Amy Bloom - A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

Jane Spencer collects pictures of slim young men. In the bottom drawer of her desk, between swatches of silk and old business cards for Spencer Interiors, she has two photos of James Dean, one of a deeply wistful Jeremy Irons in Brideshead, arm in arm with the boy holding the teddy bear, a sepia print of Rudolph Valentino in 1923, without burnoose or eyeliner, B. D. Wongs glossies as Song Liling and as his own lithe, androgynous self, and Robert Mapplethorpe slipping sweetly out of his jeans in 1972. She has a pictorial history of Kevin Bacon, master of the transition from elfin boy to good-looking man without adding bulk or facial hair.

The summer Jessie Spencer turned five, she played Capture the Flag every day with the big boys, the almost-six-year-olds whod gone to kindergarten a year late. Jane never worried, even in passing, about Jessies IQ or her eye-hand coordination or her social skills. Jessie and Jane were a mutual admiration society of two smart, strong, blue-eyed women, one five and one thirty-five, both good skaters and good singers and good storytellers. Jane didnt mention all this to the other mothers at play group, who would have said it was the same between them and their daughters when Jane could see it was not, and she didnt mention it to her own sweet, anxious mother, who would have taken it, understandably, as a reproach. Jane didnt even mention this closeness to the pediatrician, keeper of every mothers secret fears and wishes, but it sang her to sleep at night. Janes reputation as the play groups good listener was undeserved; the mothers talked about their knock-kneed girls and backward boys and Jane smiled and her eyes followed Jessie. She watched her and thought, That smile! Those lashes! How brave! How determined!

Jane sometimes worried that Jessie was too much of a tomboy, like Sarah and Mellie, even faster runners and more brutal partisans; it was nothing to them to make a smaller boy cry by yanking up his underpants, or to grind sand into the scalp of the girl who hogged the tire swing. These two didnt cry, not even when Mellie cut her lip on the edge of the teeter-totter, not even when Sarah got a splinter the size of a matchstick. But Sarah and Mellie, in their overalls and dirty baseball jerseys, never had the boys heartless prankishness, the little devils dancing in the blacks of their eyes. Jessie had exactly that, and the other kids knew she wasnt a tomboy, never strained to be one of the boys. There was no teasing, no bullying line drawn in the sand. Jane knew that one day soon, in the cove behind John Lyman School, the boys would pull out their penises and demonstrate to Jessie that she could not pee standing up, and it would be terrible for Jessie. Jane was wrong. Jessie watched the boys and practiced at home, making a funnel with both hands and a baggie. When Andrew and Franklin went to pee on the far side of the rhododendron, Jessie came too, unzipping and pushing her hips forward until there was, if not a fine spray, a decent dribble. The boys thought nothing of it until first grade, and when they did and the teacher pushed Jessie firmly into the girls bathroom, she walked home at recess, horrified by the life ahead, and Jane could not coax her back for a week.

It was worse when Jane took her to get a simple navy blue jumper for a friends wedding. Jane held it out, pleased that shed found something in Jessies favorite color without a ruffle or a speck of lace, and Jessie stared at it as if her mother had gone mad, wailing in rage and embarrassment until Jane drove her to Macys for a boys navy blazer with gray pants and dared the salesperson to comment. They compromised on patent leather loafers and a white turtleneck. People at the wedding thought only that Jane was her fashionable self and Jessie adorable. Very Kristy McNichol, the brides mother said. Driving home, Jane knew that she had managed not to see it, as you manage not to see that your neighbors new baby has your husbands eyes and nose, until one day you run into them at the supermarket and you cannot help but see. Jessie slept the whole way home, smears of buttercream on the white turtleneck, rose petals falling from her blazer pocket, and Jane cried from Storrs to Durham. She had appreciated and pitied her mother and adored her father, a short, dapper man who cartwheeled through the living room at her request and told his own Brooklyn version of Grimms Fairy Tales at bedtime. She had liked Jessies handsome father enough to think of marrying him until he was revealed to have a wife in Eau Claire and bad debts in five states. It did not seem possible that the great joke God would play on her was to take the love of her life, a wonderfully improved piece of Jane, and say, Oops. Looks like a girl but its a boy! Sorry. Adjust accordingly. It took Jane all of Jessies childhood to figure out what the adjustment might be and to save fifty thousand dollars to pay for it.

How do you get the first morning appointment with the best gender-reassignment surgeon in the world? It cannot be so different from shopping at Bergdorfs, Jane thinks. She looks twice at the pretty brown-skinned receptionist behind the big pine desk. The womans shoulders are enormous; the fabric of her teal jacket pulls hard across her back, and when she reaches for Jesss file, the seams of her straight skirt crack and bend over her powerful thighs. Jane doesnt want to be distracted by thinking about this persons femaleness, genetic or otherwise. Janes job is to be pleasant and patient as a gesture of respect, to be witty, if possible, and to convey, without any vulgar emphasis, that she is the kind of woman who really, really appreciates good service.

Lovely flowers, Jane says. The white alstroemeria. What do they call them? Peruvian lilies, I think. Jane knows what most flowers are called.

Marcella Gray puts her hands together like a bishop, clicking her long red nails. She knows what Jane is thinking. Her own daughter calls her the Deltoid Queen. Her husband calls her Queen Lats. Marcella loves bodybuilding and Dr. Laurence, and when he added transsexuals to his practice she didnt love it, but she learned to live with it and the little irony that came with being their receptionist. Jane Spencer is a well-bred pain in the ass, but the boy looks like he will make it. Tall enough, small hips.

Jess hears Jane charming across the room and looks up from Newsweek, smiling at Marcella and running a hand through his black hair. It is a killer smile, white teeth and a dimple near his blue eyes. Marcella smiles back, which is more than she usually does. Jess doesnt think that Jane can get them a better appointment, but its not impossible. Jane got the registrar at Reed to accept that Jess Spencer who begins there next January is a boy, even though Jessie Spencer finished her freshman year at University of Michigan as a girl. It had been Janes thought that the anonymity of big Michigan would not be a bad idea. Substance abuse and black-market hormones and botched surgeries are the tragedies of transsexuals, but Jess suspected that pure loneliness would do him in. He had not gone out for a beer with a pal or kissed a girl since he started cross-dressing in earnest. He wouldnt go out with his transitioning self, and he didnt want the kind of person, boy or girl, who would.

Once you know there are transsexuals, you see them everywhere. Short, pear-shaped men. Tall, knobby women. When you walk out of the waiting room of the North American Gender Identity Clinic, everyone looks peculiar. You flip through magazines and think, Hmmm, Leo DiCaprio? Theres something about him. And Jamie Lee Curtis? Look at those legs.