Tess Kelly

Word Count 800

After nine years, I knew his face better than mine. I spend two minutes a day, tops, glimpsing myself: a quick check in the mirror to make sure the part's straight or a glance at my middle-aged reflection while flossing. But I never tired of looking at his face, unlined except for the eye creases that crinkled when he was happy. He wasn’t happy all that much, but not because of me.

Sometimes, I traced my fingers across his stubbled chin or down the wedge of his perfect nose. Sometimes, I curled my body next to his, pressed my lips against his cheek, inhaled his soapy scent. “I'm glad you're my fella,” I purred as crow’s feet puckered around his bottomless brown eyes.

I saw his mom for the first time at a St. Louis Elks Lodge, where she tended bar. Still pretty at 75, she must have dazzled gentlemen customers as a young cocktail waitress. His round face was hers. Her eyes were his. She flashed his deep dimples and straight white teeth as she poured me a gin rickey.

He told me about the woman trapped inside one night, four years into being us, when we lived in the mountains of southern Mexico. He sobbed his truth on the bedroom’s terra-cotta floor. I sat on the bed, wordless, and rubbed the bright flowers of our embroidered comforter.

I wasn’t surprised, which surprised me. Was it the way I’d seen his hands flutter in a way that reminded me of a teenage girl? His frequent ranting about the patriarchy? His cross-dressing? Occasionally, I found women’s lingerie in the dryer that wasn’t mine.

Back in Portland, he hung dresses in his closet, more dresses than I had, sheer dresses, silky dresses, a rainbow of dresses he wouldn’t wear in front of me. I said I’d be okay with it, but he must have known I lied.

I came home from a camping trip to find him at the sink washing dishes, barefoot, his toenails bright red like the sirens going off in my brain. My tweezers went missing. I scrutinized his eyebrows over dinner and asked him to buy his own pair. He grew his hair long, shaved his legs. My friends noticed. “He’s a cyclist,” I explained, even though he never raced. Had they guessed? A neighbor discovered false eyelashes on our bathroom floor. I told her I’d just cleaned my costume box. Was she skeptical? He presented as male except for the bits he dared to feminize. He knew he could only go so far while he was with me.

It wasn’t my secret to tell, and save for a few close friends, I didn’t, guarding against a force that escalated with each passing year. It wasn’t my secret to tell, but I had my own.

I was afraid to be alone, to start over mid-life. The real me hid behind the woman who pretended to be in a relationship with a man, a relationship where I wanted him the way I crazy-wanted him when we met, when I biked up to his bike at an environmental protest and said hello, my hair full of sun, my heart racing. That was then. Although it was the 2010s, I now felt more like an aproned 1950s housewife married to a closeted man. Someone who's trapped in the wrongness and can’t find the exit.

I didn’t want to be in a relationship with a trans woman, with any woman, but we lived together. We traveled together. We cooked for each other and ate together. We slept together, although our sex life eventually waned to nothing.

I didn’t know how to let go until my therapist said, “You’re holding him back.”

And then it was clear. I’d do it for him, if not me.

He moved out, rode a train to Massachusetts, where he’d begin a cross-country bike journey. He stayed with my brother in Somerville, and stunned him with the news. It shocked everyone. We had held his secret close and tight for so long. He moved out, and it was sad and lonely, and it was right.

Six months later, a woman pedaled her bike up my driveway and stood in front of me. Her hands fluttered nervously. She waited for me to speak, waited for my critique. Gold-streaked brunette wig, new big-framed glasses, heavy foundation, mauve eyelids. She sported curves beneath a glitzy purple top and faded stretch jeans.

“Your ass looks good,” I said, and she admitted she wore padded underwear.

I smiled, then tried to hide the tears that sprung unbridled. I buried my face in her neck, inhaled her drugstore perfume.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’m just happy for you,” I said but thought of the face I loved, the face I’d never see again.

Tess’ essays have appeared in Cleaver, Ruminate, Sweet Lit, and HerStry, among other publications. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.