Take a Lemon

“What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked Ron, as we cleaned up our work area at the end of Wednesday’s lab.

He looked up. “Nothing much. My sister and her husband are coming over, and we’ll probably go out to a movie Friday night. What about you?”

“We’re all going up to my grandmother’s house in upstate New York. Our family, grandma, and my aunt, uncle, and cousins.”

“Oh, well, it’s always nice, getting together with family. Are you close with your cousins?”

I shrugged as I pulled on my coat. “My cousin Tara is nice, although she’s closer to my sister than to me. Tyler is pretty cool, he–” I stopped myself just in time. Tyler had always been enamored of my guitar playing; I wondered what our relationship would be now. The six-year gap between us would probably loom a lot larger, now that we didn’t have music as a bond. “He’s into video games – a lot,” I finished.

“My cousin Joey, on the other hand…” I paused, and Ron looked at me expectantly as we walked out of the lab. “Well, we’ve never been all that close. He’s into cars and I’m really not, and he’s not musical at all, so we don’t have a lot in common, even though he’s much closer in age to me – he’s just a year younger than I am.” I didn’t add, and I’ll probably never forgive him for selling my guitar. Seeing him for the first time after finding that out would be strange. I suppose Marsha had already told him off about it, so I couldn’t get the release that yelling at him might bring.

“Well, you can’t choose your relatives, I guess,” he laughed. “Have a great break.”

“Yeah, you, too,” I answered, and walked back to my dorm room. All the way there, I kept thinking about the past week, unquestionably the most emotionally exhausting one of my life, from the realization that I wasn’t in control over when and if I changed back, to the somewhat embarrassing talk with Nikki in the costume room yesterday. And I tried not to think to hard about the results last night of following her latest advice.

As I reached the dorm, I forced myself to think about the task at hand, instead. After all, I wasn’t finished packing, and my family was going to be picking me up in about an hour. As I started up the stairs, the elevator on the first floor opened and Lee Ann walked out, wheeling her suitcase.

“Hey, Lee Ann,” I called. “Have a good Thanksgiving!”

I had only gone a few steps up when I realized that she hadn’t answered me, which was more than unusual for her. “Lee Ann?” I tried, but she just walked toward the doorway, a slightly dazed look on her face.

That worried me, so hurried back down the stairs and to her. “Lee Ann, is something wrong?” I waved my hand in front of her face to get her attention.

“Oh, Marsh!” she said, looking up in surprise. “The strangest thing just happened. Geoff asked me to House Parties weekend.”

“Why are you surprised? You guys have been spending a lot of time together.”

“Yeah, but just for fun! I mean, we’ve never gone beyond a friendly kiss. I don’t understand it. Chandra said that she had told him about Stephen and me. I don’t think I led him on…”

Guiltily, I remembered that I had intended to tell her just exactly what Chandra had told Geoff, and had never actually gotten around to it. I hastened to rectify my error. “Actually, according to Geoff, Chandra told him that she and your parents were… well, that your parents didn’t approve of Stephen.”

“What?! My parents love Stephen! Why would she say something like…?” She looked very thoughtful, then her eyes filled with distress. “No. She wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Well, she and Stephen got into a big fight last May. You don’t suppose she was trying to break us up, do you? That she was still angry about that?”

“I couldn’t say. I mean, she’s your friend.”

Lee Ann wrung her hands. “I don’t believe this. I never meant for anybody to get hurt. Marsh, you need to help me out, here.”

“How?”

“Go with Geoff to House Parties, OK? I mean, I know you guys talk. You have that chemistry class together, right? If he has a date for the weekend, he won’t feel so bad, and I won’t feel so bad… and he’s your friend, right? You said that it was OK for you to dance with a guy if you knew he wasn’t going to make a pass at you, and Geoff’s clearly not interested, so it should be OK, right?”

“I–” The idea was revolting. I mean, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of dating any boy, but Geoff had been my roommate! We’d… done guy things together. Joked about girls. The idea of having him think he should treat me as a girl he was on a date with… well, that was just too much. “I– I mean, no. No, Lee Ann. I’m not going to House Parties. Geoff will just have to find another girl. There are plenty of them, here, and he’s got more than two weeks.”

“But–”

“Really. Look, it’ll work out. I warned Geoff that he was wasting his time with you. I mean, trying to make something serious about a relationship with you. But I’m not the solution. And neither is he.”

I could see that my answer wasn’t making her happy; quite the contrary, actually. Her eyes widened in dismay. She clearly needed a hug – so I gave her one. “Lee Ann, you can’t blame yourself. He wanted to believe that he had a chance with you, so he listened to Chandra, and ignored me. You didn’t do anything wrong. He did it to himself. He’s a big boy; he’ll deal with the disappointment, and maybe next time, he’ll listen to me.”

She hugged me back. “Thanks, Marsh.” Then she suddenly held me at arms length and stared at me. “When did you suddenly become so confident?”

I reddened. “Oh, I guess I just decided… I don’t know. I think deciding that I wasn’t going to worry about House Parties was kind of liberating for me.”

In fact, it had probably been the realization that my way back to Marshallhood wasn’t going to be easy, and that the terms of my boast no longer applied. I was no longer intentionally delaying speaking with the experimenters – not if they weren’t around and easy to find. It was out of my hands. I had been playing the role of Marsha as timid. OK, I guess I had actually been timid, but if I no longer needed to think about playing a role, if I actually was a girl now, and for at least a while, I could act however made sense to me.

Deciding – and pretty much accepting – that I was asexual, that I wasn’t actually attracted to anybody now, meant that I didn’t have to think about my sex. If I wasn’t going to be intimate with anyone, to be cuddling with anyone, did it really matter how my body was shaped? No sex for me, now. Well… masturbation didn’t really count as sex, did it? Especially when my fantasizing was about my own body in certain types of clothing? I wasn’t very good at it yet, but my conversation with Nikki in the costume room the day before had left me a fair bit to think about. I doubted that I’d have a chance to act on her suggestions until after break, though.

Lee Ann shook her head and smiled. “I can’t say I understand, but if you’re happy, I’m happy for you. Um… and thanks. Have a great Thanksgiving!”

“You, too, Lee Ann.”

I watched her leave, and then headed back up the stairs and into my room. Terry had left before lunch, so I left my bedroom door open. I wasn’t quite done packing about an hour later, when I got a call from Dad’s cell phone.

“Hi, Dad,” I answered, totally forgetting that I was supposed to call him, “Daddy.”

“It’s me, Marsh,” Tina answered. “We’re just pulling into the parking lot. Are you ready? Do you want help with your suitcase?”

“I’m almost done, Teen,” I replied. “I can manage, but if you’d like to come up, we can talk while we walk to the car.” I hadn’t spoken with her since the night I’d decided I was stuck, and Chad had said that she was upset. I probably should have called her then, but I didn’t know what to say. Talking about my situation wouldn’t be possible in front of Mom and Dad – “Daddy” – so this was going to be our best chance before we got to Grandma’s house.

It was a few minutes before she knocked on the outer door and I let her in.

“Wow, so this is your dorm, huh? Are your roommates here?”

“No, they’ve already left. I’m the only one of us with afternoon classes on Wednesday. Come on in, I’m almost done.”

She followed me into my bedroom. “So… how are you doing?”

I grinned at her. “I’m dealing with things. That’s all you can do, right? Deal?”

“You really sounded bad when you called me. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be bothering you if I called before Thanksgiving.”

I nodded. “Yeah, it was a tough few days, but I have some good friends, and they’ve helped me through things.” I hadn’t spoken with Vicky since the party, though, and that bothered me.

“Friends… who know about you?”

“Some. One, especially. I don’t really know what’s going to happen. I’m just taking it one day at a time.”

“How much stuff are you taking?” she asked, as I threw yet another dress into my suitcase. “We’re only going to be at Grandma’s for four days.”

“Yeah, I might have overdone it a bit. I’m really not used to packing as a girl. I mean, I don’t know how much to bring, and I thought I’d err on the side of having too much.”

“Well, don’t. You’ll never be able to carry all of that. Um…” she looked into my suitcase and pulled out a couple of outfits. “You don’t need these…”

“I thought you wanted to talk about… what I was doing.”

“Not if you don’t want to,” she said, still throwing my clothing around, with more force than I really thought necessary.

“Well… I suppose I should. I’m just not sure what to talk about.”

She turned on me. “You said that you were really eager to change back. Now you’ve found that you can’t. And you’re saying that it’s all right?”

“Well… it’s not as if I have choice, right?”

“I was ready to disappear – to have my memory wiped out, my identity destroyed – and I was going along with it, because I love you. Because you’re my sister. I mean… you’re my–”

“Sister is fine, Teen. That’s what I am now, and that’s the only way you really remember me.”

“So why aren’t you screaming and jumping up and down or crying and sulking or… something?”

“I… I did all that, Teen. I was horribly depressed; I couldn’t even get out of bed. Lee Ann had to take over and make me get dressed, and everything.”

Tina stared at me. “And now you’re OK, just like that?”

“Well, I spent some time talking with Nikki over tea. I think she might have put something in my tea, actually. She helped me a lot.”

“So, everything’s OK, now? And you never called me to work through things?”

“I didn’t want to bother you. I knew you were upset.”

“Upset? Marsh, I don’t know how things work in that boy brain of yours, but if a girl you know is upset, you talk to her. And if you’re upset, you don’t ignore your own sister, who is more than happy to talk to you, any time. I mean, you could at least have done ‘take a lemon’ with me.”

“I couldn’t, Teen. ‘Take a lemon’ is more for when you’re surprised and angry and upset. I was depressed. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to talk to anybody.”

“And now?”

“Now? Now, I’m just dealing with things. I don’t know, maybe I’ll start freaking out again, or maybe I’ll just curl up in a ball and pull the covers over my head one day, but for now, I’m focusing on getting through things one day at a time.”

She came over and hugged me.

“What was that for?” I asked.

She laughed. “Do I need a reason to hug my sister? I thought you needed it. Anyway, I think you’re all packed now. Let’s go.”

So we went.