Future Perfect

by Jen Larsen

  “You’re not,” I say.

  “Omar’s stupid studio time is pointless,” she says. “I could have just picked up the phone it wouldn’t have even mattered she’s more important than modeling, oh shit Ashley.”

  “I thought you were in drama club. Or did you drive all the way to San Francisco?”

  “I didn’t feel like going to drama club,” she says. I can hear voices in the background, Laura responding.

  “Laura,” I say. “Where would she go if she were upset?”

  She comes back. “Home?” she says.

  “She wouldn’t go home,” I say. “She would never go home when she was upset.”

  Laura is silent. We both know that Jolene’s parents treat her very gingerly. They are friendly to her—I’m reminded of someone being polite to a stranger on a bus. They ask after her well-being. They tell her that they would like her to be happy, Jolene says, but they don’t know what that means. And they don’t care about finding out.

  When she was seven and said that she was not a boy, she was not David, they took her very seriously. They thought that there was something wrong with her. That she was broken and delusional and that they had done something to her. Had twisted her somehow. They said, “Is it because we are divorcing?” but that was the first time she had heard about that. They pretended they had never said it and they might have been relieved.

  Her parents made appointments with the counselors at school, and they got another copy of the Humanism Handbook. I remember running to find her after that appointment, and stopping short when I saw her father tearing it in half in the parking lot, Jolene just watching him.

  Her parents made appointments for her at psychiatrist offices, and took her to a new one every time a doctor said that there was nothing wrong with her. They would not listen to a doctor speak about transition strategies, or support groups, or anything that suggested she was normal but struggling. They wanted to hear that she was damaged, that “sex is a biological reality not subordinate to subjective impressions,” etcetera, etcetera.

  At school, she changed every morning into a dress in a bathroom lounge near the counselor’s office because she felt she had to convince everyone she really meant it.

  She told me about all of this only in bits and pieces and during quiet moments.

  What I really remember was that one day, she was not in school and then after that she wasn’t there any other day for a month. When I rode my bike over to her house her parents told me that she was sick. They wouldn’t say with what. I remember my grandmother leaving the house with a plastic container of chicken soup. She was gone for hours and when she came home, Jolene was in the car with her. She had her pillow and her blue denim duffel bag.

  My grandmother had said, “She just needs to rest for a while.”

  Jolene stayed with us for a week. She slept in my trundle bed. After we turned out the lights, if I looked over the side I could see her lying on her back with her hands folded at her waist. Her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. She would never say anything. I never knew what to say and I did not know how to help and I called her Jolene like she asked because she was still the same person I knew. Sometimes I wished she wouldn’t keep doing it. She didn’t have to let anyone else see, I thought. I didn’t understand.

  Her parents didn’t call her at all that week, or come to see her, or demand that she come home. When I was seven I did not think about that.

  When we met Laura in fifth grade, Laura told Jolene she liked her dress. She was outraged that Jolene couldn’t wear it after school. But with Laura there, Jolene felt safe. Laura, flashing braces and a head full of perfect tiny braids, strange to the upper-middle-class white teachers who couldn’t figure out how to treat her like a student instead of an opportunity to demonstrate their open-mindedness. My temper; Laura’s quiet force, standing straight and looking them in the eye and telling them exactly what she thought. Jolene always there between us, the tiny figure with the serene face, twisting her hands in her skirt, safe. Our job.

  I pull the phone away from my ear and check the time. “It’s been hours,” I tell Laura. “Come over. Maybe we can figure out where to go.”

  “I can’t yet,” she says. “Wait, maybe. Hang on.” I hear her talking to Omar in the background and I hang up and get back into the car. I sit there for a minute. I stare through the windshield and then start the car because I am not sure what else to do.

  I think about that as I drive down the back road to Jolene’s house. They live in a development with an iron gate all around it. Every house is the same as the one next to it. The lawns are very green and the stucco of each house is one of three shades of brown.

  That week Jolene stayed with us we ran down the beach every morning and went swimming and climbed the trees in the yard and we told each other an ongoing story, about an undercover princess who travels the world righting wrongs and unleashing justice and we ate a lot of Otter Pops. That is my strongest memory, the taste of salt on my lips, sweet, slushy ice pops, how hot it got that summer. Plunging into the water together, holding hands. The shock of cold.

  Jolene had not slept at night. But when she went back home, she was wearing the clothes my grandmother had taken her shopping for. We dropped her back at her house and watched her carry her duffel bag inside, her narrow shoulders squared and skirt swinging.

  My grandmother’s mouth was grim. She said, “The world can be a cruel place, Ashley.”

  Now at Jolene’s house, there are no cars in the driveway. I stab at my phone keypad. Jolene still doesn’t pick up. Laura doesn’t pick up. My grandmother picks up. I didn’t mean to call her but her number is in my head whenever I am lost.

  She says, “Ashley, are you on your way home?”

  “No,” I say. “Jolene is missing.”

  “She’s here,” my grandmother says.

  “Oh god,” I say, my breath coming out with a whoosh like I’ve been punched. “Oh, okay yes.”

  “Come home now,” she says. I hang up the phone but she calls back immediately. “Bring sugar,” she says. “She likes her tea sweet.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “Then bring it home,” my grandmother says. She hangs up on me this time instead.

  When I get home I find Grandmother and Jolene in the parlor off the kitchen. My grandmother has set out the formal tea service. Four cups and the serving bowls. She must know Laura is on her way too. Jolene is a ball tucked in the corner of the couch. She looks like she is the size of one of my grandmother’s scratchy, musty embroidered throw pillows that my mother used to hide.

  “Jolene,” I say. I have the bag in my arms. I hold it up. “I brought sugar.”

  She looks at me. She’s been crying. She looks at the sugar in my hands and her face contorts and she starts crying again. My grandmother sips her tea.

  I rush over to sit next to Jolene. The couch dips down, bouncing her so her sob hiccups slightly. I put the bag of sugar in her lap. She looks at it and looks at me and she laughs. It’s a short laugh that sounds like the rest of her crying. She does not stop crying. She puts her face down on top of the bag.

  My grandmother catches my eye and nods at the sugar bowl on the coffee table. Jolene has her arms around the bag of sugar now. Holding it like you would hold a teddy bear.

  “Darling,” my grandmother says, leaning forward and putting her fingertips on Jolene’s knee. “Won’t you let Ashley make you a cup of tea?” Jolene looks at each of us, and then down at the sugar on her lap.

  “Right,” she says.

  I pick up the sugar bowl. “I’ll just. I’ll fill this.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Jolene says. My grandmother raises her eyebrow, just one, at us. She sips her tea again.

  “Cookies,” my grandmother says to me. “Cookies are quite good for this sort of thing.” She adds, “Not too many, Ashley.” I turn abruptly away.

  Jolene is still holding the bag of sugar. She hauls herself off the couch and starts fo
r the kitchen ahead of me. She seems so small. Why does she always seem so small to me? Things that are small are breakable, I think. They’re delicate. They’re precious.

  “I’m sorry,” Jolene says when we are standing in the kitchen and I am tipping the sugar into the bowl. She won’t meet my eyes.

  “What are you sorry for?” I ask. “You shouldn’t have run off like that. You scared the shit out of me. But you don’t have to be sorry for it.”

  “I’m sorry!” she says. Her face is doing that thing where it falls apart again and I cannot stand it.

  “Stop that,” I say. “Please, just stop.”

  She looks up at me and I have to drop the sugar bag and put my arms around her shoulders. I have to hug her even if my hugs are awkward and unhelpful. Even if I am unhelpful.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again and then, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to be sorry!”

  “Okay,” I say. “It’s okay.”

  She lets me hug her for few moments before extracting herself. I finish filling the sugar bowl, and then hand it to her.

  “What happened?” I say. “What’s going on?”

  She looks at the sugar bowl and then sets it down on the counter. The front door opens and I know Laura is making her way directly to the kitchen. Jolene tilts her head and I nod. She turns when Laura walks in, lets Laura hug her for a long time.

  “I was scared,” Laura says simply.

  “I was too,” Jolene says.

  We’re all silent. Jolene picks up the lid of the sugar bowl, spins it around in her hands. “Simons stopped me in the hallway when I was on the way to class.” She is biting her lip and her foot is tapping fast. “She stopped me and she said she was worried about my happiness.”

  “She did that to me too today,” I say.

  “How is that her business?” Laura says.

  I turn on the water in the sink and hold the kettle under the faucet, flip the burner on, and set the kettle down.

  Jolene shrugs, and her face is on the edge of falling inward again. She grips the edge of the counter. She says, “She said my parents called.”

  “Why would they call?” Laura says. “Why now?”

  I inspect the excessive number of tea varieties in the cabinet. My father collects teas with pretty boxes or weird names or strange flavors. No one needs to drink chocolate tea. I am trying not to look at Jolene, to just let her talk, but I sneak a glance. She’s clenching her jaw and bouncing just the tiniest bit on the balls of her feet. Laura is sitting cross-legged on the counter, looking at her hands.

  Jolene says, “My parents asked me my plans. My plans for—for my life. For everything . . .” She trails off.

  Laura and I are silent. When Jolene looks up, her eyes are huge. She opens her mouth, and closes it again.

  “What did you say?” I can’t stop from asking. She is fierce about her desire never to talk about the “Next Steps,” that section every website and flyer and pamphlet includes at the end. You are transgender. What do you do next? What do you do about this body you have? And I have gotten loud, furious at the curious people who want to talk about what’s under her clothes. I realize I have always assumed that she’d take Next Steps. That it’s what you’re supposed to do.

  Jolene shrugs.

  “I hope you told them it was none of their business,” Laura says.

  “You’re the only one who can get away with that,” Jolene says quietly.

  “Fuck,” Laura says. I glance over at the door to the parlor, where grandmother is sitting. I don’t know if she can hear us.

  “What did—what did your parents say?” I ask.

  Jolene’s face twitches and she is on the verge of tears again. “My decisions are ‘unacceptable,’ they said. And they called the school to tell them—to tell them that their policy is unacceptable. That I am David. And if the school doesn’t comply—” She takes a deep breath. “I won’t be going back to school. And if I don’t comply, I won’t be going back home.”

  “No,” I say. “No.” I take two big steps over to her and she’s smiling at me, just a small smile. She shakes her head, a quick fond, Oh, Ashley.

  “Oh yes,” she says. She swallows and says, “So, Simons wants to step in. She wants to intervene. She wants to mediate. She wants to get me into a program that can support me through the preliminary steps.”

  “Well that’s good . . . right?” I say hesitantly.

  She goes on. “And my parents want to send me to—to an inpatient program.”

  “Oh hell no,” Laura says. Her voice is low and furious.

  “Simons can help, though,” I say excitedly. “I mean, we can fix it so—”

  “No,” she says. “You can’t fix everything. Especially me.”

  “I don’t think you need to be fixed!” I say. “I didn’t say that.”

  In the next room my grandmother says, “Ashley?”

  I lower my voice. “I’m sorry. I just.” I don’t know what to say.

  “Everyone wants to fix me,” Jolene says. She has gone perfectly still, staring at the counter with her arms crossed over her chest and her narrow shoulders hunched. I put my hand out and then pull back when the kettle goes off. My grandmother calls again when I lift it off the stove. I step around Jolene, who hasn’t moved at all, and peer into the parlor.

  “The tea?” grandmother says.

  “Almost done.”

  “Your voice.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “But how can they do that?” Laura says behind me. “Any of them?”

  Jolene shakes her head. One shoulder goes up. “My parents tell me that while I am under their roof I am subject to their concerns about my psychology and my perversion.”

  I grimace and Laura yelps at the word. “They’re just going to have to—”

  Jolene interrupts hard. “I didn’t tell them what I wanted to do. I don’t know yet.” Her face is miserable, her hands twisting. “But they want to know what I think transitioning will accomplish. ‘Do you really think you’ll be happy when you’re a real girl?’ my father says. Just like that.”

  “Oh Jolene,” Laura says. “No.”

  “Principle Simons told me all about what she said to them. She said that my parents can’t hold me back and I am a butterfly and George Love Academy is a chrysalis and I am meant to be free but it would be cruel to let me do it alone.”

  I turn back to the stove, drop a handful of chamomile bags into the teapot to steep.

  “And my mother said that it would be kinder to be cruel,” Jolene continues. “At least until I come to my senses.”

  She slips between Laura and me. She picks up the teapot with two potholders. I don’t know what to say to her. She carries it out of the room cradled in both hands, and I hear my grandmother say, “Ah, Jolene. Thank you, darling.”

  Laura looks at me and turns to go into the parlor after her.

  I pick up the sugar bowl and follow them. Jolene’s already curled up into a small ball again at the farthest corner of the couch. Laura is sitting on the other side of the coffee table with a cookie in her mouth.

  “You’ll stay in the guest room of course,” my grandmother says, holding her hand out to me for the sugar bowl. A sleepy Soto pads into the room and circles around me, bumping her head into my knees and under my hand. Her fur is warm from the sun. I sit on the floor and put my arms around her neck, but she pulls free and jumps onto the couch, circles twice, and puts her chin down on Jolene’s knee with a sigh.

  Jolene says, “Thank you.” I don’t know if she’s talking to Soto or my grandmother. She reaches out and runs her fingers down Soto’s nose, again and again, and Soto closes her eyes in bliss.

  “You can stay wherever you need to,” I say. My grandmother leans forward to start pouring the tea. “You can do whatever you want to, you don’t have to—”

  “I know that,” Jolene says. Serene face.

  “You’re brave,” I say. My grandmother holds out a cup to me and I climb up off the fl
oor, sit next to Jolene on the couch and pick up the teapot.

  “Shut up, Ashley,” Jolene snaps. “Don’t do that. Don’t be the same as everyone else.”

  I jerk and slosh the hot tea over my hand. “I—I don’t want to be,” I say.

  “The couch, Ashley,” my grandmother snaps.

  Jolene and Laura watch me set the pot down and dab at the brocade with a napkin. “You’re not,” Jolene says, and I look up at her, Soto snoring in her lap. “Usually.”

  Jolene has given me that gift our whole lives—that forgiveness when I am wrong. I can feel the backs of my eyes prickle like I’m going to start bawling too.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “So, then,” my grandmother says. “I can send Ashley’s father over to fetch your things once he’s back from the”—she wiggles her fingers in the air—“the whatever it is he’s doing to occupy himself today.”

  “I can go,” Laura says. “I’m extremely diplomatic.”

  “No,” Jolene and I say at once.

  “I hope you stay,” I say to her.

  She nods.

  Grandmother says, “Good,” and sets her empty teacup down, lifts herself from the armchair. She pauses at the door. “You’ll be just fine, Jolene darling.”

  Jolene has both hands wrapped around her teacup, closing her eyes as she takes a long sip. I reach out to pat Soto, curled up against Jolene’s body like a parenthesis, setting her apart from the rest of the couch.

  I want to smooth Jolene’s hair back and squeeze her hand and promise her that everything is going to be okay. That everything’s fine and no other alternative to fine is possible. But I can’t lie—even for Jolene.

  CHAPTER 13

  The week crawls by. I avoid Hector, and skip lunch, and watch Jolene wilt. By Friday morning I cannot stand it anymore.

  Omar has a show tonight—in an actual San Francisco gallery, Laura says. She was ready to take off herself, speeding up the highway and leaving us all behind, but I had that overwhelming impulse to sweep us all away. Shoot past school and keep going, catch Highway 1 and drive until we see the city lights.