one last slap; this time she gets her nails in it to leave marks on my cheek. Then she turns on her heel and unlocks the door. With every ounce of her weight, she bulls past Jake to stomp down the stairs.
If I were still a woman I’d be sobbing right now. Instead I look down at the floor. Jake sits next to me and pats my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Steve. I didn’t hear her come in.”
“No, it was going to happen eventually. Might as well be now.”
“She’ll calm down. She just needs time.”
“She might calm down, but she’ll still hate me. Why shouldn’t she? I was a lousy father. An even lousier father as her best friend.”
“Steve—”
“Just leave me alone. I’ll handle it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jake says. I lie back down on the bed; I hope I’ll wake up and this will all be a bad dream.
Chapter 25
A couple days later, Tess is still mad at me. She’s too good to let me subsist on cereal or microwave meals forever, though. I come down to breakfast to find a stack of pancakes on the table. She appears a moment later with a pot of coffee. “Have a seat,” she says, without any warmth or her customary ‘dear’ at the end of it.
I wait until she’s finished with the scalding-hot coffee before I say, “We need to talk about this, Tess. How long are you going to be mad at me?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps for the next five years.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t think you would believe me.”
“But Jacob would, right?”
“He didn’t, not without a lot of convincing. He even had them test my blood at the lab.”
“And yet no one told me anything.”
“I figured it’d be better that way. You had already accepted me as Stacey. You gave me Jenny’s room and let me use her clothes. You helped me through that time of the month—”
“I would have done all those things if you had told me the truth as well.”
“I’m sure you would have.”
“Then why make a fool out of me?”
I sigh and shake my head. It’s not easy to say, “I figured you liked me better as Stacey. I didn’t think you ever really liked me as Steve. You thought I was a bad influence on your husband.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“Is it? We were never very close, not the way we were when I was a girl.”
“I always considered you a friend, Steven. I appreciated how supportive you were during Jennifer’s illness. And how you gave Jacob someone he could confide in.”
“But it was different with Stacey. You didn’t hug me and kiss me and bake plates
of cookies for me before.”
“Is that what you wanted me to do for you, Steven? I could go make you some cookies right now.”
“No, it’s fine.” It’s hard not to curse or look for a cigarette to light; Tess doesn’t like either of those habits. “I really made a mess of it, didn’t I?”
“It was a difficult time. I suppose I shouldn’t hold it against you or Jacob for doing what you thought was right.”
“Thanks.”
We don’t hug or kiss on the cheek or anything, but she does pour me another cup of coffee. I take that as a sign of progress.
***
Dressed in one of Jake’s suits and with my money and other important things in my pockets, I get on a train to go into the city. Tess and I might be on the mend, but there is someone else I need to deal with. I’ve put it off long enough.
Maybe I’m a coward, but I go to see Mac at his office. I figure it’ll be easier there, in a semi-public place. It’ll be harder for him to flip out or to wring my neck. Not that I really expect him to do either of those. Still, it’s better not to take chances.
Jamie is in the waiting room with her brother Caleb. She doesn’t pay me any attention as I go up to the receptionist. “Hi,” I say. “Can you tell Dr. Macintosh Steve Fischer would like to see him as soon as possible?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No, I’m just an old friend. Thought I’d stop by to say hello.”
The receptionist stares at me for a moment, as if to figure out if I would really be a friend of Mac’s. I don’t look like the sort of guy he would hang out with, not in my rumpled suit and with two day’s growth of beard. She does finally pick up the phone. She speaks quietly into the receiver so I can’t hear her. After she hangs up, she says, “Dr. Macintosh will see you in a few minutes, if you’ll have a seat.”
I sit down across from Jamie and her brother. Jamie looks up from her phone once, but doesn’t pay me any attention. There’s no reason she should. The last time she saw me, I was a half-Chinese eighteen-year-old girl. Before that she knew me as a ten-year-old Chinese girl. There’s no reason for her to think this old white guy across from her is the same person.
Jamie is still on the phone when the receptionist asks me to step into the office. I’m not sure what Mac will do when he sees me. He might run into my arms or he might take a swing at me. Instead, he does nothing. He plays it cool and motions me to sit in one of the white armchairs he uses for patients. The chair feels a lot smaller than before, a lot smaller than when I was a ten-year-old girl whose feet couldn’t touch the floor.
He carries a folder with him. He opens it up and looks at something inside. “So, you’re Detective Steve Fischer?” he asks. He holds up the clipping of my obituary, which features a picture of me in my dress uniform.
“That’s me.”
“And what about Stacey? What happened to her?”
“She’s gone now.”
“How did it happen?”
I tell Mac about how the Skinhead Strangler appeared in our living room and strangled me, followed by my turning back into a man. Mac shows no reaction as he listens to this cockamamie story. When I finish, he asks, “Why did you run away?”
“I needed some time to think things over.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t believe you or that I wouldn’t accept you?”
“A little of both.”
“I know your history. I would have believed you.”
“Yeah, maybe you would have.”
“And you thought I wouldn’t accept you?”
“You have to admit it’s a little weird that your wife looks like this.”
“So you ran away?”
“I decided to lie low for a while with Jake and Tess.”
“Did they accept you?”
“Tess needed a couple of days. She was kind of pissed at me for not telling her sooner.”
“Do you think her emotions were valid?”
“Probably.”
“And did Jake accept you?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty much been like old times.”
“I see. Have you told anyone else yet?”
“Madison found out. She stopped by and went up to the bedroom and I was sleeping in her bed, just like Goldilocks.”
“How did she react?”
I turn my left cheek so he can get a better view of the pink marks her fingernails left behind. “Not too well. She slapped the shit out of me and then she screamed she hates me and never wants to see me again. So, yeah, it could have gone better.” I hold up a hand before Mac can say anything. “I think it was perfectly valid of her. I’ve been a real shit to her for seventeen years now. The poor kid deserves better.”
“You haven’t talked to her since then?”
“No. She needs some time to cool off. And I need some time to think about what the hell I can say to her.”
“I understand. Perhaps you should say how much you love her.”
“She won’t care about that. I abandoned her for twelve years and then I lied to her and on top of it I slept with her girlfriend. I’m pretty much batting a thousand for Shittiest Father of the Century.”
“But you do care about Madison. In time she’ll realize that. You’ll have to be patient and persistent.”
“I’m not sure my face can handle the persistent part.”
Mac nods. He doesn’t have a pen to write anything down or else I’m sure he would. “If I gave you the mirror right now, who would you see?”
“A broken-down failure. A real shit of a father and a husband. A guy who’s lost the best things in his life twice now.”
“Do you think you’ve lost me?”
“I’m sorry, Mac, but we can’t be together. Not like that anymore.”
“You don’t feel the same about me?”
“No, I don’t feel the same. You’re a guy. I’m a guy. Maybe we could go watch a game or something, have a few drinks and some laughs. That’s it.”
“You were willing to be a lesbian, but not a gay man?”
“Stacey was willing to be a lesbian. That was before she figured out who she was. Steve already knows who he is.”
“Does he?”
“He does.”
“And who is that?”
“He’s a cop,” I say and stand up. “And right now there’s a killer on the loose.”
I get to my feet. In lieu of shaking Mac’s hand, I press an envelope into it—his grandmother’s ring. “You were right, Mac. We ended up like Romeo & Juliet.”
Then I’m out the door, my old life left behind.
Chapter 26
I decide to start my investigation at St. Vincent’s. The problem will be to get into Dr. Palmer’s room. I solve that problem by finding a set of scrubs on a counter. I change into the scrubs in a bathroom and leave my suit in a pile in the corner for later.
The cop on duty looks up from a newspaper at me. “Just going to check on her,” I say.
“You a doctor?”
“Nurse,” I say. “About time to empty her bedpan, you know?”
“Better you than me, friend.” The cop looks back at his paper. I can’t blame him for not being too alert; it has been over ten days since Dr. Palmer was brought in. Anyone who wished her ill would probably have done it by now.
I get into the room to see Dr. Palmer has gotten older since I last saw her. She’s a little girl of six or seven now; corn silk hair hangs to almost her waist. She’s skinnier as well, all knees and elbows as they say.
I brush some of the blond hair away from her face. Her cheeks are still covered in freckles that make her look even more adorable. “It’ll be all right, Doc,” I whisper. “We’ll find a way to fix this.”
There’s not much I can do to help her right now. All I can do is go to the closet. On the top shelf is a box that contains the items she was brought here with. I’m sure Jake has already looked through everything. I paw through Dr. Palmer’s personal effects anyway: the clothes that are too bi
g for her, the makeup she can’t wear yet, and the tampons she doesn’t need. Nothing out of the ordinary. I had hoped Vollmer might have left something to help me find her.
From her purse I take her keys. There might be something in her apartment that’s helpful. I don’t know what, but I need to start somewhere. And I could use somewhere to hide out, somewhere Maddy won’t show up.
I’m about to open the door to leave when I hear Dr. Palmer whisper, “Wait.”
I turn to her bed and smile. “Hi,” I say. “How are you feeling?”
“Thirsty.”
“You should be. You’ve been sleeping for a while.” I hope I don’t have too much of that condescension in my voice, like Dr. Nath when I woke up as a toddler. I go over to beside her bed and pour a glass of water. She’s too weak to move, so I hold the cup to her lips. She drinks it all in one long pull. “Better?”
“A little.” She tries to sit up, but can’t. “Can you help me up?”
“Sure.” I push a button to adjust the bed so she’s in more of a sitting position. She manages to lower her head a little. Her pale cheeks start to turn red. I put a hand to her head and stroke her hair. “It’s all right. You’re going to be fine.”
“I’m a kid,” she says. “Aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“I don’t really know—”
“Please, you got to tell me,” she says. Her blue eyes start to tear up.
“Six,” I say. “Maybe seven. Too bad we don’t have the monitor to know for sure.”
“How do you know about that?”
“It’s me, Doc. Steve Fischer.”
“Stacey?”
“She’s gone now.”
“How?”
“She died. Then I turned back into this.”
“Maybe you should kill me then.”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Maybe I’m not joking.”
“Look, Doc—”
“Clarita. It’s just Clarita now. I’m not a doctor.”
“Clarita, you’re going to get better, OK? I’ve been through it often enough to know. And hey, Jake and I talked to Dr. Nath. Lennox hired her back to work on the formula.”
“But how? It was all gone. He took everything.”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 78