“Oh my god, I never know how to answer that question. I mean, I never was any good at trying to figure stuff like that out — what difference does it make after all? I mean, who really cares, except for you of course. I didn’t mean to offend you, I hope you didn’t take it the wrong way. But really, does it really matter? I don’t see how it does. I really don’t.

“But these days I am so distracted this kind of stuff throws me for a real loop. It really does. I just cannot stop my head long enough to get a grip on even the simplest, little bitty thing. I just can’t do it. It is totally and completely beyond me.

“Like this morning. I get out of bed and go to the bathroom and do my thing and then get ready for the shower. Now I like to exfoliate my skin every three days. Can I remember if today is the third day? Are you kidding? Of course not. I don’t have a clue. Not a clue. So anyway, I decided I’d skip it for today because that stuff’s so expensive and I get dressed and brush my hair and wouldn’t you know it, I hit a big tangle and almost yank this huge clump of hair out of my head. Now look at this — I don’t have all that much to spare. So I have to stop what I’m doing and untangle this mess and then it’s time for my nails and I can’t decide for the life of me what color polish to wear today.

“Now you wouldn’t think that this would be a big deal, would you? Time was, nail polish meant red and that was that. But that was before. Now I have almost a whole box full of the stuff and there’s bottles in there I haven’t used in a dog’s age but it’s still there and now I’ve got to match the color to what I’m wearing and what I’m doing and how I’m feeling and oh my god what’s a girl to do? I guess I’m supposed to flutter my eyelashes when I say something like that, aren’t I. I’m sorry, I’m still new at this. So anyway, I completely freeze up when confronted with having to pick out my nail polish. My brain, puny as it is, just decides it is going to shut it’s damn self down and it felt like I was standing there in front of my vanity for five hours or something waiting to decide what color nail polish I was going to wear. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s the way I am.

“So anyway, finally, I just reach in and grab something and it turned out to be OK because it was kind of a light, neutral beige that sort of goes with almost everything I have that I’d wear out in the daytime. But that just goes to show you, doesn’t it? I just can’t make a decision.

“Well, there was this one decision I made, but I can’t get into that right now.

“You know, my wife used to do all that sort of stuff for us. She always knew exactly what she wanted and how things were supposed to be done. ‘There’s always a right way to do something’ she’d say.

“Now she’s gone and I can’t even figure out what kind of nail polish to wear. You’d think I was a blonde or something.

“I guess I should have expected her to leave, but I didn’t. Sort of came out of the clear blue sky. One minute she’s there and the next minute she isn’t and that’s all th-th-that’s all folks. I guess I shouldn’t talk about it like that but I can’t get too serious about it because it still hurts. Oh boy does it still hurt.

“I still love her. But I don’t think she understands that.

“What I don’t understand is how she could leave me. I mean, just because this shirt buttons one way and another shirt buttons another way, what’s the BFD? I mean really, I don’t understand. Is it that big a deal that I like pants that don’t have a pocket on the butt? No, it isn’t. I don’t think so anyway. We’re talking about pieces of cloth, sometimes they’re arranged this way sometimes they’re arranged that way but we’re still talking about pieces of cloth, right? What’s the big deal? Am I wrong? Tell me if I’m wrong.

“I’m not wrong. Doesn’t seem to matter though.

“There was this one time we had to go to a funeral. It was late in June and it was hot. Really hot. You could see the heat rising from the pavement in waves. This was the funeral of the husband of a friend of hers and I didn’t want to go but we had to so we both got dressed in our funeral clothes and went to the church and graveyard and the get-together at a neighbor’s house afterwards. I must have sweated off about five pounds in my suit, but sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do — so I did.

“So anyway, we get home around five in the afternoon and it’s still hot. We head upstairs to the bedroom to change and she looks out the window and sees the guy across the street, sitting on his steps with his shirt off sucking down a Bud Lite. ‘You guys have it made’ she says to me. ‘I would love to take my shirt off when it’s hot but I can’t because I’d have every man for miles oogling me. Maybe even I’d get attacked or raped and he’d get off because I was asking for it. And you want to be a woman. Jesus.’

“Now I never said I wanted to be a woman. I don’t. I just like the clothes and I’d told her that before but it didn’t seem to sink in. But that wasn’t the point right then. ‘Honey,’ I said to her. ‘I’ve just spent that last four hours in a dark, lined, long sleeved suit over a starched, fully buttoned shirt and a tie. I’ve sweated like a pig and felt like I was trapped in a gabardine sauna. I have on socks and heavy black shoes. You’re wearing a little cotton dress and sandals and you look great. So don’t tell me you feel cheated ‘cause you can’t take off your shirt. Not until you’ve worn a suit in weather like this.

“That seemed like a pretty convincing argument to me. Not her, though. She just flung one of her sandals at me and stomped downstairs. Damn thing came within a couple of inches of hitting me, too.

“If she flung both shoes, I prob’ly woulda kept them. Aww, I’m just kidding. We didn’t even wear the same size. Ha ha ha, isn’t that just too funny. I’m being sarcastic, in case you can’t tell.

“We argued a lot in those days. We talked, we discussed, we fought, we considered, we rationalized, we blew up, we calmed down. We went to the library, we went to counseling, we surfed the web. Mostly, we drifted apart.

“You see, it all started when this friend of mine called me up. His divorce just became final and he wanted to blow off some steam and celebrate, so he called me. We did up the town right, but it felt sort of sad and hollow to me. I got home around three in the morning but as drunk as I was, I just couldn’t get to sleep. There was too much going on in this itty bitty brain and I stayed awake all night.

“When she woke up, I needed to talk. We had a good marriage, we really did. But I couldn’t keep my secret secret any more, if you know what I mean. If our marriage was really together, then being completely open could only make it better, right? How could being honest hurt anything if we both loved each other? It couldn’t, right? Aren’t I right here?

“What I couldn’t take was knowing that we weren’t being honest with each other, especially with me being the one doing the deceiving. I just couldn’t do that anymore. So I said, ‘Honey, can we talk about something.’ And I told her all about me. Actually, it was probably way more than she wanted to know or I wanted to tell, but once my mouth started working it got hard to stop. I have that problem, can’t you tell? And when I wound down, she didn’t say a word, which surprised the heck out me. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect her to hug me and sob quietly into my shoulder. It confused me in a big way, but I got used to being confused pretty quick.

“For a couple of weeks it seemed like everything was wonderful. I couldn’t imagine life being any better. We even spent an afternoon shopping together, although I saw her blanche white when I asked one of the salesgirls for directions to the dressing room so I could try on a skirt. I guess she was embarrassed or something, I don’t know. I wound up buying a blouse and she paid for it, but she made damn sure that the cashier didn’t know the blouse was mine.

“Those were the happiest days of my life. In my wildest imagination, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

“There was this one day, I’ll tell you the truth, I’ll never, ever forget. It wasn’t even the whole day, it was just a moment…but this moment said it all. I’ll never feel like that again, but…Jesus Christ I still cry just thinking about it.

“I had this skirt I bought a couple of years ago. It was long, almost down to my ankles and I’m a tall girl, if you haven’t guessed. It was a patchwork skirt, mostly black with patches that were sorta floral and a combination of dark neutral colors, ivory and green, which has always been my favorite color. There was just something about the way it draped around my calves and flowed when I walked that was so nice. I loved that skirt, long before I talked to my wife. I’d purged a couple of times in the last few years but I always held on to this skirt.

“So anyway, this one time, I’m out shopping with her at this mall and she pops into a hardware store to pick up some bulbs for the light fixture we have on the porch and I pop into this clothing store and I see a display of sweaters marked down 50% because it’s February and they’re getting ready for spring. I see a bulky ribbed long-sleeved mock turtleneck in black in my size and I buy it. It’s the very first time I ever bought anything in a women’s store for myself when shopping with my wife, but by this time I didn’t think she’d mind and it all seemed so totally natural. I really and truly didn’t think twice about it. Just bought the damn sweater.

“So I’m still not quite sure how she’s going to take things, so I’m very careful. One step at a time, you know. Like, up to this point, I haven’t worn a skirt or dress in front of her. I’ve worn girls’ pants and tops and once even worn nail polish, but I haven’t tried makeup or skirts yet. At least not in front of her. I’ve been wearing skirts and makeup for 30 years, but, you know…

“So anyway, this one Saturday she decides she’s going shopping with a couple of friends and she’ll be out for most of the afternoon. As soon as she’s gone I zap myself upstairs, strip out of my boy clothes and put on undies, black tights and a camisole.

“About a month earlier I screwed up my courage enough to get a full makeover at the Estee Lauder counter at the local department store, so I had a complete set of tools to play with. I shaved again, started with the foundation and then tried as much as possible to duplicate what Marguerita did with me back then. The foundation and blush wasn’t too hard. The eyeshadow took a couple of tries. The goddamn eyeliner took forever because I just could not get that right. I kept wiping my eyes clean and starting over but after about 45 fucking minutes I got it right.

“When I finally got my eyes and lips and cheeks and everything else the way I wanted, I carefully combed my hair as neatly as I could and stepped away from the mirror, being as careful NOT to look at myself as I could. I didn’t want to spoil the total effect.

“So I went back into the bedroom and pulled on my skirt. Boy, I loved that skirt. Everytime I put it on I got a little thrill. Then I grabbed that sweater and pulled it on, being supercareful not to muss my makeup. The only thing left was shoes. I didn’t have too many shoes (shoes are expensive, you know. I don’t want to spend a fortune on something I’m only going to wear a couple of times) but I did have a pair of ankle boots in black that worked well with this skirt. So I dug the boots out of the closet and put them on.

“Just had a couple more things. I loosened my watchband so my watch hung like a bracelet. Then I grabbed one of my wife’s necklaces. Up to that point I had never, ever worn anything of hers. Really. I always had my own things. But for some reason, I thought it was important to wear something of hers right then. Back then, I don’t know why I did it. It was a total impulse. Now, I think I know. I think it’s because I know that she and I are really made for each other and I’m not complete without her. I know that sounds hokey and I know, given everything that’s happened, you’d have trouble believing it’s true, but it’s true goddamn it. It really, really is. At least now I know it’s true. Then, it was just some sort of instinct in the back of my head.

“So this instinct tells me I need to wear a necklace. My wife has great taste in jewelry (lousy taste in clothes, but that’s another story altogether). The first one I grab hangs a little lower than I’d like it to, so I take another. This one is made of yellow, amber and brown beads on a thick-ish chocolate brown strand with silver owls every couple of inches. I always liked it on her and thought it might look nice on me.

“Then I stepped in front of the mirror.

“One thing you gotta know is that I was gonna be 45 in two weeks. Now I’ve read all about mid-life crises and all that bullshit, but I never believed in it. Not a single fucking word. But one thing I do know is that this particular day I walked into a goddamn crisis and I don’t know if it was midlife or what. I just know it blew my life fucking apart.

“Because when I looked into the mirror, I liked what I saw.

“That’s all it took.

“For the previous 45 years, I’d looked in the mirror thousands of times. Millions maybe, and I’d never really liked the image looking back at me. I don’t know why — I never thought about it for the longest time. I just know that when I looked at that person with the black patchwork quilt skirt, bulky black sweater, amber necklace, honey ginger lipstick and plum eyeshadow in the mirror that I LOVED the person I saw. There was nothing rational about it. It was a totally emotional response but that didn’t matter. I LOVED that reflection. Then my rational mind kicked in and recognized that I was responding to that mirror image in a way that I had never responded to a mirror image before and ‘Oh boy, we’re in trouble now,’ it said. And every other synapse in my body replied ‘Fuck you, we like it.’

“For minutes I was mesmerized in this state. Not once in my entire life had I looked in a mirror and really and truly liked the person looking back at me and now I did. Except that now, the person looking back at me did not look like a man was supposed to look. My brain knew that I supposed to make something of it all, but my heart just kept responding to the image that my eyes saw.

“Then my wife’s face floated into the background of the image in front of me. I saw that image say ‘You goddamn fucking son of a bitch. Fucking goddamn faggot.’

“It took a couple of seconds for my brain to register that she wasn’t a figment of my imagination but was real flesh and blood.

“I remember that she reached out and grabbed my necklace — her necklace — and ripped it from my throat. Then she flung it into space. As she did it, she kept screaming at me. Vile, horrible things. I don’t remember a lot of it, but there are some things I just can’t forget. I can’t forget that she said I made her sick. I can’t forget that she said I made her feel dirty and sordid. I can’t forget the expression on her face.

“I also can’t forget that image in the mirror. And I can’t forget how I felt when I saw it.

“Anyway, we fought for about an hour or so before running out of steam. I slept on the couch that night and at a motel for a couple more nights that week. I came back and we were on and off for about three months. You know, we’d have four or five good days, then a fight, then a week of sulking, then a make up and a good week and then it would start all over again. She finally left.

“I think she made up her mind to leave when I told her that it wasn’t that I couldn’t stop dressing, but that I didn’t want to.

“I miss her every single day.

“But sometimes a girl’s just gotta do what a girl’s just gotta do, right? I mean, there comes a time when you have to do what YOU think is right. I just wish it didn’t take me 45 years to figure that out.

“Oh well, what the hell, isn’t that what they say?

“I’m sorry — I got carried away. What did you ask me?”

The bagger just stared at me with gaping eyes. “Paper or plastic?”