Eligible (42 page)

“She’s been in and out of different treatment centers, which, as far as I can tell, do nothing.” Darcy sighed. “But I still wonder if she should go back. She’s lost weight again since I last saw her.”

“I have a colleague who did a program in North Carolina that really seemed to help, I think at Duke. Has Georgie ever tried that one?”

“Duke doesn’t sound familiar. She’s been to places in Southern California and Arizona.” Darcy smiled sadly. “The one outside San Diego, I think the reason she agreed to check in was that a bunch of celebrities have been patients there, but her stint was celebrity-free. It must have been the off-season.”

“I know eating disorders are really hard,” Liz said. “I’m sorry.”

“I worry that her life is on hold,” Darcy said. “And I worry about her heart and kidneys.”

He was pulling into a parking space—how inevitable things seemed, how close to him Liz felt—when her phone buzzed with an incoming text. If not for her father’s heart attack, she might not have looked at the phone; she might simply have gone into the restaurant and ordered scrambled eggs that she would barely have eaten. Instead, she did look. Before she read the message, she saw the name of the text’s sender, and she said, “Speaking of sisters, this is from Mary.” Then she said, “Oh my God.”

“Is everything all right?” Darcy asked, but for the first time in two days, Darcy was not foremost in her mind; something else had abruptly pushed him aside, and his voice was background noise.

Lydia & Ham eloped to Chicago,
Mary’s text read.
Turns out Ham transgender/born female!!!!!! M & D freaking out can u come home?

“IS EVERYTHING ALL
right?” Darcy asked again.

“Lydia—my youngest sister—I guess she just eloped with her boyfriend. And also—wow.” Rapidly, Liz typed,
For real? Not a joke?
Mary hadn’t yet responded when Liz sent an additional text:
????

Ham being transgender—it seemed impossible. And Lydia had known? But, Liz thought, he had a goatee!

A few seconds later, Mary’s response appeared:
Not a joke.
Shortly there followed:
And Lydia always accused ME of being gay!
And then:
Dad and Kitty driving to Chicago now, mom losing her shit. When can u get here?

Liz looked at Darcy, who had parked, turned off the ignition, and was watching her with concern. “Sorry,” Liz said. “I just—I didn’t see this coming. I should talk to Mary. Do you want to get a table and I’ll meet you inside?”

Darcy passed her the keys, and as he climbed from the car, Liz was already calling her sister.

“You’re sure that Ham is transgender?” Liz said when Mary answered. “And you’re sure they eloped? This isn’t some prank Lydia’s pulling?”

“They—Ham—came out to Mom and Dad last night, and it didn’t go well. This morning, there was a note on the kitchen table from Lydia saying they’re getting married.”

“Does he have a fake penis?” Later, Liz would be relieved that it was only Mary to whom she’d posed this prurient question.

“How should I know?” Mary said. “But Mom is acting crazy. I can’t deal with her.”

“What are Dad and Kitty planning to do in Chicago? Do they think they can stop the marriage?”

“Lydia and Ham can’t do it today because courthouses are closed on Sunday. Then tomorrow is Labor Day. Plus, I checked online and they’ll have to wait a day to use their marriage license, unless they already had one before they left, which I doubt. Basically, I don’t see how they can make it official until Wednesday at the earliest.”

“I’m not in New York,” Liz said. “I’m in California. Are you at your apartment or the house?”

“The house, and Mom just popped a bunch of Valium that I think expired ten years ago.”

“Hold on.” Liz lowered her phone and began typing, searching for flights to Cincinnati; the earliest option she could plausibly make left San Francisco at 11:40
A.M
., entailed a layover in Atlanta, and would deliver her to Cincinnati at 9:28
P.M
. The cost of this decidedly indirect journey would be $887, which she was pretty sure would deplete the last of her once-respectable-seeming savings.

“I’ll go to the airport as soon as I can and text you from there,” Liz said.

“It’s so typical of Lydia to make us deal with her shit.”

“I like Ham, though,” Liz said. “Don’t you?”

“I don’t care about Ham,” Mary said. “I have a paper due next week.”

INSIDE THE CREAMERY,
Liz spotted Darcy in a booth—a large plastic menu lay open in front of him—and again she was gripped by an awareness of the parallel universe in which they could function as an ordinary couple. This only made it more difficult to say, as she approached the table, “I’m so sorry, but I need to go. Could you—I’m sorry to ask this—could you take me back to Charlotte’s to get my stuff, then give me a ride to the airport?”

“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.