Middlesex (61 page)

   In my last weeks in San Francisco I read everything Zora gave me, trying to educate myself. I learned what varieties we hermaphrodites came in. I read about hyperadrenocorticism and feminizing testes and something called cryptorchidism, which applied to me. I read about Kleinfelter’s Syndrome, where an extra X chromosome renders a person tall, eunuchoid, and temperamentally unpleasant. I was more interested in historical than medical material. From Zora’s manuscript I became acquainted with the hijras of India, the
kwolu-aatmwols
of the Sambia in Papua New Guinea, and the
guevedoche
of the Dominican Republic. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, writing in Germany in 1860, spoke of
das dritte Geschlecht,
the third gender. He called himself a Uranist and believed that he had a female soul in a male body. Many cultures on earth operated not with two genders but with three. And the third was always special, exalted, endowed with mystical gifts.
   One cold drizzly night I gave it a try. Zora was out. It was a Sunday and we were off work. I sat in a half-lotus position on the floor and closed my eyes. Concentrating, prayerful, I waited for my soul to leave my body. I tried to fall into a trance state or become an animal. I did my best, but nothing happened. As far as special powers went, I didn’t seem to have any. A Tiresias I wasn’t.
   All of which brings me to a Friday night in late January. It was after midnight. Carmen was in the tank, doing her Esther Williams. Zora and I were in the dressing room, maintaining traditions (thermos, cannabis). In the mermaid suit, Z. was none too mobile and stretched out across the couch, a Piscean odalisque. Her tail hung over the arm bolsters, dripping. She wore a T-shirt over her top. It had Emily Dickinson on it.
   Sounds from the tank were piped into the dressing room. Bob Presto was giving his spiel: “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for a truly electrifying experience?”
   Zora and I mouthed along with the next line: “Are you ready for some high voltage?”
   “I’ve had enough of this place,” said Zora. “I really have.”
   “Should we quit?”
   “We should.”
   “What would we do instead?”
   “Mortgage banking.”
   There was a splash in the tank. “But where is Ellie’s eel today? It seems to be hiding, ladies and gentlemen. Could it be extinct? Maybe a fisherman caught it. That’s right, ladies and gentleman, maybe Ellie’s eel is for sale out on Fisherman’s Wharf.”
   “Bob thinks he’s a witty person,” said Zora.
   “Banish such worries, ladies and gentlemen. Ellie wouldn’t let us down. Here it is, folks. Have a look at Ellie’s electric eel!”
   A strange noise came over the speaker. A door banging. Bob Presto shouted: “Hey, what the hell? You’re not allowed in here.”
   And then the sound system went dead.
   Eight years earlier, policemen had raided a blind pig on Twelfth Street in Detroit. Now, at the start of 1975, they raided Sixty-Niners. The action provoked no riot. The patrons quickly emptied the booths, fanning out into the street and hurrying off. We were led downstairs and lined up with the other girls.
   “Well, hello there,” said the officer when he came to me. “And how old might you be?”
   From the police station I was allowed one call. And so I finally broke down, gave in, and did it: I called home.
   My brother answered. “It’s me,” I said. “Cal.” Before Chapter Eleven had time to respond, it all rushed out of me. I told him where I was and what had happened. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad,” I said.
   “I can’t,” said Chapter Eleven. “I can’t tell Dad.” And then in an interrogative tone that showed he could hardly believe it himself, my brother told me that there had been an accident and that Milton was dead.

Air-Ride

   In my official capacity as assistant cultural attaché, but on an unofficial errand, I attended the Warhol opening at the Neue Nationalgallerie. Within the famous Mies van der Rohe building, I passed by the famous silk-screened faces of the famous pop artist. The Neue Nationalgallerie is a wonderful art museum except for one thing: there’s nowhere to hang the art. I didn’t care much. I stared out the glass walls at Berlin and felt stupid. Did I think there would be artists at an art opening? There were only patrons, journalists, critics, and socialites.
   After accepting a glass of wine from a passing waiter, I sat down in one of the leather and chrome chairs that line the perimeter. The chairs are by Mies, too. You see knockoffs everywhere but these are original, worn-out by now, the black leather browning at the edges. I lit a cigar and smoked, trying to make myself feel better.
   The crowd chattered, circulating among the Maos and Marilyns. The high ceiling made the acoustics muddy. Thin men with shaved heads darted by. Gray-haired women draped in natural shawls showed their yellow teeth. Out the windows, the Staatsbibliotek was visible across the way. The new Potsdamer Platz looked like a mall in Vancouver. In the distance construction lights illuminated the skeletons of cranes. Traffic surged in the street below. I took a drag on my cigar, squinting, and caught sight of my reflection in the glass.
   I said before I look like a Musketeer. But I also tend to resemble (especially in mirrors late at night) a faun. The arched eyebrows, the wicked grin, the flames in the eyes. The cigar jutting up from between my teeth didn’t help.
   A hand tapped me on the back. “Cigar faddist,” said a woman’s voice.
   In Mies’s black glass I recognized Julie Kikuchi.
   “Hey, this is Europe,” I countered, smiling. “Cigars aren’t a fad here.”
   “I was into cigars way back in college.”
   “Oh yeah,” I challenged her. “Smoke one, then.”
   She sat down in the chair next to mine and held out her hand. I took another cigar from my jacket and handed it to her along with the cigar cutter and matches. Julie held the cigar under her nose and sniffed. She rolled it between her fingers to test its moistness. Clipping off the end, she put it in her mouth, struck a match, and got it going, puffing serially.
   “Mies van der Rohe smoked cigars,” I said, by way of promotion.
   “Have you ever seen a picture of Mies van der Rohe?” said Julie.
   “Point taken.”
   We sat side by side, not speaking, only smoking, facing the interior of the museum. Julie’s right knee was jiggling. After a while I swiveled around so I was facing her. She turned her face toward me.
   “Nice cigar,” she allowed.
   I leaned toward her. Julie leaned toward me. Our faces got closer until finally our foreheads were almost touching. We stayed like that for ten or so seconds. Then I said, “Let me tell you why I didn’t call you.”
   I took a long breath and began: “There’s something you should know about me.”
 

* * *

   My story began in 1922 and there were concerns about the flow of oil. In 1975, when my story ends, dwindling oil supplies again had people worried. Two years earlier the Organization of Arab Oil Exporting Countries had begun an embargo. There were brownouts in the U.S. and long lines at the pumps. The President announced that the lights on the White House Christmas tree would not be lit, and the gas-tank lock was born.
   Scarcity was weighing on everybody’s mind in those days. The economy was in recession. Across the nation families were eating dinner in the dark, the way we used to do on Seminole under one lightbulb. My father, however, took a dim view of conservation policies. Milton had come a long way from the days when he counted kilowatts. And so, on the night he set out to ransom me, he remained at the wheel of an enormous, gas-guzzling Cadillac.
   My father’s last Cadillac: a 1975 Eldorado. Painted a midnight blue that looked nearly black, the car bore a strong resemblance to the Batmobile. Milton had all the doors locked. It was just past 2A.M. The roads in this downriver neighborhood were full of potholes, the curbs choked with weeds and litter. The powerful high beams picked up sprays of broken glass in the street, as well as nails, shards of metal, old hubcaps, tin cans, a flattened pair of men’s underpants. Beneath an overpass a car had been stripped, tires gone, windshield shattered, all the chrome detailing peeled away, and the engine missing. Milton stepped on the gas, ignoring the scarcity not only of petroleum but of many other things as well. There was, for instance, a scarcity of hope on Middlesex, where his wife no longer felt any stirrings in her spiritual umbilicus. There was a scarcity of food in the refrigerator, of snacks in the cupboards, and of freshly ironed shirts and clean socks in his dresser. There was a scarcity of social invitations and phone calls, as my parents’ friends grew afraid to call a house that existed in a limbo between exhilaration and grief. Against the pressure of all this scarcity, Milton flooded the Eldorado’s engine, and when that wasn’t enough, he opened the briefcase on the seat beside him and stared in dashboard light at the twenty-five thousand dollars in cash bundled inside.
   My mother had been awake when Milton slipped out of bed less than an hour earlier. Lying on her back, she heard him dressing in the dark. She hadn’t asked him why he was getting up in the middle of the night. Once upon a time, she would have, but not anymore. Since my disappearance, daily routines had crumbled. Milton and Tessie often found themselves in the kitchen at four in the morning, drinking coffee. Only when Tessie heard the front door close had she become concerned. Next Milton’s car started up and began backing down the drive. My mother listened until the engine faded away. She thought to herself with surprising calmness, “Maybe he’s leaving for good.” To her list of runaway father and runaway daughter she now added a further possibility: runaway husband.
   Milton hadn’t told Tessie where he was going for a number of reasons. First, he was afraid she would stop him. She would tell him to call the police, and he didn’t want to call the police. The kidnapper had told him not to involve the law. Besides, Milton had had enough of cops and their blasé attitude. The only way to get something done was to do it yourself. On top of all that, this whole thing might be a wild-goose chase. If he told Tessie about it she would only worry. She might call Zoë and then he’d get an earful from his sister. In short, Milton was doing what he always did when it came to important decisions. Like the time he joined the Navy, or the time he moved us all to Grosse Pointe, Milton did whatever he wanted, confident that he knew best.
   After the last mysterious phone call, Milton had waited for another. The following Sunday morning it came.
   “Hello?”
   “Good morning, Milton.”
   “Listen, whoever you are. I want some answers.”
   “I didn’t call to hear what you want, Milton. What’s important is what I want.”
   “I want my daughter. Where is she?”
   “She’s here with me.”
   The music, or singing, was still perceptible in the background. It reminded Milton of something long ago.
   “How do I know you have her?”
   “Why don’t you ask me a question? She’s told me a lot about her family. Quite a lot.”
   The rage surging through Milton at that moment was nearly unbearable. It was all he could do to keep from smashing the phone against the desk. At the same time, he was thinking, calculating.
   “What’s the name of the village her grandparents came from?”
   “Just a minute.” The phone was covered. Then the voice said, “Bithynios.”
   Milton’s knees went weak. He sat down at the desk.
   “Do you believe me yet, Milton?”
   “We went to these caverns in Tennessee once. A real rip-off tourist trap. What were they called?”
   Again the phone was covered. In a moment the voice replied, “The Mammothonics Caves.”
   At that Milton shot up out of his chair again. His face darkened and he tugged at his collar to help himself breathe.
   “Now I have a question, Milton.”
   “What?”
   “How much is it worth to you to get your daughter back?”
   “How much do you want?”
   “Is this business, now? Are we negotiating a deal?”
   “I’m ready to make a deal.”
   “How exciting.”
   “What do you want?”
   “Twenty-five thousand dollars.”
   “All right.”
   “No, Milton,” the voice corrected, “you don’t understand. I want to bargain.”
   “What?”
   “Haggle, Milton. This is business.”
   Milton was perplexed. He shook his head at the oddity of this request. But in the end he fulfilled it.
   “Okay. Twenty-five’s too much. I’ll pay thirteen thousand.”
   “We’re talking about your daughter, Milton. Not hot dogs.”
   “I haven’t got that kind of cash.”
   “I might take twenty-two thousand.”
   “I’ll give you fifteen.”
   “Twenty is as low as I can go.”
   “Seventeen is my final offer.”
   “How about nineteen?”
   “Eighteen.”
   “Eighteen five.”
   “Deal.”
   The caller laughed. “Oh, that was fun, Milt.” Then, in a gruff voice: “But I want twenty-five.” And he hung up.
   Back in 1933, a disembodied voice had spoken to my grandmother through the heating grate. Now, forty-two years later, a disguised voice spoke to my father over the phone.
   “Good morning, Milton.”
   There was the music again, the faint singing.
   “I’ve got the money,” said Milton. “Now I want my girl.”
   “Tomorrow night,” the kidnapper said. And then he told Milton where to leave the money, and where to wait for me to be released.
   Across the lowland downriver plain Grand Trunk rose before Milton’s Cadillac. The train station was still in use in 1975, though just barely. The once-opulent terminal was now only a shell. False Amtrak façades concealed the flaking, peeling walls. Most corridors were blocked off. Meanwhile, all around the operative core, the great old building continued to fall into ruin, the Guastavino tiles in the Palm Court falling, splintering on the ground, the immense barbershop now a junk room, the skylights caved in, heaped with filth. The office tower attached to the terminal was now a thirteen-story pigeon coop, all five hundred of its windows smashed, as if with diligence. At this same train station my grandparents had arrived a half century earlier. Lefty and Desdemona, one time only, had revealed their secret here to Sourmelina; and now their son, who never learned it, was pulling in behind the station, also secretly.
   A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shadows, sinister silhouettes. But the sky wasn’t cooperating. We were having one of our pink nights. They happened every so often, depending on temperature and the level of chemicals in the air. When particulate matter in the atmosphere was sufficient, light from the ground got trapped and reflected back, and the entire Detroit sky would become the soft pink of cotton candy. It never got dark on pink nights, but the light was nothing like daytime. Our pink nights glowed with the raw luminescence of the night shift, of factories running around the clock. Sometimes the sky would become as bright as Pepto-Bismol, but more often it was a muted, a fabric-softener color. Nobody thought it was strange. Nobody said anything about it. We had all grown up with pink nights. They were not a natural phenomenon, but they were natural to us.
   Under this strange nocturnal sky Milton pulled his car as close to the train platform as possible and stopped. He shut off the engine. Taking the briefcase, he got out into the still, crystalline winter air of Michigan. All the world was frozen, the distant trees, the telephone lines, the grass in the yards of the downriver houses, the ground itself. Out on the river a freighter bellowed. Here there were no sounds, the station completely deserted at night. Milton had on his tasseled black loafers. Dressing in the dark, he had decided they were the easiest to slip on. He was also wearing his car coat, beige and dingy, with a muff of fur at the collar. Against the cold he had worn a hat, a gray felt Borsalino, with a red feather in the black band. An old-timer’s hat now in 1975. With hat, briefcase, and loafers, Milton might have been on his way to work. And certainly he was walking quickly. He climbed the metal steps to the train platform. He headed along it, looking for the trash can where he was supposed to drop the briefcase. The kidnapper said it would have an
X
chalked on the lid.
   Milton hurried along the platform, the tassels on his loafers bouncing, the tiny feather in his hat rippling in the cold wind. It would not be strictly truthful to say that he was afraid. Milton Stephanides did not admit to being afraid. The physiological manifestations of fear, the racing heart, the torched armpits, went on in him without official acknowledgment. He wasn’t alone among his generation in this. There were lots of fathers who shouted when they were afraid or scolded their children to deflect blame from themselves. It’s possible that such qualities were indispensable in the generation that won the war. A lack of introspection was good for bolstering your courage, but in the last months and weeks it had done damage to Milton. Throughout my disappearance Milton had kept up a brave front while doubts worked invisibly inside him. He was like a statue being chiseled away from the inside, hollowed out. As more and more of his thoughts gave him pain, Milton had increasingly avoided them. Instead he concentrated on the few that made him feel better, the bromides about everything working out. Milton, quite simply, had ceased to think things through. What was he doing out there on the dark train platform? Why did he go out there alone? We would never be able to explain it adequately.
   It didn’t take him long to find the trash can marked with chalk. Swiftly Milton lifted its triangular green lid and laid the briefcase inside. But when he tried to pull his arm back out, something wouldn’t let him: it was his hand. Since Milton had stopped thinking things through, his body was now doing the work for him. His hand seemed to be saying something. It was voicing reservations. “What if the kidnapper doesn’t set Callie free?” the hand was saying. But Milton answered, “There’s no time to think about that now.” Again he tried to pull his arm out of the trash can, but his hand stubbornly resisted: “What if the kidnapper takes this money and then asks for more?” asked the hand. “That’s the chance we’ll have to take,” Milton snapped back, and with all his strength pulled his arm out of the trash can. His hand lost its grip; the briefcase fell onto the refuse inside. Milton hurried back across the platform (dragging his hand with him) and got into the Cadillac.
   He started the engine. He turned on the heat, warming the car up for me. He leaned forward staring through the windshield, expecting me to appear any minute. His hand was still smarting, muttering to itself. Milton thought about the briefcase lying out in the trash can. His mind filled with the image of the money inside. Twenty-five grand! He saw the individual stacks of hundred-dollar bills; the repeating face of Benjamin Franklin in the doubled mirrors of all that cash. Milton’s throat went dry; a spasm of anxiety known to all Depression babies gripped his body; and in the next second he was jumping out of the car again, running back to the platform.
   This guy wanted to do business? Then Milton would show him how to do business! He wanted to negotiate? How about this! (Milton was climbing the steps now, loafers ringing against the metal.) Instead of leaving twenty-five thousand bucks, why not leave twelve thousand five hundred?
This way I’ll have some leverage. Half now, half later.
Why hadn’t he thought of this before? What the hell was the matter with him? He was under too much strain … No sooner had he reached the platform, however, than my father stopped cold. Less than twenty yards away, a dark figure in a stocking cap was reaching into the trash can. Milton’s blood froze. He didn’t know whether to retreat or advance. The kidnapper tried to pull the briefcase out, but it wouldn’t fit through the swinging door. He went behind the can and lifted up the entire metal lid. In the chemical brightness Milton saw the patriarchal beard, the pale, waxen cheeks, and—most tellingly—the tiny five-foot-four frame. Father Mike.
   Father
Mike
? Father Mike was the kidnapper? Impossible. Incredible! But there was no doubt. Standing on the platform was the man who had once been engaged to my mother and who, at my father’s hands, had had her stolen away. Taking the ransom was the former seminarian who had married Milton’s sister, Zoë, instead, a choice that had sentenced him to a life of invidious comparisons, of Zoë always asking why he hadn’t invested in the stock market when Milton had, or bought gold when Milton had, or stashed money away in the Cayman Islands as Milton had; a choice that had condemned Father Mike to being a poor relation, forced to endure Milton’s lack of respect while accepting his hospitality, and compelling him to carry a dining room chair into the living room if he wanted to sit. Yes, it was a great shock for Milton to discover his brother-in-law on the train platform. But it also made sense. It was clear now why the kidnapper had wanted to haggle over the price, why he wanted to feel like a businessman for once, and, alas, how he had known about Bithynios. Explained, too, were why the telephone calls had come on Sundays, whenever Tessie was at church, and the music in the background, which Milton now identified as the priests chanting the liturgy. Long ago, my father had stolen Father’s Mike’s fiancée and married her himself. The child of the union, me, had poured salt in the wound by baptizing the priest in reverse. Now Father Mike was trying to get even.