CHAPTER 39
Emmeline looked down at her penis. It was resting on the blue paper sheet that covered the examining table in Dr. Tulevitch’s office, cradled on the wrinkled water bed of her testicles. She had shaved the whole lot, to make them look more ladylike, but still they exuded maleness.
Not that they could help it. That’s just what they did, and it didn’t bother her. She had never actively disliked her dick. In fact, she’d had a lot of fun with it over the years. But now it was becoming a nuisance, a constant reminder that she hadn’t quite achieved the goal she’d set for herself.
“So, basically, we core it out and invert it,” Dr. Tulevitch was saying.
Emmeline gave a little laugh, covering her mouth as her doctor looked at her over his glasses. Dr. Tulevitch was what Emmeline liked to refer to, not unkindly, as “a middle-aged, straight, white guy with humor issues.” But he was good, and that’s what mattered. At the moment he was showing her some pictures of his handiwork.
“I’m sorry,” Emmeline said. “It’s just that you make it sound like we’re making a jack-o’-lantern or something.”
Dr. Tulevitch blinked but didn’t smile. “Many people mistakenly think that we just cut the penis off,” he said seriously. “It’s much more complex than that.”
Emmeline nodded and took the photo that the doctor held out to her. It didn’t bother her that Dr. Tulevitch was taking it all so seriously. After all, she thought, talking about coring out a penis probably makes him a little nervous. She’d wondered about that before. What was it like for a man to turn another man’s dick into a vagina? Did he see it as a colossal waste of perfectly good cock, or was it simply another opportunity to practice his surgical skills? It was an interesting position to be in, caught between playing God and protecting the supremacy of the phallus.
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind and looked at the photo in her hand. It showed a young woman with her legs spread. Her labia folded back like the proverbial flower petals, and between them Emmeline saw a crush of pink. The picture could, she thought, have been torn straight from the pages of a Playboy magazine.
“As you can see, the results can be quite good,” Dr. Tulevitch said calmly, as if he were discussing the new paint job on a Buick or the recovering of a sofa. He handed Emmeline another photo, this one showing a before and after. In the before photo, one of the biggest dicks Emmeline had ever seen was hanging between the subject’s legs. In the second, a neat little pussy was in its place, the hair around it shaved into an almost heart-shaped mantle.
“Very nice,” Emmeline said, genuinely impressed. “You got all of that stuffed up inside her?”
She said it just to see what the doctor would do. Without a pause he replied, “The larger the penis and testicles are, the easier it is to fashion the new vagina,” he explained. “Even her gynecologist didn’t know until she told him.”
Emmeline handed back the photos. “So what do you think mine will look like?” she asked.
Dr. Tulevitch hefted her balls in one latex-gloved hand, as if he were handling fruit at the market. “I think you’ll be very pleased,” he said. “And with a little luck, the neurological results will be excellent as well. I expect you’ll have full sensation.”
“It’s hard to believe you can do that,” said Emmeline. “I mean, it just seems like it should be more complicated.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” the doctor said. “It’s not a simple procedure, and the results are not guaranteed. Each person is different. But you’re fortunate in that you’re going from male to female. The reverse is much more difficult. Although structurally the genitals of both men and women develop from the same types of cells, building a penis is much harder.”
Building a penis, Emmeline repeated to herself. He says it like it’s the same as erecting a monument or something. It was an all-too-typical male view of the bits of flesh between their legs. Suddenly she pictured thousands of Egyptian slaves pushing and pulling great chunks of marble to construct a pinnacle that towered over the desert, a permanent celebration of the glories of the cock.
“And it will really feel natural?” she asked, hoping Dr. Tulevitch understood her meaning.
“I don’t have any firsthand experience to back this up,” he said, surprising her. “But I’m told that the effect is most convincing—for both parties.”
He turned away to remove his gloves and make some notes on Emmeline’s chart, leaving her to collect herself. When he turned back, he said, “We can schedule the surgery any time you’re ready.”
Emmeline nodded. She was ready. Unfortunately, her bank account wasn’t. The surgery was expensive, and most definitely not covered by her insurance.
“I’ll let you know soon,” she told the doctor. “And thank you.” She hesitated a moment before speaking again. “May I ask you a personal question?”
Dr. Tulevitch nodded.
“Why do you do this?” asked Emmeline. “This kind of surgery, I mean.”
The doctor removed his glasses and slipped them into his pocket. “My daughter, Sarah,” he said quietly. “She was always what we used to call a tomboy. She wanted to do everything her brothers did. When she was young, my wife and I thought it was her way of asserting herself in a house filled with boys. Then, when she was fourteen, she told us she didn’t want to be a girl, that she felt she wasn’t a girl. We didn’t understand. We thought she was saying she was a lesbian. I sent her to talk to a colleague, a psychiatrist. He prescribed medication. But Sarah became more depressed.”
He stopped and took a breath. “One morning my wife went to wake Sarah for school and found her dead. She’d overdosed on some pills she’d taken from my office. She was fifteen.”
Emmeline ran a hand through her hair distractedly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Dr. Tulevitch raised one hand, as if stopping her. When he looked into her face, he was smiling wistfully. “You asked why I do this,” he said. “I do it for the daughter I lost and the son I never got to know.”
He stood up and put his glasses back on. “You call me when you are ready,” he said.
Emmeline nodded. “Thank you,” she said as the doctor left, shutting the door behind him.
She dressed quickly and left. As she drove home, she couldn’t help but think about what Dr. Tulevitch had told her about his daughter. What must it have been like, finding her dead like that? How must he have felt? Emmeline knew how the girl probably felt: frightened, confused, alone. Most likely she had simply been unable to understand who she was. Emmeline had seen that happen before. She understood it all too well.
But what about Sarah’s parents and siblings? They probably hadn’t understood her, either. Faced with her death, had they blamed themselves? How could they not? How could they not wonder what they might have done differently? How could they not feel guilt of some kind?
She thought then of her mother. All of the years they’d gone not understanding each other. Had her mother simply not known what to say? Had she somehow blamed herself for what she saw as her baby’s illness and her inability to successfully cure it?
It seemed too simple, too obvious. Her mother had never even tried to understand who Emmeline was, despite Emmeline’s numerous attempts to show her. She’d refused every invitation to Emmeline’s shows, changed the subject whenever Emmeline had tried to discuss it with her. She was the one who had rejected Emmeline, not the other way around. Why, she’d even preferred to keep Petey in her life, covering up his behavior with lies to make Emmeline feel inadequate. Even now she wouldn’t admit that he’d abandoned her and that, once again, it was Emmeline who was picking up the pieces.
She’s just lucky I was brave enough to leave instead of killing myself, she thought angrily. If I’d done that, she’d be sorry.
With a shock, she realized what she’d just done. With that one thought, she’d blamed Sarah Tulevitch—and everyone like her—for their own deaths. Yes, perhaps Emmeline had been brave for knowing that she needed to leave home for her own good. But was Sarah any less brave for leaving in her own way? Was she somehow weaker because she didn’t understand that she was okay as she was? And was Emmeline any stronger because she was still here?
No, she told herself. You’re not stronger. If anything, you’re the weak one because you’re still running, still blaming, still angry.
Although she wasn’t supposed to, she pulled the car to the side of the highway. As traffic rushed by her, the occasional face peering out of the window to see why she’d stopped, she sat with her hands on the wheel, staring out at the afternoon sun while tears began their slow journey down her cheeks. She’d wasted so much time. So much time being angry at her mother for not being smarter, or less stubborn. Emmeline had been unable to forgive her for her faults, while demanding that Lula accept her as she was. It had been unfair of her, yet somehow she’d managed to convince herself that she was in the right, was the one who deserved to feel betrayed.
Maybe, she thought, it was time to accept her mother the way she was, even if it meant accepting that she would never understand, couldn’t understand, who Emmeline was. Emmeline had spent her whole life telling the people around her that real love meant accepting the whole person, not just the pleasant parts. Hadn’t she said as much to Toby?
A line from Alice in Wonderland popped into her head. “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” She couldn’t recall to whom, or under what circumstances, the demented little heroine of Lewis Carroll’s book had uttered those words, but they seemed aimed directly at her. And wasn’t she quite a bit like Alice anyway, she thought, making her way through an ever-changing world in an attempt to find her way home.
She wiped the tears from her face and looked in the rearview mirror to check her makeup. When she did, she saw the unmistakable flashing lights of a police car. A moment later, there was a knock on her window. She hit the button and the glass retreated into the car door.
“Is everything all right, ma’am?” asked the officer.
“Yes,” said Emmeline. “I just dropped my lipstick and didn’t want to have an accident while I looked for it.”
The officer nodded curtly. “You do know the tag on your plate is expired, don’t you?” he asked.
“No,” Emmeline said, genuinely surprised. “I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“Could I see your license and registration, please?”
Emmeline opened the glove compartment and located the paperwork. Then she fished in her purse for her wallet. She handed the requested documents to the policeman, who looked at them for a moment and then looked at her with a puzzled expression.
It was only then that Emmeline realized he was confused by the information on her license. Although she’d had her name legally changed, the small matter of her sex was something else. She and the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles disagreed strongly on that point.
The officer continued to look at first the license and then her. Finally he handed both back and said, “All right Mr., I mean Mrs., Tayhill. I’m going to let you off with a warning. But make sure you get that tag renewed right away.”
Emmeline nodded. “I will, Officer,” she said. “And by the way, it’s Miss Tayhill.”
The policeman walked back to his car as Emmeline rolled the window up and started the engine. As she thought about what had just transpired, she began to laugh. And as she pulled her car back onto the highway and headed for home, she began to feel a sense of happiness. Unlike Sarah Tulevitch, she was still alive. So was her mother. And it was time they had a nice, long talk.