Chapter 21

Caitlyn

She did not think she would make it this far. The top five… That meant she had a shot. A real shot. While top ten was a realistic goal for someone like Caitlyn, who had all of the experience while still staying on top of most of her beauty regimens after all these years, she never, ever thought she'd make the top five alongside Alaska, New York, Ohio… and Kansas.

"It's happening…" The petite mother of two from Shawnee, Kansas searched for her breath while the five finalists changed into their backup pieces of eveningwear backstage. Izzy fussed with Caitlyn's dress and barked orders at their stylist, but all Caitlyn heard was Mrs. Kansas's echoing heart and thin breaths as she vainly attempted to ground herself. "Ooooh, boy. Ohboyohboy. I didn't think I'd make it this far." She turned to Caitlyn, who offered her a look of contentment. "Did you think you'd make it this far?"

"Ah, well, of course, I hoped I would…"

"I even blundered my talent! I was supposed to do a pirouette at that part in Jack & Diane, but I did a somersault instead! Stupid, stupid!"

"Is that what that song was?"

Kansas wasn't listening. "It's about my husband and me, you know? We were high school sweethearts. He played football…"

"Is his name Jack?"

"John."

"Close enough."

"And you know my name is Diane."

Caitlyn almost got mascara right in the eye when she whipped her head toward Kansas. "No way."

"Yes! Didn't I introduce myself? Oh, I am so sorry, where are my manners?" Diane shoved her hand between their chairs, much to the consternation of her stylist. "Diane Ridgeback. My husband goes by Johnny Ridgeback."

Caitlyn put in the effort to shake Diane's hand. "That's… definitely a heartland name."

"Which is where we grew up!"

"Me too, kid."

Caitlyn was finished first and urged to head backstage, where she had a front row seat to a trendy country star performing to the live audience. Oh, man, Jane is hating this. Jane had to be drunk to handle country music from any time period. It was why she was always the first one putting back beers whenever Caitlyn dragged her to an Iowan bar.

Everyone was lined up to take the stage by the time the song ended. They had to wait for the stagehands to put everything back for the final portion of the event, and Caitlyn swore she had never felt so much sweat before in her life.

"Suppose this is the part where I congratulate everyone on making it to the finals," Tandy from Ohio said, her gaze lingering on Caitlyn in front of her even when she addressed everyone else. "Whoever wins today is truly a lucky woman, but I think it's safe to say that making it this far is a big boost to the soul."

"Oh, man…" Diane slightly whined. "I made it to the finals."

"Is there a problem with that?" Mrs. Alaska asked her. "You're supposed to be excited."

"Ah, well… I mean…" Diane perked up when a producer came by to tell them they had thirty seconds before they were due onstage. "It's just that nobody thought I'd make it this far. I was only excited to be on TV for my girls. The oldest one, Lily, she had a cleft palate when she was born and she's only seven but really insecure about how she looks. I told her that if her big dumb mama can make it to all the way to nationals, then it shows that any woman at any age can do it, you know?"

"A kid with a cleft palette?" That was all Tandy had heard. "Damn. I gotta get me one of those for next year." She poked Caitlyn. "How do we compete with a kid with a cleft palate?"

Caitlyn shrugged, the producer beside her counting down from ten. "You tell me. I'm not going to win, remember? I'm a fill-in from New England."

The producer didn't give Tandy a chance to respond. Everyone marched out onto the stage with Caitlyn in front, the long length of her ballgown swishing against the waxed floor as she smiled into the bright lights and hoped she had enough rouge on her cheeks to keep from washing out on TV.

The host announced that there was one last thing to judge, the thing that would determine the title of Mrs. United States of America. A question. Just one final question, the same one asked to all five women standing together on the stage with only a light shining on them.

"What does your spouse mean to you?"

Caitlyn was first. It gave her almost no time to come up with a pageant-worthy answer.

So, she did what she did best – worked off the cuff.

"My wife is obviously one of the most important people in my world," she said, following the time-honored tradition of focusing on the host in front of her. If Caitlyn looked into the cameras, the lights, or the audience, she risked forgetting where she was or what she said. Somewhere in the distance, she knew Izzy compelled her to keep up the appearance of conversing with an old friend. She hadn't met the host before, but by God, she'd play it up.

She just couldn't lose her train of thought.

"To be honest, it's rather hard to explain exactly what happened," Caitlyn continued. "Like many women, I wasn't searching for love when I happened to meet the woman who later became my wife and business partner. I wasn't even ‘missing' that emotion from my life. Yet after knowing her for one night, I knew that I was never going to meet someone like that again. You can't let somebody like that disappear into the ether, you know? And when I realized that she made me feel something even more powerful than love, I had to marry her."

"And what did you feel?"

The mic was back in Caitlyn's face. "A sense of purpose. Living for someone else instead of just myself. Becoming a team, creating something together, experiencing things together. We come from completely different worlds, both literally and figuratively. I was a middle class cheerleader from Des Moines and she was a trilingual heiress from Hong Kong. That's how you know it's fate. How else do two women like that come together? The only thing we had in common, aside from being women, was our attraction to one anfother. And…" She knew she was running out of time, but had one more thought to get in. "She and I have so much love to give to the world. We've never had children, but it hasn't stopped us from figuring out how to share our love with others." She thought of Rebecca, the woman she agreed to not name but couldn't stop thinking about while up there, asked to explain why she was so easily in love with women like them. This wasn't her soapbox for talking about polyamory, ethical nonmonogamy, being in a throuple, whatever they called it that day. This was Caitlyn's moment to tell the world what made her fall in love. What made her a Missus.

"It sounds like you do have a life full of love," the host said.

Caitlyn lightly sniffed. "I am incredibly grateful and realize what a privilege it is to say that I am truly happily married." Okay, maybe she would soapbox a little. "Especially since when I was a girl, my long-held dream of getting married to one of my girlfriends didn't seem possible. Now I get to live all of my dreams with the people I love."

She had to leave it at that. Were there other things she should have said instead? Carefully crafted answers handed to her by Izzy and the hundreds, thousands of contestants to come before her and answer similar questions? Yes. But Caitlyn wasn't going to win. She didn't come here to win. She came here to stand on the stage one last time, to be who she was under the spotlight, and to pay homage to the little girl who used to watch Miss USA on TV while dreaming of being as pretty, as talented, and as popular as the fair women of the ‘90s who had the courage to put themselves through the circuit.

Caitlyn didn't need the perfect answer. Mrs. Iowa was here to represent all of the imperfect married women who were insecure, stressed out, and wishing for that one thing in their marriage to change, whatever it was. Caitlyn was grateful that the only change she needed was a bigger place to live. Something she would take seriously once she was off this damn stage.

The other contestants all gave perfect answers from different angles. Tandy from Ohio sounded like she had memorized three other Mrs. America's answers to the same question and created an amalgamation of them in human form. Mrs. Alaska focused on what marriage traditionally meant among her ancestors and how that applied to how she worked with her husband today. Mrs. New York wove an artistic tale about the colorful patterns of the world and how her husband was the perfect stitch she shared a quilt square with.

Diane from Kansas stumbled over her words before having to take a break to cry. In the end, she recited John Mellencamp lyrics.

Caitlyn could only laugh.

The currently reigning Mrs. United States of America stood with a crown in her hands. She shared a brief look with Caitlyn before pretending she was detached from the announcement.

This was it. The deafening silence on stage was about to be shattered.

"Our second runner-up," the host said with a mandatory pause. "The woman who will win $5,000 for her charity of choice…" Caitlyn breathed deeply, knowing that this very well could be her, and she must be prepared to step forward with grace. "Mrs. Alaska!"

Caitlyn's applause was a mix of gratitude toward the second runner-up and relief that she didn't have to move. While Alaska visibly appeared grateful to have this over with, the other contestants all knew that they were either at the top… or the bottom of the finalists.

"Yes, Mrs. Alaska has earned $5,000 for Count the Stars Foundation out of Sitka, Alaska, an organization that seeks to preserve both the local language and oral traditions of the Tlingit Tribe of Alaska. Congratulations!"

Caitlyn sighed once the camera was off her. Then it was back to smiling.

"Our first runner-up…" The dramatic music was renewed, Caitlyn wondering why she suddenly cared so much about getting this far in one last pageant she was never meant to be in to begin with. "The contestant who will earn $10,000 for her charity of choice, as well as be the one who must step up to take the winner's place should she not be able to fulfill her duties as queen…" He had to take another breath after saying all of that. "Mrs. Ohio!"

Tandy shouted in delight as the light suddenly panned to her and she approached the front of the stage, tears streaming down her eyes and kisses blowing to the crowd.

"Yes, Mrs. Ohio has won $10,000 for The Ohio Institute of Math & Sciences, a foundation that seeks to fill the economic gaps for children growing up in low-income households throughout Ohio!"

A bouquet of colorful flowers landed in Tandy's arms. She could no longer blow kisses.

"Now… the moment we've all been waiting for…" Caitlyn was suddenly aware of Diane beside her, practically clinging to her while biting her matte lipstick and looking like Dorothy attempting to go home in her ruby slippers. Caitlyn let her new compatriot on the pageant front do whatever she wanted. It was better than dealing with Mrs. New York, who stood five feet away from them as if both Caitlyn and Diane had BO. "Your new Mrs. United States of America… the woman who best represents the modern American wife…"

Caitlyn closed her eyes. What if? What if I win?

No, no, I won't win. I'm not supposed to win.

But what if?

"Mrs. Kansas!"

Diane was so bombastic in her explosive reaction that she backhanded Caitlyn in the face and sent her straight to the floor. Apparently, her kitten heels couldn't stand up to the challenge.

The post-pageant crash wasn't usually this hard, but Caitlyn had also never fallen on stage before. In this case, I was accidentally smacked by the winner. She had waved Diane off her so she could run into the spotlight and have her moment. While altruistic, it was also in Caitlyn's favor – she wanted the cameras off her and elsewhere.

She was fine. Her pride was shot and all of the negative attention created a mild viral trend of people remixing and "dueting" the video of Diane smacking her in the face and sending her to the floor. Headlines like "Midwest Infighting!" only stirred the pot more as Iowans and Kansans on the internet argued whether the plain states could be considered the "Midwest." Caitlyn was simply glad that she didn't get more than a bloody nose.

She received humorous applause when she attended the Monday brunch, her last pageant event before she was allowed to return home. After speeches, air kisses, and exchanging friendship bracelets Caitlyn would probably never look at again, she checked out of her hotel and escorted her mother to the airport where Christine would fly commercial back to Des Moines and Caitlyn drove home with the rest of her family.

Wasn't it grand to be home?

"Did you even decorate for Halloween?" she asked her wife after she dragged all of her luggage through the front door. "It's Cece's first autumn in America. You were supposed to take her out trick or treating."

Cecelia choked on the iced tea she had taken out of the fridge. "You are kidding me, right?" Jane asked while slamming her car keys onto their hook on the wall.

"I love that image," Rebecca mused. "Jane, the patient guardian… Cecelia, forced into a Wonder Woman costume against her will…"

"Why are people putting me in costumes?" Cecelia asked from the kitchen.

Caitlyn was too tired to unpack. She flopped onto the couch in the living room, stretched her limbs as far as they could extend, and forbade anyone from turning on the TV in case she had to see the replay of her falling down one more time.

She would, however, take a bath in her favorite jetted tub. The same one she would be sad to leave when they eventually found a new place to live.

…But that was something for tomorrow Caitlyn to deal with.

"Today" Caitlyn had other things to think about. Although she had made peace with not winning the pageant long before she even got there, a carrot had been dangled before her. She wasn't convinced that it would have been there had she not even made it into the top ten. I don't think I was supposed to get as far as I did… That was her own merit, right? She had proven that she had the right to be there as Mrs. Iowa, yes?

She sorted through the mental files that was the post-pageant crash while someone lightly knocked on her bathroom door.

"Aren't you pretty?" Caitlyn wrapped her naked arms on the side of her tub, turning her whole body toward Jane, who stood in the middle of the bathroom with her thumbs in her gray pockets. Her black turtleneck was tucked into her waistline, her hair recently trimmed and her knowing gaze caressing her wife's cheek before Caitlyn closed her eyes. "Sight for sore eyes."

She didn't expect Jane to kneel next to the tub, their noses only a few inches apart from each other.

"I love you," Jane said.

Caitlyn's eyes fluttered open again. "What's that for?"

"Mm, no, Cait, this is the part where you say that you love me too."

"I mean, I do love you, but where did that come from?"

"Aw, can a woman not say that she is smitten with the prettiest girl at the pageant? You know I like the ones that fall hardest. Speaks well of their character."

"We are to never bring that up again."

"Cait, please, you were taken out by the winner. A queen no taller than me practically roundhouse kicked you to the face before spiking the pigskin in the end zone."

Caitlyn's chin rolled along the edge of her tub as she lightly poked the tip of Jane's nose. "How long ago did Rebecca say that, and how often have you practiced it so you could say it in front of me? Flawlessly, no less?"

"I still do not know what most of it means."

Laughter sputtered from Caitlyn's lips as she shook her head. Eventually, she leaned back, settling against the slope of her tub and grateful that her bubblebath smelled of calming lavender. "Did you come in here to tease me? You could have waited until I finished my bath."

"I came in here because I missed you while you were gone."

The statement was so simple that Caitlyn almost didn't hear the underlying meaning. "Seriously?"

"Of course. You are my Cait."

Her knees moved upward on their own. Her arms tightened across her chest. She blamed the sudden heat in her cheeks on the hot water, not the way Jane made her feel with a single line.

"Do you really love me?" Caitlyn asked. "Even though I didn't win the big pageant?"

Jane didn't roll her eyes. Nor did she crack a joke. "What pageant?"

"The one I lost."

"Oh, you mean the one you made top five in, love?"

"Do you think I got fourth place? Or fifth?"

"Definitely fourth. New York was shambolic."

Caitlyn was likely to disappear into her bathwater if Jane kept hyping her up like this. "I know it's your job to make me feel better after the post-pageant crash…"

"The what?"

"…But you don't have to say anything you don't really mean. I wasn't even expecting to make it that far. There's still some part of me that wonders if I only made it to the top five because I was the only one not married to a man. They wanted some variety. You know, use it as part of the social media marketing to help draw in more views next time."

Jane shrugged. "So what if you were?"

"Lin!"

"I am serious, love." As Jane inched over the side of the tub, her fingers lightly flicked the bathtub before creating concentric circles right above Caitlyn's lap. "We will never know why or how these things go the way they do. But they would have no claim to put you in the top five if you did not somehow deserve it. Trust me. I was watching the pageant, and you were above and beyond one of the most beautiful, most enchanting women there. Your answers were sweeter and less practiced than many others. You spoke from the heart while also juggling what you knew they wanted you to say. You even made sure Rebecca was acknowledged without talking about her so directly."

Caitlyn wiped her wet hands across her cheeks. "I still feel a bit bad for going off to do something so selfish. You two could have used me here to help with work and Cecelia."

"It was something you had to do. I supported that."

"But did I have to do it?"

"What is this about, love?" Jane's touch lingered on Caitlyn's knee as it poked out of the water. Her gentle caress made Caitlyn hug her arms closer to her body, wondering what she had done to deserve such a wife. Or life, for that matter. Love wasn't always enough. Caitlyn was well aware of that. But they had more love in this bathroom than some couples had in their whole lives. "Something is eating away at you, and it is not me." Jane flicked the water again. "Could be me, though."

Caitlyn hooked her finger against Jane's beneath the water. "You know how it is. You get older. You don't quite recognize the woman in the mirror. Your favorite clothes don't fit the way they used to. Your doctor isn't just on you about your weight, but your blood pressure, your blood sugar, your damn teeth… I have reading glasses now. I've always had perfect vision. Until the past two years, anyway."

"So we get older. I know I'm not a big magnet for weight gain, but I am not exactly looking the same as I did twenty years ago. Can I tell you a secret?" Jane scooched closer, her natural scent as comforting as the perfume of Caitlyn's bubblebath. "I have got these wee lines at the side of my eyes. Let us also not forget that gray hair I found a few months ago."

"Not quite the same, Lin."

"No? Here is another secret. I have not told anyone, including you or Rebecca. The only person who knows is my doctor."

Caitlyn was silent as she waited.

"I have missed two periods this year. Not in a row, mind, so I was not as out of sorts as you might think. But my doctor says I am at that age. My body does not quite yet know what it wants to do about menopause. I do not remember the word she used. Started with a p."

"Perimenopause?"

"There you go, love. Forever the bigger English vocabulary than me."

"How? You're technically not forty yet!"

"I don't know. That is what they tell me. Apparently, you can start in your late thirties."

Caitlyn studied her wife's profile. I can't tell that she's gotten older at all. Jane looked much the same now as she had when she and Caitlyn met so many years ago. Haircut trends came and went, but even her clothing was largely the same between the suits, the sweaters, and the T-shirts she wore around the house. And while Jane took care of her skin, she was not big into makeup outside of around the eye when they had an event or important meetings.

She was just… perfect. As always.

"Guess that doesn't make me feel better."

Jane chuckled. "Was it supposed to? Honestly?"

Caitlyn squeezed her wife's hand. "I think you were trying."

"Cait." Water dripped from their grip as Jane raised their hands from the water and kissed her wife's knuckles. "You're as beautiful to me now as you were when we met."

"Aren't the romantics supposed to say that I'm more beautiful?"

"I do not wish to lie. When we met, you blew me away with your smile. It was the first thing I noticed."

"Oh, you liar."

"It's true. Then I noticed your hot body and great sense of style."

"There it is."

Those wet fingertips brushed Caitlyn's cheek again. "When we parted the next day, I could not stop thinking about your smile, your laugh, the eager way you wanted to do everything I suggested. You had such a genuinely good time with me. It was refreshing. Most of the girls I fooled around with all over the world… they never showed me their true selves so readily. You, though? For the first time ever, I wondered what it would be like to build a life with someone."

Caitlyn didn't know what to say. Everything she considered was lodged in her throat.

"I liked what you said up on that stage," Jane continued. "When you talked about creating something as a team. I get insecure too, you know. Less about my appearance and more about my overall worth as someone who is a part of this household. I have long made peace that I am not a stunner in the world of feminine beauty, and that is fine with me…"

"What are you on about? You're one of the hottest women in this whole city, Lin. Even in Hong Kong I'm always struck by how much you stick out."

Jane's wan smile would have been condescending coming from anyone else, but from her, it was merely a reassurance. "That's the Westernization I was shoved through. I stick out here because I am Asian, I stick out there because I have spent most of my life living abroad. It changes you enough that your neighbors no longer recognize you. If anything, they criticize you more for no longer belonging to the group like they want. But they are also the ones who shoved you out of the nest and told you to ‘make something of yourself.' You cannot win. You, though? Cait, you are the pinnacle of American beauty as a concept I grew up with. Nobody confidently pulls this off the way you do."

"Pulls what off?"

Jane playfully poked her wife in the stomach. "I will love you no matter what you look like, but I do love your body, Cait. It's soft, sweet, and the kind of womanly I like in my wives."

"And what about Becca, huh? She's like the opposite of me!"

"And? Is there a problem?"

"You are an enigma to me sometimes. Even after all these years, I'm still not a hundred percent sure what you see in me. Or us, for that matter."

"I see someone who not only makes me comfortable in my own skin but who is invested in creating something from nothing. That's what we did, Cait. We took the empty air between us and turned it into a home."

The tension in Caitlyn's muscles gradually dissipated. Was it because of the hot, relaxing water? Finally being home and allowed to decompress? Seeing the familiar, comforting face of the woman she married?

She knows how to touch me. Were Caitlyn more hormonal, she would probably cry. How sweet was it that someone loved her enough after all these years to learn this about her?

"It still feels so shallow," Caitlyn said as Jane rolled up her sleeve and drew her wrist through the water. "Caring that other people think I'm attractive. I should be content with what I have, never mind the fact that I have two people who love me for who I am, no matter what. Because I think Rebecca would still love me even if I were a worm. Don't you?"

"I'm sorry, a what? A worm?"

Caitlyn grinned. "She would love me even if I got sick and lost a hundred pounds or if I was disfigured in a car crash."

"Oh, yes, absolutely."

As Jane's touch returned to Caitlyn's thigh, she kicked her knees open, knowing exactly what her wife was up to. "Is it weird that I sometimes worry about the amount of love we have here? Is it abnormal to worry that I somehow don't deserve it?"

"I suppose it is not abnormal, but that does not mean you should feel that way." Jane's touch danced between Caitlyn's tightening thighs. "Then there is me, your old Lin Hua, who sees her wife fretting and instantly wonders what she can do to abate it." Her knuckle pushed against Caitlyn's mound, teasing her folds in that languidly lazy way that she made look so effortless. "I was socialized as a woman too, Cait. Just because I am with a woman and not a man does not mean I can quash down the urge to take care of you. Especially, you know…" Water droplets splashed upward against Caitlyn's stomach as Jane found her clit. "Sexually."

"You are very good at it."

"Ah, you know, I can think of a few ways to make you feel beautiful and self-confident even without a national pageant, love."

Caitlyn leaned back and closed her eyes. "I'm sure you can."

The kiss landing on her mouth was far from desperate and charged. It was soft, like the way Jane made love to her in the tub.

Because wasn't that what Caitlyn needed right now? Softness? Tenderness? Real love?

Well, she did not doubt that the rest could come later. Caitlyn wouldn't be the only naked one by the end of the hour.