If You Could See What I See (12 page)

“Thank you. I deserve that apology. You’ve been incredibly difficult, and it’s been hard to put up with you.” She sounded haughty and superior and did not apologize for how she’d been. I didn’t expect her to. She knew I didn’t expect it, so we let it go.

“I love you, Tory.”

The tears poured from her eyes, her shoulders shook, and I had to hug her until she was done. It was her way of apologizing.

“On another subject,” she said, shoulders back now, tough girl expression firmly in place as she mopped up with a tissue. “I know how to take revenge on Scotty.”

“Revenge on Scotty? Why are you taking revenge?”

“Because,” she said, pacing her office, hands on her hips. “Because”—her voice choked up—“he . . .” She punched the air, and I knew she was thinking of her punching bag at her condo. “He had a . . .” She took another swing, her face miserable and superticked. “He had a date last Saturday night and that pissed me off!” She swung a fist through the air again. “It pissed me off!”

“But you left him. You walked out of your house. You’ve dated several men.”

She reeled on me and pointed her finger. “I only went to dinner with them so I could tell Scotty and make him jealous and come get me. That doesn’t mean that
he
can do it, Meggie! So I’m taking revenge. Are you in or out?”

“I think I’ll be in.”

“Splendid.” She high-fived me. “I love the vengeful side of myself.”

 

“The boat sank.”

“What?”

“The boat sank with our order on it,” Lacey said, her red curls bopping, face flushed. “The crew was rescued by an American tanker going by, but all of the merchandise is gone. Sunk. Drowned. Bottom of the sea. The bras may end up on the coast of New Zealand or China or Greenland one day, or a shark may be caught with our push-up bra wrapped around its chest. Does a shark have a chest? An octopus may be able to poke his tendril things into our thongs, but women will never wear that shipment.”

I stood up and leaned my head against the cool window of my office. Mount Hood was invisible in the distance. It was raining. It was getting colder. Soon it would be ski season. I would not be skiing. I wish Mount Hood would quit reminding me of that.

Lacey leaned back, her hands above her hips. “Shoot, shoot, shoot.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Me either. It wasn’t the whole order, though. We’ll have more come in, not a complete disaster.”

I was trying to save Lace, Satin, and Baubles.

I had a sunken ship. We were literally a sinking lingerie ship. I did not miss the sad irony.

I went to the mini fridge in my office. “I wish you could share this beer with me, Lacey.”

 

“Hayden!” I stood up to hug Lacey’s second-oldest child when he ambled into my office. “Now my day is wonderful.”

“Hey, Aunt Meggie!” He gave me a huge hug.

“It’s good to see you.” Hayden was wearing sky blue pants, white tennis shoes, and a white shirt. His brown hair was back in its usual ponytail, highlighting his delicate features. I felt myself getting all choked up.
This was the kid who said he felt like killing himself.
“How ya doin’?”

“I’m doing okay.” He looked me in the eye, then down. I felt bad. There was no reason for him to look down when he looked at me, or anyone else. “Mom told you about me, right?”

“Yes. I love you as a boy or girl, Hayden. Always have, always will.”

He sniffled, wiped his cheeks. He has the prettiest blue eyes. “Thanks, Aunt Meggie, I figured you would understand.”

“I do.” I did. A little bit I didn’t. I was struggling. You can’t accept that your nephew is your niece overnight. These things take time. It’s not the easiest thing. I stopped for a minute. If it was hard for me to fully understand, how had it been for poor Hayden?

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when you first came home, Aunt Meggie, that I’ve waited all this time, but you know I love you.”

“Hayden, it’s for you to tell me, or anyone else, for that matter, when
you
want to. This is your business. Come and sit down, sweets.”

After some prodding, and a few more tears from those blue eyes, he opened up. “I’ve always been a girl in my head, you know, Aunt Meggie. I didn’t want to be a boy. I remember I cried looking at my penis when I was three and I realized Cassidy didn’t have one. I didn’t want that there. I wanted to look like a girl. It was like this thing hanging between my legs, it felt weird, like it was in the wrong place, wrong body. . . . I’ve always felt in my head, like, I’m a lie.”

“You’re not a lie, Hayden. You are who you are. You were born a boy physically, but you are a girl. I’m sorry, honey, for everything you’ve been through, all this pain, the confusion, the stress . . .”
And please don’t kill yourself, honey. Please. Oh, please.

“I haven’t worked out what I’m going to do. I’ve been thinking about switching schools and going to the new school as a girl, but I don’t know. With Facebook and Twitter the kids at the new school would probably find out anyhow. And I like my friends here, even though everybody thinks I’m gay.” His voice cracked. “I feel like I can’t hide myself any longer and myself is a girl, you know? I have to act like a boy and I’m not a boy. I hate the secret. I hate that I have to hide my own self every day just because other people can’t handle who I am. Does that make sense?”

“Yes. You’re an exceptionally brave person, Hayden.”

“Thanks. I don’t feel brave. Mostly I feel scared to death. I have two and a half more years of high school, and I don’t want to get beaten up all the time.”

I put my arm around his shoulders. “Take karate.”

He laughed, as I knew he would. “Yeah, karate. I can be a girl who karate chops anyone in her way.”

“Not a bad way to be, is it?”

He laughed. “Nope. It’s not.”

“I love you, Hayden.”
Please. Not another thought about killing yourself. Never, please.

“Thanks, Aunt Meggie. I love you, too.”

“Tell me what you’re working on right now for the company.”

His eyes lit up. “I’ve got the best idea for this frilly nightgown. You wanna see it? I sketched it out in drama class. It’ll be fabulous, conforms to curves but lets a woman move to her own beat, too.”

Hayden is a gifted, rockin’ designer. He has an instinctive knowledge of what women want to wear when they go to bed. And no, it’s not all sexy. Most of it is comfortable, fun, and in Hayden’s words “snazzy and adorable.”

I saw the designs. I laughed. They were perfect.

Hayden thinks like a woman. I hugged him.

 

Tory can be torrentially vengeful, and the revenge she planned against Scotty because he had the temerity to take a woman out on a date was, in her words, “phallically mind altering.”

“I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing, Meggie. It’s a secret. My horoscope said I would surprise even myself, and I have. You and Lacey will get a front-row seat to my deliciously medieval and evil plan.” Tory sat on top of the conference table and shifted pink silk from one hand to the other. Lacey lay back on the pink fainting couch, looking ill. Her stomach grew by the day. I put my ratty tennis shoes up and leaned back in my chair.

“How is it deliciously medieval?” I asked.

“Let’s say it’s a long lick and it sucks and leave it at that.”

“No one, like Scotty, is going to die, are they?” Lacey asked, an ice pack on her head, but she didn’t seem that worried.

“Nope. I promise. If he died, I wouldn’t be able to be deliciously medieval again and that would ruin my future revenges. You’ll both come?”

I liked Scotty. Tory would be hell to live with. She’s temperamental, difficult, and constantly needs Scotty to prove he loves her, adores her, and will never leave. She has deep-seated abandonment issues, which anyone who knows her story understands. Even Scotty understands.

She has a happy family one day, living with parents who adore her, and the next day, at five years old, she has no family, lost in a bloody, mangled car wreck, in which she’s a passenger. Her parents are dead and she’s an orphan. In her young mind, she’s been abandoned.

I remember when Tory came to live with us in my mother’s Snow White house. She slept in my bed, or Lacey’s bed, or our mother’s bed, each night for a year and cried. She clutched a purple dinosaur from her father and a yellow lion from her mother. She still has them.

My guess is that Scotty is utterly exhausted by Tory continually slamming out of their house and having to beg her to come back. He probably wants to see if she does love him and if she’s mature enough to work things out. I don’t blame him.

But Tory’s my sister, so I’ll stand by her. Besides, I was most definitely curious about the deliciously medieval and evil plan. “I’ll go with you,” I said.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Lacey said, putting an ice pack over her face. “I bore my own self to death and this will add excitement to my life.”

I hoped the medieval and evil plan did not end in any arrests.

8

“L
ance, can I talk to you?”

“Sure, Meggie. Hey, how you doin’? Are you all still coming to Sarah’s birthday party on Saturday?”

I assured him that all of us, including Grandma, but not my mother, as she was still on her book tour, would be there.

“Great! Can’t wait! Your mom already called me. She sent Sarah a five-foot-tall dollhouse. Sarah loves it. I’m barbequing. Some of my army pals are coming, too. Bart recently was released from the hospital, lost his left leg, below the knee, from a bomb outside of Kandahar, but he’s up and at ’em, his wife says. You remember Bart from high school?”

I sure did. “Lance, I have a delicate and difficult question to ask you. . . .”