Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
“What’s wrong?”
“The person Lydia eloped with—her boyfriend—he’s transgender. I guess my parents are really upset.”
Darcy didn’t seem shocked, and Liz was reminded of his general disapproval of her family. That the Bennets would find themselves in further turmoil appeared to be no more or less than he expected. He said, “You want me to take you to the airport now?”
“I just think—it sounds like I’m needed at home.”
“Why?”
It was a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Haltingly, Liz said, “This isn’t the kind of news my parents will respond to well, especially my mom.”
“Isn’t that their problem? It doesn’t seem like Lydia or her boyfriend did anything wrong.” Darcy’s abruptly condescending tone reminded Liz of when they’d first met.
“Do I think my parents will figure out a way to deal with this if I’m not there?” Liz said. “Of course.” She could hear her voice turn wobbly as she said, “But you know what? I didn’t really involve myself with stuff at home for twenty years, and during that time, a lot of things went off the rails.”
“You think getting on a plane will retroactively assuage your guilt?”
“I’m not trying to convince you I’m right,” Liz said. “I just want to know if you’ll take me to the airport or if I should call a cab.”
Darcy shut his menu. “Fine.” But in the same gesture with which he agreed to help her, some goodwill between them officially dissolved; their ST was no longer a fireball threatening to engulf Northern California.
“You won’t be dining with us today?” a waiter said as they walked toward the front of the restaurant, and Darcy said brusquely, “No.”
“Another time,” Liz added with fake brightness.
Back in the car, Darcy was quiet, and so was she. It occurred to her to ask him to simply go straight to the airport, and to have Charlotte send on her belongings, except that Liz didn’t wish to risk separation from the digital recorders she’d used to interview Kathy de Bourgh.
She hadn’t realized she’d been rehearsing concise explanations of the situation to offer Charlotte and Cousin Willie until she entered the house and found their bedroom door still closed. Liz stuffed her clothes and toiletries into her suitcase and her digital recorders and notebook into her purse and was wondering if she should at least leave a note for her hosts when, passing again by their closed door, she heard female gasps that were unmistakably sexual in nature. She hurried out.
Darcy had never turned off the engine, and after her suitcase was stowed in the backseat, even before she’d fastened her seatbelt, he began driving again. After a prolonged silence, she said, “If you’d told me Lydia had eloped with a cowboy she’d just met in a bar, or with the Bengals’ quarterback, sure. But this—I don’t know, I’ve never seen her as having a lot of sympathy for people outside the mainstream.”
Darcy said nothing.
“I wonder if my mom even knows what transgender means,” Liz added. “I guess she does now.”
Perhaps ten more minutes passed in silence, and Liz said, “Ham’s on the short side for a guy, but—I never would have guessed. He has a goatee, and he’s very muscular.”
“I’m sure he’s on a testosterone regimen.” Darcy spoke curtly.
“Have you ever had transgender patients?”
“Yes, but not because they were transgender. For that, they’d see an endocrinologist.”
The traffic on the 101 was light—it still was just eight-thirty on the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend—and Darcy drove in a middle lane. Despite the urgency she felt, sadness billowed in Liz at the first sign for the airport. She could hear the uncertainty in her own voice as she said, “I’m not sure how long I’ll be in Cincinnati, but when do you get back?”
“Tuesday morning, but I go straight to work.”
“Well, depending on how long I’m in town, maybe I can make this up to you.”
Again, he said nothing, and when he pulled up in front of the terminal, she said, “Don’t get out. It’s faster if I just grab my stuff.”
He complied, and after she’d retrieved her suitcase from the backseat, she waved. “Thank you, Darcy.”
She’d been afraid he wouldn’t get out anyway, that he wouldn’t try to hug or kiss her, and that was why she’d told him to stay seated—because she hadn’t wanted his nonembrace to be the last thing that happened before she boarded a cross-country flight.
MR. BENNET HAD found the note from Lydia upon entering the kitchen of the Tudor that morning: By the time you read this, Ham and I will be on our way to Chicago to get married. Don’t try calling because we’re not taking our phones. If you make me choose between you and Ham, I pick Ham! from Lydia THE BRIDE.
As had occurred to Liz, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Bennet had been familiar with the term transgender before the previous evening, and having it jointly defined by Lydia and Ham, over cocktails in the living room, had not brought forth the best in them. Why, as Mrs. Bennet told Liz upon her arrival home, she had never heard of such a thing! How strange and disgusting that Ham was really a woman, and what could Lydia be thinking to get involved with someone so obviously unbalanced? Though Mr. Bennet had received the news with slightly greater equanimity, he had hardly been a paragon of respect, saying cheerfully to Ham, “If only you’d been born a century ago, you could have been one of Barnum’s bearded ladies.”
Lydia and Ham hadn’t, during that conversation, been seeking Mr. and Mrs. Bennet’s approval for their marriage; indeed, there had been no discussion of marriage. Their decision to elope, Mary explained to Liz, seemed to have arisen in reaction to the lack of acceptance or grace with which Mr. and Mrs. Bennet had greeted Ham’s disclosure.
Also prior to Liz’s return home, Mrs. Bennet had called their longtime lawyer and friend, Landon Reynolds, who’d explained that turning to the police would serve no purpose. Eloping wasn’t a violation of the law, and there was nothing to suggest that Ham had taken Lydia to Chicago against her will. While the illegality of same-sex marriage in both Ohio and Illinois could potentially render Lydia and Ham’s union void were Ham deemed female, seeking an annulment on Lydia’s behalf, given that she was well over the age of consent, would be complicated and costly; and in any case, it seemed likely that the gender listed on Ham’s driver’s license, if not his birth certificate, was male. His best advice, Mr. Reynolds told Mrs. Bennet, was to buy a bottle of champagne and wait for the newlyweds to return.
Yet so insistent was Mrs. Bennet that twenty minutes later, at her urging, Kitty and Mr. Bennet had begun the almost five-hour drive to Chicago with what Mrs. Bennet chose to believe was the goal of either preventing the couple’s nuptials or, if it was too late, of separating them and transporting Lydia back to Cincinnati alone. Mary, in the meantime, had been tasked with calling Chicago hotels to check for reservations under Bennet or Ryan, a search that by late Sunday night remained fruitless.
Shortly after Mr. Bennet and Kitty’s departure, Mrs. Bennet had swallowed the expired Valium and retired to bed, and this was where, at ten-thirty P.M., Liz found her. The older woman was weeping with a vigor that appeared unsustainable, yet the voluminous scattering of tissues across the bed, nightstand, and nearby rug suggested that she had been at it for some time; indeed, of the four tissue boxes sitting atop the mattress, two were empty, one was half-empty, and one was as yet unopened but clearly waiting to be deployed. Mrs. Bennet herself was surrounded by flotsam that included a cordless phone, two remote controls (when Liz entered the room, the television was showing an infomercial for a spray-on sealant), a partially consumed three-ounce chocolate bar, a king-sized package of Cheetos reduced to orange crumbs, and a preponderance of throw pillows; on the nightstand were a lowball glass and a bottle of gin. Mary, who had opened the front door of the Tudor and led Liz to their mother’s lair, now stood just inside the room with her arms folded. Liz approached the bed and sat, setting her hand on her mother’s arm. “Hi, Mom
Mrs. Bennet shook her head, her cheeks florid and damp. “She’s so pretty,” she said in a mournful voice. “I don’t know why a pretty girl would go and do such a terrible thing.”
“I really think Ham is a good person,” Liz said. “Remember how he helped me clean out our basement?”
“Are there people like this in New York?”
“There are transgender people everywhere,” Liz said. “And there have been throughout history.”
Both in the San Francisco airport and then on her layover in Atlanta, Liz had via her smartphone learned about the kathoey in Southeast Asia and the salzikrum of the ancient Middle East. Also, she now knew to refer to it as a gender reassignment rather than a sex change, she knew that Ham might well not have had “bottom” surgery (based on her own observations, she strongly suspected he’d had top), and, in any case, she knew to be embarrassed for having asked Mary if Ham had a fake penis; it was, apparently, no less rude to speculate about the genitals of a transgender person than about those of a person who was nontransgender, or cisgender.
As far as she was aware, Liz had, prior to meeting Ham, regularly interacted with only one transgender person, a sixty-something woman who was a copy editor at the magazine where Liz and Jasper had been fact-checkers. Surely, if Liz had learned that anybody in her social circle in New York had eloped with someone transgender, she’d have greeted the news with support; she might even have felt that self-congratulatory pride that heterosexual white people are known to experience due to proximate diversity. So why, she decided, should her feelings be any different for Ham? Especially now that she understood and could disregard the slight evasiveness he’d shown the time Liz had asked about his upbringing in Seattle, or Kitty’s taunting implication that Liz was ignorant of Ham’s true character. Which she didn’t believe she had been, Liz thought. In the air over the wheat fields of Kansas, Liz had concluded that if a Cincinnatian could reinvent herself as a New Yorker, if a child who kept a diary and liked to read could ultimately declare that she was a professional writer, then why was gender not also mutable and elective? The enduring mystery of Ham, really, was how he managed to stand Lydia’s company and how he now planned to do so for a lifetime.
“Five of you,” Mrs. Bennet said, and a fresh wave of tears released themselves. “How is it there are five of you and not one can find a nice, normal, rich man to settle down with?”
“Mom, we’re healthy,” Liz said. “We aren’t drug addicts. Things could be so much worse. And with Dad having been in the hospital, doesn’t it put something like this in perspective?”
“Does Ham get up in the morning and say, ‘Today I’ll wear a dress. No, trousers! No, a dress!’ ”
“I’m pretty sure he’s a guy all the time, Mom. Just think of him like you did before you knew he used to be female.” Used to be female—Liz had a hunch such a phrase ought not to be uttered by her newly enlightened self, though she’d check online.
“Mom, you should go to sleep,” Mary said.
“I’m waiting to hear from your father,” Mrs. Bennet said, and Mary said, “He and Kitty are probably going to sleep now, too.”
Mrs. Bennet glared between her daughters. “How selfish you all are,” she said. “Doing what you like without regard to how it reflects on our family name.”
“Okay, I’m done here,” Mary said, and Liz stood, too.
“Mary’s right, Mom,” Liz said. “You should sleep.”
IN THE HALL outside their mother’s room, Mary said, “I guess all these years, Lydia has been projecting her secret same-sex attraction onto me.”
Liz looked at Mary. “Do you really think that?”
“She has no idea how mean people can be because usually she’s the mean one.” The pleasure in Mary’s voice was undisguised. “Living her whole life as this skinny, cutesy blonde—well, she’s about to learn.”
“I don’t think most people who meet Ham have any idea he’s transgender,” Liz said. “Although it also doesn’t seem like either of them is trying to hide it.”
“Exactly,” Mary said. “Because Lydia doesn’t know any better. And trust me, this is the kind of gossip that spreads like wildfire.”
“Lydia and Ham are living their truth,” Liz said. “More power to them.”
IT WAS DISPLEASING and confusing to be back in her childhood bedroom again so soon after leaving, and especially after its fumigation with chemicals whose ostensible harmlessness Liz was not entirely convinced of. Though she’d been away from Cincinnati for only four nights, Liz also felt a strange envy for the version of herself who had formerly inhabited this room and had, however unwittingly, enchanted Darcy. The net result of her time in California, she feared, had been to decrease his affections. Though moments had seemed promising, something between them had come loose when she’d canceled breakfast and asked him to drive her to the airport.
She thought of texting him to say she’d made it safely back and wished he’d asked her to when he’d dropped her off. But what if, at this very moment, he and Caroline Bingley were sharing a laugh, standing close to each other, with Caroline looking bitchily gorgeous in an expensive frock?
The timing of it all was dreadful yet somehow unsurprising—that on the cusp of finally having an honest conversation with Darcy, an interruption would come from her family, and with the whiff of scandal attached. It was in Liz’s opinion a mistake to see symbolism in one’s own life, but still, the necessity of her abrupt departure from California felt almost punitive; she wondered if she was being karmically reprimanded for her previous treatment of Darcy.
Sleep overtook her eventually. But even then, woven throughout the night’s dreams, her remorse did not abate.
WHEN LIZ ENTERED her mother’s bedroom in the morning after a run and a shower, it was nearly nine o’clock and her mother was on the phone.
“You should check again,” Mrs. Bennet was saying. “They might have gotten there right after you left.”
It was difficult for Liz to envision her father and Kitty in Chicago. Were they driving up and down Michigan Avenue or wandering on foot around Navy Pier and Grant Park? Were they loitering by the closed courthouse or entering restaurants, showing photos of Ham and Lydia from the screen of Kitty’s phone? Or were they simply, as seemed most likely, in a hotel room, watching television?
“For God’s sake, Fred, you need to find her,” Mrs. Bennet said. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night.” A few seconds passed before Liz realized that the phone call had ended and her mother’s most recent remark was directed at her.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Liz said.
“What’s it called when they slip pills into girls’ drinks?” Mrs. Bennet said. “They do it at fraternity parties. I wonder if that’s how Ham got her to Chicago.”
“Mom, I’m sure he didn’t give her roofies.”
“Here’s a question for you: Which locker room does Ham use when he swims? Because no one at the Cincinnati Country Club would want to change into their bathing suit around a person like that.”
“Ham can put on a bathing suit at home,” Liz said. “There are ways around it. But I bet he uses the men’s locker room. Just think of him as a man, Mom.”
“Lydia will never be able to have babies.” Mrs. Bennet scowled at Liz. “And at the rate you’re going, neither will you.”
“Lydia and Ham can adopt. Or”—it was impossible not to think of Jane—“there are other options.”
Mrs. Bennet shook her head. “When people adopt, God only knows what’s in those genes.”
“God only knows what’s in any of our genes,” Liz said, and Mrs. Bennet drew herself up into a haughty posture.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “Your father and I both come from very distinguished families.”
“STILL NO WORD from Lydia?” Jane said.
Liz had brought her laptop and phone to the backyard and was sitting in an ancient patio chair with flaking paint. She said, “Since they didn’t take their
What Jane did then was surprising: She laughed. “Lizzy,” Jane said. “Of course Lydia took her phone. She’d sooner lose a limb.”
As soon as Jane said it, Liz realized her sister was correct. “Wow,” she said. “I’m an idiot.”
“I feel like I should be there,” Jane said. “But Mom would take one look at me and know, and this doesn’t seem like the right time for her to find out.”
“You don’t need to come home. Mom’s driving me crazy and Mary’s MIA, but I don’t know what there would be for you to do.”
“It sounds silly, but I keep picturing Ham’s goatee.”
“He must take testosterone,” Liz said, and thought of Darcy.
“What I wonder is,” Jane said, “if Ham was choosing from all the male names in the world, why did he pick Ham? I know it’s short for Hamilton, but that’s still kind of odd. Do you know what his name was when he was female?”
“No,” Liz said.
“I wish I knew him better,” Jane said. “I guess now I’ll get to.”
“I shouldn’t even tell you this,” Liz said, “but there were new unopened Horchow boxes in the front hall when I got home last night, and there’s a bunch of raw steak in the refrigerator. Oh, and doughnuts on the counter. Apparently, Mom and Dad are very receptive to our concerns about their physical and financial well-being.”
“All we can do is encourage them when they make good choices,” Jane said. “We can’t micromanage their behavior. So, Lizzy, I think I felt the baby kick.”
“Wait, really?”
“It was this flutter that didn’t come from my own body.”
“That’s so exciting.”
“I know.” Then Jane said, “Promise to call me the minute you hear anything from Chicago.”
ALTHOUGH SHE KNEW she was supposed to be concerned about Lydia, Liz felt more preoccupied with whether she’d hear from Darcy. As she had previously planned to do, he was taking a red-eye, though having seen Pemberley, she suspected he’d be flying first-class. As Labor Day proceeded in a decidedly un-Labor-Day-ish fashion—Mrs. Bennet continued to weep and brood in her bedroom, Mary hadn’t yet come to the Tudor, and Liz wasn’t sure whether to resent Mary for staying away or be relieved by her absence—Liz imagined Darcy’s activities. He wouldn’t, presumably, leave for the San Francisco airport until around midnight in Cincinnati, so she pictured him packing his suitcase in the Pemberley guesthouse, perhaps going for a run or playing Scrabble with Georgie. (Liz had no idea if Darcy and Georgie played Scrabble.) Had Caroline Bingley returned yet to Los Angeles? Liz certainly hoped so.