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“Try what?”
“It’s a gamble.” I back away toward the office door. “But I’m honestly going to try talking to her. I wish for you to go back to Madame Mattie’s and keep working. I’ll be back.”
Odai nods. He can at least grant this for me. While he turns to head for the exit, I step into the office and rap on the open door.
A gasp comes from inside.
“Who’s there?”
“Mrs. Sherman, can we talk for a minute?” I peek around the shelving.
“You.” Her instant bitch-face makes her overly-Botoxed expression look meaner. “What do you want? Hasn’t your boyfriend done enough?” She is not outright telling me to go, so I take what I can and approach the desk. I feel her eyes scan me, and her expression twists even meaner. I kind of forgot I was dressed like… myself for once. But this is about her, and I am not going to let her deflect that.
“I don’t know exactly how Odai found out about your husband—” I hold up a hand to halt the tirade I can see ready to explode from her “—please. Let me say this. Let me talk for two minutes without you steamrolling me with another pointed ‘young man’ thrown in my face.”
Her eyes flick over my body again, but she keeps her lips sealed.
“I am seriously sorry for what happened to you. It’s awful. Anyone cheating on someone is awful. It doesn’t mean something is wrong with the person being cheated on. Believe me, it means something is wrong with the cheater.”
Mrs. Sherman huffs, turning her head like she can’t look at me anymore. “If there is nothing wrong with me, then there certainly seemed to be less wrong with the twenty-something he left me for.”
The Botox, running a workout center, and bleached blond hair suddenly make more sense.
“Tell me, young—” She cuts off, and it springs a little of a smile to my face when she corrects, “Mr. Lysander.” I am also shocked she knows my last name. “I did everything I could to stay young, stay fit, stay beautiful, but one can only do so much against time. I don’t like this older me any more than he did. So, tell me, do you have any idea how it feels to be a stranger in your own body and not even know who you are anymore?”
I laugh. It makes Mrs. Sherman’s eyes narrow on me again, but today, I kind of have to laugh. “Sorry! It’s just that yeah, I do. A lot. I have serious authority on what it is like to not feel right in your own skin. Just look at me.”
She does, more scrutinizing than judging, I think, which is… better, right?
“Today, I discovered a version of me somewhere between Mattie and the dorkier male side of me. Turns out I veer toward the female persuasion, just not all the way. Not even halfway. But more than being all ‘young man’.
“Even queerer than you thought, huh? Turns out I’m a demiboy. Still he/him, so ‘young man’ isn’t wrong, if a little condescending the way you say it, but I’m on the girl side too. Which I hope doesn’t mean I’m a fraud to you, trying to weasel in on real women’s spaces.”
“Please,” she sneers, “I’m not one of those cunts.” Mrs. Sherman’s eyes widen, and I stifle another laugh. She clearly cannot believe she said that. “You do have a different look today, unfair as it is that you look this good in such an outfit.”
I laugh again. “Thanks?” That she seems marginally cowed and maybe even a little disarmed gives me hope that I am on the right track.
“It is important for women to have their own spaces,” she says. “If you’re any form of woman, that includes you. But if you want a membership here, you are not getting a discount.”
Even she almost joins me when I laugh this time. “We don’t have to be enemies,” I say. “I love Madame Mattie’s. I love it. I love the history of it and giving those tours. I don’t want to lose what it’s meant to me and who it’s allowed me to be, to become.”
It’s only now in the somewhat weak office lighting that I realize how red Mrs. Sherman’s eyes are. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Mr. Lysander, no matter what I attempt from here. You got the church to side with you. That basically spelled my doom.”
“Maybe, but I’d still prefer you didn’t feel the need to attempt anything. It’s not our tour that has you so mad.”
“It is inappropriate,” she refutes, “but my motives may have been more self-serving than only for the community. I still do not enjoy having that sort of history down the street from where I spend most of my time. It is not a pleasant reminder of how my marriage fell apart. No matter how entertaining you may be.”
“You think I’m entertaining?”
“You know you are.”
Yeah. I am a knockout as Mattie and badass at adlibbing. Which is basically what I’m doing now, going off book and not failing at it, despite being out of costume. I decide now might be an okay time to sit.
Mrs. Sherman still doesn’t tell me to go.
“Before today, escaping into being Mattie was as close as I ever got to being the real me, but I have no plans to walk out to the street corner dressed like that and relive all of what Mattie was. I also don’t think there is anything wrong with someone who does though. For me, it’s just a fun live-out-loud persona.”
“Yes, well, it isn’t fun when you’re the wife left at home.” Her voice catches, realer than she usually is with me.
