His Fair Lady (18 page)

It had been three days since he’d found out about Josie, three days since the two of them had argued and he had stomped off after calling her a liar, three days of unmitigated stress and drama. At rehearsals everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. And if the whispers and furtive glances of the other cast members were any indication, his and Josie’s breakup was now common knowledge.

His brother had disappeared back into the kitchen. Mark thought about just turning around and going back to campus, but that seemed wrong. He walked through and joined Chris and Kevin in the kitchen.

“Hey, Mark.” Kevin closed the refrigerator, a pitcher of iced tea in one hand. “Want some iced tea?”

Mark nodded. “What are you guys doing here?”

Chris took three glasses down from above the sink and brought them to the table. “Mom found us a wedding coordinator. We’re going to meet with her tonight.”

“Weddings by Gabrielle,” Kevin said. He dropped ice cubes into the glasses, then poured tea. He pushed a glass across the table toward Mark before taking a sip from his own. He studied Mark over the rim of the glass. “Everything okay? How’s the show coming along?”

“Fine.” Mark drank half his tea in two swallows, then set down his glass.

Chris rummaged in the cabinet next to the fridge and came up with a bag of sourdough pretzels. He tore open the bag and brought it to the table. Cellophane crackled as he dug inside and pulled out a handful. He bit into one and crunched, talking around the mouthful.

“How’s Josie? Man, she’s something else, Marky. You’re lucky I’m engaged, or I’d snap her right out from under your nose.”

“That, and you’re gay,” Kevin said.

They both laughed.

“So how’s she doing?” Chris reiterated.

Mark opened his mouth to say Josie was fine, but that wasn’t what came out. “We broke up.”

“Oh, that’s rough,” Kevin said, all sympathy.

“Who dumped who?” Chris asked with the traditional Talleo bluntness.

“Babe, maybe Mark doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“We’re not talking about it.” Chris drew air quotes around the word talking. “I just want to know if she kicked him to the curb or vice versa.”

Mark hesitated over the next question. But his need to know trumped his reticence, and he plunged in headfirst.

“Did either of you guys know Josie was trans?”

A look passed between Chris and Kevin, though neither answered right away. They didn’t have to.

Mark slammed his palm on the table. The glasses jumped. “Fuck me! You guys knew?”

“No,” Kevin said.

“Yes,” Chris said at the same time.

They looked at each other again.

“We weren’t positive. And it was Chris who suspected more than me.” Kevin topped off their glasses, then carried the empty pitcher to the sink.

“Is that why you broke up?” Chris swirled the ice in his glass, then sipped.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s fucked-up.”

“It usually is,” Chris said.

“How did you know? Because I didn’t know. I mean, like at all. I was clueless.”

“I didn’t know, just thought she might be. I know a couple transwomen, not that that means anything really. But you remember Denise from Fit For You?”

“You mean the manager at the last place you worked before—”

Chris nodded. “She’s trans. So is—”

“How did you find out?” Kevin asked.

Mark told them about Masterson’s revelation and his talk with Vi. He finished with his middle-of-the-night trip to Josie’s apartment and their argument, giving them the general idea but omitting most of the nastier things they’d said to each other.

“I said I couldn’t be with somebody who lied to me like that. She called me a transphobic jerk; then I left.”

“Are you?” Chris asked.

“What?”

“A transphobic jerk.”

“I don’t care that she’s trans. But now people are saying I like dick. I didn’t even know she had… You know.” Mark gestured down at himself.

Kevin nodded and looked thoughtful. “So, are you upset because she didn’t out herself to you? Or are you upset because your friends are saying you might be gay because they’re the ones who are a bunch of transphobic jerks?”

Kevin had put his finger on the piece of the argument that most bothered Mark. All his life he’d been fighting homophobic assholes who made derogatory comments about his brother. He’d prided himself on his belief that everyone should be able to be themselves and love whoever they loved without judgment or negative consequence. Yet here he was, terrified of being judged on account of his girlfriend’s gender identity, a thing she could no more change than his brother could suddenly turn straight. Maybe he really was a transphobic jerk, and a hypocrite with it.

Kevin took a pretzel from the bag and held it. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell the truth about ourselves, if we’re afraid the price of that truth might be higher than we want to pay. So we tell ourselves a lie of omission isn’t the same as a lie of commission.”

“It’s like the difference between venial and mortal sin,” Chris added.

“No, it’s not. Quit playing amateur theologian, babe. This is serious.”

Chris grinned at his fiancé. But when he turned back to his brother, his face was serious. “The point is, Marky, you need to figure out what’s important. Then you need to go talk to Josie and fix what you broke. Own it because you’re at least as much to blame as she is. Then see what happens.”

“What if she won’t listen?”

“Make her listen,” Kevin said. He threw an arm around Chris’s neck. “That’s what I had to do with this blockhead.”

Chris laughed. “Yeah, now look at us. Picking out china patterns and going to meet with Weddings by Gabrielle.”

Kevin stared at his fiancé in horror. “What china patterns? Who said anything about china patterns?”

The front door opened, then closed. Familiar footsteps crossed the living room, and their mother’s voice drifted into the kitchen. She sounded excited and happy.

“Chris? Kevin? I have a surprise for you.”

“China patterns,” Chris whispered, and they all laughed.

* * * *

Josie’s heart beat hard and fast as she pushed open the door and emerged from the stairwell on the third floor of the Wilscher building. The hallway outside Kierra Feni’s office was deserted.

Thank God.

After the awful scene with Mark, then the note in the pocket of her costume, her first impulse was to call her mother. Her second impulse, the one she went with, was to come to Kierra. Not only, not even mostly, because she was her advisor, but because she was trans.

When she reached Kierra’s office, Josie found the door open. Kierra sat at her desk, her head bent over a stack of papers, a pen in one hand.

Josie hesitated, then, calling herself a coward, tapped softly on the open door.

Kierra looked up, smiled, and set aside her pen and papers. “Come in, Josie.”

“I don’t have an appointment,” Josie said from the doorway.

“That’s all right.” Kierra waved her inside. “Close the door and sit. Will you have tea?”

“After the last time? Are you kidding?” Josie tried a smile. It felt sort of good. Setting her bag on the floor, she took one of the chairs across from Kierra’s desk.

“What can I do for you?”

Josie blew out a breath. “I guess you heard about me.”

Kierra nodded. “I did, yes.”

“But you already knew.”

“I did.”

“How did you know?”

“Your mother—”

“My mother told you?” Josie came half out of her chair.

“No.” Kierra waved her back down. “Your mother did not tell me.”

“Then how—”

“I’ll explain if you give me a chance.” Kierra stood, then came around the desk and took a chair on the same side as Josie. She crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap.

“Okay, so tell.” Josie mirrored her position.

“Your mom called me not long after spring festival weekend. She knew I was your advisor and the director of the show. She said you’d had a rather sheltered upbringing for reasons she wouldn’t get into, and she asked if I would sort of watch out for you. When I asked why she thought you needed watching out for, she said she couldn’t tell me that without violating a confidence. That’s when I knew for sure you were trans. I had suspected, but that’s when I knew.”

“Now everybody knows.”

“How do you feel about that?” Kierra spoke gently.

Josie looked down at her hands twisted together in her lap. She relaxed them. “Scared, but a little relieved too, I guess.”

“Because now you don’t have to tell anyone.”

Josie looked up and into the older woman’s eyes. “Dr. Feni, Kierra, Mark and I broke up.”

Kierra nodded. “I knew something had happened between you.”

“How?”

“You’re different on stage, the two of you. There’s a different dynamic the last few rehearsals.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s just different. Josie, did you break up because he found out you’re trans?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know. I think…” Josie paused. What did she think? Despite days of thinking, she wasn’t sure. Maybe that was why she was there in Kierra’s office. “Maybe we broke up because I didn’t tell him before he found out from somebody else.”

“That’s hard, for both of you. What’s going to happen next? Is it over? Do you want it to be?”

Josie laughed, but it came out sounding more hopeless than humorous. “Which question should I answer first?”

“You don’t have to answer any of them for me. But you do have to answer them for yourself.”

Josie nodded. “He’s been trying to talk to me for the last couple of days.”

“Well, I can’t tell you what to do there.”

“What would you do?”

Kierra hesitated, then shrugged. “I would probably hear him out. Let him own his part in the breakup, if that’s what he wants. Then I would own my part too, whether or not I intended to go on with him. But I’m not you. Only you can make that choice for yourself.”

Josie sighed and, picking up her handbag, got to her feet. “Thanks, Kierra.”

Kierra stood too. “I don’t know if I helped.”

“You did.” Josie walked to the door. She stopped with her hand on the knob. Maybe she should tell Kierra about the note. Certainly it was what Kyle wanted her to do.

“Is there something else?” Kierra asked.

“No, it’s nothing.” Or almost nothing, an isolated incident.

“You know I’m the liaison for the trans student group on campus.”

“I know. Are there really that many?”

“A few, enough to have a group. There’s a meeting at the end of the month, if you’re interested.”

Josie opened the door, then turned back to Kierra. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”

And maybe she would actually go.

* * * *

As usual, Mark was one of the last to arrive in Autoethno. He scanned for an empty seat while promising himself no more eight-o’clock classes. Not ever!

The back of the room was full, as was the middle. With a sigh of resignation, Mark trekked to the front row and settled in a seat on the left-hand side just as Dr. Harrington tapped the lectern.

“Okay, people. Today is the day you’ve all been waiting for. Today is ugly baby day! I know, I know. Try to control your excitement and remember the rules.”

Mark dug in his bag for the DVD containing his presentation on growing up as the straight brother of a gay sibling. He found it and set it on the desk as the prof reminded them that no one’s baby is ugly and to say so was not acceptable in her classroom.

As unobtrusively as he could, Mark looked around for Josie. She wasn’t there.

Over the past few days, he had called and texted repeatedly, but what had he gotten in return? Crickets, that’s what.

Neither had he had any luck pinning her down at rehearsal. Clearly she was avoiding him and doing a damn good job of it too, managing somehow to never be alone with him no matter where they were.

The show was opening that night. It bugged the hell out of him that they hadn’t gotten to talk things out. Now here she was cutting class. To avoid him? Maybe. Or maybe he was making it too much about himself. Either way, time was running short.

Mark recalled Kevin’s words.
“Make her listen.”

“All right.” Dr. Harrington clapped her hands. “Who wants to go first?”

The classroom door opened, and Josie rushed in. She was flushed and had the out-of-sorts look that usually meant the alarm hadn’t gone off.

“Sorry,” Josie said as she made her way to a seat in the front row but about as far from Mark as she could get.

“Nice of you to join us,” Dr. Harrington said. “As a special prize for being the last to arrive, you can be the first to present.”

“Oh. But I—”

“You do have your presentation.”

“Yes.”

“All right, then.

Without another word, Josie left her seat and walked to the laptop that was set up for presentations. Someone dimmed the lights as Josie slipped a disk into the drive.

Music Mark didn’t recognize began to play, and the screen at the front of the room filled with a picture he did recognize.

A couple stood in front of a motorcycle Mark knew was a ‘62 Panhead, and between them they held a little boy.

The volume of the music decreased, and Josie’s voice began to narrate.

“This little boy’s name is Joey. He was born on April 28, 1995.”

The picture was replaced by a birth certificate bearing the name Joseph Michael Frazier. The certificate held for a few seconds; then it was replaced by another photograph, this one of a little girl in a cotton-candy-pink dress and pink high-top sneakers. Her long red hair was tied back in a bow the same shade as her dress.

Mark held his breath. He knew what was coming. And he thought she might be the bravest girl he’d ever known.

Chapter Fourteen

“Kyle, nothing’s going to happen. You don’t have to walk me all the way to the dressing room door.”

“You’re right. Nothing is going to happen because I am walking you all the way to the dressing room door. Now quit bitching or I’ll walk you inside and all the way to your dressing station.” Kyle opened the theater door and angled his head for her to go in.

Josie walked in, then turned to continue the conversation. “It’s a girls’ only dressing room, Ky.”