PLAY . . NICE!
LAIKA PUPKINO ~ 2008
PART THREE: VISITING HOURS

My father was in the hospital with- well they weren't sure what he had. Grandma, Joy and I all hopped in my truck to go visit him. Under ordinary circumstances I would be driving, but our circumstances were far from ordinary. I had been magically "transcorporated" into the 5'4" body of my sister, a less than upstanding citizen whose driver's license had been revoked. Joy now towered over me in my body; and while he was in physical possession of my license, this truck would have to be fitted with snow tires before he could drive it. On that cold day in Hell...

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||| SATURDAY OCTOBER 4 (still) ~~~
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We were on Albert Einstein Blvd. in my big pickup truck with double rear wheels, headed for the hospital at the edge of the Princeton University campus. Thanks to the magic spell our grandmother had put on us, my sister Joy and I were now in each other's bodies, and carrying each other's identification. Which in my case meant no valid drivers license. And like I said, there was just no way I was letting Joy get behind the wheel. So by default our tiny white haired Grandma Rosa was driving, and she was enjoying herself immensely.

"Wow! I haven't driven a tank since Operation Just Because."

I started to laugh at the mental image this evoked. Grandma standing in some tank's hatch in a flack vest and this same fuchsia campaign hat she had on, pointing resolutely- like that famous painting of Patton crossing the Rhine. As my head tilted back I caught sight of myself in the big center-mounted rearview mirror.

And oh GOD did I look like shit!

Since my transformation on the previous evening, mirrors had become a strange experience for me. Seeing my every gesture and eyeblink mimicked by someone who couldn't possibly be me---and yet evidently was---affected my brain like some bizarre optical illusion. It was disorienting, and except for when I brushed my teeth this morning, I had pretty much managed to avoid them. But for the next eight miles I was stuck here with this one directly in front of me.

In the day's unforgiving brightness, with my hair all pulled back, every flaw stood out in ghastly detail. Parsimonious little worm lips, the flesh puffy around my dull washed-out eyes, and a complexion that seemed not so much mediterranean as subterranean- unhealthy and prematurely aged. Joy hadn't looked this wrecked the night before, and I didn't feel sick...

Then it dawned on me what the problem was. Generally I had tended to never think about makeup. While I knew there were cosmetic products for males (euphemistically marketed as "corrective cosmetics"), which some of my gay and metrosexual friends used, my face at 33 years old just hadn't seemed to need correcting. But while Joy's features were fair and pleasingly arranged, she was not one not one of those women who looked "healthy" and "fresh" without her war paint on. I would need start experimenting within all those little tubes and bottles and plastic compacts scattered all over the bathroom. I wouldn't have to trowel it on like Joy did, but could stop when I looked more or less human.

I studied Grandma Rosa as she drove, looking at her perhaps for the first time not as my Grandma but as a woman. Yes her eyebrows were shaped, she was wearing makeup, a muted shade of lipstick, all in a manner that echoed my less-is-more sentiments. Something told me she would get a kick out of teaching me this stuff; a chance to spend more "girl time" with her favorite new granddaughter. And Hell, why not? It was just until the end of the month, and it's not like I was in any danger of going native...

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We inched through the heavy traffic along Dealership Row, strings of triangular plastic pennants hanging limply above the rows of cars, the glare pouring off the windshields making their prices nearly unreadable. Off in the distance we could see the college, the great carillion poking up like a castle...

"Now please," she said, "When we see your father, I would really appreciate it if you didn't tell him what I did to you. He doesn't need the excitement, hearing about all this magic guff."

"Are you saying he doesn't even know you're a witch?" I asked.

"I tried to tell him. It didn't go over well at all, with his staunch Catholicism."

"But he isn't one. Not anymore..."

"He says he isn't. And I know he wishes it was true. But he didn't lose his belief in God, just his trust in Him. He still thinks there's a God up there, but He's a sick, psychotic torturing bastard!"

"I can't blame him for being bitter. Mom was the last person who deserved to die young like that."

"I know. I know," said Grandma wearily. "They talk about 'part of you dying' from that kind of grief. This shows how true that is."

"But that didn't happen to you when Grandpa Enrico died. Did it?"

"I was lucky. I had other .......... perspectives on life and death to draw on. Also I had such wonderful friends to nurse me through my grief. I basically just fell apart, and they were right there for me. Some of it's pretty hazy, but I think they even spoon fed me at one point. But your father, he's never exactly been a social animal. He keeps it together when things get really rough like that by pulling inward, to a 'defensible position' I guess you'd call it. Not a wise strategy in the long run. And now he's facing this, whatever he's got, and it looks bad. So please, just pretend to be each other. In the state he's in he won't feel much like talking anyway."

"So what you want us to do is lie," said Joy, his voice thick with indignation.

Grandma's mouth fell open and she burst out laughing. When she recovered she shook her head, "I'm sorry Joy, that was so rude of me. But hearing you suddenly so concerned about telling the truth, after all your 'Don't tell Dad this' and 'Don't tell Teddy that'; it was unexpected."

"Don't tell me what?" I asked. They both looked away. Oh well, I suppose a confidence is a confidence...

Grandma found Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant's Song" on the radio and started whaaa-aaaahing along, emphatically bobbing her head to the frenetic drumbeat. Joy went into a sulk. Crossing his arms one way then the other---as if unsure of how they should sit against his bosomless chest---and pouting like the big doofus older brother on Everybody Loves Raymond.

What a Doofus Face! Surreptitiously I stuck my thumb out rigidly from my fist and jabbed him in the thigh really hard with my strong thumbnail.

"Quit it!" he hissed, and poked me back.

I poked him back even harder.

Joy jabbed me in the soft side of my tit, his bony fingertip colliding with one of my ribs. Son of a bitch, that hurt! His sadistic grin told me he knew just how painful this would be. Well two can play that game.

I was about to spank his balls when Grandma drawled, never taking her eyes off the road ahead, "You know, I have an age regression spell written down in my little cookbook. I've never tried it, but if you want to act like kindergartners I think I can fix it so you can do that without looking like a pair of immature fools."

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A man on the radio said that this part of New Jersey would be reaching a hundred and one today, which with our humidity would be utterly suffocating. I wondered if Ricky was enjoying his day off back home, the fall colors and low 70's. He would be wondering why I haven't called him yet.

"So I understand why we're not supposed to tell Dad. But would it be okay to tell my boyfriend?"

"Are you talking about Ricky? The one I met when I visited last year?

I nodded.

"He's nice, he really made me feel at home. You could tell him, or anyone else you want. I mean technically. Civilians aren't bound by the practitioner's Seven Oaths."

"Great! Although this is gonna be strange."

"Strange doesn't even begin to describe it. I'm warning you, think long and hard about this. And if you do decide to do it expect the worst. 90% of the time they won't even start to listen, and you never get to the part where you tell them all the secrets and little in-jokes that only you and they would know, the way they do in the movies. It can feel awful, when it's somebody you love, who you were sure would just know somehow, and they're being horrible, ugly, even threatening you! It can make you doubt if you ever had anything special with them in the first place..."

"That bad, huh?"

"Unless the other party believes firmly in magic, and from my week with you I'd say Ricky doesn't. It looks like you managed to fall in love with someone whose even squarer and more spiritually occluded than you are. My advise is to write to him a letter, or- what do you call it? Text message him."

"Damn! I knew there was something I forgot. My cell phone, it's still sitting in the recharger at home."

"Well if you can wait until Monday the library has nice computers you can use for free."

"I'll have to do that then. But it'll be hard to explain why I waited so long."

"Tell him-" she stomped down on the gas as the traffic light ahead of us began to change. It wasn't what I would have done, but she got us through the intersection with yellow to spare. "Tell him you've joined your crazy grandmother's cult and have taken a vow of silence. Just about anything you could say would cause less problems than calling him up like you are now and trying to bring him into our adventure here."

Joy snorted sullenly, "Some adventure."

"But it is, child! A huge adventure. You've got these rich thrill seekers shelling out millions to go sit in a can in space for a few days, to experience something only a couple hundred people have ever done. Our club may not be quite as exclusive, but the ride is a hell of a lot more interesting."

"You've got to be joking."

"You mean you were never curious about how the other sex goes through life?"

"No, and I don't want to be a dog and lick my own butt either. I already know everything I need to know about men. They're assholes! No matter what you think about some guy at first, it's just a matter of time. One week at his place, I asked Lester, but he 'really needs his own space'. Well he's getting it from me now. I wish I was a fuckin' lesbian, but no such luck..."

"There's a word for people who make careless generalizations about some huge segment of the population that all only has one thing in common. There are all kinds of guys in the world. Good, bad ........ I hope your experiences this month will teach you to empathize with men a bit more."

"Don't hold your breath. I'm not learning a damn thing!"

"How can you possibly predict what you will learn or won't?" tittered Grandma.

"Oh I can. I'm making a point of it."

"That's a strange ambition, and I'm not convinced it's even possible. You get input, make connections; it's mostly an autonomic process-"

Joy exploded, "Oh yeah? Fuck you and your possible! Fuck your Mumbo Jumbo Rebar Rebar and your 'life is just a box of chocolates'! Where the hell do you get off trying to give me lessons? You talk so spiritual, but you can turn it all around and justify doing this to someone. It's a violation of my First Amendment ....... my Fourteenth- Okay I don't know which right it is but you can't do this to people! So fuck you, you old phony. And fuck your stupid hat!"

"Hey! Show a little respect," I snapped.

"I respect my elders when they deserve it."

"Did I say elders? Try being a human being, why don't you?"

He glared at me, "Well of course you're gonna stick up for her. I'm sure you think this is great, bein' a faggot and all. You'll probably try and run off with my body."

"You wanna swap back? I'm ready, right now. Come on Grandma, do it!"

"Don't even lie to me, Bitch! I saw you two in the kitchen, Miss Princess-Teddi-With-An-I. Nobody ever crowned me a princess! This is your dream come true, isn't it? Wheeeeee I'm a girlie, I got THREE holes now! Oooooh fuck me! Fuck me!! Fuck me!! Fuck me!! Fuck me!!" bellowed Joy at the top of his lungs. (The old folks in the tour bus travelling alongside us jabbered and pointed at the big crazy poofter jumping up and down in his seat in a frenzy of imaginary self-impalement.)

How do you even start to debate ill-informed crap like this? All I could do was groan, "My God you're ignorant."

He stuck his chin out, "You're darn tootin'! And I refuse to learn anything that someone as corrupt as her wants to teach me."

"Corrupt? Ouch! That's a pretty strong word. Couldn't I just be misguided?"

"This isn't funny, Grandma. How would you feel if you got turned into a guy?"

"And what makes you think I wasn't?"

Joy and I gasped in unison, "You're shittin' me."

Grandma Rosa raised her hand in a three-fingered salute. Scout's honor.

"That's awful! Who did it to you?" asked Joy.

"Nobody. We traded voluntarily. From one Summer Solstice to the next. It wasn't entirely without problems, but- Hang on," she said, and yanked the wheel hard to the right, swinging us into the landscaped entryway of a parking lot and stopping next to a boxlike device on a post. She reached out to push the machine's big red button, tore off the paper ticket that it extruded, and---as the black and white striped barrier rose---drove through. She drove us down the end of the crowded lot, looking up each row for what might be a vacant parking space.

"Wow," I said, "I've got to hear about this."

"Yes, I believe you do. Remind me later, and I'll tell you kids all about my year as Cyrus McMahon. But right now we're visiting your father. And we're all going to behave ourselves, aren't we?"

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Joy helped Grandma out of the truck. The Princeton Plainsboro Hospital complex loomed over us. On our left stood the original building, six stories of imposing ivy-shrouded limestone- about as close to medieval architecture as you'll find in the USA. The circa-1980 "new building" on the right was almost the exact same size and shape, but there was something a bit playful in how it mimicked the old pile's lines, its tall steepled roofs. Less ponderous---and with a whole lot more windows---it seemed a more hopeful place to be hospitalized. But we were heading toward the spooky building.

"I know a shortcut," said Grandma, "This way."

She lead us around a chain link enclosure full of big noisy air-intake units, and in through a nondescript glass door, that led into a forgotten looking hallway cluttered with disused equipment. Old fashioned blackboards in wooden frames, stacks of folding chairs, a file cabinet missing one of its drawers, and what was either an iron lung or a time machine. There wasn't a soul around, or even the sound of anyone off in the distance.

"Are you sure we're supposed to be here?" asked Joy nervously.

But then a groaning elevator took us up to the next floor, the doors opened, and suddenly it was rush hour- a solid wall of milling people. And it was particularly unsettling that every one of them was taller than me.

Grandma---my fellow pygmy in this land of basketball stars---saw me hesitating. "Come on! They don't bite."

My first twelve hours as a woman had been spent in a familiar old house with familiar people. Whatever my problems with Joy, he was known and fairly predictable to me. This was my first exposure to strangers in my new form, and there sure was a shitload of them! I was beset by powerful anxieties, of the sort I imagined a transvestite would feel as he took his first trip out his front door as Deanna or Melody; only without whatever erotic thrill or sense of accomplishment the cross-dresser would get from showing the world his female side. I kept imagining that somebody was going to suddenly start hollaring; sounding the alarm that I wasn't really a girl.

Which was just stupid, because it was more likely that anyone yelling such a thing in this place of succor and caring would find himself censured than for anything bad to happen to me. Also, with this "drag" I was in extending clear down to the meat on my bones there was no chance of my being discovered as anything other than some pale, neurotic chick. But the thing about irrational fears is, they're not rational. And I could see in Joy's eyes that he was experiencing much the same thing. His posture was hunched, uncertain, like he was desperate to not be noticed. We were a gender-swapped Hansel and Gretel wandering through the mean-looking trees in the gloom. We stuck close to Grandma.

Up a more normal looking elevator to the fifth floor, then following the arrow shaped signs to rooms #500-550. Narrow halls with cloudscape linoleum, drinking fountains like tall porcelin birdbaths, and ceiling lights behind antique frosted glass fixtures. The wiring conduits and air-conditioning ducts were all exposed, bracketted to the plaster surfaces- not like some architect's deconstructionist gimmick but as if this building predated them. These self-assured nurses in their carnival-colored scrubs and cute pixie haircuts looked decidedly out of place here...

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He looked up when we entered the room. Dully, like he wasn't sure we were really there.

"Hello Jojo. Look who I found lurking out in the parking lot!"

Dad looked from me to Joy and back in confusion."Really? Why were they- Oh. You're joking. Hello Teodoro and ......... Joy. You came all this way, that's ............ I'm glad. It's so boring here. That damn television..."

"Of course we came," smiled Joy, "You're our father."

His voice was hoarse, little more than a whisper, "I guess I am. I mean of course I am. I- Sorry, I was kind of asleep here."

"If you want we can come back later," Grandma said.

"Hell no! All I been doing is sleeping. This is what? Friday already?"

"It's Saturday," I said. "Saturday morning."

"You sure?" He turned stiffly to try see out the narrow window, the view of an identical window set in a brick wall twelve feet away, in what was evidently a light-well.

He pressed the button that raised his bed, and struggled to lean forward as he kissed Grandma and then me on the cheek. The kiss I got was a loud phony smacking air-kiss at least an inch from my cheek. I thought he must be worried about contagion, but after he kissed Joy he dug a hair out of his mouth, grimacing, "Yuck! What is this shit all over your face?"

"You've seen my beard," said Joy, "I've had this for ...... What? Ten years?"

He seemed to be waking up now. "Well it makes you look like a damn bindlestiff. I always figured a guy who wears a beard has a weak chin, something he's tryin' to hide. But you don't. So what's with the Grizzly Adams bit?"

Joy rubbed his cheek, "Honestly, I'm about done with it. I'm thinking of shaving it off."

"Don't you dare!"

Papa looked at me like I was some weird kind of bug he'd never seen before, then smirked, "It figures she would like it. Anything pazzo like that. So you see what I'm sayin'?"

"I know," agreed the counterfeit Teodoro, "It's sad to see an adult still thinks she's a teenager. Plus, you know how women are. Going along like sheep with whatever some damn magazine tells them 'the latest thing' is. They have them conditioned, to keep buying crap they don't need."

Joy was parroting something our dad said all the time back to him, almost word for word. I was sure that the old man would notice such shameless sucking up, but he just nodded, "Y'got that right..."

He went to grab the little sippy cup on the narrow table that jutted out over the bed, but it was just out of reach. Rather than let us see what a struggle it would be for him to lean forward, he pretended to lose interested in it. But the longing in his eyes betrayed him.

He made a "stop fussing over me" face as Grandma handed it to him, then drank it all down in two greedy pulls. She refilled it from the sink and set it on the table, which she positioned where he could get to it. He shrugged resignedly, finally returning the tender loving smile she was giving him.

He looked terrible! I was whining a few pages back about my own anemic appearance, but this was the real thing. Greenish, his alarmingly bloodshot eyes bracketted by two great black shiners, as if he'd been worked over by the ambulance attendants on the way here. A slender air hose was looped around his head, its two little upturned spouts not quite inside his nostrils. I hadn't seen him in six years, so I couldn't say how much of his weight loss was from this illness, but he seemed gaunt, ropy, wasted away...

Was he really going to die? I imagined the three of us at his house, having to sort through all his personal belongings, just as we'd helped him do with Mom's stuff. Keeping this item, shitcanning that one; the growing pile of things to be donated to the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which Joy kept yanking stuff out of to add to "her" pile, deciding that she really needed this, and this, and this. A wearying little scene out of one of those grimly pessimistic indie films about dysfunctional families.

There was a curtain across the left half of the room. Joy pointed, "What's that?"

"That's Jesus," said Dad, pronouncing the Hispanic name with a hard G sound, like it was the Son of God back there, something he always thought was a riot to do. He said, in as much of a shout as he could muster, "Hey Jesus, you alive over there?"

Silence.

"Just as well. That man's shit, you never smelled anything smelled so bad in your life."

It was quiet for a while. Grandma was looking through a manila folder with about twenty pages in it, thin paper in institutional pastels- pink, yellow, green. She frowned, "So no solid food, huh?"

"Not so far. I get real hungry, but nothing stays down," Papa said. He fingered the clear plastic tube trailing up from the spike in his arm, "They're feeding me this stuff. So what's it say, Ma? Or do I even want to know?"

She flipped the pages, scanning them, "You're definitely a puzzle to them. Your vitals have been all over the place at different times, and they've got this list of about fifteen different things they think it could be. Three different doctors have looked at you, they're pretty much arguing back and forth in here. Their handwriting shows intelligence, competence, and---especially this one here, who's probably the head honcho doctor---massive arrogance. But they're really stymied about you. I see a lot of tests in your future."

"Oh Joy."

"Would people stop saying that like that?" whined Joy.

This drew a puzzled look from Papa, but then he shrugged. He asked Joy if he'd seen the Mets game last night.

"I, uh .......... I didn't catch it. I was driving all day and I was tired."

"Too tired too sit and watch a ball game?"

"Teddy was pretty beat last night," I told him. "But I saw most of it. The Mets won."

He rolled his eyes, irritated by my interruption, "That's lovely."

"They came from behind. It was 5 to 1 in the third inning, when I tuned in. They tied it up by the seventh, and in the eighth the Dodgers put in that new pitcher, Chavez. He's like a machine, I swear; the control he has over each pitch! Fast too. He was striking them out left and right, but the Mets finally got an RBI in the ninth. In the bottom of the ninth LA had a guy on third, Nateson I think, but they never did tie it back up. And now we're that much closer to the series!"

"That's lovely," he repeated, in the same exact voice as before. Why was he being such a DICK?!

There was a reason that even during the recent "good" phase of my relationship with this man my phone conversations with him had been infrequent, and rather superficial, and actual visits even more so. Because when it wasn't good, well it was not good. I was about to be reminded of just how bad "not good" could get...

Grandma Rosa looked from me to Papa, and made a decision. She grabbed Joy's arm, ordering cheerfully, "Teddy Dear, why don't we go down to the gift shop?"

"Gift shop? What the hell for? Oh, I mean yeah. Giftshop."

As they started to leave a middle-aged nurse came in and angrily yanked the manila file out of Grandma's hand, "Where did you get this?"

"It was laying right there on the table."

"Really? Even though we had it locked in a cabinet at the nurse's station."

"Well if it was here then obviously it wasn't, was it?" wheezed Dad indignantly. The nurse stood, sizing us all up. Decided we were honest respectable folk.

"Oh that Janice, I'll murder her!"she growled, and stormed off to go murder Janice.

We all looked at Grandma, who asked defensively, "What?"

Then she and Joy split, leaving me there. A lamb on the killing floor...

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To be continued...
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