34. What We Pretend to Be

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” —Kurt Vonnegut

Master Park was there immediately, his eyes narrow and angry behind the squares of his eyeglasses. He grabbed Jen by the shoulders—the first time she could remember him touching her directly—and shook her.

“Are you crazy?” he yelled. “What are you doing?”

Jen didn’t know what to say. The men from the advanced class had swarmed around the reporter on the ground, offering to help her up, asking her if she was okay. Jen wanted to punch her again, to kick her in the face. It took all of her energy to restrain herself.

“Go sit over there,” said Master Park, pointing at the chair behind the front desk. “Don’t move.”

She sat in the swiveling office chair, feeling like a bad child forced to sit in the corner, and watched Master Park help Olivia up and lead her outside. Through the glass of the front door, she could see them talking. Her male classmates were leaving one by one, most of them avoiding eye contact as they passed her, although a few of them smiled grimly at her, their expressions conveying that they knew she must have had a good reason. One slightly-built green belt, a college student Jen had trained with a few times since he was close to her size, stopped in front of the desk. “What did she do to you?” he asked under his breath.

Even though Master Park was facing the other direction, Jen didn’t want to risk him turning around and seeing her talking to someone. “Nothing,” she said quietly. He didn’t seem offended by her reticence. He just flashed her a sympathetic smile and left.

That’s nice about taekwondo students, Jen thought; they don’t pry.

Master Park and Olivia stood outside talking for almost fifteen minutes, according to the clock on the wall, which Jen couldn’t help but stare at as she sat in the empty room, waiting. Master Park stood with his weight balanced evenly, his arms crossed. Olivia was gesturing with her hands as though trying to negotiate some kind of deal.

Finally they came back inside and walked over to the desk. Master Park had a rigid look about him that suggested some formal business. I hope they aren’t going to ask for an apology, Jen thought; she didn’t know if she would be able to offer one.

But instead, Master Park nodded his head towards Olivia.

“She wants you to go have a drink with her,” he said.

Jen was surprised for a moment, but quickly regained her composure. Of course she does, Jen thought. She’s been chasing me all over North Middleton.

“I don’t drink” said Jen.

“It’ll be juice,” said Olivia.

Jen looked up at Master Park. He was impassive, his arms still folded across the front of his crisp white jacket. “I don’t care,” he said. “It’s up to you.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Jen.

“Give me one hour,” Olivia said. “After that, I’ll never come back here again if you don’t want me to. You’ll never have to see me again.”

Jen looked at the clock. It was nine forty-five. “Okay,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“The juice bar,” said Olivia. “You can follow me in your car.”

In the parking lot a few minutes later, Olivia pulled her car up in front of Jen’s. Jen was expecting one of the large, black SUVs that had waited in ambush for her outside the co-op. Instead, Olivia was driving a squat little Volkswagen, painted a faded red color except for the driver’s side door, which was black.

Jen drove behind her into the center of town. Just before they reached the university, Olivia flashed her right-side turn signal. It occurred to Jen that she had never turned this direction off of Main Street; the food co-op and the tea house were both on the other side.

Jen followed Olivia down a side street whose sidewalks were flooded with students, even though it was almost ten o’clock on a Tuesday, toting heavy backpacks as they poured in and out of the bars and coffee shops. Olivia parked in front of a run-down storefront whose sign read “North Middleton Juice Collective.”

The small space inside was crowded with young women whose style of dress reminded her of Paula’s comfortable, earth-tone wardrobe, except in place of her dreadlocks, most of these women had short, boyish haircuts that contrasted their flowing garments. They had filled up every visible seat, their backpacks occupying every chair that they were not sitting on. Several of them looked up from their work and smiled when Olivia walked in. “Hey, Olivia, want me to move this?” asked a woman in an oversized oatmeal-colored turtleneck, pointing at the stack of books, sweatshirts, jackets and scarves overflowing from the chair next to her.

“No, that’s okay,” said Olivia. “There’s a back room,” she said to Jen, leading her into a tiny area behind a wall that housed four more tables, all of them occupied except one. Olivia threw her jacket over the top of the empty table and walked back to the front to order.

The counter was staffed by two young, shorn-headed women who appeared indistinguishable from their clientele. Jen raised her eyes to the expansive menu posted on a chalkboard above their heads. It was printed in colored chalk, with writing that grew increasingly smaller as it approached the bottom.

Olivia turned to Jen. “What do you want to drink?”

Jen glanced again at the dizzying menu, squinting her eyes to sharpen the tiny letters. The words that popped out at her from the swirl of hand-printed writing normally would have appealed to her: carrot, melon, flaxseed, cucumber. But there was a heavy smell in the air, like bleach and steam and mushrooms, that killed Jen’s appetite; or perhaps it was just the effect of standing so close behind Olivia, her nemesis.

She was tempted not to order anything, but she didn’t want to seem passive aggressive. She had promised Olivia an hour; she resolved to be pleasant until her time was up.

“Whatever you’re having is fine,” Jen said.

“Okay,” said Olivia, turning to the girl at the counter. “Two Greenpeaces.”

Jen scanned the board for the translation: kale, grapefruit, celery, garlic. Not the combination she would have chosen. At least it’ll be healthy, she thought.

She cringed at the price, six dollars for a small. Pulling her wallet from the pocket of her jacket, she asked, “Can I give you some money?”

“Don’t worry, it’s free,” said Olivia, turning from the counter. Jen looked at the girl who took their order; she had already started helping the next customer, despite the fact that Olivia hadn’t paid for their expensive drinks. She really must be a regular here, Jen thought.

Jen sat down while Olivia waited for their drinks to be freshly squeezed. When she finally appeared around the corner, she placed two tall glasses filled with frothy brownish-green drinks on the table and sat down across from Jen.

Jen looked at the clock on the wall. It was five minutes past ten. “You’ve got forty minutes,” she said. She expected Olivia to protest that her hour shouldn’t include driving and ordering time, but she accepted the warning somberly.

“Okay, then, let me just think where to start.”

She paused, her hand wrapped around the bottom of her face. She really does look a lot better, Jen thought, remembering how the fluorescent lights of the co-op had caught in the dull ends of her bleached blonde hair and sickly, creased skin. The face of the woman sitting across from Jen now glowed with health, framed by her glossy, dark hair, looking at least ten years younger than the woman who had sat ringside, watching Jen get knocked unconscious.

“I’m going to have to start at the beginning,” Olivia said. “Sorry, but it’s important.”

Jen nodded and took a tentative sip of her drink. The first flavors were pleasant, celery and grapefruit. Then the bitterness of the kale struck her, and then, finally, a shocking flash of garlic. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant, just bracing. She took another sip and swished it around in her mouth. At least it will keep me from getting sleepy, she thought.

“I don’t know how I ended up writing for a crappy magazine,” said Olivia. “Or, I suppose I know, but the whole thing was a mistake. Growing up, I always planned to be a ballerina. I was really serious. My parents used to drive me an hour to Milwaukee every day after school. And I would go to study in New York every summer, and I was thinking of moving there when I was sixteen, because you could board at the ballet school there.”

“Why did you stop?” Jen asked.

“Oh, you know,” said Olivia, the healthy glow of her cheeks intensifying by a few shades to a burning crimson. “The same reason everybody does.”

Jen thought of all of her friends who had given up on their dreams of becoming actors. “Because it’s impossible to make a living as a dancer?”

“Oh, no,” said Olivia. “Because I got addicted to diet pills. So, you know, I had to go through treatment and that whole thing, which wasn’t so bad because a bunch of my dancer friends were doing it, too. But I lost half a year of study, and I never really got back to it in the same way.”

Jen was appalled by the image of a Midwestern rehab center flooded with adolescent ballet dancers. “If you were all doing it, somebody should have told the ballet school,” Jen said.

“Oh, they knew,” said Olivia. “They encouraged it.”

“Really?” Jen asked, scandalized.

“Well, they would say things like, ‘You will just need to figure out how to manage your weight in some way, whatever that might be.’ What do they expect in an art form where they want you to be really skinny and really energetic at the same time?”

She looked up at Jen, embarrassed, and added, “Well, you know.”

Truthfully, Jen didn’t know. Of course there was a lot of pressure to be skinny in Hollywood, but she had always dealt with it by just eating very little, as had most of the other actresses she had talked to. The truth was, it didn’t take that much energy to shoot a movie or television show. In fact, she had found it helpful to be a little lightheaded from hunger; it heightened her emotions and made her feel more creative. She tried to imagine what it would be like to eat that way while trying to maintain a rigorous athletic schedule; there was no way she could fast three times a week while training at taekwondo.

“But you’re right,” said Olivia. “It is impossible to make a living. So instead I stayed in Wisconsin for college and got a degree in mass communications and started writing for a newspaper.”

“I was writing for the arts section, reviewing concerts and art exhibits and even the ballet; I liked that job a lot. But the paper got bought out by a bigger company that owned newspapers all across the state. And then they got bought out by an even bigger company that owns a bunch of newspapers all over the country.

“That company cut the arts section from my paper, so I was going to be out of a job. But they said I could do contract work for a couple of magazines they had just bought. They wanted people in the Midwest who could specialize in what they called ‘recluses,’ which basically just meant celebrities who weren’t in New York or L.A.

“And that’s how I ended up writing for Celebrity Gape. I’ve been doing it ever since, for almost ten years. It’s really depressing work, really boring, a lot of waiting around. I was so excited when I got the assignment to cover you in Michigan, because no one knew what you were doing out here. Most of the celebrities in the Midwest just wanted to get out of the spotlight and raise their families, so there’s not really much to say about them. So you just wait and keep an eye on them and hope they get a divorce or have an affair or something.”

“That’s horrible,” said Jen.

“It sounds bad, doesn’t it,” Olivia agreed. “But it hardly ever happens. The recluses are usually really stable. If they get divorced, it’s just like a regular divorce, after the kids are grown and it’s a mutual thing, no drama.”

So you have to invent it, thought Jen, thinking of some of the wilder claims Olivia had made about her.

Olivia looked up at the clock anxiously; ten minutes had already passed. She picked up her untouched drink and took a large gulp. When she spoke again, her eyes were large and earnest with excitement. “But really, the thing I want to talk to you about is your fight. Because that’s the day my whole life changed.”

Your life changed, Jen thought, surprised. She scanned Olivia’s face, looking for some hint of ironic distance, a sign of a trap. But she looked as earnest and absorbed as she had been when Jen showed her the opening of the first taekwondo form and how to do a roundhouse kick. A woman at an adjacent table rose and gave Olivia a friendly pat on the shoulder on her way to the front room, but Olivia was too engrossed with telling Jen the story of her own fight to notice.

“I drove down to Lansing with a photographer. The drive seemed so long, and I was so nervous for you. I kept thinking, I can’t believe Jen is really going to do this. I’d been tracking you for months and months, and I just felt so invested in your progress. When you first got to Michigan, you seemed so fragile. I couldn’t believe how far you’d come since you moved here.

“Like when you first started sparring, I was sure you were going to get your rib broken again, or your nose or your arm. You didn’t know it, but we had a photographer in the parking lot every Sunday just waiting for you to be carried out in a stretcher.”

Jen felt anger begin to rise in her chest; she wasn’t sure whether it angered her more that the reporters had been stalking her without her knowledge or that they had been hoping to see her get injured. But she had decided not to pass any outward judgment until Olivia’s hour was up. Jen looked at the clock. There were twenty-seven minutes left. She took another swallow of her drink and looked down into the cup. Now that it was almost gone, she decided it was actually quite tasty. She wondered how she would distract herself from making horrible grimacing faces at Olivia’s story once she had nothing left to hide her face with.

“When we got to the gymnasium, I found a seat in the back, where no one would notice me,” said Olivia. “I sat there for the first set of fights. I was watching those two little skinny guys who went before you in on the same mats. And they were flying in the air, kicking each other. It was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen. You know how that one guy kept jumping up so high?”

Jen nodded, though she hadn’t seen any of the three fights that had occurred simultaneously in the period before hers.

“I thought that was so amazing,” said Olivia. She was speaking very quickly now, either from excitement about her story or nervousness about running out of time.

“Your fight was next, and I was so excited and nervous. I’d been keeping a low profile since that day I saw you at the co-op. But I wanted to sit closer. And I decided, screw it, I’m moving to the front. I figured there was no way you were going to be looking at the crowd, much less recognize me.”

“I saw you,” said Jen, unable to contain this small comment.

Olivia rushed on as though Jen’s statement made her nervous. “Watching you fight up there, I thought, this is amazing. This is more impressive than anything I’ve ever done—than everything I’ve ever done, put together. Here I am, following this woman around, and she is spending her life in such a better way than I am spending mine. Why am I here, sneaking around the corners of this event, when I should be right in the middle of it? Why couldn’t I be the one doing it?”

Jen remembered the awful, queasy sickness of waiting for the fight, waiting in the dressing room with Shane, reading the article that this woman, Lorna Olivia Lee, had written about her. And then the fight itself, the pressure, the public humiliation. It’s not as fun as it seems, she thought, taking one final, silencing sip of her drink.

“When you got knocked out, I screamed. I don’t know if you heard me.”

Jen didn’t bother responding, although she didn’t remember hearing a scream, didn’t remember hearing anything other than the rushing in her own head.

“My photographer was all excited, taking all these pictures. But I was so worried. I thought, if she gets up, I’m going to change my whole life.”

She paused and took a long, melodramatic sip of her drink, licking her lips clean of the green froth.

“And of course you did, and that was it. I stayed and watched all the fights. I had been planning to leave right after yours, but I just sat there, close enough to touch the fighters, and watched until the very end of the tournament. The photographer was complaining that he wanted to leave, but I had the car keys and I wouldn’t move. I saw all the people from your school fight, and your friend Brittany.”

“Shane,” said Jen.

“And when it was over, I walked out, and I felt exhilarated, like I was high or something. I called my job and quit that afternoon. And I decided my goal was to become a fighter like you.”

Olivia looked at her expectantly, as though wanting her to respond. But Jen didn’t want to show her surprise at this unanticipated declaration. She returned Olivia’s gaze blankly.

“How long do I have?” Olivia asked.

“Fourteen minutes,” said Jen.

“Okay,” said Olivia, taking a deep breath and a large gulp of her drink. “I spent the next few days looking for a new place to live. I always stayed at this one hotel in North Middleton, but I took all my stuff out of there and moved into a big house with a bunch of college kids, and one of them got me a job at the juice collective.”

“You work here?” Jen asked. That would explain why everyone here knew her, not to mention the free drinks.

“Yup, since one week after your fight,” said Olivia. “It doesn’t pay much, but I have savings, plus my rent is really cheap. And I get most of my meals here for free.” As though to emphasize this point, she took another large sip of her drink.

“The only problem was that I was in no shape to start taekwondo. I had no stamina at all. I hadn’t exercised at all for years, since I stopped dancing. So I started running every day, and I joined the yoga studio.”

“Right,” said Jen, remembering their conversation during class. “What’s it called again?”

“Pomegranate Yoga Studio,” said Olivia.

“Where is it?” Jen asked.

Olivia looked anxiously at the clock.

“I’ll count this as a time-out,” said Jen.

“Okay, thanks,” said Olivia, sighing in relief. She had been speaking so quickly that she seemed a little out of breath.

More slowly, she said, “It’s just a little further down the street.” She turned to look around the cramped room at the handful of college women hunched over their textbooks, drinking juice and eating vegetable sandwiches. “A lot of the people in here go to Pomegranate. Actually almost all of them.”

“Do you like it?” Jen asked. She couldn’t help but be curious about this potential alternate life; if she hadn’t met Rob, she realized, she likely would have been one of the women attending the yoga school and drinking juice in this collective.

“I love it,” said Olivia, smiling. “It’s a woman-centered practice, so we do more moon salutations instead of sun salutations, and all the teachers are women.”

Jen couldn’t help but note the contrast to the taekwondo school and its attendant tea house, both populated heavily, and at times exclusively, by men. I’ve been hanging out on the wrong side of Main Street, Jen thought.

“So that’s why you look so different?” Jen asked, finally understanding why the woman sitting across from her seemed to have lost ten years off her age during the last three months.

“Yeah, I suppose,” said Olivia, looking down at the table in embarrassment. “I also stopped smoking and eating fast food and bleaching my hair. And I’ve been eating a mostly raw diet, lots of vegetables and nuts and juice of course.”

Olivia took another large swallow of her juice and looked at the clock. “I can finish my story now if you want.”

“You have six minutes,” said Jen.

“Okay,” said Olivia, speeding her pace again. “Now that I’ve spent a few months getting in shape, I felt like it was finally time for me to start studying taekwondo, that I was finally ready. So that brings me to why I need to talk to you now.”

“You want to study with Master Park,” said Jen. She didn’t care anymore. “It’s fine. Go ahead.” If Olivia was really trying to change her whole life, Jen certainly wasn’t spiteful enough to try to stop her. And if this was all some kind of elaborate trap to get into Jen’s school, well, Jen had decided months ago, back at the co-op, that she wasn’t going to bother protesting whatever the reporters did. Jen could ignore Olivia like she usually ignored all the other beginning students. Hell, Rob could teach her; they would be a perfect match.

“No,” said Olivia. “I want to study with you.”

“With me?” said Jen, startled. “I’m not a teacher.” This evening had in fact been her first experience teaching, and clearly it had not ended up well.

“Sure you are. You taught me all that stuff tonight. I thought you were a great teacher.”

“I don’t think Master Park would agree to it,” said Jen, hoping this white lie would distract Olivia long enough for Jen to come up with a more credible excuse.

“I told him tonight outside, after you hit me,” Olivia replied. “He said it’s fine, if you agree.”

Jen couldn’t manage to be polite in her dismissals any longer.

“You wrote those lies about me,” she said, spitefulness darkening her voice as she tried to control her temper. Jen saw several of the women in the room look up from their textbooks in alarm.

“I never wrote any lies,” said Olivia. She did not appear insulted or ruffled by Jen’s attack. “I would never write lies. Everything I wrote was technically true.”

“You said I was obsessed with fighting and I was sleeping with my training partner,” said Jen.

“So you weren’t sleeping with her?” Olivia asked.

“No!” Jen yelled. She expected the students to come to Olivia’s defense, but as soon as she had shown herself to be calm and untroubled, they had resumed their studying.

“Oh, well, I wasn’t sure,” said Olivia. “You sure spent a lot of time at her house.”

“That’s none of your business,” Jen said, trying to lower her volume. She could hear her voice shaking; she looked down and saw that her hands were shaking as well. “Didn’t you just say you only reported facts, not just things you made up?

“I never said you were sleeping with her,” said Olivia, her calm voice suggesting that, unlike Jen, she was accustomed to this sort of confrontation. “I said that there were rumors you were sleeping with her.”

“But there weren’t any rumors like that,” said Jen.

“Sure there were. Me and the reporters had the rumors,” Olivia replied. “We had all kinds of rumors.”

“That’s really crappy journalism,” said Jen. She was tired of yelling; her voice was worn and sullen now.

“I know. And I shouldn’t defend it,” said Olivia, her voice softening. “I have no real way to defend myself, other than to say that I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped for good, and I’m going to do something better with my life, and I’m asking you to help me.”

Jen sighed. She hated rejecting people, even people who had done horrible things to her in the past. And it did seem like Olivia had changed everything about her life in an effort to reject her disgusting, parasitic career. She cursed herself briefly for being so quick to forgive.

“I’ll think about it, said Jen. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“That’s great,” said Olivia, smiling broadly. She stood up and pointed at the clock. “Time’s up; you’re free,” she said, pointing at the clock. She pulled her jacket on and pushed in her chair.

“You might think I’m a bad person,” said Olivia, “and maybe I am. But I never lie, and I always keep a promise.” And before Jen could say anything in response, Olivia had disappeared out the front door, leaving her half-finished drink on the table.

Chapter 35

33. Moved by Hope

“As long as I fight, I am moved by hope; and if I fight with hope, then I can wait.” —Paulo Freire

Step, punch, block, jump, kick.

Jen stopped and rubbed her hands together. They were getting numb already, and she had only been outside for ten minutes. Still too cold, she said to herself, pulling the hood of her sweatshirt up over her head.

There had still been snow on the ground when she returned to Michigan a week ago, but the weather had been unseasonably warm for January since then, above freezing, and the melted snow had made its way down to the lake in little streams. This morning the sky was a bright, enticing blue through the kitchen window, and it had lured Jen out to practice her forms and kicks in the yard.

She wrapped her arms around herself and stared across the lake, which was still covered with a thin layer of floating ice. The houses on the other side had been difficult to see through the thick layers of snow that covered their roofs and balconies and clung to the evergreens surrounding them. Now their full array of earth-tones was visible again: dark, muddy browns, stony tans and grays, a brick red. And there, off to the right, like moss clinging to the rocks, the old grass-green house that had comforted her back during the summer, when she first moved to Michigan and had felt so entirely alone.

Jen was happy now to see it emerge, like the patchy grass of the lake house lawn appearing from beneath the snow. The cheerful color matched the blue sky, and Jen felt suddenly optimistic that life in North Middleton would be tolerable, even without Shane to train with. Look at this beautiful lake, this house, she told herself. And all I have to do is hang around and read and study taekwondo and learn to really play chess; this is a good life.

She had said these words to herself each day since she returned to Michigan, but today, she actually believed them, at least for this moment.

As she looked at the green house, she began to get the feeling that someone was looking back at her. She looked harder, and yes, there it was: at the edge of the balcony, crouched on a short chair or perhaps a stool, was the distant figure she remembered from the summer, staring at her from far across the lake.

She continued staring for a moment, wondering if the person could see her. He moved a little, tightening his arms around his body, she thought, but his gaze did not waver. She realized how uneven their staring contest was; he was barely visible between the sweeping pine branches, while she was unobscured on a flat lawn. She wondered how long he had been watching, whether he had seen her doing such a horrible job on her forms, her feet numb and unstable on the cold earth, her hands too frozen to make proper fists. Embarrassed, she turned and walked back into the house, making a point of not looking behind her as she stepped through the door.

But once she was inside, she still had the feeling that she was being watched. She finished her forms in the living room, imagining what Master Park would say about her cramped movements as she worked within the limitations of the enclosed space, trying not to kick the sofa or the end table. As she ate her usual lunch of toast and peanut butter, she almost went back to make a second helping, but something stopped her, and she decided that one serving was enough.

She was antsy all afternoon, counting the hours until she could train again, even though she had been at the school only fifteen hours before. She had felt this way all week since returning to Michigan; it was like her body was trying to make up all of the exercise she had missed during her nine days in Los Angeles. She wanted to pull on her sneakers and go for a run, but she knew that was a silly idea; it would be better to save her energy for class. She forced herself to sit still and read the final chapters of The Meaningful Endgame.

When she finally arrived early for the intermediate/advanced class that night, she felt like skipping through the front door. Instead she calmly placed her bag and shoes in a cubby by the front window and made her way to the side of the room to stretch. She had half an hour until the class started, plenty of time for a nice, long warm-up.

As she lowered herself into a forward split, she heard Master Park call her name. She looked up, and saw him standing just in front of the screen in the back. He folded his hand twice, beckoning her to follow, then disappeared behind the screen.

“What now?” Jen whispered to herself, although no one had asked anything of her all day. She didn’t want to be interrupted from her stretching; she had just been thinking how wonderful the position felt, how eager she was to use all that range from her stretched-out hamstrings to kick high in the air. She sighed, lifted herself from the floor, and followed Master Park into the back room.

“Hi,” she said as she walked through the door to the living room in back of the school. Master Park was sitting at the table, staring at the bookshelf.

“I need you to do something,” he said, without looking up at her.

“Okay,” said Jen, trying not to get frustrated by his complete lack of urgency. Time to warm up for class, she thought, trying to project this idea into his mind.

He continued to survey the bookshelf with the passive calm of somebody browsing a bookstore for a fun summer read. Finally he reached into the middle shelf. “You should read this book,” he said, handing her a small red paperback. The New Aggressive Male. She remembered the title. It was the book Rob had been reading, the one that was encouraging him to want to win his fights more, but was also making him cheat on his girlfriend.

Was this what Master Park had called her back here for? Couldn’t this have waited until their post-class chess lesson? She held the book disdainfully in two hands, between her thumbs and index fingers.

“You think this will improve my taekwondo?” she asked.

“Hm, I don’t know,” said Master Park, as though this thought had not occurred to him. “Maybe.”

Jen looked at him expectantly, waiting for further explanation.

“I think it will improve your chess,” he said.

“Chess?” Jen repeatedly dumbly. She knew that Master Park wanted her to be more aggressive in her chess playing—but she had assumed that this was supposed to translate into her taekwondo. It hadn’t ever occurred to her that might be teaching her chess as an ends in itself.

“I think you should start playing chess at the Snail Plant,” Master Park said. “I go Saturday afternoons, in the courtyard. But you’ll need to improve your game a little first. The guys over there are pretty competitive.”

The courtyard, she thought, forgetting her hurry for a moment. She remembered the taekwondo class she had spied on there, how she had brought Rob to watch, how he had introduced her to Master Park. She thought about what the Snail Plant had symbolized to her then—the intrigue of a strange new town that was a cipher to her, a puzzle to solve. She hadn’t been back there since, called off the investigation as soon as she found something better to occupy her time. That place was too unreal, Jen thought, with that fortress-like exterior, those high, pink walls, the men with funny names that seemed to proliferate around it: Nicolai Snail, Ozzy Osterberg, even Vanto Hatch.

She suddenly felt a strong wave of dread at the thought of going back there. After all, hadn’t she left Los Angeles to get away from that sort of unreality, to find something more substantial, tangible, something that meant exactly what it seemed to mean and nothing more? And hadn’t she found it?

Calm down, she told herself; it’s just a place. A place to play chess. She shook her head and looked down at the book in her hands.

“Okay, I’ll read it,” said Jen, turning towards the door. “I just finished the endgame book, so it’s good timing.”

“Wait,” said Master Park, as she tried to leave. She stopped and turned around.

“I still need you to do something,” he said.

“Oh, right,” she said. She had assumed that reading the book and going to the Snail Plant were the somethings he had been referring to when he had called her into the back room.

“I need you to train the new girl.”

Jen tried not show her surprise, but she could feel her eyebrows rise. Only the top students trained the new people—usually Shane and Rob. Jen was still only a green belt. Of course, Shane was gone now, off to Ann Arbor with Brittany in time for their new semester to start at Eastern Michigan University. So maybe Master Park just needed a replacement, a new female trainer to set the female students at ease. Jen was now the most advanced woman in the school, she realized. Shane was gone—and wouldn’t be a woman for much longer at any rate. There were a handful of white and yellow-belted girls, most of whom had been there when Jen started training, but they barely ever came to class, and she had shot quickly past them.

“Okay,” said Jen. “When, tomorrow?” She was feeling anxious to wrap up this conversation so she could get back to her warm-up. She could hear Rob leading the beginners through their final set of push-ups and sit-ups out in the training room, and the advanced class would begin in less than ten minutes.

“No, now,” said Master Park. “She’s waiting by the front desk.”

“But the beginner’s class is almost over,” Jen said. “Do you want me to train her for ten minutes?”

“You can work with her during advanced class. She got confused and came at the wrong time; she got here right before you did. Just give her a first lesson, the beginning of the first form, roundhouse kick.”

“But I’ll have to miss class,” she said. She knew she shouldn’t complain, but she couldn’t help herself.

She knew as soon as she said it that she had made a grave mistake. Master Park looked straight at her, the edges of his mouth drooping grimly. “Some things are more important than class,” he said.

“Yes, I know,” said Jen, believing it in principle.

Out in the classroom, Jen scanned the room for the girl, looking for a college student. Instead she saw a woman close to her own age, perhaps in her early thirties, sitting in one of the folding chairs by the window.

Right, we’re all girls here, Jen thought, remembering how Master Park had so often referred to her and Shane as “you girls,” how Shane had talked about “that girl who knocked you out” to Jen.

Jen walked towards the woman, who rose to her feet. Jen sized her up quickly, comparing her to some of the other new woman she had seen at the school, most of whom had not stayed for more than a few weeks. The woman looked to be in decent if not exceptional shape, with some muscle tone visible in her arms and shoulders. She’s got to be doing some kind of exercise already, Jen said to herself. The woman’s skin shone with the healthy glow of someone well-nourished and hydrated; that was a good sign. Her hair was thick and dark, and Jen noted with approval that the woman had secured it into a plain, practical ponytail; that meant she wasn’t at the school just to meet a boyfriend, like some of the women who had come to class with their hair hanging unbound and well-combed, their faces full of makeup.

“Hi,” said the woman, beaming a large, familiar smile at Jen as she approached. “I’m Olivia.”

“I’m Jen.”

“I know,” said the woman, still smiling as she placed her hand in Jen’s and shook it firmly.

I guess she recognizes me, Jen thought, feeling startled; she hadn’t met any new people in a while, and she had gotten used to feeling anonymous in North Middleton.

But looking into the woman’s eyes, Jen had the feeling that she also recognized the woman, that they had met somewhere, not so long ago. Perhaps she had seen her around town; maybe she worked in the supermarket where Jen had been buying her food ever since she had stopped going to the co-op. She tried to imagine the woman working behind the cashier’s counter; the image didn’t seem to fit. But that’s was the only place she ever went in North Middleton—to the store and the academy. She scanned her memory—could she know the woman from Los Angeles?

She considered asking the woman if they had met before, but, thinking of how she had already gotten in trouble for not wanting to teach the student, she decided it was better to restrain herself from extraneous conversation that would distract from the lesson she was about to give.

Over by the mirrors where Shane—then Brittany—had given Jen her first lessons, Jen led Olivia through the opening of the first form.

“Good,” said Jen, meaning it, as Olivia confidently repeated her movements back to her. Watching her stomp and block and punch, Jen was impressed; there was no way Jen had looked half that good during her first lesson.

Likewise, Olivia’s first roundhouse kick felt surprisingly powerful on the pad that Jen held for her. Her hips pivoted well and her leg snapped out with a nice whipping motion.

“Have you done martial arts before?” Jen asked, realizing she should have asked this at the beginning of the lesson. I bet she did taekwondo as a kid, Jen told herself, or maybe kungfu or something. It was probably one of those things that never left your muscle memory, like running after a cab in high heels, which Jen had been pleased to discover she could still do during her visit to Los Angeles.

“No, never,” said the woman.

“You’re getting it very quickly,” said Jen. “Your form looks good and your kick is strong.”

“Well, I used to be a dancer when I was a teenager,” the woman said, slurring her words and looking towards the ground as she said it, as though wanting to avoid talking about herself. “So I guess it’s not too hard for me to copy your movements.”

Jen wanted to laugh from her surprise. It had never occurred to her that a dancer would have an advantage in learning to throw a roundhouse kick. The two arts seem diametrically opposed: dance was all about appearance and superficial things, whereas taekwondo was about power and fighting, and it didn’t matter how one looked.

But in the end, I suppose it’s all just movements, Jen thought. If you can do the movements, then you can throw a good kick. She imagined an army of ballerinas throwing round after round of perfect, pirouette-like roundhouse kicks.

“That’s amazing,” said Jen. “And you haven’t danced since you were a teenager?

“No, not at all,” said Olivia. “I’ve been too busy with,” she paused, interrupting herself. “Well, a lot of stupid things, really.”

“You look like you’re in good shape,” said Jen, noting again the definition of Olivia’s upper arms, more noticeable now that her muscles had been working. We should stop chatting, Jen thought, cursing herself for starting and continuing this conversation. She glanced around the room, hoping Master Park wasn’t watching them.

“Well, I’ve been doing a lot of yoga just recently,” Olivia said. “For the last couple of months.”

“Yoga?” Jen repeated, forgetting all about ending the conversation. “Where?”

“Pomegranate Yoga Studio,” said Olivia. “Have you heard of it?”

“No, I don’t know any yoga schools around here,” Jen said, a little embarrassed that she had given up her search so quickly after meeting Rob and Master Park. After that first taekwondo class, she had never bothered to even find out the names of any local schools. She marveled to think of her earlier yoga practice, how she used to go every day, even twice a day. She hadn’t done so much as a single sun salutation since she had arrived in North Middleton.

“So, let’s see that roundhouse kick again,” said Jen.

As the advanced students finished the isometric stretches that signaled the end of the class, Jen walked Olivia to the door. Seeing her in street clothes, a sweatshirt and puffy jacket, Jen was struck once again with how familiar she looked.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” Jen finally asked.

“Yeah, we’ve met a few times,” Olivia said, looking down at her feet again, as she had done when she talked about dancing.

How could that be, Jen thought? She hadn’t met anyone in Michigan, at least not any women. The only people she had met were taekwondo students and people who worked in stores, and none of them had been named Olivia—she would remember a name like that.

“In Los Angeles?” Jen asked. That would make sense. It seemed like she had been introduced to thousands of people there, more of them forgotten than remembered.

“No,” said Olivia. “In Michigan.” She was still looking shyly at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” said Jen. “I don’t remember meeting an Olivia here.”

“Well, I don’t think we were formally introduced,” she woman said. “And Olivia is actually my middle name.”

“But where did we meet?” Jen asked, puzzled. The more Olivia talked, the more Jen was certain that they had met before, many times, that this woman had played some significant role in her life.

“At the food co-op,” said Olivia. “And then I saw you again at your tournament.”

“At the food co-op,” Jen repeated, the center of her consciousness now racing to catch up to something lingering around the edges.

A voice rang in her head, and it wasn’t Olivia’s. It was a man’s voice, a man with a funny accent, Australian, perhaps, or maybe from some very isolated part of the Bronx. And the voice was saying, “Bradley’s baby.” Yes, she could hear it clearly now: “Do you have any comment on Bradley’s baby?”

Jen gasped.

“Um…um…” Jen stuttered, dredging for the woman’s name. That reporter, the one who wrote that horrible tabloid article about her. What was her name?

“Lorna O. Lee?” she finally sputtered, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.

“Yes!” said Olivia, smiling in pleasant surprise. “I didn’t know you knew my name.”

“Oh, yes, I do,” said Jen, confused now. Why was this woman beaming at her, this woman who had written all manner of ridiculous lies about her, who was making her own wealth by slandering Jen’s name? Here she was, allowing Jen to make a fool of herself, showing her the opening of the first form, teaching her to throw a roundhouse kick. Here was this woman pretending to be a student, accepting this precious knowledge from Jen, the most important things that Jen knew. And for what—another story? Another insider exposé of Jen’s secret life?

The woman fell to the floor, and Jen looked down at her fist. It stung a little. She had just punched the reporter in the face.

Never hit a reporter, Jen thought dully, watching her clutch both hands over her right eye.

Chapter 34

32. The Intent to Be Lost

“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”

—Elizabeth Bishop

“Oh my God,” Becky exclaimed, as Paula handed her the book across the table. “I didn’t know this was out yet.”

They were out at brunch a few days after the baby shower—Becky, Jen, Paula, and Paula’s mysterious new non-sexual romantic partner, whose name was Ex. Chase and Eduardo were supposed to be there, too, but Eduardo had caught a cold at the last minute and needed Chase to stay home and nurse him: “He hates being sick. He gets too lonely in bed all day by himself,” Chase had said to Jen on the phone as he apologized for missing brunch.

“It’s not out,” said Paula. “Ex had some connections so we got an advanced copy.”

“Thanks so much,” said Becky, a little more reserved as she addressed Paula’s androgynous lover. Ex nodded politely; so far, he or she didn’t seem to be much of a talker. Jen had met Ex briefly at the shower and now again today, but she still had no idea whether Ex was a man or a woman. Becky didn’t know, either: “When I asked Paula, she just said, ‘Ex doesn’t have a gender,’” Becky had said. “I tried to bug her about it, but she wouldn’t tell me anything more.”

Becky held the book up for Jen to see. Jen read the title as it floated between Becky’s bulging stomach and her beaming face.

The Deliberate Family.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

“It’s the new Groundbreakers book on parenting,” Becky said, with an enthusiasm that she hadn’t shown for any of the organic cotton blankets, designer baby clothes and fancy diapering gadgets she had received at the shower. “It’s supposed to be all about making conscious choices about your interaction with your child, instead of just doing whatever comes into your head.”

“So they think you should avoid being relaxed and acting naturally?” Jen asked. Becky scrunched her face up in rejection of this critique, then put the book down on the table so she could focus her attention back on the enormous plate of scrambled eggs in front of her.

“You might actually like this one,” Paula said to Jen. “It uses a lot of chess metaphors.”

“Chess?” Jen asked. “I thought Groundbreakers was all about construction and mining.”

“They’ve been switching up a lot lately,” Becky said. “They’ve been emphasizing competition as a theme.”

“Yeah, actually I had trouble understanding all the chess stuff,” Paula said, picking up the book and handing it to Jen. “I mean, I only skimmed through it; it probably explains more if you read the whole thing.”

Jen let the book fall open to a page in the middle. Her eyes landed on a familiar word, and she read aloud: “Zwischenzug.”

“What?” said Becky.

“It’s a chess strategy,” said Jen, trying to remember when she had seen it used. “I can’t exactly remember what the strategy is, though.”

“Does the book explain it?” Paula asked.

Jen scanned the page until she found a definition. She read the passage aloud. “In a zwischenzug, a player is in the position to capture a piece, but he delays capturing it. Instead, he makes other moves that strengthen his position and require his opponent’s immediate attention. He then goes on to capture the piece.”

Jen stopped, puzzled. She had seen that kind of strategy a number of times, but she couldn’t remember Master Park using that word; he never taught her technical chess terms. “When did I hear that?” she asked herself aloud. She remembered somebody inflecting it with the nasal diphthongs of the Midwest.

“I do something like that in tic-tac-toe,” Becky said. “No, I really do,” she added, when everyone ignored her comment except Paula, who laughed dismissively.

Jen shook her head, looked down at the page, and continued reading. “Psychologically, this maneuver is a show of force meant to frustrate and intimidate one’s opponent. It is like punching a man in the face, and then, as he lifts his arms to defend against further punches, kneeing him in the stomach. Then, as he doubles over, you punch him in the face once more.”

Jen looked up from the book again. “I’m curious how this will relate to parenting,” she said skeptically.

“Me too,” said Becky, her eyes widening with excitement. “This is great.”

“Experiment with this strategy in your own household,” Jen read. “When your child has violated your rules, do not punish him right away. Use the leverage of the situation to get him to do things that you want him to do.

“For example, imagine your child breaks something in the house—perhaps a lamp. You find the broken pieces that he has hidden in his room. Don’t play your move right away; hold on to the evidence for later. Now, you can begin to make suggestions: Why don’t you clean the bathroom? How about you take your little sister to the park? I think if we sold your video game consul, you could get a lot more homework done, don’t you?”

“Wow,” said Becky, clearly impressed. She had put down her fork so she could give her full attention to the passage Jen was reading.

“You can deploy these intermediate moves for several days, potentially up to a week,” Jen read. “When you sense that your child’s feelings of guilt and fear are beginning to subside, that is the moment to produce your evidence: show him the broken lamp, tell him that he will need to do chores to earn the money to buy a new lamp, along with extra chores as an interest payment for all the days that he did not tell you about his crime.”

“Brilliant,” said Becky.

“It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Paula asked, pleased that her present was being received so well. Even Ex was smiling in peaceful approval as he or she nibbled his or her toast.

“I’ve been doing these Groundbreakers parenting meetings,” said Becky to Jen. “They’ve been talking about this kind of stuff, but no one can get the book yet.”

Jen closed the book and put it down on the table. Something had been bothering her about the analogy of chess to parenting. It had taken her a moment to figure out what it was; suddenly, it came to her. “Isn’t it kind of weird to think of your child as an opponent?” she asked.

“No, it’s not,” said Becky, her tone conveying that she had anticipated this counterargument, or, more probably, that her Groundbreakers advisors had. “But that’s what we’re taught to think as mothers, that it’s weird. That our child’s interests are identical to our own. It’s not true. Groundbreakers has been teaching me to recognize that I will have needs and desires that run counter to those of my child, and that our interaction will always be a negotiation of needs, goals, and interests.”

Jen had already tuned Becky out, as she always had whenever the Groundbreakers rhetoric got too heavy. She tried again to remember where she had heard the term “zwischenzug.”

“Oh, I remember who taught me that word,” said Jen. “It was Brittany.” She remembered the first time she had met Shane’s girlfriend, how she had seen the intermediate move that Jen had missed, the move that, it turned out, would force Master Park to move his pawn, creating an opening to set up a game-ending attack. Master Park had explained it to her later, and they had reviewed the strategy a number of times, though never again using that funny name.

“That’s the woman who was teaching you taekwondo, right?” asked Becky. “She plays chess, too?”

“No,” said Jen. “Actually it was her girlfriend.”

“They’re both named Brittany?” Becky asked. “Brittany and Brittany?”

“Well, they would have been,” Jen said, wondering how much to explain. “The first Brittany changed her name to Shane. I mean, his name.” The moment she corrected herself, she had the urge to cover her mouth with her hand, but it was too late; it was out. Jen had been working on referring to Shane by masculine pronouns during the last few weeks since she—he—had told Jen of his plan to change his gender. But she wished she had restrained her self-editing right now, so she wouldn’t have to explain.

“His name?” Becky asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Yeah, she’s going to become a guy,” Jen said, trying to sound nonchalant about it. She had remembered, mid-sentence, that she still had no idea of Ex’s gender status.

“Seriously?” asked Becky, her unconcealed surprise making Jen cringe as she thought of what Ex’s reaction might be. “She’s switching from a woman to a man? Why would you ever want to do that? I’ve never met anyone who went that direction before.”

“You’ve met people who went the other direction?” Jen asked. Until recently, she had been pretty familiar with all of Becky’s friends and acquaintances, at least by description. She hadn’t heard anything about a transgendered woman; it was the sort of thing she thought Becky would have mentioned.

“No,” Becky said. “I guess I haven’t.”

Jen tried to find Ex in her peripheral vision, hoping to gage his or her reaction to this line of conversation. As far as Jen could tell from this sidelong glance, Ex’s face appeared as calm and removed as ever, without any sign of tension in the pointed chin, large dark eyes, or prominent cheekbones.

“At least I’d heard of men becoming women, though,” Becky continued, apparently oblivious or unconcerned about Ex’s presence. “You always hear about men who used to be women; they’re all over the talk shows. I haven’t heard too much about the other way around. Well, unless,” she said, turning to look at Ex.

Oh, don’t ask him, or her, Jen commanded silently. Just let it go.

“Did you used to be…” Becky continued, waiting for Ex to finish the question for her.

Ex just looked at her expectantly, a small, polite smile on his or her face.

“I mean, are you…”

“Are you asking about Ex’s gender?” Paula asked, grabbing her lover’s arm protectively. “Ex doesn’t have a gender.”

“I have been both genders,” Ex said, in a voice that was both melodious and gruff. Jen could imagine it belonging to a surprisingly sensitive truck driver, or the singer in an all-female punk band, or a teenaged boy trying to sound older than he was. “I spent many years projected into the world through the prisms of both ‘male’ and ‘female.’”

Now Paula was surprised. “Really?” she asked. That’s love, Jen thought. Up until now, Jen had found it a bit annoying that Paula refused to explain Ex’s gender. But suddenly it seemed charming that Paula had taken Ex’s explanation at face value. Paula really believed that Ex was neither male nor female, without any further questioning of this impossible proposition, Jen realized.

“Of course,” said Ex. “I wasn’t always this neutral figure you see before you. In fact, if you had met me then, back in the days when I was a man or when I was a woman, you never would have recognized me as the person you see today.”

Looking at Ex, Jen believed this; she could not quite imagine the face as belonging to either a woman or a man. It blended both elements so perfectly that when Jen tried to imagine it as one gender, contradictory features popped up that made it appear more strongly the other. But if she imagined it as the other gender, then suddenly it reverted to the first one. It was like one of those drawings in which it is impossible to tell if a box is facing up or down, projecting out at the viewer or retreating backwards into the world of the drawing.

“I was very, very good at each gender,” said Ex. “Too good. People expected things of me, certain behaviors, attitudes. I felt that I was not fully myself; yet people were completely fooled. They used to fall in love with me, throw themselves at me, take off their clothes. People like when you are the paragon of what they expect you to be; it attracts them.”

Jen looked across the table to see how Becky was reacting to this arrogance; she appeared to be completely engrossed in Ex’s narrative and not at all resistant or skeptical. Remembering Becky’s friendly façade around Eduardo, Jen wondered if Becky liked Ex or simply tolerated him or her because of Paula.

“When I was a man, I was a brick wall,” Ex said. “People expected me to be rigid, unbending. Men puffed themselves up for battle when I stated a simple viewpoint or observation; women deferred to me, deftly reorganizing their opinions to mirror mine. It was disgusting to me, this unearned power. It made me nauseated.”

As Ex spoke about being a man, he seemed to grow into one before Jen’s eyes. The jaw solidified into squareness, the voice hit deep notes that were definitely more tenor than alto.

“The worst part of it was my job,” Ex said. “I worked in commodities trading.”

Paula looked over at him in surprise. “You never told me you knew about finance,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Ex said. “I still don’t, really.”

“But don’t you need to go to school for that kind of thing?” Becky asked. She herself had gotten a business degree in hopes, at the time, of getting a fancy financial job, though things hadn’t worked out that way.

“You would think so,” said Ex. “But no, I didn’t need to. I was living in Chicago, and I got a job filing papers in an office. All the traders liked me, thought I was ‘one of the guys.’ They were always inviting me out to drinks, complaining about their jobs, and I would chime in with my thoughts and ideas. And when one of them had a nervous breakdown and quit—they were always having nervous breakdowns at that office—they offered me his job.”

“That’s horrible!” Becky exclaimed. She had worked as an administrative assistant for several years after she completed her business degree, hoping to move up in the company, and though they interviewed her for several openings, she always lost out to someone with more experience, or a more advanced degree—and always a man.

“No offense,” she added. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”

“No, you’re right. It was horrible,” Ex said. “And yet, part of me liked it, craved the approval, puffing itself up to become all that people saw me as. My body was rigid, and my shoulders stiff in their broadness. I grew strong as an oak and stiff as one. I grew to see why the men at the office were so psychologically fragile. I felt that if I were pushed too hard, I would crack through my very core.”

A look of suffering crossed Ex’s face, as though something was piercing his stomach. He frowned for a moment, pushed his shaggy hair back from his forehead, his mouth conveying strength and anger and pain all at once.

If Jen had doubted Ex’s claim about attracting people, taken it as boastful pride, she believed it now. Even as Ex spoke about his discomfort with his masculinity, Jen felt the overwhelming desire to embrace him, to throw herself against his chest and be wrapped in his arms, to offer herself as a comfort in the face of the pain he described. She had to remind herself that this was Paula’s lover, and a person that Jen barely knew, to restrain herself from leaning in to kiss his unhappy mouth.

Then his face softened, so abruptly that Jen couldn’t place when it changed, though it had changed radically. She looked at Ex’s eyes; they appeared now to be clearly women’s eyes, Jen thought, shy and dark and secretive. Ex’s brow was too delicate, her eyelashes too graceful to belong to a man, it seemed now. So odd, Jen thought, when a moment ago she was a man, and I was so attracted to him.

“When I was a woman, I was soft like butter,” Ex said. “I was tasteful. I was polite. Nothing made me so uncomfortable as someone else’s discomfort, so I did all I could to comfort and appease those around me. I felt that I was melting, changing my shape all the time, molding myself to the expectations of other people.”

Ex cleared her throat and looked around the table, checking to see that everyone was still paying attention. Becky nodded encouragingly at her. “Go on,” she said.

“Men were always asking me on dates,” she said. “And I wasn’t interested in them, but I would go, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I sat through endless insufferable dinners, picking at my food because I didn’t like for the men to see me eating. I stopped answering my phone so that I wouldn’t have to refuse a second date.”

“What was your job when you were a woman?” Paula asked.

“Oh, nothing too notable,” said Ex. “I worked at a day care for a bit, and at an after-school program. Those jobs were only part-time; I did a little modeling, too, when I could get work. I lived in L.A. then. I never had any money. I bought everything with coupons, like an old lady, and I sometimes let men buy me clothes, but I hated doing that.”

Ex seemed to fold into herself as she recalled these difficult times; she pulled her knees up to her chest and shivered, despite the warm temperature in the restaurant. Her long bangs fell over her forehead, shading one eye, which only enhanced the brilliant green of the other eye, which Jen could swear was bordered in dark eyeliner.

Again, Jen felt the powerful desire to embrace Ex—to pull her close, to touch her hair, her face, to rip open the buttons of her shirt so she could touch the soft skin below them. A confusing set of conflicting emotions tore at her chest; she wanted to protect this fragile woman—but also to devour her.

What is wrong with me? Jen asked herself, rubbing her eyes to try to straighten out her vision. Paula’s lover, Jen said to herself, several times over, as a mantra, her eyes closed against the apparition.

“Did that explain everything?” Ex asked. Jen opened her eyes, and Ex had returned to his or her previous state of optical illusion; the man and the woman were both gone.

“I have a question!” exclaimed Jen, with the poor manners of one who has just awakened from a trance. Then, realizing that the question she wanted to ask might very likely be perceived as rude, she added, “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

A look of fatigue, or annoyance even, passed over Ex’s eyes, and he sounded irritated when he spoke. “No, go ahead,” he said.

Oh no, Jen thought, horrified that she might have broken the fragile spell, that Ex would be angry with her. “Oh,” said Jen, feeling her face grow warm with embarrassment, “it was nothing.”

Ex’s face softened, and her voice grew softer, more patient. “No, it’s okay,” she said. “Really, that’s why I asked.”

“Oh, well,” said Jen, stumbling over her words in embarrassment. “Were you…I mean, which were you first, a man or a woman? I mean, a boy or a girl? Which one were you born as?”

She heard Paula breathe in sharply. Jen knew it was rude to ask, but she felt that she needed to know, that it would help her understand who this mysterious person sitting in front of her was.

“That is an interesting question,” Ex said.

“Really?” Jen asked, surprised. “I would think people asked you that all the time.”

“They do,” said Ex. “That’s what is interesting about it. I suppose people think that it means something.”

Now Jen really wished she hadn’t asked the question. But since she had, she decided to commit to it; after all, there was nothing wrong with being curious. Ex had told her a story, and she wanted more information about it.

“Well, doesn’t it mean something?” Jen asked.

“What do you think it means?” Ex replied.

Jen wanted to say, It means who you really are. But she knew that was the wrong answer. Growing up, her next-door-neighbors had been Mormons. The children, who were born into Mormonism, weren’t any more Mormon than their parents, who had converted. In fact, some might say that the parents were all the more Mormon because they had made a conscious choice to be so.

“Maybe you’re right,” said Jen. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I didn’t say that,” said Ex. “I just asked a question.” It was true, Jen thought; she had just assumed, for some reason.

“Which do you think I was born as?” Ex asked Jen.

Jen studied the lines of Ex’s face, the sharpness of the chin and soft curve of the cheekbones, the glowing brown skin showing no sign of an evening shadow.

“I have no idea,” Jen said.

“I sometimes forget, myself,” said Ex. “A girly boy, a boyish girl. Years pass, and it all begins to run together.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Paula, grabbing Ex’s arm and twining her own around it. “I bet you were adorable, either way.”

“I have a question,” said Becky. “Which way is sex better? As a man or a woman?”

“Becky!” said Paula sharply. Jen looked over at Becky, who, unlike herself, did not seem the least bit self-conscious about asking personal questions. It wasn’t in Becky’s nature to be shy, Jen thought, but this was pushing the boundaries of politeness even for her. It’s the pregnant-lady prerogative, Jen thought—they are allowed to be brutally honest, what with their own private business so publically on display for all to see.

Still, Jen thought, it seemed a particularly inappropriate question to ask an avowed celibate.

Ex didn’t seem annoyed at the question. “I didn’t like it either way,” Ex said. “It never made any sense to me.”

“You didn’t like sex?” Becky asked, incredulous. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Of course I didn’t like it,” Ex replied. “Why do you think I gave it up?”

“I thought it was some kind of spiritual thing,” said Becky.

“It is,” said Ex. “You know, perhaps I enjoyed sex at the time. All I remember now is that it made me crazy. It made me have connections to other people that were…” Ex paused to choose a word: “unhealthy.”

Becky nodded. “That makes sense,” she said. Jen noticed her absently rubbing her hand across her belly as she spoke.

“When I was unhappy with my gender, I thought another gender would make me happier, would be truer to myself,” Ex continued. “I was wrong.”

Ex turned and looked straight at Jen across the table.

“Remember that,” said Ex. “Tell your friend: if you don’t like your car, you could get a different one, but someday you will not like that one either. It is an endless cycle of neediness. I think you are better off to get rid of your car and just walk on your own plain feet.”

Chapter 33

31. The Agent of Defeat

“It is important to understand that only rarely does the volume of stress defeat us; far more often the agent of defeat is insufficient capacity for recovery after the stress. Great stress simply requires great recovery.” —James E. Loehr

It was snowing in Michigan. Through the window of the airplane, Jen could see the white specks cutting a diagonal path across the dark pre-dawn sky as she arranged her books and carry-on bag for easy accessibility during the flight. The woman sitting in the window seat had boarded the plane already dressed for Los Angeles in a short skirt, her bare legs tightly crossed to protect her modesty. The cabin was chilly, and the woman hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms through her thin sweater.

Jen, who was always cold on airplanes, looked down at her own outfit: thick sweatpants that would serve as her pajamas in California, an old t-shirt, a giant, hooded sweatshirt. Even at the height of her fashion-consciousness, she had never dressed sexy when she traveled. She liked her airplane clothes to double as a blanket; once she got settled in, she would pull her hood up over her head, pull her arms inside the body of the sweatshirt, and try to sleep. Still, in years past, the sweatshirt would have been something more stylish: the top half of a matching designer terrycloth track suit, or perhaps a fashionably large cowl-necked sweater that she could sink her head down into while she slept and ignored the other passengers.

Usually flight attendants showered her with special attention, knowing that a complaint from her could get them fired. It had been years since she had flown without multiple inquiries as to her comfort: was she too warm, too cold, would she like more blankets, was she hungry, thirsty, did she need pills to sleep?

The male attendant on this flight seemed more interested in Jen’s short-skirted neighbor. “We have warm cookies,” he said to her, winking, looking right past Jen even as he handed her the warm face cloth that always marked the beginning of a flight in business class. “Let me know if you get hungry.”

Jen studied herself in the bathroom mirror as soon as she was allowed to rise from her seat. The flight attendant had looked right past her as though she were any one of the hundred anonymous passengers on the plane. Was she really so changed as to be unrecognizable? The dim, yellow light showed an athletic young woman whose muscular shoulders were apparent even under the bulk of sweatshirt. Her hair was still short; she had taken to cutting it herself, which she turned out to be reasonably skilled at. But this morning she hadn’t brushed it, so it clung to the side of her had in some places and stuck out at startling angles in others. She hadn’t bothered with dying it black after the first time. Without any coloring or highlights, it was the indistinctive color of dead leaves, a few shades darker than her face, which was still tawny from all the time she had spent practicing her forms outdoors before the weather had gotten too cold. Her jaw looked broad and strong, her eyes bright and focused below her messy hair.

She tried to remember what she had looked like before. It wasn’t so long ago—six months, she thought in awe, although it seemed like years—but she couldn’t get a clear image of herself with her long hair, her blonde highlights, her skinny limbs. All that came to mind were photographs from magazines, stylized images of exaggerated emotion: Jen looking sweet, looking angry, looking perturbed. Jen at her wedding, looking glamorous and happy. Jen after the divorce, tears streaming down her face, juxtaposed against a photo of Bradley rolling his eyes in exasperation.

No wonder the flight attendant didn’t recognize me, she thought, remembering the soft, sheltered look of her cheeks and neck in those photos, the frail femininity of her face. That sweet princess look was all gone now. It had been beaten out of her by six months of grueling workouts, of repeated blows to her face and body. And perhaps even more, by six months of life in a place where people didn’t care how she looked, where she hadn’t heard one comment, positive or negative, about her appearance, after so many years of constant scrutiny, cattiness, unsolicited opinions.

I look tough, she decided, pulling her sweatshirt hood up over her head and practicing mean fighter faces in the mirror until she remembered that there was a line of people waiting to use the restroom. It had been a relief not to always care about being pretty, about looking hot at this premier or that party, to know that her body was okay not because of how it appeared, but because of how hard and fast it could fly in and throw a kick at her opponent.

Back in her seat, though, doubt began to creep over her. She imagined how she would appear to her friends in Los Angeles, with her newly boyish physique, unkempt hair, and new secondhand wardrobe that had replaced her original clothing, which was not warm enough for winter and was all too small now at any rate. Her old shirts strained over her shoulders and biceps; her short skirts had gone from flirty to scandalous now that they barely covered her newly muscular behind.

Shane had taken her to the giant secondhand store where the college students shopped. There Jen had found plenty of cute and practical things to fit her new climate, physique, and lifestyle: multiple pairs of running pants with stripes down their legs, thick long-sleeve t-shirts that could be worn on sunny autumn days, warm hooded sweatshirts, a puffy vest that she loved because it fit so neatly over a sweatshirt for extra warmth. And just as it had gotten too cold for the vest, and she had begun to pile two and even three sweatshirts under it along with a scarf and hat and gloves, she had found a perfect winter coat, long, puffy, filled with down, and in a style that seemed to be fashionable amongst the college-student crowd; “Score!” Shane’s girlfriend Brittany had cooed after Jen found it hanging alongside rows of pilled pea coats and boldly-colored ski jackets.

They are going to laugh at me in Los Angeles, she realized, imagining her appearance from Becky, Paula, and Chase’s perspective. Was she going to attend Becky’s shower in secondhand sweatpants? Even her “nice” outfit, which she had remembered to stuff into her suitcase the moment before she left the lake house, the stretchy black pants and tailored tank top with a pretty Asian design on it, would appear to her friends as hardly more than a glorified sweat suit. Yet in Michigan, this was as fancy as anyone she knew ever dressed. Of course, she still had several closets full of her old clothes at the house, she reminded herself, although they would be too small. Worse, she realized, they were over six months old, which meant that they would be laughably out of style.

Don’t think about it, she told herself, pulling her newest chess book from the seat-back pocket in front of her. It was the last in a series of three by Thomas Fo; The Meaningful Endgame, it was called.

By the time the flight arrived in Los Angeles, Jen was dreading the reaction she would receive from her friends when she met them in the airport. She could just imagine Chase eyeing her hair skeptically, telling her not to worry, that something could be done to salvage it.

But as she passed the security gate, only Becky was waiting for her. Jen could see her from a distance, staring into the crowd of arriving passengers. She looked remarkably unchanged for a woman who was eight months pregnant. Her trim figure was barely altered, except for the large, round belly filling out her stretchy tunic. As Jen walked up to her, she saw that her face still bore the same combination of girlishness and shrewdness that it always had, except with a bit of added rosiness in the cheeks, and tired-looking crinkles around the eyes that Jen did not remember having seen before.

Becky looked at her blankly for a moment before her face lit up with recognition. “Oh, hi!” she said, reaching out to enclose Jen in a warm, tight hug. Jen hugged her back, marveling that this pregnant lady who she could barely fit her arms around was her best friend of so many years.

“I can’t believe you’re pregnant,” Jen said. “You look just the same.” She realized too late that her statement invited commentary about her own changed appearance.

“So do you,” said Becky, automatically, before determining that her statement was too obviously false to stand unedited. “I mean, you look different, actually.”

“I’ve been working out a lot,” said Jen, trying to smooth over the awkwardness she had caused by bringing up this topic.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Becky said. “You look…” She paused to find a word. “Strong,” she decided.

Jen wasn’t sure if this was a compliment, directed at a woman in Los Angeles, but she decided to take it as one. “Thanks,” she said.

“So it’s just you?” Jen asked, as they walked towards the luggage claim.

“What do you mean?” said Becky.

“I thought Paula and Chase would be with you,” Jen said.

“We’re going to meet Chase for dinner,” Becky said. “Paula won’t be back for a few days, though. She’s on a retreat.”

“What kind of retreat?” Jen asked.

“I don’t know, some kind of sex cult,” Becky said.

“I thought she was celibate.”

“Oh, she’s celibate,” said Becky, her tone indicating that this had been a frequent topic of conversation. “But she’s into this tantric thing now. She’s got this new partner and I guess they’re into this tantric non-penetrative intercourse thing.”

“Partner?” Jen asked. “Is it a guy or a girl?”

“Well,” said Becky, “That’s kind of complicated.”

Normally, Jen would have found this response mysterious, but now that she had been hearing all about Shane’s intended transition from female to male, she understood the general idea without further questioning. She could find out the specifics from Paula when she returned.

Back at the house, Becky helped Jen find a suitable outfit for dinner. “I think this shirt will fit,” she said, pulling a sheer striped blouse from the closet. “It was a little big on you before.”

Jen tried it on and shrugged; “It’s fine,” she said, but Becky wrinkled her nose and began fussing with the sleeves, which were bunching awkwardly over her upper arms.

It was nice to spend time with Becky in the house like this, Jen thought. Despite her initial hesitance to break from her training schedule, once the trip was arranged, she had actually been looking forward to it. Shane had stopped training altogether while she got ready for her move to Ann Arbor, and the school was lonely without her. Jen realized that what had felt like a rich social life in North Middleton actually mainly consisted of her training sessions, plus an occasional evening at Shane’s apartment with her friends. Without Shane, Jen was only training with Master Park, either alone or in the advanced class, which consisted solely of college-aged men and Rob. Now, it was the thought of returning to Michigan, rather than the thought of leaving it, that was filling her with anxiety.

Once Jen had tried on half a dozen outfits and Becky had finally deemed one of them acceptable, Becky drove them to meet Chase for dinner. The restaurant used to be one of Jen’s favorites. It had everything she used to enjoy: tiny portions, fussy ingredients, minimalist-chic décor. It’s pretty, Jen thought, eyeing the concrete tables and pale blue glass lamps as she and Becky waited to be seated. But all the careful thought that had gone into the decorations seemed to her now like a waste of effort and resources. Why spend so much energy on all of these hand-made tables and bars and lamps? She knew this was a silly train of thought, that decorating was not a waste of energy any more than taekwondo or yoga or brushing one’s teeth. But she couldn’t stop thinking of all the more valuable things that could be accomplished rather than getting these decorations just right; that kind of attention to detail could lead someone to throw a perfect roundhouse kick, she thought, or open a homeless shelter, or find a cure for a horrible disease. Even the people in the restaurant seemed excessively thought-out in their casual-but-stylish clothing that clung to their bodies just so, as though they had all come directly from a photo shoot for a yoga supply catalogue.

“For four,” said Becky to the hostess, who took them to a concrete table in the corner, lit by a steel lamp hanging overhead like some kind of Spartan boom mike.

“Who’s the fourth?” Jen asked, as she sat down across from Becky.

“Chase’s boyfriend,” Becky said. “Eduardo.”

“Oh,” said Jen, surprised. She hadn’t heard anything about Chase having a boyfriend. She wondered how this detail would affect her vision of Becky and Chase’s perfect co-parenting situation.

“What’s he like?” Jen asked. She had no idea what sort of men Chase was attracted to. She envisioned him towering over a petite, feminine hairdresser, then dwarfed by a strapping leather daddy.

Before Becky could respond, Chase was walking towards the table, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man in a stylish olive suit. The man had the self-important air of an investment banking executive or advertising mogul. As they navigated between the tables she saw the man discreetly place his hand on Chase’s hip; if not for this small gesture, Jen would have assumed that this was not the boyfriend but some stranger on his way to the bathroom, the sort of stranger who had a trophy wife at home and a couple of buxom administrative assistant mistresses at work.

Becky and Jen stood to great them as they reached the table. Chase leaned in to give Jen a hug. He looked the same as ever, beaming handsomely in his casual-but-expensive designer sweater.

“Jen, this is Eduardo,” said Chase as he released her, smiling proudly as he looked his boyfriend up and down. The guy was pretty good-looking, Jen thought, in a kind of overly-put-together way that matched her feelings about the restaurant.

Eduardo leaned in and kissed her on one cheek and then the other before sitting on the seat next to her. “So nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard so much.”

“Likewise,” said Jen, hoping her expression wouldn’t belie the fact that she hadn’t known of his existence until two minutes ago.

Eduardo reached across the table to Becky and laid his hand over her round stomach. “How’s our little mama?” he asked, giving her belly a rub.

Jen winced, expecting Becky to shake his hand off and offer some withering comment in reply, but she just smiled politely. “Pretty good,” she said. “Ready for baby to make her grand debut.”

“It’s a girl?” Jen asked. She hadn’t even thought to ask about the baby’s gender. That shows how disconnected I’ve been, she chastised herself.

“Oh yeah, I didn’t tell you?” Becky said. “I guess we really haven’t talked much.”

Jen wanted to ask more—what names was Becky thinking of? Had she been hoping for a girl or a boy? Was she going to dress the baby in pink or in more unconventional, unisex clothes? But Eduardo spoke first.

“Chase and I are so excited about the baby,” Eduardo said, as he pulled out the chair next to Jen, waited for Chase to sit, and then seated himself next to Becky. “I keep telling him how lucky we are that Becky is having a daughter for us. So many men have to adopt or get a woman to have a baby for them, and here we just stumbled into it. It’s a perfect way to get a baby, without any of the work.”

“I did some of the work,” Chase said.

“Oh, I forgot,” said Eduardo, patting Chase’s hand over the cold concrete table. “You are very manly.”

Jen looked over at Becky to see if she was troubled by this line of conversation, but Becky’s face was impassive as she studied the menu.

“Champagne!” said Eduardo, as the waitress appeared to take their drink order. “Something mid-priced, not too dry. We need to celebrate.”

“Should I bring four glasses?” the waitress asked.

“Three please,” said Eduardo. “None for mommy.”

“I’ll have a glass,” Becky interrupted. “One drink is okay.”

“And I don’t need one,” Jen added. “I haven’t been drinking.”

“Oh, champagne doesn’t count,” said Eduardo. “We’ll take three glasses.”

“I guess it counts for me,” Becky said in a quiet voice that it seemed only Jen, sitting directly across the table from her, could hear.

“You can have mine,” Jen mouthed to Becky as the waitress left.

His order completed, Eduardo turned sideways to face Jen. “So great to see you in person,” Eduardo said. “Chase and I just watched Love at Dawn.”

“Oh?” said Jen, not really wanting to talk about it. It was a big-budget tearjerker drama and it hadn’t received great reviews. She had played the lead’s troubled-but-insightful best friend. She had only done it for the money; it was right before the divorce, and she had felt worried about her finances.

“Not great casting,” he said. “I liked you better in Meeting Elizabeth. You’re not really cut out for dramatic roles.”

Jen wasn’t sure how to respond. Everyone agreed she was best suited for romantic comedies, from her old acting coaches to her former agent to Becky—but they didn’t usually tell her so bluntly, especially when she had just met them.

“Eduardo is a casting director,” said Chase. “He’s a total rock star, very in-demand. I need to book weeks in advance to get a date with him.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Eduardo, waving his hands to erase Chase’s words, as though they were floating in the middle of the table.

“Didn’t I schedule this dinner with your secretary?” Chase asked.

“Stop it,” said Eduardo, giving Chase’s hand a little slap.

“I want to hear about Jen’s fight,” Becky said. She turned to Eduardo and said, “Jen’s been in Michigan studying taekwondo.”

“That’s right, you told me that,” said Eduardo to Chase.

“She’s really good,” said Becky, despite the fact that she had never seen Jen fight or even train. “She practices every single day.”

“That’s fascinating,” said Eduardo. “So that was to study for a role?”

“No,” said Jen, annoyed to be returning to the subject of her movie career after Becky had so skillfully steered them away from it. “I’m taking a break right now.”

“The new look is interesting,” Eduardo continued, without seeming to have heard her response. “Different, but I’m into it. Kind of butch. I could see you playing something like a gym teacher. Or something military, like a chick in the army or something.”

“Oh, that would be so bad-ass,” said Chase. “Could you get her something like that?”

“Thanks, but I’m actually not looking for work,” Jen said.

“You know I can’t just ‘get’ people roles,” Eduardo said to Chase. “I mean, I could keep an eye out in case anything comes up.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Jen.

“Don’t mention it,” said Eduardo, giving her a little squeeze around her shoulders.

As they ate their healthy meals of sashimi and kale and frisée, Jen asked Chase and Eduardo where they had met.

“I had heard of Chase, of course, but we had never met in person. I called him in for the lead in this movie called For Better or For Hearse, and the first thing I thought when I saw him was that he was perfect.”

“So you’re doing a film?” Jen asked Chase. She knew he had been struggling for roles and hadn’t had work in a year or so. She was excited for him, though it seemed odd that Becky wouldn’t have mentioned it.

“No,” said Chase, shaking his head.

“Well, ultimately the director and I decided he wasn’t perfect for the role,” said Eduardo.

“Too old,” Chase said.

Jen expected Eduardo to contradict him, but instead he said, “Well, we did go with somebody a little younger and fresher.”

Jen turned to see Becky’s reaction, but Becky was still smiling pleasantly.

“But,” said Eduardo, “I mean I thought he was perfect in general. Perfect for me.”

“What did you like about him?” Jen asked, hoping to elicit some compliments to counteract Eduardo’s harsh words about Chase’s lack of youth and “freshness.”

“He’s so masculine, you know. So discreet. Just very typically male. I hadn’t met any guys in Hollywood like that.”

Jen was incredulous. Was he saying that the main thing he liked about Chase was that he didn’t seem gay? Jen turned to Becky, waiting for her to come to Chase’s defense, but she was smiling politely as she chewed her frisée. She looked at Chase; he was looking down at his sashimi as though it wasn’t him who was being talked about.

“And he has such a nice, dominant energy about him,” Eduardo continued. “The broad shoulders, the deep voice, the messy hair.” Eduardo reached across the table and cupped Chase’s chin in his hand. “That strong jaw.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” said Chase, blushing.

“It’s all true,” said Eduardo.

“So, Becky,” said Jen, unable to take any more of this. “Have you thought about names for the baby?”

“I like Tamlyn,” said Eduardo. “Very hip.”

For the rest of the meal, they discussed baby business: the shower, the ultrasounds, the due-date, Becky’s heartburn and sciatica. Eduardo offered his viewpoints liberally, while Chase quietly munched his dinner. Jen thought Eduardo’s involvement in the baby planning seemed awfully presumptuous, given that he couldn’t have been dating Chase for more than six months. But Becky seemed untroubled by his invasiveness, smiling at his suggestions, pleasantly answering his bold questions. As they parted ways in the parking lot, Becky gave Eduardo a hug goodbye before he climbed into the driver’s seat of Chase’s S.U.V. and drove them away. If Becky likes him, Jen thought, that’s what matters. Oh, and also if Chase likes him, she reminded herself.

When Jen lay down in her room that night, her bed felt like every bit of the several thousand dollars she had spent on it. She lay on top of the covers with the lights on, still in her dinner outfit, staring up at the tastefully painted ceiling. But as her back sank into the thick mattress, every inch cushioned yet supported, she found herself missing the ascetic plainness of the rickety single bed that she had been occupying for the last seven months. This feels like a hotel, she thought, stretching her arms above her head and wondering if she should read a bit more of her chess book or just get undressed and go to bed.

She heard footsteps in the hall, a knock at her door. “Hey, Jen,” Becky said, opening the door before Jen could respond.

“Come in,” said Jen, sitting up, but Becky had already entered the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. In her oversized pajamas, she looked more like a little girl than a grown, pregnant woman. She stared past Jen at the wall, chewing anxiously on her lip. She looks sad, Jen thought. She wondered if she was jealous of Chase’s relationship.

“You know what I was thinking of on the flight over here?” said Jen, hoping she could cheer Becky up. “That time we got caught shoplifting. Do you remember? We had to wait in that security office, and we were banned from the mall for life.”

Becky was still looking at the wall, unsmiling. Then she looked straight at Jen. “You need to move back,” she said.

“What?” Jen asked, startled.

“It’s time for you to move back,” Becky said. “You’ve been in Michigan for more than twice as long as you were supposed to. You were only supposed to go for the summer.”

“I know,” said Jen. She had hoped that no one had noticed her extended absence; she had been choosing to imagine that life in Los Angeles had been progressing smoothly without her. The revelation of Becky’s pregnancy had only confirmed her belief that Becky and Chase were getting along just fine without her, setting up an idyllic little life in which Jen would be nothing but a disruption.

“I’ll come back soon,” she said, and then, feeling bad about lying, added, “eventually.”

“It’s so lonely by myself here in the house,” Becky said. “This house is really huge for one person.”

“What about Chase?” Jen asked. “Doesn’t he keep you company?”

“Chase,” Becky repeated, spitting his name scornfully through her teeth. “I don’t get any time with Chase. He’s always with Eduardo.”

“You don’t hang out with both of them together?” Jen asked. “Eduardo made it sound like you were all one big happy family.”

“We are not one big happy family,” said Becky. “I can’t stand that guy.”

“Really?” Jen asked. “Why were you so nice to him at the restaurant?”

“I have to be nice to him,” Becky said, her voice pained. “Otherwise I’d never see Chase again.”

“Oh,” said Jen, relieved. “I am so glad you don’t like him! The way he was rubbing your stomach, it was just…” She paused to find the right words.

“Completely inappropriate,” Becky said.

Now Jen felt free to air all of the complaints she had suppressed during dinner. She shifted up on to her knees and began to laugh at the absurdity of their dinner conversation.

“I can’t believe he was trying to pick your baby’s name,” Jen said, laying her hand on Becky’s knee. It was hard to speak through her flood of relieved laughter. “Like it’s his baby. How long has he been dating Chase, a few months?”

“Five,” said Becky.

“And that thing with the champagne,” Jen said, catching her breath. “He acted like he was your doctor or something.”

“You need to move back,” Becky said, her solemn tone interrupting Jen’s waning hilarity. “You can do taekwondo here. There are schools in Los Angeles. I looked them up. There are at least thirty of them.”

Thinking of how her life in North Middleton was about to change, how lonely the academy would be without Shane, seeing how lonely and sad Becky was, Jen felt a strong wave of desire to say yes, to make Becky happy, to help raise the baby, to be with her friends. Moving back would fix everybody’s troubles all at once.

But she also knew that moving back would leave too much business unfinished. She hadn’t mastered anything she was working on: winning a fight, learning chess, even living in the Midwest.

Becky must have sensed her moment of weakness. “You’ll think about it?” she asked.

“I’ll think about it,” Jen said, and she wasn’t lying. She would think about it. She was pretty sure she would think about it all week, all through Becky’s baby shower, through evenings with Chase and Eduardo and Paula, and even as she packed her things again, drove to the airport, and got on the plane back to Michigan to resume what was now her life.

Chapter 32

Please Note...

I normally post chapters every two or three weeks, with my longest interval being a month. I have had a lot going on this past month, and have needed a break. I will be back soon with the next chapter, sometime in the next two weeks.

30. Feelings of Insecurity

“We were taught to channel anger, rage, feelings of insecurity—to channel what would be negative energy masochistically. We were taught not to do it directly—not to go out and hit someone, for example—but to do it so we’d hurt ourselves.” —Kathy Acker

The summer after sophomore year, Becky and Jenny spent almost every Saturday at the mall.

When they got off the bus, they would start at the store that sold lotions and strong-smelling candles. Then they would shop for clothes, first at the store with the cool clothes, then at the store with the ugly but cheap clothes where you could sometimes find a good deal.

After lunch—croissants and coffee at the bakery—they would go to the discount store that had cheap makeup.

The hulking, cranky security guard would eye them suspiciously as they entered the store, and Jenny could imagine how they looked to him: two teenagers, one with crazy purple hair and petticoats, the other seeming by contrast a typical Westchester County girl, tame and appropriate, a follower. Becky never seemed to notice, but Jenny always felt horrible under his disdainful gaze.

Jenny had wanted a new lipstick all summer, and one Saturday she found the right one on a display that had samples of lipstick and eye shadow in sparkly, pastel tones. The display’s cardboard backing was decorated with a photograph of a bride, her luminous skin painted in the subtlest imaginable shades of peach and baby blue under her graceful veil.

“Why are you looking at bride makeup?” Becky asked.

“I’m just looking for light colors,” said Jenny.

“I hate light colors,” said Becky. “They’re so non-committal.” She was holding a bright magenta lipstick up to her cheek, the color glowing assertively even through the layers of plastic packaging. “What do you think of this one?”

“It’s cool,” said Jenny, and she wasn’t lying, even though she would never wear such a startling color. It would look probably good on Becky; Becky could pull off crazy stuff like that.

Jenny rubbed her finger along her favorite lipstick in the bride display. It was lavender, with a metallic, iridescent sheen. She lifted her finger to smear the pigment across her lips.

“Do you want to get married?” Becky asked her.

Jenny rubbed her lips against each other to distribute the color. “I don’t know,” she said. “Do you?”

Becky blew out air from between her teeth to indicate that this was a stupid idea.

“Hey, that’s kinda pretty,” said Becky, pointing at Jenny’s face.

“You think so?” asked Jenny. Becky almost never approved of her relatively pedestrian choices in cosmetics or clothes.

Becky nodded, but her attention had already shifted to a bottle of acid green nail polish, which she held up, raising her eyebrows to show her pleasure at this unusual find.

“Well,” Becky said, “Maybe I would get married just to have the wedding.”

Jenny was surprised. “You want a wedding?” The thought of Becky in a white dress, her face painted in these gentle peachy colors that she so despised, made Jenny laugh out loud.

“Yeah, totally,” said Becky. “Not with my parents or anything,” she added, scoffing. “Just my friends.”

“What about the guy’s friends?” Jenny asked.

“What guy?” Becky asked. “Oh, right, you mean my fiancé? Sure, he can bring his friends, too, I guess.”

Jenny studied the lavender lipstick in the thin strip of mirror at the side of the display, pursing her lips and moving her head around to see her face from different angles.

“I’m going to decorate everything in black and purple,” Becky said. “At the wedding. The tables will be covered in black lace. And there will be giant purple candles everywhere.”

“Wow,” said Jenny, as she traced her finger over the rows of lipsticks under the display, like looking up a book in a card catalogue, until she found the lavender one.

“Wouldn’t that be pretty?” Becky asked.

“Sure,” said Jenny, pulling the lipstick out of its little cubby.

“You don’t sound like you really think so,” said Becky.

“No, it sounds pretty,” said Jenny, making an effort to sound interested and sincere. She felt guilty that she had only been half-listening to Becky, even though Becky did the same thing to her all the time. “It's just, maybe you won’t be into purple and black lace when you’re, you know, grown up,” said Jenny.

“I’ll be like twenty-two,” Becky retorted, quickly. “That’s only seven years from now. Anyway I’m always going to be into purple and black. Are you going to change when you get old?"

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “Maybe.”

“I hate that,” said Becky. “I’m not going to get all normal and respectable just because I’m old. I’m going to stay just like I am forever.”

Jenny nodded. “I think I’m going to buy it,” she said, holding up the tube of lipstick. “It’s pretty, right?” She smiled and turned her head to show off the dazzle of her iridescent lips.

Becky grabbed it from her hand and scrutinized the packaging. “It’s twelve dollars,” she said. “That’s way too much.”

“It’s okay, I have it,” said Jenny, grabbing it back. Her mother had given her a hundred dollars to spend this weekend. Becky’s parents didn’t have that kind of money, so Becky had only come with twenty dollars for the day.

“Yeah, but it’s the principle,” Becky said. “That stuff probably costs like twenty cents to make. I can’t believe they’re charging twelve dollars.”

“Isn’t twenty-two kind of young to get married?” Jenny asked.

“I’m not going to stay married,” Becky said. “It’s cooler to do it young, before everybody starts doing it. I want to be the first one.”

“So will you just get a divorce right after the wedding?” Jenny asked.

Becky thought about it for a moment.

“We’ll stay married for a little while so I can get to say ‘my husband.’ But then we’ll get divorced. I could never be satisfied with just one man.”

“How long will you stay married?” Jenny was still looking at the lipstick, turning it over, trying to decide whether the metallic sheen was pretty or cheesy.

“I don't know, a while,” Becky said. “Three months? I’ve never dated anybody longer than three months.”

She leaned over, pulled the lipstick out of Jenny’s hand, and dropped it into Jenny’s open purse.

“Hey!” said Jenny.

“Chill out,” said Becky, through her teeth, without moving her lips. She turned her back and started walking towards the cassette tapes. Jenny followed her, rummaging in her purse to find the lipstick amongst her tangle of other makeup and assorted junk.

Someone bumped against her, and she looked up to see one of the store employees, wearing a red vest and holding a clipboard. Jenny’s heart raced. It was her! she wanted to yell, pointing at Becky. I was trying to take it back out!

But she wouldn’t do that, and anyway, there was no need.

“Sorry,” mumbled the employee, hurrying past Jenny and looking down at his clipboard.

Jenny met Becky over at the tapes, still feeling shaken about the lipstick. I guess they don’t know about it, she told herself, deciding not to look for it in her bag anymore.

Becky was rifling through a bin of cassette tapes encased in large plastic security devices.

“You’re totally going to get married,” Becky said, nonchalantly continuing their earlier conversation. “Like in the normal way. You’re kind of normal.”

“No, I’m not!” Jenny said. But yes, she thought to herself. She did want to get married, and maybe even have a real wedding. Not a huge one or anything, but with a white dress and a cake and flowers. Maybe everything would be all light blue and gray and lavender; that would be so pretty.

She began to thumb through the cassettes, looking for something to buy so she wouldn’t feel so guilty. She found one she wanted, by a band whose lead singer she found extremely attractive, although his heavy use of makeup and falsetto made her pretty sure he was gay.

And she wanted to have a husband, she thought. And live with him in a nice house, and have children and a backyard and a dog. And it didn’t matter if that made her normal, because it would be sweet and cute and make her happy.

But she wasn’t going to tell Becky that.

“Get these, too,” Becky said, handing her a stack of blank cassette tapes. “I’ll copy some stuff for you.”

“Cool,” said Jenny.

The cashier, when they went to check out, was a middle-aged lady with helmet hair who beamed at Jenny and Becky as though they were her favorite nieces.

“Did you girls find everything okay?” she asked, smiling.

“Oh, yeah,” said Becky, as Jenny nodded.

The woman took Jenny’s cassette tapes, the album and the blank ones, ran them across the scanner, and dropped them into a plastic bag. “Are you having fun at the mall?” she asked.

“Lots of fun,” said Becky, cheerfully.

“That will be fourteen dollars,” said the cashier. Jenny reached into her purse and saw the lipstick, in its plastic wrapping, poking out of the top of her jumbled clutter. She gasped and placed her hand on top of it, blocking the view as she rummaged around until she pulled her wallet from the bottom.

“I used to love going shopping with my friends,” the cashier said. “You don’t get to do that as much when you get old like me.”

“You’re not so old,” said Jenny, embarrassed to be telling such an unconvincing lie. She handed the woman a twenty dollar bill.

She wanted to rush out of the store as soon as she got her change, but she forced herself to wait calmly for Becky to buy her green nail polish.

“I’ve never seen a color like that,” said the cashier, holding it up to the light. “It would be fun on Halloween.” She brought it down to the counter and held it against her own hand. “Think I could pull it off?” she asked.

“She was so nice,” said Jenny, when it was finally time to walk towards the exit. She looked at Becky, who grimaced a little, as though acknowledging the thing Jenny was thinking.

“I know,” Becky said.

Just then, Jenny felt a hand on her shoulder and heard the voice from above her head.

“Miss,” it said.

She turned to face the security guard, who was towering over her, his hand extended as though he was expecting to have to grab her by the collar as she ran.

“Yes?” she asked, her voice shaking despite all her efforts to steady it.

“You put something in your bag,” he said, pointing at her purse.

She looked over at Becky, unsure of how to respond. Becky shook her head.

“No I didn’t,” said Jenny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Someone saw it on the camera,” said the man, impatiently, as though he was expecting her to deny it. “You put a lipstick into your bag.” He grabbed Jenny’s arm and started to pull her towards the doorway.

Jenny began to get that spinning feeling that meant she was panicking. Where was he taking her? Was he going to arrest her? Call her parents?

He’d better call my mom, she thought, trying to strategize quickly. She probably won’t care. Jenny could never be sure about her mother’s reactions; she would be nonchalant about something scandalous like finding a little bag of Becky’s cocaine hidden in Jenny’s room. But then the most seemingly insignificant thing would send her into a fury, like when Jenny’s English teacher wanted her to stay after class to write poetry and her mother was sure he was hitting on her, which, even if he was, didn’t seem like the sort of thing that would upset her.

Maybe she thinks shoplifting is cool, Jenny thought hopefully. Maybe it’s like sticking it to the man.

“I’m taking you to mall security,” he said. “That’s where we handle shoplifters.”

“Wait,” said Becky. “Wait, I put it in her bag. You need to arrest me!”

Jenny felt the wave of relief—she would not have to go to security alone. She hadn’t expected Becky to speak up, and wouldn’t have been angry at her for staying silent. Unlike Jenny's own mother, Becky’s parents were predictable. They would scream at her for a week and ground her for a month; there was no doubt about it.

The guard turned to look at Becky as though he hadn’t noticed her until just then. Without saying anything, he surveyed her, his eyes lingering on her purple hair and painted combat boots.

“Yeah, you better come, too,” he said finally.

At the security office, an actual police officer searched Jenny’s purse, found the lipstick, and then asked for phone numbers to call the girls’ parents. He lectured them about how they could have gone to jail for their offense. They were banned from the mall, and if he ever saw them here again, he would arrest them for real.

He went into an adjacent office, separated by a large window, to call their parents. Jenny could see him cringe as though someone was shouting at him on the phone; that must be Becky’s father, she thought.

Neither of their parents arrived for half an hour. Jenny and Becky sat silently on stiff chairs as they waited, Jenny’s sweaty hand folded tightly in Becky’s.

Chapter 31:
http://kickoutofyou.blogspot.com/2009/12/31-agent-of-defeat.html