Middlesex

I knew that my situation, whatever it was, was a crisis of some kind. I could tell that from my parents’ false, cheery behavior and from our speedy exit from home. Still, no one had said a word to me yet. Milton and Tessie were treating me exactly as they always had—as their daughter, in other words. They acted as though my problem was medical and therefore fixable. So I began to hope so, too. Like a person with a terminal illness, I was eager to ignore the immediate symptoms, hoping for a last-minute cure. I veered back and forth between hope and its opposite, a growing certainty that something terrible was wrong with me. But nothing made me more desperate than looking in the mirror.

I opened the door and stepped back into the room. “I hate this hotel,” I said. “It’s gross.”

“It’s not too nice,” Tessie agreed.

“It used to be nicer,” said Milton. “I don’t understand what happened.”

“The carpet smells.”

“Let’s open a window.”

“Maybe we won’t have to be here that long,” Tessie said, hopefully, wearily.

In the evening we ventured outside, looking for something to eat, and then returned to the room to watch TV. Later, after we switched off the lights, I asked from my cot, “What are we doing tomorrow?”

“We have to go the doctor’s in the morning,” said Tessie.

“After that we have to see about some Broadway tickets,” said Milton. “What do you want to see, Cal?”

“I don’t care,” I said gloomily.

“I think we should see a musical,” said Tessie.

“I saw Ethel Merman in Mame once,” Milton recalled. “She came down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right back up the staircase and sang the song over again.”

“Would you like to see a musical, Callie?”

“Whatever.”

“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” said Milton. “That Ethel Merman can really belt it out.”

No one spoke after that. We lay in the dark, in our strange beds, until we fell asleep.

The next morning after breakfast we set off to see the specialist. My parents tried to seem excited as we left the hotel, pointing out sights from the taxi window. Milton exuded the boisterousness he reserved for all difficult situations. “This is some place,” he said as we drove up to New York Hospital. “River view! I might just check myself in.”

Like any teenager, I was largely oblivious to the clumsy figure I cut. My stork movements, my flapping arms, my long legs kicking out my undersized feet in their fawn-colored Wallabees—all that machinery clanked beneath the observation tower of my head, and I was too close to see it. My parents did. It pained them to watch me advance across the sidewalk toward the hospital entrance. It was terrifying to see your child in the grip of unknown forces. For a year now they had been denying how I was changing, putting it down to the awkward age. “She’ll grow out of it,” Milton was always telling my mother. But now they were seized with a fear that I was growing out of control.

We found the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, then followed the arrows to something called the Psychohormonal Unit. Milton had the office number written out on a card. Finally we found the right room. The gray door was unmarked except for an extremely small, unobtrusive sign halfway down that read:

Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic

If my parents saw the sign, they pretended not to. Milton lowered his head, bull-like, and pushed the door open.

The receptionist welcomed us and told us to have a seat. The waiting room was unexceptional. Chairs lined the walls, divided evenly by magazine tables, and there was the usual rubber tree expiring in the corner. The carpeting was institutional, with a hectic, stain-camouflaging pattern. There was even a reassuringly medicinal smell in the air. After my mother filled out the insurance forms, we were shown into the doctor’s office. This, too, inspired confidence. An Eames chair stood behind the desk. By the window was a Le Corbusier chaise, made of chrome and cowhide. The bookshelves were filled with medical books and journals and the walls tastefully hung with art. Big-city sophistication attuned to a European sensibility. The surround of a triumphant psychoanalytic world-view. Not to mention the East River view out the windows. We were a long way from Dr. Phil’s office with its amateur oils and Medicaid cases.