Robyn in Mourning

My younger sibling Seth stands up to say a few words at our father’s shiva. They’re still wearing the black dress and tights from the funeral, even though Mom and I dumped our dresses and pantyhose, changing into pants as soon as we got back. I’d suggested Seth do the same.

“I’m comfortable this way,” Seth had said.

Under the dress, Seth wears the padded sports bra they showed me this afternoon, when I’d questioned the look of their chest, wondered whether they’d been taking hormones. I can’t imagine what Mom thought when she saw that. Seth’s hair is long and straight, parted in the middle, hanging past their shoulders. Longer, now, than mine. They’re wearing makeup: black eyeliner and a light brown shadow, deep red lips with a matte finish. Muted for the occasion, I assume.

“Good evening,” Seth says, smoothing their dress. “Thanks for being here to honor my dad. You all know me as Seth, Jason and Abby’s second child, but recently I’ve been trying out the name Sesu, an anglicized version of the name Seth in Japanese.”

And here we go, I think. Always about Seth. Sesu. Whatever.

I’m still calling Seth Seth, despite the recent experiment with Sesu. I’ve been trying to remember the new name, but it’s hard. I mean, they’ve been Seth for over twenty years, Sesu only for the last few weeks.

And I’ve had a few other things on my mind, Seth. Like Dad dying. Like helping Mom with these arrangements. Like making sure you booked a flight from Japan that got you home in time—Midwest time—for the funeral.

To be fair, Seth hasn’t been correcting me on their name anyway.

Seth holds a paper napkin from the food-laden kitchen table. It’s covered in writing. They look down at it. “In Hebrew, the name Seth means ‘appointed or placed,’ as Seth in the Bible, Adam and Eve’s third son, was supposedly appointed by God to them after Cain killed Abel.” They look up from the napkin. “Sesu seemed a softer version of my name. Not so much appointed, but affirming.” They smile. “Don’t worry, though, for now I’ll still answer to Seth.”

Seth pauses to allow for a few scattered, awkward laughs. I hear Mom clearing her throat. We opened the windows in here before the service, but it’s still too warm. Three small windows next to each other on only one side of the room, framed by sheer, gold-colored draped curtains. There’s no cross breeze, the curtains don’t stir.

“What exactly is the point of curtains that don’t close?” Dad had laughingly whispered to a ten-year-old me after they’d been put up.

“Kinda dumb, but Mom really likes them,” I’d said. “Except she keeps having to stop Seth from twisting himself all up in the flowy part.”

Themself, I imagine correcting my younger rendition. Twisting themself all up.

I glance around the living room. There are about fifty of us crammed together, elbow-touching close even with Dad’s hospital bed taken out. Mom and Dad’s longtime rabbi, finished with leading the short shiva service, stands near the swinging kitchen door, his tie loosened, crumbs in his beard. A few guests stand near him, others are sitting on folding chairs, the love seat, the couch. Near the windows, our next-door neighbor, Mrs. Gleason, perches precariously on the worn leather arm of a tufted wingback chair I used to curl up in to read. She already had gray hair and had been long-widowed when we moved in twenty years ago. She’d babysit Seth and me once in a while, bringing us homemade snickerdoodles, yelling at us when we’d sneak out of bed for more.

The rest of the mourners are mostly Mom and Dad’s friends, probably in their fifties or sixties or older, some still playing tennis or golf, maybe going to synagogue on Shabbat mornings, others not quite as ambulatory as they used to be. Grandparents are already gone, as is Mom’s older sister, Nina, who never married or had kids. Dad was an only child, so no cousins here for Seth and me. Lily, my friend since fourth grade, still lives locally and has stopped by, but it’s definitely an older crowd squeezed together, chairs creaking with crossing and uncrossing legs, arms reaching in pockets for tissues or handkerchiefs, bodies shifting side-to-side as they lean against one of the buttercup-yellow walls or Mom’s black baby grand piano, the lid down and covered in scattered paper plates of half-eaten banana bread and noodle kugel.

Even though most people here already saw Seth’s outfit at the funeral, and the pink trench coat that covered it at the rainy burial—“Actually, the color’s guava,” Seth had said in the limo—my sibling’s appearance is probably still surprising up close like this. I can’t see everyone’s face, but I assume many in Mom and Dad’s generation aren’t looking at Seth directly. The rabbi seems to be, but I’m sure Mrs. Gleason isn’t. They just don’t get it. I think I do, but it’s still a challenge when it’s your own sibling, once a little boy, short hair and Ironman underwear, clinging to your six-year-old legs, begging you to stay home from school and play Legos.

I usually don’t comment on Seth’s fashion choices, but even I texted them yesterday as they waited to board their flight, suggesting they wear pants today. Try not making everything about them. Give Mom a small break. Just this once. But Seth insisted on the dress. And the guava coat.

“I think they go nicely together, Robyn,” they’d said as we walked across the muddy cemetery grounds. “And I know Dad is appreciating a touch of color in all this doom and gloom. Plus, I look good in this.”

Typical, I’d thought, always demanding attention. Not how I’d operate at a funeral.

“You were both born that way,” Mom once said, “you nursing every four hours like clockwork, Seth never letting me out of the rocking chair without screaming in protest.”

But Seth’s right, Dad would appreciate the guava coat. He’d always be the first to compliment any of us on a new look or outfit. And it is a flattering color on Seth.

The thought of Dad, boundless champion of everything Seth and I ever did, or tried to do, now dead and underground, suddenly makes my stomach churn, my eyes fill.

Dad, a successful gastroenterologist, died from an advanced form of stomach cancer that he’d kept insisting was bad reflux. According to Mom, he’d behaved like the typical doctor he was, refusing to have his stomach pains checked until the disease had progressed too far for anything but experimental levels of chemotherapy.

“The treatments are making your dad so sick,” Mom had said over the phone a few weeks before he died. “At this point, he’d be better off simply starving to death.”

“Wow, Mom,” was all I could say.

I never enjoyed Mom’s dark humor like Dad did, but Mom had to handle most of Dad’s dying on her own, so I’d let her vent. I’d been in Milwaukee writing features for the Sentinel, my first full-time reporting job, and could only get to Evanston every other weekend or so.

Dad had always let Mom’s  barbs go unchecked. “She’s clever,” he’d  say. “She jokes, but there’s a nugget of truth in them every time. It’s her way of coping.”

I wonder what joke she’d make about this shiva.

Dad was always positive about our choices, even when they turned out wrong. My letting Lily, in seventh grade, chop off my hip-length hair in her parents’ bathroom became, after Dad’s research, a teary-eyed donation to Wigs for Kids. A rejection letter from Northwestern’s world-renowned journalism school might mean, Dad thought, an easier time getting a beat or column on Wash. U.’s Student Life, which it did. Sure he was a bit of a Pollyanna, but for me, it was easier to swallow Dad’s positivity than Mom’s sometimes harsh pragmatism. “What did you do to your beautiful hair?” she’d gasped in seventh grade. “Screw Northwestern,” she’d said a few years later.

But Seth and I always knew both of our parents loved us and wanted us to be happy, to succeed. They just had different reactions when our attempts didn’t match their expectations.

Like when Seth started wearing dresses.

“Seth’s still our child, Abby,” I’d overheard Dad say to Mom as I walked by their room one night soon after they’d first seen Seth in a dress. Their door was closed, but their voices were loud. “What’s wrong with you?”

“He’s not the son I raised. I mean, they, they’re not the son I raised,” Mom had said. “It’s just not what I thought would happen.” I’d moved away from the door, surprised that Mom’s love for Seth and me, while strong, may not have been unconditional.

“Many of us have spoken this evening about my dad,” Seth is saying from the front of the room, “his accomplishments as a physician, his love for Mom, Robyn, and me. And, of course, he also loved his parents, both Holocaust survivors, and was proud of how they’d struggled and persevered in their new country after the war. Like how Grandpa was eventually able to practice medicine here, and how Grandma sewed and did alterations for neighbors to earn extra money, building those jobs into a dressmaking business.

“Old-school Grandpa never wanted Dad to learn how to sew,” Seth continues, “but Grandma taught me and Robyn the basics of sewing when we were little. I picked it up again when I got to Japan, and found I had a real knack for it. I’ve even started my own small dressmaking business there.” Seth’s hands touch their shoulders. “In fact, I made this dress.”

Another pause, this time for dramatic effect. I hear people around me murmuring. Mrs. Gleason coughs. I’m not sure what Seth’s sewing skills have to do with their memories of Dad, but I’m sure Seth is delighted by the reaction. They were always the dramatic one. Was in almost all the high school productions, had a minor role in the musical, Spring Awakening, during that one year of college. When they weren’t on stage, they’d be in the orchestra pit, playing piano. A talent inherited from Mom. Our parents tried to go to as many of the shows as possible, dragging me along when I was still in high school or home from college. Even so, I’ve got to admit that Seth was quite the performer, the thespian, the musician.

A natural.

Me, I was usually content to let Seth keep the spotlight. I found satisfaction in academia, hours behind the pages of a textbook, or reporting on other people’s achievements, once I discovered the school newspaper and journalism.

“Now I’m persevering in a new country, advocating for my own identity,” Seth says. “And Dad was proud of me, too. Proud of my newfound strength and direction.”

Mom is sitting directly across from me, on one of the rented folding chairs. She looks uncomfortable. She’s staring straight at Seth with that supportive parent look, but I bet inside she’s feeling alarmed, realizing Seth deliberately left her out of that last comment, afraid of what Seth might say or do next. Afraid to be embarrassed in front of family and friends, more embarrassed than I can tell she already is. As far as I know, Mom hadn’t shared Seth’s changed identity with anyone, was too distraught or ashamed I suppose.

Well, guess what, Mom? The topic of Seth will now surely dominate all our guests’ conversations once they’ve left our house of mourning.  

“While we’re all aware how acutely Dad suffered these last few months,” Seth continues, “what you may not know is that these last weeks marked a period in which the two of us most closely connected.”

Wait, what? They did?

For me, these last few weeks weren’t spent connecting with Dad, they were saying goodbye to him. He was skeletal, in and out of awareness, never seemed to be all there when I was home. At the end, I felt like he rarely recognized me.

What the hell, Dad?  Did you use up all your energy connecting with Seth in Japan?

I take a deep breath, feel tears coming. Stop it, I tell myself. Don’t be like Mom.

But I can’t help it. It’s not just Dad I’m angry at.

Why Japan, Seth?  Why? You couldn’t have connected to Dad from less than six thousand miles away? It wouldn’t have been enough for you to emotionally drain Mom and Dad closer to home? You’ve done it so well our whole lives, constantly demanding Mom and Dad’s attention. Demanding my attention. Always. Even after I’d stopped giving it.

When Seth decided to move to Japan, they’d texted me.

Spring Awakening director taught a course on Kabuki theater, Seth wrote me, announcing their plan. Amazing. Have always wanted to experience the real thing for myself.

 Sure, Seth, I’d thought at the time. I didn’t text them back. I never expected them to go, especially after Dad’s diagnosis. But they did.

I take another look around the room. Sitting next to Mom, Leslie-who-plays-the-oboe, Mom’s friend from the Evanston Symphony, gently wraps her arm around the back of Mom’s chair. Lily, on the couch, shoots me a sympathetic glance. Others are sitting forward in their seats, or standing up a little straighter. They look like they’re at a press conference, about to raise their hands, ask a question. Everyone always wants to know how it is for someone else at the end, don’t they? These shiva voyeurs, hanging on Seth’s every word, I can almost smell their schadenfreudian glee.

There’s that Mom-gene at work again.

I glance back at Seth and recognize the look on their face. That poker-playing look. While believable on stage in the role of someone else, Seth was never any good at keeping their own face straight in poker. Dad taught us the game, and the three of us would sometimes play together after dinner and homework were done. If Seth was dealt a good hand, it showed—they’d suddenly shift their posture, bite their lip, blink too many times. Dad and I would laugh.

“What? I don’t have anything,” Seth would say, looking at their cards, fighting back a smile.

I try to remember the last time I played poker with Dad. I can’t.

For a moment, I feel for Mom who, I imagine, can also sense the room’s uptick in interest. But she’s not totally innocent here. She hasn’t made it easy for Seth. It started in high school with Seth growing out their hair. Then growing out their nails. Then elaborately painting their nails with bright red polish and black stenciled musical notes.

“I can’t stand all that clicking and clacking!” Mom had yelled from the kitchen as Seth practiced piano for their freshman spring orchestra concert. Seth had eventually trimmed the nails—the orchestra director had complained, too—but kept the polish, used smaller stencils.

Seth’s evolution continued during the year they were away at Kenyon College. I didn’t think much about it—well, maybe a little, if I’m being honest—but I was busy at school in St. Louis, enjoying being away from home, away from the drama. Gender wasn’t such a big deal, wasn’t so concrete. It was Mom and Dad’s problem. They would just have to deal with it.

But I couldn’t ignore it either.  

Dad had texted me after Parents’ Weekend at Kenyon that Seth seemed to have a new look, an even more feminine look, and new pronouns.

Nothing alarming about that, right? he’d written.

I’d imagined Dad trying to smile as he texted, trying to stay positive, to understand.

Maybe you should just ask Seth about it, I’d texted back, if it bothers you.

 I will, Dad wrote. Doesn’t bother, just  new things for the old dad to figure out.

 I’d noticed he hadn’t included the old mom in that  last line.

 I’d been annoyed by Dad’s text. Why always ask me about Seth? What about me? I was their kid, too. I was meeting people, writing for Student Life, studying for my classes. Why didn’t they want to understand what I was doing? Was I too mundane? Too easy to disregard? I didn’t want to help them understand Seth, didn’t want to be caught up in all of it.

I knew that Seth’s gender fluidity had always been there, waiting to surface. In high school, I’d jokingly called them the little sister I never had as they took an interest in my hairstyle (still growing out after that disastrous seventh grade haircut), clothes (mostly jeans, t-shirts, V-neck sweaters, though shoe-shopping was a weakness), and make-up (blush, mascara, clear lip gloss, everything else too complicated). But I wasn’t completely prepared for how I felt when Seth started dressing fem full-time.

That spring, both of us home from our respective schools for break, Seth came down for breakfast wearing a dress. Mom, Dad, and I were eating at the table, sections of the morning Tribune scattered between us. I looked up from my cereal bowl to see Seth standing—posing, perhaps—by the refrigerator. Their dress was simple, navy blue cotton, short-sleeved, empire waist. Hung just at their knees. They’d shaved their legs.

Did Seth look strange to me? No. Not really. Seth looked like Seth, except now they looked happy, seemed natural. Maybe it wouldn’t be that big a deal, I thought. But Mom jumped right in.

“I don’t understand this,” she’d said to Seth. “Women wear pants. Why can’t you wear more feminine pants? Why do you have to call so much attention to yourself?”

“I’m not trying to call attention to me,” Seth said. “I’m trying to be me.”

“Abby,” Dad said. “It’s okay. If Seth’s comfortable, we should be, too.” He motioned for Seth to sit down and eat. “You look great,” he said.

And it was fine with me. Seth could identify and dress however they wanted. I was okay with their choice, had seen it before, was happy for them. I wasn’t ashamed but, for some reason, didn’t feel like shouting it from rooftops either. It felt strange to me, unsettling, that my younger brother, though still my sibling, was, in some ways, no longer my brother, not exactly my sister.

Was I somehow threatened by Seth’s ease in their femininity? In their fluidity?

No, I’d thought, of course not. Even understandable change is sometimes hard, I’d reasoned.

Isn’t it?

“I like your dress,” I’d said to Seth. “It. . . it suits you.”

Seth had smiled while Mom glared at Dad and me.

“Over the last couple of years,” Seth is saying now, putting the writing-filled napkin down on their empty chair, “I’ve been dealing with some of my own issues.”

I see that Mom is sitting perfectly still, almost frozen in her seat. Her eyes have shifted away from Seth. Mom turns her face, just slightly. Perhaps she thinks no one else can see her eyes. But I can. She closes them for a moment, and when she opens them, she’s looking past Seth, at the framed photograph hanging on the wall behind them, of me and Seth as kids, soon after we moved to Evanston. In the photo, Seth and I stand at the water’s edge on the Lake Michigan beach, splashing in the shallow tide. The sun must have been behind us as we’re silhouetted, two small dark figures against the water’s glittered reflection and the white of the distant breaking waves.

After I’d graduated from college, and Seth had dropped out, we found ourselves both living back at home again. Our paths didn’t cross much—I was interning at the Evanston Daily Herald while applying to journalism master’s programs. Seth was working as a restaurant server, “figuring out the next step,” as our parents would say when friends asked whether Seth would be going back to school soon. But actually, in between restaurant shifts, Seth was figuring out Seth, with the help of a psychiatrist, a therapist, and a prescription for Prozac.

“But Dad tried to understand what I was going through,” Seth is saying in the living room, “how it felt to feel conflicted inside, not to be able to express what you’re feeling to others. Not to be able to do things you’d like to do, dress the way you’d like to dress. He said it was a little like how it felt to have to stay in your pajamas, in bed, all day. Like how it felt to be dying.”

My stomach lurches. There’s something sour-tasting in my throat.

Why didn’t Dad tell me any of that? Why didn’t he tell me, too?

Had I done something wrong?

“Before I left for Japan,” Seth continues, “Dad and I were able to speak candidly, something I hadn’t been able to do with any other member of my family.” Seth is looking right at Mom now. But they’re also implicating me. I’m feeling too warm, uncomfortable in my chair.

“And then,” Seth continues, “even long-distance, even after he got so, so sick, no one, not one family member, not one friend, not one mental health professional, understood my struggle or connected with me like Dad did.”

I don’t like the direction this talk is taking. I’m worried about Mom, having to deal with Seth without Dad as a buffer. I’m worried about me, too, and all these kind-hearted vultures, sitting in our living room, drooling over my articulate, wearing-a-dress sibling, who’s not-so-subtly lashing out at us and our meager, ineffective attempts at supporting them.

I look down at my hands, fingers woven tightly in my lap.

As Seth and I got older, our relationship became an I’ll-see-you-when-I-see-you connection; we didn’t usually call or text each other for no reason, just to talk or touch base. I thought we were still connected, just a bit more disconnected.

But maybe Seth felt differently.

Why am I always the one to text first? Seth had written soon after they’d moved to Japan.

Because you’re exhausting, I’d thought. Everything’s always a production.

Sorry, just crazy busy, I’d replied.

Mom’s relationship with Seth had changed, too. When Seth and I were both home after my college graduation, Dad seemed his buoyant, positive self, despite Seth’s unending need for attention and reassurance. But Mom, who’d never miss a chance to let us know what she was thinking, wasn’t saying much. She’d always been demonstrative, now she wasn’t touching anyone. I don’t mean touching in a weird or embarrassing way, just moments when we’d be within her reach, when she’d walk past us—a small hug, a quick kiss, a muss of hair, a light touch on the back or arm—always. Even at her most cutting, most sarcastic moments, there was still that contact. But she wasn’t reaching for any of us then, not even Dad. Although, to be fair, I don’t know what went on between them in private.

I admit it, I missed Mom’s stupid little touches. I hadn’t realized how much I craved them until they stopped. Time spent with Mom became a degree cooler. She seemed to have pressed some emotional mute button.

And, I’d noticed, Mom and Seth weren’t playing the piano together. Growing up, they’d always messed around on the keyboard, Seth at first banging the keys with toddler fists, then, with Mom’s lessons, evolving into an accomplished player and composer. Dad and I weren’t as musically inclined, but loved to listen to them play. We’d sit right next to each other on the couch, me leaning against his chest, his arm around me. Sometimes we’d just sit and take in the music, other times I’d quietly tell Dad about my day, my friends, my writing.

“I’m thinking about covering Mom’s orchestra concert for the paper,” I’d once whispered to Dad as we took our places on the couch. It was my junior year in high school. Mom and Seth were warming up with scales before beginning their latest endeavor, a Mozart sonata duet. Their fingers flew across the keyboard. “Or maybe I should just review the new Italian beef place downtown? It’s a high school paper, after all.”

Dad stifled a laugh. “How about reviewing Mom’s concert, followed by your take on a late-night dipped beef with peppers?”

“Maybe.” I smiled. “The headline could be A Musical Feast. Or A Tale of Two Seatings. Get it?”

Dad squeezed my shoulder and pulled me close as Mom and Seth started in on the sonata, engulfing us in their sound.

When Mom and Seth truly connected on the piano, they sounded like one person playing, one person with four hands. But for those months that Seth and I were home, Seth and Mom were separate, Mom practicing for her performances with the orchestra and her private students, Seth not playing at all. For me, there was no more listening with Dad.

I’d asked Mom why she and Seth weren’t playing like they used to.

“Not sure,” she’d said. She’d looked away from me. “Self-preservation, maybe?”

I didn’t understand. “Self-preservation for you?”

“For me and Seth, I guess,” she said slowly. “While we’re living together in this house.”

Listening to Seth now, I sense what Mom had been saying.

Of course, none of this means that I don’t love Seth. Right? We’re still connected, no matter what they say tonight. Honestly, Seth seems happier wearing a dress than I do. And they’re sewing? I always hated sewing, hated that I was forced to sit for those hours with Grandma. I cringe when I think of how selfish and ungrateful I was, squandering that time with her. My inner reporter blanches at the lost opportunity to question her about her life, what she and Grandpa had survived. We all knew the story of how they’d made it through the war, the hiding, the near-starvation. But Grandma, like many Holocaust survivors, wasn’t forthcoming about her own emotional experience, her feelings. I would’ve had to ask her, force her to tell me. But I was too young, too stupid. I never did.

I realize I’ve never asked Seth about their emotional experience either.

And I call myself a journalist?

I wonder if even Dad could put a positive spin on me.

“The last time I spoke to Dad on Skype,” Seth is saying, “he was miserable, wincing in pain. He was sitting propped up in the bed in our living room, the hospice nurse visible in the corner of the screen.” Seth clears their throat. “Dad wasn’t altogether there anymore, but he seemed to be listening to a new piece I’d composed that I was playing for him on my keyboard. To be enjoying the music.”

I feel my throat tighten. It’s hard to swallow.

“And then, after I finished playing,” Seth says, their voice starting to shake, “Dad looked straight into the camera and said to me, ‘Don’t let Mom or anyone else make decisions for you, Sesu. Stay true to yourself, true to what you want. You are wunderschönen.’ He pronounced that last word with a perfect German accent. Funny, after all this time, I had no idea Dad still spoke his parents’ German so beautifully.”

But I’d known about Dad’s German, I think, as I start to cry. Last year, he’d helped me translate some old letters for a Sentinel piece on Milwaukee’s Octoberfest celebration.

I’d known about Dad’s German, Seth.

I’d known, Dad.

Seth has stopped talking and is looking out at the room. I can see them trying to hold back tears, their eyes wide, lips shut tight, but somehow they appear to be standing taller, triumphant. Mom is quietly crying. Leslie hands her a tissue.

Wait a minute, I think, wiping my face with my hand, Mom and I aren’t the bad guys here. Seth is the one being a jerk, being hurtful. There’s no reason to do this at our dad’s shiva, Mom’s husband’s shiva.

I look at Seth’s crumpled napkin, fallen from the chair to the floor. But maybe we had it coming. Mom and I both must have known that something like this would eventually happen. Maybe we didn’t expect it to be so loud, so public, but who do we think we’re dealing with? Seth was never one to keep quiet.  

“Here’s what I understood from that last conversation with Dad,” Seth says, speaking softer and slower now, forcing us to listen more keenly, pay closer attention. They bite their lip, poker-style. “We may learn many life lessons from what our parents and grandparents say, but we learn best from what they do.”

I’m holding my breath. Self-preservation, indeed. I look at Mom. Good luck getting old without Dad. Good luck to me, too, dealing with Mom and Seth and the aftermath of this shiva. God, how I miss you, Dad. You’re the only one who’d know how to handle all this. How to persevere, to be okay.  

“My dad showed me how difficult aging and illness can be, even while living the best of lives,” Seth says, louder now, brushing tears off their cheek. “I know Dad wouldn’t want to be remembered by these last few months, but I will remember this time as meaningful and precious, a time that leaves me, strangely, with a small amount of hope as I recount it for all of you. Thanks, Dad. Thanks for your love and understanding. I’ll miss you.”

Seth walks back to their seat. They’re crying, but they manage to smile at me.

I want to get up from my chair and slap that smile off their face. To scream at them to stop making my life about theirs. To stop making everyone’s life about theirs, everyone’s loss about theirs.

To give me my father back.

Go play piano with Mom, Seth. Play something amazing, Sesu, show off your talent.

Leave Dad and me alone, nestled on the couch, listening to the music.