Leaving the hospital Grandma Rosa asked, “Say, since they’re running tests on Josepho again tomorrow, I was thinking you and me and your brother could all go to the Italian Festival in Trenton...”

“That’s tomorrow? Sure! I haven’t been there in years, I’d love to go. But I don’t know if Joey will want to. He’s been acting kind of strange lately.”

“Strange?”

“Well yesterday he did the dishes, cleaned all the sinks and counters, mopped the floor-”

“SWEET JESUS, NO!” she gasped, “That is not good! Just say the word and we’ll do it.”

“Do what?”

“Switch you back, of course. If his sudden interest in scrubbing things means what we think it does it’s time to put an end to this little body-swap adventure.”

“Really?! That’s fantastic!”

But why in the next second did the prospect of going back to who I had been suddenly not seem so fantastic?

PLAY . . NICE!
LAIKA PUPKINO ~ 2009
PART ELEVEN: EXIT STRATEGIES
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||| FRIDAY OCT 10 2008 ~~~
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“I’m real sorry about yesterday. Did you get my message?”

“Message?” I asked, imagining some weird and exotic form of communication from my weird, exotic grandmother. The Bat Signal, or glowing Gothic script forming in the depths of a mirror.

“On the answering machine...”

“Jeez, I didn’t even think to check it. I had such a crazy day!”

Grandma Rosa smiled wryly. “Things were was pretty freaky over at Birda’s place too. I almost didn’t make it here again today.”

“Well I’m sure glad you did,” I said. I figured that even if my father failed to recognize me again today there was a good chance he'd know his own mother. That no matter how far back his memories regressed they should always include her. Or so I hoped...

“Yesterday,” Uncle Grisha started to say. After several seconds we realized this was all we were going get from him on the topic.

Although, from the fact that he'd hardly said a word since we met him down in the lobby, and the way he wincing at every sharp noise or change in the light it was fairly obvious what kind of day he'd had. But even as hung-over and out-of-it as he was I was glad he was here. After that plunge through the looking glass yesterday's visit had turned into I wanted all the support I could get. Whatever additional bit of sanity and reason Grisha could bring to the encounter.

The bell chimed, the elevator’s doors slid open and we stepped out onto the sixth floor.

“I have to go to the powder room,” said Grandma, nodding toward the nearby restrooms. My droll gesture for her to go right ahead earned me a disappointed frown.

“Oh right. Me too,” I said. The girl thing of adjourning to the bathroom to talk.

Or maybe it was the witch thing, because what she’d wanted to keep from the Russian’s ears was an account of what had kept her from coming here the previous morning, which she related to me from behind the massive marble partition between us, these ancient toilet stalls like a row of crypts in some mausoleum. Seeing the entire male wing of our family descend into psychosis yesterday had made it one of the weirdest and most disturbing days of my life; but I had to admit that Grandma’s weird day easily outweirded mine.

She and her three coven sisters had been chanting a healing spell for Papa nonstop for the past five days, with Sister Francine taking the midnight-to-six-a.m. shifts. The incantation was complicated, nearly a third of a page long, and the chanting was going easier now that they all had the words and strange inflections of the ancient language it was spoken in down perfectly. Staring at the configuration of candles on the kitchen table, the cantress usually went into a trance at about the twenty minute mark, which made her six hours go by in a timeless blur; ending with a moment of pure disorientation as one of the other witches shook her, always after her replacement had sat down and begun chanting along with her.

“Like a relay race,” I said over the roar of the hand drier I was rubbing my wet hands under, an old streamlined chrome thing like a Buck Rogers rocket pack. It shut off with a loud clunk.

I noticed that neither of us had dressed up much for today’s visit; me in tank top, shorts and sandals and Grandma in a sleeveless tee, sneakers, and a pair of clingy elastic slacks that didn’t exactly flatter her scrawny legs. She set her purse on the counter and pulled out a tiny bottle. “Here, let’s do your nails. They look like crap.”

“I know, I know,” I sighed, disgusted with how I had butchered them during that fight I’d had with Joey on Sunday, “But won’t painting them just draw attention to how short they are?”

“Believe me, this’ll help. I picked this shade up especially for you.”

“But Uncle Grisha’s waiting-”

“He’ll be fine,” she sang, wagging the bottle at me.

I deferred to her judgment in feminine matters, and as she spread the enamel onto the nail of my right pinkie she told me about her ordeal yesterday...

The night had been ordinary enough for a house full of witches. Grandma sleeping on the couch while Vivian had the bedroom, the insomniac Birda sitting up reading a Repairman Jack novel in her highback chair, all quiet except for the soft steady drone of Francine's chanting in the kitchen. But as the sun rose and Francine’s shift as cantress came to an end, they discovered that she'd gotten stuck in her trance somehow, and no amount of shouting or shaking her could bring her out of it. When Birda resorted to slapping her she did finally open her eyes, but they were these scary glowing featureless white things. Grandma and Birda had loaded the quaking and babbling witch into the Lincoln, Grandma driving her to clear to the apartment of some voodoo priestess in Harlem, an expert in demonic possession.

“I’ll tell you, Frannie sure made a lot of heads turn as we were going up Fifth Avenue, with the way hers kept spinning around,” she deadpanned as she finished the thumb of my right hand. “There. Now you do the other one.”

Gingerly taking the applicator between my freshly painted fingers I began doing the nails of my left hand, careful to keep it off of the adjacent meat. This color had been marketed as Sedona, but I thought of it as 'burnt rose'. Grandma smiled, “You do that well.”

“It’s a good little brush. So you got Francine back to normal, right?”

“More or less. But it took a bit of help...”

Madame LeVitre’s best efforts had just bounced right off of whatever was inhabiting Francine Rogers. They had wound up having to telephone some famous top gun sorceress in San Diego named (I think) Iona Bidet, who was able to walk them through a rite that finally snapped Francine out of her trance. She was now completely wiped out, and between sleeping and bowls of chicken-and-pentagrams soup she was insisting on being replaced; that she was through with playing witch after having been “touched” by entities whose ugliness and insane malice were way beyond anything ever dreamed up by Francis Bacon or Heironymus Bosch...

“Grandma, is this safe? I mean it’s wonderful that you’re trying to help Papa, but not if you’re going to risk being possessed by these-”

“Oh pish tush!” she sputtered, “It’s safe. Frannie just made a dumb mistake is all.”

“But I thought you’d said you were impressed with her abilities.”

“I was impressed. And I still am. But she has a history of misusing her talent when she was younger---in layman’s terms ‘black magic’---thinking it was a real Salem Witch thing to do. And something from her past caught up with her yesterday. Francine let this happen! Her trouble is that she has a serious case of witch’s guilt---I’m bad! I’m evil! God’s gonna sic the Devil on me!---dodging the big guy like she owes him money. This leaves you wide open to any flea-bitten malignant entity that comes along. But for good little witches who say their prayers---God, the Goddess, it’s all good. What the creator cares about is what’s in our hearts, not whatever name or images our feeble little brains have cooked up for him---then it’s safe. Or as safe as any work that involves machines or forces that can squash you like a bug.”

“That’s a relief. I think.”

“So Frannie went home on the train. She needs to do what she needs to do, and after what happened to her we can hardly blame her. But with just the three of us now we’re back to those damned eight hour shifts.”

“That sucks,” I sympathized. Holding out my work for inspection I had to admit that Joy’s slender hands did look better tipped in a bit of color. I carefully recapped the little bottle.

I couldn’t deny that I was becoming increasingly fascinated with this magical world of hers. The questions it raised ........ Is there really this whole hidden side to the cosmos? Really some divine intelligence overseeing the whole thing? Does the fact that my grandmother and others can perform spells point to some great purpose to everything? Or is magic simply another type of technology, employing forces unknown to mainstream science but in fact no more supernatural than electricity; even these “spirits” being just another type of animal---energy organized to the point of sentience---and all these mystical aspects of Grandma’s belief system just something they'd tacked on out of wishful thinking? I really did want to meet these 'coven sisters' of hers, to get a better sense of what all this was about...

And so despite the unease I felt at all this talk of demons, I found myself asking, “Is there any way that I could help? Become a deputy witch or something?”

“Afraid not, Teddi. About all you could do would be to bring us coffee and donuts, pick up our dry-cleaning, flunky stuff like that.”

“I’ll do it!”

“Thank you Nipotina, you’re an angel! Pressed for time as we’re going to be now it’d sure help. And you know, if you’re interested there’s a book I can loan you. It’s mostly philosophy, the ethics of magic, but it does have some very basic beginner’s spells toward the back you can try.”

“Really?” I asked, more intrigued by the idea than I would’ve thought.

I imagined myself returning to Centerville as a sassy broom-riding witch, able to do amazing things just by wiggling my cute little nose, my magic getting me into all kinds of wacky sitcom trouble but then quickly getting better at it, doing good things with it. Granting my transsexual neighbor Elsa’s one great wish by instantly zapping her into full womanhood, foiling robberies that I happen across by materializing banana peels right where they’re needed, and finally going up against the evil wizard Hardonicus and his scheme for world domination...

I got so caught up in these superpower fantasies that I started doing things in the mirror like it seemed a witch might do, arching my splayed fingers and making scary moves with my hands: I AM THE MIGHTY STREGA TEODORA D’ORA! TASTE THE POWER OF MY WRATH- BOOOOM! POW! SITH LIGHTNING! Z-ZZZAPP!!!

“Sweetie? What are you doing?”

Brought back to the reality of where I was I stopped, feeling as foolish as my strange gesticulations must have looked. “Uh ........ drying my nails?"

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Uncle Grisha was a short distance down the hall, leaning against one of the narrow tall windows, his forehead pressed against the glass and peering down the side of the building, like something a sleepy little kid might do…

I had to sympathize. I was feeling pretty bedraggled myself, after having been kept up half the night by my brother’s idiot antics. He now had a TV in his room that he’d gotten from I hated to think where, and a player of some sort apparently, on which he’d watched a copy of Alan Parker’s THE WALL. He’d been so fucking into it---playing it three times in a row that I was aware of, cranked up to full volume---his formerly fine voice now a braying off-key caterwaul as he sang along with the film’s self-pitying narcissistic rock star hero: “So you ....... thought you ....... might-like-to-go-to-the-show. GO! TO! THE SHOW!! To feel the warm thrill of confusion, that space cadet glow. SPACE! CA! DET GLOW-”

As we came up behind Grisha we could hear him muttering faintly, “It’s so far ......... it’s so far...”

“YOU OKAY THERE, GRISH?!!“ barked Grandma Rosa loudly, like she was testing his startle response.

He didn’t even blink but turned slowly to face us and dolefully declared, “Never drink with Georgians. They’re crazy...”

“What do you mean by Georgians?" I asked, "Are you talking vodka or moonshine?”

“I think it was moonshine vodka,” he groaned as we started off down the hall again.

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The nearer we got to my father’s room the more I was dreading some repeat of yesterday’s madness- like finding him jumping on his bed naked, screaming that the California Raisins had stolen his Mojo! So I was relieved to discover that he was fairly with it today...

He did show a bit of confusion briefly, a rather disjointed rant about about a famous murder trial from a couple of years ago as if it was still going on, but for the most part he was back to his old self, for both better and worse. He made his usual pissy remarks about “the girl” when we first showed up, but I was so happy that he seemed to know who we all were that it was hard for me not to smile as he insulted me; which he would've interpreted as some kind of insolence on my part. I was far more angered by how obnoxious and rude he was to Grandma and Uncle Grisha; cursing them as idiots, mocking everything they said in a snotty voice; like the “patient from hell” character out of some horribly unfunny MAD TV sketch.

The visit lasted about forty minutes, ending when Grandma had finally had enough of his attitude. She remind him of the way Grandpa Enrico had died, slowly and in terrible pain from pancreatic cancer, and yet he had never snivelled and moped like this, lashing out at those who loved him. Her parting shot to him was a solemn, “Now there was a man.”

Papa just snorted, like he couldn’t care less. But as he pretended to tune us out by taking a rapt interest in his newspaper I could see the shame in his eyes that he couldn’t hide.

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We made our way down the corridor in silence, until Grandma sighed, “Well that was fun.”

“Wasn’t it though?”

About the only non-sarcastic thing he had said to us in that whole time was tell us that his doctors would be running a lot of tests on him on Saturday, and so not to bother coming. Which by then had been fine with us. I told Grandma how I planned to use this latest day off we’d been given to replace the ancient fuse box in the service porch with something more up to date.

“That old thing is pretty scary,“ she chuckled, “But if you wanted to hold off on that a while, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to go with me to the Columbus Day thing in Trenton.”

“That’s tomorrow? I thought Columbus Day was on Monday.”

“Technically it is, but you know how they do with holidays anymore. I was just gonna make a quick stop there before coming here, but now we can make the day of it.”

“Sure, I’d love to go! I haven’t been to that since …… well not since I moved out of state,” I told her, when it occurred to us that we’d lost a member of our expedition.

We looked back to see Grisha tying his shoe. As he struggled awkwardly to his feet he waved for us to wait up, looking a bit panicked, like he thought we might use this opportunity to run away and ditch him here. I asked, “So is it about the same as it was?”

“More or less. Same stuff, just more of it. A lot more booths at the festival, and the parade is longer since they added all the classic cars.”

I had to wonder what a bunch of old Cadillacs and Buicks could possibly have to do with Christopher Columbus, but the parade always had been a thematic and historical hodgepodge. I asked, “Do they still have those dumb fiberglass boats on wheels?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t be Columbus Day be without the three boats. And ask your brother if he wants to come along.”

“Joey?”

“Unless you have another brother…”

I gestured hesitantly, “I uh ..... I don’t know that he’d really want to go.”

“I see. Well ask him anyway.” she frowned. And now we could hear Grisha closing the distance to us, complaining to himself in a listless cadence, ‘It’s so far ........ It’s so far ........ It’s so far...’

“Okay. Sure,” I promised, although I didn't plan on twisting his arm if he said no.

“Because it’d be great if he did. It’ll be just like the old days when we all used to go together. You two kids, me, Jojo, Elizabeth, that old Russian bum-” she boomed, making sure Grisha heard this, “And oh, speak of the Devil! Hey Grish, you wanna go to the Eye-tie Festival in Trenton with us tomorrow?”

“I can’t,” he wheezed, struggling to catch his breath.

“Come on, it’ll be fun! And you know, Cosimo’s bakery will have their booth in Capitol Park. You always loved stopping there,” she coaxed, drawling seductively, “Cuccidata ........ crostata ........ can-nooooooli-”

“No Rosa, I really can’t. I have to work,” he panted. Then he laughed, surprised at having actually uttered these words.

Grisha’s bootleg video business really was the closest thing he’d had to a job in a long time. Goods coming in from Odessa; going out to less than reputable retailers and his flea-market customers. Money making the same trip in reverse. It all had to be kept on top of on a daily basis. Especially if his business partners were the sort who would suddenly go from being your best drinking buddies to your worst nightmare if anything was off on your end.

“Then we’ll miss you,” said Grandma, “I’ll drop by your shack on the way back with a cannoli or two.”

“Really?” he asked, more animated than he’d been all morning, “Thank you! I like cannolis!”

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We stood in the lobby watching him trundle off toward the tall glass windows of the entryway, muttering to himself, hesitating at the mouth of the big slowly-turning revolving door like it was a major challenge before stepping into it.

“See you later, Easy Money!”

“Take care Grisha,” I added, then turned to Grandma, “So, do you feel like lunch?”

“To be honest, no. After we got Francine settled down and put to bed at around one Birda heated up a pot of her Texas gumbo. I really made a pig out of myself,” she put her fist to her mouth like she was stifling a belch, “But I sure could go for some coffee right now.”

After that gluttonous fastfood breakfast I’d had I wasn’t at all hungry either, but I planned on having a more than substantial lunch anyway (Was this really such a smart thing I was doing? No, not really. But if Joey wouldn’t or couldn’t listen to reason about his tweeking he might respond to threats…) I said, “Coffee sounds good. Mostly I just needed to talk.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Just some stuff that’s been going on with me.”

She smiled warmly, pleased that I was seeking her help, glad that she was getting to be a grandma for me. “Anything you need to tell me, Honey.”

“Great. There’s a Starbucks over in the new wing,” I said, pointing out across the square of lawn with its big heart sculpture that sat between this ancient building and its more modern counterpart.

“God no!!!” she exploded, “I’m sick of hospitals! I’m here so often it’s like I’m living here. Hey, how about that coffee joint you were telling me about? The one with the computers.”

“Sure, let’s go there,” I said, “And I can e-mail Ricky, something else I forgot to do yesterday. You feel like walking? It isn’t far.”

As we were leaving---the giant spinning steel and glass X sweeping us outside---I glanced back at the lobby’s big television, checking to see if it was showing a Keystone Cops one-reeler or some other weird vintage comedy like it had so many times before, but it was the usual weekday fare; Mitzy Gladworth from Canoga Park asking to buy a vowel on WHEEL OF FORTUNE.

After the temperatures we’d had this past week today’s high-eighties just seemed pleasantly warm, although they still might have set a record for this date. Grandma faced into the sunlight and did her slow pranayama breathing thing: Out with the grim hospital air and Papa’s bummer attitude, in with the salubrious air of the outdoors. And twice more.

She opened her eyes, “So where is this place?”

“This way. I think...”

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I led her around the outside of the building, to a brick walkway with a railing that ran right along the top of the bluffs, overlooking the little neighborhood my internet café sat in. The walk dead-ended at a small patio in the old wing’s shadow, where a handful of hospital employees sat around, smoking guiltily.

“So we’re gonna rappel down on ropes?” joked Grandma, before she spotted the gap in the steel pipe railing, the concrete platform jutting out into the air on stout pilings. “Oh yeah, these…”

I remembered seeing the long stairway from down in the village below, meandering back and forth up the dirt face of the palisades, but hadn’t really been sure that this was where it would end up. Out on the landing we paused to take in the view.

“Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Mmmm,” I said, “Like a little model train layout. And all those nice trees, which you'd think would be bare at this time of year...”

The student village was a combination of the quaint and the carefree. Old timey white globe streetlights, funky boutiques, clapboard bungalows with lunatic circus paintjobs, the brick five story Mars Hotel that had housed generations of young Princetonian; its “Delmore Schwartz Slept Here” reputation attracting the more bohemian element from among the student body. Exactly the sort of place I had once pictured myself living in…

That is until I found out what a royal pain in the ass a lot of these self-described young bohemians could be. Wolf-howling drunkenly in the flat next door at 3:00 a.m.; desperate to prove their uniqueness, that they were possessed by some terrible burning genius beyond their control (and certainly beyond your comprehension), which exempted them from such tedious bourgeois notions as consideration for all us clueless people who comprised the great bulk of the world's population, and who had been put here just to annoy them with our terminal unhipness. Joey Nation.

I pointed out our destination among the tarpaper roofs and old brick rear walls of the shops along the main drag, “It’s that one. With the robot-coffee-pot thing on the roof...”

“It wouldn’t have made much sense to drive then. Probably would’ve took us longer to find a parking spot.”

“It’s not going to be much fun coming back up though,” I said as we started down.

“We won’t have to. You see that road there, behind the elementary school? Look where it goes.”

“Oh yeah,” I grinned, seeing how it went up a short hill right to Princeton Plainsboro’s lower parking lot. “So we can take your short cut back. That freight elevator up from that weird basement area.”

She nodded, “And going down these won’t be too bad. Looks like about five hundred steps.”

“Six hundred and thirty-three,” I announced. When she gawked at me, wondering how I came up with such an exact figure I pointed behind us. Somebody (probably a bohemian...) had used spray paint to paint a number the riser of every single step, using an assortment of whimsical fonts, switching at random to Roman numerals or binary blocks of ones and zeros.

Grandma whistled. “Then it’s a good thing we’re both in good shape.”

“Er, right. Good shape…”

For the umpteenth time this morning I reflected on this scheme of mine to coerce Joey into giving up drugs. How I would tell him that I’d begun eating like a pig, and planned to keep at it until he knocked it the fuck off and got sober.

It had seemed like a brilliant solution last night, in the heat of my anger at my thoughtless, irresponsible brother, as he jabbered on and on about his sucky teenage-alien movie. That he couldn’t continue to poison my body without there being serious repercussions to his body. Put that in your little glass pipe and smoke it!

But since then it had been dawning on me that this might not be such a keen idea after all. That if merely fucking up my bangs had felt as disheartening as it did, how much worse was intentionally turning myself into a porker going to be? In the short term I’d be hurting myself a lot more than him.

Not to mention that this strategy depended on him responding to my threats more or less rationally, out of a sense of self-preservation that I had no real evidence he possessed. He might counter my ultimatum by escalating his drug abuse, leaving me with a nice little heroin withdrawal to suffer through when we swapped back. Or hell, he might just scream “Blee Blee! Bloo Bloo!”, jump out the window and go flying home to Planet Bob! It was ridiculous to even try to second guess the big stunad...

But damn it, I had to do something! There had to be a way to influence a self-centered jerk like Joey, without going straight to the nuclear option; these Weapons of Ass Distortion…

At step 502 we reached at the first of the irregularly-spaced landing, turned and continued down the opposite way. Grandma rapped on the concrete railing, “I’d forgotten all about these stairs. The last time I was on them must’ve been before you were born. They were older than hell even back then…”

“I can believe that,” I said. The cliff face beneath them had seriously eroded, forming little caves and even bridges in places, though the odds of them collapsing right this morning seemed slim.

“468, 467, 466,” she counted absently under her breath, then glancing up caught sight of the shorts I was wearing. She tapped on one of the brass grommets along the hem, “I like these. Did you just get them?”

“I did these last night.”

“You made those?”

“If you want to call it that. They’re those same jeans that Joy brought. Hot as it’s been I’ve been wanting some shorts, and after he ripped the sleeves off my best long sleeved shirt I figured why not? And since I can’t sew worth a damn...”

“You hemmed them with your father’s grommet punch. Very ingenious. I like how you made a little design out of them. Maybe you could do the same thing for your brother’s shirt.”

I snorted, “I think he likes them all ragged looking. Trying to be 'Larry The Cable Guy' or some shit. I just hope he doesn’t go visit Papa like that. You know how Papa is: ‘Why they all trying to look like bums anymore?’”

“Oh, and speaking of your father. After that horror story you told me about your visit yesterday I was surprised to find him as coherent as he was.”

“You and me both!” I exclaimed. “Although he still did seem kind of confused there for a while. That business about the Bow Tie Killer. Yelling how that idiot jury was going to let him walk, when the guy’s been sitting on Death Row for the last five years. That sure put my heart in my mouth, thinking ‘Oh boy, here we go again!’”

“But he seemed to snap out of it quick enough. Like he suddenly realized what he was saying.”

“Or what about that crazy stuff about how it was your lousy cooking that put him in there? Stopping just short of accusing you of trying to poison him.”

“Not short enough, with that crack about Lucrezia Borgia. If that’s how he feels he can burn his own steaks when he gets home, it’s not like he doesn’t know how! Although I wouldn’t call that part crazy, exactly. Josepho’s always tended to take his accusations way past anything he really believes; never lets reality get in the way of a good insult. But at least he wasn’t throwing things and screaming about the Teletubbies coming out of the TV after him. That must’ve been awful!”

“It wasn’t something I’d care to go through again.”

She grinned crookedly, “Actually, you might not have to. I managed to sneak another look at his file today.”

“When was this?”

“When you were all trying to figure out what that weird noise was.”

“That was you?” I laughed. It had sounded like lobsters in tap shoes were crawling through the air conditioning ducts.

“I had to do something, that nurse was watching me like a hawk. I didn’t have time to do more than take a peek, but once again the doctor’s comments in that section in front were interesting. I think when you saw him he was in the middle of having some kind of reaction to his meds. There was something they’d put him on that the boss doctor---the one who just signs his entries with a big ‘H’---really tore into them for trying. They discontinued it, whatever it was.”

We were now level with the gleaming gold dome of the Eastern Orthodox Church, as we rounded the final landing to the last long flight of steps that led down to a tiny neglected-looking little park along the rim of an unpaved cul-de-sac. I said, “Let’s hope that all it was. And so how did Papa’s aura look? Could you tell anything from that?”

“Afraid not. My aura sight’s gone.”

“Gone?!”

“No biggie. At least I know what did it this time. When we had that emergency with Francine yesterday, before I decided to take her all the way into New York, I tried something on her. Sort of a mind meld I guess you could call it, you’d know what that is,” she teased, reminding me of the days when my father and I had shared a near-Trekkie devotion to both the original Star Trek and the “new” show with Captain Baldy. A time when I knew more than I’d care to admit about Romulans, Andorians and (Papa’s favorite) green Orion slave girls...

“But you’ll get it back, right?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, this has happened before. What ticks me off though is I was so damn close! In fact I did get through to her for a second. But then there was this ......... sort of a surge.”

“A surge?!!” I squeaked, picturing a blinding flash and her flying across the room with her hair on fire.

“A dizzy spell. A bunch of spooky laughter and some gory images of how I’m supposedly going to die here soon. I’m too sure!" she scoffed, "Like I’d ever be jay-walking at that time of night. And the next thing I knew I was sitting on the couch drinking a banana Slurpee.”

“Jesus, Grandma!”

“Just your typical demon flim-flam, like they all watch the same bad horror movies. But the main thing was that I was able to snap out of it. To get Francine the help she needed and then take half of her next shift as cantress, and do that okay,” she said, and grinned wickedly at my obvious unease. “So are you still sure you want to sign up as an apprentice witch?”

I thought about it. Nodded, “If I can help you to help Papa.”

“Well God bless you! But you already are a great help, you know that don’t you? Just by showing up there every day.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it sometimes. It’s like I sit through his name calling and then him and me just ignore each other while you guys talk.”

“But you might notice he didn’t order us not to bring you this time. He’s having to face that you’re part of this family, and his big-shot paterfamilias decrees aren’t law. So it’s good that you’re hanging in there.”

“I hope you’re right. I know the real Joy would’ve just said fuck it and quit a long time ago.”

“And you know what happens when Joy says that,” she said, “Those are the two most dangerous words in an addict’s vocabulary. ’Fuck it! I know what’ll happen if I do this, or take this stuff, but I don’t care. Everything’s just a big sick joke anyway, so fuck it!’ How’s Joey doing anyway?”

I didn’t answer at first. The last dozen steps took us down into a green shadowy space under the two elm trees that took up most of the tiny park. Stepping down onto the dirt trail to the street I told her, “I think you pretty well described it. Where he’s at.”

Grandma sucked air in between her teeth. “Oh dear! Do you have any proof?”

“Not really. But well yesterday he did the dishes, cleaned the sinks and counters and mopped the whole kitchen floor-”

“SWEET JESUS, NO!” she gasped, “That is not good! Just say the word and we’ll do it.”

“Do it?”

“Switch you back, of course.”

For some reason I hadn’t been expecting this. “You mean it? When?”

“I’m still a little out of whack from yesterday, but tomorrow. Monday at the very latest. It’d be one thing if you two just weren’t getting along, or didn’t like this or that about being swapped. But if his behavior means what we both think it does, it’s time to put an end to this little adventure.”

“Wow,” I said, “That’s fantastic!”

But why did prospects of going back to who I was suddenly not seem so fantastic?

.
~ || ~~ || ~~~ || ~~~~ || ~~~~~ || ~~~~ || ~~~ || ~~ || ~
.

It was a short walk from First Street to the Fourth Street business district. Already we were crossing the crunchy gravel parking lot toward the open rear door of CAFበGIGO.

“So you were saying you needed to talk?” asked Grandma.

“No, that's okay,” I shrugged.

“If it’s something personal we can sit out here,” she suggested, indicating the two vacant picnic tables next to the back entrance.

“Thanks, but we pretty much covered it all already.”

Actually there had been several things I’d been anxious to discuss with her. But with this sudden change of plans there didn’t seem to be much point to it. I had wanted her insights on the somewhat vain pleasure I was taking in the cute face that looked back at me from the mirror, while my male face---which I’d formerly regarded as tolerably handsome---had started looking goony and loutish to me. On the radical changes in both the focus and the emotional texture of my erotic fantasies. On how holding Jenny’s baby in Rivercrest Park yesterday had turned me into an inconsolable crying wreck. I’d wanted to know if these feelings were normal aspects of an intergender body-swap (“Don’t worry, that’s just your sister’s hypothalamus talking...”) or if they pointed to some weird anomalous thing that was altering me forever, feelings I would take back with me into my male form. But I had blown off this chance for a heart to heart with Grandma about the matter, since I’d be finding out soon enough if this was the case.

If it was, my friend Elsa and I would sure have a lot to talk about.

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.

When she saw who was entering Barbara the Barista called out cheerfully, “Hi Teddi!”

“Hey Barbara,” I replied. I wasn’t sure if you could technically call her a friend at this point, but she was one of the nicer people in my life right now and I was happy to see her.

There no line at the counter. There were only four other customers in here, who had each staked out a corner of the room. As we placed our order I introduced Barbara to Grandma, who surprised me by asking for her own internet station. “I need to check my e-mail…”

“You have an e-mail account?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she drawled languidly, doing Joan Crawford (or somebody like that) and flashing us a big silly self-important smile.

“I just never heard you mention it. Anything to do with computers…”

“Are you kidding? Why I’m a cybernetic wunderkind!” she sputtered, and launched into a story about her groundbreaking work on the UNIVAC series at Sperry Rand, under the auspices of “none other than Leslie Groves”, former head of the Manhattan Project, and some farfetched stuff about how her project started doing things it hadn’t been told to do, taking initiative, as if displaying signs of sentience.

Which was all fascinating, but I happened to know she’d been teaching fifth graders at PS 38 in Brooklyn during those years. Her Fuchsia-ness was on a roll:

“…and Al Gore may have invented the internet, but I invented Al Gore. Took me the better part of a year. Pity though, that I never managed to get the speech patterns quite human sounding, or get the stiffness out of his movements,” she frowned, doing a brief stilted robot dance. Barbara grinned and rolled her eyes at me, letting me know what a character she thought my grandma was.

“Say goodnight, Gracie,” I grunted as Barbara slid us our coffees to us and I led Grandma Rosa toward our computer stations. Which of course she did...

A minute later as I was reading the latest e-mail from my boyfriend (a funny tale about our dog Mike being terrorized by the neighbor’s cat, and a sniffle-inducing account of how our baby had been pining away for me, sleeping forlornly on top of my jacket-) Grandma cried out from the table beside me, “Wow! Five hundred pieces of spam! That’s gotta be a record!”

“When was the last time you checked it?”

“I remember it was snowing that day. Some time in April, I think,” she said, and still playing to her audience behind the counter yowled, “And Holy Crap! They all want to give me money! I’M RICH! I’M RICH!”

“April?!”

“Well I don’t play around on these things just for something to do ……. But you know that redheaded gal down in San Diego I was telling you about? Who helped us with that, uh, problem yesterday?” she lowered her voice, “She said she’d send me something that might help me get my aura sight back quicker. Ah, here it is…”

While she was printing it out, and then pouring over the pages of what looked like a combination recipe and calculus equation, I composed a response to Ricky, resorting to the laryngitis story for why I was still communicating only by e-mail, explaining that I’d been screaming my head off at last night’s Mets game. Which in truth I had forgotten all about…

Regretting my deception, I pushed SEND. And it seemed like such a flimsy lie too. Like anyone, I could get a bit vocal when watching sports on TV. But it would be pretty out of character for me to go so apeshit that I thrashed my vocal cords. Even if Mike Greznowski and some old friends had dragged me down to Jox Tavern to watch it over a few too many pitchers of beer; and even if the Mets had come from way behind (5-0 in the 7th, according to this morning’s paper…) to win this final game of the playoffs, and were now set to face Chicago in the World Series.

And after this I was all out of excuses for not phoning Ricky. My throat problem’s mysteriously lingering would scare the hell out of my hypochondriac-by-proxy boyfriend, who would rush me to the emergency room for a stubbed toe if I let him. And I couldn’t really keep having sisterly rampages or freak accidents destroy a succession of new telephones.

But luckily I wouldn’t be needing any new alibis. I’d soon be able to talk to Ricky in my own voice, and to hear his voice, which I missed terribly. Along with getting my body back from the fool who was wrecking it this made another gigantic reason why Grandma needed to swap us back as soon as possible. I’d be able to stop all this damned lying to him and put our relationship back on its foundation of scrupulous honesty. This would be a huge relief…

And yet I couldn’t deny the disappointment I felt over the immanent end of my adventure in womanhood. To return to Grandma’s trip-to-Japan analogy, one week just isn’t enough time to see an entire country. I hadn’t yet set eyes on Mt. Fujiyama. Or bought made-in-China native artifacts at the Ainu villages up in Hokkaido. Or rode on the bullet train, although that sounds kind of dirty in this context.

“Are you done, Baby?”

I turned to see that Grandma had logged out already and was standing there with her paper coffee cup in her hand. “You’ve been staring at that exit sign for five minutes, it seemed like you were done. But if not I can go fool around in that hippie head shop across the street, the organic bakery next to it.”

“Naw, I’m good,” I said, hitting the DONE button and sliding my chair back. I might have liked to surf around a bit, perusing blogs and webcomics, hoping to get a response from Ricky, but he’d be at work for another four hours so this wasn’t likely. We said our goodbyes to Barbara and left.

.
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.

Out on the sidewalk, heading down the row of shops I confessed my regrets about being swapped back to Grandma. That I knew this was for the best, but…

“It’s funny. I was so pissed off at you when you put that spell on us. ‘How dare you! You have no right-’ and all that. And intellectually I still think it’s wrong, the fact that you didn’t ask us. But somewhere in the past few days I’ve turned a corner, to where I can’t feel too mad about it. It’s not like you ever planned to make this permanent, and except for the part about Papa being sick, and being Papa, and Joy being Joey, I have to admit it’s been fun. A fun week. And educational too, with all sorts of insights I never would’ve had. And I guess this change in plans just caught me by surprise. You’d sounded so set on that whole ‘You’re staying like this until the thirty-first!’ thing, and from my past experience with you, and how, uh...... intractable you can be-”

“That’s one word for it!” she laughed.

“-that I guess I’d gotten used to the idea. And just as I was starting to get into this, looking forward to whatever other little discoveries might be waiting around the next corner ...... Oh well, c’est la vie huh?”

“Exactly. We have to be flexible about things. Life is quicksilver, and none of us knows how long we’ll have for any endeavor. And really, there’s never any shortage of educational experiences, if you know how to look.”

“Or of fun,” I smiled, and pointed. The shop we were passing sold furniture for kids that resembled cars and rocket ships and different animals. An adorable little boy and girl of about seven were having a blast in there, climbing all over an enormous bean bag couch in the shape of an orca whale, while their mom tried to interest them in the smaller, more reasonably priced zebras and fluffy sheep...

“Yeah, fun. It's a shame when people's imaginations get so atrophied they think they have to take something just to have fun. Joey’s using was always the one contingency that would make me de-transcorporate you two. I’d decided that even before I finished that spell I used on you. I was hoping the novelty of being a male would be enough of an ‘altered reality’ for him for a while. But it wasn’t, so it wouldn’t be fair to you to continue this. If Joy wants to risk her neck, let it be her own neck…”

I said glumly. “So that’s it, huh? We just wash our hands of her and let her go on risking her neck? Destroying herself like she’s doing?”

“I’ve tried talking to her every way I know how. We all have. There’s really not much else anyone can do, other than to try and make sure she doesn't drag you down with her.”

“God, I hate this! You just know that as soon as she gets her body back she’s just going to take off again, go do her thing. The same old bullshit, with us all wondering where she is and what kind of nonsense she’s up to, and with God knows what kind of people…”

Seeing I needed it, she grabbed me in one of her patented Grandma hugs. Said softly into my ear, “Listen. I’ve seen people far worse off than her have turned their life around. So there’s still hope. What we can do is just let her know we’re here to help if she ever wants it, and keep our own houses in order so we’ll be ready when she does. Also, even if you don’t believe in it, it never hurts to pray.”

“Okay, I will,” I sighed wearily, but just like in the park yesterday after Papa flipped out, praying didn’t seem like doing much of anything. I said,“Damn it, Grandma! You can do all this magic, put lobsters in the ceiling, isn’t there anything you can do?”

“GET A ROOM!” hooted some beefy-faced frat boy from the window of a passing car, his friends all laughing maniacally. I pulled myself out of the hug to violently flip them the bird. Grandma joined me.

“What the hell’s the matter with people?!” I spat.

“You don’t want to know,” she said darkly, a haunted look crossing her face, then brightened, “What you can do for Joey is to really try and talk him into going to Trenton with us tomorrow. I’ll check him out, and you and me we’ll try to figure out something before I change you back, which if we can’t will probably be tomorrow night...”

“I’ll do that, Nonna,” I said. When I had promised to ask him earlier I'd intended to do it, but in a way that emphasized what an unhappening waste of time our corny old grandmother was trying to rope us into and how bored we'd be. But now I would try in ernest.

An idea came to her, “In fact, tell him I’ve got some money I want to give him. But we have to stop by the ATM.”

“Oh, that’ll make it a snap. He’ll want to go for sure then.”

.
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.

As we passed the vintage clothing shop POSITIVELY 4TH STREET I was happy to see that my black skirt still on display in the window.

Well not “my” skirt obviously---I had never seriously intended to buy it---but there was no denying I’d fallen in love with it. Not being as leggy as the aloofly pouting mannequin it hung on, I estimated that on me it would be a bit longer than knee length. Or on average that is, since the hem wasn’t uniform. Where the top part was some synthetic with the lustre of silk, the whole bottom half of was crenulated into what looked like black flower petals. And all the petals were made of lace, which I realized was what drew me to it.

I'd always had a thing for lace; ever since as a kid I’d developed a fascination with the tablecloth that still covered our dining room table. The material’s intricacy; the wide variety of patterns it came in, with their histories and regional variations; the way the sunlight looked pouring through it, like those lace curtains I'd hung in our apartment back in Centerville. But despite my lifelong appreciation of lace I'd never pictured myself wearing it until now. And if I’d still been male when I first spotted this skirt I can guarantee that I wouldn’t have imagined myself shimmying into it, but either would have speculated on who I could give it to as a gift, or wondered what I might convert it into besides an article of clothing. That anything lace would have looked absurd on me was such an incontrovertible fact that I couldn’t even lament it. This was just how it was.

And now that I had more latitude to wear these sorts of things, this particular item was still a bit exotic for my taste. Costumy, more like something Joy would wear than anything I could see myself in. But damn it, it was so pretty!

“You like that?” asked Grandma.

“Yeah, kind of…”

“Kind of,” she chuckled, “Like you were ‘kind of’ drooling. Come on, I’ll buy it for you.”

“What? NO!” I cried out.

“Why not?”

“I think it would be pretty obvious why not. We were just talking about it. What we’re doing tomorrow.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Did you see the price tag? It’d be pointless to spend eighty bucks just for one day.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got lots of money,” she smiled, pulling the door of the shop open for us, “And if it’s one day that’s all the more reason to do this. Something nice for your last day as a girl. Besides, we might not be able to swap you back until Monday, so that’s twenty six bucks a day. You spent your own money renting that rug shampooer, didn’t you? And your labor…”

“But it needed it.”

“And you need this. Come on, once in a while it’s okay to buy something just because it’ll make you feel good. Which I don’t think you’ve ever really done. You’re so methodical, everything for a purpose.”

“Sure I have.”

“When?”

“Like that shirt Joey wrecked.”

“And did it make you feel pretty?” she asked, drawing out the word the way she’d tried to coax Grisha to the festival with Italian pastries.

“No, but I liked it. It looked, I don’t know ……. sharp.”

“Ouch, sounds painful! Come on, you’ll look darling in this. Just like a little flower,” she insisted, then pouted, “Don’t’cha wanna be a pwiddy flower for Gwamma?”

“Now you’re being stupid.”

“No you’re being stupid, thinking you’re going to win on this. I’m intractable, remember?” she pointed at it, “Look, it would even go with your top there. You’ll look like a gypsy. Like Carmen. And I know how you love Carmen! Come on, I want to buy you a Granddaughter gift while you’re still my Granddaughter. Please?”

How could I resist? “If you put it that way, then sure. Thank you Grandma!”

.
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.

When we emerged I had the skirt on, my shorts stuffed into my big red purse. I couldn’t seem to bring myself to change back out of it after trying it on in the dressing room. It buttoned up the side with three rows of tiny snaps, in a way that I could have been a bit bigger or a bit smaller and it still would’ve fit. Being that it was in like-new condition and ten years older than I was, it really was worth every penny of the $80.

“Thanks again, I love it!”

Even though it was black, its airy construction and lightweight fabric should keep me fairly cool in it tomorrow, when the temperature was supposed to shoot back up into the 90’s. Grandma stepped back and rotated her finger, “Twirl for me!”

My resistance to this lasted about a nanosecond. This skirt pretty much demanded to be twirled in, having been designed for the female dancers in the short-lived (and unlamented) Broadway musical OH CATALONIA, based on Orwell’s Spanish Civil War memoirs. I grinned and spun for her.

“Bella, bella, fiorella!” she warbled joyously, “Oh that’s perfect on you!”

I don’t know that I felt like a flower, but the way it cascaded down my hips and rustled and swirled when I moved I was definitely some kind of foliage. And it really did go with my sandals and this aqua tank top, which I would wash so I could wear this ensemble to Columbus Day Tomorrow. I could be one of Ferdinand and Isabella’s deported Gypsies...

We reached the end of the business district and turned at the old school, a sparsely developed little residential street. There was a hill a block or so ahead of us, steep but short, to where the various private clinics and labs surrounding the hospital started.

I glanced at the little watch I’d bought at Raji’s liquor store, “So what time’s your shift today, chanting Papa’s healing spell?”

“Four to midnight. Don’t worry, we have plenty of time.”

“How is that going, anyway? Is there any way to tell?”

“There really isn’t. When it works, it tends to be all at once. Which can be really dramatic, since it doesn’t seem to matter how sick they were, leaving the doctors wondering how it happened. Something just clicks, and then they’re up and out of bed and wanting to get back to their life.”

“Be nice if it happened today.”

Grandma yawned, “Wouldn’t it though?”

“Actually he seems like he’s doing better. The way he was able to cuss us all out like that without going into one of his coughing fits. As obnoxious as it was, that has to be a good sign.”

“I noticed that. He did seem stronger. I think his color might be a little better too.”

“Although Grisha sure was in rough shape today, wasn’t he? Like he hardly knew what was going on, and how out of breath he was even when he was sitting. Kind of scary…”

She shrugged, “You’ve seen your Uncle Grisha hung over before. I’m sure he’ll be fine!”

.
Which was about as wrong as she had ever been about anything…
.

,
To be continued . . .