Middlesex

Callie’s situation distresses her, and she’s unable to sleep. Milton returns for the appointment wherein Dr. Luce gives his final assessment. While the doctor has been careful not to use gendered language up to this point, he readily calls Callie their daughter when the parents sit down. Dr. Luce explains her condition: Every zygote has the capacity to develop into a male or a female; everyone has the same nascent parts. In Callie’s case, a chromosomal anomaly inhibits particular hormones, such as dihydrotestosterone. Thus, she’s a biological male who developed, in utero, genitals that appear female; at puberty, testosterone kicked in, which led to her increasingly male characteristics—the height, the voice, the mustache. In Dr. Luce’s opinion, though, Callie should be considered a girl, even though biology suggests otherwise. Because she was raised as a girl, and according to the answers she gave him, the doctor believes that surgery and hormone therapy will remedy her situation and allow her to live a fulfilling life as a woman. In addition, he informs Milton and Tessie that Callie will never be able to bear children.

While her parents meet with Dr. Luce, Callie is at the library. She recalls some of the terminology bandied about by Dr. Luce and his colleagues, and she wants to know what these terms mean. She looks up “hypospadias,” which eventually leads her to “hermaphrodite.” Under that entry, the dictionary suggests “monster” as an appropriate synonym. Callie is devastated.

When her father picks her up, she knows the news is bad, though he tries to downplay it. Dr. Luce wants to talk to her about the procedures moving forward. Callie’s mind is still reeling; she thinks of the word “monster,” and she thinks about her love for the Obscure Object. She realizes, however, that her parents want her to keep being Callie. Dr. Luce doesn’t want her to read his final report, but he’s called away from his desk during their appointment. She grabs the report and reads it. It describes her in stereotypical female terms and acknowledges that the corrective surgery will likely result in the loss of sexual sensation. It also clearly states that she’s biologically male, which Dr. Luce didn’t reveal to her.

Back at the hotel, Callie tells her parents that she doesn’t want to go to the Broadway play for which they have tickets because she’s tired. Once her parents leave, she takes her father’s suitcase and packs it full of her least feminine clothes. She leaves a note for them and tells them not to worry.

Cal reflects on his life in Berlin among the many Turkish immigrants there. He feels that his life contains echoes of his family history and thinks he might want to work in Turkey.

The novel returns to Cal fleeing New York. Cal takes a bus to Scranton and cuts his hair short. Thinking of his immigrant grandparents, he decides to go as far from home as possible: California. Along the way, he’ll reinvent himself. He discards the girlish underpants and colored socks, exchanging them for boxer shorts and tube socks. He dresses like a man and learns to walk like one. He hitches rides from strangers—which Callie would never have done—and uses the men’s restroom, even though he’s horrified by the unsanitary habits of men. He admits to himself that one of the main reasons he refused to stay was that he didn’t want to lose “this private ecstasy between [his] legs” (453). After he’s nearly assaulted by a predatory driver who gets him drunk, he manages to stumble away and finds his last ride all the way to California.

Cal lies to the driver, Bob Presto, that he’s headed toward California to attend Stanford. Presto quickly catches him out on the lie, asking Cal where Stanford is. He doesn’t know. Presto starts ask Cal a lot of questions that make him uncomfortable. He wants to know if Cal is gay or if he’s a transvestite. Cal asks to get out of the car, but Presto insists on taking Cal all the way to California. He keeps quiet the rest of the way, however. Once there, Presto hands him a business card as Cal decides to make his own way in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, his parents are devastated. Tessie believes that Callie is alive; she can feel her daughter’s presence out there. However, they don’t know where to look. Friends and family gather to support them. Chapter Eleven comes home, as well, and he and Milton begin to repair their relationship. Milton grooms him to take over the Hercules Hot Dogs business.

Cal lives among the other runaway teens in Golden Gate Park. He’s not a Deadhead like they are, but there’s safety in numbers. The older homeless men are often violent. One evening Cal is left to guard the camp alone. He falls asleep and is awakened by the sounds of men invading the camp. They assault Cal and take off his clothes, discovering his secret, and beat him to the point of unconsciousness. When Cal wakes up, he calls Bob Presto.

Presto owns a club, Sixty-Niners, where Cal takes a job as a performer. He’s christened Hermaphroditus and shows his genitals to customers who watch as he dives into a pool in Octopussy’s Garden. The other performers include a transgender woman and a person who has androgen insensitivity—meaning they have XY chromosomes but in all other ways are indistinguishable from other people assigned female at birth (though they are usually infertile). Zora plays Melanie the Mermaid, and she and Cal form a friendship. Cal learns a lot about the community of people who don’t identify as either male or female for various reasons. He’s not alone. The lifestyle is hard, though. He and Zora remain slightly drunk and high the entire time they perform to separate themselves from the unsavory voyeurism that helps them pay their bills.

Cal’s disappearance initially brings Milton and Tessie closer. However, as time passes and their hope flags, they begin to drift apart again. Milton begins receiving mysterious phone from a male telling him he knows where Callie is.

Cal begins to think that playing the role of Hermaphroditus has been somewhat healing. He’s coming to terms with who he is: a man, though not typically male, raised as a girl but not a woman. He begins to accept himself. In addition, he’s able to relinquish his obsession with the Obscure Object.

As was common in 1975, the club is raided by local police. Cal is forced, finally, to call home. When Chapter Eleven answers the phone, he informs Cal that Milton has died.

In the Berlin timeline, Cal runs into Julie Kikuchi at an art-museum gala. He’s smoking a cigar, and she teases him about it. They lean in close to one another, and he says he wants to tell her why he stopped calling.

Back in mid-1970s Detroit, Milton has gone out to drop off the ransom that the mysterious caller demanded in exchange for Callie. He’s to drop the money in a garbage can near the train station where his parents arrived in the city 50 years earlier. However, once he leaves the money, he starts to doubt the veracity of the caller’s story, wondering if maybe he should leave only half until he can ensure that Callie is safe. As he thinks about walking back to the drop site, he sees Father Mike leaving with the money. Milton snaps, and a slow-motion car chase ensues. Father Mike heads for the Canadian border, however, and the chase becomes serious. Father Mike’s smaller economy car can maneuver in traffic, while Milton’s El Dorado is less agile, though faster.

The narrator speculates about what drove Father Mike to such actions. His life as a priest has been disappointing. His wife doesn’t respect him. The woman he really loved—Milton’s wife, Tessie—jilted him.

Father Mike rear-ends the car in front of him, while Milton suddenly imagines himself airborne. He thinks about the car flying above the river and begins to cry because he hasn’t saved Callie. The newspaper reports that he died in a 10-car pileup on the bridge.

Cal notes that, while the event itself was tragic, perhaps Milton was saved unnecessary grief back home. He doesn’t have to see his oldest son mismanage his business into bankruptcy or accept that his daughter is now a man.

In the Berlin timeline, Julie Kikuchi and Cal Stephanides consider their relationship: Maybe this is the last stop for both of them.

Back in 1975, Chapter Eleven retrieves Cal from San Francisco and brings him home. Father Mike survived the crash and has confessed to the ransom scheme. The funeral for Milton will be held later that day. Cal insists that Chapter Eleven first drive him around Detroit. He wants to remember his home.

Chapter Eleven accepts Cal’s transformation with little comment or consternation. Tessie, though, is a different matter. She has lost not only a daughter but also an ally, she thinks. However, Cal can see in her eyes that she’ll eventually accept him for who he is. As the narrator, Cal notes that he’ll still fulfill all the traditional duties of the daughter, based on his upbringing.

Cal asks about Desdemona and learns that she’s still alive, all these years later, though she has dementia. She doesn’t remember that Milton is dead, and when she sees Cal, she thinks that he’s her long-dead husband, Lefty. When he gently corrects her, she looks at him closely. Then she declares that her silver spoon was right all along. She also tells Cal her terrible secret: that Lefty was, in fact, her brother. Cal promises not to say anything until after Desdemona’s death.

Cal decides to skip his father’s funeral; it will be too much for everyone to adjust to his appearance during this moment of grief. Instead, he stays behind to look after his grandmother. He stands in the doorway at Middlesex, impeding the reentry of disgruntled spirits, just as his ancestors did in the old country, and thus helping his father’s spirit ascend unimpeded.