Chapter 26: Claire Dover: The Second Search
By: Kristen Pizzo
Tags: Novel, Transgender, LGBTQ, Eating Disorders, Fiction

On a shelf in her closet, my mother kept a little blue book of baby names. I had never opened it before, because I had always hated my name and therefore did not care to know its meaning.

It was Thanksgiving night. My mother had informed me she’d be home late, but hopefully home by eight-thirty with a store-bought lasagna so that we could partake in our little Thanksgiving dinner for two. Because both my grandparents were dead and my mother was an only child, we hadn’t had a real, traditional Thanksgiving since my father stopped living with us. His visits were far and few in between, and eventually, we just stopped counting on them. I was thankful, though, that we would get to spend another year without gorging ourselves with pie, potatoes, turkey, and crescent rolls. I was still binging and purging uncontrollably, and a meal that was representative of a binge would have been a nightmare for me.

I sat on the floor of the closet, knowing full well my mother could walk in the door at any time. My alibi was something that made me queasy but would please her: I would tell her I was daydreaming of the future and what I might name my first child. She’d make a teen pregnancy joke and then abruptly transition into Christian mom lecture mode, and all suspicion would dissolve. It was a sickening scene to imagine, but it would serve its purpose if necessary.

I flipped quickly to “C” to finally have my name defined.

Claire

Origin: French

Clear, bright

So it’s basically it’s how you say “clear” in French? How intriguing.

I flipped back to the first page of the book to begin my search at letter “A”. I knew my method of renaming myself lacked creativity and depth, but I couldn’t think of any other way. It was a wonder I hadn’t considered it before as a child. There was just no name that called to me that I could think of off the top of my head. I figured everyone else in the transgender community must have some deep, emotional attachment to their names and at least a paragraph-long story behind why they chose what they did. Maybe I’m not even able to fit in with them, I thought.

It was a nerve-wracking process. How did my parents do it the first time around? A name is with you for a lifetime. Until you’re eighteen, at least. But even then, the percentage of people who change their names must be so small. This was the first, seemingly smallest step in redefining myself, and the only step I was readily able to take, sans all the legal paperwork. Yet at the same time, it wasn’t small at all. It was a giant leap that couldn’t be taken carelessly. It required intense thought and consideration. I needed a name that was “me”, even though I wasn’t quite sure who that was. It’s funny. We name children before we know their personalities, before they are even capable of most human actions, thoughts and feelings, but somehow, they grow up and their names are “them.” They fit well and you can’t imagine them with any other one. Perhaps we are the ones who give our names meaning, not the other way around. You hear people say “Oh well you don’t look like a Jessica or a Ryan or a Lillian” and maybe those Jessica’s and Ryan’s and Lillian’s are the few people destined to change their names. Does anyone really depend on the meaning of their name to give them answers on their soul-searching journey? Most names don’t mean much of anything anyway. They are just combinations of letters. It’s the people who are born and receive them that give them reputations. We learn to associate different names with certain personalities and character types. I wonder what most people associate “Claire” with. At that point, I had not yet met any other Claire’s, which wasn’t surprising considering the size of my high school. Are Claire’s stereotyped as slutty? Mean? Sweet? Girl-next-door types? Tomboys? No, probably not. It’s too pretty a name.

I had to choose a name for my sanity. Those letters would be the starting line in my race to a better future for myself. And perhaps, I thought, I didn’t need the “perfect” name to create a template to set myself up for happiness and inner peace. Perhaps I only needed a name I liked. It could be the first piece of myself, my new self, that I could love unconditionally. And it wouldn’t be a mistake. The first building block of the new self-built person I intended to become. It’d be small, like a cell, and seemingly meaningless, but it’d be a sign of my new beginning.

I’d have to live up to it, to give it a good, positive, respectable connotation. It needed to be slightly obscure — not in the wacky ditsy celebrity baby name way — I was definitely not naming myself after fruit, compass directions, or a commonplace noun, but I wanted it to be obscure enough that I wouldn’t feel pressured to live up to any sort of standards. If I chose a name like Chase, Chad, Alex, or Connor, everyone might assume I wore Ralph Lauren polos and kept my hair the perfect length for fingers to run through it. And they’d picture someone really hot.

I had no idea how I would look when I presented myself as male or what I’d wear. I hadn’t gotten that far. But I knew I couldn’t choose a stereotypical pretty boy name. That would be setting myself up for disappointment and disaster. I didn’t need to set those kinds of expectations for myself. Transitioning already seemed difficult enough. I needed a name that was easy on the eyes and ears, yet striking; something people might glance at for a few moments longer when reading it on paper or take a second to absorb when hearing it. The kind you’d name a character in a book, a good book, not a cliché teen romance where everyone is named after colors or months of the year.

Before I knew it, I had listlessly flipped through the entire book. I began again at the back, paying closer attention to the meanings of each name that struck me as out of the ordinary, or at least not overused.

The next one that stopped me was:

Rene — French

Reborn.

Another cliché perfect fit. But again, it was too perfect, and more feminine than I liked. I didn’t need a name that defined me.

After Rene came,

Parker- unknown origin

Keeper of the forest.

Like Peter Parker! I instantly liked the sound of it. Sure, its meaning was a bit whimsical, but it wasn’t the type of name people would question, and it wasn’t too bland either. I earmarked the page and kept flipping. Next came:

Keaton — unknown origin

Place of the hawks.

What do hawks symbolize? In politics, a hawk is someone who pushes for aggressive foreign policy. That has nothing to do with me. But it didn’t have to. Plus, Michael Keaton was a pretty great Batman. Two names with slight comic book character associations! I felt like I was hitting the baby name jackpot.

Keaton is a cool, confident name, and maybe, I thought, that was all I needed. A name to set me on the road to confidence as a new person, a new man. I earmarked that page too.

I didn’t find another name that piqued my interest after that, but decided my two choices were good enough to start with. The book was hidden and I was out of the closet well before my mother returned. Feeling accomplished, I smiled at dinner for the first time in months. My mother, though weary and not looking forward to leaving once more a few hours later for the Black Friday shift, seemed pleasantly surprised and smiled right back. “There’s my girl,” she said warmly, beaming. “For a while I felt like she’d been taken away. I hardly see you. You’re always up in your room. I suppose that’s normal for senior year…all that work, what with college apps due in mere weeks…It’s so good to see you looking happy though! Are you going to have Cara over tomorrow since you have it off? I think it’d be great for you to get out, relax a little. They say the stress on students gets worse and worse every year and the teen suicide rate has just been climbing…”

As a mostly-absent mother who only really conversed with me a few times a week at best, she always talked like this, trying to cram months’ worth of parental advice and motherly banter into one long stream without pausing to breathe or to allow me to soak everything up and force out a response. She sputtered on, but I was still hanging on the part about her “girl” being taken. My mind was made up about what I wanted. She’d never see her daughter again. At least, not the daughter she’d thought she’d had. Who did she think I was anyway? Did she even have an idea? She never spent enough time with or around me during my adolescence to even form a legitimate opinion. I wasn’t sure I knew her either. We both had our secrets, hers about the lost love…and mine about food and my identity. I decided then and there, as she was still rambling on, that I would not tell her anything until she was open and upfront with me.

But the time came more quickly than I wanted it to. As I was zoning out in my own head, still continuously shoveling lasagna into my face, my mother continued on with the subject of suicide.

“You know, I had a close call with it…when things were first rough with your father after we married…I was feeling like I settled…”

“Was it because of Jack?” I interrupted.

I couldn’t help myself. A child deserves to know things about their mother, even if it completely changes everything.

Her fork hit dropped to her plate with a loud clatter and she stared at me, in disbelief, her mouth slightly open. “How…did he call the home phone? Did you speak to him?”

I was slightly relieved that her first reaction wasn’t to accuse me of snooping. It made admitting it a little easier.

“I’m sorry, I was looking for something in your closet and I found a letter…I shouldn’t have read it I’m sorry.” I hoped my apology sandwich would work and that she wouldn’t question what I was looking for.

She sighed. “Claire…I don’t want you to think that I’m some shady, loose woman…I really tried to love your father. I did. But my heart was always with Jack…I shouldn’t have kept up anything with him…it was…and it is wrong…but your father and I… our marriage was a product of my guilt and desperation to be accepted by my family. You might think that’s a joke now, seeing how your father isn’t exactly a man anyone would wish upon their daughter. I thought I could make peace with choosing to make your grandparents happy over making myself happy but I couldn’t. In the end, we can never live our lives for anyone else, because they are ours, and nobody else’s. I messed up and I should never have go behind you and your father’s backs…but I did it for my sanity. I couldn’t bear the thought of waking up one day and regretting never being true to myself and what I want in this life.” Tears welled up in her eyes as she finished speaking. I had become lost in her words; even though I knew she was talking about her affair with Jack, but I heard my own story, too. I was stuck sneaking around and doing the bare minimum to try to become comfortable in my body and keep myself sane because I feared harsh backlash if I told my mom about who I was. But if she really believed in living life on your own terms no matter what (even if it meant cheating on your husband), wouldn’t she understand my situation and encourage me to chase who I wanted to be?

I couldn’t be sure and didn’t want to test her reaction. I feared she wouldn’t see the parallel, that even if I tried to relate to her story she would tell me, No, love is different. What you want is wrong.

I didn’t want to ruin the once-in-a-lifetime moment

One, because I wanted to slowly begin building an open, honest relationship with her so that maybe one day coming out would be slightly less catastrophic. And two, if she kept talking it would keep me from getting seconds. It was selfish, I know, but after being wrapped up in my own reclusive world ever since the party, I had neglected to care about others and their interference in my life.

I bussed and washed our dishes as my mother sat slumped in the kitchen chair, baffled by my lack of response. I was too wrapped up in my own thoughts to offer her one. What would I say anyway, “It’s ok that you had an affair”? “I forgive you”?

She eventually rose to get ready for her midnight shift. After she left, I ended up breaking down and eating a quarter of the unopened Costco pumpkin pie she must have gotten on her way home from her first shift.

And after I swallowed the last shameful, guilt-laced bite, I robotically made my way to the bathroom. As I knelt before the still closed toilet, hands trembling, I suddenly began to cry. I hadn’t truly cried in quite a while.

Crying meant acknowledging that I had problems to face and fix. Crying was not “manly.” But at that moment, I felt utterly defeated. I had failed to keep from binging. I had failed to tell the truth. I had failed to defend myself from Evan. I had failed, in all my selfish anger, to help Cara. I had failed to repair our friendship. I had failed to open up to my mother in a rare moment when she shared something raw and real. I was close to failing calculus. I had failed to transform my body the way I wanted to.

I want to say I refrained from purging, pushed away the guilt and stood up from the cold tile floor with renewed strength and a commitment to change.

That was what I so desperately needed. A change in my ways.

But I cannot lie. If there’s one thing I can be completely honest about, it’s to say that I did not change, not for many months, until I was almost too far gone.