Cha-Ching!, page 2
A few years back Theo had read a newspaper article about a math teacher who got caught in the crossfire of a gang fight. She’d cut out the story and pasted it to her refrigerator: “What Are the Odds: Statistician’s Life Saved When Bullet Becomes Lodged in the Window of his Scientific Calculator.” Without the calculator in his breast pocket the bullet would have pierced his heart. The teacher posed in the newspaper photo holding up the calculator that had saved his life, the bullet mounted in it like a tiny taxidermied deer head. These kind of stories gave Theo hope that for every hundred cruel things the universe could throw around, occasionally blind luck prevailed.
After she finished her cigarette she got in the truck and ate the entire pack of mini donuts in less than a minute. Her head and body ached. She needed a shower and a good night’s sleep, and maybe twelve gallons of water to clear out her system. She pulled a clean T-shirt out the bag of necessities she’d packed for the drive to New York, and changed out of her bloodstained version.
She thought about what Dr. West had said: Maybe you’re supposed to have a dog in New York. She laid the bloody shirt down on the passenger seat like a blanket and then she rummaged around in her bag for her toothbrush. She came across the wig her neighbor Olivia had given her for the solo cross-country drive.
“So you’re not murdered in a creepy rest stop,” Olivia had said flatly.
Olivia had moved to San Francisco from Ohio, driving across country and negotiating public restrooms as a transwoman who didn’t always pass as female. She knew Theo would be in the same predicament, because even in San Francisco, people often didn’t know what the fuck to make of Theo. When she’d first moved into her apartment building and hadn’t yet lost the courage to walk by the boys on the corner, they’d yell, “What the fuck are you?” “What the fuck are you” can be translated into a variety of languages. Sir? Ma’am? Sir? Señor? Señora? Monsieur? Madame? She and Olivia joked that she was “the sirma’amsir”—like some kind of elusive two-toed sloth that lazed about the rainforest floor. They imagined the nature documentary, with the sound of twigs breaking and leaves moving and then a strong British accent whispering, “The timid sirma’amsir can be seen here hiding in the thick foliage, drinking Coca-Cola and chain-smoking.”
The problem wasn’t being mistaken for a man, it was in that second later, when she was discovered to be female. The variety of responses was plentiful. Some people became angry, thinking she was purposely trying to mislead them about her gender, others so embarrassed that they tried to deflect their embarrassment by sharing ridiculous anecdotes, like how they’d once been mistaken for a little boy in the church bathroom when they were eight years old. It was best when everyone just pretended nothing was amiss and Theo could continue with her business at hand: ordering a hamburger, buying stamps, or getting a seven-dollar haircut.
Theo spent a lot of time with Olivia since they were both homebodies who lived across the hall from each other. Olivia had kept Theo steady company during the last week as she packed and cleaned her apartment. They took a break one day because Olivia wanted to go to the wig shop. Theo had never been to a wig shop before, and she milled about assessing the hairstyles on the assortment of Styrofoam heads until she found one that came closest to the hair she’d had her senior year in high school. It was long, down to the middle of her back, wavy, and light brown. She put it on.
“What do you think?” she asked, turning to Olivia who was trying on a dark red wig with blonde highlights.
“Mousy.”
Theo felt a little hurt and wanted to tell Olivia the wig she was looking at was too young for someone in her mid-forties.
“What about mine?” she asked.
“Divorcée,” Theo replied.
They both ignored each other on the drive back. The next day Olivia knocked on Theo’s door and invited her over for drinks. Theo loved how Olivia’s apartment felt like a historical site, with its fainting couch and old Victrola. She decided to bring her some roses. Their friendship had always been platonic, but a few times when they’d been drinking, Theo had felt like they were on the verge of having an affair.
“I’m sorry I said you looked like a divorcée,” Theo said, handing Olivia the roses.
“Well, I’m not sorry I said you looked mousy. Friends tell each other the truth.”
Olivia walked over to the Victrola and dropped on a big band record.
Crackers, Olivia’s white cat, was sleeping on the shelf with the records. Her fur was saturated with secondhand smoke because Olivia never opened her windows. The first time Theo had tried to hug the cat, the smell of its fur almost made her throw it across the room.
Theo sat down at Olivia’s vanity while she waited for her friend to return with the drinks. She fiddled with a pair of clip-on bangs. Stuck between the mirror and vanity frame was a strip of photo booth pictures they’d taken one night after getting blotto at the bar. Olivia was wearing the clip-on bangs and giant, black sunglasses. She held her martini glass up at four different angles as if to say, Cheers. Theo looked virtually the same in each shot, staring straight ahead with dark circles under her eyes, with her Marine-style haircut and torn hooded sweatshirt. She gave the camera the finger, while keeping her other arm slung around Olivia’s shoulder coolly. This was the first night Theo thought they were going to hook up. They’d snorted some speed and looked at each other a little too long, a little too close in a bathroom stall. Then the rest of the night Theo tried to get the courage up to kiss Olivia but never did.
“This is a going-away present,” Olivia said, sliding a cardboard box across the floor.
Theo felt the sadness creep up inside her. Olivia was her family. She opened the box, and inside was the brown wig she’d tried on in the store.
Theo looked at her, confused.
“I thought it might be nice for driving across country,” Olivia started. “You can wear it when you go into restrooms so you don’t get murdered. It was either this wig or a felt moustache set. Believe me, the middle of the country won’t understand you.”
Theo put the wig on and turned to the mirror.
“It’s really terrible,” Olivia said. “I gave it to you early so we can work on it.”
Theo primped in Olivia’s mirror. “Do I look like a beautiful woman?” she joked.
“No, you look like a man wearing a woman’s wig.”
The wig was flattened on one side from where it had been packed in the box, and Olivia picked at it with her fingers, then stepped back.
Theo felt hopeful for a moment.
“I only need it for the rest stop. I’m not looking for a husband.”
“Wear it every day until you leave and let it shape to your head.”
After a few days of wearing it around the house while she washed the dishes Theo reported back to Olivia.
“Well?” she asked when Olivia opened the door.
“You look like that woman I saw on TV who was shot in the head and lived.”
“Why did you give me a present if you’re just going to make fun of me?”
“Do you know who I mean?” Olivia said, ignoring her.
Theo did. She’d read the paper about the woman caught in the middle of a robbery. Another kind of miracle, where the bullet went just the right way through her brain so that she could still talk and hold down a job. When the newspaper showed the photos of her recovery she was smiling, but the left side of her head was caved in, like Theo’s wig. The doctors had taken out part of her skull to let her lucky brain swell. If you didn’t know she’d been shot in the head you might think she’d fallen asleep with her head pressed into the window on a Greyhound bus that had been traveling for three hundred years.
The last thing Olivia said when she hugged Theo good-bye was, “Don’t linger in the restroom and you won’t scare anyone. And send me a postcard from Cleveland.”
Theo scared women in public restrooms the way brooms scare stray dogs. Theo just had to come near the entrance of a ladies’ room and women stopped speaking altogether, and pointed for her to walk in the other direction.
Once an old lady in a casino had grumbled, “Mujeres, mujeres.”
When Theo wouldn’t leave she gave one more, “Mujeres,” while pointing at the toilets.
“Yo soy,” Theo said, hitting her chest with her hand because she didn’t know how to say she was the timid sirma’amsir searching for shelter in a diminished habitat.
•
When Theo woke up in her truck, she was still holding the toothbrush she’d fished out of her backpack. Several hours had passed since she was supposed to have returned for the dog, and she shoved the toothbrush in her pocket and bolted back into the vet’s office.
The receptionist smiled when she saw Theo.
“Let me get Dr. West,” she said.
A moment later Dr. West appeared, leading the dog on a thin, bright blue leash. Its brindled head was inside a clear lampshade and on its front right leg was a hot-pink cast. The dog swayed a little, sedated.
“Break this painkiller in half and give it to her twice a day,” she said, handing Theo a prescription bottle.
Theo’s mouth salivated as she held the bottle of opiates.
“The cast will need to stay on for at least a month. The stitches can come out in seven days,” Dr. West continued.
It was as if Dr. West had hypnotized Theo. It was her dog, right? Fate? She’d been on the roof and seen it fall. If she didn’t take it, it would probably be put down. It didn’t matter; by this point Theo was too embarrassed to say, “Oh, actually I’m not taking the dog.” Instead she just kept nodding and saying, “Of course.”
“This whole visit is on the house,” Dr. West said, “and here’s a bag of dog food to start.”
Theo stared at the drugged dog.
“What will you name her?”
Theo’s eyes settled on the thick scar across the dog’s head.
“What do you think about Cary Grant?” Theo said. “Doesn’t this scar kind of look like Cary Grant’s hair?”
Dr. West laughed, petting the dog’s back haunches.
“Call me here if you have any questions at all,” Dr. West said.
Theo took her card and the dog and the bag of dog food out to the truck, and each time the dog took a step its cast made a tiny click on the sidewalk.
“Want to go to New York?” Theo asked, setting the dog down on the bloody T-shirt that was now her blanket.
By the time she put her key into the ignition, Cary Grant was already asleep.
two
Theo wasn’t taking a meandering road trip across America trying to determine her fate through the text of quirky road signs. She’d already taken that trip. Many times. She just wanted to hurry up and get to New York so she could be a new person. Her lungs hurt from chain-smoking, but she needed the cigarettes to keep her awake while she was driving and also, Jesus Christ—she’d already quit drinking, what more was expected of a person in one lifetime?
Cary Grant spent most of the first day curled up sleeping, her pink cast hanging over the edge of the passenger seat. The rest of the time the dog stared straight ahead, sadly, at nothing. Theo took off the lampshade, but it didn’t help. At rest stops, Theo put on her Butch Bathroom Wig and tried to get the dog to pee or eat or drink something. She was sure they both looked down on their luck to passersby— Cary Grant with her cast and stitches and Theo with her wig askew and her busted lip. She noticed people at the rest stops going out of their way to avoid her, the same way she’d kept a wary distance from the boys on the corner in her old neighborhood. At one rest stop, when Theo leaned over to fill the dog’s water dish, her wig slid off and landed on the sidewalk.
“Oh my God!” she heard a woman who was standing near the vending machines gasp.
Theo picked up her wig with one hand and antagonistically waved hello with the other. When the woman didn’t wave back, she became enraged.
“I fucking have cancer,” she yelled, jamming the wig back onto her head.
The adrenaline that comes with telling a flagrant lie rushed through her veins as she led Cary Grant back to the truck. Theo loved lying to strangers and often felt justified, telling herself they probably hated gay people. But she’d also been raised with just enough Catholicism to feel guilty—what if that woman had cancer herself? Now Theo’s punishment would be to get cancer.
A few summers ago Theo had gotten a second job to save some money. She worked at the baseball stadium selling cotton candy. The majority of her coworkers were sixteen-year-old boys who’d been given the jobs in an effort to keep them out of gangs. It was some of the hardest work she’d ever done, climbing up and down the stadium stairs holding a plywood board with fifty cones of cotton candy stuck into it. After her shift, she practically crawled to the bus stop, her legs and feet hurt so badly. One day walking to the bus stop her coworker asked her if she had a boyfriend.
Theo looked at him incredulously and said, “A boyfriend?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“No. I’m gaaaayyyyy,” she told him. She said the word gay very slowly and clearly, like it was a special flower the class was learning about.
“Oh,” her coworker said. “I didn’t know. I just thought you had cancer.”
•
Cary Grant was beginning to adjust to her new relationship with Theo. On the second day, she finally clicked over to the water dish and took a few timid sips. She still slept most of the day, but she also began to sit up and look out the window when the truck changed speed on the interstate. She hadn’t eaten any of the kibble, so Theo bought a package of hot dogs from a truck stop and broke one into a few pieces. She held one in the palm of her hand, flush with the seat and a few inches from Cary Grant. The dog sniffed but didn’t take it.
“It’s okay,” Theo said.
She could see the dog extend her neck forward as if she was going to take the hot dog but then retreat, and it killed Theo to see her so afraid. She tossed the piece of hot dog onto the seat near Cary Grant’s paws. The dog sniffed, then swallowed it without chewing. She threw another piece, and Cary Grant gobbled that one, too. Theo felt like she might cry from joy. Cary Grant glanced at her shyly, waiting for her to throw another piece.
“Here you go,” Theo said, this time trying to get the dog to take the food directly. She held the hot dog under the dog’s nose and watched the very tip of Cary Grant’s tail wag nervously.
“It’s all for you,” she said, and the dog reached forward and seized the hot dog from her hand.
“What a good girl,” Theo cooed, taking in the giant scar on Cary Grant’s head and all the other scars that crisscrossed her body.
The first two nights, they slept in Motel 6 parking lots trying to save money. Theo reclined her seat and Cary Grant remained shotgun, snoring lightly with her hot pink cast straight out in front of her. On the third night Theo purchased a cheap room in a small casino and dog track outside of St. Louis. She desperately needed a shower and a good night’s sleep for her sore back.
She led the dog into the motel room and dumped her belongings on the bed. Then she shoved one of the dog’s painkillers into a piece of hot dog and dropped it in the bowl with some kibble next to the nightstand. She flipped on the TV so the dog would have some background noise and got into the shower. The hot water felt good on her filthy body and she stayed in there long enough to feel guilty for wasting water. When she opened the bathroom door she found the dog waiting for her shyly.
“Cary Grant!” she said happily, and the dog wagged once nervously then disappeared around the corner.
Her bowl was empty; she’d finally eaten. Theo put on her pajamas and crawled under the sheets.
“Come here,” she said, patting the mattress a few times, but the dog’s ears went back when she did that.
“Cary Grant,” Theo said quietly.
She said it a few times until she could feel some meaning behind it. The next time she patted the mattress, she did it lightly, and the dog jumped up, curling into a circle at the foot of the bed.
Theo flipped through the channels until she landed on an episode of Hooked. She’d seen this one before, about a woman who smoked twenty-five PCP cigarettes a day. How was there enough time in the day to smoke twenty-five PCP cigarettes? And despite smoking twenty-five PCP cigarettes a day, the woman still held down two jobs: one as a prostitute and the other as an ordained minister who married people, drive-thru-chapel style.
“I didn’t like the taste of alcohol at first,” the woman said, recounting how her addiction had begun with just a few beers and then escalated to twenty-five PCP cigarettes a day. “I had to force myself to like it.”
A camera panned to a middle-aged white man with a moustache. The banner underneath him said, “Addiction Specialist.”
“She needs help,” the addiction specialist told the woman’s mother.
“Well, that’s a no-brainer! Right, Cary Grant?”
But the dog had fallen asleep. When I get to New York, maybe I’ll be an addiction specialist too, Theo thought. She imagined herself behind a giant mahogany desk, knee-deep in losing lottery scratch-offs, chain-smoking and wearing one of those bright yellow helmets that hold two beers at a time. The sign on her desk would read, “The Addiction Specialist is IN.”
Theo was simultaneously exhausted and wired. She turned off the TV and lay in the dark feeling her mind race. She had never smoked PCP, but when she was eight her mother had gotten revved up after watching something on the news, and had lectured Theo to be on guard for strangers who might offer her PCP.
“What is it?” Theo had asked.
“An elephant tranquilizer.”
Theo’s young brain confused elephant tranquilizers with elephants, and so she waited for the circus to come to town and offer her funny cigarettes.
There had been many moments in the three days of driving that Theo had come close to drinking. Especially when she went into gas station mini-marts and saw all the six-packs of beer in the refrigerators. Staring at them, she knew exactly how each would taste going down her throat. Ever since the first time she stole one of her father’s beers in junior high and guzzled it on the side of the house after school, she’d loved the taste.
