OCTOBER 12, 1937
“But let’s leave Wardenclyffe in the past where it belongs,” Tesla said as we dominated our bench, discouraging anyone else from claiming a corner. “How is your life, Charles? What have you accomplished with all that potential?”
I thought about that. I’d often asked myself the same question.
“‘Accomplished’? In objective terms, not much. In personal terms…everything.”
“Everything?”
He still could not seem to take his eyes off my mustache, so I stroked it and said, “Well, I grew this.” As he laughed and winced again, I added, “In all seriousness, I have managed to stay employed despite the depression. I have—”
I stopped because of the way he was staring at my mustache.
“It looks so real.”
“It is.” I leaned toward him. “Touch it. Go ahead.”
He ran a hesitant finger over it, then snatched it away. “It is real!”
“I told you it was. Why are you so shocked?”
“Because all this time I thought…I thought…”
“Thought what?”
“Don’t be angry with me: I thought you were a woman disguised as a man.”
His words did not anger me in the least, but they certainly jolted me. Looking into his eyes I knew the time for truth had arrived.
“You’re almost right. I am not a woman disguised as a man. I am a man born into a woman’s body who has garbed that body to reflect my true nature.”
“How…what?” Confusion reigned in his expression, and undoubtedly in his thoughts as well. “I don’t understand. How does this happen?”
“I wish I knew. You want my true life story? I once told you I was born in Manchester in 1878—that much is true. But I was born Charlotte Atkinson. I had a female body but not once in my life can I remember feeling feminine or wanting to live as my mother did. I wanted my father’s life. So after my mother died and I sold the cottage, I boarded a train to Liverpool as Charlotte and stepped off as Charles. You know the rest.”
“But your mustache!”
Now I knew why he’d been staring. How could a woman grow a mustache?
“Testosterone,” I said. “A synthesized form was developed two years ago and I’ve been injecting myself three times a week. I used to shave just to remove the peach fuzz. Now I must shave. And I love it—the favorite part of my daily ablutions.”
How wonderful to reveal myself to this man I revered and owed so much.
He shook his head. “Such a challenge you set for yourself.”
If he only knew…
“It isn’t as if I have a choice. It is something I must do. I have lived my entire adult life as a man, and whatever I have accomplished in life is because I’ve lived as a man.”
“You have a brilliant mind.”
“I don’t know about brilliant, but I know I have a good one. Yet MIT would not have accepted me had I applied as a woman. They accepted a rare woman back then, but only if she could live nearby with her family. As a female orphan from England, I’d have been rejected out of hand, despite my high test score. Remember, women didn’t even have the right to vote until 1920. And you—would you have taken me on if I’d approached you as a woman?”
He shook his head. “Of course not. I have always thought women the intellectual equals of men and that they would someday startle the world with their innovations. But the presence of a woman would have been a terrible distraction to the workers, catastrophically disruptive.”
Something didn’t fit here…
“When did you discover my secret?”
“During your first year.”
So early?
“How?”
“I went to your quarters in the loft to see if we might make you more comfortable. I found a bloody rag.”
“Ah…my monthly.” The bane of my transformation.
“I didn’t know that then. I thought you might have cut yourself. But there was so much blood…and your face was so hairless…I began to keep track of the times you didn’t look well, and then I would check, and I’d find blood.”
I’d worked so hard at hiding my monthlies. I might have been a man in a woman’s body, but a woman’s body has undeniable and indomitable rhythms, irrespective of the soul inhabiting it. At age fifty-nine now, they are a thing of the past, but back then I had to sneak out at night once a month and bury the bloody rags in the field far beyond the tower. Some of those nights were bitter cold and the ground hard as stone.
“So if you knew,” I said, “why didn’t you sack me?”
He gave one of his Serbian shrugs. “You may deny your brilliance, but I do not. In everyone’s eyes you were a man—a very boyish looking man, yes, but you functioned as a man. That made all the difference. As a woman among them, you would distract the workers; they would look at you and think of sex instead of their tasks. They’d be posturing instead of working. But day to day they looked upon you as a man and so you caused no disruption. As for myself, I was and am celibate, so the truth did not affect me.”
“Weren’t you angry that I’d deceived you?”
He gave a short laugh. “I suppose I was too confused to be angry. I did not understand the how nor the why of the way you were living—and I still do not—but I had come to know you and like you and trust you. I knew you truly shared my dream. I wanted to keep you for your mind and your enthusiasm and your dedication, but mostly because I did not want to crush your dream of being a part of worldwide wireless. So I decided I would keep your secret and that you would stay.”
I blinked away tears that threatened to spill. I loved this man.
“You kept the secret extremely well,” I said, my voice wobbling. “I shall forever revere you for that.”
Never comfortable with emotion, he waved off my gratitude. “You deserve all you’ve achieved.”
I hadn’t told him the rest of it.
“You didn’t let me finish before. I have a wife and a daughter—”
Eyes wide, he grabbed my forearm. “A child? But how?”
“I married a wonderful woman. I love her and she loves me. No more need be said. Our daughter was adopted as an infant and we treasure her. I am, in every sense, the Man of the House.”
Yes…a very unconventional man living a very conventional life.
He slapped his thighs. “Well then, you have answered my question. You have gotten what you wanted from life.”
“Except world wireless.”
He sighed. “Yes. Except that.”
“And so I rest my case and say again: Whatever I have accomplished in life is because I’ve lived as a man. To which I must add: And because I met you.”
“But then,” he said with a frown, “had you not met me, you would have been spared the horrors of Wardenclyffe.”
I could not argue with that…