A Fine Bromance Read online

  The door came swinging in, hitting Smartass on the back. Mr. Monroe, the gym coach, stood in the doorway. He was wearing shorts, as usual, his field jacket, a baseball cap with a H on it, and athletic shoes and socks. His hair could hardly be seen under the cap, it was so short and slate gray, contrasting with his dark skin. “What’s going on in here?” he demanded. “Oh, it’s you, Bradley.” He glanced over and saw Andy, who was looking away.

  Monroe asked, “He harassing you, Kahn?”

  Robby answered “Yeah” just as Andy said “No big deal.”

  “What?” Robby asked incredulously. “The asshole was just about to pants you.”

  “It’s nothing,” Andy said in an irritated voice. “Just drop it.”

  Robby stared at him. “Why are you letting this jerk do this?”

  “Just drop it,” Andy pleaded, his voice going up in pitch. He cleared his throat. “It’s nothing, Mr. Monroe,” he said in his normal voice. “Just messin’ around.”

  “You sure about this?” he asked Andy.

  “Yeah,” Andy said, still not meeting anyone’s eyes.

  Mr. Monroe turned to the three ruffians and said in a stern voice, “This school has a no-bullying policy. You know that.”

  The three boys stood with their arms at their sides, their eyes round and hurt, but with smiles tugging at the edges of their lips. “We weren’t doin’ nothin’, Mr. Monroe. Honest.” Smartass looked for confirmation from his confederates.

  The other two boys chimed in.

  “No way!

  “We weren’t bullying the little….”

  Andy looked up, angry and hurt, when the boy called Grease let the comment fall away without adding some insulting word. “Let’s go, Robby.”

  Robby looked at him and nodded. They walked around the gym teacher and pushed through the door, leaving the three bullies alone with the coach.

  They walked down the corridor several feet before either spoke. Finally Robby said, “What the hell was that all about?”

  Andy stopped in his tracks and glared at Robby, who stopped and faced him. “I said it was nothing!”

  Robby backed up and raised an arm in a whoa position. “Okay, man, I’ll drop it. But you gotta admit that was weird.”

  Andy dropped his chin to his chest. “I wish you’d just forget about it. It wasn’t anything. They were just mouthin’ off.”

  Robby stared at him a moment longer, then shrugged and turned down another hallway to his next class. Andy watched him go, still shaking inside and wondering how long it would take before Smartass and his friends let the whole school know he was trans.

  SITTING IN the school library with books about the Seven Years’ War spread out on the table in front of him, Robby was lost in thought. He riffled through the pages of one book, not looking at it while he considered what had happened in the bathroom. He had sometimes been the object of bullying, for no reason other than that he seemed weak. This is why I worked out all summer. It was the first time he had ever defended anyone else, and it felt good. Mostly he simply didn’t like Smartass and his buddies, but he also felt bad for Andy, who was new and short. He was puzzled by Andy’s reaction, though. Instead of acting scared or defending himself, he just wanted it all glossed over. Why in the world would he react that way? Maybe he was too small to fight the boys, though Robby suspected if anyone stood up to them, they would back down. Even if they had fought, Andy and Robby could have gotten a few punches in. And why did Smartass say that thing about Andy’s “pussy”? Boys didn’t have pussies, but some other boys liked to joke that they did. It was part of the constant fag baiting that went on with boys. It was common to call each other “fag” or worse, even when no one was actually suggesting a boy was gay. It was just a way to put each other down. Robby was sensitive to some of the name-calling, given his puzzling lack of sexual interest in girls, or for that matter, boys. But he had made his peace with the name-calling, or thought he had.

  But with bullies it was more threatening. It sure felt like that with the encounter in the boys’ bathroom. Robby was about to shrug it all off when his eyes lit on two portraits in the book he was scanning.

  The Chevalier d’Éon. He had heard of him. Of her. There was a Japanese animé character based on him—her. In the animé it was a girl who fought with a sword. But he seemed to remember that in real life the chevalier was a man who disguised himself as a woman to be a spy for the French crown. He looked at the two portraits. One was of a man of aristocratic bearing from the mid-eighteenth century. The other was a woman of the same era, wearing a black-brimmed hat and a crucifix. They could be the same person, though the portraitists’ styles were different enough to make the chin and nose and the fullness of face vary. He read with interest about how d’Éon had to dress as a woman in order to gain access to the Empress Elizabeth of Russia. She wound up serving the empress as a woman. Though d’Éon served in the dragoons upon his return to France, his life as a woman must have appealed to him, since he then claimed to have been born a girl and forced to live as a boy and then a man. At one point there was even a London Stock Exchange wager set up as to whether the chevalier was male or female. The mystery continued for some years, the chevalier claiming to have been born a woman but raised as a boy, even after the deaths of Louis XV and Louis XVI and the chevalier’s being sent to debtor’s prison in England. Upon his or her death at the age of eighty-one, a doctor testified that the chevalier was born biologically male.

  Wow, this puts my sexual problems in perspective. Robby wondered if the situation with Andy was that he was transgender. It would explain a few things: his sister saying Andy was a lesbian, and the boys in the bathroom talking about a pussy. Plus Andy was so short and had small hands and feet. And he was concerned about whether he was growing a beard. None of this proved anything, but it would explain a few things.

  Still, Robby had read enough about gender identity to understand it didn’t matter what Andy had or did not have between his legs. What mattered was what Andy had between his ears. It was the gender of the brain that counted, not the body.

  Robby decided that either way, it was none of his business and he would relate to Andy as Andy wanted.

  WHEN HE saw Andy again, it all seemed to have blown over. Apparently Robby acted the way Andy wanted, for they went back to their old behavior. They joked around, called each other mild, inoffensive names, argued about current events, started practice for Quiz Kids, and hung out with their friends, just as they had before. Robby managed to hide that he occasionally watched Andy for signs, one way or another, and finally decided it didn’t matter.

  One day after school, Robby went to Great-aunt Ivy’s house to discover that yet another knickknack was missing. This time it was a little porcelain snuffbox. Ivy was distraught over its loss. She explained to him that while the tarot card deck was just a reproduction of the original, with its images of Regency personalities and events, the little box was a genuine Limoges from the period of Louis-Napoleon, Emperor of France. This reminded Robby of the Chevalier d’Éon, and it didn’t surprise him at all that his great-aunt knew all about her.

  “There aren’t that many stories of transgender women in history, not since the time of the Romans, but there have been many, many transgender men,” she explained. “James Barry was a British surgeon who performed the first caesarean section where the mother and child both survived. They found out he was born a woman when the housekeeper found him dead in his parlor. Then there was Albert Cashier, one of perhaps over a hundred women who served as men in the Civil War on both sides, and who continued to live as a man until nearly her death. Or his death, I should say. It is surprisingly common.”

  She got up from the sofa and went to one of her many bookshelves, peered through the titles, and selected one. “I just got this a few weeks ago. It’s They Fought Like Demons, about all the women who enlisted in the Union and Confederate armies. Some of them did it to be near husbands. Others took off the uniform and wore dresses fo
r the rest of their lives. But there were plenty like Cashier who preferred to be recognized as men.”

  Taking the book from her hand, Robby riffled through it, looking at the photos and reading snippets. “I didn’t realize there were so many transgender men out there.”

  Ivy nodded. “I was looking on some website the other day and found all these transgender people there. That means female to male transgender people. I can’t help but wonder what old Albert Cashier and Chevalier d’Éon would have made of this. But they were very brave to live as they did when they did. It’s not easy now, but it’s a lot easier, at least in the western world.”

  Looking up where she stood near him, Robby nodded and was thoughtful. He wasn’t going to tell his Aunt Ivy about Andy. That was Andy’s business. But he couldn’t help but wonder if Andy was transgender, as his great-aunt described it.

  The missing items from her collection were starting to become noticeable. He had wondered if her memory was starting to go, but listening to her talk about history made him doubt it.

  “Has anybody been in here, maybe looking around?” he asked her.

  She looked at him, her eyes distant. “Lots of people. You’ve been here. The ladies from my groups. Your Uncle Roger. The cable man. The grocery delivery man. I have classes from the junior high come in sometimes to look at all my junk. And Mr. Duck and me.” She leaned down to give the cat a scratch under his chin, where he rubbed against her leg. “He and I have been here.” She looked straight into Robby’s eyes. “You think someone might actually be coming in here and stealing the things? Like a burglar?”

  Robby just sat and thought. He looked around the room, then got up and walked into the dining room. He moved from bookshelf to tables to windowsills, then on to the kitchen. Everywhere he went he touched things, not the items themselves but the surfaces where they lay or stood.

  When he came back into the sitting room, his great-aunt Ivy was still where he had left her, standing by the sofa looking at him. “I don’t know, Aunt Ivy. At first I thought you were starting to lose your memory, but I’m starting to realize you’re as sharp as ever. If things are vanishing from their places, it’s because someone is moving them. Or removing them. I just don’t know who or why or if they just misplace them or take them or what. At least we know it’s not ghosts.”

  There was a twinkle in Ivy’s eyes as she said, “Why not ghosts?”

  ROBBY SAW Andy at his locker and hailed him. “Hey, Andy, do you have to go straight home?” he asked.

  Andy took out his phone and checked the calendar. “No, I don’t. How come?”

  “I want you to meet my great-aunt Ivy.”

  Andy just looked at him as he shoved books into his book bag. “Why?”

  Robby looked at him. “What do you mean, why? She’s interesting, and I want you to meet her. And you’re interesting, and I want her to meet you. Besides, she has a mystery going on.”

  Andy opened his mouth as if to protest but stopped. “A mystery? What kind of mystery?”

  Robby grinned. He knew he had Andy’s attention. “She has this collection of all sorts of memorabilia. Hundreds of items. You know. I told you about all the ones that have gone missing. I used to think she was going loony, but now I think the things are really being stolen or something. I think if we put our three heads together, we might figure it out.”

  Andy nodded. “We could play Holmes and Watson.” He grinned at Robby’s rolled eyes. “Well, that’s better than the Hardy Boys.” He thought a moment and asked, “What do you think might be happening to it all? Is someone selling it for drug money? Or is it just a light-fingered squirrel?”

  Robby looked at him. “You watch way too many movies.”

  “That’s true. No mystery there.” Andy pulled on his jacket. “Okay, you’re on. How do we get there?”

  “My sister, Claire, has the car and will drop us off.”

  Andy stopped in his tracks again. “Your sister Claire? The junior, right? I don’t think she likes me.”

  He looked at Andy. “I doubt she knows you’re alive. She’s way self-absorbed.”

  Andy started walking again. “Okay, if you say so.”

  Chapter 4

  “THAT’S FUNNY. She’s usually here.” Robby tried the doorknob, then knocked on the front door of Great-aunt Ivy’s house.

  “She leaves the door unlocked? No wonder things are going missing at her place,” Andy replied.

  The house was a two-story wood frame with a small but neat front yard. There were a couple of hydrangeas flanking the concrete steps, but of course they had no flowers in November. The welcome mat had two silhouettes of cats standing above the word Welcome and was immaculately clean and swept.

  “Only when she’s home.” Robby knocked again. “Well, she’s usually here, and I guess she figures no one will come in when she is. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but this used to be a terribly safe residential neighborhood. It mostly still is.” Robby peered through the tall narrow window to the left of the door. “I guess she’s gone out.” He fished the key ring from his pants pockets and selected one.

  Andy fell back a bit. “She won’t mind?”

  As Robby unlocked and opened the door, he reassured him. “Naw, she’s cool with it.”

  The moment they were inside the foyer of the little house, Andy’s eyes widened in astonishment. “My God! Look at this place!” He walked in, gazing all around. The house was immaculately clean and neat, but every square inch of space was covered with, if it wasn’t carefully planned, total clutter. The foyer walls were lined with framed artwork, and the hall table had its own share of figurines and memorabilia. The floor, with a clear path through the middle, likewise had taller things, like an umbrella stand made of an elephant’s foot and a black-faced statue of a man holding out a ring to tie up a horse.

  “The really amazing thing about it all is that everything has some historical significance. The little guy is from some Southern politician’s front yard. That first-day cover envelope”—Robby indicated a small frame just above the hall table on the wall—“commemorates the attack on New Orleans by the North in April 1862.”

  Andy leaned forward to see the stamp on the envelope that showed a row of different types of ships on fire at a New Orleans levee.

  “Why is she so into history?” Andy inquired.

  Robby took off his jacket and hung it on a coat tree that looked like it must have come from some nineteenth-century manor house. “She was a history teacher at St. Madeleine Sophie School in Bellevue for over fifty years.”

  Andy made an impressed noise in his throat. “I thought teachers didn’t make much money. But all this stuff—it must have cost her a fortune.”

  They walked into the parlor, which was even more amazing than the foyer. “She was head of the department and also had quite a retirement fund, but she also had money from her parents and her husband. Plus the stuff is mostly not all that valuable, or so she tells me. I mean, the first-day cover was just from a few years ago. And the tarot cards were reproductions, not originals. Fact is, I don’t know if she even knows which items are worth anything. Mostly they’re just glorious junk.”

  “You can say that again,” observed Andy.

  Robby grinned. “Which? Glorious or junk?”

  Giving him a sardonic smile, Andy replied, “Both.”

  While Andy went about the room examining every single item or group of items, Robby called for his aunt Ivy up the stairs that led to the second floor. He got no response and went to look in the dining room and kitchen. He came back and observed, “It’s a good thing these Seattle-area houses don’t usually have basements. Otherwise I would have had to go looking there too.”

  Andy stood by the fireplace mantel with something in his hand. “Didn’t you say one of the things missing was a commemorative medallion of some World War II ship captain?”

  He walked over to him and looked at what he held. “Oh yeah, Captain Rooks. This one turned up again. So did the
tarot cards. Right back where she left them.”

  Andy stared at him and then carefully placed Captain Rooks as neatly as possible in the same spot he had found him. “Weeirrrd,” he said. “So were you right? Is her memory just going?”

  Robby put a finger to the medallion and moved it a few millimeters. “No, I saw myself that it was missing, and now it’s back.”

  “And you don’t think she did it herself?”

  Looking thoughtful for a moment, Robby shook his head. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so.” He shivered melodramatically. In a mock-Transylvanian accent, he said, “I’m beginning to think there are otherworldly spirits acting.”

  Andy laughed aloud. “Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?” He was already looking around the room for some other treasure.

  “Let me give you the tour.” Andy followed Robby into the dining room with its exquisite chandelier. “That’s from Errol Flynn’s Hollywood house.”

  Andy quipped, “He died with a hard-on.” The look on Robby’s face made him realize he had made a tasteless joke. “You know, that movie, They Died with Their Boots On?”

  Robby grinned sheepishly. “Cool! You’re an old movie buff! My mom likes to watch TCM.”

  Andy’s face cleared and he laughed. “Mine too. I heard that Flynn died ‘in the saddle,’ so to speak.”

  The two boys shared the moment of companionability and laughed together.

  After Andy had looked around the dining room for a few minutes, Robby gestured toward the hallway. “C’mon, I’ll show you the things upstairs.”

  They went to the foot of the stairs. Along the wall was a mismatched set of framed portraits, or reproductions, of American presidents. At the landing at the top of the stairs, Robby opened the nearest door. He led Andy into what was clearly an office.

  Andy strolled in, no longer surprised by the memorabilia that plastered every surface. What did bring him up short, however, was what was on the desk in a room used as an office. “Hey, your Aunt Ivy is wired!”