When Watched (11 page)

Joan and Dennis were lying in bed. It was late but the lamp on Joan's side was still on. She wouldn't turn it off. She had been talking about their daughter all evening.

“She said she hated me.”

“They all say that.”

“But do they really?”

“Yes.”

“And it's not just me. Cindy hates
everything
.”

“Teenagers are mean. They need to be. It's the first interpretation of seriousness.”

Neither spoke for a few seconds.

“What is it?” Dennis asked.

“I'm just thinking about what you said. I think you might be right.”

“Oh, I am.”

 • • • 

In the morning Joan made pancakes and Dennis made coffee. Then they sat together sipping from their mugs. Under the table
a cat careened into Joan's shin and slid away, purring wildly. They had two cats, one orange and one white, named Carrot and Sneaker respectively.

Cindy appeared in blue shorts and a white T-shirt. She was taller than both of her parents, with blonde hair and pale green eyes. Without a word she padded into the kitchen and withdrew a cereal box from the cupboard, then stuck half her arm in. After eating a few handfuls she walked off with the box.

“I made pancakes!” Joan called after her. Then she heard Cindy's door slam shut. “Now what the hell was that?” She turned to Dennis, her nostrils hard.

But he had barely looked up from his food. The sight of Cindy's new body made him cringe. There was something blurry about it, how she tipped moment by moment between woman and child. Cindy was so beautiful—almost too beautiful. And while Dennis looked away, the whole neighborhood was peeping. Now that she was fifteen it had only gotten worse. It seemed no glance in Cindy's direction did not attach itself to her as she moved grumpily through a room or down a hall or across a street. As a result she stayed home a lot, playing the same pop songs over and over until she hated them. It was summer and she had no desire to go to camp or spend time with any of her friends. Generally she looked tired because she was. Tired of marshaling the world's lust for her.

“I don't think she's eating enough,” Joan said. “She lives on diet soda . . . these teenage girls—they're like automatons—they'll eat anything that does nothing.” She caught his eye. “You think I'm controlling but I'm not.”

He made a neat cut in his pancakes. “You can't conduct this conversation with yourself in front of me.”

Joan had to laugh at that. She tucked a slice of butter under
her top pancake and licked the excess off her knife. “I
had
to eat at the table when I was a kid. If I had behaved like her my mom would've smacked me so hard.”

“Yes, well, my mother smacked me no matter how I behaved,” he said. “We don't have to demonstrate the abuse we experienced.”

Joan softened. “You're a lovely man,” she said.

 • • • 

When Dennis went to work, Joan washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. Then she walked to Cindy's door and knocked.

“What?”
came the voice of the demon on the other side.

Joan strode right in with a cheery show of confidence that made her daughter tense. Cindy distrusted her mother's smile. In fact the merriness of all middle-aged women felt fraudulent to her. They seemed dangerous with their tight grins and burning coal eyes. They were jealous of course and it made her lonely. It filled her with hate.

In her robe and slippers, Joan walked around freely. She picked a worn copy of
Franny and Zooey
off the bed and touched its fragile cover. “Are you reading this?” she asked.

“You can't just come in here.” Cindy sat on the floor next to an open magazine.

“I loved to read when I was your age,” Joan said. “But my brother was always stealing my books.” She smiled reflectively. “He didn't even read them. He just put them on his shelf. What he wanted was my
enthusiasm
.”

“Mom, get out.”

“I believe this is
my
book.”

“It was on the shelf.”

“You can have it.” Joan set the book back down on the bed. “It's good, isn't it?” she said, but there came no reply. Cindy sat
with her arms crossed, a homicidal song in her eyes. Still Joan was too captivated to look away. It was a marvelous view of something utterly gone: her youth.

She left the room, leaving the door ajar. Then Cindy slammed it.

Joan walked to the bathroom and felt it too, the forbidden feeling: hate. Cindy had left the hair dryer on the floor and one by one the cats were examining it like a spaceship had landed. Joan shooed them away and the orange one jumped up onto the sink, then into the toilet with a splash.

“Carrot!” Joan cried.

The cat hopped out, shaking and appalled, then ran off.

Sighing, Joan wiped down the toilet seat and sat on it. Then a blast of music made her jerk, bracing the wall as she peed. It was a small apartment and the walls seemed porous, the way they spilled noise from one room into another. Many times she heard Cindy crying in there. Maybe, she thought, the shrill pop song was actually announcing such a moment.

Joan wiped herself roughly. She flew off the toilet, stomped to Cindy's door and stood there. Just then the song ended. But an instant later it began again, the canned screams. Joan's face tightened. Stepping away from the door, it occurred to her that she was a little bit afraid of her daughter.

It seemed there was only one thing to do so Joan did it—she left. She didn't know where she was going, only that she was going. Maybe she would never come back. Maybe she would jump in front of a car and a certain grim little girl would get a cold, hard taste of reality. But no, she would go on living. She knew it. She was doomed to function.

Joan walked out into the sun, past an ice-cream truck and a
pile of dog shit and an old man selling batteries. She walked on and on until she wasn't in their neighborhood anymore. She imagined herself getting thin this way, speed-walking through the streets for days, bolstered by hate.

A pair of wealthy-looking women walked by. They had such similar plastic surgery that they looked like sisters. It made Joan laugh.
Maybe I'm crazy,
she thought with the breeze in her hair.
But the world is deeply insane.
Suddenly she felt happier than she had in weeks. Joan looked up at the blue sky and thought it might be even more beautiful than her daughter.

She passed a man on a stool with his easel before him. He was painting a cheesy panoramic of some buildings, even though there was a drooling junkie behind him.
Why don't you paint that?
Joan wondered. A man bumped into her and she realized, as she had so many times, that she was invisible. It made her want to do something obscene like take her top off. But no, that would disgust people. She pictured herself getting arrested with her breasts out and felt incredibly sad.
There's no reward for being an older female,
she thought.
Because no one wants to look at your flesh.

She didn't
feel
older, that was the confusing part. She felt seventeen, just as hungry. Maybe she always would. Maybe the energy that was sizzling and repressed in high school would keep unfurling all her life.

A cop on a horse clomped slowly by and Joan wiped the sweat from her upper lip. She wondered what it was like to be seized and made to carry people your whole life, then killed when you were old. She wondered if there were any wild horses left in the world. Joan felt herself slowing as she calculated the possible number of them—eighteen? Her feet hurt. She wiped her lip again, then tore her eyes from the doomed horse and hailed a cab.

 • • • 

At home it was quiet. The cats rubbed themselves against the backs of her legs, then walked about the kitchen meowing. “Calm down you lunatics,” Joan said. She drank a glass of water. Then another.

Franny and Zooey
lay on the table, facedown beside an open can of soda. Joan snatched the book up with a small flourish of anger. Opening it, the smell of aged paper jumped up into the air.

Inside was a loose photograph of herself as a teen, smiling in a pale pink romper, a yellow telephone beaming before her. Joan flipped the photograph over and read
1971
in blue ink. Abruptly she stuck the photo back in the book and walked with it to Cindy's door.

There was a round sticker by the doorknob. Maybe it had been there before but she couldn't be sure. It pictured a humanish cartoon rabbit giving the middle finger. Next to it there was a sticker that read
WISH YOU WERE WEIR
D
in neon green letters. That one was old. Joan froze for a second, then knocked.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come in?”

“Do I really have a choice?”

“No.” Joan opened the door.

“Why even ask if I don't have a choice?”

“Because I respect you.”

Cindy let out a dismissive puff of air, making her doubt clear. She was lying on the bed, cell phone in hand.

“You left this in the kitchen,” Joan said.

“On purpose,” Cindy said.

“I gave it to you,” Joan said. She seated herself on the bed and set the book down.

Cindy stared, her face a dark shield.

“I found this picture inside,” Joan said and for a moment Cindy looked caught.

“It's me in 1971,” Joan reported. She placed the photograph on the bed before her daughter, who hesitated, then picked it up.

“I saw it,” Cindy admitted. Then, “I like how you looked. Everything was so pretty in the seventies.”

Joan almost stopped breathing; she didn't want to break the delicate twig that suddenly held them together. “It
was
pretty,” she said finally. “But if you were depressed it was really intense.”

Cindy looked genuinely curious. “How?”

“Just gauzy and endless,” Joan said. “It made me want to scream.”

Cindy understood that. She laughed. “I like the yellow phone though.”

“All girls wanted a princess phone in their bedroom,” Joan said. “Mostly they were white and pink and lavender.” She stared into space. “Actually, I don't know if they were ever lavender. But that would have been the perfect color.”

Cindy had stopped looking at the photograph and Joan knew their time was almost up. She didn't want to sit and watch the sweetness recede—it was too excruciating. So with a small smile she stood and let herself out.

 • • • 

Later Dennis and Joan lay in bed reading. The cats sat at the window, staring out at something on the sill, their tails making question marks.

“Cindy saw a picture of me from 1971 today.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She liked it.” Joan rested her hands on her open book. “And the funny thing is that I remember how much I liked looking at pictures of
my
mom when she was younger.”

“Because you didn't know her.”

“That's exactly why.” Joan lay there blinking.

“Look at them,” Dennis said, pointing at Carrot and Sneaker. “I love a cat looking out a window.” He paused. “It makes the window more beautiful.”

“It's sort of monstrous though,” Joan said. “That we don't allow them to partake in their own nature. Everything they want is out there,” she said, gesturing toward the window. “But everything they have is in here.”

They were quiet, watching the cats.

“The only justification is that we're keeping them alive,” she added. “It's like we're God.”

Dennis laughed. “But maybe it's not so bad,” he said. “They never get what they think they want, so looking out the window is probably like watching TV.”

“What a TV,” Joan said. She thought of all the trapped creatures on earth, all of them watching the free world and waiting to join it. If there was no window to look through, there was the shimmering thought of one. There was a mind. They were all waiting because something better was out there for them on the other side. There had to be.

Miranda found a seat toward the back of the room. A man left the coffee station and walked toward her, staring a moment. He had a very dirty face.
Homeless,
she thought and recoiled. Then he sat in the chair directly to her right.

The meeting began and her eyes swam nervously around the room, hunting for another seat. She spotted one but it was far away and she didn't want to draw attention to herself. She didn't want people to think
What a coward
or
What a stuck-up bitch
. So she remained in her seat, smelling the man.

She found it difficult to focus on the woman talking at the front of the room, hearing only stray details. She fidgeted, her eyes batting around. She felt so aware of how she might look in the chair: her scrawny body and big breasts, her stringy black hair. Everyone else seemed to be listening.
But that can't possibly be true,
she thought.

The woman said she often considered shooting herself in the head. This grabbed Miranda's attention. “I keep seeing my brains splattered all over the wall,” the woman said and, audibly, the
whole room's breathing changed. “I'm not drinking. I haven't drank in sixteen years. But the world still scares me.” The woman grimaced, holding back tears. Then she started talking about the seventh step and Miranda's focus wavered. She could only focus when people detailed their sorrows. Otherwise AA had the empty feeling of a cult.

She glanced sideward at the homeless man, his filthy profile. He was older than her, with gunmetal gray hair and the deep, tanned wrinkles of a farmer. Her gaze lingered over the mystery of his features, each one shaded with dirt. Then he turned and grinned at her. It was startling. He had thin, darkly arched brows and very blue eyes.

Miranda smiled quickly and turned away, blushing profusely. She had the urge to bolt as she always did when any man showed even the slightest interest in her. But she only stirred in her seat, fumbling with her fingers in her lap.

After a half hour of keeping her eyes on her hands and the backs of other people's heads, the fizzy feeling of anxiety diffused. Miranda let her gaze drift back onto the man, wanting badly to confirm his continued interest in her. And there it was, beaming like a lit candle in a dark, dark room. He looked a bit like Jack Nicholson, she realized, with his boomerang eyebrows and wide cat grin.

It occurred to her that he could be high or drunk, but he didn't look it. Then she considered the possibility that he could be a thief.
And it would be easy to steal from me,
she thought, lacing her fingers together on her lap. But the truth was that she enjoyed the feel of his burning gaze, regardless of whatever sat lurking behind it. Who was he, this man who could stare and stare? He was filthy but handsome.
It's obvious,
Miranda thought. Anyone could see it.
Well not anyone,
she thought, commending herself
for being able to take anything—and anyone—out of context. His context was just a lot of dirt and probably a very sad story. Miranda wondered what had ejected him into the wilderness of Manhattan. Then she imagined him emerging from the shower with a towel tied at his waist, clouds of steam gushing around him. She admired the look of him all clean in her mind: hair combed, nails scrubbed, his blue eyes electric against the pink of his cheeks.

But what if he's stupid?
Miranda thought. This was not impossible. Often people radiated a smartness that simply wasn't there. And certainly this would be worse than him being high or drunk or a thief. She let the unhappy thought twirl in her mind a moment. Then she let it go. She was getting better and better at letting things go.

When the meeting was over everyone stood in a circle to pray aloud, holding hands. Miranda stalled a moment, clearing her throat, then took his grubby hand in hers. She said the prayer softly so as to hear his voice. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” came a high, funny voice. “Courage to change the things I can. And wisdom to know the difference.”

When their hands parted they looked at each other. She had a crush. It was shocking. She cleared her throat. The room had grown loud like a cafeteria, everyone chatting and collapsing their chairs.

“Hello,” she ventured.

“Hi,” he said.

“I'm Miranda,” she said, hating the sound of her name, how desperate it seemed to sound in any context.

“Drew,” he said with a nod.

In a soft voice, feeling embarrassed, she said, “Do you have anywhere to go?”

He paused. “There's a place.”

Miranda nodded, admiring his vagueness. There was a certain dignity about it. “Do you want to go for a walk?” she asked.

Again he paused. Then, without answering, Drew gathered his things: a backpack and a smaller bag with handles, both blackened with filth. He followed her as she left the building and in the streetlight they walked alongside each other in silence.

It was late August. A cool breeze stroked them from six different directions, reassembling their hair.

“Are you a Christian?” Drew asked.

“No,” Miranda said, laughing a little.

“So what's your story?” he asked, which made her nervous.

“Well I've been sober for a couple years but I just started going to meetings. I mean . . . I haven't spoken yet.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I don't know what I'd say.”

“You don't have to know.” He paused, walking a little slower. “I mean, you
do
know.”

“I do?”

“Yeah, I think . . .” He scratched his jaw. “I think the thing in your mind is the thing to say.”

Miranda was quiet. Then she said, “I like that.” It was so easy to imagine him clean because, in a way, he already was. His mind was. And the fact of his filth relaxed her. She wasn't worried about her clogged pores or the murky scent of her underarms. She felt very civilized, almost queenly. The dreamy feeling mounted until she was drunk with it. “Do you want to come over?”

He looked stricken when she said this. They had stopped walking. The stiff look of caution first softened around his mouth. It took a moment. Then the old grin grew in its place.

Miranda said nothing. She only faced him with the wide,
emotional eyes of a silent film star. She hoped he didn't think she was whorish. Because she wasn't. She thought about sex constantly but she hadn't had any in a while.

“Alright,” he said.
“Okay.”
He was smiling widely now. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” But she wasn't sure. She pin-balled between arousal and revulsion, which fascinated her. It made the two sensations seem like old friends, sizzling together in one pool of wanting.
Yes,
she thought to herself as they mounted the stairs of her apartment.
No
when they walked into her living room.
No
again when he set his bags down on the floor. Then
Yes
when she made him a sandwich and he ate it.
Yes
when he said her apartment was nice.
Yes!

It wasn't a nice apartment. He was being kind and it felt good. Her last boyfriend had called her apartment a dump. The day they broke up he looked around and said, “Fucking dump.”

“Can I use your shower?” Drew asked.

“Of
course
.” She fetched him a yellow towel and he disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door.

He was in there for a long time. Miranda unhooked her bra and yanked it out from under her shirt. She smoked three cigarettes in a row, then cleared the candy wrappers from the windowsill by her bed.

Finally the door opened a crack, his face peeking through. “Is there something I can wear?” Steam poured from the door.

“Oh. Sure.” She looked around, stumped, then settled on her silk robe, beige with navy polka dots. He took it uneasily, which made her laugh.

Drew walked out looking very uncomfortable and sat on the couch. Miranda joined him and smiled sleepily. She liked being sleepy, how it felt vaguely beer induced. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“I feel good,” he said, nodding. “I don't know about the robe though.”

Miranda laughed. Drew looked nervous and that relaxed her. She felt almost predatory. “You look great,” she said. “I mean you looked great
before
but now I can really see you.” Without hesitation, Miranda took his wet head in her hands and kissed him. It was a forceful, passionate kiss. Her hand swam over his thighs and then between them, where it froze and was retracted.

A horrible, breathless silence fell over them.

“I couldn't tell if you knew,” Drew said.

“I didn't,” Miranda said, stunned. “Of course I
didn't
.”

“Are you mad?”

“No.” Miranda shook her head. “That's not it exactly. I just . . .” She got up and walked to the other side of the room, her arms folded. “I've never kissed a woman.”

They stared at each other. A disturbed expression was quietly building on Drew's face. “I'm transgender.”

“I feel fucked up,” Miranda said. “Like I'm
seeing
things!” She walked back over to the couch and sat down, staring at Drew with open horror. “You look so much like a man,” she said.

“I know that,” Drew said. His pained expression was now morphing to one of pure anger. He marched to the bathroom and shut the door.

In seconds he emerged in the same dark rags, zipping up his fly.

“What are you doing?” Miranda demanded, but Drew said nothing, crossing the room and bending for his bags. “Don't go,” Miranda pleaded in a new voice, a child's voice, grabbing Drew by the arm. She hated when people left. She hated when
anyone
left.

Drew turned his head and stared.

“Please,”
Miranda said. She was crying. “Will you please just sit down.”

Drew said nothing. After a moment he sat on the couch and sighed.

“Do you wanna lie down with me?” Miranda asked, wiping the tears from her eyes.

“What the fuck?” Drew looked appalled. But still he followed Miranda to her bed and they lay down staring at each other, the tangy stink of Drew's clothes filling the air between their faces. Strangely Miranda liked it.

 • • • 

Hours later they were both naked under a scratchy blue blanket, passing a cigarette back and forth between them, a soft breeze pushing through the window.

“Did you always know you were a man?” Miranda asked. “I mean when you were younger.”

“Well.” Drew took a long, reflective drag. “I knew I was different but I didn't know exactly what to call it—I just knew that I hated my name.”

“What was your name?”

“Gloria.”

“No.”

“Yes.” Drew shook his head. “So wrong, right?”

Miranda nodded. “You are the
furthest
thing from a Gloria.”

“Thank you,” Drew smiled. He handed Miranda the cigarette and she took a long suck.

“So I renamed myself,” Drew said. “At age six.”

“You named yourself Drew?”

“Drew came later. As a child I was Daniel.”

Miranda stared. “Your parents allowed that?”

“I had a single mother. She was very encouraging.”

“That's incredible,” Miranda said. “This was the fifties, right?”

“Yeah.”

Miranda wanted to ask so many questions. She was smoking like a fiend.

“Look at you,” Drew laughed.

“I know.” Miranda smiled, handing the cigarette back.

“A name is all fantasy, you know?” Drew puffed thoughtfully, then flicked the cigarette out the window. “Why should anyone control that fantasy but you?”

Miranda smiled. She thought of other names besides Miranda.
Allison, Jennifer, Betty, Veronic—

“I remember when I took baths as a kid I would stare at myself in the faucet—it made my nose look big—which I liked. I looked more like a man.” Drew scratched his jaw, staring into darkness. “Man isn't really the word—but I looked more like myself.”

Miranda nodded, though she didn't understand.

“I don't believe in gender as a binary
regime
—two categories with the whole human race crammed in. But it's a lot less disturbing for me to be called sir than
ma'am
,” he said, warping the word
ma'am
with contempt. “So that's how I live.”

“As sir.”

Drew smiled. “Yeah, except no one actually calls me sir. They say man or mister. Or they say nothing.” He paused. “Part of being trans is that language fails you.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “All I ever wanted was to be seen as the person I am. And that person isn't male or female.”

Miranda smiled. She had never been so turned on in her entire life. She sat up and lit another cigarette, then leaned against the wall taking long drags, her face obscured by darkness.

“What is it you do,” Drew asked, “for money?”

“I wait tables. But really I'm a writer,” Miranda said.

“Seriously?”

Miranda nodded. “What's that look for?”

“Nothing. I just—I didn't know I was hanging out with a camera.”

They both laughed. Then Miranda started coughing.

“Jesus. How much do you smoke?” Drew asked.

“A lot.”

“It's funny that you smoke lights,” he said. “I mean there's no point. You suck em so hard.”

“I know,” Miranda said with shame, stubbing the cigarette out on the window ledge. “I've
tried
to stop. But time passes incredibly slowly without cigarettes. A day goes on for
weeks
.” She began fondling her hair. “I can't deal with that kind of time.”

Drew smiled. He reached up and felt around for Miranda's breast. “Your
heart
,” he said.

“What?”