by Cynthia Dane
“Yes. You got down on one knee while Sherman stood over there and shook his head. I thought he didn’t approve of me. Now I know that he didn’t want you proposing to me before you told me the truth. Apparently, he’s been in love with you.”
“I’ll handle that,” I said with a sigh. “Men really are impossible.”
“Honey, you really don’t have any idea. Because you’ve been a man for too long.”
Natalie waved to me. I offered her a smile, but made no promises to go to her soon. “That might be changing soon. But I’m going to need everyone’s help. Including yours.”
Brooke handed me the padlock. “Don’t know how things are going to look in the long run, but I’ll at least help you with that. I think it would be good to help me move on, anyway.”
“Adam’s a good man,” I admitted. The padlock was heavier than I expected, but I rolled it around my palm as if it were lighter than a feather. Back when we attached this thing to the Ponts des Arts, I had thought it a quaint tradition for couples to indulge. Now? I had never expected it to be so powerful. “But you know I already approve of him.”
“Yeah, he is.” Brooke took the padlock back. “You know what I’ll always miss most?”
“Midnight trips to Guam and Venice?”
Brooke chuckled. “No. The way you used to look at me. As if I were the only woman in the world.”
She turned to Natalie before chucking the padlock into the river. It plunked into the Seine, a fitting full-circle to our finished relationship. Yet, at the same time, I had never heard such a satisfying sound. Our romantic love was over and solidly in our pasts. Our lives diverged. In ten years, we may not even live in the same city anymore.
It hurt to think that. Because, at one time, Brooke really was the only woman in the world. The only one that mattered, anyway.
“You were,” I said.
“Not anymore.”
“No, now you’re the only woman in Adam’s world.”
“Natalie’s the only one in yours?”
“Well, I…” Why was I such a wimp in that moment? It should’ve been easy to assert my love for another woman! “We’ll find out, huh?”
Natalie took my hand when we reached the end of the bridge. Her warm smile and kiss of relief to my cheek reminded me of what I wanted to say to Brooke. I didn’t have the chance now.
“She is,” I would have said. “From the moment I saw her in my office, she was the only woman who continued to exist.”
The fact she had stood next to Brooke on that day we met said everything I needed to know about how intertwined our fates were. Anyone who outshone her was where my heart belonged.
Chapter 57
ERICA
I was tired. Tired of the emotional roller coasters we had been on over the past few weeks. While emotions always ran high in my life, it wasn’t usually served with a side of interlopers and fear for my safety.
Brooke was secured and offered a ride home on my chartered plane. Sherman, on the other hand, remained silent while he retired to his room to take a shower and call his wife. Nobody could hear what he said in the privacy of his room. He was a master of lowering his voice to a near whisper.
I dropped by his door and insisted that he join Natalie and me for dinner in our room. Fifteen minutes later, we sat around a baroque dining table that overlooked the Seine. Natalie was the only one who ate her meal with gusto. I occasionally stared at the view I used to love sharing with my ex-fiancée. Sherman caught my eye more than once. Every time it happened, his shoulders tensed more, until he hunched over his plate, neck disappearing into his chest.
Would’ve been funny if tensions weren’t so high.
“She’s right, you know,” he finally said. “I never tried to understand what was going on in your head or what this whole double-life thing was doing to you. I’m one of the few who knew how you ended up in this mess to begin with.”
Natalie looked between us as if we were about to explode. The last thing she should fear, honestly. Yet if she weren’t around, I would have patted my friend on his shoulder and left it at that.
Natalie would continue to stare at us until somebody said something, though. She didn’t yet understand that sometimes things were best left unsaid between Sherman and myself.
“To be fair,” I said, fork clattering to my plate, “I made a point of never bringing it up. I barely understood any of it myself. That’s what the therapists were for, anyway.”
“Still, I should have been there for you like that. Some friend I am if I’m too busy wishing for something that could never realistically happen.”
Good Lord. Did he have to admit it out loud like that? Natalie was right there! Oh, and now she was trying to look like she wasn’t listening. Cute. “Why could it never happen? Because you’re not my type?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Sherman grumbled. “Most lesbians don’t make a point of sleeping with men after affirming we’re not their types.”
The way he said it made me groan. “Speaking of not knowing what’s going through my head… never said I was a lesbian.”
Sherman sighed. Natalie rubbed my arm, offering her treasured reassurance. I knew they were both frustrated with me in different ways. I didn’t care. This came with the territory of being in my inner circle.
I never knew how to label myself, and I had given up trying.
“Anyway,” I stood up, disenchanted with my half-eaten dinner. “Don’t harangue yourself. Let’s be like Brooke and move on. Besides, we don’t need to give your wife reason to find you’re in love with me.”
Fine thing if I caused Sherman and his wife to divorce. That was on my conscience as I went into the bathroom and thought about that poor woman, who probably had no idea her husband was in one-sided love with his boss. Someone she thought was a man.
God, it made my head hurt. How many other heads did I hurt simply by existing?
I popped out of the bathroom a few minutes later and caught my girlfriend’s eye in the hallway. I went into the bedroom and shut the door behind me without saying a word. The bed called to me. Not to sleep, but to sit upon it and stare at the view as if it could ease my mind.
It couldn’t.
“Hey.” Natalie’s voice followed the light knocking of her knuckles. “Everything okay?”
Swallowing, I assessed the erratic beating of my heart and the dark memories dwelling deep inside of my mind. “No.” Damnit. What if she took my blunt nature personally? “Not because of you, though. You’re awesome.”
She preened before me, her hair cascading from bunches pushed upon her scalp every time she turned around. A smile touched my lips. “I am,” Natalie said with a happy sigh. “Awesome, that is. Glad you can appreciate it, Ms. Mann.”
“I can’t imagine any other woman on the planet could go through everything you have since September and stay by my side. I don’t have that much money.”
She shrugged. “You’ve got enough. Promise me a Ferrari and I’m in.”
“A Ferrari?” She had good taste. During one of my benders the year before, I bought a Ferrari. Eventually gave it to one of my business associates as a birthday present.
“To match your Lambo, of course,” Natalie said. “Ooh, we could get them in the same colors! Christmas will be here before you know it, babe, make it count.”
Make Christmas count? First time in years I had a girlfriend, so she best bet her ass I would make it a Christmas to remember! “I plan on making Christmas count, trust me.”
“My ring size is five, by the way.”
How did she know what I wanted to buy her? “Would you get over here and let me kiss you?”
She hurried to me, butt firmly planting in my lap once it was ready for her. The grace with which she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and settled into my embrace made me want to kiss her all over. I intended to. Kiss her, that is. I’d start from her crown – built for a tiara – and take my time making my way down to her navel. Then the fun would really begin.
“I keep thinking that you’re right, Nat.” I held her closer to my chest. “I need to rip off the bandage and be honest with the world. The older I get, the harder it is to live like this. It’s time for my brother to be properly buried. There’s a grave with my name on it that says I died twenty-five years ago.” I kept thinking about it. Like if I obsessed over what it said, I would somehow make it right with only my mind. “It’s not fair to him or me. Beyond my own issues, I think that’s one of the things that’s fucked me up the most. We’ve both been forgotten.”
“I’m sure that wherever he is, he understands.”
“It’s one thing for his spirit to understand what I’ve had to do. It’s another for me to condone it.”
Natalie lightly kissed my cheek. “Whatever you need, I’m there.”
“You know what I need right now?” My eyes undressed Natalie, and it took an act of God to keep from undressing her with my hands. “I need to know exactly who and what I am. Because that’s the first thing everyone is going to ask me.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I do, though. If I’m going to bury Eric, I need to know who Erica is. I don’t want to publicly bring her to life only for her to flounder A part of me feels like I’ve been training half my life for this.”
Natalie hopped off my lap and stood before me. She may not be the tallest woman in the world, but good Heavens, she has presence. Her perfect posture, her commanding countenance… I could stare at it and fall in love with it every day for the rest of my life. “Like I said,” she said, “whatever I can do to help, I’ll do.”
“Who do you think I am?”
Natalie crossed her arms. “I can’t tell you that! I have my own daily identity crisis. Babe, I don’t know if you’re a woman or genderqueer, let alone a lesbian! You gotta tell me that stuff!”
“That’s the rub, isn’t it? If there’s one thing I’ve discovered, it’s that I do not appreciate the company of men.” I looked away, inadvertently remembering uncomfortable truths. “In that context, anyway.”
“So you exclusively like women,” Natalie asked. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m forever asking myself if I like women because that’s how I was born, or if it’s because I was raised as a boy. From the moment my father decided I was his son instead of his daughter, he impressed upon me how important it was to be discerning about the women I dated and eventually married. The fact I was biologically female didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t give him grandchildren unless I became pregnant. How was a wife going to do that for me? He spoke as if I could impregnate any woman if I put my mind to it.” Sometimes I truly wonder about my father’s state of mind. My mother basically has dementia. What did my father have, let alone after what he had done to himself and those around him?
“I mean…” Natalie giggled. “You definitely fuck hard enough.”
“I’ve never been attracted to men,” I continued, ignoring that flattering treatment. “I only slept with one so I could know for sure, but I only had more questions than answers afterward.” Trust me. They were not constructive questions. “Is it really me? Am I attracted to you because I am, or because I was conditioned to find you attractive?”
“Erica.” Natalie grabbed my shoulders and looked me dead in the eyes. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re probably never going to know.”
My heart crashed into the pit of my stomach. “No?” Never know? She might as well kick me in the crotch while she was at it!
“No.” She shook her head. I wish there were more women in this world who still made me feel a little hopeful with a mere shake of their heads. “I may not be a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s some deeply ingrained stuff that can’t be counteracted. Odds are, had you been raised as a girl like me, you would’ve still been attracted to all of the women you’ve slept with.” A gleam in her eye implied she would have liked to see that fate. “But your life would still have been different.”
Heavy, wasn’t it? Heavy enough to make me flop back onto the bed, arms splayed wide. “Too much baggage. God damnit.”
Natalie joined me on the bed. Her added weight barely affected the displacement of the sheets. “You’re telling me. I found out that I’m into girls after all. I was in the same boat as you. Experimented with someone I wasn’t used to, and thought it wasn’t for me. Turned out I simply hadn’t been with my type. Sex and gender didn’t have much to do with it.” She tugged at the collar of her shirt. What was she doing? Shoving cleavage into my face? What kind of point was she trying to make? “I’m your type, okay? You’re my type. That’s all the world has to know.”
“What are you going to tell people? You a lesbian?” Natalie Chen: Lesbian. Those were some gold-embossed business cards I would have liked to give her.
“Probably not. Just ‘cause I’m only riding your dick for the rest of my life doesn’t mean I’m suddenly the gayest chick at the dyke march.” Well, that was one colorful way to put it. I barely knew what the hell any of those words meant. “Like you, I’ve got some exploration to do in my head. I’m not worried about it, though. Labels are kinda meaningless, anyway. Especially if they cause you so much strife that you want to choke.”
I rolled toward her. “I’m about ninety percent sure that I’m a woman.” I couldn’t be so close to her and not touch her. My finger. Her little nose. She was lucky I didn’t draw a whole line down her face, taking in every contour and counting every little freckle. “A woman who’s only been attracted to other women. Hm.” Suppose it may have been fairly simple, after all.
“Sounds like a lesbian to me,” Natalie said with a grin.
The thought of walking around calling myself a lesbian was something I batted around before, but for some reason, I was uncomfortable. Perhaps it was because a gay woman was the exact opposite of what I was raised to be.
And it didn’t help that my father would have had a heart attack to know his daughter grew up to be gay. His son that happened to have a vagina? That was fine! Still heterosexual! Good family imaging! A dyke for a daughter? I would have been cut out of the will… or worse. I would’ve had a different set of hellish tutors.
“Think I might have to try that on for a while before making a final judgment,” I said.
Natalie couldn’t stop grinning. “Keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be final. There are lots of things in this world that aren’t necessarily permanent the moment you make them yours.”
“That’s not true.”
“Hm?”
My teeth nipped that enticing nose. “You became pretty permanent the moment I chose you.”
Natalie spent so much of her time trying to make me feel better and run my damned life, that I lived to see her curl up on the bed in a fit of overwhelmed giggles. Yup. Still had it in me.
***
In the next three days before we were due to return to America, I had two – no, three – important feats to accomplish. While Brooke planned more of her wedding with Adam over Skype, I tended to what business matters I could and showed Natalie to my favorite corners of Paris. (While minding the intimate places I once shared with Brooke. No, thank you.) While hiking to the top of the Eiffel Tower was a mainstay, I was more concerned with a trek through the Louvre and dinner on a private vessel upon the Seine. Every time Natalie watched me speak in fluent French, I thrived. It hadn’t been impressive in front of fellow French-speaker Brooke. If anything, she always corrected my accent.
Natalie promised to teach me better Mandarin. I told her we’d start as soon as we returned home.
My third task was to anxiously prepare my debut as a woman. Natalie’s plan was shared with Brooke, who took it upon herself to help plan both my coming out and her wedding. I daresay she was more preoccupied with my business than her own.
Apparently, as I was informed, I needed a new wardrobe. My bespoke suits wouldn’t cut it if I really wanted to convince the wor
ld I was a woman.
“Last I checked,” I said as my female entourage literally dragged me into a high-end boutique in downtown Paris, “wearing dresses was not required of being a woman!”
Natalie gave me an exasperated look. Meanwhile, I perspired. “Just keep an open mind, hon. We picked this place for a reason.”
I glanced around the gallery. There I was, standing in my tailored trousers and an androgynous dress shirt over my binder, surrounded by women’s clothing meant to go on my body. But when I expected to be surrounded by cocktail dresses and in-your-face office wear that left nothing to the imagination, I was somewhat relieved to find a female suit tailoring station and a conservative selection of dresses and blouses. It was certainly more cohesive than my slapdash collection of dresses and mismatching skirts and blouses.
“Nothing is required.” Brooke jumped right into one of her favorite activities – shopping. Before I knew it, there was a black office dress in my arms. “You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want. We want to make sure you get some damned clothes that fit you for once. Clothes you’ll wear outside of the house, mind!”
“It’ll be fine,” Natalie reassured me. “Keep an open mind.”
Brooke compared the dress to another one on the rack. The way she kept looking back at me made me feel like a walking mannequin. “You’re dying to see me in that dress, aren’t you?” I asked my girlfriend.
“Curiosity!” Natalie exclaimed with a nod. “You’ve got this killer muscular body that needs to be shown off!”
“I don’t think that’s why we’re here.”
“While we’re at it…” Brooke marched across the shop to the lingerie section and chastised Nick for staring at lacy panties. He sheepishly looked away and pretended he had been watching over us the whole time. “Let’s get you some decent underwear. Those sports bras will be travesties in clothes like these.”
I clapped my hand against my chest. “These sports bras are comfortable!” Never mind I wasn’t wearing one. All that mattered was that my collection of sports bras were carefully chosen for how good they felt. I still wasn’t comfortable with traditional women’s bras. They… exposed a little too much for my liking.