The Diner

By Asche

Copyright 2016

My friends had all decided to go to the diner, the one we always go to, and I was tagging along. We found a wide booth and squeezed in, three to a side, even though it was really only supposed to hold two. It was cozy with Ben and Jenny on one side and the wall on the other. It felt nice to be included. I sat there and listened as Ben and Jenny flirted with one another and the guys on the other side talked about sports, a topic I didn't know much about and wasn't all that interested in anyway.

We saw what we thought was the waitress come over to our table, but instead it was a woman about my height in a white pants suit, and instead of dealing out menus and asking us what we wanted to drink, she said, "Adam? Please come with me." She looked right at me, so she knew who I was. Ben and Jenny silently slid out to let me out of the booth and then slid back in.

Once I was out of the booth, I got a better look at her. She had thick black hair that billowed out around her face and short bangs that left most of her forehead exposed. The suit jacket had really wide lapels, in sort of an exaggerated disco style, and the pants had big hips. She had tiny silvery things in her ears, probably studs, and a thin silver bracelet on her left wrist.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

She gave me a tired smile and said, "no, if anything, the opposite. Please come along, we don't have time to waste." She turned and walked away from the table and I had to hustle to catch up.

I wondered what this was all about. As far as I could remember, my life was quite unremarkable and unmemorable. I'd never done anything particularly bad, but I hadn't done anything particularly good, either. I didn't think I'd made much of an impression on anyone and sometimes wondered if anyone would notice if I simply vanished. Indeed, none of the friends I'd come to the diner with had seemed to pay any attention to my being led off by some strange woman, leaving me with the suspicion that by now they no longer even remembered me coming in the first place.

As I finished thinking this, I looked around and saw we weren't in the diner any more. Indeed, I wasn't sure we were anywhere at all. We were walking side by side through an endless grayness. It didn't seem like a grayness that was hiding anything so much of an absence of anything. I tried to see if I could see anything through the grayness and I started to see vague outlines of houses, trees, lampposts. But when I relaxed, they faded back into the uniform gray. As an experiment, I tried to see mountains and chalets and after a while I thought I could see them, instead.

"Where are you taking me?" I asked.

"It's hard to explain. You'll see." She said nothing more and I had the distinct impression that that was as much of an explanation as I was going to get.

I remembered a story I'd read recently where a kind of 'enforcer' finds a lost girl and comforts her and holds her and gets her to feel safe and relaxed. And then breaks her neck. I had the impression you were supposed to see it as a mercy killing, but instead it had if anything simply reinforced my fear and distrust of the kindness of strangers. I felt like crying.

"Am I -- am I going to die? Is that where you're taking me?"

"We all die, sooner or later," she said, not breaking her stride or even turning her head. "But that's not where I'm taking you. Don't worry." I wasn't exactly reassured, but I couldn't think of anything to say to that. We continued walking.

After a while, I began to feel a little uncomfortable about the silence. I thought I should try to strike up a conversation.

"What's your name?" I asked. "What should I call you?"

She stopped and faced me. "What would you like to call me?" She was looking at me like she was seeing me more than anyone ever had before. It was unsettling. It took me a while to find an answer.

"You remind me of Diane Keaton in Annie Hall. Could I call you Annie?"

She gave me the first full-hearted smile I'd seen so far. "I would like that," she said and stroked the back of my head. I noticed that she was at least a head taller than me now and I had to look sharply upward to see her face. She took my hand and we resumed walking.

"My mother's name was Anne. Not Annie, though."

"I know. But I'm not your mother."

The featureless gray void around us and the featureless gray floor, or ground, or whatever it was, never changed. It began to get to me. I looked at where we were going and even turned around to see where we'd come from. It all looked alike wherever I looked. I started to worry that we were walking in circles, or perhaps walking in place, like Marcel Marceau.

"I can't see where we're going. Are you sure this is the right way? I'm afraid we're lost."

"No, we're not lost. I know the way. You don't need to see it, you just need to come with me."

"But how will we get back to the diner? Do you know the way back?"

"I don't need to. We won't be going back."

"I'm scared," I said. I hadn't planned to say anything, it just popped out. My voice sounded high and whiny.

She turned to me and pulled me to her. I buried my face in her stomach and sniffled. She caressed my head and shoulders and toussled my thin, wispy hair. "I understand you're scared. But, really, it's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. I'll be with you the whole time."

It took me a while, but I stopped crying and we went on, her holding my hand. Her steps were shorter than before, more like strolling than the purposeful strides we'd made when we started, but I was still having to hustle to keep up with her, and when I couldn't, she'd look down and slow down for me to catch up. My legs looked awfully short to me and my hands were sort of pudgy. I'd wondered whether she was getting bigger or I was getting smaller, but it now looked like it was me getting smaller. I looked over at her and saw that my face was even with her hips.

"Am I getting smaller? Or growing younger? I think I am."

I had stopped, so she had to stop, too. "Yes, you're growing younger, honey."

"But -- why?"

"It's necessary," she said gently. "You'll see." She started walking and I had to trot to catch up.

"Will I -- will I keep getting younger? Will I keep getting younger until I'm the way I was before I was born?"

"No, it won't go that far. We're almost where we need to go. When we get there, it will stop. It will be all right."

By now, just walking was difficult, even if I wasn't trying to keep up. I gave up and stood still and started to cry.

"Why am I like this? What is going on? What is happening to me?" My voice sounded funny and I had trouble making the words sound right.

She stopped walking and looked down at me. "You can't keep going?" she asked.

I shook my head. I plopped down on my butt. It didn't hurt like it would have when I was full size. "I'm sorry," I sobbed. "I know I'm supposed to, but I can't."

She squatted down in front of me. She was still taller than me, but at least she wasn't so much taller and I could look her in the face without hurting my neck. She gave me a penetrating look, but then sighed and looked more sympathetic.

"Come here, little one," she said and picked me up like a toddler and held me to her chest with one hand under my butt and the other stroking my back, so I was looking over her shoulder. I kept thinking it was silly, but it did make me feel better.

"How old am I?" I asked after she started walking again.

"You look like you're maybe two or three, and your emotional maturity is not much older. But your awareness isn't much younger than when we started." I could feel her voice vibrating her chest where I was pressed against her. Her voice was low and soothing. I was still scared, but I felt a lot safer now that she was carrying me.

She started talking as if to herself. "Sometimes, to make things right, you have to go all the way back to where they went wrong. Sometimes that means you have to go pretty far back."

I started to feel bad about having to be handled like a baby. "I'm sorry to be so much trouble," I said.

"It's no trouble. You're doing the best you can. Just relax, we'll be there in no time. We're pretty close."

I wasn't sure that being there soon was all that comforting, I was pretty anxious about what would happen there, but it didn't seem like I had any alternative.

It did seem like the gray around me was getting brighter. I couldn't look all the way around me, but as far as I could tell, the brightness was all around us. I still had no clue what she was seeing to tell her where to go. She kept walking. I had no sense of time, but it did get brighter and brighter until it was as bright as a beach on a sunny day and I had to bury my eyes in her shoulder to protect them from the light.

At last, she stopped and put me down. I turned around and saw sort of a pond, about the size of a duck pond. There was no shore. It looked like it was just a depression in the featureless gray floor we'd been walking on which had collected rain water, like a bird bath.

"You need to go in there. Let's get your clothes off." I felt embarrassed that she would see me naked, but it wasn't like I could do anything about it. I tried to help, but my chubby fingers weren't able to handle the buttons or to pull myself out of my shirt and pants.

"Is that water going to change me?" I asked as she was getting my underwear off. I noticed that my belly and genitals looked like a baby boy's.

"No, it won't change anything. It's more like a ceremony. A symbol of what is going to happen."

"So why do I have to do it?" I whined.

"What has to happen won't happen if you don't."

Now naked, I sat down on the edge of the pond. The floor or ground or whatever it was felt neither warm nor cold. I put my feet in the water. It felt like tepid water. It splashed like water. I didn't feel like it was changing me in any way.

I turned and saw that she had just finished taking off her shoes and socks and was starting on rolling up her pants. "I'll walk you in in just a minute." I went back to looking at the water. My feet had made little ripples which reflected the diffuse light surrounding us into little lines across the water.

I felt her come up beside me and take my hand. I stood up without her asking and we took slow steps into the pond. Other than the splashing of our feet in the water, there was no sound. Once we got to where the water was up to my chest, we stopped.

"Dunk yourself in the water. Just hold your breath and squat down. Once you're wet all over, stand back up."

I took a deep breath and dropped down on my haunches. I opened my eyes. I could see her bare legs through the watery blue. Otherwise, there was nothing to see. I looked a little longer, remembering how long I used to be able to swim underwater. I felt her tug on my arm, so I stood back up.

"I don't feel any different," I said. "Maybe wetter."

"That you are," she said with a chuckle, somehow sounding more relaxed and cheerful than she had before. "Let's get you back out and dressed." We splashed back to the spot on the shore where my toddler-sized clothing lay in a heap.

"Do you have a towel? I'm still wet."

"We'll just wait here until you're dry."

"Is this what we came here for? Can you tell me now what's going on?" My words sounded funny coming out in a little baby voice.

She found a spot where there weren't any puddles from our drip-drying and sat down cross-legged on the ground. "Honey: didn't you ever have the feeling you didn't really fit? Like you weren't really there?"

"Yes. Sometimes I thought I was a ghost. Like, how come none of my friends wanted to know why you were there, or why I went off with you?" I felt so lonely, so empty, so afraid.

"Somehow, when you were very young, something went -- off. You got lost and nobody saw or came to find you. You never got the chance to become who you were meant to be."

I was a little distracted. I was looking at my naked toddler body and the little drops of water and wondering how long it would take for them to evaporate. I would have expected to feel chilly, but somehow the air felt as lukewarm as the water. It took a while for her words to sink in, I don't know how long. Time didn't seem to have its usual meaning.

"Nobody came to find me?" I suddenly felt very, very sad. Then the word 'nobody' struck me. "But -- didn't you come?"

A warm smile filled her face and she nodded.

I thought some more. My toddler brain wasn't having an easy time of it. "So -- does that mean I have that chance now?"

She nodded again.

"Do I have to do something? To become, I mean."

"You'll know what to do. Just listen to your heart."

"I think I'm dry now," I said after a while. Annie came over and helped me back into my toddler-size clothes, or rather, she put them on me while I tried to move my limbs into whatever position made the job easiest for her.

"What do we do now?" I asked once I was dressed.

"We go," she said.

"But which way?"

"You tell me. I led you here, now it's your turn to lead."

"Oh, thanks a lot!" It sounded funny, hearing adult words spoken in a toddler voice. "How do I do that?"

"Pick a direction. You'll know the way. If you listen to your heart, that is."

"New age religion now. You're being very helpful." Annie laughed gently. I turned around a few times slowly. No direction seemed better than any other. Finally, I just picked one at random. "That way," I pointed. I took her hand and we started walking.

"Now that I'm leading, do you have to go away? Can you stay with me?"

"Of course. I'll stay with you for as long as you need me. You don't have to go it alone. Just remember you're leading, not me."

As we walked, I tried to figure out how to listen to my heart. I mean, if I tried, I could hear a 'lub-lub, lub-lub,' but I don't think that's what she meant.

I closed my eyes and had a vision of a kindergarden girl dressed for ballet, in pink leotard and tights and a pink child's tutu, the kind you make with a length of nylon net folded over some elastic, and with her wispy yellow hair held out of the way with green and blue plastic barrettes with bas reliefs of frogs on them. I got a warm feeling all the way down to my groin. I opened my eyes and saw that I was dressed the same way. I'd grown back to kindergardener size and I looked exactly like the girl in my vision. I glanced over to Annie, who was giving me an indulgent smile. I stopped and looked at myself. Then I got afraid of my daring and when I did, I faded back into a drab little boy. When I saw that, all the joy drained out of me and I started to cry.

"You'll get better at it," Annie reassured me.

I looked up at her through teary eyes. "Can I have a hug?"

"Of course," she said and picked me up and held me tight until I felt better. It didn't erase my disappointment, but it did make me feel better. "Uff! You're a lot heavier that you were the last time I carried you," she laughed as she put me back down.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It was my privilege," she said cheerfully. She seemed a lot more carefree than she had been on the way in. Like she'd been carrying a weight and she wasn't any more.

I started walking again and so did she. I didn't know if I was going the right way, or even the same way as before, but I didn't worry about it any more. The gray had gotten dimmer, back to the way it had been before.

I tried to recall the vision of the kindergardener in the tutu, but it was hard, and when I finally could see it, it felt unhappy and reluctant, like it had felt hurt and pushed away when I'd gotten scared.

"I want to bring the girl back, but I can't," I said.

"Don't push it. Just listen. Your heart will speak to you again when it's ready. It's very forgiving."

I tried to imagine myself as a Disney prince. I sort of got the picture in my mind. But then a Disney princess appeared, in my mind, and he went off with her. Yeah, pushing it wasn't working.

We were walking together, holding hands. I was gently swinging our joined arms back and forth. "I know you're not my mommy," I said. "But I kind of wish you were."

As soon as I said it, I was afraid she'd vanish, like in a fairy tale. But when I looked over at her, she was smiling. "How about a favorite aunt?"

"Aunt Annie...." I recited and got a good feeling all the way down to my toes. On an impulse, I turned to her and said, "I love you, Aunt Annie." I reached out to hug her.

She stopped and hugged me back, a long loving hug where we melted into each other. I was a little taller, up to the height of her chest. She said, "I love you, too. You know -- I don't know what I should call you. I somehow think you aren't an Adam any more."

"I better let my heart answer." We hugged a little longer, and the warmth of that hug kept flowing into me. I had a vision of myself as a seedling that was being warmed by the sun. I felt my hair brushing my shoulders. She stroked my back and I was aware of my body, my back and front and all, very aware that it was real and it was my body.

"We'll have to break this up sooner or later if you ever want to get home." I wasn't sure where 'home' was any more, but I let go of her anyway and we went back to walking. We were walking hand in hand, a little like a child with their mother and a little like two BFFs. I was thinking of Marcel Marceau walking and drawing a box with his hands. I looked at my free hand. It looked exactly the same as before. But it felt different. I had this strong feeling, like: wow, it's my hand!

"Eve!" I blurted out without thinking. Did I say that? I mused on this. "I guess my heart wants me to be called Eve. Like Adam and Eve. But I'm not a girl."

"Would you like to be?"

"I don't know. I never really wanted to be, not before. I never really wanted to be much of anything, I guess. Except maybe real. But -- maybe my heart.... It's so weird. Isn't it?" I looked to her for an answer.

"You're leading, it's for you to answer."

"I guess I was lost a long time, so being found is going to feel weird for a while." I thought about it for a while. "So I guess I'm not what -- or who -- I thought I was. I guess I'm going to be Eve now. And different in a lot of other ways, too.... It still feels weird, but not quite so weird as before."

I glanced down at myself as I walked. I was taller now, almost teenager size, and I could almost see a gauzy peasant dress superimposed over my drab dungarees. I had a feeling the dungarees were my past and the dress was my future. I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but it didn't seem like how I felt would make any difference.

I still couldn't tell which way was the right one. All directions still looked exactly the same. No matter where I looked, everything was the same featureless gray. From somewhere came the thought: maybe it doesn't matter so much which direction we walk in as that I chose it. I wondered where we'd end up, though.

"Do you think we'll get back to the diner, and my friends will still be there?"

"What do you think?"

I thought for a moment. Words came into my mind from somewhere. "I think when I get back, we won't be at the diner at all. And if I do go to the diner someday, it won't be anything like it was when you fetched me." I waited for more words to come to me. "I'll be different. I'll want different things. No, I'll actually want things. I'll like some things and I'll hate some things. I won't be able to hide any more. People will see me. I'll have different friends, and the people who used to be my friends, if we're still friends, I'll be a different kind of friend to them." I felt a little sad, but just a little. Maybe a little lost. "I won't be able to be Adam any more, will I? I'll be Eve, instead," I said wistfully. "But I'll be me."

As I was saying it, the formless gray we were walking through seemed to be ending and there was something more distinct ahead of us. I stopped and peered into the distance. A home? A school? A church parish hall? I couldn't tell for sure, but it felt welcoming. Challenging, too. Indistinct as it was, though, it felt more solid, more real than anywhere I'd been back before Annie fetched me from the diner. I felt afraid. Was I ready to face a new, more real world as the new, more real me? I looked at my new aunt. "Am I ready for this?" I asked.

She smiled at me. "Ask your heart."

"I don't know. But I'm not sure it matters. I have to go ahead whether I feel ready or not." I swallowed nervously. "If I fall, will you be there to help me back up?"

"Of course. But I don't think you will."

I slowly felt a smile starting in my chest and spreading out all through me. "I'm going to do this right," I said. As I took my first steps forward into my future, my heart pounding with fear, I picked up my courage and shouted, "ready or not, here I come!"