Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

“Who’s Dr. Bauer?”

“He’s . . . a ladies’ doctor.”

There was a hot bubbling in my chest. As if my heart were eating Pop Rocks. But I played it cool, looking out at the lake.

“Who says I’m a lady?”

“Very funny.”

“I just went to the doctor, Mom.”

“That was for your physical.”

“What’s this for?”

“When girls get to be a certain age, Callie, they have to go get checked.”

“Why?”

“To make sure everything’s okay.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Just—everything.”

We were in the car. The second-best Cadillac. When Milton got a new car he gave Tessie his old one. The Obscure Object had invited me to spend the day at her club and my mother was taking me to her house.

It was summer now, two weeks since Maxine Grossinger had collapsed onstage. School was out. On Middlesex preparations were under way for our trip to Turkey. Determined not to let Chapter Eleven’s condemnation of tourism ruin our travel plans, Milton was making airplane reservations and haggling with car rental agencies. Every morning he scanned the newspaper, reporting the weather conditions in Istanbul. “Eighty-one degrees and sunny. How does that sound, Cal?” In response to which I generally twirled an index finger. I wasn’t keen on visiting the homeland anymore. I didn’t want to waste my summer painting a church. Greece, Asia Minor, Mount Olympus, what did they have to do with me? I’d just discovered a whole new continent only a few miles away.

In the summer of 1974 Turkey and Greece were about to be in the news again. But I didn’t pay any mind to the rising tensions. I had troubles of my own. More than that, I was in love. Secretly, shamefully, not entirely consciously, but for all that quite head-over-heels in love.

Our pretty lake was trimmed in filth. The usual June scum of fish flies. There was also a new guardrail, which gave me a somber feeling as we drove past. Maxine Grossinger wasn’t the only girl at school who had died that year. Carol Henkel, a junior, had died in a car accident. One Saturday night her drunken boyfriend, a guy named Rex Reese, had plunged his parents’ car into the lake. Rex had survived, swimming back to shore. But Carol had been trapped inside the car.

We passed Baker & Inglis, closed for vacation and succumbing to the unreality of schools during summertime. We turned up Kerby Road. The Object lived on Tonnacour, in a gray stone and clapboard house with a weather vane. Parked on the gravel was an unprepossessing Ford sedan. I felt self-conscious in the second-best Cadillac and got out quickly, wishing my mother gone.

When I rang the bell, Beulah answered. She led me to the staircase and pointed up. That was all. I climbed to the second floor. I’d never been upstairs at the Object’s house before. It was messier than ours, the carpeting not new. The ceiling hadn’t been painted in years. But the furniture was impressively old, heavy, and sent out signals of permanence and settled judgment.

I tried three rooms before I found the Object’s. Her shades were drawn. Clothes were scattered all over the shag carpeting and I had to wade through them to reach the bed. But there she was, sleeping, in a Lester Lanin T-shirt. I called her name. I jiggled her. Finally she sat up against her pillows and blinked.

“I must look like shit,” she said after a moment.

I didn’t say whether she did or not. It strengthened my position to keep her in doubt.

We had breakfast in the breakfast nook. Beulah served us without elaboration, bringing and taking plates. She wore an actual maid’s uniform, black, with white apron. Her eyeglasses hailed from her other, more stylish life. In gold script her name curled across the left lens.

Mrs. Object arrived, clacking in sensible heels: “Good morning, Beulah. I’m off to the vet’s. Sheba’s getting a tooth pulled. I’ll drop her back here, but then I’m off to lunch. They say she’ll be woozy. Oh—and the men are coming for the drapes today. Let them in and give them the check that’s on the counter. Hello, girls! I didn’t see you. You must be a good influence, Callie. Nine-thirty and this one’s up already?” She mussed the Object’s hair. “Are you spending the day at the Little Club, dear? Good. Your father and I are going out with the Peterses tonight. Beulah will leave something for you in the fridge. Bye, all!”

All this while, Beulah rinsed glasses. Keeping to her strategy. Giving Grosse Pointe the silent treatment.

The Object spun the lazy Susan. French jams, English marmalades, an unclean butter dish, bottles of ketchup and Lea & Perrins circled past, before what the Object wanted: an economy-size jar of Rolaids. She shook out three tablets.

“What is heartburn, anyway?” I said.

“You’ve never had heartburn?” asked the Object, amazed.

The Little Club was only a nickname. Officially the club was known as the Grosse Pointe Club. Though the property was on the lake, there were no docks or boats in sight, only a mansion-like clubhouse, two paddle tennis courts, and a swimming pool. It was beside this pool that we lay every day that June and July.

As far as swimwear went, the Obscure Object favored bikinis. She looked good in them but by no means perfect. Like her thighs, her hips were on the large side. She claimed to envy my thin, long legs, but she was only being nice. Calliope appeared poolside, that first day and every day thereafter, in an old-fashioned one-piece with a skirt. It had belonged to Sourmelina during the 1950s. I found it in an old trunk. The stated intent was to look funky, but I was grateful for the full coverage. I also hung a beach towel around my neck or wore an alligator shirt over my suit. The bodice of the bathing suit was a plus, too. The cups were rubberized, pointy, and beneath a towel or a shirt gave me the suggestion of a bust I didn’t have.

Beyond us, pelican-bellied ladies in swim caps followed kickboards back and forth across the pool. Their bathing suits were a lot like mine. Little kids waded and splashed in the shallow end. There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. The Object was in it. As we revolved on our towels that summer, self-basting, the Object’s freckles darkened, going from butterscotch to brown. The skin between them darkened, too, knitting her freckles together into a speckled harlequin mask. Only the tip of her nose remained pink. The part in her hair flamed with sunburn.

Club sandwiches, on wave-rimmed plates, sailed out to us. If we were feeling sophisticated, we ordered the French dip. We had milk shakes, too, ice cream, french fries. For everything the Object signed her father’s name. She talked about Petoskey, where her family had a summer house. “We’re going up in August. Maybe you could come up.”

“We’re going to Turkey,” I said unhappily.

“Oh, right. I forgot.” And then: “Why do you have to paint a church?”

“My dad made this promise.”

“How come?”

Behind us married couples were playing paddle tennis. Pennants flew from the clubhouse roof. Was this the place to mention St. Christopher? My father’s war stories? My grandmother’s superstitions?

“You know what I keep thinking?” I said.

“What?”

“I keep thinking about Maxine. I can’t believe she’s dead.”

“I know. It doesn’t seem like she’s really dead. It’s like I dreamed it.”

“The only way we know it’s true is that we both dreamed it. That’s what reality is. It’s a dream everyone has together.”

“That’s deep,” said the Object.

I smacked her.

“Ow!”

“That’s what you get.”

Bugs were attracted by our coconut oil. We killed them without mercy. The Object was making a slow, scandalized progress through The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins. Every few pages she shook her head and announced, “This book is sooo dirty.” I was reading Oliver Twist , one of the assigned volumes for our summer reading list.