The Shadows Behind

by Kristi Petersen Schoonover

  Carefully, I bent and reached past the dangly bits. Sure enough, behind them, there was a hole.

  Damn.

  Definitely a question for the gynecologist.

  I looked at the clock . . . they still weren’t open yet.

  The period stash yielded a host of possibilities, but I had to squash the old man down into a lump in order for it to stay in place. It probably didn’t help that the panties were decades old and stretched to California.

  Clothing that kept the todger out of sight was also going to be a hurdle—mostly what I wore to work were three piece suits with pencil skirts, which stretched flat across the lap; there wasn’t exactly room to hide much. At the back of my closet was a Hot Topic two-piece Halloween costume, the skirt of which had an attached crinoline. Perfect! Okay . . . maybe not totally perfect; it was brocade with gold thread and patterned with the No-Face character from Spirited Away . . . but it would have to do. I paired it with a white blouse and a black sweater. It didn’t look half bad.

  I tried not to think about what I was going to do if this thing didn’t go away. I couldn’t keep wearing the same skirt to work.

  At last, my gynecologist’s office was open. I called and got the usual If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial 911 message over a bad Muzak version of Def Leppard’s “Animal,” then was on hold for a solid ten minutes before a nasal woman named Joan thanked me for holding and asked for my name, date of birth, and what I wanted.

  “I need to see Doctor Laron.”

  “Is this for a checkup?” She tapped the keys on her keyboard. “Let’s see . . . I have . . . Thursday, October 20 at 3 p.m.”

  Three weeks away.

  “I need something—soon. Like today or tomorrow.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s . . . I just noticed this morning there’s an unusual growth . . . on my . . .”

  What the hell do I say?

  “. . . labia.”

  There was a moment of silence. Joan was probably wondering who the hell felt up her labia every day.

  “Hang on, Marietta.”

  I hated when people called me by my given name.

  “I’m going to have the nurse call you back.”

  “No, I just . . . I just need to see the doctor as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll have the nurse call you. Is this 7569 number the best way to reach you?”

  I gave up. “Yes.” I pulled my briefcase off the chair in the corner and tossed it on the bed. “Yes, that’s fine.” Nothing said I had to answer the phone.

  “Okay, just hang in there, Marietta. She’s going to go over these notes and look at your chart and she’ll give you a call.”

  Wonderful.

  I finished pulling myself together and made the somewhat challenging—I drove a stick, so it felt like a lump was moving around every time I put in the clutch—drive to work.

  At a stoplight, I pulled up in front of a Honda sporting the bumper sticker Nice Truck—Sorry About Your Small Penis.

  I instinctively looked down. Pecker was still present, and I wondered for a second if I’d measure up to the bumper sticker’s standards.

  My cell phone buzzed again. Jim: lets just talk if u won’t come over pls call.

  I ignored it, but the more horrifying thing was that I knew I would call him. I had to admit that Jim, as much of a failure as he was as a good boyfriend, wasn’t all bad. There was familiarity in him, something I recognized—my dad had left us when I was eight. I had always wanted to please him, but no A+ essay about lobsters, winning a medal during PE week, or baking him his favorite hermit cookies (even if they did come out looking like freakish amoebas, they still tasted good) was going to do it. But Jim: Jim I could get a second shot at. If I worked hard enough, if I kept trying to please him, I could make him into the boyfriend I wanted and needed.

  The marble-floored office lobby was its hustle of well-dressed go-getters rushing to the elevators to ensure they were early to their desks.

  Zig, the tall, lion-maned Derring-Do Donut guy who sold more Kona blend coffee than he did chocolate frosteds, hoisted my morning black-two-sugars in the air.

  The captain went to full-on attention.

  Is that Zig or the coffee doing that? I didn’t even think of anything!

  I fumbled to shift the briefcase over my skirt.

  “Hi, MJ.” He was always bashful with me. This time he looked surprised and eyed me up and down.

  I pulled a five out of my blazer pocket and tried to take the coffee, but he swooped it out of reach. “Something’s different about you!”

  Oh, no.

  “Come on, Zig, I gotta go.” I did, actually. I had to pee again.

  “I got it!” He grinned, showing his shockingly perfect teeth for someone who owned a donut cart. “Your skirt! Studio Ghibli!”

  I nodded politely and he handed me the cup. I hurried away.

  Upstairs, no one noticed as I walked down the cubicle-buttressed hall to my office, wondering what I should do with the pictures of Jim living there. I felt a twinge of sadness: there were pictures of us camping, hiking, whale watching. I didn’t want to toss them yet, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to look at them all day, either.

  It was amazing how things could change over a weekend.

  Ginny, Mr. Pancefoot’s secretary who hailed from somewhere in Texas, sipped her coffee and stared at her computer screen, perusing barbecue recipes. She held up a delicate hand to stop me. “Well, don’t you look nervous as a fly in the glue pot.”

  I held my breath.

  She got up out of her chair and set her hand on my arm. “What’s goin’ on?”

  I heaved a deep sigh. “Jim and I, we—broke up.”

  She cocked her head to the side; her bell-shaped bob didn’t move. “Well.” She smiled. “At last. He was crooked as a dog’s hind leg and if that ain’t a fact God’s a possum. You just come right over here and sit with me and have some tea.” She tugged on my arm, the delicate silk of her pink blouse shimmering in the harsh fluorescent light.

  “No, really, Ginny. I have coffee.”

  “We have time! Pussyfoot won’t be out for a little while. He’s chawin’ away on a conference call.”

  Just then, Mr. Pancefoot’s door opened to reveal my sweaty-shirted boss, a flame-haired, bedraggled Barney Rubble who looked like he’d slept on the faux leather couch in his certificate-spackled office.

  I couldn’t help it. I wondered what his wang looked like. My eyes strayed to his crotch.

  Then I shuddered at the thought.

  He eyed me. “What are you looking at, MJ?”

  I jerked away and stared at the corner of Ginny’s desk. I hated to throw her under the bus, but . . .

  “Nothing.” I straightened up and smoothed my hair. “I need to get back to work.”

  “Wait.” He crept up to Ginny’s desk. “Wait, what did you see on Ginny’s desk?”

  Ginny gave me a dirty look.

  I shrugged, turned, went into my office and closed the door.

  When I picked up a framed photo of Jim and me camping up at Lake Waramaug last summer, him trying to shove a marshmallow in my mouth, I got a boner.

  ~~**~~

  Jim’s texting was relentless. Pls call me devolved into this isn’t over and I just bought lobsters and champagne for 2nite.

  My heart was starting to soften. I’d put three years into this relationship. I shouldn’t just throw it away, should I?

  Clearly, my new peen wasn’t having any less confusing of a day. It rose when the numbers on my reports added up and fell when Ginny brought me a cup of coffee; it shriveled when the afternoon lunch cart rolled by and hardened every time I thought of Jim and lobster and champagne and butter . . . butter . . .

  I couldn’t stand it. I picked up my phone to text Jim: yes, yes, I’ll be over at seven and we’ll talk when one of my coworkers—Mike—stopped in. I’d always liked and confided in him, and we’d even knocked back a few at The Thirs
ty Goat on several occasions (maybe he was the guy waiting in the wings). My office flooded with the scent of his cologne—wood and musky oranges, and his maroon-striped tie was slightly crooked. At six foot one and broad in the chest, Mike was the opposite of Jim, who was just about my height and wiry. “What’s up, MJ? How’s your day?”

  My face flushed and my cock swelled. I grabbed a file and pretended to flip through it.

  “Last day of the month, so, you know, very busy,” I said. “Very busy. How about you?”

  “Just crap,” he said. “Filing from last year I need to take care of.”

  The way he’d motioned with the manila folders when he’d said crap turned me on; the way he’d just admitted that he was a total rebel—my God, filing stuff from last year?—turned me on.

  My crotch throbbed.

  He winked. “You know how it is.”

  I shifted uncomfortably, the period panties stretching to accommodate the bulge. “I do.”

  “Well,” he stood up.

  I could swear I saw his muscles flex beneath his shirt.

  “Y’know, back to the grind.” He rested his hand on the doorknob. “You want this door open or closed?”

  My dick pulsed so badly it hurt, and there was only one way to take care of that.

  “Closed is fine.”

  At last he was gone, but there was a bigger problem—where was I going to go? My office wasn’t at all private; it had pane glass windows that overlooked the bustling cubicle floor. Anyone could walk into the bathroom, and somebody was always rummaging in the supply closet.

  The file room had no windows and needed a key. It wasn’t the most romantic place in the world and reeked of aging paper and printer toner, but I’d have plenty of warning.

  I barely had the room’s door closed behind me before it happened. Warm and wet seeped into my panties. I lifted my skirt to survey the damage.

  A drawer slammed.

  Oh, God! Had somebody been in here the whole time?

  Mike literally stared at my crotch and dumped the contents of his paper coffee cup on the floor.

  “Holy shit, MJ!”

  My mouth hung open.

  “Really? Reduced to masturbating in the file closet?”

  “No!” I shouted, then lowered my voice. “I mean, yes . . . but it’s not like that . . . it’s—”

  Suddenly it occurred to me that I should just tell him everything. He was a guy, after all. Maybe he could help me. “Come here.”

  I took his arm and led him deeper into the crevice between the file cabinets full of W-9s and fingerprint cards going back at least twenty years, and into a corner by the emergency exit that dumped into the parking lot. “If I show you this,” I said, “you can’t laugh.”

  He looked pale.

  “Swear,” I said.

  He glanced back around the corner, toward the entrance. Then he looked at me again. “Okay.”

  I shut my eyes and lifted my skirt.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Shhh! Someone’ll hear!”

  He paled and looked down at the floor. “Have you been a guy all along?”

  “No—it’s—”

  “You got a sex change? When you said you and Jim were on vacation in Bermuda last year—”

  “No—”

  His face sagged. “I knew it. I knew you guys were into weirdness.”

  “No! Stop!”

  There was a suspended breath and the hum of the fluorescent lights between us.

  He heaved a sigh and set his hands on his hips. “What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I—I woke up with it this morning.”

  “You what?”

  “I woke up with it this morning! I broke up with Jim last night—”

  “Oh crap, it happened to you too?”

  I was confused. I didn’t think he had anyone in his life; most of our talks revolved around asking him for guy advice about Jim, office politics, what was happening on The Last Man on Earth, his nieces, and what we did on our weekends. When we were drunk at happy hour, we got deep—about things like perception and death and would you take a one-way ticket to a Mars colony—deeper than any conversation I’d ever had with Jim in between all that banging, now that I thought about it. But none of that deep stuff had ever been about his relationship. “You broke up with somebody?”

  “No. No!” His face lit up. “I woke up with a vagina last week!”

  My mouth fell open. “What?” A hundred questions. “What did you do? Did you talk to a doctor?” I eyed his crotch. “Did it go away, did it—”

  “I’m living with it. It’s not too bad, actually. Except for the strange chocolate cravings.” He rubbed his chin and looked me right in the eye. “But I did some reading.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. So, in the animal kingdom, right? There are animals that change gender. Clownfish start off male, but if the female dies they become female. Male garter snakes can mimic females, copy their behavior exactly. Cuttlefish can appear female on one side and male on the other, depending on who’s around.”

  “That doesn’t happen to humans.”

  “How else do you explain this? I made a decision, I woke up with a vagina. You made a decision, you woke up with a penis.” He grabbed my hands. “We’re changing. Because our environment is about to change.”

  It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “I haven’t made a decision yet. I’m thinking I should maybe get back together with Jim.”

  He stared at me.

  His hands were warm and encompassing; meaty and strong. My first instinct would’ve been to pull mine away, but I was strangely compelled to keep them where they were. “What was your decision?”

  He looked sheepish and let me go. “After we went to The Thirsty Goat last Sunday. I realized.”

  The words hung in the air.

  “What?”

  He hesitated.

  “Tell me.”

  More hesitation. Then he said, “I wanted to ask you out. If you were really serious with Jim or not. If you were willing to break up with him—to go out with me.”

  I felt the pressure down there again. I had a thing for Jim, I did. The romance was awesome. The sex was awesome. But could he ever be the boyfriend I needed? Was it worth the time? And Mike . . . well, he was more like a friend, and was I attracted to him in that way, really?

  My cell phone, in my sweater pocket, chimed Jim’s familiar ring.

  “That’s him.” Mike nodded at my pocket. “Isn’t it.”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “Listen, I can see this was a dumb idea.” He went to the door.

  “Mike, wait—”

  He let himself out of the room, and the door slammed. There was an eerie echo.

  I felt the lump between my legs and thought about all the trouble it had given me that morning, but at the moment, it felt like an old friend. I thought about waking up out of a dead sleep to being fucked, how hurt Jim had looked in the icy rain, roasted marshmallows and champagne and lobster and butter. I thought about The Thirsty Goat and tossing back a few and The Last Man on Earth and one-way tickets to Mars.

  I thought about the fact that it was four o’clock and the nurse from the gynecologist’s office hadn’t called me back yet.

  When I only had the vagina and Mike only had the penis, it would never have worked out between us.

  But now that we had both, it just might.

  CANDLE GARDEN

  I t used to be that in each of Lilly’s candle gardens she had a favorite, one that melted slower or had milkier wax; since the fire, she found she loved each one equally, as one might love multiple children.

  In the bedroom, a trio was lit: silver, gold, and forest pillars set in a bowl of glass stones. Flames jitterbugged on the pineapple wallpaper. The pattern was incongruous, and the paper peeled in the corners where she’d matched the seams. Wickford had approved the repairs rather than lose the structur
e altogether, and so, long after she’d scrubbed the smoke-damaged beams and replaced the rugs, she had spent torpid afternoons mixing paste and listening to appeals regarding the removal of fungus from the colonial-era stones in the yard. “Take the money and improve the grounds, too,” her pregnant friend Iris, who still had her two other children, said one afternoon.

  “The house is on the historic registry. I don’t want things to change,” Lilly answered, climbing down off her ladder. “Why don’t we have some tea?”

  The pineapples flickered: dark and light then dark again, and one of them blinked at her; she could see a face if she looked hard enough. The psychiatrist told her that she merely did something called pareidolia, mentally arranging leaves, smoke, coffee grounds, and patterns into faces. But she didn’t believe that. She believed the pineapples pulsed with the spirits of her dead girls: Lucy had been four, Edna had been six, and Amarinthe had just turned seven. They had begged to sleep with the gardens lit because they believed the candles kept away the ghost of a man who shredded the wallpaper with his squiggled nails. “He tears faces so we can see what people look like on the other side,” Amarinthe had said.

  She wondered if the man had burned like her girls, the night they had cried from that very room where they couldn’t break the window with glass so old it warped the yard’s lilies into lavender smears. Her husband had gone back in to get them and had never emerged; by the time the firemen had arrived there was only her, a cotton bathrobe, a dash of soot on her cheek. What remained of her family was charred swaddling.

  She didn’t believe her beloved candle gardens caused the fire. That night three summers ago, the lightning had lit up the very back teeth of her defenseless girls—yes, it had—and she wondered what arrow she had shot at God to make him so angry.

  She was going to take something back from God. And Jeremy was going to help her.

  In Jeremy’s hands, wax was flesh. He crafted candles in shapes for the shops in town: glittering pale blue sea shells for Operculum; goddesses for the Grateful Heart; apples for the outdoor tables at Wickford Gourmet; flowers for Newport’s mansion weddings. Yes, Jeremy did amazing things with wax. He was twenty years her junior but seemed older because of his shock of skunk-stripe hair. “My dad, he went gray by the time he was thirty,” he said. “You’d think my older brothers’ would’a popped first, but they didn’t.” She secretly wondered if all that melting and burning, all that paraffin and dye, had made him old.