Jeffrey McGowan - Major Conflict

“Sir, are you all right?” the soldier said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No, no. Can you give me a minute?”

He walked out quietly, and I closed the door behind him.

Suddenly Mrs. Gaffney’s voice came back into focus.

“Jeffrey, are you there? Jeff? Hello?”

“I’m here Mrs. G. What happened?”

“She died in her sleep.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can. Thanks, Mrs. Gaffney,” and I gently placed the phone back onto its cradle.

I just stood there for a few minutes, frozen in place, listening to the room breathe, as it were. I knew that once I allowed myself to feel this wholly, I’d be a mess, and I still had my presentation to do, so I pulled myself together and returned to the meeting. Though I thought I had it under control, it must’ve been written all over my face, judging from the way everyone looked at me when I walked back into the room. Taking my seat again, I tried to ignore the looks and to lighten, or at least neutralize, the expression on my own face. I sat and stared straight ahead, until it was time to do my presentation, which I did mechanically, with a forced smile plastered across my face the whole time. At the end I made a lame attempt at a joke, and the men laughed politely. I couldn’t bear it another moment.

“Excuse me,” I said, and I fled the room, going straight to my battalion commander’s office around the corner.

“Sir, may I see you?”

“Sure S-Four, what can I do you for?” he said affably.

“My grandmother just died, sir. She raised me like her own son. I need to go home as soon as possible.”

His face changed immediately, and he came out from behind his desk and put his arm around me and walked me to the door.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Take whatever time you need. Don’t worry about the paperwork; we’ll straighten it out later.”

Walking out of headquarters, I began crying to myself. For years I had dreaded this moment. But it had always remained purely theoretical in my head; it never seemed like a real possibility. It would happen eventually, maybe next year, or the next century, but not today, not right now. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down! I’d lost my great love and my grandmother, all in the course of a few months. It sure would have been nice to be able to count on Paul’s support at a time like this, but the good old army had seen fit to make sure that couldn’t happen. I’d never felt more alone in my entire life.

During the long drive up to New York I thought a lot about my grandmother and how special she was, how she’d managed up until the very end to retain that unique spark she had—staying so active, always going to the senior center at St. Joan of Arc, remaining vitally interested in the people in the building and in the neighborhood, hanging out with her “gray panther” girlfriends, ladies with names like Tessy and Marge and Gertrude and Fran. We talked often on the telephone, and she never failed to mention her friends. And she was always so completely supportive of me, no matter what was going on in my life. Of course, I never came out to her. I’d barely come out to myself by the time she died. And I was convinced she was generationally challenged, so to speak, though looking back on it now, she might have surprised me, who knows?

She was strong and feisty and full of spirit. If I called her and she sensed that I was angry at something, she would tell me to “kick ’em in the knees.” She bore a strong resemblance to the Queen Mother, and though she was only five feet three inches or so, she could be quite fearsome when she got going. I loved when she told me about going to rummage sales and finding some god-awful piece of bric-a-brac and haggling the price down by half, from fifty cents to a quarter. Nobody—but nobody—took advantage of Maxine Reid. She spoke with her sister, Maude, every day and had a fight with her every other day—usually over something that had happened more than fifty years before—the most contentious of which was affectionately called the “Maude the mule” fight.

Maxine and Maude, two sisters. One day when she was about twelve years old, Maude was coming home from school, angry and hurt at having been teased by a boy who often razzed her about a popular comic strip character, Maude the mule. As it happened the boy’s house was on her way home. When she reached the house, she’d become so enraged at him that she picked up a big clump of mud and hurled it at the front door and then hid behind the neighbor’s lilac bush. Apparently no one was home, so she went ahead and plastered the whole front of the house. Well, she got into a lot of trouble for this. It was the main reason why she changed her name to Mary. My grandmother spent fifty years trying to get Maude (now Mary) to admit that she’d been wrong, that her behavior had been far short of ladylike. But until the day she died Maude refused to admit she’d done anything wrong. I think they both just liked the story and liked fighting, and they knew if they ever fully resolved it a lot of the steam would go out of it.

One of the main reasons I think I may have underestimated my grandmother’s willingness to deal with my sexuality has to do with a phone conversation I had with her about a year before she died. It went something like this:

“Jeffrey? Hello. Oh, I’m so glad you called. I need your advice about something that’s going on in the building.”

“Really? What?”

“Well, you remember the Catours on the fifth floor? You know, Father Catour’s parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they decided to sell the apartment. They want to move to a nicer place. I don’t know what could be a nicer place at their age, but they want to go. Did you say hello to them the last time you came home? I hope so. Everybody always asks about you and the army.”

I rolled my eyes and bit my tongue. She asked this question almost every time we spoke on the phone. In her view it was worse than a mortal sin for me to come home and fail to say hello to every single person I’d ever known in the building and the neighborhood. And I always made sure to do it since if I missed anybody she’d be sure to find out about it and I’d never hear the end of it.

“Yes, Grandma, I said hello to the Catours the last time. So what happened?”

“Well, they sold the apartment and a, a… person bought it.”

“A person? Who… what’s their name?”

“Well, now, Jeffrey, that’s what I am calling about, and honestly I just don’t know what to do. This person… is a… man… for now, but soon may not be.”

I had to think for a second to figure out exactly what she was trying to tell me. “Ya lost me,” I said.

“Well he… wants to become a woman,” she said, with a sharp intake of breath followed by a slow, anxious sigh.

“You mean to tell me that a transsexual moved into the building?”

“Oh Jeffrey! Don’t use that kind of language!”

It took every ounce of control I had to keep myself from bursting out laughing. I knew she was totally sincere, that she was really having trouble getting her mind around the situation, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“Well, Grandma, if you’re a man and you want to be a woman, that’s what it’s called. A transsexual. Same if you’re a woman who wants to be a man.”

“Well, I’ve never heard that word before. It doesn’t sound nice at all.”

“That’s the proper word. So what is it exactly that you need advising on?”

“Jeffrey, please don’t be a pill. This is serious, what do I say?”

“Whaddya mean what do you say?”

“Well, what do I call him? How do I greet him? Does he hold the door for me or do I do it for him?”

“Okay, slow down, Gram, let’s take it one step at a time. What’s his name?”