"You’ll live a long time, if that matters, and I don’t see why it should, I think we’re talking about quality, aren’t we? Amazing about these long lifelines. They go to conservative, dried-up people, as a rule. Sometimes to crazies. Unfortunately, lifelines have nothing to do with lines of the mind or the heart. You can live to be a hundred and have your mind stop dead at ten. Not lovely. Your mind is all right, but your heart line stops right here—see it? Like a car crash. Only one survivor, not two.”
In Karen Heuler’s The Made-Up Man Alyson Salky is feeling trapped by her gender. She lost her boyfriend, and perhaps worse, her dog, to her “best friend” and was passed over for a promotion at work by a sniveling manipulative man who doesn’t have an original thought in his head. Someone must be blamed! Someone must pay! These thoughts lead her to a seedy storefront where she encounters Madame Hope, a fortuneteller with strange abilities. Alyson ultimately makes a pact with this woman for a single wish: to change her gender. All Madame Hope asks for in return is her soul.
And soon enough Al becomes Bob, intent on getting ahead in life—and getting even. But how do reversals work out? And can you really expect to get what you want when you’re dealing with a rather bored devil with a sense of irony? Inevitably, nothing goes exactly as planned, and in the process Bob/Al has to learn about what matters in life, and how to negotiate with a devil who has her own reasons for making a deal.
In this fascinating and utterly distinctive novel, Heuler creates an evocative dilemma, which poses interesting and challenging questions regarding gender, society, and personal responsibility.
Chapter 1
There are three things a woman should take for granted: looks will fade, men will stray, and wishes are worthless without actions.
Bur learning this is the result of experience, and experience takes too long. At 35, Alyson Salky was still young enough to have confidence in her looks and in the fidelity of her boyfriend, and to think there was time to get what she wanted—well, she might not even know everything she wanted (occasionally she had a twinge about babies—possibly more than a twinge; but Peter didn’t want kids and really, wasn’t Peter better than a kid? More fun? Not so demanding?). She was happy, and therefore confident. She loved the feel of Peter’s body beneath his shirt when she pulled him close for a hug, the roughness of his chin, the nimble flexibility of his body, his half-lidded sex look, the way his face burst into laughter, his roaming curiosity, his wit. “I love you because you love me,” he’d say, and wink. And laugh. And grab her with one arm like she was his moll in an old Hollywood film. When she was with him she felt smart and funny—hell, she was smart and funny, and that kind of hard-core bliss was her due, and inviolable.
So there she was, a good job, a great boyfriend, a fine dog, some really great girlfriends—when that magazine came out with the article stating that a woman over 40 stood a better chance of being killed by a terrorist than getting married.
“Do we want to get married?” she asked her co-worker, Anna. They were turning into good friends.
Anna’s mouth got unhappy. “Sometimes, yes,” she said. “Sometimes we want to get married. Especially if we want to have kids. And I want to have kids.” She raised her eyebrows significantly to Alyson, who shrugged.
“I’m already complete,” Alyson said. “I have everything I want.”
Who needed to be married, anyway, in this day and age? What did marriage bring to the table? A woman could get everything she needed under her own steam—career, love, fulfillment, self-respect! Statistics could be manipulated to prove any point; everyone knew that, so who could say if that statement was even true?
She had no interest in marriage, not a bit. Anna was just in a bad mood.
But she wasn’t; she was happy and lucky and safe and in charge.
Until all of it fell apart, the day she saw Peter get into a cab with her best friend Maggie. She stood on the sidewalk, stunned, watching with a clarity of vision that was almost supernatural. She saw them get in the back seat and fuse—that was it; they fused into one organism, their heads their arms their mouths coming together like two drops of water irresistibly combining.
The cab was gone, with its unicellular monster in the back; yet the picture throbbed in her mind as if constantly refreshed: Maggie got in, then Peter got in, closing the door. Peter leaned forward to give the address to the driver, then he turned to Maggie and fell back against the seat and smoothly draped himself around her as she draped around him and they were indelibly lit up through the cab’s rear window, as if a spotlight shone on them, or the burst from some sly terrorist’s bomb.
Everyone kept walking and she did too, but she didn’t turn into Peter’s studio to surprise him for lunch, of course; that surprise had been tossed on its head. Instead, she walked back to her own job, skipping lunch altogether, walking hard to try to get her heart to match the rhythm of her feet instead of racketing around like a roulette ball. A fire engine blared its alarm as it made its way up the avenue, and the scream of its siren merely served as the soundtrack for the image in her head: Peter turning to Maggie, Maggie turning to him, the vanishing perspective of the two of them, together.
She got back to the office and walked past Anna with a wave, shutting her door, saying vaguely that she was under deadline. But in fact she spent the afternoon trying to find a way of making that scenario innocent. Despite her determination and imagination, there was none. Anna tapped on her door before leaving for the day, asking, “Feel like a drink?”
“That’s not what I feel like,” Alyson said under her breath, then shook her head no. “I’m behind on the schedule for the meeting.” Anna nodded (meetings ruled them both) and left. Alyson moved some papers around on her desk (she certainly would end up being behind schedule) and tried to come up with a plan. She had no room for any other thoughts but thoughts about Peter, and the only way she could move forward was to do something about it. She could already feel the corrosion of his betrayal eating at her; there was nothing to do but face it.
He had been working late a lot; she had trusted him. She went home with dread in her heart, not even noticing the frenzied welcome she always got from Dingo, their dog, though she picked up his leash, clipped him in, and took him outside. Every thought was about Peter. Dingo went about his doggie business, subdued.
When Peter finally came home late he was surprised to see her still dressed and waiting for him. He was just about to stride across the room when she said, “I know about you and Maggie.”
He stopped, frowned, his eyes shifted to the window opposite, to the doorway to the left, to the wall to the right. He leaned back a little. He started to say something and then stopped and thought some more. “Okay,” he said finally. “Good.” He still stood in the same spot.
In fact, he smiled. “I’ve been feeling terrible about it. I’m glad you know. It’s a relief.”
Her mind was double-tripping around what he’d said. Was it a relief because he felt guilty and would apologize and get it over? Relief because he really didn’t want to betray her and now it was open for discussion? Why would he be relieved unless he felt he had a way out, a way to fix it? Her mind seemed to have wrapped its arms around itself; it wasn’t going to expose anything. “What are you relieved about?” she asked finally.
The dog moved in between the two of them, halting with a low whine and sitting facing Peter.
Peter cleared his throat and said, almost theatrically, “I can’t live here anymore, I can’t. I didn’t know how to say it, to tell you. Maggie and I feel awful. But I don’t love you, Alyson. I’ve tried and—and, no. I can’t force myself to, you know. It’s no good.” He had even managed to have a tear well up on that—on how he had tried to love her, and no, he couldn’t.
“Tried to love me,” she said, hoping to shame him.
“Yes.” He nodded. “I didn’t want to hurt you. So I tried. And I couldn’t.”
“But you said you loved me—“
“I said what I believed; also what I wanted to believe. Don’t throw it in my face, Alyson. I’d give my left arm to make this better somehow.”
And it went on from there: she pleaded, she accused, he stood there deflecting. She cried and he came over and hugged her and she sank into him, thinking there was a reprieve, but he pulled away and said he had to leave. She asked why, he told her, and it went on for a while until he took some shirts and things in a hastily packed bag and left.
And where did he go? she thought bitterly. To Maggie. Whom she now hated even more than she hated Peter who—despite it all—she still loved. Her head was chattering. She thought she would lie down at least until she could control the violent movements in her head and in her heart.
Dingo was hiding under the bed. His snout peeked out, and his sad brown eyes followed her as she stood in the doorway, then walked away, and then walked in again. She saw him, pulled him out, and hugged him, not noticing it was too tight. He groaned. “Poor Dingo! What will we do? He’s gone!” The dog licked her face, a frown between his eyes, and she let him go and began to pace again.
She passed a mirror and saw herself—gray eyes, medium brown hair to her waist. Peter liked to braid her hair, the two of them had braided it together, braiding the braids, toying with her hair as they lay in bed. He had pulled it, he had stroked it, lifted it, brushed it, parted it. It had coiled around her head like a snake, he had said he loved it.
She found a pair of scissors, coiled the hair around her fist, and chopped it off, bunch after bunch, laying it out on the dresser like an animal pelt. She found a box in the closet and rolled the hair up nicely in one of the styles she wore, put it into the box and wrapped it. Gift wrap. In times like this, drama was called for. How many years did that hair represent? The same number of years she’d spent with Peter? She figured it was pretty close.
That made her feel better, briefly, just briefly, and she looked around the room and saw all the heaps of things—his things, the room would look bare without his half—and another wave of distress washed over her. What next?
She despaired at the unfairness of it all. He could move on, he could always move on, a man could always find a woman, but what would she do—loyal, loving, trusting—a goddamn idiot who didn’t see it coming?
How long before she could find someone she could love and believe in again? Was that even possible? Peter had been the one, she’d wrapped herself around him, she’d made a cocoon out of him. Where could she start over, in a city where all the women were single and all the men were married? That was how Maggie had characterized it, and Maggie should know, the whore, how could Peter fall for her? Sure it was funny, listening to Maggie’s endless parade of lousy lovers (when had Maggie stopped talking about them? How had Alyson failed to notice?).
She hit her forehead with her fist, as if to get a stuck movie reel going again. She didn’t want to get stalled on this, she couldn’t get stalled on this. If that was the end of the picture, that was the end of the show. One minute she wanted to die, the next she just wanted to kill him. No, her. Impossible to let them get away with it.
She was filled with a kind of relentless energy. The dog began to whine and she stopped, briefly, to pet him and give him a biscuit. He left you too, poor thing, she thought. And then she started cutting up Peter’s clothes, cutting off the heels of his socks, the toes of his shoes, until the fun went out of it, finally, and she sat on the floor, the dog beside her, worried and pulling at her with his paw.
She jumped up and ran outside, stopping once she hit the front door to consider her next move. The Vulture was at the bottom of the five front steps, shifting from leg to leg. He lived on the first floor and was always hanging around the garbage cans. He moved back, his eyes cast down, as he usually did. Alyson had once tried to say hello to him and he had winced.
He was skinny, long matchstick legs hidden by loose, wrinkled jeans that highlighted his thinness. He wore an old stained peacoat and a ski cap pulled down nearly to his eyebrows. Peter had nicknamed him the Vulture because he thought he picked through the garbage for food. Old meat, fruit rinds, containers with a lick of sour cream in them. She tucked her head down and turned her eyes away as she passsed.
He went out of her mind immediately. She paced up and down the streets, finally ending up in a bar where she ordered a glass of wine. White wine. A single woman in a bar with a glass of white wine. No wonder Anna had suggested a drink: it was hard to go it alone. Alyson’s hands began to sweat. She looked around. Couples, leaning into each other. A few men alone, but they were too old, hacking coughers, half-lidded drunkards, men tensed over their shot glasses and glancing furtively at her. Dismissing her? She looked in the mirror behind the bar and saw her hair. It looked like a child had cut it. It made her thick eyebrows seem even thicker, overshadowing her gray eyes. Her mouth looked swollen. Her face was haphazard.
She gulped her wine and left the change on the bar. In the mirror she saw a neon sign, and her eyes caught it again as she left. There, across the street: Madame Hope, Fortuneteller. In red and yellow and green.
She had to know her future. She had to know there was something ahead of her that would break open like a fruit. “This future she tells me will be my future,” Alyson thought. She looked in through the window. An empty room, two folding chairs, a small round table with a deck of Tarot cards, an unlit candle and a palmistry chart. She could just make out a doorway with a bead curtain. Alyson knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again. A black dog slightly bigger than a spaniel shuffled thorough the curtains and stood facing her, a very old dog who bared his teeth but made no sound.
Alyson was about to knock again when the curtains parted and a face peered out. The beads rippled and knocked against themselves like a cloud of insects.
The gypsy looked very ordinary. A plain square face, low forehead, hair dyed ash blonde and pulled back behind her ears. A line of dark roots edged the part like a black scar. She smiled gently, but more as if her lips had settled that way than as if she meant it. She wore a cotton print dress and an oversize cardigan sweater. She was chewing something.
“Don’t worry about the time,” the fortuneteller said, opening the door. “Come in.” Alyson realized with a start that it must be midnight; one of the churches nearby was beginning to toll.
“Sit, sit,” the gypsy urged, waving her hands at the chairs. She eyed the dog. “Go inside,” the gypsy ordered. The dog stared her down, growling faintly. “I said go in.” The dog turned grudgingly, looking over his shoulder at Alyson, and walked insultingly slowly. The curtains continued to click even after his black shabby tail had disappeared inside.
“That dog doesn’t love me the way a dog should,” Madam Hope sighed, settling herself down in a folding chair. “And he won’t go away, either; he’ll live forever just to make a point. He never forgave me, you know,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “He’s been like that ever since I had his balls cut off. But what could I do? He was jumping everything, humping away, the customers weren’t safe. In a continual rut. I thought his hormones were stuck or something, but they tell me all males are like that. Wanting to plug everything in sight.” She laughed tolerantly. “He stares at me and I know what he’s thinking. Someday he hopes to get even. But I don’t think so.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so at all. Do you have a dog?” Alyson nodded. “I knew it. You can always tell. People who have dogs expect a certain amount of order. People with cats—well, cats are the devil’s familiar, aren’t they? Sly creatures.”
Alyson nodded, but she wasn’t really listening.
“Well,” the gypsy said, eyeing her, “let’s get down to business, shall we? Tarot reading is twenty dollars, palm reading is ten dollars each hand. Spells are extra, though candles come at a bargain rate this time of year.” She winked. “The crop is in.” Alyson looked at her blankly. “Tallow candles, dear. Made from animal fat. There’s been a large kill this year and the fat was cheap. I have my sources.”
“No candles,” Alyson said hastily. Her eyes were darting quickly around the room. There seemed to be a few bones lying in a corner—something slender and white, at least, with knobs on the end, like thighbones. She remembered reading about animal sacrifices, horrible cults with goats bleating, their throats cut. “Don’t do this to yourself," she thought. “Don’t be suggestible. Take it at face value." She went over the prices the gypsy had named. They seemed a bit high. “What if I only have one hand read?" she asked.
“You can," the gypsy nodded. “People do." She looked a little bored. “Your right hand contains all the influences at work right now; your left hand holds the future. The sinister hand, you know. From the Latin."
“I don’t know Latin."
“I used to speak it. Sinister, left hand. Dexter, right hand. If you’re right-handed you’re dexterous, get it?" Her eyes crinkled in amusement. She reached into her pocket and brought out a peppermint. It went into her mouth like a mouse down a hole. Alyson had to drag her eyes away from the chomping jaw.
“I know all the forces around me now," Alyson murmured. “I need to know the future.”
“I’m very good at futures,” Madame Hope said smugly. “You could say future’s my specialty. And I don’t mince words. Good or bad, I’ll tell you. Though, to be honest, I don’t see that many good ones. People don’t take care of their left hands.”
“I do,” Alyson said, “I take care of my hands.”
“Good for you, then,” the gypsy said, patting her. “Yes, pretty hands. Soft and white. Long nails, too, how do you manage? Beautiful polish, not everyone can carry it off, hey? Stops this side of being garish. I like that. But that’s all dressing, so to speak.” She stroked Alyson’s hand lovingly. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.” Her head bent down, she bit her lip in concentration, running her forefinger over the lines, back and forth, tickling Alyson, who straightened her back to remain immobile, refusing to twitch.
The gypsy drew her breath in and said, “Well, I guess it depends on what you’re looking for.”
“I want normal things,” Alyson whispered. “To love and be loved forever.”
“Forever?” She laughed. “I don’t see a forever in this hand.”
“For the rest of my life. As much of forever as I have.”
Madame Hope chewed her lip. “Husband, house, babies?”
Alyson nodded, feeling herself cave in. “And love. Don’t forget love.”
The gypsy scraped her nail into the palm of Alyson’s hand. “No husband,” she said. “No house.”
“Love?”
Madame Hope closed Alyson’s hand into a fist. “What do they say? It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”
“Bullshit,” Alyson hissed.
“Probably, but they say it anyway. Maybe it doesn’t apply to you. But as to your future—a lot of it depends on what kind of choices you make. If you continue along these lines—that’s what I see, you know, what your future is at present. As if you were to take a drive and go exactly where you’d planned, no detours. Well, that future is pretty shallow. A lot of waiting around and eating yourself up with spite. In fact, you lose just about everything. Mind you, I don’t know exactly what ‘everything’ is. That’s your business. But it’s a one-track line. You’ll live a long time, if that matters, and I don’t see why it should, I think we’re talking about quality, aren’t we? Amazing about these long lifelines. They go to conservative, dried-up people, as a rule. Sometimes to crazies. Unfortunately, lifelines have nothing to do with lines of the mind or the heart. You can live to be a hundred and have your mind stop dead at ten. Not lovely. Your mind is all right, but your heart line stops right here—see it? like a car crash. Only one survivor, not two.”
“You’re telling me my life is empty?” Alyson was aghast.
“Empty. That’s a comparative term, isn’t it? You could have a career if you set your mind on it. Become a minor something-or-other, that kind of thing. You could feel important, a lot of people do, as long as there’s someone to boss around. But as for the rest of it,” she cocked an eyebrow, “I read this article a while ago, about women over thirty. Not many get married, you know. Very depressing, if that’s what you’re after. In fact, it said—”
“I read the article,” Alyson interrupted. “I don’t want to hear.”
“There are probably more terrorists around than you think.”
Alyson shook her head, blinking hard. “I don’t want to sleep alone for the rest of my life.”
“Oh, if that’s all that’s bothering you!” She made a sound like she was shooing chickens, and her eyes were laughing. “No one has to sleep alone in a town like this, not even if you’re eighty. I can help you with that all right, and I don’t mean candles, why go for candles when you can have the real thing? I thought you were talking about love.” She seemed to be laughing to herself, still enjoying Alyson’s innocent despair as she plumped another mint into her mouth.
“I was,” Alyson answered. “I was talking about love.”
“Think about it some more. After all, what’s love? It’s a figment of your imagination. Read the reports. Love dies. Everything dies. People change their minds. They don’t know what they want.”
“I do,” Alyson said, exasperated. “And I can’t have it.”
“Think it through,” the gypsy chided. “Look at it all a different way. There are things you can have.”
Alyson shook her head. “I don’t want anything I can have now.”
“Ah,” Madame Hope growled. “Self-pity. Useless. You can’t get anything when you’re weak. It’s no use at all. Think it through. Find out what you can get, and let me know.” She winked at Alyson broadly, and her head moved close. “I can help you, you know. I can do a lot. I know my business inside and out. You’d be surprised.” She nodded forcefully, like a dog thumping its tail. “There are more things on earth than you dream of.”
“Or less,” Alyson said, reaching into her pocket for a crumpled ten-dollar bill. “Much less.” The woman was impossible, she thought, but there was some relief in feeling irritated, rather than miserable.
